We Were the Mulvaneys (29 page)

The first time he'd looked through a microscope, in seventh grade, he'd been shocked, and perplexed.
So beautiful, it almost hurts.

Of course, he knew
beauty
doesn't exist. He hadn't known then but he knew now.
Beauty
is a matter of perspective, subjectivity. Cultural prejudice. You require a human eye, a human brain, a human vocabulary. In nature, there's nothing.

Still,
beauty
gives comfort. Who knows why?

Maybe Patrick Mulvaney would discover the answer, some day.

He'd removed from his bed the handmade rag quilt, red white and blue squares elaborately sewn together, of contrasting fabrics (cotton, denim, velvet, taffeta, corduroy, muslin) Corinne had given him from home; folded it and hid it away in his closet. Because he couldn't be sure that their mother had given Marianne anything quite so nice to take with her to Salamanca.

On Dryden Road, at a florist's, he'd bought a dozen fresh-cut flowers. Yellow daffodils he hoped wouldn't remind Marianne too much of High Point Farm where they'd grown in wild profusion, multiplying each spring, bulbs planted by Corinne along the driveway, in the front lawn, out near the road. And hyacinth too Corinne had grown, cutting sprigs to bring into the house, the sweet smell, so sweet. And jonquils with their papery petals. In a glass vase Patrick set these flowers on his single table, to greet Marianne.

So she'd exclaim, as soon as she entered the room,
Oh Patrick how nice
. Wiping lightly at her eyes.

He dreaded her crying. He was not going to cry, himself.

Never cried. Couldn't remember the last time. When Prince had trampled him, practically knocked out his eye? God damn making him a freak for life.

Still, no one's fault. In nature, no one's to blame.

 

“Snow after Easter—it doesn't seem fair, does it?”

Marianne was stirring a rich dark minestrone soup in a battered pan on Patrick's hot plate, as Patrick set the table for their meal; she peered out the window where, in the streetlight below, damp snowflakes swirled like agitated moths. She hadn't sounded complaining, only wistful. Patrick said, incensed, “I don't much notice weather now. That's one thing I'm freed from, now I'm not a farm kid.”

Farm kid
just slightly mocking. For of course the Mulvaneys of High Point Farm had never been only just
farmers
.

Marianne said, “I'll never change, I'm sure. Staring up at the sky, trying to figure what's coming.”

Patrick was briskly laying out plates on the table, a folding table in the center of the book-cluttered room that was his study: the plates, slightly chipped, were cobalt-blue stoneware of some well-known American stock, pressed upon him by Corinne when he'd moved to Ithaca.
But you have to eat off something, why not something nice?
The thick-plied yellow cloth napkins were from home too, and the stainless steel cutlery with the chunky carved-bone handles. Marianne had noticed, smiled, murmured something Patrick hadn't heard. Patrick was saying, in the high-toned, nasal, insufferable mode of a brother scoring points against a sister who'll always be younger than he, “But why should you
care
? We're free of all that. If there's a drought, or so much rain the seeds rot in the soil. If there's an infestation of tent caterpillars in the orchard, or Japanese beetles. We don't have to be superstitious, like primitive people. God, what a relief, to live in a place like this, where I'm not connected, I'm not responsible, I can walk away without a backward glance. What a relief, not to have to care who you
are
.”

Marianne said hesitantly, “But, Patrick, you must care—?”

“What? Why?”

“Who you
are
? You must care.”

Patrick said impatiently, “I said
where you are
. It's a relief not to have to care
where you are
. All that pride we had, at home, and anxiety. Keeping up some kind of—I don't know—model family life. Not that we were aware of it, even Dad and Mom. Especially Dad and Mom. As soon as I left I discovered how big the world is, you only have to reposition yourself in it.
Where
is just temporary, you'll be moving on.”

Making little speeches, to his perplexed sister. He supposed he was overstating the case for her sake.
Look: you aren't missing much. Do I miss them?

Supposed that Marianne's presence in these cramped quarters where he was accustomed to being blissfully alone, in truth rarely thinking of
back home
, of
them
, of
it
, was making him say extravagant asinine things he didn't exactly mean.

Marianne, however, took every statement of Patrick's seriously. He remembered that from the past: years, years, years of playing elder smarter more cynical brother to his adoring, unquestioning sister. It was flattering, but occasionally annoying. Provoking anger, you could not predict when, like the hot pounding anger he'd felt in the bus depot, seeing his sister,
his own sister he loved
, through the eyes of a sexual predator. Marianne was saying slowly, “I suppose I'm different. More literal. Every place I
am
, like, now, the Co-op, and Kilburn—I can't think it's temporary. Even if I left, it would still be there. The place, and the people.”

Patrick let the subject pass. He had yet to inquire much about the Green Isle Co-op apart from knowing that it provided off-campus room and board for Marianne at Kilburn State and that, by working there, she could defray sixty percent of her college costs. Just possibly he resented his sister's tender tone in speaking of it and of the companions she'd known only the previous September but clearly liked, very much. Brothers and sisters they were to her, apparently. Patrick knew the names,
Abelove
,
Birk
,
Felice-Marie
,
Val
,
Gilb
or was it
Gelb
. A mixed-breed spaniel named
Teardrop
.

This information seemed to him more than sufficient.

Patrick had wanted to take Marianne out to dinner that evening, to a Chinese restaurant on State Street, but she'd insisted she would make their meals while she was here. She'd seemed so emphatic over the phone, he'd given in—“Though it's a lot of trouble for you, to bring food on the bus. Couldn't we buy it here?”

“Oh Patrick,
no
.”

Sounding almost hurt. In just Corinne's tone, if one or another of her children hadn't been hungry for a meal, or hadn't wanted to take time to sit down at the table and eat with the family.

So Marianne had brought with her on the Trailways bus, in the canvas bag, two quarts of a tomato-based soup stock, raw vegetables, and macaroni; two loaves of bread she'd baked herself, zucchini-walnut and nine-grain whole wheat; a jar of Green Isle raspberry jam; even, in a plastic bag, salad greens and vegetables. Preparing the meal in Patrick's alcove kitchen (no stove, but a double-burner hot plate, a squat little Pullman refrigerator on the floor, a small aluminum sink, a single counter and cupboard) she'd chattered to him, glowing with pleasure and purpose. Almost, she was Button Mulvaney. If Patrick didn't stare at her.

In the bus depot, God he'd been shocked! The sight of her going through him like a sharp blade.

Marianne?—was it possible?

In the room here when she'd removed her jacket. He'd swallowed hard, how thin she was. Upper arms no larger than his wrists. Collarbone jutting and breasts tiny as a twelve-year-old's and anyone who would gaze upon such a child with lust was sick, depraved, repellent. The spiky hair, brutally shorn at the back and sides. Faint blue veins at her temples and eyes threaded with red as if she'd gone without sleep recently. Or had been crying.

Equally disturbing, the odd clothes. Discount-store clothes. Like no clothes worn by Cornell students, even those eager to define themselves as “characters,” “freaks.” The flimsy white cotton T-shirt with the thin, loose straps and, in green stamped letters

 

GREEN ISLE CO-OP

 

on the front. Sarcastically Patrick asked, “Are you in disguise, Marianne?—as what?” He'd meant to be funny but Marianne only stared at him, confused. She'd touched her hair nervously as if trying to smooth it down. It occurred to him that she didn't know what she looked like.

Patrick had read about rape victims, he'd done research in his methodical Pinch-style, in the Cornell psych library.
It is common for a rape victim, female or male, to avoid mirrors and direct confrontation with all images of the “self.” As if, where there had been a person, there is now no one.

Patrick offered to help Marianne prepare supper but she said she didn't need help. The minestrone was her own recipe, never the same twice. Patrick murmured he wasn't used to being waited on any longer, it made him uneasy, and something in his voice tipped off Marianne, who laughed, teasing, asking who'd been cooking for him lately? a girl? and Patrick blushed and said no one.

Marianne smiled. “No?”

It was true in a way. No one had cooked for Patrick here, in his own kitchen.

They sat down to eat. Marianne's minestrone was the most delicious soup Patrick had ever tasted: steaming-hot, in stoneware bowls, a thick broth seasoned with fresh basil and oregano, containing chunks of celery, tomato, carrots, red onion, beans, chickpeas and macaroni. The nine-grain whole wheat bread was crumbly, chewy, delicious, too. And a green salad with red leaf lettuce and endive, cucumber, pepper, alfalfa sprouts, a vinegar-and-oil dressing flavored with dill. Patrick was surprised at his appetite, his hunger. Usually he prepared for himself quick meals out of cans, dumped in a pan or stirfried in a skillet. Sat at his desk and worked as he ate, hardly tasting his food, washing it down with numerous glasses of fruit juice. Lean-limbed, lanky, with a flat stomach, Patrick had always had nearly the appetite of his heftier brother Mike but no one had seemed to notice. He ate, ate, ate and retained only ropey muscle on his bones. Marianne had always been slender, small-boned; she'd eaten sparingly, as she ate now, taking pleasure in Patrick's appetite and his reactions to her meal—“Wow. Terrific. This is really good.”

Marianne blushed: like Corinne, she was uneasy receiving praise.

Saying, disparagingly, “—I think I put too much oregano in the soup. If it's overdone—”

“Hell, no,” Patrick said severely, “—it's perfect.”

Marianne smiled, laughed nervously. In the overhead light her eyes were enormous and the sockets deeply shadowed.

Patrick reiterated how happy he was at Cornell, how rarely he was lonely. Marianne's wistful smile seemed to inquire
But don't you miss me?
—he took no notice. He was feeling rather boastful, a quiet boy running at the mouth, in the way of stiff shy vain young men who imagine themselves brilliant, and are so perceived by others. He spoke warmly if vaguely of his fellow tenants in the house, foreign students so much more serious than most American students. Civilization, for them, was a very different matter than it was for Americans, Patrick believed. We tend to take it for granted, it's just
there
. We tend to think it's
for us
, a gift. But others, from the East especially, seem to know something else. “Almost, when you talk with them,” Patrick said earnestly, “you get the impression they're shielding us—I mean, a kid like me. Typical spoiled American kid like me.”

“Oh, Patrick,” Marianne laughed, with sisterly reproach, “—you're hardly typical.”

Patrick said loftily, “I don't want to be. But I see the world through the prism of my culture, not through ‘objective' eyes.”

“But why would anyone else be more ‘objective'? I don't understand.”

“Because their civilizations are older, more fatalistic. It's like contingency in evolutionary theory—sheer chance. There seems to be design, in fact it's ingenious design, no mere human brain could have devised it, there seems to be ‘intelligence' manifested—but it's the accidental, mechanical accumulation of ‘natural selection' over a period of millions of years. No God, only just nature. And accident.” Patrick spoke dogmatically, in the tone of Dr. Herring in the lecture hall. Marianne was sitting meekly hunched at the table, bone-sharp elbows on the table, eyes downcast and forehead creased. She'd virtually stopped eating.

Shyly she said, “My friend Abelove—that's his last name, he's called by his last name—he's executive director of the Co-op—he says that evolution and creation can be reconciled. Evolution through nature and creation through—”

“God?—don't be silly,” Patrick said, snorting in derision.