We Were the Mulvaneys (56 page)

She protested, “Oh, Miss Hagström—you can't expect me to ‘critique' your poetry. I have only a high school diploma, I flunked out of college—”

Penelope Hagström, regal in her wheelchair, her hawkish face uplifted, said, “Of course I can, Marianne, and I do. You're an intelligent young woman. Much more intelligent, I've come to see, than you let on. To whom do you imagine I'm writing my poetry, if not to ‘Marianne Mulvaney'? Not to the dear departed dead poets, I hope. Not to my ‘archivist.'”

So, reluctantly, Marianne would offer an opinion: she liked a poem very much though she had to admit she didn't fully understand it; or, she didn't fully understand a poem but she liked it, very much. “But what are you truly thinking, Marianne?” Miss Hagström demanded, suspiciously. “I feel you're thinking something sharp and shrewd.”

Marianne, seated in the older woman's study with Muffin twined in her lap half-asleep, protested faintly, “But, Miss Hagström—why have any opinion at all? Can't poetry be just what it
is
?”

Coolly, Penelope Hagström said, “Nothing
is
, my dear. Only what our opinions make of it.” She shuffled manuscript pages into a folder on her lap, indicating the poetry session had concluded.

Marianne fled in relief, carrying drowsy Muffin. Her cheeks burned, her heart beat swiftly. She thought
No! I could never believe that.

Thinking
I must leave Spartansburg soon. It's time.

Much as she admired Penelope Hagström, that remarkable woman. And had grown—almost—to love her. But Marianne was being mistaken for a person she was not, and could never be.

The end came abruptly only twelve days later. Miss Hagström made to Marianne an astonishing, wholly unexpected offer of a “promotion”: Marianne would become associate director of the Hagström Foundation, as well as continue as Miss Hagström's personal assistant, at a considerably higher salary than the one she now received—“An executive salary, my dear.” (The Lydia Charles Hagström Memorial Foundation for the Arts, which Penelope had established after her mother's death in 1967, awarded grants as high as twenty-five thousand dollars to arts organizations, literary journals, nonprofit theaters and the like, mainly in the Pittsburgh area. The director was a Pittsburgh attorney with whom Marianne occasionally spoke on the phone but had never met.) This proposal was so alarming, Marianne felt faint. There was a buzzing in her ears as of muffled laughter. She began at once to shake her head. “Miss Hagström, thank you very much, but—”

“Go away and think it over, Marianne. Don't make a decision on the spot. Discuss it with Muffin, if you wish—I'm sure he's on my side!”

“But, Miss Hagström, I couldn't possibly take on such a—such responsibility. I don't have any executive experience. I have only—”

“I know: a high school diploma,” Miss Hagström said briskly. “We've been through that, I think. Will you stop behaving in such a ridiculous schoolgirl manner, Marianne? That isn't you—
I happen to know that isn't you.”

Marianne stared at the older woman, seated in her wheelchair as if it were a throne, her ravaged-handsome head uplifted, eyes shining.

“Who—who is it, then? I don't understand.”

“
I
don't understand, I'm sure,” Miss Hagström said. “But our subject is the Foundation. As you know, we receive many applications for grants each year, and are obliged to assess them carefully; your task would be to organize the files, which you do so superbly, in any case, and to help in the selection process. You might even travel to Pittsburgh occasionally, to interview applicants; or to see work we've subsidized—plays, art exhibits, children's puppet theater. Most of the work you would do from this house, of course, in an office of your own. Otherwise, I wouldn't hear of it! Wouldn't hear of losing you, I mean. I would miss you too much.”

“I see,” Marianne said, confused. “I'm sorry.”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous, my dear! Go away and think about it and tell me ‘yes' in the morning.”

Marianne went away. But never spoke with Penelope Hagström again.

Instead, in stealth, very early the next morning, she hastily packed as many of her things as she could fit into her duffel bag, and sweet-talked dubious Muffin into allowing her to close him in a cardboard box liberally pierced with airholes. There was a housekeeper who lived on the premises, who would discover the note Marianne left for Penelope Hagström, on the dining room table.
Miss Hagström, I'm sorry but I find I must leave, right away! No need to bother about my last-month's salary, or whatever. I thank you for your kindness and Muffin thanks you, too.
Only later would Marianne recall, she'd forgotten to sign the note!

Well, anyway. That was done.

Unseen, Marianne slipped away from the tall shuttered pale-limestone house, and hiked a mile or so into the Spartansburg downtown, carrying her duffel bag and the cardboard box inside which Muffin mewed quizzically, thinking she would buy a ticket—two tickets?—at the Trailways bus station; then got to fretting what if pets weren't allowed on the bus? She was standing on a street corner where a farmer's pickup truck waited for a red light to change, and the farmer, middle-aged, kindly faced, called over to ask did she need a ride, and Marianne said gratefully yes she did, and climbed into the cab of the truck, tossing her duffel bag into the back and holding the cardboard box tight on her lap, and they drove off toward the country. The farmer said he was headed for Sykesville, and Marianne said that was fine. She was headachey from crying, and must have looked a sight—but she'd done the right thing, she'd prevented a terrible misunderstanding from taking place. She would miss Penelope Hagström, she hadn't had room to pack even one of the inscribed books the poet had given her, she was embarrassed of her rude behavior but she was excited, too—it was a mild showery-bright April day, and she'd never so much as heard of Sykesville before.

“That a cat you're carrying there, miss?” the farmer asked.

“His name is Muffin,” Marianne said. She'd been poking her fingers through the airholes in the box, and Muffin licked them with his scratchy tongue, ticklish and cool.

 

In Sykesville, a country town half the size of Spartansburg, Marianne rented a whitewashed wood-frame cabin with a kitchen by the week at the Wayside Motor Court; got a job at a farm produce market less than a mile away by simply walking in and asking if help was needed. She would have been content to settle down in Sykesville, at least for a while, meeting new people, joining a new church, making a few friends including the wonderful woman Janie who, with her husband, owned the produce market, not much older than Marianne but already the mother of several children. And what beautiful children! There was even a young man “interested” in Marianne—in fact, two or three young men—but Marianne rarely went out except during daytime hours, and most days she worked at the market. And by midsummer she'd become increasingly distracted as Muffin began to behave strangely.

When Marianne returned to the cabin in the early evening, instead of trotting out eagerly to greet her, Muffin didn't appear at all. Marianne would call and call him, and sometimes he'd come, and sometimes he wouldn't. One evening the woman who owned the motor court told Marianne she'd seen Muffin descending the hill behind the cabin, where the ground was rocky, uneven, and littered with rusted cans and trash, and where, calling “Muffin? Muffin?” Marianne stumbled, trying not to give in to fear, or worse. Inside a scrubby woods, she sighted the cat, glimmering-white in the dusk, so strangely unmoving, of hardly more substance, at fifteen feet, than a scrap of paper. Why hadn't he come to her, hearing her pleading voice? Why didn't he acknowledge her now? Gazing at her instead with tawny imperturbable eyes. “Oh, what are you doing here? Oh, Muffin.” Marianne waved away a swarm of mosquitoes, seeing that Muffin was sitting, or lying, in the grass, sphinx-style, forepaws neatly tucked beneath his chest, tail curving around his thin buttocks. She picked him up gently and held him. How thin he was! Yet how soft and fine his fur. He did not resist her; but neither was he kneading his paws against her as usual, nor did he begin to purr immediately.

Up in the cabin, with shaking fingers Marianne opened a can of cat-food tuna, Muffin's favorite, but Muffin merely sniffed sadly at it, and at his water bowl; and lay down on the floor as if he were very tired. “But, Muffin, you have to eat. If you don't eat—” Marianne's eyes stung with tears.

What had Corinne said?—
You'll just have to be realistic.

Next day Marianne was fretful and distracted at work, and when she returned to the cabin it was as she'd feared—Muffin was again missing, and would not come when she called. Again she found him in the scrubby woods, except this time deeper into the woods. “Oh, Muffin. What's happening to you?” Marianne was close to tears. She picked Muffin up tenderly, hugging him to her chest. So thin! Hardly more than fur and bones. It took him longer today to begin purring and Marianne had the distinct notion he was doing it solely to humor her, to make her believe things were as they'd always been.

Up in the cabin, again Muffin refused to eat. Sniffed at his food as if he'd forgotten what food was. And again he lay on the floor, tawny eyes going inward.

Next day, Marianne was so distracted at the market, Janie asked her what on earth was wrong, and Marianne laughed lightly and said, “Just life, I guess.” Janie had learned not to question Marianne too closely, and so asked nothing more.

Again when Marianne returned to the cabin, she had to hunt out Muffin in the woods, more remote than ever. And again he refused to eat, turning away with a look of disdain. It seemed to Marianne that his eyes that had always been so beautiful were going flat, dull.

“Muffin, can't you try? Oh, please
try
.”

Of course, Marianne had known for some time that Muffin wasn't “a hundred percent”—as Corinne used to say of an ailing person or animal—but she hadn't wanted to dwell upon it. She knew that Muffin was aging—in fact, old. Was he fifteen? Sixteen? Her mind went vague. She held him on her lap and petted him and wondered what would happen next even as her mind held to its vagueness, an upright wall of fog. She smiled recalling how, as foundling kittens never weaned, Muffin and his twin Big Tom had eaten so ravenously, and so often, everyone in the household was amazed. You would put food in the cats' plastic dishes, turn around for a moment, and next thing you knew—the dishes were licked clean, and the kittens were looking up expectantly, hungry for more. Dad marveled that the kittens ate more than he did, pound for pound. Patrick swore they were growing daily—hourly. When Mom had brought them home, from where they'd been abandoned on a country road, they'd been so tiny both could fit in the palm of her hand; at their heaviest, in the sleek, lustrous prime of mature cathood, they'd each weighed more than twenty pounds.

Now, Muffin probably weighted no more than seven pounds. Five?

Be realistic, Marianne.

Yes, she knew. But there'd be time to be realistic, wouldn't there, when there was no other choice?

So Marianne decided instead to take Muffin to the Stump Creek Hill Animal Shelter & Hospital, of which she'd been hearing such good things since coming to Sykesville. It was only a few miles away and next morning, early, she managed to get a ride with a local farmer, carrying Muffin not in the cardboard box but on her lap. The farmer was doubtful about just dropping her off at the end of the sandy driveway marked
STUMP CREEK hill animal shelter & hospital
, wouldn't she want him to come by and pick her up, later?—but Marianne said no, thank you, she'd be fine. Walking then up the quarter-mile drive, Muffin in her arms, the two of them blinking and staring about them. A strange place—an old estate apparently, now given over to the care of animals; a broad stone house and a carriage house each weatherworn as aged grave markers, yet with bright yellow shutters and trim, and the front area overgrown and tangled as a jungle, lush with wild tiger lilies, goldenrod, and Queen Anne's lace. There were various outbuildings and sheds, and a graveled parking lot in which a half dozen vehicles were parked. To the rear was a yellow picket fence and twin gates marked
ENTER
and
EXIT
, leading to what appeared to be an outdoor zoo. Muffin's pale nose began to twitch with the raffish smell of animals. There was a sound of excited screeching, jabbering in the distance. Muffled barking. Marianne saw a gigantic bird—iridescent midnight blue, exquisitely beautiful, with a quivering feather crown and a long tail dragging in the dust—a peacock?—ambling across the parking lot, and in its wake a smaller pure-white bird—a peahen? Farther along the lane were several deer, a small loose tame herd. Marianne stared—at least two of the deer were young bucks, with only three legs.

Marianne let herself into the main house, through a door marked
ANIMAL HOSPITAL PLEASE ENTER
. She was in a veterinarian's waiting room with a shabby linoleum floor and an oilcloth-covered counter and several slightly scummy glass-fronted cages with handmade signs
ORPHANS
!
PLEASE ADOPT
! inside which a number of small kittens slept, played with one another, stared through the glass. “Oh, look, Muffin! Aren't they sweet?” Marianne whispered. But Muffin scarcely looked, and Marianne herself could hardly bear to meet the kittens' eyes. A stringy-haired girl behind the counter, name tag
RHODA
, took Marianne's name and asked what the problem was, staring at Muffin, and Marianne explained, as clearly and brightly as she could, and it seemed to her, unless she imagined it, that the stringy-haired girl muttered, “Uh-oh,” in a discouraged tone. There was no one ahead of Marianne, but the telephone rang, rang, rang for Rhoda to answer. After a few anxious minutes of studying a sun-faded poster
PET OWNERS GUARD AGAINST RABIES
! Marianne heard her name called, and quickly followed Rhoda into a frankly stale-smelling interior, a warren of rooms. At the end of a long corridor, as a door opened, there came a noisy clamor of barking and yipping, before the door swung shut again. Marianne hugged Muffin tight in case he should panic, but he didn't move, at all.