We Were the Mulvaneys (9 page)

“Oh!—oh.”

As sometimes, not frequently but sometimes, she'd whimper aloud with the strain of a painful bowel movement, a sudden flash of sensation almost too raw to be borne, now the sound forced itself from her, through her clenched teeth—“Oh God! Oh Jesus!” She seemed fearful of releasing her weight entirely; her legs quivered. The pain was sharp and swift as the blade of an upright knife thrust into her.

You're not hurt, you wanted it. Stop crying.

Don't play games with me, O.K.?

I'm not the kind of guy you're gonna play games with.

At first when she tried to urinate, she couldn't. She tried again, and finally a trickle was released, thin but scalding, smarting between her legs. She dared not glance down at herself out of fear of seeing something she would not wish to see. Already seen, in vague blurred glimpses, at the LaPortes', in the hot rushing water of a tub.

The pain was subsiding, numbness returning like a cloud.

Flushing the toilet, she saw thin wormlike trails of blood.

 

That was all it was, then!—her
period.

Of course, her
period.

That was how Mom first spoke of it, warm and maternal and determined not to be embarrassed:
your period.

It was all routine, and she was one who responded well to routine. Like most of the Mulvaneys, and the dogs, cats, horses, livestock. What you've done once you can do again, more than once for sure you can do again, again. No need to think about it, much.

Still, Marianne's hands shook, at the first sighting of menstrual blood she'd feel faint, mildly panicked, recalling her first period, the summer of her thirteenth birthday, how frightened she'd been despite Corinne's kindness, solicitude.

I'm fine. I'll take care of myself.
In her bureau drawer a supply of “thin maxi-absorbent sanitary pads” and snug-fitting nylon panties with elastic bands. She realized she'd been feeling cramps for hours. That tight clotted sensation in the pit of the belly she'd try to ignore until she couldn't any longer. And a headache coming on—ringing clanging pain as if pincers were squeezing her temples.

It was all routine. You can deal with routine. Ask to be excused from active gym class tomorrow, which was a swim class, fifth hour. After school she'd attend cheerleading drill but might not participate, depending upon the cramps, headache. Always in gym class or at cheerleading drill there was someone, sometimes there were several girls, who were excused for the session, explaining with an embarrassed shrug they were having their periods.

Some of the girls with steady boyfriends even hinted at, or informed their boyfriends, they were
having their periods
—Marianne couldn't imagine such openness, such intimacy. She'd never been that close to any boy, had had countless friends who were boys yet few
boyfriends
, with all that implied of specialness, possessiveness. Sharing secrets. No, not even her brothers, not even Patrick she adored.

Her cheeks burned at the mere thought. Her body was her own, her private self. Only Corinne might be informed certain things but not even Corinne, not even Mom, not always.

She shook out another two aspirin tablets onto her sweaty palm, and washed them down with water from the bathroom faucet. In the medicine cabinet were many old prescription containers, some of them years old, Corinne's, Michael Sr.'s, there was one containing codeine pills Dad had started to take after his root canal work of a few months ago then swore off, in disgust—“Nothing worse than being fuzzy-headed.”

Well, no. Marianne thought there could be lots worse.

Still, she took only the aspirin. Her problem was only routine and she would cope with it with routine measures.

Marking the date, February 15, on her
Purrrfect Kittens
calendar.

 

She'd been a tomboy, the one they called
Cute-as-a-Button.
Climbing out an upstairs window to run on tiptoe across the sloping asphalt roof of the rear porch, waving mischievously at Mule and P.J. below. Her brothers were tanned, bare-chested, Mule on the noisy Toro lawn mower and P.J. raking up debris.
Look who's up on the roof! Hey get down, Marianne! Be careful!
The looks on their faces!

Roof-climbing was strictly forbidden at the Mulvaneys', for roofs were serious, potentially dangerous places. Dad's life
was
roofs, as he said. But there was ten-year-old Button in T-shirt and shorts, showing off like her older brothers she adored.

It was a good memory. It came out of nowhere, a child climbing through a window, trembling with excitement and suspense, and it ended in a blaze of summer sunshine. She'd ignored the boys calling to her and stood shading her eyes like an Indian scout, seeing the mountains in the northeast, the wooded hills where strips of sunshine and shadow so rapidly alternated you would think the mountains were something living and restless.

And Mt. Cataract like a beckoning hand, for just Button to see.

Here. Look here. Raise your eyes, look here.

 

In the warmly lit kitchen rich with the smell of baking bread there stood Corinne leaning against a counter, chatting with a woman friend on the phone. Her blue eyes lifting to Marianne's face, her quick smile. The radio was playing a mournful country-rock song and Feathers, incensed as by a rival male canary, was singing loudly in rebuttal, but Corinne didn't seem to mind the racket. Seeing Marianne grab her parka from a peg in the hall she cupped her hand over the receiver and asked, surprised, “Sweetie? Where are you going?”

“Out to see Molly-O.”

“Molly-O?
Now?
”

That startled plea in Corinne's voice: Don't we prepare Sunday supper together, super-casserole? Isn't this one of the things Button and her Mom
do
?

Outside it was very cold. Twenty degrees colder than that afternoon. And the wind, bringing moisture to her eyes. It was that slate-colored hour neither daylight nor dark. The sky resembled shattered oyster shells ribboned with flame in the west, but at ground level you could almost see (sometimes Marianne had stared out the window of her bedroom, observing) how shadows lifted from the snowy contours of the land, like living things. Exactly the bluish-purple color of the beautiful slate roof Michael Sr. had installed on the house.

In the long run, Dad said, you get exactly what you pay for.

Quality
costs.

Marianne's heart was pumping after her close escape, in the kitchen. There would be no avoiding Mom when they prepared supper. No avoiding any of them, at the table.

Yet how lucky she was, to have a mother like Corinne. All the girls marveled at Mrs. Mulvaney, and at Mr. Mulvaney who was so much fun. Your parents are actually kind of your friends, aren't they? Amazing. Trisha's mother would have poked her way into Marianne's room by now asking how was the dance? how was your date? how was the party? or was it more than one party? did you get much sleep last night?—you look like you didn't. Another mother would perhaps have wanted to see Marianne's dress again. That so-special dress. Even the satiny pumps. Just to see, to reminisce. To examine.

One of the rangy barn cats, an orange tiger with a stumpy tail, leapt out of a woodpile to trot beside Marianne as she crossed the snow-swept yard to the horse barn. He made a hopeful mewing sound, pushing against her legs. “Hi there, Freckles!” Marianne said. She stooped to pet the cat's bony head but for some reason, even as he clearly wanted to be petted, he shrank from her, his tail rapidly switching. He'd come close to clawing or biting her. “All right then, go away,” Marianne said.

How good, how clear the cold air. Pure, and scentless. In midwinter, in such cold, the fecund smells of High Point Farm were extinguished.

No games. No games with me.

Just remember!

At the LaPortes' she'd bathed twice. The first time at about 4:30
A.M.
which she couldn't remember very clearly and the second time at 9:30
A.M.
and Trisha had still been asleep in her bed, or pretending to be asleep. The gentle
tick-ticking
of a bedside clock. Hours of that clock, hours unmoving beneath the covers of a bed not her own, in a house not her own. Toward dawn, a sound of plumbing somewhere in the house, then again silence, and after a long time the first church bells ringing, hollow-sounding chimes Marianne guessed came from St. Ann's the Roman Catholic church on Mercer Avenue. Then Mrs. LaPorte knocking softly at Trisha's bedroom door at about 9
A.M.
asking, in a lowered voice, “Girls? Anyone interested in going to church with me?” Trisha groaned without stirring from her bed and Marianne lay very still, still as death, and made no reply at all.

Later, Trisha asked Marianne what had happened after the party at the Paxtons', where had Marianne gone, and who'd brought her back, and Marianne saw the worry, the dread in her friend's eyes
Don't tell me! Please, no!
so she smiled her brightest Button-smile and shook her head as if it was all too complicated, too confused to remember.

And so it was, in fact: Marianne did not remember.

 

Unless a giddy blur, a girl not herself and not anyone she knew. Coughing and choking dribbling vomit hot as acid across her chin, in a torn dress of cream-colored satin and strawberry-colored chiffon, legs running! running! clumsy as snipping shears plied by a child.

 

Out in Molly-O's stall, at this hour? But why?

This safe, known place. The silence and stillness of the barn, except for the horses' quizzical snuffling, whinnying.

Marianne wondered if, back in the house, Corinne was consulting with Patrick.
Is something wrong with
—
?

Judd, too, had looked at her—strangely.

He was only thirteen, but—strangely.

Marianne took up a brush and swiftly, rhythmically stroked Molly-O's sides, her coarse crackling mane. Then lifted grain and molasses to the wet, eager mouth. She clucked and crooned to Molly-O who had roused herself from a doze to quiver with pleasure, snort and stamp and twitch her tail, snuffling greedily as she ate from Marianne's hand. That shivery, exquisite sensation, feeding a horse from your hand! As a small child Marianne had screamed with delight at the feel of a horse's tongue. She loved the humid snuffling breath, the powerful, unimaginable life coursing through the immense body. A horse is
so big
, a horse is so
solid.
Always, you respect your horse for her
size.

She loved the rich horsey smell that was a smell of earliest childhood when visits to the horse barn were overseen scrupulously by adults and it was forbidden to wander in here alone—oh, forbidden! Brought in here for the first time in Dad's arms, then set down cautiously on the ground strewn with straw and walking, or trying to—the almost unbearable excitement of seeing the horses in their stalls, poking their strangely long heads out, blinking their enormous bulging eyes to look at
her.
Always she'd loved the sweetish-rancid smell of straw, manure, animal feed and animal heat. That look of recognition in a horse's eyes:
I know you, I love you. Feed me!

So easy to make an animal happy. So easy to do the right thing by an animal.

Molly-O was nine years old, and no longer young. She'd had respiratory infections, knee trouble. Like every horse the Mulvaneys had ever owned. (“A horse is the most delicate animal known to man,” Dad said, “—but they don't tell you till it's too late and he's yours.”) She wasn't a beautiful horse even by Chautauqua Valley standards but she was sweet-tempered and docile; with a narrow chest, legs that appeared foreshortened, knobby knees. Her coat was a rich burnished-red with a flaglike patch of white on her nose and four irregular white socks—Button's horse, her twelfth birthday present. There is no love like the love you have for your first horse but that love is so easy to forget, or misplace—it's like love for yourself, the self you outgrow.

Marianne hid her face in Molly-O's mane whispering how sorry she was, oh how sorry!—since school had started she'd been neglecting Molly-O, and hadn't ridden her more than a dozen times last summer. Her horse-mania of several years ago had long since subsided.

It had been a mild horse-mania, compared to that of other girls of Marianne's acquaintance who took equestrian classes and boarded their expensive Thoroughbreds at a riding academy near Yewville. Flaring up most passionately when she'd been between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, then subsiding as other interests competed for her attention; as Marianne Mulvaney's “popularity”—the complex, mesmerizing life of outwardness—became a defining factor of her life. Competing in horse shows wasn't for her, nor for any of the Mulvaneys. (At the height of his interest, at fifteen, Patrick had been a deft, promising rider.) Dad said that the “great happiness” in horses, as in all of High Point Farm, was in keeping it all amateur—“And I mean
real
amateur.”