We Were The Mulvaneys Part 42

Resisting temptation. Marianne hadn't known she was strong enough but yes, she was.

And again, that afternoon in Mt. Ephraini where she'd asked Hewie please to drive slowly along South Main Street. Too upset to explain what on earth she'd been doing, crouching and cringing and hiding and skulking like a fugitive, at that country church and now in town. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e and cracked from crying, her eyes were swollen, she wouldn't have dared glance at herself in any reflecting surface. Where once (as a cheerleader, as "b.u.t.ton" Mulvaney) she'd been the silliest vainest shallow person, now she could barely force herself to contemplate her reflection, not just in a mirror but in her mind's pitiless eye.

Part of downtown was a pedestrian mall-what a good idea! Marianne caught a glimpse of the old Woolworth's which looked unchanged, RexaIl Drugs at the corner, across on Fifth Street the movie house showing The Deer Hunter-not a new film. She had a vague sense of things not quite the same, a one-way street where there'd never been one before, then suddenly, abruptly there was Mulvaney Roofing!-the squat building familiar as if she'd last seen it the previous week, not four years ago. The green stucco building with white trim, needing a new coat of paint, oh but what was wrong?-an ugly yellow-and-black sign FOR SAI.F OR LFASfr-Marianne wasn't prepared for the sight though hadn't Patrick warned her? OrJudd.

Having seen the sign MULVA-EY ROOFING, Hewie braked to a slow crawl, five miles an hour. Unperturbed when other drivers honked impatiently at him, cast derisive glances at his big old boat of a Dodge. Marianne had crouched down in the pa.s.senger's seat, straw hat jammed down on her head so that the brim hid most of her face; she peered fearfully up over the rim of the car door, a single eye exposed. Heart pounding like crazy. Beads of sticky sweat on her face. What if-? What if-? Dad steps outside, and sees you?

He would hug her, wouldn't he. Run right out onto South Main to open the car door, hug her weeping wouldn't he.

Marianne whispered for Hewie to stop the car if he could, park at the curb. Or maybe she hadn't whispered aloud but he'd heard her nonetheless. Through a haze of blinding scintillating light she stared at the facade Of MULVAN]-Y ROOFING. Immediately she'd understood it wasn't open for business though not exactly empty. The front door locked, that unmistakable look of a locked door, and no one in sight. Where was Leah, her father's receptionist? Leah who'd been so sweet to Marianne, telling Michael Mulvaney how she wished she had a beautiful little girl like his. Marianne saw that there were no vehicles in the lot, either. Not a single truck?-MULVANEY ROOFING in curving white letters.

"Well. I guess no one's here right now. I guess-" Marianne straightened cautiously, adjusting her hat. Peering out at the build- ing and blinking numbly. He'd run out, he'd hug me, he loves me. If only he could see me! But there was no one at Mulvaney Roofing, not a soul.

Farther down the block, at the box company warehouse, there was activity-a truck being loaded. And vehicles pa.s.sing in the street in ajerky continuous stream. If only he could see me.

After a few minutes Marianne whispered to 1-lewie, "I guess- you can drive away, now."

Around the corner and along a street she didn't at first recognize, blinking tears from her eyes, except there was the old Blue Moon Caf- with a new smartly-bright blue moon swinging sign. Down to Third Street which was now one-way going the wrong way-a woman in sungla.s.ses driving a handsome car-Suzi Quigley's mother?_Matia1u1- quickly looked away. (She'd written to Suzi, and Suzi had written back, enrolled at Wells College, they'd kept up a correspondence for the first year then Suzi ceased replying to Marianne's letters and Marianne eventually ceased writing, too. But always in her heart she would be Suzi's friend. And Merissa's, and Bonnie's. And Trisha's most of all.) On Fifth Street easing downhill past the attractive Trinity Episcopal Church she'd visited once, for Sunday service, with a friend, which appeared unchanged; and Reynolds' Funeral Home; and a large pink-limestone house, she'd imagined in childhood a mansion, now occupied by an insurance agency. And so on down the hill to the high school, needing to drive past the high school, already cringing and wincing as Hewie slowed the Dodge, sensitive to Marianne's unuttered wish as her lost lovely Molly-O had been on their good days. Hewie had to brake in any case as cl.u.s.ters of teenagers crossed the street heed1es-, brashly smiling young people Marianne seemed not to know. Not a single one! They would have been younger brothers and sisters of her cla.s.smates but she didn't recognize anyone. The girls so younglooking, and so pretty-cutting their eyes at Hewie-snug jeans, oversized sweaters, bright lipstick, permed-fi-izzy hair. The boys were so young-that was even more unsettling. Suddenly she saw one she knew-no, he only looked like luinbering-loutish Ike Rodman-swinging along the sidewalk, a baseball cap reversed on his head. Ajeepload of boys veered past Hewie, rudely honking, laugh-. ter in their wake; at the wheel, a dark-haired hawkish-profiled boy resembling Zachary Lundt. Marianne's temples throbbed. It was silly, an optic-neurological misfiring. As, new at Kilburn State, she'd kept seeing faces achingly familiar until at last the new faces drove out the old which they hadn't much resembled, really. Probably there was a term for such tricks of the eye, Patrick would be the one to ask.

But she'd lost contact with Patrick, too. He'd spoken vaguely of going off on a "field trip"-with some scientists-or maybe they were fellow dropouts from biology? You could ask Patrick a question point-blank and hear an answer but afterward you wouldn't know much more than you'd known at the start.

Even as Marianne was thinking of her brother, she was watching a tall blond boy trotting across a patch of scrufFy' lawn, eyegla.s.ses winking. His solitary hunying-away gait-he might have been Patrick Mulvaney, almost.

Marianne said, stammering, "Isn't it-funny, Hewie, people remind you of other people? Faces remind you of other faces? As if there aren't enough faces in the world to go around, exactly-" She remembered then that Judd was actually a student at Mt. Ephraim High, a soph.o.m.ore; he'd be leaving the building at this time, except of course he was in Ransomville with their mother. Only Corinne and her youngest showed up, of the precious Mulvaneys. There's a sorry tale there. Marianne was saying, "My brother Judd, he's my youngest brother, he goes to school here. Maybe you met him, Hewie? Around Christmastime, last year? He and my mom came to visit inc in Kilburn, we all had lunch together? They met Abelove..-" Her voice trailed off weakly.

If Hewie responded, Marianne couldn't make out what he said.

There appeared then, close by on the sidewalk, on Marianne's side of the car, Mr. Farolino, who'd taught biology to each of the Mulvaney children, in turn- one of Mt. Ephraim High's most popular teachers, admired and feared for his sarcastic wit. Mr. Farolino was loping along the walk-he lived near enough to school not to have to drive. He was carrying a briefcase battered as an old football at his side. How bald Mr. Farolino had become, though only Michael Mulvaney's age! How caved-in his chest, in a white nylon s.h.i.+rt with short fluttery sleeves! His expression was fixed in a fierce grin, eyes lifted to the horizon, to somewhere not in sight; clearly, he didn't want to be waylaid by departing students- But Marianne had hunched down in her seat at once, in terror of being seen. And what -f Mr. Farolino sees you? F-Vhy should it matter so much? Haven't you put that all behind you, silly sad vanity, along with everything else? Poor b.u.t.ton Mulvaney! Taking for granted that everyone adored her, yes they must have been envious of her, "b.u.t.ton" Mulvaney and her close tight circle of friends, "b.u.t.ton" Mulvaney of High Point Farm, the Mulvaneys whom everyone in Mt. Ephraimn knew and admired, how sad to be left out of their circle of friends, how sad not to be them, pity the plain girls of Mt. Ephraim High where being pretty and being popular were so crucial, pity the girls with blemished skins, no boyfriends, no personality-plus Dad and Moni, no good-looking brothers, girls whose pictures never appeared in the school newspaper or the Mt. Ephraim Patriot-Ledger. Girls like poor Della Rae Duncan, their smudged skin, hunted eyes. That kind of a girl. Sad!

Marianne wondered what had become of Della Rae. The family had lived in a trailer village on the Haggartsville Road, her brother Dwight had been killed in Vietnam. Della Rae had dropped out of school and had-what? Disappeared? Married? Last time Marianne asked Corinne about her, Corinne had murmured vaguely that she didn't know, hadn't the slightest idea.

Marianne said, "Oh, Hewie, it's as if-I've been gone a hundred years. As if I've died and come back and-"

Hewie had parked the Dodge at the curb, and was leaning over now to scowl at the buff-brick facade of Mt. Ephraim High. In mild disbelief he asked, "You went to school here, Marianne?" It was the first direct question from Hewie in hours, perhaps all day, and the tenor was unrni stakabl e- That place isn't good enough for you.

Then, to High Point Farm.

With that strange fated compulsion with which swirling water is drawn down a drain, each discrete molecule and atom seemingly pressing for extinction, Marianne felt a wildness come over her-to see High Point Farm one more time. As beforehand she'd warned herself No: you must not even as she knew she would succ.u.mb, if once she and Hewie drove to Mt Ephraim, only seven miles from the farm. Just to say h.e.l.lo to Molly-O! I promise that's all.

Shrewdly reasoning that since Corinne and Judd would still be in Ransomville, and Michael Sr. would surely not be at home at such an hour, no one would ever know.

She took a deep breath. "Hewie, please will you drive out into the country now? I'll tell you where."

Eager to be gone from the potholed constricting grid of Mt. Ephraim's streets as if he'd been feeling his pa.s.senger's pain, Hewie gunned the Dodge's motor at once.

And so-and so it happened, as in a dream, yet a dream not of Marianne's own volition, they drove out of Mt. Ephraim; a turn, another turn, past the Chautauqua & Buffalo depot, past the water tower with its heraldic Day-Gb scrawls and so to Route 119, the Haggartsville Road, en route to High Point Farm. Just for afew minutes. No one will know. Past Country Club Lane where Marianne's eyelids blinked as in a nervous spasm and Hillside Estates where certain of her former friends lived hidden now by a handsome scrim of rapidly grown poplars and Spohr's Lumber which had expanded, twice the size Marianne recalled but she wasn't looking, Mr. Spohr was one of those men who'd betrayed her father but she wasn't thinking of that, not now. Family secrets you aren't supposed to know, of course you know. The railroad tracks running parallel with Route 119 she found herself staring at entranced, for railroad tracks are neutral territory, lacking ident.i.ty and history.

At High Point Road, where it forked off from the highway,

Marianne murmured, "Here!-" her breath failing, unable to speak she touched Hewie's arm-his knotty-muscled arm-it was the first time she had ever touched him, or any man of her present acquaintance, in their months of formally knowing each other at the Co-op and in these peculiar intense hours in his car, and the gesture was arguably not conscious-to indicate the road.

The Dodge sped onto High Point Road without slacking speed. As if it were the most natural thing in the world-Mananne bringing a college friend home to visit.

But:a balmy wind-crazed spring day. The sun shone blindingly in the sky from a thousand points, as if in a shattered mirror. As they ascended into the foothills, Hewie's big old Dodge began to quaver, rock, in the wind. Because you're not wanted here: G.o.d is warning you. At once Hewie slowed the car, for he was a careful, conscientious driver; not a boy but a young man of twenty-eight or -nine; danger alerted him, suffused his face with blood. Yet he glanced repeatedly from side to side, blinking at the view-more severe than the Ransoniville countryside, the foothills of the Chautauqua Mountains were higher, more broken and discontinuous than that terrain. Marianne saw the Valley through Hewie's eyes and felt a frightened rapture: May fields planted in wheat, corn, soybeans, sloping down from the road; outcroppings of granite on the other, hilly side of the road, like ancient wounds that had never healed. Sudden drops, open vistas beyond an absurdly low guardrail. They were traversing the ridge of a glacier hill. Hewie pointed-"What's that?" In the distance, thirty miles away, chalky Mt. Cataract shone in the sunlight like a hand upraised in greeting. Or in warning.

The car rocked in the wind, Hewie s.h.i.+fted to second gear. Now he had broken the silence between them he seemed yet reluctant to speak, as if no mere uttered words could be equal to the sanct.i.ty of that intimate silence. His voice was thick, shy-"Where is this?- we keep climbing."

"Well, it's called High Point Road." Marianne laughed nervously, plucking at her hair beneath the crooked brim of the black straw hat.

"How niuch higher does it get? We're not going there, are we?"-pointing to an eroded cliffside rearing up a few miles ahead. Where clearly no one lived, and no road ascended.

"There? Oh, no. Wejust follow the road, a little farther."

"This is where you-lived?"

Lived. How sensitive Hewie was, for all his awkwardness. How subtle. Yet Marianne, suddenly clumsy, like an overgrown girl with awkward knees, elbows, could only laugh again, a sound in her own ears like breaking gla.s.s. "Well, yes. You could say so." Jamming her knuckles against her mouth to keep from crying.

Going home. To High Point Farm. Was it possible?

You knew: impossible.

Oh but just to say h.e.l.lo! To Molly-O, and hug her. Stroke her cool damp nose. Just for afew minutes, I promise, who will know?

Recalling then how many times in the dreamless sleepless night she'd made this trip. High Point Road to High Point Farm. By phantom vehicle, no Mulvaney vehicle she could identify. Nor any driver she could identify, nor even see as she stared enraptured at the rus.h.i.+ng countryside, the landscape of her childhood as imprinted in her soui as that soul's very essence and indeed indistinguishable from it. And often in these waking dreams she held m.u.f.fin in her arms. A restive, anxiously alert creature. m.u.f.fin she adored, when he'd been a soft heavy cat, and m.u.f.fin in more recent worrisome months when he'd begun to lose weight, grown amazingly lanky, longtailed with a prominent spine. It was crucial that Marianne return m.u.f.fin safely home to High Point Farm but the danger was of course as with any cat regardless of how tamed docile and loving he might panic at any moment, struggle out of her arms, out of the vehicle and onto the rus.h.i.+ng highway, even over the side of the guardrail- But Marianne always woke fully, bathed in sweat, before that happened.

Weeping half-angry with herself for being unable to bring the dream to a happy conclusion. Oh, how many times!

Abruptly and it always seemed rudely High Point Road changed from cracked and eroding blacktop to gravel and dirt, and now Hewie drove with increased concentration, diligence. At the Green Isle Co-op he was one of the patient, reliable workers; one of the "older" members; if he'd been casting his darkly shy sidelong glances at Marianne from time to time since early that morning, he ceased doing so now for maneuvering the wind-rattling Dodge, bearing his pa.s.senger to her mysterious destination, was work entrusted to him, a sacred duty and a privilege. You wouldn't blow us both off the road, G.o.d? Not 1-lewie, oh please! Jamming her knuckles against her mouth though whether to keep from crying or laughing she could not have said. It was ridiculous, to imagine for a split second that G.o.d could be so petty and vindictive; the G.o.d of all the ages, creator of all life on earth and it may be through the great universe, caring in such a fussy old-maidish way, about Marianne Mulvaney disobeying her parents' gravest wishes on the very day of her grandmother's funeral.

Now past the Pferming farm, now past the shabby converted schoolhouse where a sprawling family lived, still the Zimmermans?- and as they approached High Point Farm Marianne began to feel faint. Her skeleton straining against her tight close-to-bursting transparent skin. No, you don't dare: how do you dare, you! Not wanted here, a trespa.s.ser, thief Before she could comprehend what she was seeing her eye picked out the yellow-and-black realtor's sign FARM FOR SALE proiflinent and jarring beside the gravel drive.

Yes but you knew, you'd been told, warned. Patrick had told you and Judd had told you not once but numerous times. And Mom in her glimmering blurred way had mentioned it, You know the fann's for sale, Dad's holding out for a decent price, as if it were an issue already acknowledged, discussed. Just another neutral fact of Mulvaney family history.

In a trance of panic tinged with wonderment Marianne shut her icy fingers into fists and stared, stared greedily. Hewie had braked to a stop (seeing MuLVANfY on the mailbox?- and stared wordless as well. There was a palpable excitement in the air, windblown, sunstruck, the dazzling-budding fragrance of spring. Wild-looking lilacs just past their fullest bloom and in the shallow roadside ditch a profusion of tiger lily stalks not yet in bloom, vividly green-by July the roadsides would be filled with them, bright-orange like savage dabs of paint. There was Connne's proudly lettered, now slightly faded sign HIGH POINT FARM 1849 and yet more faded HIGH POINT ANTIQUES BARGAINS & BEAUTY! The antique sleigh with its slumping scarecrow figure seemed to have skidded farther downhill a few yards. There was the brook, almost hidden behind overgrown vegetation, and there was the little plank bridge. There, at the top of the hill, the house that was part fieldstone and part lavender, floating like a pastel drawing in a child's book.

Hewie, the undemonstrative one, whistled through his teeth, ran a big-knuckled hand through his hair. "There? That's your family's house?"

Marianne couldn't speak at first. Her lips were icy-cold, numb; she was frightened of fainting. Saying, almost inaudibly, "I-guess not. I mean, it is, but I can't go in. I made a mistake."

Hewie turned to Stare at her. "What? Why?"

"I-just can't."

"Can't?" Hewie screwed up his face, not in impatience, nor even in surprise, or doubt; it was more a sort of perplexed sympathy, as if he might have antic.i.p.ated such a response, all along. "You mean-you can't go in? You don't want us to drive up, and-go inside?"

"No! No, please."

There was a silence. Marianne heard Hewie breathing, or was it a sigh? He frowned, scowled-not at Marianne, at whom he'd ceased looking, but possibly at himself. You would expect this young man to reason with his distraught pa.s.senger, at least to express some disapproval of her mysterious self-hurtful behavior; it may have been even that Hewie was sifting through his head such a possibility, trying out words, phrases, yearning for the eloquence of, say, Abelove in such a circ.u.mstance, Abelove's moral certainty, yet failing; a young man of reserve, shyness and sullenness inextricably interwoven, he was not accustomed to such speech. As Marianne stammered, blus.h.i.+ng, "I just remembered-my horse I'd wanted to see, to say h.e.l.lo to? She isn't here any longer. She's been sold. She's gone. Gone for years. I made a mistake. Hewie? I'm so sorry."