"Oates, Joyce Carol - We Were the Mulvaneys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

So, aged twenty-three, working at Schroon Lake for good summer wages, not a thought in the world for any immediate future that included a woman, let alone marriage, Michael Mulvaney fell in love. Hell, I was relieved it was so easy, after all. Didn't hurt a bit. There was the added enticement that Corinne confessed she'd been about to become engaged, to a fellow student at Fredonia State. Immediately Michael flared up, "Don't tell me anything about him, Corinne! Not even his name." Corinne said, astonished, "But, Michael, there isn't much to tell. Jerry is a Sweet, quiet, serious boy-he's majoring in music education, plays the-" Michael interrupted, in anguish, "Corinne, no. As long as you didn't-well, sleep with the guy-that's all I want to know." Corinne said, hurt, "But you had girlfriends, Michael. I don't expect you not to have had girlfriends!" By this time Michael was on his feet, pacing about, grabbing at his hair. He said, "Honey, what a guy does, what men do-it isn't anything like what a girl like you-your quality-does, or even wants to know about. Believe me!"-adding, excitedly, as it flew into his head," `Judge not, that ye be not judged.' "When Michad quoted the words ofJesus Christ to her, Corinne grew grave, glowing, transfixed. (Was he conning her?-she seemed never to catch on, if that was so.) She said, taking his hand, "Anyway, I didn't love Jerry, I see that now. Oh, let me say it! What I felt for him wasn't one ounce of what I feel for you, Michael Mulvaney!" Michael's heart swelled. He said, joyously, "One iota, honey. You mean one iota. That's a helluva lot less than one ounce."

Still, Michael was unforgiving. Stubborn as a balking goat. When, after they'd become engaged, Corinne had wanted to see her friend one final time to explain what had happened, Michael was obdurate in opposition: no. Hadn't Corinne written to the guy, hadn't she spoken with him on the phone? She wouldn't be returning to Fredonia in the fall, what difference did it make? He'd broken off completely with his ex-girifriends, hadn't the slightest interest in seeing any of them ever, ever again.

So when Corinne hesitantly suggested inviting Jerry to their wedding, as a gesture of goodwill and friendship (it was to be a small church wedding at the Ransomville Lutheran Church, all but a few of the guests Corinne's), Michael vetoed it at once. Grabbed her in a bear hug so tight it squeezed the breath out of her, kissed her and said, "Darling, you love me, Michael Mulvaney. I'll show you I'm more than enough for you."

Is nothing lost? Corinne wondered. Twenty-four years later, thinking these things, in a consulting room in Dr. Oakley's office, she heard again her young lover's ardent voice ringing in her ears and saw again the distinct webbing of shadow and light on the wall of the room (Michael's room at the boardinghouse), the outline of a lilac tree outside the window that fixed these words pernunently in her memory.

Love me! I'm more than enough.

IMMINENT MORTALITY

She would have wished him not to know. Never to know. For once he knew, once they shared the bitter knowledge, never again would he be able to look at her in the old way. The old loving kidding-around How'd all this happen? way. (Meaning High Point Farm. The kids. The animals. The whole shebang as Michael Sr. called it. Plus the mortgage.) Never without each of them thinking Our daughter! our baby girl!-eyes snatching at each other's, helpless, in fury and unspeakable hurt.

She waited for him not in the house in the warm-lit kitchen where Patrick, Judd, the animals would be crowding her, but in the converted barn. HIGH POINT ANTIQUEs. Space heaters thrummed heroically but emitted little palpable heat beyond a few feet, their red-heated coils like X rays of raw nerves. The stark overhead light caused ugly shadows to veer upward from the floorboards. Her coldstiffened fingers moved fumblingly, varnishing the hickory armchair. Varnish fumes so sharp her cheeks were streaked with tears.

Keep bus y!Just keep busy. Wisdom of the Hausmanns who'd been farm people for centuries.

Marianne was upstairs in her room, sedated, calm and possibly sleeping. She was all right, she'd be all right. HEAD HEART HANDS HEALTH the watchword of the American 4-H movement HEAD HEART HANDS HEALTH and Marianne Mulvaney would be all right.

Corinne hadn't been able to pray, not exactly. As if- if she did, she might reproach God? blame Jesus? for what had happened to her daughter? For what had been allowed to happen to her daughter? Instead the words repeated HEAD HEART HANDS HEALTH like a flashing neon sign she couldn't turn off.

Michael was late corning home. It was dark as midnight by 7:20 when at last his headlights ascended the bumpy drive. Corinne had called him at work from Dr. Oakley's office but he'd been out, his secretary said, on a work Site miles away, a Valu-Right Drugs in a new shopping center on Route 119 where a five-man crew was putting in a hot asphalt roof. That was at 4:30. Again she'd called him froni home but he was still out. He'd told her that morning he'd be late for supper, he was meeting some men friends at the Club, the taproom. Business he'd said. But he'd be home by seven at the latest.

She hadn't wanted to call him at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club. Hadn't wanted to risk upsetting him in front of his friends. And the situation was under control now wasn't it. Marianne safely home, upstairs in her room. Sweet throaty-purring Muffin snuggling beside her on top of the quilt.

The wind was out of the northeast, gaining strength. A powdery glisten to the windowpanes, fine gritty sandlike snow blown against the glass. And there stood Michael in the doorway, in his good camel's-hair coat and the jaunty fedora with the tiny pheasant feather in the rim, looking puzzled, concerned. "Hon, what the hell are you doing out here? Something wrong?"

Michael's cheeks were ruddy, healthily flushed from the cold and the two or three drinks he'd had, his eyes quick, staring. Those eyes, Corinne used to say with a shivery laugh, like X-ray eyes seeing what you'd never expect them to see.

The varnish brush had slipped from Corinne's fingers unnoticed. She'd been squatting by the armchair on its messy outspread newspapers and now stood, trying to smile but in fact she'd begun to cry. Exactly what she'd vowed she would not do.

"Jesus, Corinne-what is it?"

He came to her, she fumbled to take his hand. Michael's hand she'd long ago teased was the size of a bear's paw. It came to her then-when there was disturbing family news (Patrick's terrible accident with his horse had been the worst, but there'd been others- oh, others!) it fell to Corinne the mother to inform Michael the father. How Corinne came by such knowledge, such cruel expertise, was a mystery. Softly she said, "It's Marianne, darling. Something has happened to her."

"Marianne? What? Where is she?"

She gripped Michael's hand tighter, to steady him. There was no way to say this, yet she would find a way.

"She's all right now-she's upstairs in her room. I mean, she isn't in danger, and she isn't ill. But something has happened to her."

That sick, sinking look in Michael Mulvaney's face. He was a man, he knew.

The father of a seventeen-year-old daughter. He knew.

After the front wheels of Corinne's station wagon ran over the creature, there was nothing for her to do except make an emergency U-turn on the highway and speed back into Mt. Ephraim, to get medical help for Marianne who was sobbing convulsively-choking, breathless, hysterical. Hyperventilating! Corinne was in such a distraught state she hadn't seen what she'd hit-thank God she hadn't had an accident, swerving and weaving on the highway as she tried to comfort, with one groping hand, the weeping, thrashing girl in the seat beside her. Like a woman in a dream she sped back into Mt. Ephraim tapping her horn to clear a way for herself when necessary. In the exigency of her need, her need to get help for her daugh-. ter, she might have struck other vehicles, pedestrians-might have killed Marianne and herself both. God help us, God take care of us. God we are in Your mercy.

What had she struck back there on the hill, a dog?-but the creature had seemed too small for a dog, and wrongly shaped. A cat? It hadn't a cat's shape, either-more like a raccoon, bulky and waddling side to side in that way of raccoons-but you rarely saw a raccoon in winter, still less in bright daylight.