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

"Now? So late?"

"I said, Haw, I'll come get him."

So Connne drove to Wolf's Head Lake, arrived at 1:25 A.M. in hastily thrown-on jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers without socks. She had not so much as glanced at herself in a mirror, hadn't had time to splash water onto her face or drag a comb through her hair, rushing off, calling to the children (of course, they'd been awakened-or had they been asleep, at all, waiting too for the telephone to ring?) that things were all right, their dad was all right, at Wolf's Head Lake and she was going to get him.

How strange to be driving alone at night, arriving alone at the darkened lakeside. Buildings made unfamiliar by night, their lights extinguished. The faded red neon wOLF's HEAD INN extinguished. There were only two vehicles in the tavern parking lot, one of them Michael's pickup. Haw was waiting for Corinne on the Inn veranda, beneath a bug-swirling light, a tall, burly, apologetic nian who made no effort to shake Corinne's hand, or touch her to comfort her-that wasn't his way. "Michael got in a, kind of a disagreement with a local guy," Haw said, "-they'd both been drinking and they shoved each other around. But nothing serious." Corrnne entered the neardarkened tavern, diminished and melancholy it seemed without patrons, even the jukebox turned off, but, oh--that smell. She would know it anywhere. "How badly drunk is he?" Corinne asked. "Sickdrunk? Passed-out drunk?" She was trying to be matter-of-fact. She was trying not to sound fririous and reproachful, a raging wife. Wasn't she a farm woman, after all-she'd had plenty of experience with emergencies. Telling herself, As long as he's alive. He's alive.

A light was burning at the rear of the tavern, beyond the bar and the shabby old-fashioned kitchen, beyond the stinking alcove, and Corinne hurried in that direction, not waiting for Haw, who was short of breath, to lead her. He lumbered close behind her, squint-. ing at her through smudged glasses, smelling of beer himself, male- sweat and beer. Saying, "Michael looks worse than he is. Don't be upset." But when Corinne saw her husband sprawled atop a bed, his face swollen, his upper lip swollen and bloody, shirt stained and eyes shut, snoring, she began to cry. It took some time to wake him and when she finally did, crouched beside the bed in a posture of abriegation and appeal, stroking his heated face, she had a sense of going in and out of focus in his eyes, a hapless female figure in a cartoon.

The room was minimally, shabbily furnished and smelled of insecticide and stale tobacco smoke. It had an adjoining cubbyhole of a bathroom, however, and Haw was kind enough to provide a rudimentary first-aid kit, so Corinne could tend to -jchael-WaShing his face, putting iodine and Band-Aids on his cuts. He groaned- cursed, thrashed about; he was deeply ashamed, disgusted with himself Saying, "I don't lu-mow what the hell happened, honey. One niinute 1 was O.K. and the next-" His arm lifted, only to fall back limp onto the bed.

Haw said, "You're both welcome to stay the night-of course- Drive back home tomorrow. That way, you won't have to both come again, to get Michael's pickup." He was hanging about in the hallway, awkward, apologetic, yet trying for an amiable tone. O-d-friends-tvho't'e been- - ag h- wo rse-tha th,t-gether tone. Corinne remembered their encountet in the Kmart and felt a physical, visceral dislike of the man.

Stiffly she said, "Thank you, but I want to take Michael home tonight."

"But-"

"Not Tonight."

She was close to clamping her hands over her ears, like one of her children.

"Corinne, come on," Haw said, scratching at his beard, "-d'you hate it here that much? Hate me?"

Corinne stared at I-law, wiping her eyes. A wave of shame caine over her: how could she, Corinne Mulvaney, whose sense of herself as one privileged by God had defined her entire adulthood, knowledge hating any living person, let alone this sad, hopeful, raddie-faced and lonely old friend? One of the few men of Corinne's life who had desired her, as a woman? "Well, all right." she said, relenting. "You're right, I suppose. But we'll pay you for the room."

"Corinne, what the hell-"

"I said we'll pay you."

Surprising, how tough she could be, even in her nerved-up exhausted state. She'd almost forgotten how good it felt.

Brisk, capable, fueled with purpose as a mom should be, Coriune telephoned home to assure the children that everything was under control. Patrick answered the phone on the first ring. He asked how was Dad and Corinne said Dad was fine and Patrick persisted, what had happened?-afld Corinne said that nothing had happened. "It's just Dad isn't up to driving tight now. But he'll be fine by morning. We'll both be home by midmorning." Still Patrick asked, reproachfullY-

"What's wrong with Dad? I've got a right to know." Cormnne said sharply, "We'll talk about it tomorrow, Patrick. Good night!"

As long as he's alive. Alive.

I give us both over to You, God. Protect us!

They lay together exhausted. Only partly undressed, their shoes off. Not in, but on top of- the dank-smelling bed that was hardly more than a cot, pushed into the corner of the cramped little room. Michael's left eye had swollen almost shut and promised to be luridly blackened. There were cuts in his eyebrows, his upper lip was swollen, the color of an overripe plum. His knuckles, too, were skinned and swollen. A jittery sobriety had overtaken him by 3 A.M. just as Corinne sank toward sleep. "Jesus, honey, I'm sorry!" Michael murmured. Corinne murmured, "Well." She was holding him in a way she'd held him frequently, after lovemaking, in the early years of their marriage: her arm slipped beneath his heavy shoulders, his head on her shoulder, his arm slung across her. Seen from above, they would appear to be huddling together like dazed and desperate children. With an air of dogged incredulity that seemed genuine Michael was saying, "-ust don't know what happened." Corinne said, tak- ing the tone she'd taken with Patrick, "It isn't what happened, Michael, it's what you've done." The schoolmanrnsh edge was a way of keeping herself from more tears, or worse than tears. Adrenaline had pumped through her veins for a long time and was beginning now to wane and Corinne knew that, when it did, if she Wasn't safely unconscious, she would be washed out, despairing.

God protect Us/-we're your children, too.

She wished Michael, willed him, to sleep. To relinquish shame. The tattered remnant of his pride. A man's pride, carried like a burden on his back. But vaguely, wonderingly he continued to speak. Corinne had not inquired what the quarrel with the stranger had been. Haw claimed not to know and Corinne did not think it had had anything to do with it-Wolf's Head Lake was a considerable distance from Mt. Ephraim. But she preferred not to know, would -1ever ask. There was the relief of her husband's living se?f When the :elephone had rung waking her from her stuporous sleep she had iad the instantaneous terrified conviction that Michael had been rifled, or had killed; that he had transgressed beyond his capacity to :eturn. But that was not so. With God's iove, it would not be so. he could save him, would save if only God showed the way.

Now, the comfort of his warm, perspiring body heavy against hers. Her arm growing numb from his weight. His damp hair, the hard intransigent bone of his skull. A smell of his body and breath- beer, whiskey, sweat. It was a smell she savored as, a farmer's daughter, she'd learned to savor, young, the smells of the barnyard, the smells that nieant home. Well, yes-they were stinks, sometimes. Exacerbated by rain and humidity. Yet, still, they were familiar, they meant home. They meant what is known. U/hat is given to us, to know.

The light in the room was extinguished. There was a window beside the bed, no blind to draw so Corinne was aware of the starlit sky above Wolf's Head Lake; a faint-luminous pearly moon that seemed to be pulsing. Unless it was an artery in her brain that was pulsing. Confused, she mistook it for-what? A streetlamp. Somehow, that was logical. There were lights on poles in Haw Hawley's parking lot turned off for the night and somehow this was one of them except floating. And there was a streetlamp in a famous painting of a jungle, a dream-jungle, a French painting of the previous century Corinne had seen years ago but could not now identify, yet recalling the jungle flat as wallpaper and clearly a dream and the artist had inserted a streetlamp in it because that is the nature of dreams.