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

Living a hundred miles away, on the other side of the mountains, with a cousin of Mom's none of us knew; in the town of Salamanca none of us, except Mom, had ever seen. Weeks passed, and months, and though Mom had promised Patrick and me we'd drive down to visit Marianne soon, somehow we never got there. And Dad never spoke of going, in fact he never spoke of Marianne in my hearing, at all.

This cousin of Mom's was named Ethel Hausmatin and she was unmarried, a longtime receptionist and bookkeeper for a Salamanca podiatrist. Mom was vague about the woman, apologetic and enthusiastic at once-"Ethel isn't easy to know but she's a deep spiritual good woman I would trust with my life. I would." Since Marianne's vanishin,- Mom had become yet more nervously extravagant in her speech, eyelids and fingers fluttering.

Each Sunday at 8 P.M. Mom would telephone Ethel Hausmanfl and speak with her for several minutes, and then with Marianne, in private; after fifteen or twenty minutes she would call Patrick, and then rue, to speak with our sister. "Keep the conversation short, please," Mom would whisper. "This isn't a local call."

So strange-talking with Marianne on the phone. I could almost believe it was one of our old games. The "telephone game" when I was very small, three or four years old, and Marianne and I would pick up phone receivers and talk and giggle on different floors of the house, playing at being adults. A game we could only play whei- Dad and Mom weren't around. How distant Marianne sounded now, her voice thin and flattened. Because the mountains are in the way I thought. Possibly Marianne had been crying while on the phone with Mom-Mom would resolutely not have been dying: eyes bright, perfectly clear and dry-but she'd make an effort to be cheerful while speaking with me, I was reminded of certain of our hymns we'd sing like marching songs chanted through clenched teeth. "Judd! How are you?" Marianne would ask eagerly, and the question confused me: it isn't one sisters and brothers ever ask of each other as kids. It's an adult question, one of the phony ones. Ex-. cept I guess Marianne meant it. I'd mumble, embarrassed, "I'm O.K., I guess," shrugging as if she could see me, and Marianne would cry, "Oh, Judd! Gosh I miss you! I can't wait to see you. Mom says-" I wouldn't know how to reply, just stood there gripping the receiver in misery, because Mom had warned Patrick and me not to discuss future plans with Marianne; never to speak of the J-ture-"It will just get her hopes up, and that would be cruel."

Marianne would inquire after the animals one by one, always beginning with Molly-O. Oh, she missed Molly-O! She dreamt she was riding Molly-U all the time. She dreamt Molly-U was just a filly, a baby, just brought to High Point Farm. And how was Pririce?-how was Clover?-how was Red? And how were the dogs-Foxy, Little Boots, Troy, Silky? And the cats-Big Tom, E.T., Snowball, Marmalade? And Feathers? She was always iniagining she heard Feathers in the early morning, when she was just waking up. And how were the goats Blackie and Mamie? And the barn cats? And Cap'n Marvel and all that crew? And the cows, and the sheep? Marianne always reported that she and Muffin were fine but missing the family, it was so quiet and somehow so small there. We always assured Marianne that everyone was fine at High Point Farm, too. (In fact, Silky had died of a cancerous tumor in his stomach, but none of us wanted to tell Marianne. Mike had left Silky behind when he'd moved to town, said his apartment building didn't allow pets, and poor Silky pined away at the end of the driveway for weeks waiting for Mike to return then abruptly sickened and died and Mom, Pj. and I had a little ceremony burying him in the front yard, not far from the brook, where, as Mom said tearfully, he could wait for Mike forever.)

Last of all, Marianne would draw a deep breath and ask after Dad, as if she hadn't already asked Mom and Patrick, and I'd stand sweating and the words I wanted to shout jammed in my throat and Marianne's voice became plaintive, pleading, "Judd? There isn't anything wrong with Daddy, is there? He never seems to be home when Mom calls." I stammered I didn't know, I didn't think so, Dad was working hard these days. Marianne would begin to sound desperate, asking, "Does he ever say anything about me, Judd? Does he ever-say my name?" and I would mumble yes sure I guessed so, and she would ask, suddenly pleading, "When can I come home, Judd? Do you know?"-but by this time Mom who'd been hovering close by, nervous as a cat, would take the receiver gently from me and say into the mouthpiece in a playful-Mom voice, "Sor-ry! This is your long-distance operator and your time has run Out."

Patrick left to enroll at Cornell in early September 1976 and would never live at High Point Farm again except for brief periods. That first Thanksgiving when we were all looking forward to seeing him he shocked us by not coming home-"Too much work," he explained tersely. Lab courses in biology, organic chemistry, physics. And at Christmas, he was home for only a few days of the long recess-not only did he have too much work to do, he'd been hired as a biology lab assistant. The following summer, he was home only two weeks, returning to Ithaca to work in the lab. (This, Dad didn't like at all. He'd been counting on Patrick to "do his share" on the farm. Already, Dad had had to hire part-time help, and these were not very reliable farmworkers, like the Zinmiennans, father and son, who lived down the road in the old renovated schoolhouse.) But Patrick had his own life now, and he certainly had his plans. His talk was all of "amino acids"--_"genetics"_"cellular biology." He had little to say about Cornell University itself, meeting new people, making friends-his manner was stiff, polite, distracted. He endured Mom's effusive talk and as much as he could of her affection; his smile was the old Pinch-smile, a corner of his mouth tucked down, in a look of virtual pain-but it seemed unconscious, it meant nothing.

He hadn't any interest in hearing news of his fellow graduates of the

Class of `76 nor had he much interest in his own photograph in the

Mt. Ephraim Patriot-Le4ger above his name and the caption, "Area

Youth Achieves Dean's List, Cornell." Mom, of course, had provided the newspaper with the information.

Unlike Marianne, Patrick rarely inquired after the animals. He never seemed to have time to visit with Prince, still less to ride. `When Mom muttered glumly about Dad wanting to sell Prince, Red, Molly-O, Patrick frowned but did not protest.

Damn you, don't you care? Why don't you care? I wanted to shout.

Always I'd be waiting for Patrick to spend some time with me, just me alone. His kid brother who missed him so. His kid brother at High Point Farm pining away like poor Silky, left-behind and lonely. Once I came into his room where he was (cLimn him: he hadn't been home three hours) studying a chart with the heading "Mendelian Inheritance in Man" and I asked him if he'd spoken with Marianne, or seen her? and he sort of shrugged and looked embarrassed. (Meaning yes, he had?-or no, he hadn't?) "Why does Dad hate Marianne so? Why doesn't he want to see her, or even talk to her?" I asked, and Patrick said, frowning, "Dad doesn't hate her. It's just she reminds him of-you know." Lifting his arm in a way of Dad's that signaled What the hell? what can you do?-spreading the fingers, letting the arm fall limp.

I said, "But that isn't Marianne's fault!"

Thinking I could hate Dad, if Patrick gave me a sign.

But Patrick said, soberly, looking at me for the first time since he'd come home, "It isn't Dad's fault, either."

VALEDICTORY SPEECH

Before Patrick Mulvaney left Mt. Ephraim, he gave us all something to remember.

At first he'd debated not showing up for his high school commencement in June, though he was valedictorian of his graduating class, and the "honor" fell to him (as he was told repeatedly by Mr. Hendrie the school principal, and by his teachers) to deliver the valedictory speech. His grades through high school had been in the high nineties; he'd several times had perfect scores in math, chemistry, biology, his favorite subjects. His S.A.T. score was in the highest percentile and he'd been offered scholarships to a number of excellent universities. Since it, however, he'd been more withdrawn than previously, preferring to spend time alone, at home, in a makeshift laboratory he'd set up in one of the old barns. (The lab was out-of-bounds to Patrick's kid brotherJudd, which didn't mean I'd never poked my nose into it, at times when Patrick wasn't around. Examining beakers containing strange soapy liquids, lemonyacid-smelling chemicals, corked bottles, vials, and jars. Prominent on the workbench was Patrick's mail-order microscope he'd laboriously assembled from a kit. On a wall was a poster of the "periodic calendar" of chemicals-to me, an eighth grader, exotic as a foreign language. I was in dread of high school science, where I'd be expected to learn such things, but, worse yet, I'd be measured against my brilliant older brother.) Patrick never missed a day of school, sitting quietly in his classes, frowning at his teachers who admired rather than liked him, a thin-limbed, lanky boy with a penetrating steely-blue stare. Because his left eye was so weak, he sometimes narrowed it almost to a slit. Pinch's laser-ray.

Of the eighty-nine students of Mt. Ephraim High's 1976 graduating class, all but a handful had always been wary of Patrick Mulvaney; uncomfortable around him as of an adult in disguise in their midst. They admired him, and feared him, and did not much like him; he responded by looking through them, when he could not avoid looking at them. This included even the three or four who'd once counted themselves his friends.

Whatever Patrick's classmates were thinking of Marianne, now mysteriously departed from Mt. Ephraim, and of Patrick who was her brother, Patrick did not know and did not wish to know. Of course, Zachary Lundt was a classmate of Patrick's, who would be graduating with him on June 19, ranked sixty-five in his class. And there were Zachary's buddies, his circle. Patrick seemed not aware of them at all. Even entering the cafeteria, or the boys' locker room, or descending a flight of stairs to overhear-what? Murmured remarks, crude jokes. Muffled laughter. Words intended for Patrick Mulvaney to hear which in flict he might have heard yet somehow did not, was spared, as if the very airborne syllables might be repelled by an act of his superior will.

When, at a May assembly, Mr. Hendrie made the proud announcement that one of their seniors was among the first-prize winners of the annual New York State High School Science Fair, and that senior was Patrick Mulvaney, there was a distinct pause, a collective intake of breath, before the clapping began. Patrick, forced to rise in his seat, flushed deeply in embarrassment, or chagrin. He would be one of those who aggressively seek honors, yet shrink from their public acknowledgment.

And now: the valedictory speech.

Should he, or shouldn't he? Conform, or-?