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

Sometimes he realized he was arguing with Corinne, and with Marianne, not consciously, not coherently, but with much emotion. Like a young, aggrieved boy, furious at such ignorance. Don't you see how ridiculous it is to believe "man is made in the image of God"? he wanted to shout into their startled faces. How ridiculous people like you are, to believe?

Corinne had been right: as soon as Patrick left home, aged eighteen, he ceased attending church, church of any denomination. He ceased being a Christian, nor did he so much as think in wonder or defiance or satisfaction I have ceased being a Christian. It simply fell from him, like a heavy overcoat he'd shrugged off, no longer needing its warmth or bulk to protect him.

In late April 1978, Patrick was completing his second year of college at Cornell and his grade-point average was just.06 shy of perfect. He was proud of being alone in Ithaca, in an off-campus rooming house in the heterogeneous neighborhood known as Collegetown, yet never, or almost never, lonely; proud of keeping the Mulvaneys at a distance-the obsessive thought of family. He loved them all yet had no wish to see them frequently nor even to speak with them often. (Corinne wanted him to call weekly, Patrick compromised by calling every two or three weeks, never at the same time; he dreaded falling into a pattern that would soon become an obligation, a duty, a ritual. Since he didn't have a phone in the tworoom apartment he rented, and claimed not to have access to any phone, no one could call him.) He hadn't seen Marianne since the previous June when he'd gone (the only Mulvaney!) to her graduation at Salamanca High. He hadn't seen his parents and brother Judd for almost eight months: when he'd discovered, to his disgust, that, another time, Marianne hadn't been invited home for Christmas, he'd decided not to go home himself, calling home to deliver a chilly little message saying he had too much lab work to do. Corinne said, on the verge of tears, "Oh, Patrick-how can you?" and Patrick said stiffly, "Well, Mom-how can you?" And Corinne said, weakly, "If you mean about your sister it's just that your dad isn't ready to see her yet, I'm doing a lot of concentrated praying about it, Patrick, I want you to know, and Marianne does know, and I told her I'm sure your dad will he ready, he'll be strong enough, in a little while- maybe Easter. Patrick?" Patrick said curtly, "Good-bye, Mom. And Merry Christmas."

Hanging up quickly before Corinne could say a word more.

On the phone with Marianne for over an intense hour, Christmas Eve, Patrick meant to console her for the inexplicable cruelty with which their parents were treating her, but as usual with Marianne she'd ended up consoling him. "Patrick, don't worry about me, please! I'm happy. Of course I'm waiting for them to call me back but I'm not, you know, only just that-waiting. I have plenty to do. I'm living my life, and I'm happy."

Patrick ended up believing her. At least, while they were on the phone together.

Weird: meeting Ethel Hausmann, Corinne's cousin, with whom Marianne was living in Salamanca. "Aunt Ethel"-as she'd asked them, with a forced smile, to call her-was like a second, not-veryconvincing mother in an amateur play whipped together by Corinne herself. As if she'd grabbed hold of clumsy Ethel Hausmann-Now Ethel, you play me. Of course you can do it! Don't be bashful,for heaven's sake just try. Aunt Ethel turned out to be a big-boned, stoic, kindly woman of about fifty-two with a creased face whose habitual expression was a sad, wan hope-a look that carried with it the full won't-be-surprised expectation of disappointment. Aunt Ethel smiled, too, and often, but it was a melancholy smile, such an effort you almost could hear creaking. "Why's she so sad all the time?" Patrick asked, and Marianne put a finger to her lips to shush him, "Oh but she isn't, Patrick, not this weekend."

Aunt Ethel had the Hausmann features Corinne called "lethal"- she was long-jawed, long-nosed and horsey-toothed, with pale blue protuberant eyes. (These eyes were uncannily like Corinne's, except the light had drained from them.) Where, for all her slapdash ways, Cormne was a good-looking woman, Aunt Ethel was franldy homely. She was slope-busted, stout, with a smell as of rusted nails. One of those whom life has passed by as if literally she'd been standing on the weed-edged sidewalk in front of her aluminum-sided "bungalow" in Salamanca and watched helplessly as it passed, a procession of fascinating strangers without the slightest interest in, or awareness of, her.

Not married, no child. Unlike her cousin Corinne, Aunt Ethel wasn't even a faithful churchgoer.

For all of her adult life, three full decades, and more, Aunt Ethel had worked for Dr. Briscoe, a local podiatrist-"He prefers not to be called afoot doctor." Just the way Aunt Ethel spoke, defensive yet proud, with a wistful undercurrent of hurt, Patrick understood that the woman was in love with Briscoe, whoever he was.

"You mustn't laugh at Aunt Ethel," Marianne told Patrick when they were alone. "She's a good, generous woman, just like Mom said. She let me keep Muffin!"

"That is good of her," Patrick said neutrally.

Near as he could gather from his three days, two nights as a not- very-comfortable houseguest of Aunt Ethel's, all she really provided for Marianne was a dreary little room at the rear of her dreary little house that smelled (oh why did he have this notion?-yet it was unshakable) of rusted nails. In exchange, Marianne. was an uncomplaining, bright and tireless and reliable servant.

Or, maybe, slave?

"Oh Patrick, no." Marianne's eyes brimmed with tears when Patrick made this suggestion, Pinch-style, rather mean and sly out of the corner of his mouth.

Ethel Hausmann had spoken vaguely of "hoping to assist" with Marianne's college expenses but in the end, apparently, near as Patrick could gather, nothing came of it. (Nor could the Mulvaneys help, much: by summer 1977, Mulvaney Roofing was in what Corinne nervously called a "temporary slough" and Michael Sr. was hoping to sell five or ten acres of flirniland "if he can get a decent price." By fall 1977, Red, Prince, and Molly-O had all been sold.) Now Marianne worked part-time, was a part-time student at Kilbum State College, in a small rural town near the Pennsylvania border, two hundred miles south and west of Ithaca. Patrick had intended to drive down to see her but always he'd been busy, distracted by work of his own. On the phone he chided Marianne, "You deserve better than Kilburn State, for God's sake," as if it were Marianne's -iult she'd ended up there and not, for instance, at glamorous Cornell. Marianne insisted she was happy at Kilburn, she'd made friends and liked all her professors and believed they liked her. And please remember that her high school grades hadn't been spectacular. At Kilburn, Marianne was enrolled in a historyeducation program, and lived in a co-op, miles from campus, to econonuze on expenses. When they spoke on the phone, Patrick could hear energetic voices in the background, a dog barking, a clatter of kitchen noise, radio music. Often he had to ask Marianne to speak louder, he couldn't hear. "It sounds like a railway station," he complained.

What he meant was it sounded like a big noisy happy family.

By the time Patrick drove to the bus station, parked hisJeep and rushed into the Trailways waiting room it was almost 6 P.M. As in one of his nightmares, he'd arrived so late!-and he'd been thinking uneasily of Marianne all day, in fact for days, since they'd made arrangements the week before. What would she think, that Patrick had forgotten her after all? He'd told her not to take a taxi, not to spend the money, he wanted to pick her up, he'd be there.

Entering the waiting room, Patrick almost collided with passengers on their way out. An announcer's nasal voice intoned Albany! White Plains! New York City! Where was Marianne? He didn't see her. A girl turned, pretty, snub-nosed-not his sister. Another girl, a young woman carrying a baby. Their eyes lighted upon him, friendly and curious. But Patrick was too distracted to take much notice. He stood in the center of the crowded waiting room, peering about. He was breathless, excited, irritable; he imagined (but was it only imagination?) his hands, even his hair stank of the lab. (He had a habit of running his fingers swiftly through his hair sometimes as he worked.) His glasses steamed faintly. The peripheral vision in his left eye was weak, and weaker still when he was exhausted or rattled, so he turned unconsciously to his left, turning his entire body, frowning- where was Marianne? Hadn't she come to Ithaca, after all?

The thought that she might not have come, and he'd be alone that evening, filled Patrick with dismay.

Or-something had happened to her? In Kilburn, or on the bus, or here in Ithaca? He was the one who'd arrived almost an hour late.

The interior of the Trailways bus depot in downtown Ithaca was a shabby slipping-down sort of place, connected with a diner; there was a prevailing odor of cigarette smoke, griddle-grease, wet wool (it had been a chill, rain-darkened April day, rife with puddles) and inadequately washed human bodies. An odor of the left-behind, the losers of America: everyone who could afford it traveled by air now. Or, poor even as Patrick Mulvaney, drove his own car. Passengers for the now-boarding bus shuffled out of the depot and only a few parties remained. An elderly black man muttering to himself- trying to get a locker open; a very pale teenaged boy, with short, spiky hair and spindly limbs, nodding off against a rear wall; two light-skinned black girls, giggling and whispering together; a middle-aged woman with her heavyset, apparently retarded son, Patrick's age; a sailor, duffel bag on his lap, smoking, and casting furtive glances at the giggling girls-or was it at the sleeping boy beyond, who looked about twelve years old? A disheveled man smelling of burnt orange peels approached Patrick with-what?-a ballpoint pen to sell-but canny Patrick turned away and pushed through the doors to the outside. There were benches here, and a few stragglers sitting on theni, but no Marianne.

He realized how much he wanted to see her, now she wasn't in sight.

He realized how much he was depending on this visit of hers, he who had so few friends-well, no friends at all, exactly.

Prowling the bus-boarding area, circling the depot to check all the buses in sight. Thinking just possibly he'd gotten the time wrong and Marianne was only now due, 6 P.M.?-but she wasn't here, wasn't anywhere. He stared grimly as a northbound bus, up from Binghamton en route to Syracuse, discharged passengers. All strangers. The Erie, Pennsylvania bus, with its Kilburn connection, had obviously come and gone an hour ago. Patrick saw an Ithaca patrolman talking with a security guard and approached them to ask if they'd seen Marianne but at the last moment he passed on by, he was too confused. He could not think how to describe his sister! His mind had gone blank and his last clear memory of her was of the radiantly smiling cheerleader in the maroon jumper and long-sleeved perfectly starched white cotton blouse, eyes shining, curly-brown hair bouncing as in an advertisement for American happiness itself "Button" Mulvaney. Immortalized on Mom's bulletin board.