We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

with disconcertingly humanoid faces. Still, Marianne found the image fascinating, like a riddle to be decoded. Many times she’d asked Corinne who was the pilgrim, and where had she come from? She was alone—why? She seemed quite young, only a girl. Was she about to die, and that was why Jesus smiled down upon her from the clouds? Yet she did not appear injured or exhausted; in her very posture of humility, head bowed, hands clasped and uplifted in prayer, there was a suggestion of pride. Clearly the pilgrim was praying to Jesus, unaware of Him though His rays of light illuminated her out of the shadow.

      Corinne found The Pilgrim fascinating, too. She had the idea it was based on some German folktale, she didn’t know why. And the caption wasn’t accurate, exactly: it should have been She that loseth her life for my sake shall find it.

      Marianne drew her fingers across the glass, trailing dust. She squatted beside the painting, staring avidly at it, her eyes misting over in tears. She felt a surge of happiness sharp as pain in her heart.

      She hadn’t actually seen The Pilgrim in a long time and had more or less forgotten it. Yet, evidently, she’d been thinking of it the previous night, soaking in Trisha LaPorte’s bathtub. Numbed, dazed. Her thoughts flying rapidly and fluidly and without weight or seeming significance. Jesus help me. Jesus help me. Like scenes glimpsed from the window of a speeding vehicle, lacking depth and color. Like those strange fleeting faces, strangers’ faces, some of them distorted and grotesque, we see as we sink exhausted into sleep. So, amid the steaming water, above a limp-floating naked girl’s body, a body at which Marianne did not look, The Pilgrim rose, took shape. It hovered suspended until finally it faded into numbness and oblivion, a gouged-out hole in the very space of consciousness.

      So much to talk about! So many interruptions! Laughter, and Judd scolded by Dad for passing sausage-bits to Little Boots beneath the table, and Mom scolded by Dad Honeylove will you for God’s sake stop jumping up every five minutes?—and the discovery, midmeal, that the oven was still set at four hundred degrees and the Mexican chicken-shrimp-sausage casserole was beginning to burn. Marianne had helped Mom prepare supper as usual as if nothing were wrong, so perhaps nothing was wrong. In addition to the super-casserole there was grilled Parmesan-dill bread, baked butternut squash sprinkled with brown sugar, a giant tossed salad with Mom’s special oil-and-vinegar dressing, homemade apple-cinnamon cobbler with vanilla ice cream. How many suppers, how many meals, here in the big cozy country kitchen at High Point Farm: you might bear the memory into eternity, yet each occasion was unique, mysterious.

      In a haze of smiling, nodding, chewing, swallowing Marianne navigated the hour-long meal. Not quite so talkative, smiling, happy as usual but maybe no one noticed? (Except Mom?) Mikey-Junior was away with his girl Trudi Hendrick (Are those two getting serious? Mom’s worried, wondering) but all the other Mulvaneys were in their usual seats. And all hungry.

       You know you want to, why’d you come with me if you don’t?

      Nobody’s gonna hurt you for Christ’s sake get cool.

      Talk swirled around Marianne’s head like confetti. She was listening, yet seemed not to hear. Did they glance at her oddly?—or not notice a thing? There was a buzzing in her ears remote as wasps, in summer, under the eaves. That ache like weeping in her loins. (Don’t think: va-gin-a. Ugly words like ut-er-us, clit-or-is.) Marianne leapt up to save Mom a trip, carrying the heated casserole back to the table; passed the newly replenished bread basket back to Dad, the salt-free margarine, the hefty gleaming “Swedish” salad bowl. Mom was telling them excitedly of the candidate she and church friends intended to campaign for, in the upcoming Presidential election, Jimmy Carter—“A true Christian, and an intelligent, forceful man.” Dad murmured in an undertone, with a wink for the kids, “Rare combo, eh?” but Mom chose to ignore the remark; tried never to argue at mealtimes, on principle. Next was talk of the icy roads, Monday morning’s predicted weather (snow flurries, wind-chill temperatures as low as minus twenty). Talk of upcoming dental appointments (Patrick, Judd—both groaned), a vet appointment (for poor Silky, whose teeth were getting bad). Dad brought up the subject of the bid Mulvaney Roofing had made last Monday to the contractor for the St. Matthew’s Hospital addition, one of seven bids from local roofers, so far as he knew; a decision was due soon, maybe this week. With a shrug of his burly shoulder meant to disguise the hope and anxiety he felt, Dad said, grinning, “Well, as the fella says, ‘No news is good news.’ Right?” Mom interjected in her way of thrusting her head forward, gawky-girl style, with her neighing laugh, “‘No noose is good noose’—as the condemned man said on the scaffold.”

      “Oh, Mom!” everyone brayed.

      Except Marianne, who smiled vaguely. Knowing she’d hurt her mother’s feelings earlier, that exchange about Feathers. Though she couldn’t remember any longer what either of them had said.

      Patrick tried to initiate a discussion of time travel but Dad laughed scornfully, pointing out it was bad enough we have so many useless overpriced places to travel to now, let alone going back and forward in time. Mom remarked it would make her so nervous, plunging into the unknown—“The ‘known’ is about all I can handle.” Patrick sulked they never took anything seriously and Dad said in fact they took everything seriously except not at mealtimes. Going on then to tell a new joke (“There’s these identical-looking skunks, one’s a Republican and the other’s a Democrat, meet in a bar”) he’d heard in the club locker room that afternoon and everyone laughed, or made laughing-groaning sounds, and Marianne too smiled though preoccupied with passing the salad bowl. And replenishing the bread basket lined with bright pumpkin-decorated paper napkins from Hallowe’en. Patrick observed dryly, “Is Homo sapiens the only species that laughs? What’s the evolutionary advantage in laughing, does anyone know?”

      Mom said thoughtfully, “Laughing is a way of getting out of yourself, laughing at yourself—mankind’s foibles, pretensions.” Dad said, “Hell, it’s a way of letting off steam. Nervous tension.” Judd said, “It’s just something that happens, you can’t force it.” Patrick said, “But why? Why does it happen? What’s the point?” Mom said, sighing, laying a hand on Patrick’s arm, “Oh, well, Pinch—if you have to ask, you’ll never know.” And everyone laughed at Patrick who was blushing, embarrassed.

      Everyone except Marianne who was at the counter cutting more slices of bread. She smiled, and returned to her seat. What had they been talking about?

      It’s as if I am already gone. Just my body in its place.

      She’d seen Patrick glancing at her, sidelong. Not a word from him.

      There was the Mulvaney cork bulletin board on the wall. Festooned with color snapshots, clippings, blue and red ribbons, Dad’s Chamber of Commerce “medal,” dried wildflowers, gorgeous seed-catalogue pictures of tomatoes, snapdragons, columbine. Beneath what was visible were more items and beneath those probably more. Like archeological strata. A recent history of the Mulvaneys. The bulletin board had been there forever, Mom’s contribution to the household. At its center was a large calendar with the handprinted * * * WORK SCHEDULE * * * above. High Point Farm had to be run like a boot camp, the elder Mulvaneys believed, or chaos would sweep in and bear them all away like a flood. So painstakingly, with the judiciousness of Solomon, Corinne drew up each month a schedule of chores—house chores, mealtime chores, trash-related chores, all variety of outdoor/seasonal chores, horse chores, cow chores, barn chores, pet chores, and what was unclassifiable—“misc.” chores. (These, the Mulvaney children agreed, could be the most treacherous. Helping Mom clean out the cellar, for instance. Helping Mom sand, scrape, caulk, paint in the antique barn. Helping Mom put flea collars on all the dogs and cats in a single afternoon.) Like any month, February 1976 presented itself to the neutral eye as a phenomenon of white squares arranged symmetrically along proportionate grids as if time were a matter of division, finite and exacting; each square mastered by Corinne Mulvaney’s meticulous hand-printing. Corinne was famous for her terrible fair-mindedness, as Dad said she spared no one the worst, not even herself and him.

      True, the Mulvaneys sometimes made deals with one another, switched chores without Mom’s approval. So long as the chores got done there was no