We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

it, comforting. Knowing that at any time you could check the bulletin board, see exactly what was expected of you not only that day but through the end of the month.

      Most prominent on the bulletin board as always were the newer Polaroids. Button in her pretty prom dress. Before the luckless Austin Weidman the “date” arrived in his dad’s car to take her away. Strawberries ’n’ cream! Dad teased, snapping the shots. But of course he was proud, how could he not be proud. And Mom was proud. Pride goeth before a fall Mom would murmur biting her lower lip but, oh!—it was hard to resist. Marianne had sewed such a lovely dress for her 4-H project, not due until June for the county fair competition. And Marianne was so lovely of course. Slender, high-breasted, with those shining eyes, gleaming dark-brown hair of the hue of the finest richest mahogany. In one of the shots Marianne and Corinne were smiling at Dad the photographer, arms around each other’s waist, and Corinne in her baggy SAVE THE WHALES sweatshirt and jeans looked wonderfully youthful, mischievous. The white light of the flash illuminated every freckle on her face and caused her eyes to flare up neon-blue. She’d been photographed in the midst of laughing but there was no mistaking those eyes, that pride. This is my gift to the world, my beautiful daughter thank you God.

      The meal was ending, they were eating dessert. Talk had looped back to Dad and his triumphant or almost-triumphant squash games that afternoon. Marianne listened and laughed with the others. Though her mind was drifting away and had to be restrained like a flighty unwieldy kite in a fierce wind. No telephone calls for Button that day. Not one. Corinne would surely have noticed.

      Dad was being good, amazingly good for Dad—eating a small portion of cherry cobbler and stoically refusing another helping. He complimented Mom and Marianne on the terrific supper and went on to speak of his friend Ben Breuer whose name was frequently mentioned at mealtimes at High Point Farm. Mr. Breuer was a local attorney, a business associate and close friend of the Democratic state senator from the Chautauqua district, Harold Stoud, whom Michael Mulvaney Sr. much admired and to whose campaigns he’d contributed. “Ben and I are evenly matched as twins, almost,” Dad was saying, smiling, “—but I can beat Ben if I push hard. Winning is primarily an act of will. I mean when you’re so evenly matched. But I don’t always push it, you know?—so Ben thinks, if he happens to win a game or two, he’s won on his own. Keeping a good equilibrium is more important.”

      Patrick pushed his wire-rim schoolboy glasses against the bridge of his nose and peered at Dad inquisitively. “More important than what, Dad?” he asked.

      “More important than winning.”

      “‘A good equilibrium’—in what sense?”

      “In the sense of friendship. Pure and simple.”

      “I don’t understand.” Patrick’s mild provoking manner, his level gaze, indicated otherwise. A tawny look had come up in his eyes.

      Dad said, pleasantly, “Friendship with a person of Ben Breuer’s quality means a hell of a lot more to me than winning a game.”

      “Isn’t that hypocritical, Dad?”

      A look of hurt flickered across Dad’s face. He’d been spooning cherry cobbler out of Mom’s bowl which she’d pushed in his direction, seeing how he’d been casting yearning glances at it, and now he said, fixing Patrick with a fatherly patient smile, “It’s sound business sense, son. That’s what it is.”

      After supper there was the danger of Corinne knocking at her door. Of course the door could not be locked, impossible to lock any door at High Point Farm and violate family code.

      In fact there were no locks on the children’s bedroom doors. For what purpose, a lock?

      God help me. Jesus have pity on me.

      During the meal Marianne had had a mild surge of nausea but no one had noticed. She’d conquered it, sitting very calmly and waiting for it to subside. As Dad said, An act of will.

      But it was there, still. The nausea that had spread through her body like that species of thick clotted green scum that, if unchecked, spread through the animals’ drinking pond and despoiled it each summer. Microorganisms replicating by an action of sunshine, Patrick explained. Only drastic measures could curtail them.

      But the nausea remained, and a taste of hot yellow bile at the back of her mouth. Like acid. Horrible. It was the vodka backing up, vodka and orange juice. She hadn’t known what it was, exactly. Zachary prepared the drink for her saying it was mild, she wouldn’t notice it at all. How happy she was, how elated! How easily she’d laughed! You’re so beautiful Marianne he’d said staring at her and she’d known it was true.

      Jesus have pity on me, forgive me. Let me be all right.

      As soon as she’d come home that afternoon she took two aspirin tablets. To get her through the ordeal of supper, two more. It seemed to her that the pain in her lower belly, the hot sullen seepage of blood in her loins had lessened. Her skin was hot, her forehead burning. If Mom had noticed she would have said in her usual murmurous embarrassed way, dropping her eyes, that it was just her period. A few days early this month.

      How to examine her dress without touching it or smelling it.

      The left strap was torn from the pleated bodice but did not appear to be otherwise damaged, it should be easy to mend. More difficult would be the long jagged tear in the skirt, upward from the hem on a bias. She could hear still the shriek of the delicate fabric as if her very nerves had been ripped out of her flesh. Nobody’s gonna hurt you for Christ’s sake get cool. Where she’d gently hand-washed the dress with Pond’s complexion soap in lukewarm water in Trisha’s bathroom sink the stains were still visible, blood- and vomit-stains. The satin was still damp. When it dried, it would wrinkle badly. But she would try again of course. She would not be discouraged.

      Picking up the dress between her thumb and forefinger as if she feared its touch might be virulent, she turned it over on the bed.

      Oh. Oh God.

      The scattered bloodstains across the front of the dress were light as freckles but the darker stains on the back, a half dozen stains as long as six or seven inches, had turned a sour yellowish shade, unmistakable. Like the stained crotches of certain of her panties which Marianne scrubbed, scrubbed by hand to rid them of traces of menstrual blood before drying them in her closet and dropping them into the laundry chute. Ashamed that Corinne, who did the laundry, might see. Oh, ashamed! Though Corinne would never say a word, of course—Corinne who was so kind, so gentle. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Button, really, Mom insisted, perplexed at her daughter’s sensitivity. But Marianne could not help it. These panties weren’t disreputable enough to be discarded yet were not fit to wear; especially on gym days at school. One by one they’d collected at the back of Marianne’s underwear drawer in her bureau, to be worn, if at all, only in emergency situations.

       Look, 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!

      At the prom she’d been photographed with the Valentine King and Queen and the Queen’s “maids-in-waiting” of whom Marianne Mulvaney was the only girl not a member of the senior class. Up on the bandstand. Smiling and giddy. The band was so loud! Sly-sliding trombone, deafening cymbals and drums. The Valentine King who was a tall blond flush-faced boy, a basketball star, kissed Marianne—full on the mouth. There was a smell of whiskey, beer, though drinking on school property was forbidden. Confetti caught in her hair. The band was playing “Light My Fire.” She was dancing with a senior named Zachary Lundt and then another senior named Matt Breuer who was the son of Dad’s close friend Mr. Breuer. In the excitement she could not recall with whom she’d come, which “date.” Then she caught sight of Austin Weidman’s long-jawed glum face and waved happily.

      Her friends had come out to High Point Farm to see her dress and to stay for supper. Mom loved Marianne’s girlfriends—how lucky Marianne was, Mom said, to have such good friends! Such sweet girls! Her own girlhood had