We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

to open too wide, to stare, were her most distinguishing feature, an embarrassment to her children. Her fluttery talk in public, her whistling. Her occasional, always so-embarrassing talk of God. (“God-gush,” Patrick called it. But Corinne protested isn’t God all around us, isn’t God in us? Didn’t Jesus Christ come to earth to be our Savior? Plain as the noses on our faces.)

      At least, Corinne didn’t embarrass her daughter Marianne. Sweet good-natured Marianne who was Button, who was Chickadee, who was—everybody’s darling. Never judged her mother, or anyone, with that harsh adolescent scorn that so wounds the parents who adore them.

      Marianne’s voice was low, liquidy-sweet and apologetic. She was calling from Trisha LaPorte’s house, where she’d spent the night. The St. Valentine’s prom at Mt. Ephraim High had been the previous night, and Marianne Mulvaney had been the only junior elected to the King and Queen’s “court”; it was an honor, but Marianne had taken it in stride. She’d stayed over in town as she usually did for such occasions—dances, parties, football or basketball games; she had numerous girlfriends, and was welcome anywhere. Less frequently, Marianne’s friends came out to High Point Farm to spend a night or a weekend. Corinne basked in her daughter’s popularity as in the warmth of sunshine reflected in a mirror. She’d been a gawky farm-girl lucky to have one or two friends in high school, self-conscious and homely; it was a continual amazement to her, her daughter had turned out as she had.

      Michael Sr. objected: you were damned good-looking, and you know it. And you got better-looking as you got older. How’d I fall in love with you, for God’s sake?

      Well, that was a wonder. That was a puzzle Corinne never quite solved. Thought of it every day for the past twenty-three years.

      Marianne was apologizing—that was a habit Corinne should try to break in her: apologizing more than was necessary—for being a nuisance. “Trisha’s father says he’ll be happy to drive me home, but you know how icy the roads are, and it’s so far—I really don’t want to trouble him.” Corinne said, “Button, honey, I’ll send one of your brothers.” “Is it O.K.? I mean—” “No problem,” Corinne said, in a country drawl, “—no problem.” (This phrase had become part of Mulvaney family code, picked up from some TV program by one of the boys and now everyone said it.) Corinne asked Marianne to say hello and give her warm regards to Lillian LaPorte, Trisha’s mother: a friendly acquaintance of Corinne’s from years ago, both women longtime P.T.A. members, active in the League of Women Voters, the Mt. Ephraim General Hospital Women’s Auxiliary. She was about to hang up when it occurred to her to ask, belatedly, “Oh, how was the prom, sweetie? Did you have a good time with—what’s-his-name? And how was the dress—honey?”

      Marianne had already hung up.

      Later, Corinne would recall in bewilderment this conversation, so matter-of-fact and—well, familiar. So normal.

      Of course, Marianne had not lied. Concealing a truth, however ugly a truth, is not the same as lying. Marianne was incapable of deliberate deception. If now and then there’d been the slightest trace of what you might call subterfuge in her it was a sign she was protecting someone: usually, of course, as they were all growing up, her older brothers. Mikey-Junior who’d been quite a handful in his teens (“First ‘Mule’ was our bundle of joy,” Corinne used to joke, sighing, “now he’s our boy-oh-boy!”), Patrick, poor sweet-shy short-tempered Pinch, who’d had a tendency since kindergarten to blurt out things he didn’t mean, truly didn’t mean, not just to his family, which was bad enough, but to his classmates—even to his teachers! Even, one memorably embarrassing time, when he’d been no more than ten, a cutting, shrewd remark (“How do you know, did God tell you?”) put to a Sunday school teacher at the Kilburn Evangelical Church. (Corinne was a passionate “nondenominational Protestant” as she called herself, with a weakness for remote country churches; she dragged the children in her wake, and they seemed happy enough. Michael Sr. was never involved in these infatuations, of course: he described himself as a “permanently lapsed Catholic,” which was religion enough to suit him.)

      Of the children, Marianne had always been the most natural Christian. In her flamboyant way that embarrassed her children, Corinne was fond of saying, “Jesus Christ came to dwell in my heart when I was a young girl, but He’s been dwelling in Button’s heart, I swear, since birth.”

      At this, Marianne would blush and flutter her fingers in an unconscious imitation of her mother. She sighed, “Oh, Mom! The things you say.”

      Corinne drew herself up to her full height. Mother of the household, keeper of High Point Farm. “Yes! The things I say are truth.”

      Corinne Mulvaney’s terrible vanity: her pride in such truth.

      She marveled at it: how even as a child of two or three, Marianne simply could not lie. It distinguished her from her brothers—oh, yes! But from other children, too, who, telling fibs, instinctively imitate their elders, feigning “innocence,” “ignorance.” But never Marianne.

      And she was so pretty! So radiant. No other word: radiant. The kitchen bulletin board, Corinne’s province, was festooned with snapshots of Marianne: receiving a red ribbon for her juicy plum-sized strawberries a few years ago at the state fair in Albany, and, last year, two blue ribbons—again for strawberries, and for a sewing project; being inducted as an officer in the Chautauqua Christian Youth Conference; at the National 4-H Conference in Chicago where she’d won an award, in 1972. Most of the snapshots of Marianne were of her cheerleading, in her Mt. Ephraim cheerleader’s jumper, maroon wool with a white cotton long-sleeved blouse. The previous night Michael had taken a half dozen Polaroids of Marianne in her new dress, which she’d sewed herself from a Butterick pattern—satin and chiffon, strawberries-and-cream, with a pleated bodice and a scalloped hem that fell to her slender ankles. But these lay on a windowsill, not yet selected and tacked up on the bulletin board.

      She, Corinne, had never learned to sew. Not really. Her mother had been impatient trying to teach her—she’d mistaken Corinne’s eagerness for carelessness. Or was eagerness a kind of carelessness? All Corinne was good for with a needle was mending, which she quite enjoyed. You weren’t expected to be perfect mending torn jeans or socks worn thin at the heel.

      How beautiful Marianne was! Alone with no one to observe, Corinne could stare and stare at these pictures of her daughter. At seventeen Marianne was still very young, and young-looking; with a fair, easily marred skin, no freckles like her mom; deep-set and intelligent pebbly-blue eyes; dark curly hair that snapped and shone when briskly brushed—which Corinne was still allowed to do, now and then. It was Corinne’s secret belief that her daughter was a far finer person than she was herself, a riddle put to her by God. I must become the mother deserving of such a daughter—is that it?

      Of course, Corinne loved her sons, too. As much—well, almost as much as she loved Marianne. Loving boys was just more of a challenge, somehow. Like keeping an even course in a canoe on a wild rushing river. Boys didn’t let you rest!

      A long time ago when they were young married lovers with only the one baby, Mikey-Junior they’d adored, Corinne and Michael made a pact. If they had more babies—which they dearly wanted—they must vow never to favor one over the others; never to love one of their children the most, or another the least. Michael said, reasonably, “We’ve got more than enough love for all of them, whoever they are. Right?”

      Corinne hugged and kissed him in silence, of course he was right.

      What a feverish, devoted, you might say obsessed young mother she’d been! Her blue eyes shone like neon. Her heart beat steady and determined. She knew she could love inexhaustibly because she was herself nourished by God’s inexhaustible love.

      But Michael had more to say. In fact, Michael was argumentative, impassioned as Corinne rarely saw him. He’d come from a large Irish Catholic family of six boys and three girls in Pittsburgh; his father, a steelworker and a heavy drinker, had bullied his mother into submission young and slyly cultivated a game of pitting Michael and his brothers against one another. All the while Michael was growing up he’d