We Were The Mulvaneys Part 27

He wanted to believe her, she insisted she was happy.

She was happy, her soul s.h.i.+ning in her deep-socketed eyes.

Last time Patrick had spoken with his mother on the phone, mentioning Marianne's upcoming visit to Ithaca, Connne said evasively, guiltily, Oh give Marianne our love! She's doing very well at that little college, she'll make a wondeiful teacher I'm sure. Judd and I are going to drive down some weekend soon. A pause and a choked-pleading voice, Hon, I wouldn't inte-fere with your sister jf I were you and Patrick said coolly, Yes, but you aren't me, Mom. And I'm not you.

What secrets lay between them, Mom and b.u.t.ton?-mOther and daughter?

Just possibly, none.

MMMMM SUCKS c.o.c.k! That time, at the start of gym cla.s.s, at the high school, Patrick swung around the row of lockers and saw a friend of his hastily rubbing something off the corrugated front of Patrick's locker with the flat of his hand, a look of distaste on his friend's face and Patrick walked by pretending he'd seen nothing. Afterward unable to face the friend. Could not recall whether, from that day until graduation, he'd ever spoken to him again.

Would he die for Marianne, yes he believed he would.

Yet:had he ever confronted Zachary Lundt, or any of the pack of guys who were Zachary's friends and who, it was rumored, would "stand up for Zach" if the police investigated?no, he had not.

That wasn't Patrick's way. That wasn't Pinch's way.

Aloof and furious and deeply unspeakably hurt.

Nor had he confronted his father, with whom, since February 1976, he'd scarcely spoken. You go your way and Igo mine. His father seemed to him mad: it was pointless to talk to him, still less argue. He'd banished Marianne from the household and from his life so that he could banish her from his thoughts. It was simple as that, and Patrick understood. He understood, but couldn't forgive. To Corinne he said It's cruel, it's ridiculous, I hate him, how can you? and Corinne said angrily, You don't hate your father, Patrick!-you know that. As for Marianne, she's happy and she's adjusted, her faith sustains her just as it sustains me. Don't inte-ere!

But Pinch would interfere, if only at a distance.

He wanted to believe her, she insisted she was happy.

Didn't want to sit staring at her, trying to figure out what was her life now.

Life after high school: cheerleader, prom princess.

He didn't want to interrogate her yet had to ask: how had her first semester at Kilburn gone?-and when, another time, she told him with girlish enthusiasm, plucking at her shorn hair, how happy she was at the college, how much she'd been learning in her cla.s.ses, especially a Course in American history, focussing upon the Abolitionist movement, readings in Th.o.r.eau, Emerson, Frederick Doug-la.s.s, Patrick interrupted to ask, "But, Marianne, bow did you do? I mean-your grades?"

Crude blunt Pinch.

Mananne had been smiling and now her smile faltered. Her bruised-looking eyelids began to flutter, so like Corinne's. Is there a gene for such related mannerisms, or are they purely learned, conditioned? She said, quietly, so quietly Patrick almost couldn't hear, "I- didn't exactly complete two of the courses. I had to take incompletes."

"Why?"

"Well-" Marianne squirmed, pulling at her spiky hair. "Things sort of caine up. Suddenly."

"What kind of things?"

"An emergency at the Co-op, just after Thanksgiving. Aviva who was a.s.sistant store tnanager got sick-"

"Store? What store?"

"Oh Patrick, I must have told you-didn't I? In Kilb.u.m, in town, we have a Green Isle outlet. We sell preserves, fresh produce in the summer, baked goods-my zucchini_walmiut bread is one of the favorites. I-"

"And you work in this store? How many hours a week?"

Marianne dipped her head, avoiding Patrick's interrogative gaze. "We don't think in terms of hours-exactiy," she said. She was sitting on Patrick's sofa (not an item from home, part of the dull spare slightly shabby furnis.h.i.+ngs of the apartment) while Patrick sat facing her, in a rather overbearing position, on his desk chair, his right ankle balanced on his left knee in a posture both relaxed and aggressive.

Thinking Pinch-style I have a right to ask, who else will ask if I don't?

"What terms do you think in, then?"

"The Green Isle Co-op isn't a-formally run organization, like a business. It's more like a-well, a family. People helping each other out. 'From each what he or she can give; to each, as he or she requires.

"Who said that? P. T. Barnum?"

"Oh Patrick, no." Dutifully Marianne laughed at Patrick's adolescent sarcasm, as a sister must. For an instant they were twelve and thirteen years old, and Pinch was being dourly witty at the supper table. "It's the Co-op motto, it's Abelove's, derived from some nineteenth-century philosopher I think."

"Karl Marx."

"Whoever."

Marianne smiled anxiously, forehead creased. Since Patrick had picked her up at the depot she'd been plucking at her hair, halfconsciously; stroking the nape of her neck as if it were tender, and ached; groping to make sure the flimsy straps of her T-s.h.i.+rt were in place. You would wonder (Patrick would wonder) why a young woman of nineteen would wear such a s.h.i.+rt, and nothing beneath it; why, when it was only just April in upstate New York, and far from summer. And why the pebble-colored slacks with the elastic waist, in so synthetic a abric it had no weave at all, smooth as Formica-slacks that might have been bought in a bargain bas.e.m.e.nt children's department. I am so small and inconsequential, please don't be angry at rue.

But Patrick was angry. Bristling with anger. He said, " 'From each, what he or she can give'-sure. Who's helping you?"

"But Patrick-"

"You're clerking in a Store? You're baking bread? What else?"

"Patrick, these people are my friends. You'll have to come visit us-maybe the weekend Mom and Judd drive down? Kilb.u.m is a small place, the town and the college, nothing like Cornell. No one is suspicious of anyone else there. No one would ever cheat, for instance."

Patrick let this pa.s.s. He listened in silence as Marianne spoke of how she'd been approached by some of the Green Isle people on her second day at Kilb.u.m, she'd been wandering in the bookstore sort of lost and confused, to tell the truth she'd been almost crying, the textbooks cost so much, even the used textbooks, and the first thing

Felice-Marie and Birk said was hey don't wony, there's probably some of these books out at the house, we have a library, you can use ours. She spoke of the "wonderftil old" house that had once been the Ku- b.u.m Inn "going back to stagecoach times." The greenhouses they'd restored to almost perfect condition, the pear orchards, meadows, fertile soil-"Mom would love." She spoke of the Co-op members.h.i.+p- currently twenty-three, of whom eighteen lived in the house. They had a single bank account, they pooled all their finances, if they worked outside the Co-op (as, sometimes, Marianne did, shelving books in the college library) they pooled their earnings. Green Isle was synonymous with "honor system." Green Isle was a "conununal oasis in an American capitalist-consumer desert." (These were Abelove's words, reverently quoted.) In just five years since the Green Isle Co-op had been founded by Abelove, it had acquired an excellent local reputation, and many loyal customers at the store. In fi-ct, Kilb.u.m State was itself a customer: Abelove had negotiated a contract with the food services department.

Patrick resisted his Pinch-instinct and asked casually, politely about Abelove. And of course Marianne spoke warmly, at length; describing this "wonderful, dedicated" person with a "wonderflxl, kindly sense of humor"; a musician (guitar, banjo); an artist (clay sculpting); an organic gardener (no artificial fertilizers or insecticides); but primarily an intellectual, a theorist with advanced degrees in psychology and anthropology. Abelove had been an a.s.sistant professor at Kilb.u.m who'd become disillusioned with the "straightjacket conformity" of the academic world; he'd dropped out to found the Green Isle Co-op, a private vision he'd had as an idealistic teenager camping alone on Mount Katahdin which is somewhere in Maine.

Patrick interrupted to ask, "How old is this person?"

"Old? Why, I don't know-in his early thirties maybe."

"I'd guess he just didn't get tenure at Kilburn State. That's why he 'dropped out.' And where are his 'advanced degrees' from, do you know?"

Marianne plucked at her hair, trying to recall. "Somewhere in Boston, I think."

"Harvard?"

The question was very lightly, ironically put. Marianne missed the tone amid said, "Yes, I think maybe. One of them, at least. Actually Abelove won't talk about himself. Things are known about him-people talk about him, because they admire him so-but he rarely talks about himself."

Patrick said stiffly, "The Green Isle isn't some sort of ridiculous cult, is it?-and 'Abelove' some sort of megalomanic guru?"

"Oh, Patrick, no."

Patrick sucked at his lower lip. Harvard, really! He very much doubted Harvard. He said irritably, "Well, is there a religion involved? Do you all 'wors.h.i.+p' together?"