Free We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

was a witty, playful means of making simple requests: “Silky, will you trot over and ask Curly when he wants supper, early or late; and when he plans on husking the sweet corn, in any case.” Or, in a raised voice, “Snowball, will you please ask Judd to come out here and give me a hand?” It was a favored means for mild scolding: “Muffin, please ask a certain somebody”—this might be Mike, Patrick, Judd, or even Dad—“how long he plans on lounging there with the refrigerator door wide open?” Mostly such remarks were from Mom or Dad. When we kids imitated them, the code seemed somehow not to work, quite. I remember Mike furious at Patrick for some reason, the two of them riding their horses in the front drive, Patrick stiff and upright in the lead, his horse’s tail flicking, and Mike calling after, “Hey, Prince: tell your rider he’s a horse’s ass, thanks!” But both Prince and his rider ignored the taunt, breaking into a canter to escape.
    Most of these exchanges, in fact, were inside our house. Now that I think of it, most were in the kitchen. For the kitchen was the heart of our household; where we naturally gravitated to seek one another out. The radio was always on, turned to Mom’s favorite Yewville station; there were always dogs and cats underfoot, looking to be petted or fed; of course, Feathers was a permanent resident in his handsome brass cage near the window. Of all the Mulvaney pets, it was Muffin the cat who was the favored medium for such exchanges; Muffin who was sweetly docile and patient and so unfailingly attentive when we human beings spoke, you’d swear he understood our words. With comical intensity Muffin would look from one speaker to the other, and back, and again, like a spectator at a tennis match. His tawny cat-eyes flashed sympathy, concern. It was almost possible to think, as Dad insisted, that Muffin wasn’t a cat but a human being in disguise; yet, being an animal, he was ever so much nicer than any human being. “Muffin, you and I understand each other, don’t we?” Dad would say, stooping to pet the cat, shaking dry food out of a box into a dish for a between-meals snack that was in fact against Mom’s household diet rules just as Dad’s own forays into the refrigerator between meals were against the rules, “—both of us endomorphs, eh?” Dad was growing ever more husky with the years, his muscular torso thickening, his belly pushing out over his belt; he would never be a fat man, nor even plump, for there was no softness to him, only a kind of defiant sinewy flesh. Muffin had begun his Mulvaney life as an abandoned kitten, rescued with his brother Big Tom from imminent death by starvation in a landfill off High Point Road, so tiny he could fit into the palm of the youngest Mulvaney’s hand; with alarming swiftness he’d grown into a soft heavy adult male, neutered, weighing somewhere beyond twenty pounds. He was by no means a beautiful animal though his coat was silky-white, always impeccably clean, with lopsided markings like a child’s drawing in orange, black, gray, brown. His head was round as a cabbage. His tail was ringed as a raccoon’s. He’d been Marianne’s kitten from the start, but we all loved him. Dad was a little rough showing his affection, hauling the big cat up onto his lap as he sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and making telephone calls. It was Dad’s habit to speak craftily through Muffin to certain of his sons—“Muffin, one thing puzzles me and maybe you can clear it up? Why, after I made a simple request five days ago is the tire on the goddamned John Deere still flat ?” The object of such remarks was usually Mike, who tended to slight his farm chores. So Mike would say to Muffin, with a smile, “Muffin, explain to Dad I’m just a little behind, I’m still mucking out those goddamned stalls. Tell