Free We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

him I’m sorry, sir !”
    There was a protocol to such exchanges, a logic to the most circumlocutory of maneuvers. When the code was broken the effect was like a slap in the face. That time Marianne entered the kitchen so quietly I didn’t know she was there at first, this would have been early evening of the day following Valentine’s Day, early evening of the Sunday she’d been at the LaPortes’. Less than twenty-four hours after it had happened to her and in that limbo of time when none of us had any idea, any suspicion. I was hurriedly finishing one of my household chores, cleaning out some of the accumulated magazines, newspapers, mail-order catalogues from the kitchen alcove, and Mom was trimming a half dozen plants she’d brought to set on the table, whistling under her breath, and I heard her say in her bright-flirty voice, “Feathers!—what’s this I’ve heard about a certain someone not getting to church this morning?” There was a moment’s startled silence, I turned to see that Marianne had come in. Her back was to me. She wore jeans, a sweatshirt. Her hair was pulled roughly back in a ponytail. She said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear, “I—I think it’s cruel for that poor bird to be caged his entire life so that selfish human beings like us can be entertained by him. I think it’s a sin. ”
    Mom was so surprised, the shears slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.
    Not just that Marianne of all her children had spoken these harsh words but that Marianne had broken the code. When Mom or Dad addressed you by way of an animal, you always replied the same way. Yet, suddenly, Marianne had not.
    Mom said, defensively, drawing herself up to her full height as if her very integrity had been challenged, “Why, Button! What do you mean? Feathers is a canary bred for the cage, and so were his parents and their parents going back for generations! Feathers wouldn’t have any life if he hadn’t been bred for the cage. He was born in that cage, in fact. You could say that the cage is Feathers’ life. And it’s a lovely nineteenth-century brass cage, an antique. ” Mom’s voice was tremulous with hurt and indignation, as when she argued politics with Dad, rising on the reverential word antique.
    Marianne said, almost inaudibly, “Mom. It’s still a cage. ”
    Turning then, with a sigh of exasperation, or a muffled sob, taking no heed of me but hurrying out of the kitchen before Mom could protest any further. Mom and I stared after my sister in mutual astonishment as she pushed blindly through the swinging door into the dining room, and was gone.
    Â 
    Did you know, Marianne: how by breaking the code that day, you broke it forever? For us all?

DIRTY GIRL
    M ike Mulvaney Jr. was a senior at Mt. Ephraim and he was on the football team and some of his buddies were involved with the girl but he had not been involved. “Mule” heard all about it, for sure. But he had not been involved.
    What can you expect of a girl like that. That kind of a girl. Her mother, her sisters. County welfare. Runs in the family.
    What the Mt. Ephraim guys did after the last game of the season. Three or four guys on the team and some older guys who’d graduated the year before. Sure, they were all friends of Mike Mulvaney’s but Mike Mulvaney had not been one of them, that night.
    Getting a retarded girl drunk. Doing—you know, things—to her.
    Hey: she isn’t retarded. Who says that?
    The whole family, the Duncans—the mother’s an alcoholic, she’s got Indian blood. Comes from the Seneca reservation.
    That’s not what I heard. I heard they’re—you know, Negro.
    Well it’s all the same. That kind of people. At that—what d’you call it—trailer court—
    Trailer village. On the Haggartsville Road.
    Mule knew all about it, or maybe just a little about it.