LITMIR.BIZ

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lamps, outdoor privies, snow chains on tires.

      In her room, Marianne modeled the dress for Trisha, Suzi, Merissa, Bonnie. They were themselves very pretty girls, from well-to-do families in Mt. Ephraim, they were “good, Christian” girls—generally. Suzi and Merissa were cheerleaders like Marianne. Bonnie was class secretary. Trisha would be editor, the following year, of the school newspaper. They all had “dates” for the prom of course but their “dates” were with boys they’d gone out with in the past, boys of a certain quality. They teased Marianne about Austin Weidman whose name they pronounced in four flat-stressed syllables—“Aust-in Weid-man”—as if it were the funniest imaginable name. Suzi who was the boldest of them said slyly, What a shame, Button wasting that dress on Aus-tin Weid-man. All the girls laughed, including Marianne who blushed fiercely. She’d been prancing about her room in the shimmering satin dress with the strawberry-pink chiffon netting at the waist and hips, the finely stitched pleated bodice, elegantly thin straps. (Yes, she would have to wear a strapless bra beneath! Imagine.) She’d parodied the sexy arrogant pelvisthrust stance of a fashion model, lifting her arms above her head, but now froze in that position, confused.

      Nobody’s gonna hurt you, Marianne.

      “Marianne Mulvaney”—hot shit.

       You’re pissing me off, you know it?

      Everyone in the school had voted for the Valentine King and Queen and the names of the eight finalists were announced on Friday morning over the intercom in each homeroom and Marianne Mulvaney was the only junior in the list and her friends had shrieked with excitement and hugged, kissed her. Marianne had been dazed, disoriented, a little frightened. Who had voted for her? Why would anyone vote for her? This was not like being elected to the cheerleading squad for which she’d practiced tirelessly for weeks, nor was it like being elected secretary of her class which might have been perceived as an honor few others would have coveted. This was grace falling from above, unexpected. This was high school celebrity.

      Was it a sin, such happiness? Such vanity?

      Later, she would try washing the dress again in the bathroom sink. She would have to wait until everyone had gone to bed. And then she would have to be very quiet, stealthy. If Mom heard. If Mom knocked on the door. If Mom whispered, Button—?

      Quickly Marianne folded the dress back up, to the size of a T-shirt. A spool of thread among her sewing things she’d spread on top of her bed went rolling, and Muffin leapt to pursue it. He’d been watching her from across the room. The dress was still damp, but Marianne placed it on a high shelf in her closet beneath some summer clothes. Zipped up the garment bag and hung it in a corner of her closet. Out of sight.

      Fortunately Marianne hadn’t a mother like Trisha’s. Poking about in her room. That look in Mrs. LaPorte’s eyes, that nervous edge to the voice.

       I’m fine, thank you. Really!

      A little tired I guess. A headache.

      That look passing between Trisha and Mrs. LaPorte. They’d been talking of Marianne of course. Last night, those long hours she’d been out. Hadn’t returned with Trisha and the others. Went where?

      O Jesus truly I do not remember. I have sinned but I do not remember.

      Between her legs she was bleeding into a sanitary napkin. Her lower abdomen ached. There was comfort in this ache which meant cramps: something routine. A few days earlier this month but nothing to be alarmed about, was it. Take two more aspirin before bed. Put your mind on other things.

      It was too early for bed. The telephone had not once rung for her, all that Sunday.

      She sat at her desk. Opened her geometry book. The printed words, the figures began to swim. She read, reread the problem and even as she read she was forgetting. The cat batted the spool of cream-colored thread about on the carpet until Marianne could not bear it any longer and scolded, “Muffin! Stop.”

      Cruel and unfair, certain of the rumors at Mt. Ephraim High. That the “good, Christian” girls—the “popular” girls—the “nice” girls—if they were pretty girls, in any case—were subtly upgraded by their teachers. Marianne was sure this was not true—was it? She worked hard, she was diligent, conscientious. True, her friends were happy to help her with problems of math, science that gave her trouble. Boys in her class, senior boys. Not often Patrick, though: Patrick disapproved.

      At the thought of Patrick, Marianne began to tremble. She was convinced that he knew. In the station wagon, driving home—the way he’d glanced at her, frowning. Certainly he would know by the end of homeroom period tomorrow morning. Or would no one dare tell him? There would be, in any case, murmured jokes, innuendos for him to overhear. Mulvaneys! Think you’re so good don’t you!

      At Trisha’s she’d bathed twice and a third time since returning home that afternoon and now at 10 P.M. yet a fourth time cautiously lowering herself, her clumsy numb body, into water so hot it made her whimper aloud. The bathroom was filled with steam so she could barely see. The tub was an enormous old-fashioned clawfooted vessel of heavy chipped white porcelain. As a child, Marianne had been lost in it, giggling just slightly frightened as the buoyancy of the water lifted her feet and legs, tilting her backward. Mom had bathed her in this tub, careful not to run too much water into it, and to keep the water from getting too hot. Scalding water issued from the right-hand faucet, cold water from the left. You would not want to lift your foot experimentally to that right-hand faucet.

      Nothing happened you didn’t want and ask for.

       So shut up about it. Understand?

      He’d shaken her, hard. To stop her crying, sobbing. Choking-vomiting. The stink in his car that made him furious.

      In the tub the currents of scalding water twined and twisted with the currents of cold water. A noisy gushing that muffled any other sound. Her heart was beating strangely as it had beat the other morning when she’d heard her name—her name!—over the loudspeaker. She shut her eyes not wishing to see her naked arms and legs, milky-pale, floating like a dead girl’s. Her pale bruised breasts, floating. The ugly plum-colored bruises on the insides of her thighs. Especially she did not wish to see any thin tendrils of blood.

      O Jesus have pity, Jesus let me be all right.

      Always, you maintain your dignity. You’re a Mulvaney, you will be judged by different standards.

      It came to Marianne then, late in the evening of that windy-frigid Sunday in February, that you could make of your pain an offering. You could make of your humiliation a gift. She understood that Jesus Christ sends us nothing that is not endurable for even His suffering on the cross was endurable, He did not die.

      Dissolving then like a TV screen switched to an empty channel so there opened before her again that perfect void.

       SECRETS

      In a family, what isn’t spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.

      Because Judson Andrew Mulvaney was the last-born of the Mulvaney children, because I was Babyface, Dimple, Ranger, I was the last to know everything—good news, or bad. And probably there were lots of things I never knew at all.

      This was long before the trouble with Marianne, I mean. When I was a little cowlicky-haired kid all eyes and ears like, if you’d imagine me as a cartoon figure I’d be a fly with big bulging eyes and waving antennae. For years I was undersized for my age, and a quiet boy, so to compensate sometimes I’d chatter loudly and importantly at school and, if it was just Mom and me, or Mom, Marianne and me, at home. I’m embarrassed to remember, now. And maybe I still behave that way, unconsciously, now. In imitation of Mikey-Junior who was my hero until I was in high school.

      Secrets excited me, secret talk! What I’d understand was not for Ranger’s ears.

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