We Were the Mulvaneys. Joyce Carol Oates

hardly a monopoly of the country club set.”

      “Michael, this ridiculous club discriminates against two members of your own family! Marianne and I, being ‘female,’ can’t even enter by the front door! We have to enter by a side door, through the ‘family entrance.’ Were you aware of that?”

      So they argued. For days, for a week. The quarrel would flame up, then subside; like a treacherous marshland fire it would seem to have been extinguished, when it had merely gone underground. Corinne sulked, and Corinne was sarcastic, and Corinne was morally, spiritually dismayed. She knew, she knew she was right! But the children weren’t eager to come to her defense. And there was Marianne’s question, put to Corinne one day with dazzling simplicity: “Mom, don’t you want Dad to be happy? We do.”

      For even Marianne wanted to belong to the Mt. Ephraim Country Club. Especially Marianne—so many of her friends’ families belonged.

      So Corinne, who was a good sport after all, bought a CONGRATULATIONS! card for Michael, got the kids to sign it, and added smudged paw prints with dogs’ and cats’ names attached; added a warning, in parenthesis, A woman convinced against her will is of the same opinion still. She signed the card LOVE ALWAYS YOUR ‘WHISTLE’ and dropped it off with a bottle of champagne at Mulvaney Roofing.

      So Michael Mulvaney was inducted into the Mt. Ephraim Country Club one evening in May 1973. And quickly became an involved, active member, generous with his time, eager to serve on committees, offer his practical advice on such matters as building maintenance, plumbing, public relations. You would think your father is running for political office, Corinne observed dryly to the children, he’s become such a handshaker. Watching affable Michael Mulvaney, smiling, gregarious, in his navy blue blazer with brass nautical buttons and his bright plaid necktie, moving about in the atrium dining room at Sunday brunch, greeting friends, being introduced to potential friends, shaking hands, laughing, flirting with women who clearly adored him—all very innocently of course (of course!)—Corinne had to acknowledge with a sigh that the Mt. Ephraim Country Club made her husband glow with pleasure in a way that High Point Farm, for all its beauty, no longer could.

      Am I disappointed with him?—oh just a little.

      Corinne did admire the Club, from a distance: the colonial-style building of fieldstone and spotless white clapboard, overlooking the golf course of gently rolling, sculpted-looking hills; the fir-lined gravel driveway with the ominous sign at the entrance: MT. EPHRAIM COUNTRY CLUB PRIVATE MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY Of course, there were numerous decent people who belonged, people she knew well, and liked very much, as they liked her, quite apart from the Club. It was just that she couldn’t overcome her prejudice against it. People whom she could respect outside the Club she did not, somehow could not, respect there. How would Jesus Christ fit in, in such a milieu? Would He have been blackballed for membership, year after year? Over time, Corinne visited the Club less and less frequently, and then only when Michael insisted. “Oh Mom, you’re not trying,” her shrewd children objected. But why should she try? Whom was Corinne Mulvaney hoping to impress, or deceive? True, women like Lydia Bethune were friendly enough to her, but probably (almost certainly) out of pity; she felt their eyes crawling over her, assessing. Who was Corinne Mulvaney but a gawky farm wife trying to pass herself off as someone she wasn’t; someone who belonged in overalls, jeans, polyester slacks or shorts, not cotton pastels, linen skirts, “chic” black, shoes with ridiculous heels and fussy little straps. She was miserable at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club, couldn’t her family see? Michael compounded her misery by insisting she was a “damned attractive woman” except why didn’t she have her hair cut and styled? wear a little makeup, at least lipstick? smile more? buy some new clothes? Marianne said, “Mom, you’re just as nice-looking, nicer-looking, than any of the women your age at the Club.” When the other Mulvaneys laughed at this innocent slight, Corinne the loudest, Marianne quickly said, blushing, “I mean, Mom, you look just as nice as anybody. You do.”

      The Mulvaneys, a family who loved to laugh, hooted with laughter at such a notion.

      Thinking of such things, smiling and grimacing to herself, Corinne wasn’t prepared for—yet again!—Lydia Bethune appearing suddenly before her. Corinne came to a dead stop on the sidewalk, staring at the woman. What was this? What on earth did Mrs. Bethune the doctor’s wife want with her? So commanding a presence in her russet rabbit-fur, her sleek frosted-blond hair, glowing makeup. She was smiling uneasily at Corinne, knowing how close Corinne was to bolting past her. “Corinne, please?—let me tell you—about your daughter?”

      Corinne stared at Lydia Bethune, blinking. Her luminous blue eyes had gone hard and blank and opaque and she was gripping her packages and tote bag as if fearing the other woman might snatch them from her. “What—what about Marianne?”

      Lydia Bethune swallowed. “Well, I don’t know, exactly,” she said apologetically. “It’s just something Priscilla mentioned and I—I’ve been seeing her, by accident, not in school. I mean, during school hours. I’m wondering—is anything wrong?”

      Corinne asked evenly, “Where have you been seeing Marianne?”

      “In St. Ann’s Church. You know—on Bayberry. Yesterday afternoon, when I dropped by. And I think today—I mean, I happened to see her go in, this morning around eleven.” Lydia tried to smile at Corinne, one mother of an adolescent girl to another, but the pink-glossy smile disintegrated like wet tissue. The women regarded each other with raw, perplexed eyes.

      Corinne bit her lip, and said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, “Well. Thanks, Lydia. I do appreciate it.”

      Driving to St. Anne’s Corinne thought, calmly So this is how it will be revealed to me: by a stranger.