"Am I-sure?"

"He didn't take advantage of you yesterday, did he? You were alone together all those hours...

"Advantage? Hewie?" Marianne was upset, incensed. 'Hewie is as good and deceqt a man, Abelove, as you."

She'd opened the door, desperate to escape before Abelove persuaded her to stay. He was saying, in a lowered voice, so that rio one could overhear, a voice that was an echo of Marianne's own most secret yearning, "Will you come back, Marianne, as soon as you can? We'll go somewhere away from here to talk-we have so much to talk about! Marianne? I love you."

Headlong in flight, Marianne was already out of earshot. Or almost.

Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can return.

RAG-QUILT LIFE.

Who could have foreseen? Not Marianne Mulvaney herself. How, on the day following her attempted return to the Chautauqua Valley, the very day of Abelove's declaration of love for her, what Corinne had already shrewdly identified as her rag-quilt life would seriously begin.

No one at the Green Isle Co-op would have guessed why, nor would Abelove volunteer or offer any explanation. Stricken, humiliated, bewildered as he'd been when Birk had vanished, he'd gone to look for Marianne in the late afternoon-finding only Felice-Marie in their room, baffled as well. Where is Marianne? Abelove asked, trying to keep his voice level, and Felice-Marie shook her head numbly. She didn't know! She hadn't seen Marianne all day!

It was obvious that Marianne had packed most of her belongings, leaving behind only larger, unwieldy items (overcoat, boots, a scattering of hardcover textbooks); she'd taken her quilt, most of her paperback books, and her few clothes, apparently stuffed in a duffel b-ag. And, of course, she'd taken m.u.f.fin.

Where had they gone, without anyone observing?

Where had they gone, leaving no explanation or note of farewell?

"Vanished off the face of Earth"-Abelove's words had a grimly prophetic tone.

HARD RECKONING.

This is a hard reckoning for a son to make. I'm not sure how to begin.

How Judd, too, went away-left my mom when she needed me. Thinking I want my own life. I'm not just Mulvaney, I'm Judd.

How I struck my dad, and was struck by him. Struck down, on my a.s.s on the ground is frankly how you'd put it.

This was in Ma.r.s.ena, in the new place we came to live. That long wet spring 1980. I was seventeen, just transferred to the Ma.r.s.ena High School for the remainder of my junior year. New kid with no friends, and wanting none. Slouch-shouldered, scowling, a habit of shaking my head like a horse hara.s.sed by flies. If I smiled, which wasn't often, it was a quick come-and-gone twitch of the lips. Mom joked, sighing, "Judd, hon, you're becoming-well, some kind of uptight tic."

Looking at me, the youngest of the Mulvaneys, all that remained of her children at home, as if looking into a mirror.

When I say this is a hard reckoning I mean it's been like squeezing thick drops of blood from my veins. Just to set down what requires saying in some semblance of chronological order. For every statement of histonc fact like High Point Farm was Jinally sold, February 1980 or The remaining Mulvaneys, Michael, Corinne, Judd, two aging dogs and three newous cats, moved to a "split-level ranch" in a cornfield outside Marcena, New York or However many loan.c my father took out to relocate Mulvaney Roofing in Ma.r.s.ena, he was forced to declare bankruptcy anyway by June strikes my ear like a lie, reverberating like tin. What actually happened was so much more complicated.

"A man gets to be the sum of his bad luck"-Dad was in the habit of saying, smiling bemused as he'd open another can of ale or, carefully so his hand wouldn't shake, pour something stronger and darker into a gla.s.s.

Trying to sell High Point Farm when real estate in the Chautauqua Valley was what the realtors called a buyer's market, and mortgage interest rates were high-that was bad luck. And Dad with debts to pay. Taking out loans, loans to repay loans, not always telling Mom what he was doing exactly, and maybe not always knowing hiniself- trying to negotiate a partnership with a roofer-sider in Yewville that finally fell through, and another with a businessman in Ma.r.s.ena that dragged on for weeks and finally fell through, too-bad luck. "It's like somebody, or something, is fixing the dice against me," Dad said, with his shrugging smile meant to indicate he wasn't much surprised, only just a little curious. He'd always been, in the old days, a man of good luck.

It was like the tragical-farcical Delta rescue mission in Iran, President Jimmy Carter's desperate jinxed attempt to free our hostages from their imprisonment in the center of Tehran under the directive of the Ayatollah Khomeini-in theory, the American military strategy might have worked, but in reality things went wrong. Badly wrong.

Mom watched TV nonstop when the terrible news broke on April 25, 1980. Our TV in a corner of the new, unfamiliar living room, reception wavering and ghostly. She wept for the eight young American servicemen who'd died in the helicopter cr-ashes-men "chosen from all four branches of the armed services" as the Joint Cbith of Staff so meticulously stated, and she wept for ashen-faced, badly shaken Jimmy Carter who was more and more looking like an ordinary man, a decent good Christian-Caucasian-American man as out of his depth in the riptide of history as a person not knowing how to swim in a deep, rough sea. What was this but American bad luck- smashed and burrnng helicopters, rubble where triumph might have been, an officially "aborted" mission arid a rapid clumsy retreat to Egypt. Naked, exposed in the eyes of the entire world: what shame.

Mom said, wiping her eyes, "Oh, at least Mike wasn't one of them! Oh, thank you, G.o.d, at least for that."

Just to make the statement High Point Farm was sold-finally! doesn't give any true sense of that disjointed time in our lives that dragged on, and on, and on. There must have been thirty or forty "prospectives" who drove out to gawk at the property, in the company of a real estate agent; even more made appointments and were "no-shows." Some of the people who tramped through our house were locals with no intention to buy. You couldn't screen them out very well, the real estate agent explained to Mom. It's an open market, you've listed your house, in theory anyone can buy.

Like selling your soul. Once you make the decision, sign the contract, you can't back out.

Seffing High Point Farm fell to Morn mainly. She was always on the telephone, or in a frenzy of housecleaning; wildly brushing at her hair, slipping on a sweater or jacket to cover her stained shirt. She had to play "Mrs. Mulvaney"-"the lady of the house"-when at last the awaited car or cars drove haltingly up the driveway. She had to be polite, smiling, hopeful and never, never betray the misery she felt. Never scream into these strangers' faces, "Go home! Go away- This is madness! Leave us alone!"

No, Corinne Mulvaney was a good sport about her own bad luck. Michael Mulvaney Sr. was busy elsewhere. Not of a temperament to permit strangers to prowl through his property staring and a.s.sessing, shaking their heads at "needed repairs." To Dad, the potential buyers of the farm were "bloodsuckers" or "just plain suckers" depending on his mood.

As for me, Judd-I tried to stay out of everyone's way. If I was doing barn ch.o.r.es when the real estate agent showed up with whoever, I'd hide until they were gone; hardly breathing, my forehead pressed against a bale of hay. Sometimes I'd overhear s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversations not meant for my ears-Oh this is a run-down place isn't it, hut so attractive, but how much would it Cost to, but what a lot of work, oh but why would anyone in his right mind, yes but it's so beautiful out here, yes but it's so far out here, is it true the farm might be sold at auction, for bankruptcy? should we wait, until then?

A knife blade turned in my heart. I will never, never forgive you, I thought. Not knowing who you was.

Over the many months the farm was for sale, the list price was frequently "readjusted"-downward. I'd overhear Morn on the phone, her hurt, faltering voice, "Oh, but I can't take that offer to my husband, I'm sony I just can't. That offer is an insult-don't you know that offer is an insult?"

And, once, suddenly furious: "All right, then! I warned you! We will list High Point Farm with another realtor starting this minute! Please do not attempt to contact us again!" Slamming the receiver down so I felt the thrill of it along my spine.

Yayyyy Mom!

Eventually, though, in February 1980, after we'd about given up hope, a potential buyer made an offer that Morn dared bring to Dad. Only two thousand dollars below the list price. Dad shrugged and said, "Sure. How Soon?"

So, High Point Farm was sold.

So, in March 1980 strangers came to live in the house in which Muivaneys had lived since 1955. Supplanting Mulvaneys as if we'd never been. Hillside Estates people, a family of four plus a nervous little dachshund. Showy silver-gray BMW and canary-yellow Toyota Station wagon. The adults were youngish middle-aged, the children, boy and girl, were ten and twelve. The father was a cardiologist at the new Chautauqua Medical Center, he claimed never to have heard of Dr. Oakley, now retired. It had long been his dream, he told Mom, to breed Black Angus cattle on a "dream-farm" like High Point. Both the children were "crazy for horses"-the girl had already begun riding lessons. The mother proudly described herself as a full-time housewife-mother and something of a perfectionist "bordering on the neurotic." She wore designerjeans, cashmere pullovers in bright, soft colors. She was almost beautiful in a way Corinne Mulvaney had never been. Deftly this woman met Mom's nervous chatter with shrewd questions about soil drainage, house maintenance, which "interesting" pieces of furniture, clocks, carpets, quilts, decorative objects Mom wanted to sell. Where Mom tried to quickconnect by searching out mutual friends or acquaintances, in the hopeful female way, this woman shook her head as if she'd never heard these names, smiled hard and directed the subject back to the purely practical. Can't we befriends? Surely we're meant to befriends -f you're buying this farm I love? Mom pleaded in the face of one who held firm, having no sentiment to spare for strangers. Especially luckless strangers about whom the terrible word bankruptcy was being whispered.

Mom was rebuffed, hurt, chagrined. But after a while, being Mom, philosophical and even approving-"I understand her, of course! She's afraid I might turn out to be the kind of person who'd want to come back and visit, try to be friends. Some kind of crazy thing like that. I don't blame her at all!"

After so many months of delay and frustration, the sale was disconcertingly swift, the closing within fifteen days: the cardiologist and his perfectionist wife didn't require a mortgage but bought the property outright. And this, before they'd even sold their own house and five-acre lot in Hillside Estates. The day we moved into our new home in Ma.r.s.ena, Mom said, smiling, "There! Thank G.o.d that's behind us." She made a dismissive gesture in the vague direction of whatever it was we'd left.

The new house was only temporary of course. A tacky "split-level ranch" with glary-white aluminum siding like corrugated metal, "simulated redwood" trim, "picture window," carport on a two-third acre lot. The cement block bas.e.m.e.nt showed peculiarly like bared gums in a giant mouth, only a few scrawny bushes grew around the house and there could not have been more than five spindly trees on the entire property. We were just outside the Ma.r.s.ena town limits, on a country highway where trucks traveled at sixty miles an hour, sometimes more, rattling eveiything not cemented in place, though the speed limit was fifty, and, inside the town limits, thirty-five. There were snuall doomed farms in the vicinity, several with FOR SALE signs out front. There was a large, busy Kmart a half mile away, there was a prosperous-looking Ford dealership, there was a mini-shopping center with 7-Eleven store, Exxon station, car wash. Ma.r.s.ena was a town of 3,400 people and where we'd live pernunently Dad said but the house itself was temporary. He'd been in a hurry, pressed for time, had to make a quick decision on his own. A small down payment and a deal in which he took over the previous owner's mortgage without the intervention of lawyers. Just to find his family an interim house until, with the money realized from selling High Point Farm, he could reestablish Mulvaney Roofing and they could look around for a more suitable house. Maybe build?

Mom in her open-eyed daze, smiling at every surface in the new house, every remark put to her, murmured, "Oh, yes, Michael. That's always been our dream anyway-to build our own house."

High Point Antiques hadn't been abandoned exactly. Like Mulvariey Roofing, it was to be relocated in Ma.r.s.ena.

Except Mom hadn't much s.p.a.ce for her precious things in the "split-level ranch" which was primarily a single floor sprawled out in a formula rectangle, living room/dining room/kitchen/"rec rooni"/three bedrooms at the rear of which two were small, meant for children. There was a toolshed beyond the carport only large enough to hold Dad's Toro lawn mower, the tractor, gardening tools, etc., and there was bas.e.m.e.nt s.p.a.ce inm-ediately crammed with furniture that couldn't be fitted in upstairs and movers' crates, boxes, barrels that weren't unpacked, and would not be unpacked for a long time. There was an attic no larger than our comcrib at High Point Farm and this too was crammed solid. All the rooms of the new house were full to bursting with familiar things made strange and disturbing by their crowdedness and juxtaposition in this new setting, like an unwieldy nightmare into which an entire life has been shuffled out of impersonal malicious glee. "It's like the inside of a skull," Mom marveled, with her fluttery laugh. "We just have to deal with it one day, one hour at a time. We just have to keep calm and retain our sense of humor. We should think of it as camping out, sort of-not real. Just temporary. Oh, but that bas.e.m.e.nt-I'm afraid even to peek." She shuddered, and laughed.

Mom did peek, though. And more. While Dad was out on business, and I was at school, she'd run back and forth, upstairs and down, checking to see if some beloved item (lamp, watercolor, pendulum clock, quilt, wine-colored crystal goblets, etc.) had been packed and brought along, a dog or two whimpering or yapping at her heels. (We had only Foxy and Little Boots, and of the cats only s...o...b..ll, Marmalade, and a pure black barn kitten, Sin, Moni had taken pity on and carried away with her to Ma.r.s.ena. The new owners of High Point Farm had been ambiguous about how they would deal with the evershifting population of semiferal barn cats and Mom dreaded the worst-"What if they hire old Zimmerman to come out and shoot them? What if that nasty old man suggests it? I wouldn't put it past him, or them. But I don't want to know about any of it. Thank G.o.d that's behind us.") There was a way she had of running with her eyes slitted almost shut, hair frizzed out gray-laced-with-red like a Hallowe'en wig and there was a way she had of abruptly halting because she'd forgotten where she was going; or, arriving there breathless, bas.e.m.e.nt, attic, toolshed, back bedroom she'd swear she'd never seen before, and the view from the window of an empty weedy backyard ending at a ditch-she'd have forgotten why. She drew up lists of purchases to make in town (one of these, a replacement for poor Feathers who'd died just before the move) but lost the lists and had to draw them up again and this list too she'd mislay, or find crumpled with others in her pocket, handwriting unintelligible. Make new friends (women!) it looked like she'd scribbled on a sc.r.a.p of paper. Seek Out new church (local!). Naturally it fell to Mom to make arrangements with the telephone conipany for new phones, the gas and electric company, the oil delivery company, the Ma.r.s.ena public school district, the Ma.r.s.ena post office. The First Batik of Ma.r.s.ena-checking account, savings account. "Home owner's protection" for the new Mulvaney property at 193 Post Road, Ma.r.s.ena, New York. She rushed out intending to drive into town but found herself headed into the open country where, taking a wrong turn, she'd get lost for a half hour; or, on her way to the discount stores south of town, she'd find herself cruising the two-block Ma.r.s.ena downtown looking for a fiumiliar storefront-some store she'd been shopping in for the past twenty years, in Mt. Ephraim. In the midst of so much confusion, why not take the animals for their much-procrastinated rabies and distemper shots? And little Sin, rapidly maturing, why not have her "fixed"? It would only save grief later. So single-handed, not even waiting for Judd to get back from school to help, Judd who was always Mom's a.s.sistant on these tumultuous outings, Mom hauled Foxy, Little Boots, s...o...b..ll, Marmalade, and Sin to a new vet six miles away-an adventure that would afterward require the thorough cleaning of the interior of the befouled station wagon, disinfectant and three Airwicks! Well, we all had quite a time today Mom would chuckle hoping to entertain her husband and her son when, and if the three of them sat down together for dinner at the same time that evening. Look at my war wounds!-holding Out her arms to show the scratches.

The looks on their faces!

There were those times when the telephone rang, and she could not locate a phone amid the clutter. She rushed, she stumbled-for what if it was Michael Sr., her beloved husband of whom she thought, worried obsessively as the mother of an infant if physically parted from the infant thinks and worries obsessively of the infant even when her mind appears to be fully engaged, if not obsessed, with other matters. Or what if it was news of him? During these mad dashes to the wall phone in the kitchen she hadn't time to faIl but with fantastical grace and dexterity wrenched herself upright in midfall and continued running (dogs whimpering, yapping hysterically in her wake, cats scattering wide-eyed and plume-tailed) before the telephone ceased its querulous ringing-though frequently she was greeted with nothing more than a derisive dial tone, in any case. "Yes? h.e.l.lo? Who is it? This Is-" wonderrng for a blank moment what her name was before hanging up sadly, like a schoolgirl pa.s.sed over by thends.

This is Corinne Mulvaney, please don't forget me.

In the weeks following the move from High Point Farm, a dozen times a day Mom had to restrain herself from calling the new woman of the house there. Oh, that woman! That-exploiter! Shrewdly see- ing how trapped Corinne Mulvaney was, with her inventory of High Point Antiques and so much more furniture and belongings than she could ever fit into a "split-level ranch"-knowing how vulnerable Cormne was and how little time she had to sell her things elsewhere, this woman offered to "help out" as if buying an 1840 Cast-iron Gothic Revival settee for $150 or a Colt Willow Ware bed for $200 or the exquisite little German ceramic clock in Marianne's old room for $60 was "helping out"! Oh, how she hated-but no, of course Corinne didn't hate. She was a Christian women to her finger- and toe-tips, to the deepest depths of her soul, she'd managed not to hate even those vicious enemies of Michael Mulvaney's, his former friends at the Mt. Ephraim Country Club who'd almost succeeded in putting him in prison. She'd managed not to hate even the Lundts, Morton and Cynthia Lundt who'd once been her friend who'd not only denied the brutal act their rapist son Zachary had perpetrated upon her daughter but had defended the son and vilified her daughter- even these people Corinne Mulvaney had managed not to hate.

These past few months, Corimme seemed to have lost contact with Marianne. She had an address for Marianne in Erie, Pennsylvania- unless, in the confusion of the move, she'd misplaced it. She had no telephone nunuber. She knew of course that Marianne was no longer a student at Kilburn State and no longer a resident of the Green Island Co-op, or whatever it was called. Probably Marianne had transferred to another college? Was there a college in Erie, Pennsylvania? She'd ask Judd to look it up in the local library. Kilburn State was not a highly regarded college even within the New York State system and the Co-op-----that character "Abelove" with his moist staring eyes and shimmering Christ-locks simply wasn't trustworthy. So it was just as we]l that Marianne had left. Corinne wasn't worried, much-hadn't time to worry about her scattered grown-up children any more than a mother cat about her scattered grown-up kittens telling herself It's nature's way for them to scatter, to leave the nest as Patrick had once said lecturing his family at inealtimes it's the strategy by which nature a.s.sures that mammals won't interbreed with their siblings and weaken their genes-expulsion from the Garden of Eden, with a purpose so she wasn't truly worried about Mariam-me, or Patrick either, both would contact her soon enough, she had no doubt.

Rag-quilt lives, both of them!-not what you'd have expected.