Pleistocene. Mile-high mountains of ice grinding down everything in their paths.
You could see Patrick was hurt, obviously it showed in his face. If Marianne had noticed.
Gunning the motor as he turned up the rutty-snowy drive, racing the station wagon in the home stretch to announce Here we are! And parking noisily in front of the antique barn inside which Corinne was working. Marianne might have begun to say, “Thank you, Patrick—” but she spoke too softly, already he was out of the vehicle, in one of his quick-incandescent and wordless furies, and there came Silky exploding comically out of the rear of the vehicle too, to dash about in the snow, urinating in dribbles, shaking his ears as if he’d been confined for days. Marianne was carrying her garment bag in the direction of the back door and somehow the plastic handle slipped from her fingers and Patrick hesitated before helping her to retrieve it and Marianne said quickly, her voice quavering, fear in her eyes that were a damp blurred blue Patrick would afterward recall, “No!—it’s fine, I have it.” Marianne smiled at him, unconvincingly. Her tall impatient brother loose-limbed and nerved-up as one of the young horses. “Suit yourself,” Patrick said. He shrugged as if, another time, he’d been subtly but unmistakably rebuffed, turned to slam into the house, upstairs to his room, his books.
It’s fine, I have it. It’s fine.
Many things were coded at High Point Farm. Like our names which could be confusing for they depended upon mood, circumstance, subtext.
For instance, Michael Sr. was usually Dad but sometimes Curly and sometimes Captain. He could be Grouchy (of the Seven Dwarves), or Groucho (of Groucho Marx fame), he could be Big Bear, Chickie, Sugarcake—these names used exclusively by Mom. My oldest brother was usually just Mike but sometimes Mike Jr. or Mikey-Junior; sometimes Big Guy, Mule, Number Four (his football jersey number for the three years he excelled as a fullback at Mt. Ephraim High). Patrick was frequently P.J. (for Patrick Joseph) or Pinch. Marianne was frequently Button or Chickadee. My names, as I’ve said, were many, though predominantly Baby, Dimple, Ranger.
Mom was Mom except for special names which only Dad could call her (Darling, Honeylove, Sweetheart, Sugarcake). Occasionally Mom could be called Whistle—but only within the family, never in the presence of outsiders.
It was a matter of exquisite calibration, tact. Which code name at which time. Especially in Mom’s case, for there were times when being called Whistle seemed to vex her and other times when it was exactly what she wanted to hear—she would laugh, and blush, and roll her eyes as if her innermost soul had been exposed.
Why Whistle? Because Mom had a habit of whistling when she believed herself alone, and to those of us who overheard, her whistling was a happy contagious sound. In the kitchen, in the antique barn; tending the animals; in her garden through the long summer and into the fall. Mom’s whistling was loud and assured as any man’s but with a shift of mood it could turn liquid and lovely as a flute. You’d listen, fascinated. You’d think Mom was speaking to you, without exactly knowing it, herself. Locking stanchions around the thick neck of a cow, scrubbing a horse’s mud- and manure-splattered coat, fending off enraged fowl who’d hoped to hide their eggs in the hay barn, especially in the early morning when she and our canary Feathers were the only ones up—there was Mom, whistling. “Faith of Our Fathers”—“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”—“Tell Me Why the Stars Do Shine”—but also “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” (a year-round favorite, to Dad’s exasperation)—“I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”—“I’ll Be Seeing You”—“Heartbreak Hotel”—“Hound Dog”—“Blue Suede Shoes” (though Mom claimed to disapprove of Elvis as a poor moral example for the young). When she was in the house, Mom was likely to be whistling with Feathers, who, like most male canaries, responded excitedly when he heard whistling in or near his territory. Whistling was a quick expedient way of communicating with the livestock, of course: the horses whinnied alertly in reply, pricking their ears and flicking their tails as if to say Yes? Time to eat? Cows, goats, even sheep blinked to attention. Two deft fingers to her mouth, a shrill penetrating whistle, and Mom could bring dogs, cats, barnyard fowl and whatever else was in the vicinity to converge upon her where she stood, usually beneath one of the carports in an area designated for outdoor feeding, laughing and bountiful as the Goose Lady in our well-worn old copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Dad whistled, too. Hummed happily under his breath. But none of his names alluded to his musical ability or lack of ability.
Coded too were the ways in which we sometimes spoke to each other through animals. This was a means of communication that predated my birth, of course. I remember as a very young child crawling energetically on a carpet, and Dad and Mom praising me to one of the dogs—“Foxy, look! Baby is as fast as you.”
Such a way of addressing one another 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