We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

know certain things. Like an explorer to Antarctica, or to the moon—once you stepped foot in such a place, you’d never doubt it existed. Like giving birth— that , just once, you’d never doubt. “If you’ve done it, you know; if not, you don’t.” Mom would smile beatifically, and fix her glowing blue gaze on us one by one until we’d begin to squirm. Even Dad.
    For that was Mom’s trump card: she was the mother, and so possessed a mysterious and unquestioned authority. Dad was the boss, but Mom was the power. Mom in her manure-stained bib overalls, or, in warm weather, her MT. EPHRAIM HIGH T-shirt and khaki shorts, an old hand-knit sweater of Dad’s pushed up past her elbows, her boots she called combat boots, or hippie-style leather sandals worn with cotton socks. Mom with her frizzed hair that shone a luminous carroty color in the sun. Mom’s smile that could turn sweet and teasing, or pucker into her “vinegar” look; her loud neighing laugh that made people want to join in, just hearing it. Here I am, a funny-silly woman, an ordinary woman, a TV mom, but God has touched my life nonetheless.
    Mike Jr. (who was the most like Dad) might tease, daringly, “Hey Mom: what about Doughnut?”—one of the barn cats—“she’s had thirty kittens, what kind of authority does that make her ?”
    And Mom would retort, quick as, at Ping-Pong, she was capable of returning a killer serve, “It makes her an authority on kittens. ”
    And we’d all laugh, including Mom. Yet the fact she was our mother remained.
    Of us kids it was always Patrick who was most skeptical about the blizzard-fireflies story. (Maybe because Patrick, the smartest of us, wanted so badly to believe?) There was a way he had of leaning his elbows on the table (the kitchen table: where we’d likely be) and shoving out his lower lip, his warrior-stance in Debate Club at school, and saying, “Oh, Mom! Come on ! Let’s examine this rationally. It could not have been ‘fireflies’ in a blizzard in December. Ple- ease. ”
    And Mom would retort, her cheeks reddening, “What were they, then, Mr. Socrates? I was there, and I saw. I know a firefly when I see one.”
    â€œHow would I know what they were?” Patrick protested. “It might’ve been a hallucination.”
    â€œTwo of us? Momma and me? An identical ‘hallucination’ at the identical moment?”—Mom was incensed, leaning across the table toward Patrick.
    â€œThere’s such a phenomenon as mass hysteria,” Patrick said importantly. “The power of suggestion and wishful thinking. The human mind is—well, real weird.”
    â€œSpeak for your own ‘human mind’! Mine happens to be normal.”
    Mom was laughing, but you could see by the glisten in her eyes she was getting miffed.
    Yet Patrick persisted. Mike might kick his ankle under the table, Marianne might poke him in the ribs and tease “Pinch!”, but Patrick couldn’t stop. There was something wonderful in the hot harried look in his eyes, especially the bad one. “O.K., Mom, but consider: why would God send a blizzard to almost kill you and Grandma, then rescue you by sending ‘fireflies’? Does that make sense?” Patrick’s glasses winked with adolescent urgency. His voice cracked like a radio beset by static. Here was an American teenager who just wanted things to make sense. “And what about the other people who died that day, in the blizzard? Why did God favor you and Grandma over them? What was so special about you?”
    That was Patrick’s trump card, he’d toss down onto the table in gloating triumph.
    By this time Mom had gone dangerously red in the face, that mottled look you sometimes get without being aware of it, working in the barns on a stifling hot day, even if you’ve avoided the sun. Her hands fluttered like hurt