You would think that Time "stands still." But you'd be wrong.

Always, Marianne had loved the clocks at High Point Farm. She'd thought that all households were like theirs. So many clocks ticking their separate times. Striking the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour whenever they wished. Friends who came to visit asked, "How do you know what the real time is?" and Marianne said, laughing, "Oh, the real time is in the kitchen: Dad's electric clock." She would lead her friends into the big country kitchen where, above the fireplace, was a moonfaced General Electric clock in the design of a sunburst, with fat black hands and bulgy black numerals and a maddening little hum like something grinding its teeth. The clock had been a gift to Dad on the occasion of his forty-fifth birthday from his poker-playing circle. The men of the circle were local businessmen and merchants and their dominant att.i.tude toward one another was one of goodnatured bantering. Since Michael Mulvaney Sr. was notorious for being late for many occasions, including even his poker nights which meant so much to him, there was significance in the gift clock.

In any case, here was High Point Farm's "real" time.

Except, of course, as Mom liked to point out, when the elecrncity went out.

Up in Marianne's room were several more of Mom's clocks, of which only one "kept time" and that fitfully: a small cream-colored ceramic mantel clock with garlands of tiny painted rosebuds, golden pendulum and delicate hands, a chime like the sweetest of birdcalls. It was turn-of-the--century and a genuine antique, Mom insisted. But its time couldn't be trusted, of course. So Marianne kept a windup alarm clock with a plastic face, luminous green hands and numerals that glowed in the dark. Five nights a week Marianne set the alarm for 6 AM, though it had been years since she'd needed an alarm to actually wake her. Even in the pitch-dark of winter.

She took up the clock suddenly, wanting to bury it under her pillow to smother its snug tick-tick-ticking- But of course she didn't. For what would that solve?

And there was her watch, her beautiful watch, a white-gold battery-run Seiko with tiny blue numerals; a gift from Mom and Dad for Marianne's sixteenth birthday. She'd taken it off immediately when she'd come home. She hadn't examined it too closely, knowing, or guessing, that the crystal was cracked.

How many times compulsively she'd run her thumb over the crystal feeling the hairline crack. But she hadn't actually examined it. And if the minute ticking had ceased, she didn't want to know.

She was not a girl accustomed to thinking, calculating, plotting. The concept of plotting an action that might be broken down into discrete, cautious steps, which Patrick would have found challenging, was confining to Mananne. A kind of static intervened. But this was so: Mt. Ephraim was such a small town, if she took the watch to Birchett's Jewelers where it had been purchased, Mr. Birchett might mention the flhct to her mother or father if he happened to run into them. He would mention it casually, conversationally. And if she ceased wearing it, Dad who was sharp-eyed would notice. There were other watch repairmen in the area, at the Eastgate for instance, but how would she get there? Marianne felt fatigued, thinking of the problem. Maybe it was wisest to continue wearing the watch as if nothing were wrong, for unless she examined it closely nothing was wrong.

Patrick would guess, unless Patrick had already guessed. He frightened her with his talent for seeing what wasn't there to be seen. His mind worked like a calculator: a quicksilver adding of digits, an immediate answer. He had not asked her much about the previous night because he knew. In disgust of her he held himself stiff against the knowledge. Not a word about Austin Weidman. Why isn't your "date" driving you home? Under normal circ.u.mstances her brother would have teased her but these were not normal circ.u.mstances.

Cutting his eyes at her, outside when she'd dropped the garment bag in the snow. And she'd murmured quickly, shamefully, it's fine, I have it, it's fine. And he'd walked away, not another word.

You know you want to, Marianne-why'd you come with me -f you don't?

I'm not gonna hurt you for Christ's sake. Come on!

n.o.body plays games with me.

And this was a strangeness she'd recall: how when she entered her room which was exactly as she'd left it the day before, yet irrevocably changed, she'd known what a long time she'd been away, and such a distance. As if she'd left, and could not now return. Even as, numbly, she stepped inside, shut the door.

"m.u.f.fin! h.e.l.lo."

Her favorite cat of all, m.u.f.fin, fattish, very white with variegated spots, lay dozing in a hollow of a pillow on her bed, stirring now to blink at her, and stare.

Away so long, and such a distance.

She unzipped the garment bag and removed her toiletry kit, her badly stained satiny cream-colored pumps, wadded articles of underwear and the ripped pale-beige stockings, placed everything except the toiletry kit in the bottom of her wastebasket without examining. (The wastebasket was made of white-painted wicker, lined with a plastic bag for easy disposal; Marianne would be emptying it into the trash can herself in a few days, as usual. No one in the family would have occasion to see what she was throwing Out, still less wonder why.)

She didn't remove the crumpled satin-and-chiffon dress from the garment bag. Didn't glance at it, or touch it. Quickly zipped the bag up again and hung it in the farthest corner of her Closet, beneath the sharp-tilting eaves. Then rearranged her clothes on hangers, not to hide the garment bag exactly but simply so that it wouldn't be seen, first thing she opened the closet door.

Out of sight, out ofmind!-one of Corinne's cheerful sayings. Not a syllable of irony in it, for irony was not Connne's nature.

In the closet, three white cotton cheerleader's blouses on wire hangers. Long ftiIl sleeves, double-b.u.t.ton cuffs. If you were a cheer- eader at Mt. Ephraim High, generally acknowledged the most coveted of all honors available to girls, you were required to buy your own blouses and maroon wool jumper and to maintain these articles of clothing in spotless condition. The jumper was dry-cleaned of course but Marianne hand-laundered the blouses herself, starched and ironed them lovingly. Inhaling the good, familiar, comforting smell of white.

Which she stooped now to inhale, closing her eyes.

Love you in that cheerleader's costume. Last Friday. You didn't see me I guess. But I was there.

Corinne was so amusing! Like a mom on TV. She'd tell stories on herself- to the family, or relatives, or friends, or people she hardly knew but had just met, how she'd have loved to be a housewife, a normal American housewife, crazy about her kids, in her heart she loved housewifely ch.o.r.es like ironing, "calming and steadying on the nerves-isn't it?" yet in the midst of ironing she'd get distracted by a telephone call, or a dog or cat wanting attention, or one of the kids, or something going on outside, she'd drift off from the ironing board only to be rudely recalled by the terrible smell of scorch. "It's my daughter who's the real homemaker: b.u.t.ton loves to iron."

That wasn't exactly true, though almost. She'd taken pride as a young girl often or eleven, ironing Dad's handkerchiefs at first, and then his sports shirts, which didn't require too much skill, and finally his white cotton shirts, which did. And her own white cotton blouses of course. Like sewing, ironing can be a meditation: a time of inwardness, thoughtfulness, prayer.

Not that she'd tell her girlfriends this, they'd laugh at her. Tenderly, affectionately-Oh, b.u.t.ton! Even Trisha, who was such a good girl herself.

He'd said there was no one in Mt. Ephraim to talk with, about serious things. Except her.

Whether G.o.d exists? Whether G.o.d gives a d.a.m.n about us, -f we live or die?

She couldn't remember when he'd said this, asked this. If it was before leaving the party at the Krausses', or after, at the Paxtons'. Before or after the "orange-juice" c.o.c.ktails. The tart stinging delicious taste coating the inside of her mouth.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the n-ht, y'know?-and I'm so scared, almost I want to yell something weird, crazy-11/hy'd you screw me up so, G.o.d? 14/hat's the point?

His earnest moist heavy-lidded eyes. Some girls thought them beautiful eyes but Marianne shied from looking at them, into them, too obviously. There was his quickened breath, the sweet-liquor smell. The heat of his skin that was rather pallid, sallow. A shrill girlish giggle escaped her, didn't sound like her but like an anonymous faceless girl somewhere in the night, between houses, in a boy's car or staggering drunkenly between cars in high-heeled pumps and unb.u.t.toned coat in blurred swaying rays of headlights.

Oh Zachary u'hat a way to speak to G.o.d!

She shut the closet door, hard.

The cat was pushing himself against her ankles in an ecstasy of yearning. He seemed to sense, or even to know. How long she'd been away, and how far. How hazardous, her return. Temporary.

She knelt, hugging him. Such a big, husky cat! A sibling of Big Tom, yet heavier, softer. Head round as a cabbage. Long white whiskers radiated outward from his muzzle stiff as the bristles of a brush, and quivering. His purr was guttural, crackling like static electricity. As a kitten he'd slept on Marianne's lap while she did her homework at her desk, or lay across her bed talking on the phone, or read, or, downstairs, watched TV. He'd followed her everywhere, calling her with his faint, anxious mew?-trotting behind her like a puppy.

Marianne petted him, and scratched his ears, and stared into his eyes. Loving unjudging eyes they were. Unknowing. Those curious almost eerie black slats of pupil.

"m.u.f.fin, I'm fine! Go back to sleep."

She went to use the bathroom, she'd been using the bathroom every half hour or so, her bladder pinching and burning. Yet there was the numbness like a cloud. She locked the door, used the toilet, the old stained bowl, aged ceramic-white, the plumbing at High Point Farm needed "remodernization" as Corinne called it, the bathrooms especially. But Dad had laid down some handsome vinyl tile of the simulated texture of brick, a rich red-brown, and the sink cabinet was reasonably new, muted yellow with "bra.s.s" from Sears. And on the walls, as in most of the rooms at High Point Farm, framed photos of family-on horseback, on bicycles, with dogs, cats, friends and relatives, husky Mikey-Junior clowning for the camera in his high school graduation gown twirling his cap on a forefinger, skinny Patrick, a ninth grader at the time, diving from the high board at Wolf s Head Lake, arrested at the apogee of what looked to have been a backward somersault, maybe a double somersault. b.u.t.ton was here, b.u.t.ton smiling for the camera that loved her, how many times b.u.t.ton smiled for the camera that loved her, but Marianne, wincing as she drew down her jeans, her panties, and lowered her numbed body to the toilet seat, did not search her out.

As sometimes, not frequently but sometimes, she'd whimper aloud with the strain of a painful bowel movement, a sudden flash of sensation almost too raw to be borne, now the sound forced itself from her, through her clenched teeth-"Oh G.o.d- Oh Jesusl" She seemed fearful of releasing her weight entirely; her legs quivered. The pain was sharp and swift as the blade of an upright knife thrust into her.

You're not hurt, you wanted it. Stop crying.

Don't play games with me, O.K.?

I'm not the kind of guy you're gonna play games with.

At first when she tried to urinate, she couldn't. She tried again, and finally a trickle was released, thin but scalding, smarting between her legs. She dared not glance down at herself out of fear of seeing something she would not wish to see. Already seen, in vague blurred glimpses, at the LaPortes', in the hot rushing water of a tub.

The pain was subsiding, numbness returning like a cloud.

Flushing the toilet, she saw thin wormlike trails of blood.

That was all it was, then!--her period.

Of course, her period.

That was how Mom first spoke of it, warm and maternal and determined not to be embarra.s.sed: your period.

It was all routine, and she was one who responded well to routine. Like most of the Mulvaneys, and the dogs, cats, horses, livestock. What you've done once you can do again, more than once for sure you can do again, again. No need to think about it, much.