Still, Marianne's hands shook, at the first sighting of menstrual blood she'd feel faint, mildly panicked, recalling her first period, the summer of her thirteenth birthday, how frightened she'd been despite Corinne's kindness, solicitude.

I'm fine. I'll take care of myseif In her bureau drawer a supply of "thin maxi-absorbent sanitary pads" and snug-fitting nylon panties with elastic bands. She realized she'd been feeling cramps for hours. That tight clotted sensation in the pit of the belly she'd try to ignore until she couldn't any longer. And a headache coming on-ringing clanging pain as if pincers were squeezing her temples.

It was all routine. You can deal with routine. Ask to be excused from active gym cla.s.s tomorrow, which was a swim cla.s.s, fifth hour. After school she'd attend cheerleading drill but might not partic.i.p.ate, depending upon the cramps, headache. Always in gym cla.s.s or at cheerleading drill there was someone, sometimes there were several girls, who were excused for the session, explaining with an embarra.s.sed shrug they were having their periods.

Some of the girls with steady boyfriends even hinted at, or informed their boyfriends, they were having their periods-Marianne couldn't imagine such openness, such intimacy. She'd never been that close to any boy, had had countless friends who were boys yet few boyfriends, with all that implied of specialness, possessiveness. Sharing secrets. No, not even her brothers, not even Patrick she adored.

Her cheeks burned at the mere thought. Her body was her own, her private self. Only Corinne might be informed certain things but not even Corinne, not even Mom, not always.

She shook out another two aspirin tablets onto her sweaty palm, and washed them down with water from the bathroom faucet. In the medicine cabinet were many old prescnption containers, some of them years old, Corinne's, Michael Sr.'s, there was one containing codeine pills Dad had started to take after his root ca.n.a.l work of a few months ago then swore off, in disgust-"Nothing worse than being fuzzy-headed."

Well, no. Marianne thought there could be lots worse.

Still, she took only the aspirin. Her problem was only routine and she would cope with it with routine measures.

Marking the date, February 15, on her Purrifect Kittens calendar.

She'd been a tomboy, the one they called Cute-as-a-b.u.t.ton. Climbing out an upstairs window to run on tiptoe across the sloping asphalt roof of the rear porch, waving mischievously at Mule and P.J. below. Her brothers were tanned, bare-chested, Mule on the noisy Toro lawn mower and P.J. raking up debris. Look who's up on the roof! Hey get down, Marianne! Be careful! The looks on their faces!

Roof-climbing was strictly forbidden at the Mulvaneys', for roofs were serious, potentially dangerous places. Dad's life was roofs, as he said. But there was ten-year-old b.u.t.ton in T-shirt and shorts, showing off like her older brothers she adored.

It was a good memory. It came out of nowhere, a child climbing through a window, trembling with excitement and suspense, and it ended in a blaze of summer sunshine. She'd ignored the boys calling to her and stood shading her eyes like an Indian scout, seeing the mountains in the northeast, the wooded hills where strips of sunshine and shadow so rapidly alternated you would think the mountains were something living and restless.

And Mt. Cataract like a beckoning hand, for just b.u.t.ton to see.

Here. Look here. Raise your eyes, look here.

In the warmly lit kitchen rich with the smell of baking bread there stood Corimie leaning against a counter, chatting with a woman friend on the phone. Her blue eyes lifting to Mananne's face, her quick smile. The radio was playing a mournful country-rock song and Feathers, incensed as by a rival male canary, was singing loudly in reb.u.t.tal, but Corinne didn't seem to mind the racket. Seeing Marianne grab her parka from a peg in the hail she cupped her hand over the receiver and asked, surprised, "Sweetie? Where are you going?"

"Out to see Molly-O."

"Molly-O? Now?"

That startled plea in Corinne's voice: Don't we prepare Sunday supper together, super-ca.s.serole? Isn't this one of the things b.u.t.ton and her Mom do?

Outside it was very cold. Twenty degrees colder than that afternoon. And the wind, bringing moisture io her eyes. It was that slatecolored hour neither daylight nor dark. The sky resembled shattered oyster sh.e.l.ls ribboned with flame in the west, but at ground level you could almost see (sometimes Mananne had stared out the window of her bedroom, observing) how shadows lifted from the snowy contours of the land, like living things. Exactly the bluish-purple color of the beautiful slate roof Michael Sr. had installed on the house.

In the long run, Dad said, you get exactly what you pay for.

Quality costs.

Marianne's heart was pumping after her close escape, in the kitchen. There would be no avoiding Mom when they prepared supper. No avoiding any of them, at the table.

Yet how lucky she was, to have a mother like Corinne. All the girls marveled at Mrs. Mulvaney, and at Mr. Mulvaney who was so much fun. Your parents are actually kind of your friends, aren't they? Amazing. Trisha's mother would have poked her way into Mari- anne's room by now asking how was the dance? how was your date? how was the party? or was it more than one party? did you get much sleep last night?-you look like you didn't. Another mother would perhaps have wanted to see Marianne's dress again. That so-special dress. Even the satiny pumps. Just to see, to reminisce. To examine.

One of the rangy barn cats, an orange tiger with a stumpy tail, leapt out of a woodpile to trot beside Marianne as she crossed the snow-swept yard to the horse barn. He made a hopeful mewing sound, pushing against her legs. "Hi there, Freckles!" Marianne said. She stooped to pet the cat's bony head but for some reason, even as he clearly wanted to be petted, he shrank from her, his tail rapidly switching. He'd come close to clawing or biting her. "AU right then, go away," Marianne said.

How good, how clear the cold air. Pure, and scentless. In midwinter, in such cold, the fecund smells of High Point Farm were extinguished.

No games. No games with me.

Just remember!

At the LaPortes' she'd bathed twice. The first time at about 4:30 AM, which she couldn't remember very clearly and the second time at 9:30 A.M. and Trisha had still been asleep in her bed, or pretending to be asleep. The gentle tick-ticking of a bedside clock. Hours of that clock, hours unmoving beneath the covers of a bed not her own, in a house not her own. Toward dawn, a sound of plumbing somewhere in the house, then again silence, and after a long time the first church bells ringing, hollow-sounding chimes Marianne guessed came from St. Ann's the Roman Catholic church on Mercer Avenue. Then Mrs. LaPorte knocking softly at Trisha's bedroom door at about 9 AM, asking, in a lowered voice, "Girls? Anyone interested in going to church with me?" Trisha groaned without stirring from her bed and Marianne lay very still, still as death, and made no reply at all.

Later, Trisha asked Mananne what had happened after the party at the Paxtons', where had Marianne gone, and who'd brought her back, and Marianne saw the worry, the dread in her friend's eyes Don't tell me! Please, no! so she smiled her brightest b.u.t.ton-smile and shook her head as if it was all too complicated, too confused to remember.

And so it was, in fact: Marianne did not remember.

Unless a giddy blur, a girl not herse!f and not anyone she knew, Coughing and choking dribbling vomit hot as acid across her chin, in a torn dress of ream-colored satin and strawberry-colored ch-fj-n, legs running! running! clumsy as snipping shears plied by a child.

Out in Molly-O's stall, at this hour? But why?

This safe, known place. The silence and stillness of the barn, cx- cept for the horses' quizzical snuffling, whinnying.

Marianne wondered if- back in the house, Corinne was consulting with Patrick. Is something wrong with-?

Judd, too, had looked at her-strangely.

He was only thirteen, but-strangely.

Marianne took up a brush and swiftly, rhythmically stroked Molly-O's sides, her coa.r.s.e crackling mane. Then lifted grain and mola.s.ses to the wet, eager mouth. She clucked and crooned to Molly-O who had roused herself from a doze to quiver with pleasure, snort and stamp and twitch her tail, snuffling greedily as she ate -rom Marianne's hand. That shivery, exquisite sensation, feeding a horse from your hand! As a small child Marianne had screamed with delight at the feel of a horse's tongue. She loved the humid snuffling breath, the powerful, unimaginable life coursing through the immense body. A horse is so b-g, a horse is so solid. Always, you respect your horse for her size.

She loved the rich horsey smell that was a smell of earliest childhood when visits to the horse barn were overseen scrupulously by adults and it was forbidden to wander in here alone-oh, forbidden! Brought in here for the first time in Dad's arms, then set down cautiously on the ground strewn with straw and walking, or trying to- the almost unbearable excitement of seeing the horses in their stalls, poking their strangely long heads out, blinking their enornious bulging eyes to look at her. Always she'd loved the sweetish-rancid smell of straw, manure, animal feed and animal heat. That look of recognition in a horse's eyes: I know you, I love you. Feed me!

So easy to make an animal happy. So easy to do the right thing by an animal.

Molly-O was nine years old, and no longer young. She'd had respiratory infections, knee trouble. Like every horse the Mulvaneys had ever owned. ("A horse is the most delicate animal known to man," Dad said, "-but they don't tell you till it's too late and he's yours.") She wasn't a beautiful horse even by Chautauqua Valley standards but she was sweet-tempered and docile; with a narrow chest, legs that appeared foreshortened, k.n.o.bby knees. Her coat was a nch burnishedred with a flaglike patch of white on her nose and four irregular white socks-b.u.t.ton's horse, her twelfth birthday present. There is no love like the love you have for your first horse but that love is so easy to forget, or misplace-it's like love for yourself, the self you outgrow.

Marianne hid her face in Molly-Os mane whispering how sony she was, oh how sorry!-since school had started she'd been neglecting Molly-O, and hadn't ndden her more than a dozen times last summer. Her horse-mania of several years ago had long since subsided.

It had been a mild horse-mania, compared to that of other girls of Marianne's acquaintance who took equestrian cla.s.ses and boarded their expensive Thoroughbreds at a riding academy near Yewville. Flanng up most pa.s.sionately when she'd been between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, then subsiding as other interests competed for her attention; as Marianne Mulvaney's "popularity"-the complex, mesmenzing life of outwardness-became a defining factor of her life. Competing in horse shows wasn't for her, nor for any of the Mulvaneys. (At the height of his interest, at fifteen, Patrick had been a deft, promising rider.) Dad said that the "great happiness" in horses, as in all of High Point Farm, was in keeping it all amateur-"And I mean real amateur."

It was more than enough, Dad said, for a man to be competing in business with other men. Maybe an occasional golf game, squash, tennis, poker-but not seriously, only for friendship's sake, and sport. A man's heart is lacerated enough, being just an ordinary American businessman.

Of course, Dad admired certain friends of his, business a.s.sociates and fellow members of the Mt. Ephraim Country Club who were "horsey" people (the Boswells, the Mercers, the Spohrs), but the thought of his daughter taking equestrian lessons, competing in those ludicrously formal horse shows, was distasteful to him. It was rank exhibitionism; it led to fanaticism, obsession. You don't want animals you love to perform any more than you want people you love to perforni. Also, it was too d.a.m.ned expensive.

The Mulvaneys were in fact "well-to-do." At least, that was their local reputation. (Despite the way Corinne dressed, and her custom of shopping at discount stores.) High Point Farm was spoken of in admiring terms, and Michael Mulvaney Sr. cut a certain swath in the county, drove new cars and dressed in stylish sporty clothes (no discount stores for him); he was generous with charitable donations, and each July Fourth he opened his front pasture to the Chautauqua

County Volunteer Firenien's annual picnic. But in private he fretted over money, the expense of keeping up a farm like High Point, leasing as much land as he could, supporting a family as "spendthrift" as theirs. (Though Michael Sr. was the most spendthrift of all.) From time to time he threatened to sell off a horse or two-or three-now the older children's interest in riding had declined, but of course everyone protested, even Mike Jr., who rarely poked his head into the horse barn any longer. And Morn became practically hysterical. That would be like an execution! That would he like selling one of us!

Well, yes.

In the next stall Patrick's gelding Prince was knocking about, whinnying and snorting for Marianne's attention. And so Clover and Red were stirred to demonstrate, as well. Here we are, too! Hungry! And a gang of six barn cats was gathering around Marianne, mewing and suggestively kneading the ground. Love us! Feed us! All these creatures had been fed twice that day, by Patrick and Judd, but Marianne's appearance threw their routine off kilter, or so they wished it to seem; and Marianne was far too softhearted to disappoint. As a little girl she'd made rules for hersel if she petted or fed one animal in the presence of others, she must pet and feed them all. It was what Jesus would have done had He lived intimately with animals.

What wouldJesus do?-that's what I ask myseif 1 try, and I try, but my good intentions break down when I'm with other people. Like with the guys, you know?-it's like there's the real rue, that being with somebody like you brings out, }'vlarianne, and there's the other me that-well, that's an a.s.sholc, a real jerk. That makes me ashamed.

His eyes lifted shyly to hers. The heavy lids, the narrow bridge of the nose, the lank hair fallen onto his forehead. His skin looked grainy, as in an old photograph. He was stretched on the step below her, his shoulders rounded, so she'd wanted to poke at him as she might have poked at Patrick to urge him to straighten his backbone, lift his shoulders. Music pounded and pulsed through the walls. It was loud enough to influence the beat of your heart, to make you sweat. He'd been drinking but wasn't drunk-was he?-and seemed instead to be speaking frankly, sincerely, as she'd never heard him speak before. Oh hadn't he meant it, any of it? Had it solely been to deceive, to manipulate?