“Mom doesn’t know and I hope never will know that two of her sons were involved in a criminal action of extreme seriousness. I’ll be direct with you: I’ve been an accomplice to two Class-A felonies punishable by lengthy prison terms in New York State and I came close to being an accessory both before and after the fact in an actual case of murder and very possibly I would not be repentant if this murder had been committed. Certainly my brother Patrick, who came close to committing the murder, would not have been repentant. Asked by the judge to speak on his own behalf, at the time of sentencing, Patrick would have looked the man in the eye and said, “Your Honor, I did what I did and I don’t regret it.” Many times in my imagination I’ve heard Patrick say these words. So many times, I almost think, in that twilight state of consciousness between sleep and wakefulness, which involves a subtle, shifting, mysterious personality few of us have explored, that in fact Patrick was arrested, tried, and convicted for murder, kidnapping, auto theft—whatever the numerous charges would have been—and had stood before a judge and spoke in just this way. Then I force myself awake, and relief floods through me like sunshine! It didn’t happen, not in that way.”
Judd’s self-disclosure vis-à-vis their participation in a crime hints at consequence of unconscious reminiscences. Judd’s imaginings gather that he has not censored his recollections concerning the delinquency that he and his brother almost executed. Clearly, Judd and Patrick had contrived to partake the criminality without their mother’s acquaintance because she would not have permitted them to go on considering that it would predisposed them to incarceration or other retributions. Although, the concession portrays Judd and Patrick undesirably, it informs the reader that the Mulvaneys are not faultless folks; they adopt integral human faults that are incarnated in their bid for lawbreaking.
“A long time ago when they were young married lovers with only the one baby, Mikey-Junior they’d adored, Corinne and Michael made a pact. If they had more babies—which they dearly wanted—they must vow never to favor one over the others; never to love one of their children the most, or another the least. Michael said, reasonably, “We’ve got more than enough love for all of them, whoever they are. Right?”
The parenting methodology subsidized by “Corinne and Michael” ratifies impartiality in the dissemination affection. This mode could be expedient in forestalling sibling enmity specially when one youngster senses that parents do not revere him/her unreservedly. Accordingly, adoring all progenies correspondingly nurtures impartiality of children notwithstanding their genders.
“Corinne was about to ask Marianne what sort of soup she’d like when they got home, there was chicken-corn chowder left over in the refrigerator, always more delicious the second time, how’s about that?—turning to Marianne with a smile, but seeing the girl’s face registering horror. What? What was wrong? Corinne was confusedly aware of something dashing in front of the station wagon at the crest of a hill—a gray-furry shape blurred with speed—and before Corinne could think to brake the vehicle’s front wheels ran over it with a thud—and beside her Marianne began to scream, and scream.”
Marianne’s shrieks, consistent with Lacanian psychoanalysis, illustrate the “Trauma of the Real.” Marianne is devastated because she is cognizant of her rape. The yells is are a mode of unleashing her trauma which is manifestly throbbing her conscious; the trauma that she is enduring can no longer be stifled. Externally, she seems to be satisfactory, but psychologically she is submitting to gigantic torment.
“Her many hours in solitude, in St. Ann’s Church, had given her a strange stubborn placidity new to Marianne Mulvaney. She’d been reading the Gospels, she’d been praying. Opening her heart to Jesus as she’d never done before—oh, never! He had instructed her in the way of contemplation; of resisting the impulse to rage, to accuse. And, in truth, drunk as she’d been, sick, staggering, confused and frightened as she’d been, she could not clearly remember what had happened between her and Zachary Lundt.”
Marianne pursues solace in the church to block the remembrances of her rape tribulation. The church’s mood bids a tranquil ambiance for the “Imaginary Order” which stimulates Marianne’s tenacious serenity. The religious armor which Marianne hunts for in the church is imaginary, for it guarantees that her unconscious is tranquil. However, the religious mood is not ample to obliterate all the rape recollections since they are pertinently embedded in her unconscious.
