We Others

by Steven Millhauser

  I hadn’t expected her to open her eyes. She saw me—I saw her see me. She sat up violently, holding the collar of her pajama top against her throat. The gesture reminded me of her aunt. She held up her forearm, as if to prevent a blow to the face. I heard myself speak—that distant, despairing sound—and with a cry she leaped from the bed and rushed to the door, where she fumbled at the knob before escaping into the hall.

  I continued to sit there, paralyzed with shame, while outside I heard Andrea tear open the door of her aunt’s room and cry out “Oh god—oh god—” and as I rushed from that cry and hurled myself up the attic stairs, I could hear the women talking together, very fast.

  14

  In my high lair I paced and brooded. What else was there to do? I had seen the look of terror on Andrea’s face and I could imagine with dreadful ease the dark thoughts of Maureen. I kept out of sight all day Sunday and came out only when it was safe. Maureen was waiting for me in the darkened living room. As soon as I appeared she whispered, “You scared the life out of her! She’s practically—how could you?” She paced in a haze of smoke, waving her cigarette. “I told her it was all a dream. I think she—but she knows. She knows. I made her doubt her own eyes. I can’t believe that you—in her room, of all places. What were you doing in her room?” I stood there stiffly while she shouted in whispers. Smoke swirled around her like river mist. Light from the kitchen caught her barrettes, her eyes. She looked like a creature in a chamber in hell. Jealousy flared in her like fire. “I thought we had an agreement—an understanding—” She flung herself heavily onto the couch. Her head lay against the couch-back. A hand fell to her lap.

  I breathed out an apology and made an awkward exit. I had no excuses, nothing to say. Outside, in the night, I threw myself from one refuge to another, in search of calm, but there was no calm. I had terrified one woman and mortified another—it was time for me to banish myself to the ends of the earth. But where does the earth end? The earth never ends. Besides, where could I go, really? It was also true that I wanted desperately to return and set things right—I who was wrong in my very existence.

  Back in the attic I paced and paused, paced and paused, like someone with a memory disorder who is searching for something that keeps vanishing from his mind.

  Have I spoken of the dawn? We do not like the dawn. We object to its youthful radiance. We dislike its suggestion of new beginnings, of the uplifted spirit. We are creatures of the downward-plunging spirit, where hope perishes in black laughter. Some claim that at dawn we cease to exist, that we dissolve in light. Blissful thought! But that is pure superstition—or careless observation. No, we’re there, always there, though in a weakened and faded way, like flowers that bloom only after sunset.

  Dawn came. It was Monday morning: a school day. Maureen was soon stirring. When I heard her leave, I understood that I wasn’t going to remain locked up in the attic like an insane relative shut away from the healthy part of the house. It was absolutely necessary for me to know that Andrea was all right. I understood that I was behaving foolishly, even recklessly, and that my desire to assure myself of Andrea’s wellbeing was a mask for my imperious need to be in her presence.

  I had known from days of listening that Andrea spent her time drifting about the house, but as I followed her—at a safe distance—I was impressed by the number and intricacy of her rituals of wasting time. In her long robe and big fuzzy slippers she sat at her late breakfast in front of an open newspaper that she folded carefully along the crease each time she turned the page. After this she folded the paper exactly in half and then in half again. Every few minutes she rose to go to the silverware drawer, or check the faucet in the sink, or look for something on the counter, or gaze out the kitchen window while she sipped her coffee. Later she brought her coffee and the newspaper into the living room, where she turned on the television and flipped through channels, never watching a program for more than three minutes at a time. She rummaged through her large pocketbook and removed a big comb that she pulled for a while through her hair. She went to the front door, opened it, and looked out. In the kitchen she rinsed one of her dishes and placed it in the dishwasher. In the living room she closed the blinds of each window and then partly opened them again. Once, in the kitchen, she looked around suddenly. I was standing closer to her than I had realized, but she saw nothing. She liked to rub the side of her nose, stretch out her arms, fling herself onto the couch. A moment later she would stand up and go into the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator and peered inside with a studious frown.

  Intermixed with her restless rituals was a different species of behavior, a nervous alertness or watchfulness that I observed with interest. She would turn her head suddenly, as if she’d seen something out of the corner of her eye. Or she would stop in the middle of a room, where she grew tense and still, listening with stern attention. It was as if she knew she wasn’t alone, in that empty house, in the middle of the empty day. And an irritation came over me, for I had done my part, had I not, I had kept well out of sight, hadn’t I?

  At the sound of Maureen’s car in the drive I retired to the attic. I could hear the vigorous sounds of their voices, crisscrossing far below. Perhaps they were arguing—what did I know of these women? For that matter, what did I know of myself? Of anything? Then I thought: My name is Paul Steinbach. I have fallen asleep in my bed. This is all a dream. Even as I welcomed the thought, I was repelled by its ludicrous triteness. There was nothing to do but wait. I waited. I waited for the sounds of dinner. I waited for the move to the living room. I waited for the slow, dragging footsteps on the stairs.

  Scarcely had the door closed when I found myself rushing down the attic steps to the hall. In a moment I was at the landing. As I made my way down to Maureen, I became aware that I was moving more and more slowly, as if impeded by some substance in the air. By the time I reached the bottom I discovered that I had come to a complete stop—as in the old days, I couldn’t help thinking. But these were the new days, weren’t they? Maureen was sitting on the couch, in her storm-cloud of smoke. Ah, she was tired, desperately tired—she was coming unraveled before me. Her hair hung down carelessly. A button of her blouse was undone, revealing the bottom edge of a ghostly white bra. She sat there, a tired, middle-aged woman. I could feel harm flowing from me like ripples of heat.

  I turned around and went back. Yes!—a coward. I confess it. Shall I say it again? A coward. She would have looked at me accusingly—pleadingly. I couldn’t—I couldn’t. In the attic I fell into a restless stupor. Dutifully I moved among her old things. Have I mentioned the porcelain cookie jar shaped like a panda? In a dusty green bowl lay an old eggbeater and a pink rubber ball. As I paced the floorboards I felt like an aging actor in an empty theater. At some point I heard Maureen’s footsteps on the carpeted stairs. The footsteps irritated me, since they meant it was now impossible for me to go down to her. Even my irritation irritated me, for, when all was said and done, what good did it do me or anyone to know, with absolute clarity, that I had failed to rise to an occasion?

  I was wondering how I would drag myself through the rest of the appalling night, while the two women in their big soft beds lay calmly out of it all, when the world burst open with a roar. That is to say: a sudden noise was followed by a jolt of light. The light swept across the rafters. It withdrew. I understood that the door to the attic had opened and a flashlight was shining up. She was climbing toward me. The beam of light wavered along the stairs like low fire. I saw her rising slowly into view like a creature from the sea. I slipped behind a child’s bookcase filled with old puzzles and Golden Books. Through a crack in the flimsy back I could see her take two steps into the attic and turn off her light. “You’re here, I know you are,” she shouted in a whisper. “Are you here? Paul! Where are you? Why didn’t you—” The flashlight burst into life—the beam swept across the floorboards, leaped to the rafters, rippled across the dressmaker’s dummy and the old typewriter in the sewing basket. Off with the ligh
t—darkness swarmed back. “She told me there’s something in the house—she’s sure of it. She asked whether I’d ever—whether I’d ever seen—” She sighed. Then, in a fierce whisper: “Never!” She continued more mildly. “She won’t sleep in her room anymore. Can you imagine? Too haunted in there, ha ha. Now she sleeps with me, like twenty years ago. A bit crowded in there, as I’m sure you can imagine. Well”—in a merry voice—“now you’ll have to visit both of us! But you know”—here her voice dropped—“I’m so tired …” I heard her shuffle forward in the dark. “Oh, where are you? Paul? I know you’re somewhere.” The flashlight sprang on and she moved about, her beam of light held out before her like a sword. “You can’t hide from me!” A moment later she said, “Please, Paul. What have I done? I’m sorry.” Wearily she turned around. I could see the light shining on her moccasin slippers trimmed with red beads and white fur. She walked down the stairs, clutching the rail. I watched as she sank back into the sea.

  15

  At the sound of the attic door closing I felt a sudden stillness of relief. At the same time, in the center of that stillness, I could already detect the stirrings of the opposite of relief. That’s how we are. Our rest is unrest, our peace is unpeace, our hopefulness has a heart of doom. Things were spinning out of control. I wanted to calm it all down, immediately, forever. Yes, I wanted to assure everyone that things would be all right, in the long run. If anyone had had the gall to assure me that things would be all right, in the long run, I’d have looked at them as one might look at an elderly woman in a nursing home who has said that she is waiting to join her dear mother in heaven. But there I was, eager to spread comfort wherever I could, even as I seemed to hear, behind my back, a howl of mocking laughter.

  I hurried down the attic steps with no definite idea of what I was going to do. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I knew precisely what I was going to do but concealed it from myself cunningly. In my mind there was nothing but an image—those moccasin slippers, trimmed with red beads and white fur. There they floated, helpless and forlorn. It seemed to me that I needed to protect them, to save them from harm. Swiftly—like a cleansing wind—I entered Maureen’s room.

  She was sitting up in bed, in the dark, supported by a pillow that stood upright against a reading pillow with arms. “You can’t—” she whispered, in that stifled shout. At the edge of the bed lay Andrea. She was on her side, facing the wall. Only her cheek was visible above the turned-back sheet. At Maureen’s stifled words, Andrea opened her eyes and lazily turned onto her back. “What did you—” she said, and saw me. Clutching the sheet to her chest with one hand, she pushed herself back against the headboard and held up the other hand, as if directing traffic to stop. Maureen leaned forward in my direction, shaking her head and saying “No … no …” I looked at the two women sitting up side by side, their bodies touching, one pressed back against the headboard, the other straining forward, and what I most wanted, at that moment, was for one of them to move forward a little and the other to move back, so that both of them would be sitting shoulder to shoulder, looking at me with an air of quiet expectation, and in order to encourage this new arrangement I said, “What I want to say—” But at the sound of my voice, which startled me like a groan, Andrea held up a forearm in front of her face, while Maureen lifted her head alertly, raised both arms, as if she were offering me a tray of chocolate chip cookies, and let them fall heavily onto the spread, where they lay with the palms up. Unnerved by my voice, and by the sight of the two women, one staring at me from behind an arm held out across her face, the other looking sadly at me with her hands lying upside down on the spread, I felt like a man in a mask who had broken into a bedroom at night, and with a breath of apology, which sounded to me like the rattling of a distant chain, I left them there.

  I left them there, but not so that I might disappear into the attic like another broken doll. No, the entire house now seemed to me a place of misery—I was eager to escape into the night. Exactly what I thought I might do, out there in the night, was as uncertain as my larger fate, but I found myself drifting from yard to yard, as on that first, fatal morning. After a while I saw that I’d come to a familiar neighborhood. I crossed a street, made my way through hedges and fences, and entered the Delvecchio backyard, with its flagstone patio shaded by a canvas top. The sprinkler and the soccer ball were gone, replaced by a leaf rake standing against the side of the garage. I passed through the tall hedge and stopped.

  Nothing had changed. There stood my small back porch, with the four wooden steps and the white posts under the gabled roof. There was the cellar window with the taped pane. I wondered whether Paul Steinbach, M.D., was inside, asleep in his bed. I wondered whether he’d remembered to return that book.

  In the kitchen I was startled by the refrigerator. It had become much larger in my absence. In the dish rack I saw a plate with a solid band of color along the rim, instead of the apples and leaves that ought to have been there. Somehow the old stove with its four burners had been replaced by one of those glass-topped ones. It was as if the house, in my absence, had decided to dress up in some way, like a child left alone in its parents’ bedroom. Upstairs in the hall I lingered before a familiar door—his door. What, it occurred to me to ask myself, was I doing in this house, which had abandoned me long ago? But it was too late, already I was in the bedroom, where an alien chest of drawers stood against the wrong wall. In a bed with no headboard a man lay on his side. He had a straight sharp nose, with a raw pinkness at the bridge, where his eyeglasses must have rubbed. The rimless glasses rested on their wire temples on a book at the base of a new lamp. On the cover of the book was a photograph of a woman with a boa and a feather hat. Perhaps, I thought, I had fallen asleep many years ago and lay dreaming there. In my dream I had come to this place. And if I should wake?

  The sleeper stirred. He muttered something, moved a shoulder, and lay still. An eye began to open. It fell languidly shut. It opened again. Now the man began a scramble, a sideways tangled sluggish rush among the bedclothes as he tried to twist away from me. One arm, caught in the sheets, beat about like a broken wing. I had the feeling that I was watching the antics of an amateur actor who exaggerated his effects. Something shattered against the wall behind me. I looked at the floor and saw the scattered pieces of a clock. Had he thrown it at me? “It’s mine!” I wanted to shout, meaning the room, the house, his life. He was glaring at me with a mixture of wildness and wariness—a man in striped pajamas, rudely awakened in the middle of the night. In the morning he would recall his dream with bewilderment, with interest. There was nothing for me in this place.

  Out in the yard I hesitated. I had fled from one home, only to be driven from another. I imagined searching for a new attic, in a new town, where I would start a new—but at this thought I could feel something stirring deep within me, and all at once I burst into a laugh. It was not a pleasant laugh, that laugh. But then, ours are not pleasant laughs. I turned and made my way through the hedge.

  As I approached Maureen’s neighborhood I became aware of a glow over the dark trees. I crossed a lawn, passed through the stand of spruce, and stopped in her backyard.

  The house was ablaze with light. At any moment I expected to see flames bursting through the windows, leaping up toward the roof. By which I mean: all the lights were on—the kitchen overhead light, the sink light, the dining room light, the floor lamp and the table lamps in the living room, the stair light, the hall light, the bedroom lights, the bathroom lights. Even the back-porch light flung its harsh brightness across the lawn. Were they trying to drive me out by light? Like a crazed lover or father I stumbled across the brilliant grass into the blazing house. I rushed up the fiery stairway into the hall. The sharp light cut into me like splinters of glass. Behind the bedroom door I could hear them breathing quietly. I would never let them drive me from my attic. Even up there, the light was on—a single bare bulb that gave off a garish glow. Where there is light, there is dark. I made my way bli
ndly toward a dark corner and threw myself down on the floor behind a row of peeling suitcases. A rag doll lay facedown beside me. Her yellow string hair streamed out like the rays of a child’s sun. I tried to think what to do.

  16

  I was in the midst of imagining myself on the move, passing from attic to attic, across alien lawns, through unknown towns, in remote lands, as strangers in beds rolled wildly in their sheets and clocks shattered against walls, when the attic light went out. In the sudden darkness I heard the closing of a door. Footsteps shuffled in the hall below. It struck me that I had sunk so deeply into my thoughts that I hadn’t heard the attic door open or the switch click off. Through the attic window the sky was black. For a while I lay there trying to make sense of it all. Was it still the same night? We are careless about time. We have too much of it. With a wary kind of suddenness I rose and passed across the attic and down the wooden stairs.

  In the hall it was dark. I could hear the sound of breathing in Maureen’s room and the sound of movement down below.

  When I reached the bottom of the carpeted stairs I saw that all the lights were out. At one end of the couch, Andrea sat tensely upright in her bathrobe.

  I entered the room and started to walk behind the couch, thought better of it, and passed in front of her. Without incident I reached my armchair and sat down.

  “I’m not afraid of you anymore,” she said quietly.

  She glanced over at me and looked away. “I was afraid before,” she said. “But I decided not to be.” A pause. “I want to get to know you.” She continued to sit upright, like a student in a principal’s office.