Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

“Our neighbors. Must be on West Crescent Drive.”

  The husband spoke matter-of-factly. It was not like him to take notice of neighbors unless in annoyance—which was rare, in Crescent Lake Farms. He seemed bemused and not annoyed.

  They had never seen these neighbors. Whoever lived on the far side of the wooded area were strangers to them. There was no occasion for the husband and the wife to drive on West Crescent Drive which wasn’t easily accessible from the cul-de-sac at the end of East Crescent Drive, where they lived: this would involve a circuitous twisting route to Juniper Road, which traversed the rural-suburban “gated community” called Crescent Lake Farms, an approximate half-mile north on that road, and then a turn into the interior of the development and, by way of smaller, curving roads, onto West Crescent Drive.

  Like a labyrinth, it was! Crescent Lake Farms was not a residential area hospitable to strangers. Easily one could become lost in a maze of drives, lanes, “ways,” and “circles,” for the gated community had been designed to discourage aimless driving.

  Their three-acre property did not include frontage on the man-made ovoid Crescent Lake. But a small stream meandered through it, to empty into the lake a short distance away.

  “They sound young.”

  The wife heard what sounded like low thrilled throaty laughter. There was a strange unsettling intimacy to this laughter, as if their neighbors on West Crescent Drive were very near and not a quarter-mile away, at the very least.

  You stared at the massed trees, expecting to see human figures there.

  “Yes. And happy.”

  The wife had brought drinks for her husband and herself: whiskey and water for the husband, lemon-flavored sparkling water for the wife. And a little silver bowl of the husband’s favorite nuts, pistachios.

  Hungrily, noisily the husband chewed pistachios. Yet his attention was riveted to the dark cluster of trees which the sounds of voices and laughter teasingly penetrated.

  It wasn’t unlike hearing voices through a wall. Intimate, tantalizing. You heard the musical cadences but not distinct words.

  Drinks outside on the terrace behind their house was their ritual before dinner, in warm weather. Though he wasn’t any longer making his forty-minute commute to Investcorp International, Inc. in Forrestal Village, on Route 1, where the husband had directed the applied math and computational division of the company for the past seventeen years, the husband and the wife had not changed their before-dinner ritual.

  They had lived in this sprawling five-bedroom shingle-board house in Crescent Lake Farms for nearly thirty years and in that time, very little had changed in the gated community which was one of the oldest and most prestigious in northern New Jersey.

  There was a waiting list of would-be homeowners. Elsewhere, properties were difficult to sell; but not in Crescent Lake Farms.

  The wife thought We are protected here. We are very happy here.

  Thoughtfully, his head cocked in the direction of the massed trees, the husband finished his whiskey-and-water. The voices continued—softly, teasingly. A sudden squawking squabble among geese in the near distance, and the gentler sounds were drowned out.

  In any case it was time to go inside for dinner which was more or less ready to be served—in a warm oven, and in a microwave. And on the kitchen counter a lavish green salad in a gleaming wooden bowl with feta cheese, arugula, avocado, cherry tomatoes—the husband’s favorite salad.

  “I think they must have gone inside. Over there.”

  Shyly the wife touched the husband’s hand. He did not, as he’d used to do, turn his hand to grasp hers, instinctively; but he did not brush her hand away as he sometimes did, not rudely, not impolitely, but half-mindedly.

  It appeared to be so: their neighbors’ voices had faded. All you could hear was the quarrelsome sound of waterfowl and, startlingly near at their stream, the excited miniature cries of spring peepers.

  She said, “Will you come inside, darling? It’s late.”

  AIRY AND MELODIC the laughter, summer evenings.

  Almost, the husband and the wife could hear through the woods a delicate tinkle of glassware from time to time—wineglasses? And cutlery.

  The neighbors-through-the-trees frequently dined outside. Their voices were low and murmurous and no words were distinct but the sounds were happy sounds, unmistakably.

  “Oh—is that a baby? D’you think?”

  The wife heard something a little different, one evening in June. A sweet cooing sound—was it? Just barely discernible beyond the nocturnal cries of the waterfowl on Crescent Lake and low guttural bullfrog grunts in their grassy lawn.

  The husband listened, paused in his pistachio-chewing.

  “Maybe.”

  “Though we haven’t heard a baby crying, ever.”

  The wife sounded wistful. Her own babies had grown and departed the house at 88 East Crescent Drive, years ago.

  The wife was thinking They are dining by candlelight probably. Their faces reflected in a glass-topped wrought-iron table on a flagstone terrace like ours.

  If the husband-through-the-trees brushed the hand of the wife-through-the-trees, the wife could not observe. If the wife-through-the-trees paused to take up the baby in her arms, to kiss him on his little snub nose, the wife could not observe.

  “A baby would cry. So maybe it isn’t a baby.”

  Yet, the soft cooing sound persisted. And adult voices, and throaty laughter. The husband and the wife listened acutely, sitting very still on their terrace.

  It was their custom now to eat outside. In the past, the husband had not liked to eat outside which he’d thought too picnicky.

  The wife did not mind the extra effort of carrying things from the kitchen and back again. The wife quite enjoyed the romance of mealtimes on the rear terrace, in the company, at a little distance, of their mysterious neighbors-through-the-trees.

  For often, since his retirement, the husband was very quiet. The wife felt lonely even as she told herself Don’t be ridiculous! You are not lonely.

  It was strange that, in the past, they’d had no particular awareness of these neighbors. Possibly, a new family had moved into the house on West Crescent Drive?

  Other, nearer neighbors, who lived on East Crescent Drive, were more visible of course and more annoying, at times; there were frequently large summer lawn parties, children’s birthday parties with balloons tied to mailboxes, political fund-raisers involving vehicles parked on both sides of the narrow road. But overall, Crescent Lake Farms was a quiet place. In the Crescent Lake Farms Homeowners’ manual disturbing the peace and privacy of our neighbors was expressly forbidden.

  And the properties were large: a minimum of three acres. So your neighbors weren’t inescapable, as in an urban setting.

  Now the wife recalled: at Easter, on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon when their daughter Ellen had come to visit with her two small children, and they were walking on the back lawn, the wife had heard an unusual sound through the thicket of trees—a woman’s voice, it might have been, so melodic as to seem like music, but indistinct, and soon fading. At the time she hadn’t known what it was, assumed it was coming from their neighbors at 86 East Crescent Drive, and had paid no particular attention to it.

  The husband hadn’t noticed this female voice, at the time. Their daughter, distracted by her young children, hadn’t noticed.

  Ellen said, “This is a lovely house. I have such good memories of this house. It’s a shame, you will probably be selling it . . .”

  Selling it? The wife reacted with dismay, and did not glance at the husband; knowing that the husband would be upset by their daughter’s careless remark.

  “. . . I mean, since it’s so large. And it must be so expensive to maintain especially in the winter . . .”

  The husband had walked stiffly on, headed for the edge of the property, where there was a gate, rarely used, that opened onto a no-man’s-land—a densely wooded area that belonged not to any private landowner but to
Hecate Township.

  The wife was embarrassed by the husband’s rudeness. But she, too, was offended by the question and did not want to think that their other children were speculating about their future.

  The wife remained with their daughter and lively grandchildren, talking of other things.

  Now, the wife recalled that awkward episode. And the way their daughter had lifted one of the children into her arms, with such confidence, and joy. Listening to the neighbors’ cooing baby weeks later, she was feeling a pang of loss.

  Inwardly protesting to her daughter But we are so happy here! Why ever would we want to move?

  “WHAT IS THAT?”—the husband was baffled.

  The wife listened: a soft blunted sound as of wood striking wood, she was sure she’d never heard before.

  It was a morning in mid-June. The wife and the husband were outside on the deck reading the Sunday newspaper, that fluttered in the breeze. A part of the paper had gotten loose from the husband’s grasp and had been blown into shrubbery close by, which the wife would retrieve.

  “Is it coming from—over there?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Some sort of—repair work? A kind of hammer striking wood?”

  “Not a hammer. I don’t think so.”

  They listened. Again the blunted sound came, a near-inaudible crack.

  They were staring at the trees. Pine trees, deciduous trees whose names they didn’t know—beech? Oak? Beyond their six-foot wire fence was a dense jungle of bushes, scrub trees, mature trees. However deep the woods was, whether a quarter-mile or less, it was as opaque to their eyes by day as by night.

  The wife had to suppose that not one but two fences separated their property from that of the neighbors-through-the-trees. For the other property would be fenced-off as well.

  In the land owned by Hecate Township there was a median strip kept mowed in the summer, probably no more than fifty feet across, where power lines had been installed.

  The husband and the wife had never walked along the median. The wife had a vague recollection of stubbled weeds, marshy soil. Nothing like the fastidiously tended suburban lawns of Merion bluegrass, the preferred grass for Crescent Lake Farms.

  Years ago when they’d walked more frequently, often hand in hand, they’d walked in parks, or along hiking trails; they had never explored the area behind their house which did not seem hospitable to strolling couples.

  The wife assumed that there were signs posted in the woods behind their house, as elsewhere in Crescent Lake Farms, forbidding trespassing, hunting with gun or bow.

  White-tailed Virginia deer dwelt in the woods of Crescent Lake Farms. Occasionally, no matter how vigilant homeowners were, no matter how high their fences, deer would manage to slip through, to ravage gardens in the night.

  It had happened, the wife’s roses had been decimated, years before. Her carefully tended little vegetable garden, even her potted geraniums. But the husband had had the fence repaired, and no deer had set foot on the property since.

  Crack!—a light glancing sound.

  It was utterly baffling, what this sound might be. At once sharp, yet muffled. A playful sort of sound, the wife thought.

  The husband had ceased reading the newspaper. The politics of the day infuriated him: even when power lay with the politicians he supported, and the opposition appeared to be failing, so much in the political sphere seemed to him vile, vulgar, meretricious, inane—he threatened that he wouldn’t be voting at all.

  The husband, whose professional life had been involved with the most complex algorithms and equations, knew to distrust the sort of crude polls you saw reported in the media, and “statistical studies.” The husband made the droll joke that roughly 40 percent of what was printed in the New York Times in such quasi-scientific or –economic terms was fabricated by researchers.

  “Only naïve people take polls seriously. The publication of a poll is a stratagem of persuasion.”

  After degrees from Harvard the husband had begun his career at a mathematical research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then, he’d been recruited by a medical science research center in White Plains, New York. Then, by a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Princeton, New Jersey, where he’d developed algorithms brilliantly forecasting consumer purchases. By the time he’d moved to Investcorp International, Inc. his work in mathematical computation was so complex, the wife had virtually no knowledge of what her husband did, or how it was related to the actual world.

  “What is it that Dad does?”—so the children would ask one by one.

  The wife recalled when her young husband had talked excitedly of his work to anyone who would listen. But in recent years, never.

  She no longer made inquiries. Much of his life was separate from hers as if each was on an ice floe, drifting in the same direction and yet drifting inevitably apart.

  “Something hitting against something else—that’s what we’re hearing. It sounds like wood.”

  “Croquet?”

  The husband was impressed, the wife had solved the mystery.

  “Yes of course! Such a civilized lawn game—croquet.”

  They did not mind the glancing crack of the mallet against the croquet ball, for the sound was diminished at a distance, like their neighbors’ voices and laughter.

  “I’ve never played croquet, have you?”

  “Oh, long ago. At my grandparents’ house on Nantucket.”

  The wife spoke wistfully. The husband spoke nostalgically.

  “D’you think they have guests? They’re playing croquet with guests?”

  They listened. It was impossible to tell from the near-inaudible murmuring voices.

  The wife half-closed her eyes. In twilight figures clothed elegantly in white were gracefully wielding mallets, striking painted wooden balls and driving them forward in the grass beneath little wire hoops.

  The woman, or the women, wore long skirts. The men, white coats and trousers.

  “I’d like to play croquet again. Would you?”

  “Yes. I’d love to play croquet with you.”

  They smiled at each other. The wife felt an impulse to take up her husband’s hand and kiss it.

  On the backs of her husband’s hands, bruises the hue of grapes. His blood was thin: he bled easily, beneath his skin. His medication was to correct for high blood pressure.

  “We could order a set online, maybe. I doubt there are croquet sets for sale in town.”

  “Yes. Let’s!”

  They realized that the croquet game through-the-trees must have ended, when they’d been talking. It was past dark by now: fully night.

  The trees beyond their property were a solid block of darkness like a gigantic mouth.

  High overhead, a blurred moon that cast a blurred light.

  “DARLING? COME HERE.”

  The wife called excitedly to the husband, who was working in his home office on the first floor facing the front of the house.

  Though there was no longer an office at Investcorp International, Inc., yet the husband’s office at home remained his home office.

  “Hurry, darling! Please.”

  It was midday. Strains of music were penetrating the trees at the rear of their property, sweetly delicate, captivating. At first, the wife had assumed that the exquisite sound was the singing of an unusual species of bird but when she’d listened closely, and determined that the sound was coming through the trees, she realized that this was no bird.

  “I think someone is playing the violin over there. I mean—it isn’t a recording or a radio, it’s an actual person.”

  The husband had come outside, frowning. He seemed irritable at having been interrupted at his desk yet he leaned over the railing, listening.

  “Maybe a child? Practicing his lesson?”

  The husband frowned, cocking his head.

  “I’m not sure that I hear anything. I think you’re imagining a violin.”

  They listened, intently. There came, fr
om the roadway in front of the house, a sudden blaring of rock music: from one of the damned tradesmen’s vans, or delivery vans, so prevalent in the neighborhood.

  “I’m sure that I heard—something . . . It wasn’t ordinary music but something special.”

  The wife knew: it was household protocol never to interrupt her husband when he was working in his home office. The children had never dared.

  Apologetically the wife said she might have been mistaken. She was sorry to have called the husband and she knew that if she admitted her error at once, the husband would not be angry with her.

  He was saying, petulantly, “I didn’t hear a thing. Certainly not any violin.”

  The husband returned to the house. The wife continued to listen in a trance of expectation.

  But she heard no more “violin” notes. Maybe the sound had been a bird’s song after all.

  Or blood pulsing in her ears. Beating in her heart.

  That was what she’d been hearing—was it?

  THEY HAD BEEN married for nearly forty years. Not an hour had they ceased to be married in forty years.

  The husband had been “unfaithful” to the wife—probably. On those business trips. On company “retreats” to Palm Beach, Key West, Bermuda and Saint Bart’s, Costa Rica and Mexico, to which wives had not been invited.

  But these trips were of the past. The last one had been several years ago. The wife had ceased to think of these humiliations as one ceases to think of an illness, painful but not lethal, of long-ago.

  The husband would be a domestic animal now, confined to the household and to the wife. And to his online life, in his home office.

  The wife had not been unfaithful to the husband. Not with any man—any individual.

  In her heart. In the mysterious and uncharitable way of the heart.

  But I love him. That will never change.

  “LISTEN! A DOG.”

  Not often but from time to time, when the neighbors-through-the-trees appeared to be in their backyard, or on their deck, adults and a child, or children, there came the sound of a dog barking—not protracted, not disturbing, just two or three short barks, then silence.

  A dignified dog, the wife thought. A German shepherd, or a border collie. One of those elegant long-haired dogs she’d always fantasized owning—an Afghan.