Steven Millhauser - Voices in the Night - Stories

The wife throws the covers off, slips into her robe, steps across the room into the hall. How else can she be one hundred percent sure? She needs to put an end to it. She needs her sleep. She makes her way down the stairs without attempting to conceal the sounds of her bare feet on the steps. At the bottom of the staircase she whispers, “Is anybody there?” After a while she says, “I know you’re there.” The footsteps have stopped. She does not hesitate as she enters the living room.

She moves with sure steps through the dark, staring fiercely into corners. She touches the couch arm, the back of the armchair, the rocker, the walls. He is not there. She passes through the dining room, where the cut-glass bowl crouches like a tense animal on the table, and enters the kitchen. Through the kitchen window she can see the faint glimmer of the side of the white garage, the two dark lawn chairs on the black grass. The thief has tricked her once again, though he was here only seconds ago, listening to her footsteps on the stairs. Now he’s not here. He has disappeared into the night, in his hoodie or his ski mask. Time to let him go, let it all go, time to climb the stairs and fall asleep beside her husband, who’s lying there peacefully, dreaming his dreams. But how can she climb the stairs and fall asleep beside her husband, lying there peacefully, on a night like this? She is too restless for sleep. Sleep is for husbands, sleep is for the good people of this world. It’s thieves and wives who walk in the night.

It is warm in the kitchen, a warm night of summer. He must have entered through the back door, which she unlocked after her husband went upstairs to bed. Did he escape the same way? She opens the door and steps onto the back porch — no porch, really, just four steps and a landing, with posts and a little roof. The air is warm, with a ripple of coolness. A warm-cool night, the dark sky bright with stars, a sliver of moon, like a tipped-back rocking chair.

She walks down the steps and feels the grass cool and sharp-soft against her bare feet. She strides past the row of spruces that separate her yard from the husband and wife next door, asleep in their bed, past the pinewood fence in back, past the side of the garage. The thief must have stood somewhere in the dark yard, studying the house, planning his way in. A safe world of yards and fences, of people asleep in the night, behind locked doors, under the tipped-back moon. The thief must be somewhere. Where is somewhere? Somewhere is nowhere. She throws herself onto one of the reclining lawn chairs and leans back with her legs on the stretched-out part, her ankles crossed, her slithery robe open at her knees. A warm night of summer, dim glow of streetlights over the roofs, a good night for prowling. He must have climbed the back steps, tried the door, surprise! She hears something in the trees. A cat? Raccoon? If the thief is hiding under the trees, he’ll come out, he’s got to, after a while. He’s only waiting for her to go back upstairs, if he’s there, so that he can complete the work she interrupted.

She glances suddenly at the lawn chair next to her. He is not there. She looks behind her. He is not there. He is not there, and he is not there, and he is not there, and he is not there. He has gone away, her thief in the night, he doesn’t want to rob them anymore. She turns to look at the house. In the warm-cool air, under the tipped-back moon, she is waiting, she is watching, she is restless, she is ready. She bends and unbends her toes, squeezes the chair arms, flings back a twist of hair from her face. Something is rising in her, a tide of night sorrow, at any moment she will burst into loud tears, she will cry out with bitter laughter. Lights will go on, people will stare out of windows, the moon will tip back in its chair and fall out of the sky. Her soles itch. She’s got to jump up, jolt herself loose. There’s only so much waiting you can hold inside.

As she climbs the porch steps, the wife looks quickly over her shoulder. She enters the kitchen and locks the door that her husband locked before going to bed. From a box under the sink she removes a large plastic bag with tie handles. She opens a second bag and lines the first with it. She pauses, listens, then opens the cellar door. From a hook on the back of the door she removes a baseball cap and pulls the peak low on her face. She closes the door and moves through the kitchen. In the dark living room she takes the windup clock with the four glass sides and places it in the bag. From the top of the lamp table she removes the painted glass tray from Italy and the ivory statuette of a girl with a parasol and places them in the bag. She moves swiftly and surely about the room, taking the porcelain vase with the ostrich feathers, the silver dove on the mantel, the photo album of the trip to California, the spiral lightbulbs in the bottom drawer of the corner cabinet, the two TV remotes, the dictionary, the framed photograph of herself in a straw hat standing by a stream, the small painting that shows a woman reading by a haystack, letters from drawers, the wooden owl. From the dining room she takes the cut-glass bowl and a set of blue wineglasses, from the kitchen the silver napkin holder, the coffeemaker, the clock. With the aid of a flashlight she drags the heavy bag down the cellar steps and carries it past the furnace and the water heater to the pile of boxes and broken furniture in the corner. The boxes contain old dishes, folders of outdated medical records, discarded gloves and hats. She thrusts the bag of stolen goods into a space between boxes. Over the space she places an upside-down table with three legs.

At the top of the stairs she hangs the cap on its hook. She closes the cellar door. In the kitchen she returns the flashlight to the drawer. She moves through the living room, climbs the stairs, opens the bedroom door. Her husband is lying asleep on his back. He has the nose of a little boy. She removes her robe and slips under the covers. She can feel a dark peacefulness flowing in her like the water of a pebbled brook. She closes her eyes and sleeps like the dead.

We have completed our preliminary investigation and hereby submit our report to the Committee.

For nearly six months our town has suffered events that threaten its very existence. Entire families have moved away, in the hope of finding relief in other towns, only to discover that they cannot escape what some have called a curse, others a fatality; we ourselves prefer less colorful forms of speech. Those of us who remain have attempted to go about our business as if nothing has changed, while knowing that everything has changed. The very expressions on our faces have altered. Even the smiles of our children are no longer the old smiles, but betray an air of exaggeration, of willed cheerfulness. On block after block we see the empty houses, the untended lawns. Cats scratch at screen doors that never open. Large groups of townsfolk gather in vacant lots at dusk, as if for a purpose, only to drift away. Under such conditions, who can speak? We who dare to hope, we who are in the thick of things but try to stand apart, in order to grasp the ungraspable — we have taken it upon ourselves to trace the history of these aberrations and to discover their secret cause.

For as long as anyone can remember, our town has been a pleasant place to live in. Situated at the far end of the commuter line, we enjoy the sense of a vital connection to the larger world, as well as a satisfying sense of self-exclusion from that world, of communal separation for the sake of our own way of life. Here, we preserve touches of an older, more rural America. The north woods, the stream with its railed wooden bridge, the Indian burial ground — such retreats coexist peacefully with our train station, our six-lane thruway, and our new microchip plant. Here, the streets are shady, the houses in good repair, the backyards bright with swing sets, lawn chairs, and round cedar tables under broad umbrellas. In Sterling Park, our children play baseball on a diamond with real bases, a pitcher’s mound with a pitcher’s rubber, and a chain-link backstop, while our dogs lie down, beside slatted benches, in stripes of sun and shade. Of course, like other towns, we have our share of troubles, we’re only human. But on the whole we are happy to be here, where the sky has always seemed a little bluer, the leaves a little greener, than in other towns we know.