Steven Millhauser - We Others - New and Selected Stories

She was absent the next day. At home I dialed her number and hung up after the first ring. I was angry at myself in every way, but it was more complicated than that — I felt I’d been driven to the edge of what I could bear by the oppressive white glove. In all this, Emily wasn’t innocent — she knew something and refused to speak. Exactly what I’d hoped to accomplish by removing the glove was no longer clear to me. But the glove had disturbed the harmony between us, had introduced a note of uncertainty, of opacity. If I longed to see what lay underneath, it wasn’t simply in order to gratify a by now ferocious curiosity, but to release Emily and me from the spell of secrecy, to return us to peacefulness — for there was no peace between us anymore, only the mocking white glove. I hated that glove, hated the way it sat there without doing anything. I wanted to tear it off and set it on fire. Better yet, I would bury it in my backyard. Then a tree would grow, and every spring, when the maples put out their yellow-green and dark red flowers, the buds of my tree would open into white gloves.

When she appeared at school the following day, she rigorously avoided my gaze. She looked tired and drawn; her anger, if it was that, seemed a kind of sadness. I stayed out of her way. It was all fine with me — fine to smash things up, fine to be done with it all. High school would end, I would drag my way through the stupefying summer, then off to college and a new life, hey ho. It was all fine: dead and fine. She was already a memory — the girl with the white glove.

A week passed, the weather grew warmer. On the way home from school I heard the sound of hedge clippers and electric edgers. Someone was tarring a driveway. The smell of fresh tar mingled with bursts of cut grass. In school the windows were wide open and I could hear the dark cry of a mourning dove and the leathery smack of a baseball against a glove. One afternoon at my locker I heard a voice say, “Are you angry at me?” and I felt as if a hammer had struck the side of my head.

“Angry! No, why would I, not really, I thought you—”

“So would you like to”—she shrugged—“I don’t know, come over?”

Then I was walking home with her, through flickers of light and shade. On the front porch we sat on the glider. Mrs. Hohn brought out a plate of sugar cookies, each with a dab of jelly in the center, and glasses of iced tea. It was as if nothing had happened — had anything happened? — but I felt something unspoken in the air, like a heaviness. I glanced at Emily. She was staring straight ahead and holding a cookie in her hand, stroking it with her thumb. Sugary granules fell in her lap. I stared out past a square porch post, one side in sun and one in shade. Shadows of maple leaves moved on the sunny part. Emily said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Thinking?”

“About — you know.” She shrugged her right shoulder — a quick impatient little shrug, which made the right side of her collar lift and fall. “I’m ready now.”

“Ready! I don’t know what you—”

She looked at me. “To — you know — show you.”

Her eyes burned at me — I had to look away.

“Only if you—” was all I could say.

It was to take place Saturday night. Her parents were going out and they wouldn’t be back before midnight. She’d been thinking about it, ever since that night, and she now saw that it was the right thing to do. She had feared I would never visit her again, once I knew. She’d been afraid, she’d been ashamed, but she was no longer that way. Her mother wanted it kept a secret. Her mother would kill her. But Emily trusted me. It was meant to be.

“There’s just one thing,” she said.

“Which is?”

“Whether you’re really sure.”

“You mean whether I’m sure you—”

“I mean sure you really want to.”

“What makes you think—”

“It’s just that it’s not — it isn’t what you think.”

“I don’t think anything.”

She threw me a look. “I mean it might really bother you. I mean more than you think.”

“But you — you’re the one—”

“It’s you — it’s you — you don’t like it when things — you know, when things—”

“When things—”

“When things aren’t — when they’re not — not the way you—”

And an irritation came over me, for it was as if I were the one being tested.

“Oh, don’t worry about me. But are you sure you—”

“Oh yes — yes — I mean if you’re sure you—”

This was on a Tuesday. During the rest of the week we fell into our old habits with a kind of gratitude. It was early June; under the maple leaves Emily walked through trembling spots of sun with a light jacket tied around her waist. From the porch I watched the girls across the street jumping rope. Overhead a squirrel scampered across a telephone wire and leaped onto a branch. In the warm summery air I could hear the smack of the rope, the soft clatter of a basketball against a backboard, the slam of a wooden screen door. Beside me, on the glider, Emily sat with her legs tucked under. Her black flats rested on the floor of the porch and her gloved hand lay in her lap. She was wearing a rose-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly above her elbows and a tartan-plaid skirt held in place at the side by a gigantic safety pin the size of a pocket comb. On the green wicker table, a black tin tray painted with pink flowers held a pitcher of pale yellow lemonade in which dark yellow slices of lemon floated. We talked about a paper for English, and her friend Debby’s troubles at home, and the summer. She wished she could go on a family trip the way she used to in her childhood — she missed that camp in New Hampshire — while I argued that summer was a perfect time for doing absolutely nothing. “What do you mean by ‘nothing’?” Emily asked. The rope slip-slapped. In the gleaming windshield of a parked DeSoto, I could see a perfect reflection of green leaves, brown branches, and blue sky. “Nothing,” I said, “is the least amount of effort over the greatest amount of time.” “That,” said Emily, “is so—” and burst out laughing. The glider creaked. The sun shone down.

On Friday night I played Scrabble with the Hohns on the dining room table, under the little brass chandelier with six bulbs shaped like flames. Beside the table stood a wheeled cart on which lay a plate of homemade peanut butter cookies and four glasses of limeade, each at a different level. “Don’t,” Mrs. Hohn said, glancing at Emily. I stared at my tiles, which were not promising. Later, when it was time for me to go, all three of them stood in the little front hall. The wooden door was open, and through the screen door I could see dark leaves shining green beside a streetlight, and a pale band of sky over the black rooftops. “Night, Will,” Mr. Hohn said. “Drive safe, now.” “Good night, Will,” Mrs. Hohn said, raising her hand shoulder-high and bending her fingers twice. “And thank you for keeping Em company tomorrow night. Not that she isn’t perfectly capable of taking care of herself, Lord knows. My big girl.” She placed an arm around Emily’s shoulders and looked at me fondly. “You’re all so grown up now! I can hardly believe it.”

When I drove over to the Hohns’ on Saturday evening, Emily opened the door. Her parents had already left. For a while we sat on the faded pink cushions of the glider, in the warm dusk. It was the time of day when leaves are dark and the sky is watery pale. The world seems unable to make up its mind, as if at any second it might become deep night or a new day. Suddenly the streetlights came on. “I’ve never seen that before!” Emily cried. I said, “I can’t really remember whether I have or not. It’s strange. Wouldn’t I remember something like that?” “When I was little,” Emily said, “I once saw it raining on one side of the street — right over there — and not on this side. It was magical. I ran over to touch the rain and then I ran back into the sun. And then, a few years later, maybe seventh grade, when I remembered it, I couldn’t be sure it had really happened. I couldn’t feel the memory, you know what I mean? And I still can’t be sure, even though”—she waved her hand rapidly in front of her eyes—“oh, let’s go inside, I hate these idiotic bugs.”