Steven Millhauser - We Others - New and Selected Stories

I understood that it was of vital importance for me to go to Maureen immediately, and with this end in mind I rose from the bed and stepped over to the door. Andrea was still leaning up on an elbow, but her extended arm had fallen a little, and the fingers of her outstretched hand had begun to droop. Her fuzzy pink slippers, her dark robe partly open at the throat, her broad pale neck, her big forearm on the bed, all this made me think for some reason of a sad queen who had lost her kingdom, and I tried to remember whether I had ever read such a story. But time was passing, I could already hear sounds coming from the stairs, and with a nod toward Andrea, who was staring at her feet, I hurried into the hall.

Behind the curtains of the living room, rain spattered against the windows like bits of ice. The couch and the chairs were empty. “Maureen!” I called, in a voice like distant rolling barrels. In the kitchen I found two plates in the dish rack, a white cup on the table. Around the dark table in the dining room, with its blue cut-glass bowl, four chairs sat neatly in place. Had anyone ever sat at that table? Then it struck me that the footsteps I’d heard had perhaps come from those other stairs, leading up to my own domain. Quickly I mounted the steps to the attic, where in the afternoon rainlight it was less dark than in the curtained living room. “Maureen!” I called, trying not to listen to my voice, but she was nowhere. I walked among the piles of labeled boxes and the old chairs, looked behind the dresser and the child’s bookcases, but the attic was deserted. Then I went back downstairs and roamed the empty rooms, looking over my shoulder from time to time as though I suspected her of sneaking up behind me. From the kitchen I stepped onto the open back porch. Chimes near a porch post rocked in the wind. Gusts of rain blew across the floor. When I raised my eyes I saw Maureen striding across the stormy yard, carrying an aluminum stepladder toward the sugar maple.

I hurried down the porch steps and out into the fierce rain, but she ignored me or perhaps could no longer see me. She placed the six-step ladder beside the wooden swing that hung from a thick branch and began to climb. Over one shoulder hung a length of rope. I did not like that rope and I began to call out to her, but my words blew away in the loud wind. Her wet dress clung to her as she climbed, her hair darted up and down like flames, her skin was shiny as a seal’s. On the fifth step she stopped, looked up as if she were peering into the rage of heaven, and flung an end of the rope over the branch. She looked like a big Girl Scout engaged in some woodland skill. She caught the loose end of the rope, tied a loop into it, and slid the other end through. When she pulled, the knot slipped upward and stopped against the branch. Then she began tying a second loop into the hanging end of the rope, while I shouted her name into the storm. Rain lashed her face. When she let the rope drop, a noose turned in the wind. She slipped it over her head and stood on the ladder, staring out into the rain. I waved my arms, shouted into the rain and wind. Then it seemed to me that, far from not seeing me, she saw me clearly and wished to be seen by me. I begged her to come down, I howled into the storm like a crazed dog. Desperately I ran to the ladder and began to climb, reaching out uselessly to her ankle, her leg. As if emboldened by my nearness she jumped, kicking over the ladder, which began to fall slowly, lazily, toward the soggy ground. The rope tightened around her neck and for a moment she hung there with her arms dangling awkwardly. Then the rope tore from the branch and she fell heavily to the ground. She lay on her side with the slick rope trailing from her neck like a monstrous artery.

I rushed over to her and knelt down. Somewhere a screen door slammed. Footsteps sounded heavily on the porch. Andrea came running down the steps into the yard and knelt in the sloshy grass beside her aunt, who was trying to push herself up. “I hurt my leg,” Maureen said, wincing as she sat partway up. Andrea sat down in the wet leaves and the rain and threw an arm about her. “It’s all right,” Andrea said. “Everything will be all right now.” She pressed her cheek against her aunt’s cheek. I had moved a little away and stood looking down on them, as they leaned together in the storm like a wet marble statue commemorating a battle. Then I looked up at the rainy bleak sky, which seemed to be darkening into night. “Go away,” someone said, and when I looked back down I was startled to see the two women staring up at me in rage and sorrow.

And so I have come to this place. No one will find me here. I ask no more.

I didn’t once look back as I walked away through the harsh rain. I could feel their gaze following me, rising slowly above me, hovering in the heavens like a fiery sign.

We others have no business with the likes of you.

When the restlessness comes, like a ripple of madness, I seek out my own kind. I attend a gathering, where I force myself to crush down that little eruption of revulsion. In an abandoned attic we consider our nature, we brood communally over our fate. Then we melt away into the empty places of the night.

It is said that we haunt you. It is far truer to say that you haunt us.

Here in my retreat, here where the world ends, I return to Maureen on her ladder. What seizes me isn’t her earnest awkwardness as she climbs, or her look of innocent and childlike stubbornness as she removes the rope from her shoulder and tosses it up to the branch. No, what I return to is the instant of the leap. For in that moment I detected in myself a little hot burst of envy. To know, at every second of your life, that you can kick over the ladder and jump into nothingness — what a glory that must be! For us there is no ladder, no leap. No way out.

I used to think of myself as a good man, who took care of his patients and protected them from harm. It may or may not have been so. But I can tell you that we are not good, we others. We bring harm to you. Already I have harmed two women. I offered one a false dream and drove the other to a rope and a tree.

And yet I maintain that they are far happier than we can ever be. For they will recover from my eruption into their lives. They will console themselves with hope. For that’s what you do: you console yourselves with hope. You console yourselves with the hope of a new beginning, of another day. We others do not console ourselves.

One question that arises at the gatherings is this: Why? Why us? We all ask it. Why? Why me? Some say that we are random events, equivalent to any other random event in Nature — the birth of the first self-replicating molecule in the primal soup, the extinction of a species of lizard. Others argue that there are no random events and that each of us can be accounted for by means of scientific laws that have yet to be formulated. Still others make the claim that we are being punished, though there’s disagreement over the nature of our crimes. I myself waver between the random-events theory and the theory of punishment, with a tendency to favor the second. For a time I believed we were being punished for not having lived fully enough, for having failed to seize the portion of life that was ours — hence our terrible longing. Now I have come to think that such an argument is too comforting, that it satisfies too readily our need for an explanation. No, if we are being punished, it’s because we once thought of ourselves as good.

We are bad for you, we others. We bring unhappiness. We have no words of comfort for you. We bring no tidings of joy. Do not look for us. Cover your faces when we’re near.

For we are always near. It’s true that I have taken myself away, to this place. But we are weak, as I’ve remarked before. Sooner or later a time will come when I will deceive myself. I’ll tell myself that I desire only a glimpse, a passing glance, no more. You will be sitting in your chair, or on your couch. You will sense a change in the room. Is it a draft? Can a window be loose? You will get up and go to the window, you will fiddle with the window lock. Then you’ll return to your chair, your couch. It is a quiet evening at home. You can tell that you’re feeling a little bored. You’ll wish, just for a moment, that something new might come into your life. If only the telephone would ring! If only someone would knock at the door! That is when you will feel something in the atmosphere. It’s as if a shadow has fallen across the back of your neck. It’s as if all the streetlights have gone out. Is it possible that you’re no longer alone in the room? You’ll feel that someone may be watching you. Is someone standing behind you? You will want to turn around. You will want to look. You will want to know. Don’t turn around. Don’t look. Don’t want to know.