Steven Millhauser - Martin Dressler - The Tale of an American Dreamer

“May I come in?” Emmeline said. “You look angry.”

“Come in, I’m angry at my slippers.” He shut the door. “There’s something wrong?” He had said good night to her an hour ago.

“Not exactly,” Emmeline said.

Seated on the sofa facing the armchair, she explained that Caroline had insisted she come. Caroline was worried about Martin, alone in the apartment; she wanted to be assured that he was all right.

“I’m deeply touched by her concern,” Martin said.

“I wish you wouldn’t sound like that. This is serious.”

“You humor her too much. You and your mother.”

“I’ll tell her you’re fine,” Emmeline said irritably, getting up to go.

But the next night she appeared again, looking so mortified and defiant and troubled and exhausted that Martin said, “Look, why don’t you just sit a while. I’ll boil you up a cup of tea, and then you can go back. Tell Caroline I’m fine. What harm will it do?”

“Oh, I don’t like it,” Emmeline said, sitting down and closing her eyes but immediately forcing them open.

After that he began to listen for Emmeline’s knock, night after night, not long after eleven o’clock. The visits no longer seemed in any way irregular, but became part of the familiar order of his day. Caroline’s behavior was bizarre, but Caroline’s behavior had always been bizarre, and this recent turn had many pleasant advantages; he and Emmeline could talk, for instance, which was surely a good thing. For he wanted to speak to Emmeline, not about Caroline, but about his always growing plan for the new building. Emmeline listened carefully, but he could see that she was tired and distracted, her days after all were long, her nights with Caroline a continual strain. He could see the strain, printed in two lines between her thick eyebrows: Caroline’s lines.

One night she reported that she had found Caroline asleep in her bed, the night before. Emmeline had slept on the sofa.

“It’s got to stop, you know,” Martin said. “You’re just making it worse by giving in.”

“She’s trying to replace me,” Emmeline said wearily.

A moment later she said, “This is wrong. It’s very wrong, all of it, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“You can do something about it. Say no to Caroline.”

“I’ve never been able to say no to Caroline,” Emmeline said.

Two nights later Emmeline reported with a kind of melancholy exasperation that things had really gone too far this time. For Caroline had suggested, had asked outright, really, that Emmeline move into her apartment, to assure that Martin was all right.

“It’s all wrong,” she said wearily. “It’s gone too far.”

Martin stood up. “It’s gone far enough. I’ll step over and have a few words with Caroline.”

But Emmeline begged him not to. She wouldn’t obey the grotesque suggestion, of course. But she knew Caroline, knew when she was up to something, and preferred to let things take their course. Emmeline sat with one elbow on her knee and her chin on her raised hand, frowning in thought so that her eyebrows touched. Caroline, she said, was somehow trying to replace her: to become Emmeline. Not that she really wanted to become Emmeline — but by moving into Emmeline’s apartment, by suggesting that Emmeline move into hers, she was attempting to accomplish a reversal. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that in some sense she was trying not to be Caroline. And this was a good thing, up to a point, for wasn’t it Caroline’s attempt to overcome some obstacle in herself, to leave the old Caroline behind and become new? But if it was good, in this sense, it was good only up to a point, beyond which the wrongness began; for really the whole business was some kind of magic trick. And beyond that she could feel something else at work, some obscure desire working itself out in Caroline, something she didn’t like at all, for of course there were three people, not just two, and it was as if — she could just barely seem to see it — it was as if Caroline were attempting to undo her marriage and say that she — that Emmeline — but it was precisely here that she could only grope her way.

The next night she pursued it. It did appear that Caroline, having withdrawn into Emmeline’s apartment, was offering Emmeline as a — well, as a wife. This bizarre act, looked at in one way, was an act of generosity. The flaw here was that Caroline was not given to acts of generosity. There was therefore some other motive at work, something that eluded Emmeline; and closing her eyes, she leaned back against the sofa, so that Martin saw very clearly, between her dark eyebrows, the two Caroline-lines, one slightly longer than the other. Martin saw something else: the completed direction of Emmeline’s thought. For if Emmeline was correct in her analysis, then it was clear that Caroline was offering Martin a substitute in the marriage bed — that she was presenting Emmeline as a sexual emissary. And an irritation came over Martin, at Emmeline’s failure to pursue her own thought to its deepest implication, along with gratitude for being spared that unthinkable discussion. But Emmeline was correct about one thing: Caroline was not generous. Why then would she practically thrust her sister into her own marriage bed? And was it possible that the lines of strain between Emmeline’s thick eyebrows were the sign of her secret knowledge, a knowledge she dared not confess to herself?

A night came when there was a second knock on the door. Martin looked at Emmeline, who looked at him anxiously from the sofa across from his chair, but even as he crossed to the door he knew who it had to be. Caroline was wearing a dark dress he had not seen before. She waited to be invited in and then walked in swiftly. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face but a few tendrils had escaped at the back. Over one arm she carried a shawl. Martin closed the door and walked over to her, where she stood beside his chair.

“Sit down, Caroline. You look tired.”

Caroline ignored him and stood looking at Emmeline, on the sofa, who looked back at her. It seemed to Martin that the two sisters were unable to move, that a spell had been cast, a spell as in an old fairy tale — he tried to remember which one it was. Or did all fairy tales have spells? But within the motionlessness something was growing, something was swelling, Martin could feel it, and turning to Caroline he was struck by a faint glow on her cheek, so that the thought came to him that she looked marvelously healthy, as if lying on the sofa with her arm over her eyes had filled her with health, though an instant later it occurred to him that she was sick, that she really ought to be in bed. But it was Emmeline who looked worn and anxious, there on the couch, while Caroline glowed down at her from beside the chair. It struck him that she looked like a heroine on the stage. And immediately he sensed with his skin what was going to happen, what was bound to happen, what could never happen but was about to happen, it was all nonsense and yet he would have to do something about it, he would have to act fast, very fast, and he tried desperately to struggle out of the spell, as one might struggle up from deep water, while from beneath the shawl Caroline removed a gun, a foolish awkward gun, and with her face aflame, the face of a heroine, she pointed it at Emmeline, who remained motionless but drew her eyebrows together as if in pain. Then a dream-shot rang out, and Martin, still struggling out of the fairy-tale spell, saw high up on the far wall a piece of plaster trickling down, while Emmeline sprang up as if startled from sleep, and Caroline, who had fainted away at the loud sound, fell slowly to the rug, where Emmeline was already kneeling, calling quietly for a damp cloth.