Voices in the Night

by Steven Millhauser

  Monica said nothing; I could feel her opposition hardening in her like a muscle. I wasn’t unaware that I was behaving oddly, like a man in the grip of an obsession. At the same time, what I was doing felt entirely natural and necessary. Some people added windows to brighten their homes—I bought mirrors. Was it such a bad thing? I kept seeing them at yard sales, leaning against rickety tables piled with pink dishes, or hanging in hallways and bedrooms at estate sales at the fancy end of town. I added a second one to the living room, a third to the upstairs bath. In the front hall, on the back of the front door, I hung a mirror framed in a dark wood that matched the color of the umbrella stand. When I passed by my mirrors, when I caught even a glimpse of myself as I walked into a room, I felt a surge of well-being. What was the harm? Now and then Monica tried to be playful about it all. “What?” she would say. “Only one mirror on the landing?” Then her expression would change as she saw me sinking into thought. Once she said, “You know, sometimes I think you like me better there”—she pointed to a mirror—“than here”—she pointed to herself. She said it teasingly, with a little laugh, but in her look was an anxious question. As if to prove her wrong, I turned my full attention to her. Before me I saw a woman with a worried forehead and unhappy eyes. I imagined her gazing out at me from all the mirrors of my house, with eyes serene and full of hope; and an impatience came over me as I looked at her dark brown sweater, at the hand nervously smoothing her dark green skirt, at the lines of tension in her mouth.

  In order to demonstrate to Monica that all was well between us, that nothing had changed, that I was no slave to mirrors, I proposed a Saturday picnic. We packed a lunch in a basket and took a long drive out to the lake. Monica had put on a big-brimmed straw hat I had never seen before, and a new light-green blouse with a little shimmer in it; in the car she took off her hat and placed it on her lap as she sat back with half-closed eyes and let the sunlight ripple over her face. A tiny green jewel sparkled on her earlobe. At the picnic grounds we sat at one of the sunny-and-shady tables scattered under the high pines that grew at the edge of a small beach. It was a hot, drowsy day; the smoke of grills rose into the branches; a man stood with one foot on his picnic-table bench, an arm resting on his thigh as he held a can of beer and stared out at the beach and the water; kids ran among the tables; on the beach, three boys in knee-length bathing trunks were playing catch with enormous baseball gloves and a lime-green tennis ball; a plump mother and her gaunt teenage son were hitting a volleyball back and forth; young women in bikinis and men with white hair on their chests strolled on the sand; in the water, a few people were splashing and laughing; a black dog with tall ears was swimming toward shore with a wet stick in its mouth; farther out, you could see canoes moving and oars lifting with sun-flashes of spray; and when I turned to Monica I saw the whole afternoon flowing into her face and eyes. After the picnic we walked along a trail that led partway around the lake. Here and there, on narrow strips of sand at the lake’s edge, people lay on their backs on towels in the sun. We made our way down to the shore, through prickly bushes; on the sand Monica pulled off her sandals, and lifting up her long skirt she stepped into the water and threw back her head to take in the sun with closed eyes. At that moment it seemed to me that everything was possible for Monica and me; and going up to her I said, “I’ve never seen you like this!” With her eyes still closed she said, “I’m not myself today!” She began to laugh. Then I began to laugh, because of what we had both said, and because of her laughter and the sun and the sky and the lake.

  On the ride home she fell asleep with her head against my shoulder. The long outing had tired me, too, though not in the same way. In the course of the afternoon an uneasiness had begun to creep into me. The glare of the sun on the water hurt my eyes; the heat pressed down on me; there was a slowness in things, a sluggishness; Monica seemed to walk with more effort, as if the air were a hot heaviness she was pushing her way through. The two of us, she in her straw hat and I in my cargo shorts, seemed to me actors playing the parts of ordinary people, enjoying a day at the lake. In fact I was a man weighed down with disappointment, a man for whom things had not worked out the way he had once imagined, a quiet man, cautious in his life, timid when you came right down to it, though content enough to drift along through the little rituals of his day. And Monica? I glanced over at her. The back of her hand lay on her leg. The four fingers were leaning to one side, the thumb hung in front of them—and something about those fingers and that thumb seemed to me the shape of despair.

  But when I opened my front door and stepped into the hall behind Monica, then the good feeling returned. In the mirror we stood there, she in her shimmering green blouse and I with a glow of sunburn on my face. Deep in the shine of the polished glass, her hand rose in a graceful arc to remove her straw hat.

  In the living room I snatched glimpses of her in both mirrors as she walked buoyantly toward the kitchen. In the sunny kitchen her cheerful reflection picked up a pitcher of water that caught the light. I looked at the second mirror, where she began to raise her glass of shining water, paused suddenly, and opened her mouth in a lusty yawn. “I’d like to lie down,” Monica said. I turned my head and saw her tight lips and tired eyelids. I followed her as she made her way slowly up the stairs and past the new mirror on the landing. For a moment her hair flamed at me from the glass. At the top of the stairs she walked sternly and without a glance past the oval mirror and into the bedroom, where I watched her bright reflection lie down on the bed and close her eyes. I too was tired, I was more than tired, but the sheer pleasure of being home filled me with a restless energy that drove me to stride through all the rooms of the house. From time to time I stopped before a polished mirror to turn my head this way and that. It was as if my house, with its many mirrors, drew all the old heaviness and weariness from my body; and in a sudden burst of inspiration I took out the bottle of Miracle Polish, which was still two thirds full, and went down to the cellar, where I applied it to a new mirror that had been leaning against the side of the washing machine, waiting for me to decide where to hang it.

  Later that evening, as we sat in the living room, Monica still seemed tired, and a little moody. I had led her to the couch and tried to position her so that she could see her good-humored reflection, but she refused to look at herself. I could feel resistance coming out of her like the push of a hand. In the mirror I admired a shoulder of her blouse. Then I glanced over at the other Monica, the one sitting stiffly and very quietly on the couch. I had the sense of a sky darkening before a storm. “Can’t,” I thought I heard her say, so softly that I wondered if she had spoken at all; or perhaps she had said “Can.”

  “What did you—” I breathed out, barely able to hear my own words.

  “I can’t,” she said, and now there was no mistaking it. “Such a perfect day. And now—this.” She raised her arm in a weary sweeping motion that seemed to include the entire room, the entire universe. In the mirror her reflection playfully swept out her arm. “I can’t. I tried, but I can’t. I can’t. You’ll have to—you’ll have to choose.”

  “Choose?”

  Her answer was so hushed that it seemed barely more than an exhalation of air. “Between me and—her.”

  “You mean…her?”

  “I hate her,” she whispered, and burst into tears. She immediately stopped, took a deep breath, and burst into tears again. “You don’t look at me,” she said. “But that’s not—” I said. “I have to go,” she said, and stood up. She was no longer crying. She took another deep breath and rubbed her nostrils with the back of a bent finger. She reached into a pocket of her skirt and pulled out a tissue that crumbled into fuzz. “Here,” I said, holding out my handkerchief. She hesitated, took it from me, and dabbed at her nostrils. She handed back the handkerchief. She looked at me and turned to leave. “Don’t,” I said. “Me or her,” she whispered, and was out the door.

  During the next week I flung myself into my work, which was just complicated eno
ugh to require my full attention, without interesting me in the least. At 5:00 I came directly home, where I felt soothed in every room. But I was no child, no naïve self-deceiver intent on evading a predicament. I wanted to understand things, I wanted to make up my mind. From the beginning there had been a deep kinship between Monica and me. She was wary, trained to expect little of life, grateful for small pleasures, on her guard against promises, accustomed to making the best of things, in the habit of both wanting and not daring to want something more. Now Miracle Polish had come along, with its air of swagger and its taunting little whisper. Why not? it seemed to say. Why on earth not? But the mirrors that strengthened me, that filled me with new life, made Monica bristle. Did she feel that I preferred a false version of her, a glittering version, to the flesh-and-blood Monica with her Band-Aids and big knees and her burden of sorrows? What drew me was exactly the opposite. In the shining mirrors I saw the true Monica, the hidden Monica, the Monica buried beneath years of discouragement. Far from escaping into a world of polished illusions, I was able to see, in the depths of those mirrors, the world no longer darkened by diminishing hopes and fading dreams. There, all was clear, all was possible. Monica, I understood perfectly, would never see things as I did. When she looked in the mirrors, she saw only a place that kept pulling me away from her, and in that place a rival of whom she was desperately jealous.

  I felt myself moving slowly in the direction of a dangerous decision I did not wish to make, like someone swerving on an icy road toward an embankment.

  It wasn’t until another week had passed that I knew what I was going to do. Summer was in its fullness; on front porches, neighbors fanned themselves with folded newspapers; sprinklers sent arcs of spray onto patches of lawn and strips of driveway, which shone in the sun like black licorice; at the top of a ladder, a man in a baseball cap moved a paintbrush lazily back and forth. It was Saturday afternoon. I had called Monica that morning and told her I had something important to show her. She was to meet me on the front porch. We sat there drinking lemonade, like an old married couple, watching the kids passing on bicycles, a squirrel scampering along a telephone wire. A robin was pecking furiously at the roadside grass. After a while I said, “Let’s go inside.” She looked at me then, as if she were about to ask a question. “If that’s what you want,” she finally said, and turned both hands palm up.

  When we stepped into the front hall, Monica stopped. She stopped so abruptly that it was as if someone had put a heavy hand on her shoulder. I watched her stare at the place where the mirror had hung. She looked at me, and looked again at the wall. Then she turned and looked at the back of the front door. Its dark panels shone dully under the hall light. Monica reached out and touched her fingers to my arm.

  I took her through every room of the house, stopping before familiar walls. In the living room a photograph of my parents looked out at us from the wall where one mirror had hung. The other place was bare except for two small holes in the faded wallpaper, with its pattern of tall vases filled with pale flowers. In the kitchen a new poster showed many kinds of tea. In place of the oval mirror in the upstairs hall, there was a framed painting of an old mill beside a brown pond with two ducks. New bathroom cabinets with beveled-edge mirrors hung over the upstairs and downstairs sinks. I could see the gratitude rushing into Monica’s cheeks. When the tour was over, I led her to the drawer in the hutch and removed the brown bottle. In the kitchen she watched me pour the thick greenish-white liquid into the sink. I washed out the empty bottle and dropped it into the garbage pail next to the stove. She turned to me and said, “This is the most wonderful gift that you—”

  “We’re not done yet,” I said, with a touch of excitement in my voice, and led her through the kitchen door and down the four wooden steps into the backyard.

  Against the back of the house all the mirrors stood lined up, slanted at different angles. There it was, the oval mirror from the upstairs hall, leaning over a cellar window. There they were, the two front-hall mirrors, the kitchen mirrors in their wooden frames, the shield-shaped mirror from the cellar, the living room mirrors, the bedroom mirrors, the full-length mirror from the TV room, a pair of guest-room mirrors, the upstairs-bathroom mirror removed from its cabinet, the downstairs-bathroom mirror, the mirror from the landing, and other mirrors that I had bought and polished and stored in closets, ready to be hung: square mirrors and round mirrors, swivel mirrors on wooden stands, a mirror shaped like a four-leaf clover. In the bright sun the polished mirrors gleamed like jewels.

  “Here they are!” I said, throwing out my hand. I began walking along in front of them, from one end to the other. As I passed from mirror to mirror slanted against the house, I could see different parts of me: my shoes and pant cuffs, my belt and the bottom of my shirt, my sudden whole shape in the tall mirror, my swinging hand. Now and then I caught pieces of Monica’s rival, standing back on the green, green grass. “And now,” I said, as if I were addressing a crowd—and I paused for dramatic effect. I glanced at Monica, who stood there with a look that was difficult to fathom, a worried look, it seemed to me, and I wanted to assure her that there was nothing to worry about, I was doing it all for her, everything would soon be fine. I bent over behind a broad mirror at the end of the row and withdrew a hammer. And raising the hammer high, I swung it against the glass. Then I walked back along that row of mirrors, swinging the hammer and sending bright spikes of glass into the summer air. “There!” I cried, and smashed another. “See!” I shouted. I swung, I smashed. Lines of wetness ran along my face. Bits of mirror clung to my shirt.

  It was over faster than I’d thought possible. All along the back of the house, broken mirror-glass lay glittering on the grass. Here and there an empty frame showed triangles of glass still clinging to the wood. I looked at the hammer in my hand. Suddenly I threw it across the yard, hurled it high into the row of spruces at the back. I could hear the hammer falling slowly through the needly branches.

  “There!” I said to Monica. I made a wiping gesture with both hands, the way you do when you’re done with something. Then I began walking up and down in front of her. A terrible excitement burned in me. I could feel my blood beating in my neck. I imagined it bursting through the skin in brilliant gushes of red. “She’s gone! That’s what you wanted! Isn’t it? Isn’t it? All gone! Bye bye! Are you happy now? Are you?” I stopped in front of her. “Are you? Are you?” I bent close. “Are you? Are you? Are you?” I bent closer still. I bent so close that I couldn’t see her anymore. “Are you? Are you? Are you? Are you? Are you?”

  Monica did the only thing she could do: she fled. But first she stood there as if she were about to speak. She stared at me with the look of a woman who has been struck repeatedly across the face. There was hurt in that look, and tiredness, and a sort of pained tenderness. And along with it all came a quiet sureness, as of someone who has made up her mind. Then she turned and walked away.

  There is a restlessness so terrible that you can no longer bear to sit still in your house. You walk from room to room like someone visiting a deserted town. Every day I mourned for my mirrors with their gleam of Miracle Polish. Where they’d once hung I saw only patterns in wallpaper, framed paintings, door panels, lines of dust. One day I drove out to the mall and came home with an oval mirror in a plain dark frame, which I hung in the upstairs hall; I used it strictly for checking my suit jacket. Once, when the doorbell rang, I rushed downstairs to the front door, but it was only a boy with a jar collecting money for a new scout troop. I could feel grayness sifting down on me like dust. A bottle of Miracle Polish—was it so much to ask? One of these days the stranger is bound to come again. He’ll walk toward my house with his heavy case tugging him to one side. In my living room he’ll snap open the clasps and show me the brown bottles, row on row. Mournfully he’ll tell me that it’s my lucky day. In a voice that is calm, but decisive and self-assured, I’ll tell him that I want every bottle, every last one. When I close my eyes, I can see the look of suspicion on
his face, along with a touch of slyness, a shadow of contempt, and the beginnings of unbearable hope.

  PHANTOMS

  The Phenomenon

  The phantoms of our town do not, as some think, appear only in the dark. Often we come upon them in full sunlight, when shadows lie sharp on the lawns and streets. The encounters take place for very short periods, ranging from two or three seconds to perhaps half a minute, though longer episodes are sometimes reported. So many of us have seen them that it’s uncommon to meet someone who has not; of this minority, only a small number deny that phantoms exist. Sometimes an encounter occurs more than once in the course of a single day; sometimes six months pass, or a year. The phantoms, which some call Presences, are not easy to distinguish from ordinary citizens: they are not translucent, or smoke-like, or hazy, they do not ripple like heat waves, nor are they in any way unusual in figure or dress. Indeed they are so much like us that it sometimes happens we mistake them for someone we know. Such errors are rare, and never last for more than a moment. They themselves appear to be uneasy during an encounter and swiftly withdraw. They always look at us before turning away. They never speak. They are wary, elusive, secretive, haughty, unfriendly, remote.