The Uncanny Reader (31 page)

The husband listened, paused in his pistachio-chewing.

“Maybe.”

“Though we haven't heard a baby crying, ever. “

The wife sounded wistful. Her own babies had grown and departed the house at 88 East Crescent Drive, years ago.

The wife was thinking
They are dining by candlelight probably. Their faces reflected in a glass-topped wrought-iron table on a flagstone terrace like ours.

If the
husband-through-the-trees
brushed the hand of the
wife-through-the-trees
, the wife could not observe. If the
wife-through-the-trees
paused to take up the baby in her arms, to kiss him on his little snub nose, the wife could not observe.

“A baby
would cry
. So maybe it isn't a baby.”

Yet, the soft cooing sound persisted. And adult voices, and throaty laughter. The husband and the wife listened acutely, sitting very still on their terrace.

It was their custom now to eat outside. In the past, the husband had not liked to eat outside which he'd thought too
picnicky.

The wife did not mind the extra effort of carrying things from the kitchen and back again. The wife quite enjoyed the romance of mealtimes on the rear terrace, in the company, at a little distance, of their mysterious
neighbors-through-the-trees
.

For often, since his retirement, the husband was very quiet. The wife felt lonely even as she told herself
Don't be ridiculous! You are not lonely.

It was strange that, in the past, they'd had no particular awareness of these neighbors. Possibly, a new family had moved into the house on West Crescent Drive?

Other, nearer neighbors, who lived on East Crescent Drive, were more visible of course and more annoying, at times; there were frequently large summer lawn parties, children's birthday parties with balloons tied to mailboxes, political fund-raisers involving vehicles parked on both sides of the narrow road. But over all, Crescent Lake Farms was a quiet place. In the Crescent Lake Farms homeowners' manual
disturbing the peace and privacy of our neighbors
was expressly forbidden.

And the properties were large: a minimum of three acres. So your neighbors weren't inescapable, as in an urban setting.

Now the wife recalled: at Easter, on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon when their daughter Ellen had come to visit with her two small children, and they were walking in the back lawn, the wife had heard an unusual sound through the thicket of trees—a woman's voice, it might have been, so melodic as to seem like music, but indistinct, and soon fading. At the time she hadn't known what it was, assumed it was coming from their neighbors at 86 East Crescent Drive, and had paid no particular attention to it.

The husband hadn't noticed this female voice, at the time. Their daughter, distracted by her young children, hadn't noticed.

Ellen said, “This is a lovely house. I have such good memories of this house. It's a shame, you will probably be selling it…”

Selling it? The wife reacted with dismay, and did not glance at the husband, knowing that the husband would be upset by their daughter's careless remark.

“… I mean, since it's so large. And it must be so expensive to maintain especially in the winter…”

The husband had walked stiffly on, headed for the edge of the property, where there was a gate, rarely used, that opened onto a no-man's-land—a densely wooded area that belonged not to any private landowner but to Hecate Township.

The wife was embarrassed by the husband's rudeness. But she, too, was offended by the question and did not want to think that their other children were speculating about their future.

The wife remained with their daughter and lively grandchildren, talking of other things.

Now, the wife recalled that awkward episode. And the way their daughter had lifted one of the children into her arms, with such familiarity, and such confidence, and joy. Listening to the neighbors' cooing baby weeks later, she was feeling a pang of loss.

Inwardly protesting to her daughter
But we are so happy here! Whyever would we want to move?

*   *   *

“What is
that
?”—the husband was baffled.

The wife listened: a soft blunted sound as of wood striking wood, she was sure she'd never heard before.

It was a morning in mid-June. The wife and the husband were outside on the deck reading the Sunday newspaper that fluttered in the breeze. A part of the paper had gotten loose from the husband's grasp and had been blown into shrubbery close by, which the wife would retrieve.

“Is it coming from—
over there
?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Some sort of—repair work? A kind of hammer striking wood?”

“Not a hammer. I don't think so.”

They listened. Again the blunted sound came, a near-inaudible
crack.

They were staring at the trees. Pine trees, deciduous trees whose names they didn't know—beech? Oak? Beyond their six-foot wire fence was a dense jungle of bushes, scrub trees, mature trees. However deep the woods was, whether a quarter mile or less, it was as opaque to their eyes by day as by night.

The wife had to suppose that not one but two fences separated their property from that of the
neighbors-through-the-trees
. For the other property would be fenced-off as well.

In the land owned by Hecate Township there was a median strip kept mowed in the summer, probably no more than fifty feet across, where power lines had been installed.

The husband and the wife had never walked along the median. The wife had a vague recollection of stubbled weeds, marshy soil. Nothing like the fastidiously tended suburban lawns of Merion bluegrass, the preferred grass for Crescent Lake Farms.

Years ago when they'd walked more frequently, often hand-in-hand, they'd walked in parks, or along hiking trails; they had never explored the area behind their house which did not seem hospitable to strolling couples.

The wife assumed that there were signs posted in the woods behind their house, as elsewhere in Crescent Lake Farms, forbidding
trespassing, hunting with gun or bow.

White-tailed Virginia deer dwelt in the woods of Crescent Lake Farms. Occasionally, no matter how vigilant homeowners were, no matter how high their fences, deer would manage to slip through, to ravage gardens in the night.

It had happened, the wife's roses had been decimated, years before. Her carefully tended little vegetable garden, even her potted geraniums. But the husband had had the fence repaired, and no deer had set foot on the property since.

Crack!
—a light glancing sound.

It was utterly baffling, what this sound might be. At once sharp, yet muffled. A
playful
sort of sound, the wife thought.

The husband had ceased reading the newspaper. The politics of the day infuriated him: even when power lay with the politicians he supported, and the opposition appeared to be failing, so much in the political sphere seemed to him vile, vulgar, meretricious, inane—he threatened that he wouldn't be voting at all.

The husband, whose professional life had been involved with the most complex algorithms and equations, knew to distrust the sort of crude polls you saw reported in the media, and “statistical studies.” The husband made the droll joke that
roughly forty percent
of what was printed in the
New York Times
in such quasi-scientific or economic terms was fabricated by researchers.

“Only naïve people take polls seriously. The publication of a poll is a stratagem of
persuasion
.”

After degrees from Harvard the husband had begun his career at a mathematical research center in Cambridge, Mass. Then, he'd been recruited by a medical science research center in White Plains, New York. Then, by a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Princeton, New Jersey, where he'd developed algorithms brilliantly forecasting consumer purchases. By the time he'd moved to Investcorp International, Inc., his work in mathematical computation was so complex, the wife had virtually no knowledge of what her husband did, or how it was related to the
actual world
.

“What is it that Dad
does
?”—so the children would ask one by one.

The wife recalled when her young husband had talked excitedly of his work to anyone who would listen. But in recent years, never.

She no longer made inquiries. Much of his life was separate from hers as if each was on an ice floe, drifting in the same direction and yet drifting inevitably apart.

“Something hitting against something else—that's what we're hearing. It sounds like wood.”

“Croquet?”

The husband was impressed, the wife had solved the mystery.

“Yes of course! Such a civilized lawn game—
croquet.
”

They did not mind the glancing
crack
of the mallet against the croquet ball, for the sound was diminished at a distance, like their neighbors' voices and laughter.

“I've never played croquet, have you?”

“Oh, long ago. At my grandparents' house on Nantucket.”

The wife spoke wistfully. The husband spoke nostalgically.

“D'you think they have guests? They're playing croquet with guests?”

They listened. It was impossible to tell from the near-inaudible murmuring voices.

The wife half-closed her eyes. In twilight figures clothed elegantly in white were gracefully wielding mallets, striking painted wooden balls and driving them forward in the grass beneath little wire hoops.

The woman or the women wore long skirts. The men, white coats and trousers.

“I'd like to play croquet again. Would you?”

“Yes. I'd love to play croquet with you.”

They smiled at each other. The wife felt an impulse to take up her husband's hand and kiss it.

On the backs of her husband's hands, bruises the hue of grapes. His blood was thin: he bled easily, beneath his skin. This was to correct for high blood pressure.

“We could order a set online, maybe. I doubt there are croquet sets for sale in town.”

“Yes. Let's!”

They realized that the croquet game through-the-trees must have ended, when they'd been talking. It was past dark by now: fully night.

The trees beyond their property were a solid block of darkness like a gigantic mouth.

High overhead, a blurred moon that cast a blurred light.

*   *   *

“Darling? Come here.”

The wife called excitedly to the husband, who was working in his
home office
on the first floor facing the front of the house.

Though there was no longer an office at Investcorp International, Inc., yet the husband's office at home remained his
home office.

“Hurry, darling! Please.”

It was midday. Strains of music were penetrating the trees at the rear of their property, sweetly delicate, captivating. At first, the wife had assumed that the exquisite sound was the singing of an unusual species of bird but when she'd listened closely, and determined that the sound was coming through the trees, she realized that this was no bird.

“I think someone is playing the violin over there. I mean—it isn't a recording or a radio, it's an actual person.”

The husband had come outside, frowning. He seemed irritable at having been interrupted at his desk yet he leaned over the railing, listening.

“Maybe a child? Practicing his lesson?”

The husband frowned, cocking his head.

“I'm not sure that I hear anything. I think you're imagining a
violin.
”

They listened, intently. There came, from the roadway in front of the house, a sudden blaring of rock music: from one of the damned tradesmen's vans, or delivery vans, so prevalent in the neighborhood.

“I'm sure that I heard—something.… It wasn't ordinary music but something special.”

The wife knew: it was household protocol never to interrupt her husband when he was working in his
home office
. The children had never dared.

Apologetically the wife said she might have been mistaken. She was sorry to have called the husband and she knew that if she admitted her error at once, the husband would not be angry with her.

He was saying, petulantly, “I didn't hear a thing. Certainly not any
violin
.”

The husband returned to the house. The wife continued to listen, in a trance of expectation.

But she heard no more “violin” notes. Maybe the sound had been a bird's song after all.

Or blood pulsing in her ears. Beating in her heart.

That was what she'd been hearing—was it?

*   *   *

They had been married for nearly forty years. Not an hour, had they ceased to be married in forty years.

The husband had been “unfaithful” to the wife—probably. On those business trips. On company “retreats” to Palm Beach, Key West, Bermuda and St. Bart's, Costa Rica and Mexico, to which wives had not been invited.

But these trips were of the past. The last one had been several years ago. The wife had ceased to think of these humiliations as one ceases to think of an illness, painful but not lethal, of long-ago.

The husband would be a domestic animal now, confined to the household and to the wife. And to his online life, in his
home office.

The wife had not been unfaithful to the husband. Not with any man—any individual.

In her heart. In the mysterious and uncharitable way of the heart.

But I love him. That will never change.

*   *   *

“Listen! A dog.”

Not often but from time to time, when the
neighbors-through-the-trees
appeared to be in their backyard, or on their deck, adults and a child, or children, there came the sound of a dog barking—not protracted, not disturbing, just two or three short barks, then silence.