Black Evening

The Hidden Laughter

There's a line somewhere in an Eliot poem, "Burnt Norton" I think, about unheard music and leaves being full of children, hidden in excitement, laughing. I have sensed that music, almost seen those children, not in leaves it turns out, in a house, though, where I used to live, except that all this was so long ago that now I think of "I" as "he" and how he turned to see her walking toward him.

She was looking very puzzled. "Something's funny at the house we sold," she told him. "All the neighbors say there are children inside laughing."

What was odd, of course, was that he'd locked it when they'd moved out, and besides, there were few children in that neighborhood, all of them accounted for. "I think I'd better look," she said. She had a key, you see, until the new owners came to take possession, just in case some trouble happened in the meantime, and she loved that house, the one that she'd been married in, so she was going back to take a final look. He didn't think she ought to, but he couldn't talk her out of it. Because he was working on some bookshelves, he just told her that he'd wait to hear about the laughter, which he knew would be imaginary. So she left, and that's the last he ever saw of her.

This happened in the morning. He postponed his lunch and waited for her. Finally he ate. He figured she was visiting some friends in the old neighborhood, and after all, the kind of marriage that they had, they both were free and easy, so he didn't worry. Then the evening came, and it was time for supper. Still she didn't come, and now he did begin to worry. After he made a meal and fed his children, he began to phone, but no one at the old neighborhood had seen her. Not since lunch at least.

She'd checked the house, he was told, and as he had expected, there was nothing. Then she'd visited some friends, again as he'd expected. After lunch she'd gone back to the house, just to see it one last time, and people in the neighborhood had gone on with their business. But yes, wait a minute, yes, her car was still parked in the driveway down there, and she must be with some other friends. When he made more calls, however, he learned that no one else had seen her, and he worried even more. He thought that maybe she'd had some trouble with the car and left it. But she would have phoned him then. That much was certain. He got a sitter for the children and drove over.

The house was much the same as he'd left it. Oh, the grass was somewhat long, the shrubs in need of a little trimming, but except for that and dust on the outside windows, it looked as if they still lived there. As he stood at the curb and surveyed the place, he felt a yearning: for his youth, for the days when he and she were just beginning. Don't mistake. The place was not impressive. Oh, acceptable but nothing more. A single-story ranch house with a lush maple tree on the right, a stunted plum tree on the left, and in the middle an overhang that formed a porch. What they used to call low-income housing when a house was something that ambitious, saving people could afford. A lot of things had changed since then, more money and more complications. That moment as he stood there, watching, brought back fond memories of early days and innocence.

He walked up toward the house, and of course the door was locked. That was exactly like her. She had felt so close to what the house had meant to her that she would never have left it unsecured. He had a key as well, though, and he turned it, going in. There was an echo off the bare walls and the floor. The cabinets that they'd built, the hardwood floors that they'd varnished, these brought back a sequence of quick images, the two of them starting their marriage.

He waited, and he listened. "Honey?" But he really didn't think there'd be an answer. He walked through the living room to the kitchen, looking for some sign that she had been there. But the kitchen was the way it should be, and he continued to the stairs down to the basement. Maybe she had fallen. When he took a breath and opened the door to look down, though, the concrete floor below was silent, and he almost didn't go down, but he knew he should be thorough. So he checked the basement, even looked behind the furnace and the washer and the dryer they had sold with the house. He glanced inside the crawlspace. Then he went upstairs and checked the closets, the two bedrooms, the small bathroom, but he didn't see a sign of her, and now he didn't know what else to do. He almost went back to the front door before he thought of the attic, and for reasons he didn't understand, he felt a chill.

At first he just dismissed it. Then he thought that she would have had no reason to go up there, and he almost left the house. But he'd been determined to be thorough, and he knew that failing to check the attic would soon nag him, so he walked back to the hallway, moving toward the trapdoor. When he stretched, he barely touched the ring, but then he had it, and he pulled, and the fold-out steps came down to reach the floor. He waited just a moment longer. There was something like the coo-coo-coo of pigeons up there, one on top the other, faint and soft and gentle, and it sounded just enough like laughter that he guessed this maybe was what people had been hearing. Not exactly laughter, more like giggling. Coo-coo-coo. And then it stopped.

Of course. Some birds had somehow gotten into the attic, and they'd heard him, going silent. She had gone up there to look, and maybe she was hurt. He didn't think until later that the trapdoor would be open if she had. He knew only that he needed to look, and quickly, so he scrambled up, and there was nothing. Insulation, cobwebs, wiring. But no sign of her, no birds, no laughter, nothing. There was must all through the close stale air, and he checked in the corners, sweating, and he still found no sign of her. He thought too late that he had climbed around up there without first looking for a disturbance in the dust. Now, with the smudge marks where he had knelt among the rafters, he could never tell if someone had preceded him. He listened for the cooing, looking for some explanation. When the sweat became too much for him, he eased back, leaving.

Outside, he was puzzled. He checked with the neighbors again. There'd been a man she talked to. Someone now remembered that. But everyone was certain that she'd been alone when she'd returned to the house. He walked back, looking. Then he asked if he could use a neighbor's phone. He called other friends. He called the hospital and on an impulse the police. No help, no sign of her, and since there was no evidence of something wrong, he learned that no policemen would be coming out. "Just give her time. She'll be back."

He left the neighbors, returning to the house. But this time when he studied it, the dusk now gray around it, he was conscious of a sound, no, something less than that, something on the other side of hearing, more a presence than a sound, coming from the house. He took a step. The thing subsided. A moment later, it rose again, closer, stronger. He could almost touch it, hear it. He continued toward the house. Music, unseen, unheard, faint and tinkling, merry, far away, yet close. When he reached the door, he recognized the coo-coo-coo, and yes, he did hear laughter, children's laughter, but he burst in, and the house was dark, and there was no one. The laughter stopped, although it hadn't really been there. It was all in his imagination.

He has heard it many times since then, however, and he comes back often just to stand and wait and let it happen, so much so that now he owns the place again. He lives there with his children, who don't remember her. The years have led them forward. Flashes now and then, but little recollection, and he asks them, but they do not hear the laughter.

And the answer? The police at first suspected that he killed her, but they found no body, and he managed to convince them of his innocence. He had seldom argued with her, had always seemed to like her. There was no other woman and no insurance as a motive. Still he often wonders. With this tendency of his to be both "I" and "he," in past and present, he could maybe have a double personality. He could have killed her, and as someone else, he never would have known about it, although he can't find a reason he would have.

All right, she was kidnapped. But there was never a ransom note, and his mind can't sustain the thought of what a kidnapper who left no note would do to her. Imagining his wife alone and trembling, he continues to hope that one day she'll come back to him. He even hopes, although this would normally be painful, that she left him, that the changes they'd been going through weren't half so good as when they first had started, that the man whom someone might have seen had been a secret friend who led her to a better life.

He wishes, and he grieves and, in his constant emptiness, imagines that she actually is with him, all around him, that she never went away but only back.

To where? he asks himself and answers – to her youth, her innocence.

His theory is fantastic, although consoling: that in every person's life there is a place that one can fall through, even by choice slip through, that she lives now with the laughter in a better time and space; and sometimes he can hear a woman in among the children's laughter, playing games perhaps or just enjoying, bringing home to him those words from Eliot again. What might have been. What has been. My words echo with the laughter.

Four stories in ten years. I'm not prolific. Do authors who are prolific have a secret weapon, something that increases their output – a special typewriter, for example? The following story, a mix of darkness and humor, portrays the bleak side of author envy. It's longer than my previous stories and, with a few exceptions, establishes a trend – from this point on, you'll be reading mostly novellas. Many of the cultural references in this piece, Truman Capote and Johnny Carson, for example, are now out of date, but when I attempted to substitute current equivalents, the story didn't work. At first puzzled, I finally realized why Truman and Johnny had to stay. This story belongs in 1983, the year it was published. After all, if it were current, it would have to be about a word processor.