Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

“There’s the answer to the energy shortage,” Mickelsson whispered. “We could strap some kind of machine to them, run the lights or something.”

Jessica raised one finger to her lips.

He closed his eyes, thinking if perhaps he only heard and did not see, all would be well. But alas, in his mind they bobbed and weaved as grotesquely as ever. When he opened his eyes again and glanced around, it seemed that in all the audience he alone was unenraptured. He leaned slightly toward Jessica and whispered, “Ah, I get it! It’s Art!”

She pointedly did not hear him, sitting with her head lifted, smiling with appreciation. Christ but she was beautiful! Fake as hell, just now; but beautiful. He thought of speaking further but decided against it. She seemed actually to be enjoying it, though it was she herself who had warned him that it might be awful. Once or twice she nodded and almost laughed with delight. It was a fact, perhaps, that the whole thing was ridiculous, but he’d better not trust his judgment. Though he’d had only one glass of gin, it had been a good-sized glass, and on an empty stomach. He would give the audience the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, music had never been his language. Spiritual insensitivity, no doubt, like Faust’s. Deaf to even the noblest arguments. See, see, where Christ’s bloom streams in the firmament!

He tried to listen to the words of the song, since some of them at least seemed to be English, and after a moment he discovered that it was something old-timey, not Shakespeare, but something vintage:

“Stay me with flagons,Comfort me with apples,for I am sick with love!”

Mickelsson threw a look at Jessica, saw that she was still all attention, then slouched down in his seat.

“With lu-uh-uh-uh-uh-uv!” Kate Swisson sang. Her eyes had that glistening, lidless look embarrassingly common among Swedes.

All around him students, professors, and townspeople listened reverently, as they would listen to the solemn intonings of a Carter, Anderson, or Reagan on TV. Some of the people around him were smiling, little teary glints in their eyes. He sighed. “Don’t make a scene,” he cautioned himself. “Culture is not for everyone.” He let his eyes drift again over the audience and suddenly came alert. The brown-eyed young woman he’d met in the kitchen at Blicksteins’, widow of the murdered chemistry professor, was here at the concert with the dean and his wife, sitting between them like a daughter, the dean’s arm on the top of the seatback behind her, just barely not touching her, nestled against her hair. The young woman sat with her forehead resting on her hand, the elbow on the seat-arm, so that her eyes were hidden, perhaps allowing her to sleep or, conceivably—he smiled at the thought—cry. Then it crept over him that she was crying. “Fool,” he told himself, clenching his fist. He thought of how he’d blindly trod on the Polish girl’s feelings in his graduate medical ethics class.

Kate Swisson sang, smiling frantically,

“The voice of my beloved!Behold he cometh, leaping upon the mountains,skipping upon the hills. …”

Idiotically, the piano made jumping noises in the bass, and all around Mickelsson, people laughed. He craned his neck, making sure it was not that something had happened on the stage, but no, it was the music; all was normal, if any of this hoity-toity foolishness was normal—the Swisson twins grinning happily, both of them swaying like Muppets on TV. He thought, abruptly smiling, of what Donnie Matthews would think of all this, or Tim. “Faggots!” she would say, and that would be that. But at once he backed off. They were not his people either. As soon as the diningroom was finished, he thought, he must have a party. That would be a good time, as long as the party weren’t too close to Christmas. He wasn’t quite up yet to full-fledged Christmas feeling.

Perhaps his son would show up, stay for a while with Mickelsson, talking about the nukes, straightening out old problems. It was surely not unthinkable. What rage he must have felt when they’d smashed his camera, what absolute bafflement, given the trust in life Mickelsson had done his best to instill in him. They would talk, perhaps shout, as when Mickelsson had tried to make him not afraid of horses. He saw the horse rearing, his son flying off, terrified and helplessly enraged. Mark had been seven or eight then. It was at one of those riding stables, snowy mountains in the distance. “For Christ’s sake, it’s only an animal,” Mickelsson had yelled, trying to drive his son to courage by pure fury. “I hate animals,” Mark had yelled back, crying, looking wild-eyed, crawling away on all fours from his father as if he, Mickelsson, were an animal, the most dangerous and stupid of them all. Mickelsson cringed, remembering it. But Mark had indeed overcome his fear—had become a fine rider, secretly proud of himself.

Perhaps it was possible. It would make sense, all things considered. Mark would appear from nowhere, like a deer from the woods or the first midwinter robin. He would be bearded, duffle-bagged, loaded down with books and pamphlets. And what if the boy were to meet Donnie? He felt a blush stinging his face.

He must definitely have a party, show off the house. He began to work out in his mind what date the Friday two weeks before Christmas would fall on. Election Day was next week, the fourth. …

Without warning, the Swissons’ song stopped, and everyone began to clap. Jessica, beside him, clapped with what surely must be genuine pleasure. Britt Swisson rose from the piano to bow—he seemed almost to be laughing—and the clapping grew louder. From here and there throughout the auditorium came whistles and shouts of “Bravo!” It was, by God, an event, Mickelsson thought. The Blicksteins’ young woman was leaning far forward, clapping violently. Perfectly together, like two grinning