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

saw Gail Edelman, in an aisle seat to his left, lean forward with shining eyes, clapping and nodding. She was dressed in light blue, like a highschool girl, and had on rouge and lipstick. Alan Blassenheim and his friends, then some older people, stood up and clapped with their hands in front of their faces. He saw that the Rogerses, Garrets, and Tillsons were standing, then the Blicksteins and the girl. Jessica got to her feet, brushing the seat of her skirt as she rose. Mickelsson rose too. “Brav-o!” Jessica’s eyes were shiny, glinting. “Brav-o!” Mickelsson shouted, cupping his mouth, then clapped harder, cupping his hands to get maximum noise.

In the lobby, afterward, pressed against the wall, out of the crowd’s way, Tom Garret said, “I hear you’re the Cupid behind the Great Romance.”

“Me?” Mickelsson said gruffly, “What romance?”

Garret pointed, the ceiling lights blanking out his glasses as he did so, and when Mickelsson turned to look he saw his student Alan Blassenheim with his arm around the waist of the class nihilist—as he’d thought her once—Brenda Winburn. Blassenheim was laughing, holding forth to those around him, gesturing with his free right hand and arm. He looked grown-up tonight; successful young lawyer or politician. Brenda’s eyes were hooded, her expression unreadable, yet there could be no denying that her own right arm was clinging to Blassenheim’s waist as if for dear life, and when suddenly she smiled at him, looking at his forehead, one saw that there was definitely something going on. If the smile made her beautiful—changed her completely—no one was quicker to notice than Blassenheim, pulling his chin back, grinning and widening his dark brown eyes as if Brenda Winburn were his personal creation and now, watching her, he were amazed at how he’d outdone himself.

Mickelsson said, “They’re in my class together, if that’s what you mean.”

“The way I hear it,” Garret said, his smile going up into both plump cheeks, “you practically commanded the thing. Isn’t that the truth, now?” Again his glasses became silver blanks.

Mickelsson glanced at Jessica, who smiled, reserved. Damn stiff-necked bitch, he thought. In her shadow, Mabel Garret, ancient and elfin in her drab black dress, was looking at Mickelsson with an expression so clouded and unfriendly that a shiver ran up his back. He glanced at Garret. “I guess I don’t know what you mean.”

“You old yenta,” Garret said, smiling on and clamping a hand on his arm. Then he too saw his wife’s expression, and his smile went as blank as his glasses. Michael Nugent’s face emerged from among the others, staring hard at Mickelsson, as if harboring some grudge. His face was so white it looked as if he’d powdered it. Belatedly, Mickelsson raised his hand to wave, but Nugent had disappeared, fading like a fugitive back into the press.

“Well,” Jessica began, unaware of whatever it was that was going on with the Garrets—but that moment Tillson broke in on them. He had his short, big-bosomed wife in tow, her face triangular, sad-eyed, long-suffering, at the moment bravely smiling. Tillson firmly gripped Mickelsson’s hand, his silver-bearded head thrown forward, his grin and eyebrows twitching. “Wonderful concert!” he piped, shaking Mickelsson’s hand as if Mickelsson were responsible. Then, as if to cover his exaggerated friendliness toward Mickelsson, he reached in past him to shake Phil Bryant’s hand. “Wonderful concert!” he cried, and gave his head a sharp sideways snap. Bryant smiled vaguely. “Interesting poem, that last,” he said, but Tillson didn’t hear, swinging his face around toward Jessica and crying, “Shall we try to catch the Swissons for a drink?”

“I don’t know,” Jessica said. She gave Mickelsson a look, then turned quickly back to Tillson: “Yes, let’s!”

Mabel Garret said, with her usual madwoman abruptness, “We have to go home. Tom can meet you if he wants to.” She gave a quick, shy smile. “All those kids, you know.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Tillson said—the first thing she’d said to any of them—“I’m so sorry!” She pressed her hand to her heart. “I’d hoped—” Tillson leaned in, nodding urgent agreement.

Mabel ignored them, staring hard at Mickelsson. “Peter,” she said, “don’t go home tonight. Stay with someone in town.”

“What?” Jessica said.

Mickelsson waited. Something had happened inside his ears; perhaps he was hearing the roar of his own blood.

“I have this feeling,” Mabel said.

“What do you mean?” He grinned but raised his fist to his chest, pressing in, having a little difficulty with his breathing.

“I don’t know.” She suddenly laughed and raised her hand to her eyes.

Tom Garret leaned into the group to look up at Mickelsson. “Her hunches are sometimes uncanny, Pete.”

When Mickelsson looked back at Mabel, she was already turning, fixing the shoulder-strap of her large, lunky purse and moving off quickly, fleeing her friends’ attention.

“Are you all right, Peter?” Jessica asked.

“I just think I’ll get a drink of water,” he said.

Two hours later, after food, martinis, and several cups of coffee at the Firehouse Five—the Swissons saying no more than two words to anybody there, even Edie Bryant—and after dropping off Jessica with a kiss on the cheek (“Thanks, Peter!” “No, no, thank you,” both of them feeling, it seemed to him, like traitors, though he couldn’t make out even now where it was that the evening had gone awry)—Mickelsson, driving up the winding mountain road, just escaped being slammed into a ditch by a dark, expensive-looking car. For all the speed with which the car came at him—barrelling straight down the middle of the road, headlights undimmed, blindingly lighting up the snowfilled night—for one violent, ephemeral instant as the two cars slid crazily around each other, nearly overturning, Mickelsson saw in the beams of his headlights the face of the driver who’d nearly killed him. Fists clenched at the top of the steeringwheel, her ashen face thrown forward toward the windshield, almost striking it, wide-eyed and white in her black overcoat, sat the large, pleasant woman who’d sold him his house, “the doc.”

He stopped the Jeep as soon as he was able; but