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

as if he’d never heard it before. I suppose in a way I was grateful. But sometimes when he’d smile that fond, practiced smile at me, as if to say to all the people, ‘Oh, isn’t she lovely! Isn’t she brilliant,’ I’d be tempted to push those crooked teeth in.” She grinned, then quickly made her face apologetic. She met Mickelsson’s eyes.

“He was a good man,” she said solemnly. She put her hand on Mickelsson’s chest, fingering the graying, curly hair. “He always wanted to be lord of his own house, though. A little like you, with Ellen. There was really nothing you could do about it. I’d fight him, argue with him, but it was impossible to get him to understand. He had a good trick. If I’d say one cross word—not to mention throw a dish at him—Buzzy would sulk for a week.” She smiled, meaning to lighten it, but her eyes showed the old irritation. “He used to do these things to me. He’d say, ‘Jessie, dear, call Dr. Brown for me, will you? Tell him I can’t make my appointment this afternoon at two.’ As if I were his secretary! Or, ‘Jessie, would you mind fixing dinner for three? I’m bringing old Dornsucker home.’ I’d be up to my ears in work, you know—writing some article, or whatever. … I don’t know how he ever got it in his head that in marrying a Ph.D. in sociology he’d bought himself a lifetime cook. I never gave in—at least not completely—but it was strictly one of those no-win situations. He was so sure he was right! Sometimes I’d show him articles in magazines—the fiercest feminist tracts I could find, things any normal wife would laugh at. He’d settle down in his black leather chair and put his horn-rimmed glasses on—he was never what you’d call a scholarly man, though he’d picked up somewhere an incredible amount of information about trees. … So anyway … he’d read the article very slowly and carefully, and when he’d finished he’d lay down the magazine and look at me, and after a while he’d say, ‘Ver-ry queer.’ ‘But what do you think?’ I’d say: ‘I mean, don’t you think there might be something to it? The old where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire principle?’ Buzzy would shake his head, maybe pull at his collar, and after a minute he’d settle himself and nod and smile and say, ‘Ver-ry queer.’ ” She sighed and slid her hand to Mickelsson’s belly. “What the hell. We made a life of it. I loved him terribly, especially when other women fell in love with him—which they did like flies around a honey-pot. Opening up the fronts of their blouses and leaning close, to talk. He never seemed to notice. What a dummy he was! That was part of why I loved him.”

She turned her face away.

“How did he die?” Mickelsson asked.

“Smoked too much, like you,” she said. “Lung cancer.” She sniffed. He hadn’t realized she was on the verge of crying.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Death is death,” she said, suddenly bitter. “It doesn’t matter all that much what the cause is. I’ll tell you this, though. If I were ever to marry again—”

(Alas, poor Mickelsson, pricking up his ears!)

“… it would be to someone wise and gentle and ugly, someone not famous or likely to become so; someone like—” She broke off abruptly, no doubt suddenly conscious of how far that description came from fitting Mickelsson.

“I’m ugly,” he said. “I can work on the rest.”

She laughed as if flooded with relief at his not having been hurt by her carelessness. Her hand moved gently on his resolutely sleeping cock. She said, “You’re crazy. You’re the handsomest man I know.”

He played the words over and over in his mind, baffled. What would make her say such a thing? He felt a little chill of panic.

Silence fell between them. It was Jessie who finally broke it.

“Everyone was wonderful when he died—the Bryants, Blicksteins, people I’d never really known, friends of Buzzy’s. Your colleague Edward Lawler. You know him, don’t you?” She raised her left hand to wipe her eyes.

“One of the best,” Mickelsson said. “I didn’t know Lawler and your husband were friends.”

“Buzzy had a thing for intellectuals. And of course there was no one else here who could speak those African languages he knew. They’d have lunch together and talk Swahili or something. I guess Professor Lawler enjoyed it too. He strikes me as a lonely man.”

“I suppose that’s so,” Mickelsson mused. It surprised him that the thought had never occurred to him, though as she said it now he knew it was true. Never in all the time he’d been here had he seen Edward Lawler at a party; he’d never even heard him mentioned except in connection with his learning. Was he married? A widower? Mickelsson imagined the handsome young man he’d seen in the photograph at Jessica’s, smiling with his lips closed to hide the crooked teeth—the charming, universally admired Buzzy Stark—seated in the faculty cafeteria with immense, short, black-suited Lawler, a man so shy, or so filled with distrust, one could hardly tell which, that he never ventured out without a book between himself and the world, some heavy old tome from which he never for an instant glanced up, even when, in one language or another, he said hello. There was something childlike, even weird, about Lawler’s parading of languages, a sort of boyish showing off. But that was part of the beauty of the man, that unworldliness, innocence like an angel’s. Had he looked up from his book while he and Buzzy talked their Swahili or Waringa? Probably not. Stark would be leaning forward, animated; Lawler would be sitting erect, slightly sideways to the table, mechanically sliding his fork into his potatoes, raising it to his mouth, lowering it again, his eyes on the book in his left hand, occasionally moving the food into the side of his mouth to bring out a few timid words,