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

not as if conversing with Stark but as if reading aloud. It was his loneliness, perhaps, that made him seem so distant, so medieval, in fact so generally grieved and dismayed by everything around him, insofar as he saw it at all.

“So Lawler came to see you,” Mickelsson said.

“More than that,” she said. “He took care of everything—the burial plot, casket, funeral, the works.” She thought a moment, or remembered. “I didn’t want anything to do with it, it’s always seemed to me so pagan, and anyway I was a wreck.” She rolled her head on the pillow. “Boy! But somebody has to do those things, and Edward understood how I felt without my mentioning it. He was really good at it. The funeral was beautiful, simple and … elegant. Buzzy would have liked it. He always liked elegance—fancy cars and clothes. … I guess Edward knew that. Maybe it was one of the things they had in common.”

“Strange, isn’t it,” Mickelsson said, “the friendships that spring up. Lawler, this positively frightening intellect, and your husband—not that I mean to say—”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve thought about that too. It makes me feel rotten that I was never able to satisfy him that way. But I suspect he didn’t really like too much brain in a woman. At any rate, I know he was always surprised when he ran into it. Maybe I wasn’t as smart as I thought. I may have bored him, tagging along like a kid sister, my eyes glazing over when he talked about trees—the way his glazed over when I talked about shopping in Entebbe or witchcraft in modern Nigeria. …”

Something came awake in him. “You knew the languages too, then?”

“Of course,” she said. She smiled and gave a suggestion of a lying-down shrug. “I’m a Jew!” That last was too hard for him. On second thought, it was all too hard for him.

“Are you crazy?” he said. She didn’t seem to notice that he was mimicking her. He rose up on his elbow, feeling sorrow partly at what Buzzy Stark had failed to see, partly at his own ignorance of African languages. He bent over her slowly and kissed her.

Mickelsson made lunch, feeling superior to Jessie’s late husband. He made what he made for himself almost every day, as for years he’d made it for his children: baked, open-faced sandwiches of cheese, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions, a little oregano; hearts-of-lettuce salad with the spiced buttermilk dressing Ellen had discovered long ago in San Francisco; and coffee. When he served it to her—at the low, glass-topped table in the livingroom—the diningroom was still unfinished—she looked up from the New Yorker she’d been glancing through, took off her glasses, and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Hey,” she said, “it looks good!”

When they’d begun on the sandwiches, he asked, “How are you doing with your Marxists?” He thought of Levinson, grieving, driving to Boston every two or three weeks to see his son. Guilt passed over him like a cloud.

“We get by,” Jessie said, and shrugged. She stopped to pat the side of her mouth with her paper napkin. “I’m a thorn in their side, but so far so good.” She took another bite, bending down close to the plate inelegantly. She was not careful to eat with her mouth closed.

“They’ve got no reason to cause trouble,” he said.

“That’s easy to say if you’re not one of them.” She smiled, still chewing. “I’m not good around fanatics. I don’t keep my mouth shut. I bait them. I tell students quite frankly what I think. Bad department citizen, as my chairman says.” She stopped chewing, squinting at some annoyance. “He’s right, but they make me furious.” She bit into her sandwich again and waved her left hand, keeping the floor. “How can they say things they know to be grossly oversimplified, and say them with such conviction—even feel such apparently authentic indignation when you dare tell them they’re crazy, as if you were the one telling lies?” She gave her head a little shake to drive the hair back. “There’s one of them, David Reese—very young, very nice boy really“—she stopped, eyes widening, and picked a crumb from her blouse—”except that he’s bonkers. He works like a dog, really dedicated teacher, students in there in his office all the time. … He makes ’em work like devils, not always the way you might wish he’d make them work—half of them can’t write an English sentence—but they all get A’s. …” She took another bite, chewed, then drank her wine as if it were grapejuice—all with hardly a pause. “I’ve tried to talk to him, because he seems nice—mild, kind eyes, good smile, real gentleness. … Believe me, it’s like talking to a Martian.” She shook her head, then rubbed her fingers on her napkin.

“I know,” Mickelsson said.

She looked up.

“I don’t know about Reese, but I know about fanatics. They really are Martians. There’s a philosopher named R. M. Hare, very popular these days. He’s got some interesting things to say about fanatics. Points out that, essentially, their code isn’t moral, in the usual sense; it’s aesthetic.” He looked down, aware that he was telling her more than she was interested in hearing. He picked the last piece of onion from his plate with his fingers and ate it. It occurred to him to wonder if Jessica minded the smell of onions on one’s breath.

“Go on,” she said.

“Listen, let’s go for a walk,” he said. “It’s beautiful out—getting warmer. I could show you the waterfall.”

“Why not?” She rose at the same moment he did, and they carried their plates to the kitchen.

It was true that the day had warmed considerably; by evening much of the snow would have melted. He took her gloved hand in his, leading her past the large, still barn, past where his night visitors had thrown his bottles and cigarettes, down the drifted meadow and along the winding path through pines and low brush