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

again his heart lurched. Perhaps everything that had happened down at the Acme was right there in his face. “What?” he asked, and bent over the heavy paper bag to look in, as if some small treasure might have hidden itself at the bottom.

“What’s all that mail in your study? Some of it’s months old, and not even opened.”

He picked up the porkchops to carry them over to the counter beside the range. “It’s just junk,” he said.

“It sure doesn’t look like junk,” she said. She leaned far to one side, trying to get him to look at her directly. “There’s a stack of things from the I.R.S., and a ton of letters from collection agencies—”

He leaned on the counter and looked at the floor between them.

She said, holding out one hand, shaking it in his face, “Do you realize the I.R.S. can put people in prison? They love it when it’s somebody famous like you. Puts the fear of God into the common folk.”

“Alfred North Whitehead, one of the greatest philosophers of our time, refused for years to answer his mail from the I.R.S.”

“Good for him,” she said. “You can bet he got his name in the paper! Listen to me, Pete. You may think I’m just another Jewish neurotic, but believe me, you’ve gotta get your shit together.”

He shrugged wearily.

“You’re in real trouble, aren’t you.” She pouted, thoughtful, looking at him. “The divorce, I suppose … back taxes, obviously …” When he said nothing, looking down at the glossy, pink porkchops, she said, “That’s why you wanted to write a best-seller philosophy book.” She laughed, then stopped herself and came nearer, hesitated a moment as if wary of him, then came up and put one hand on his arm. “Look, why don’t we just tear into it? I’ll help you. Let me help—not just with answering the mail, necessarily. I have quite a lot of money. I don’t mean I’m rich. …”

He drew back. “You know I can’t take your money.”

“Why not? Too proud?”

“Of course. But it’s more than that. I’d be a bad investment.”

She made a face, irritably dismissive, then watched him again. “I didn’t exactly make the offer in my role as brilliant businesswoman.”

“Forget it,” he said. “You can help me with the mail if you want to, yes. Help me write whining, stalling letters. But not till after supper.”

“It’s amazing that you can eat.”

“Are you telling me you’re too upset to?” he asked.

“It’s not my life.”

His smile was no doubt sour, a little miffed. She put her arms around him.

“We’ll fix you up,” she said. “Trust me.”

The words seemed to move through his head and chest, pursued by the shadow of Donnie Matthews.

He asked, “How do you like your porkchops?”

After supper they worked for hours, or rather Jessica worked, like the secretary she’d said she disliked being cast as, during her years with her husband. Mickelsson sorted through envelopes, staring blindly, managing to get rid of one from Donnie—he’d failed to notice it before and had no idea what it contained, certainly not a request for payment, since ever after that first mistake he’d paid cash. Jessie, sternly bent over the desk, wearing glasses now, made lists, depressing columns of figures, then drew the electric typewriter toward her and asked for typing paper. He opened a new pack, pilfered from the department, and set it on the desktop beside her.

“Dear Freddy’s Refuse,” she read aloud as she typed, “I’m terribly sorry my check to you, dated September third, failed to clear. There seems to have been some mix-up at the bank, which has not yet been straightened out. I thank you for your patience and can assure you that if you will be patient a little longer …”

“You know, it really is hopeless,” she said at one point, taking off her glasses. “All those debts from your old life. Can’t you just …” As she turned toward the chair by the window where he sat, he fixed his gaze on the sill, his ashtray filled with cigarette butts and dottle from his pipe. When he said nothing, she said, “Cancel that. Nothing’s hopeless, not even you. We’ll work it out.”

“You can see why I let it lie there,” he said.

“It didn’t lie there, it accrued,” she said.

He heard her crank another sheet of paper into the typewriter, then start typing. She made the thing sound like a machine-gun. Without a pause in her typing, she asked, “Is the stuff at the office as bad as this?”

“Better and worse,” he said. “Hardly any of it is bills, but most of it takes longer, more complicated answers. Requests for letters of recommendation from former students—some of ’em I’m not even sure ever were my students, but who knows? Requests to give lectures, usually for no money, usually to a hostile audience. Appeals from the Teachers’ Union, letters warning me that my subscriptions to tiresome magazines are running out—”

“If there’s no money in it,” Jessie said, cranking out the sheet, cranking in another, “throw away the letter and forget it.”

“It’s that bad.” He sighed.

She was silent a moment, not typing. Then she asked, taking off her glasses again, “Pete, are you aware that the I.R.S. has taken a lien on your house?”

He said nothing, staring out the window into blackness.

“Mickelsson, you need a lawyer.”

He smiled, thinking of Finney. “I know.”

The rat-a-tat-tat of the typewriter began again.

They sat on the couch, the room dark around them except for the flickering light from the woodstove, the stove doors open, the screen in place. He said, thinking now of Phil Bryant, who was forever quoting Shakespeare,

“That time of year thou dost in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang …”

She smiled. “What a whiner you are!”

He intoned nasally,

“Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,Mournfully assailed the seasons,Cursed the day that he was born …”

She raised a finger to his mouth. “It’ll all come out in the wash, you’ll see.” When he kissed the hand, she drew it away, then lowered