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

“Listen, think about it,” he said.

“There’s not that much time.”

“Just for a little while longer. I could send you away someplace, somewhere where they’d take good care of you, maybe one of those church places—”

“No! Why are you doing this to me?” Her voice broke, and now she began to sob, her hands covering her face. He understood, all at once, just how frightened she was, and that instant he almost relented, but when he opened his mouth to speak his voice refused, locked stubbornly in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to touch her, but she shrank away. His heart was all darkness, as if something had gotten into him. “Look, I know how you feel. But I can’t do it. I just can’t. I can’t kill a baby.”

“A foetus,” she screamed, “it’s just a foetus!” The scream sang through the apartment, shocking him to silence. She abandoned herself to sobbing. He lay perfectly still.

After his two nights with Jessie, his bout with Luther, and then that terrible night with Donnie, Mickelsson felt more anxious than ever, and therefore more than ever kept bullishly to his routines, including his refusal to deal with his mail. He did not resist when Jessie came to his office and asked if he were ready to let her help with the great, unstable mountain on his desk; he even threw himself into the work of helping her, summoning up for the moment the extraordinary powers of concentration he was known for, but only to avoid the questions in her eyes, only to avoid, insofar as it was possible, her touching him or drawing him out. That pile proved, as he’d expected it would, less alarming than the one at home had been: they found almost no bills, and the few that came to hand were of a kind easily dealt with—bills for magazine subscriptions, professional memberships, university traffic fines; nothing that had to be paid. He wrote, with her help, recommendations for former students he did or did not remember (some of the recommendation forms were far past the deadline and he could throw them away), wrote polite refusals to requests for articles and reviews, explained why he would not be able to give a speech to the parents of incoming freshmen on Exploration Day, and wrote brief, cool letters pointing out why he could not read and evaluate the books and articles sent to him, unsolicited, by aggressive philosophical strangers. When his desk was bare, they went for drinks at Firehouse Five, she pretending to feel triumph, as if his life were now all fixed—though from the moment she’d entered his office, he knew, she’d recognized that there was something wrong. He waited for her terrible Jewish nosiness and directness, but luck was with him: she closed her hand over his, patting it now and then, and she gave him searching glances sometimes between smiles, but for some reason she stayed off his case. His cheeks ached from smiling, and his mind wandered, dazed and full of dread, like a small child lost in the woods. Once, when he allowed himself a minor tirade against Ronald Reagan, calling the nation’s new President “Herr” and allowing himself language he usually avoided, she said, slightly widening her eyes, pressing down more firmly on the back of his hand, “Peter, for heaven’s sake take it easy!” She glanced around the restaurant. “I can’t say I’m terribly fond of him myself, given his stand on abortion and so forth, but he’s not worth breaking a bloodvessel over. I’m sure the republic will survive him.”

“He’s a shit,” Mickelsson said emphatically, twisting his distress at the word abortion into anger. He was not shouting, but not lowering his voice either, which was no doubt why she glanced at the tables around theirs, good Middle Americans up to their usual tricks. He leaned toward her a little, speaking just loudly enough that the people around him could hear if they chose to, which he hoped they did. “All this budget-cutting crap! Can people really be so stupid they—”

“Pete,” she said, smiling harder, leaning in toward the candle. The waiter, passing with a tray of drinks on his shoulder, glanced at her. Perhaps his name was Pete. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked.

“Don’t you think sometimes righteous indignation is a perfectly rational response?”

“Maybe so,” she said, and looked down. He blushed but stopped ranting. It was an interesting idea, the connection between rant and illness, and for a moment the philosopher in him paused to consider it. He thought of Martin Luther in his final psychosis, writing tracts in support of the slaughter of peasants who, inspired by Luther’s own ideas, had risen in rebellion; then thought of the doctor’s three unspeakable, potty-mouthed tracts against the Jews. He thought of Luther turning savagely against all his best friends, growing more and more obscene of speech, until his disciples, who did not blanch at “shitty” or “donkey fart” or even “Shit in your breeches and wipe your face with it,” would not write down the exact words he said.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, bringing her face closer to get his attention. In the glow from the red-globed candle on the table, Jessie’s mouth, nose, and cheekbones were strikingly Semitic. He was reminded of an image he’d gazed at once for a long time in the British Museum, a face on a coin. Strange, he thought, that centuries of human life should be present in a living face. Et mortuus vivit!

He said, “I was thinking of old Dr. Luther, if anything.” He turned his hand palm up under hers to return the pressure of her fingers. “You’re right, of course. There’s nothing in Reagan to hate. Fly in a fly-bottle. It’s depressing.”

She laughed, though she understood that he was serious. “You should be glad we have