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

to have difficulty finding the place, but the map (Jessie’s work) was foolproof, and after stalling for half an hour, driving around sightseeing, wasting precious gas, they’d given up at last and driven—sheepishly, as Mickelsson had seen—into his yard. The minute they’d stepped out of the car, Mickelsson’s cat had vanished as if by magic. Mickelsson, nowhere near ready for guests—Jessie, who’d promised to help him, had been delayed—fixed Alan and Brenda drinks and allowed them to assist. They laid the white tablecloth in the newly finished diningroom, set up the candles, put out plates and silverware, started the mulled wine, set out the liquor and ice. By that time others were beginning to arrive—the ever-merry Bryants, wearing matching shepherd coats, holly in their lapels, the Garrets, the Rogerses, the Blicksteins and their friend (pale as a ghost, evasive of eye, but smiling), the Tillsons (Jessie had insisted that they be invited, really for Ruth’s sake), Jessie herself—in a purple coat baffling to Mickelsson, queer and untamable as something in a New York store window, and obviously expensive—and with Jessie, Kate Swisson, who was unable to drive a car. Her husband was not with her, away on another tour, she said. She wore a full-length mink over a Paris designer dress, and bore a fruitcake redolent of rum. In her startling attire she suddenly seemed to him—whether authentically or not he couldn’t tell—a creature from another world, the purlieu of movie-stars, TV personalities, maybe opera singers. (He wondered if it was Kate’s odd attire that had made Jessica come as a gypsy.) Kate Swisson’s shyness struck him differently now from when he’d first met her. If she was chilly and aloof, even when she smiled and bobbed her head forward on its long, white stem, her distance from the ordinary, common world seemed to him now (to his annoyance) perhaps not so much helpless as Olympian. The SUNY-Binghamton Music Department was supposed to be outstanding. It had two Tchaikovsky Prize winners, one of the finest opera departments in America—so they claimed—and a history of launching great chamber groups (and losing them)—the Guarneri, the Lenox. … Perhaps Ms. Swisson had a right to her mink. Whether or not that was so, he disliked her. She seemed to know it, smiling harder and harder at him, widening her gazelle eyes more and more, sinuating her long neck left, right, forward with increasing meekness. “Good to see you,” he said, suddenly conscious that while his mind drifted he’d been glowering. He took the cake from her with his right hand, then stepped around her and, with his left, caught the collar of her mink as one would the loose shoulder-skin of a kitten.

“Thank you,” she breathed, turning her head around at him, submissively smiling. (“Gratitude,” says Nietzsche, “is a mild form of revenge.”)

There was a knock at the door and he stepped over to answer it, still carrying the coat and cake. It was the graduate-student contingent, Wolters and Stearns, Ms. Cohen and Ms. Orinsky. “Come in! Come in!”

“This must be the place!” Christmassy laughter.

One moment, from Mickelsson’s point of view, the house had been quiet, elegantly—maybe even exquisitely—prepared, the next it was abuzz with talk and movement, Edie Bryant raving about the Christmas decorations—“Nicer than the ones down in Rich’s Department Store, that’s in Atlanta” (as she spoke, stealing the floor from Jessie’s art, the candles and ornaments were instantly diminished to mere prettiness)—Mabel Garret drifting here and there in stony silence, picking up everything and looking at the underside, presumably to see who’d made it, Phil Bryant and Blickstein heatedly arguing over President-elect Ronald Reagan’s proposed tax cut and decontrol of oil, Jessie and Kate Swisson talking earnestly about Binghamton child-care centers, though neither of them had children. (Living, he corrected himself, and fought a shock of gloom.) It struck Mickelsson, no doubt unjustly—he was liking Kate Swisson less and less—that she was coyly faking interest in having a baby. If he was right, Jessie was not fooled: sweetly cool, smiling, regal. He could not help feeling that some of the coolness was meant for him, though he’d given her no cause. He imagined his old friend Luther saying, with that scorn he’d always been a master of, “What a child you are!” “Old fart,” Mickelsson whispered. Mabel Garret’s dark eyes turned slyly to meet his.

Jessie wore a black floor-length dress with a low neckline and layers of gold chain. Mickelsson, when she’d come in, had squeezed both her hands, but though she’d smiled, she’d been reserved, like someone arriving at a party after hearing bad news. Had someone told her about Donnie? He could read nothing in her eyes. After the first instant, he decided on another, more likely explanation. That she took nothing for granted between himself and her was a kindness to him, a surprising bit of generosity; yet at some point—never mind what point, precisely—it began to verge on peculiar for a woman to hold a man still free, not responsible for the drift of her feelings, not to mention his own. His heart had leaped at first sight of her, Donnie Matthews and her troubles momentarily banished even farther from his mind than Michael Nugent. “What a lovely house,” Jessie had said, more to Geoffrey Tillson than to him, as if she’d never before seen it. Was she ashamed of Mickelsson? She went over to study the Christmas tree ornaments she herself had picked out. Mickelsson had felt, in spite of himself, hurt. But then, as he was leading the whole crowd through the house, showing off his work of restoration, all but the diningroom, his eyes and Jessie’s met, and Jessie winked like a conspirator, for the first time tonight showing affection. Bafflement on bafflement! A little later they’d accidentally come together in the doorway between the livingroom and the study, the doorway over which Alan Blassenheim and Brenda had hung mistletoe. They’d realized their predicament the same instant—they could feel the watching eyes—then abruptly