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

“That’s not so easy to do,” he said, then wished he could call back the words. Now he had to tell her about Mark. He hadn’t mentioned to her his son’s disappearance. She couldn’t be expected to understand, close as they were, why he’d kept it to himself. Useless to tell her (only half true anyway) that his silence had nothing to do with her, had to do with a wordless superstition on his part. Now that he’d talked to Mark on the phone, knew that his son was alive and claiming to be well, it was possible—or easier—to speak of it. He told her about the phonecall. Jessie made appropriate exclamations that, in his present heavy mood, he couldn’t help finding suspect. “Peter, that’s terrible!” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” And: “Poor Mark! He’s a brave kid, isn’t he. Jesus. Have you contacted Missing Persons? What do the police say?” He soothed her mechanically, answering questions, making promises—he would hire a private detective, yes (she’d apparently forgotten the condition of his purse). All the time he talked, he found himself lingering over the memory of stroking her as she slept, murmuring to her, “Jessie, Jessie,” like a father lulling a child past nightmare with its name. If she were here he would close his arms around her, make himself clear. They would comfort one another, lean on one another like strolling lovers in a painting. But behind some tree Donnie Matthews waited; behind another, sooner or later, the hard-ball players, as Finney liked to say, of the I.R.S. He felt increasingly burdened, put upon, and the next instant realized why. She’d called because she was staggering under the attack on her, no doubt baffled and hurt by it, though she’d clearly foreseen it, and had been feeling in need of Mickelsson’s comfort, though partly unsure of him, maybe injured—he should have called her—and lo, having risked the call to him, she’d found herself constrained, as usual, to give comfort to him instead. His annoyance grew more intense, as if someone else had pointed out to him his failure. For all her talk, for all her evidently earnest wish to avoid imposing on him, there it was: obligation.

As soon as he was able to get off the subject of his missing son, he asked, “How’s that business between you and the Marx brothers, Jessie?”

“Bad,” she said. “I managed to tell off old Shel today.”

“Shel?”

“Blickstein. Probably one of the few friends I’ve got.”

Mickelsson smiled, imagining Blickstein’s embarrassment, his awkward attempts to calm her down, get her out of his office. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “He’ll forgive it. He knows you’re upset. Believe me, he’s on your side. And if he’s not, your yelling at him won’t make him either better or worse.”

“You don’t know,” she said. “You’re not Jewish.”

There it was again. He shook his head. “He’s rabbinical,” Mickelsson said. “He’ll be just.”

“He hates Jewish women.”

Mickelsson laughed. “Shall I shoot him for you? Shall I shoot them all?”

“That’s not funny, Mickelsson. You don’t know how great the odds are that I’d say yes.”

Again he shook his head, touched by the way she instinctively blocked pity. The pity that makes us melancholy and ill. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Help me. Threaten people! Write to your Congressman!”

“They’re making you cynical, Jessie,” he said.

“If you want to do something, do something,” she said. “I leave the details to you.”

“I will. Whatever I can,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“Whatever,” she said. Then, after a moment: “Anyway, none of that’s what I called you about. What are you doing for Christmas?”

“I don’t know.” His voice, he was sure, betrayed his alarm at the question. “I thought I’d try to miss the whole thing. Get roaring drunk, maybe.”

“Aren’t you just a little tired of that solution?”

He sighed, staring blindly at the mail he’d been mindlessly sorting. “What’s the expression, ‘Don’t shake my china cabinet’?”

“Something like that. Listen, you want to spend Christmas with me?”

He frowned, trying to think.

“Hello?” she coaxed.

“No,” he said at last. “I don’t think I could handle that, Jessie.”

“OK,” she said. “Just a passing thought.”

“Thanks, though. I really appreciate—”

“Skip it.” The voice was unusually sharp, as if she thought he were trying to start a fight. “Well, that’s all I had to say, I guess.” Then as usual she relented. “Listen, Pete, if anything happens—those ghosts, I mean … or anything …”

“I’ll phone you right away.”

“I mean it,” she said. Then apparently a new thought occurred to her, or she remembered something in his voice earlier that had left her unsatisfied. “You’re sure you told me everything that happened—when you saw them, I mean? They didn’t try to do anything—hurt you, I mean, or talk to you?”

“They didn’t,” he said, then instantly could have kicked himself.

As though he were staring right at her he saw her lunge forward, her face suddenly tense. “Pete! What are you saying? Somebody else tried to hurt you?”

“No,” he said quickly, raising his hand palm out to calm her, as if she too could see across miles and through walls. “But somebody talked to me.”

Even more reluctantly than he’d told her about the old people, he told her about his phone conversation with Michael Nugent.

After he finished she was silent for a long time. “You’re not making this up?”

“Do I sound like it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Something else,” he said abruptly, “a cat’s moved in with me. Big gray and white one, big as a house.”

She was silent again, then said, “I know about the cat. I saw him when you were at the hospital with the Garrets.” Again her tone was faintly accusing, as if his mentioning the cat seemed to her frigid. She was right. “That’s awful about your student,” she said. “Peter, are you positive you didn’t dream all this?”

“Not positive, but I don’t think so. It’s a terrible thought, isn’t it? Ghosts worrying, wandering around in the dark, crying—”

“It sounds like a nightmare.