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

“You should see me! I gaht a tan.”

“That’s swell,” he said, paying no attention. “Listen, I’ve been wanting to tell you … I’ve been thinking, and … I want you to have that abortion if you want it. I was wrong. Forgive me for all those things I said.”

“I already did,” she said, and laughed. “Have the abortion, I mean. And forgive you. That’s why I wanted to call you. To tell you …”

“You already had it,” he said. He knew he’d heard her right. Why he dumbly repeated it he had no idea.

“Yeah,” she said. “I had to, Pete.”

“Sure. I know. That’s good—that’s wonderful. You did the right thing. I hope it didn’t hurt much.”

“Actually it hurt like hell, but it’s over now.”

He shook his head, narrowing his eyes. “I should’ve been with you.”

“It’s OK, don’t yell at yourself. My brother’s wife, I mean my sister-in-law, was with me. They’re where I came to.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.” For some reason it astonished him that she did.

“We never even met each other till a while ago. He’s my half brother, really. He’s almost as old as you are! Anyways, can I tell you why I called?”

“Sure. Go ahead, Donnie. I’m sorry I keep jabbering.” He looked up at the wall, waiting.

“I wanted to tell you, you’re a really swell person, and I didn’t treat you right at all, so now I’m sorry. What you did for me—I mean, I know how awful it was for you. When I saw your face that night you looked like you’d just died or something, and then you didn’t even keep any of the money for yourself. It was dangerous, what you did, and scary, and I guess sort of terrible for you, I mean really really terrible, like giving up your life for—” She paused a moment to get her voice in control. “So anyways I want you to know I’m a whole different person now. I’ve changed. I’ve been saved—I go to church every Sunday—and I don’t do any of those things I used to, and … well, I miss you.”

Suddenly his eyes, too, were swimming. “I miss you too, Donnie.” After a moment, when he was sure of his voice, he said, “I hope you’re doing something worthwhile with the money.”

“I did. I threw it in the ocean.”

Mickelsson closed his eyes.

“It was blood-money, Pete. It saved my life, but I just couldn’t have it around me. If you could see this new life I have, these people … Let somebody find it that doesn’t know. Maybe it will save their life.”

“You threw it in the ocean,” he said.

“Yeah. Crazy, huh? I threw away my whole suitcase, everything I had. It was the bravest thing I ever did in my life.”

He listened to the soft, mindless singing of electrons in the line.

“Are you mad at me again?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. No, of course not. How is somebody supposed to find it in the ocean? You’re not kidding me, are you? You really threw it in the ocean?”

“Splash.”

He was still shaking his head.

“Well, I guess I gahtta go now. Be happy, Prafessor.”

“You too, Donnie. Write me sometime.”

She hesitated. “I dunno,” she said at last. “See, I’m tryin ta stahrt over. …”

“OK,” he said, tears welling fast now. “Good-bye, then, Donnie.”

The pause was long, this time, before she said, “G’bye.”

California, he thought. He’d walked with Ellen along the edge of the Pacific, on the beach down below Seal Rock and Sutro’s, the pastel houses of San Francisco on their left, far to their right a faint suggestion of the planet’s curve. As in another new life he’d sat on dark rocks with his daughter and son, looking out over the seemingly endless gray churning of the Atlantic. Toward Iceland. Toward Germany. The collision of stone and waves made him remember drums.

California. He imagined Donnie Matthews timidly walking out, her face turned sideways, into the breakers.

Sublimieren.

God be with her.

When he bent down to throw more wood into the stove, he remembered another dream he’d had. It was this same house, but the walls had been stone. His mother had come in, still young and beautiful, at least in Mickelsson’s eyes, leading by the hand his dead sister, who was not dead after all but had been sewn up and patched like a cloth doll. There had been other people too, quite a number of them, but he couldn’t make out who they were. It was cold in the house, and Mickelsson, happy to see his family safe and sound, made a fire in the woodstove. After they’d talked awhile—he could remember nothing of what they’d said; his sister kept smiling and nodding like one of those dolls with a weight in it—they’d all gone to sleep. The stove burned warmer and warmer, heating the stones. Something stirred beside him, and in his dream he awakened to find the whole room crawling with fat, slow-moving rattlesnakes.

When he’d put the wood in and closed the stove doors, he went back to the couch and lay down and let his eyes fall shut. He dreamed the same dream again.

It was morning when he awakened. There was someone gently knocking at his door.

7

He registered the car down by the road only as one he ought to know but didn’t, perhaps because his emotions were still clouded by the nightmare; and then, with suddenly changing emotion—half guilty discomfort, half delight and surprise—he saw Lawler. Mickelsson smiled and drew the door open farther. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Professor Lawler! Come in!”

Edward Lawler smiled shyly, not quite meeting Mickelsson’s eyes but clearly pleased to see him, perhaps timidly congratulating himself on having driven all this way and found the place. He stood a little to the right of the door, his leather-gloved hands folded in front of him, his many-chinned head bowed, eager to give no offense. He wore a fur hat but with the flaps