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

Mickelsson said: “I don’t trust good works. What are you doing?”

Tim raised one finger to his lips. “Sh!” he said. “Go to sleep.”

He came again that night, and again the following morning. Now Mickelsson was much stronger, impatient of the bed. He still slept for hours on end, but more often now he lay with his eyes open—one wider than the other—thinking, irritably listening to the noise downstairs, Tim’s people flapping on black webbed wings from room to room, shovelling things into bags or crates, cleaning out the mess. Once one of them, a scraggly young woman, brought Mickelsson a piece of toast and a glass of grapejuice. Otherwise he did not see them. When he finally went down they were gone; the wrecked livingroom was clean, neatly swept, ready for stud-repairs and sheetrock. He waited for Tim to come and fix him supper, then at last understood that no one was coming, he was on his own. Irritably, he built a fire in the woodstove, then made himself a soft-boiled egg. He thought of calling Jessie, then sat still, the fork halfway to his mouth, understanding that he could not do it. Reality was back, bleak as a stone. For all his nightmares, he hadn’t seen the ghosts in days. That was Lawler’s gift to him, or Wittgenstein’s, perhaps. Reality in winter.

He’d been in bed for hours when the phone rang, waking him. He ignored it at first, but it continued to ring, and he at last reached over to the lamp on the floor and turned it on, then looked at his watch: 3 a.m. The guest bedroom was freezing cold. He blinked, trying to drive the loginess from his eyelids; the left one still drooped, giving him, he knew, a slightly stupid look. He drew the covers around him and went down to the kitchen to get the phone. He must start up another fire in the woodstove or the pipes would freeze—maybe they were frozen already. Somehow he must get oil for the furnace. Sell something, perhaps—the blue car, the Jeep. He thought of the five hundred dollars he owed Stearns’ Texaco. Hopelessness washed over him.

“Hello?” he said.

“Professor Mickelsson?” It was a woman’s voice, one he could not recognize, though he felt he should.

“Yes,” he said cautiously.

The woman began to sob. “Christ,” he whispered. Surely not even Job was so tried and tormented! The feeling of hopelessness increased. He thought he would drown in it.

“Hello?” he said, his voice sharp. He imagined himself roaring like a crazed gorilla. No more! No fucking more! He controlled himself.

She went on sobbing, breaking sometimes, trying to speak.

The ghosts he’d thought banished forever suddenly appeared, frowning by the sink, bending forward, watching. I’ve gone mad again, he thought. He felt a flutter of fear and utter weariness, then nothing. The old woman dabbed at her mouth with quick, angry jabs, catlike. Spittle glistened on her chin. Thinking perhaps he was still asleep, it was all just a nightmare, he held out the receiver and looked at it. What caught his eye was his own stiff, bloody-scabbed hand. He raised the receiver to his ear again, checking as he did so to see if the ghosts were still there. They were, solid as furniture, the old woman watching him with narrowed eyes.

“Who is this?” he demanded. “Take your time. I’m listening.” After a while he said, “Brenda?”

The sobbing changed, grew more frantic, but still she couldn’t speak. Drunk, he thought. He asked, “Where are you?” When she sobbed on, he asked still more sharply—indifferent and objective, surgical, his voice as much like a slap as he could make it—”Brenda, where are you?”

“Colonial Inn,” she said. “In Hallstead. Alan was—”

“You’re not hurt?”

“No, I just—”

“Stay there, I’ll be right over,” he said, and angrily hung up the phone. “Well?” he shouted at the ghosts.

They touched each other, not afraid of him; hostile, plotting, as if he were the evil invader.

She sat in the bed in just her blouse, the covers at her waist, her face streaked and puffy, blond hair stringy, her body drawn inward around its center. When he paced past the mirror he saw that his own face was red with anger, wrinkled and long-nosed from his weight loss, his uncombed hair flying wildly, like a mathematician’s.

“So what did you expect?” he said, jabbing his hand out, walking back and forth. He felt and ignored a touch of dizziness.

“I’m going to kill her,” she said.

“You’re going to kill her,” he mocked. He picked up the drink on the dresser, sniffed it, then put it down again. “You’re behaving very foolishly, you know that, young lady? You follow your boyfriend around like he’s property, and you find out that he’s doing what you knew he was doing, and then you get yourself drunk and call me up—me!—get me out of bed in the middle of the night, a sick man, because you want me to give you advice but you’re too drunk to hear it.”

“I’m not drunk!”

“My mistake.” He touched his forehead. Another little tingle of dizziness.

The way she pursed her lips, her mouth was like a beak, a small pigeon’s, one of Darwin’s beloved tumblers. He wondered if he was making her angry on purpose, not entirely out of malice, at least partly from a half-conscious theory that it might help.

“And I don’t want advice,” Brenda said, belatedly bridling. She took a swipe at her eyes with the back of one hand.

“Good.” He put his fists on his hips. “So why call me?” At once he was annoyed: resounding righteousness, hollowly echoing. Luther’s hammer putting nail-holes in the church door.

“You should be flattered,” she said. “A lot of people would be.”

His heart skipped, and he half turned away. Jessie had said the girl had a crush on him—because Brenda was “proud.” Abruptly, he sat down on the side of the bed and put his hand on her shin. “Listen, Brenda, what’s all this about? Do you know?”

She shook her