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

feeling for a hold. Mickelsson felt his body coming alert, cautiously balancing. The dean swung around on his small, neat feet, extending his short and powerful left arm in the direction of the carpeted stairs leading up to the livingroom. “Come up! Come right up! We were afraid you’d gotten lost!”

“I’m sorry,” Mickelsson said, “I didn’t realize I was late.”

“Not at all! Good Lord, no,” Blickstein said, but now his right hand was on the small of Mickelsson’s back, groping for advantage, gently pressing him toward the stairs. The entryway was tiled, vaguely Spanish; the livingroom, partly visible above, was what Mickelsson’s ex-wife would call American academic—dark panelling, indirect lighting, a vast superfluity of books. The house smelled richly of food—beef, onions, potatoes, garlic, herbs. On the wall at the top of the stairs hung a black and white photograph of an old shed and trees. For an instant Mickelsson’s heart caught: he thought it was one of his son’s. It was not, of course; probably by someone famous and expensive, perhaps a photographer who had influenced his son.

“Beautiful house,” Mickelsson said.

“We like it,” Blickstein said, warmly grateful.

Talk filtered down from the livingroom and, from somewhere to their left as they started up the stairs, kitchen sounds, blurry as sounds under water. As Mickelsson’s eyes came up level with the room he saw, indistinctly, gathered in small groups here and there, some seated, some standing, the usual crowd—the Rogerses; the Bryants, in English; Tom and Mabel Garret, in philosophy; one tall, young couple he’d never seen before, both blond and scrubbed and ill-at-ease; and over on the couch, just looking up at him from intense conversation, old Meyerson and his wife and—Mickelsson’s heart paused, thoughtful—Jessica Stark. They both smiled. Tillson, Chairman of Philosophy, was not present.

“You know everyone here, I take it,” Blickstein said; then, tipping his head in the direction of the young couple and raising his hand like a classy waiter offering a table, “Have you met the Swissons?” Mickelsson drew his eyes away from Jessica.

The new couple bowed formally, exactly together, shyly smiling. The woman had a long white neck and huge eyes. When she blinked it was something from Walt Disney. Mickelsson approached them, extending his hand. “Peter Mickelsson,” he said heartily. He spoke, he realized an instant too late, as if he meant to overawe them. Blickstein’s influence frequently did that, made him clumsy. As the young man reached out, slightly effeminate, for Mickelsson’s hand—giving him that covertly eager look, boringly predictable, Swede meeting Swede—Blickstein delicately poked his head in between them, saying, “Britt Swisson’s a composer—you may have heard of him—and Katie here’s a soprano. They’re the catch of the year, believe me!” He winked. Now the young woman took Mickelsson’s hand, squeezing his fingers much more firmly than her husband had done, her oversized eyes not meeting Mickelsson’s, gazing instead at his tie, as if perhaps there was a spill on it. Her skin had a waxen look.

“Glad to meet you,” Mickelsson said, somewhat lowering his voice. “I look forward to hearing your work.”

The young man smiled, glancing at his wife. He had dark vein-shadows in his forehead and on the backs of his hands. The flesh under his eyes looked bruised.

Blickstein asked, rapidly brushing his palms together, looking up at Mickelsson, “What are you drinking? We have pretty much everything, I think.”

He asked for a martini and, as Blickstein hurried away, delighted by the choice, moving as if weightlessly for all his bulk—ritually touching people’s elbows as he passed—Mickelsson returned his attention to the couple. He was aware that, behind him, people were beginning to talk again. Fred Rogers’ wife appeared with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Mickelsson accepted one, a pastry shaped like a butterfly, with some kind of spicy meat on it.

The young woman’s name had already escaped him. “So you’re new with us,” he said. The Swissons bowed and smiled, two china figurines.

“We just arrived last week,” the woman ventured, as if speaking took great courage. Her voice was soft, like a young child’s. “We’ve been touring, you know.” Her eyes blinked shut, then opened wider.

“You haven’t found a house, then?” Mickelsson asked.

“Noooo,” she said, and smiled hopelessly, her head tipped sideways, like the head of one of those divinely meek saints in a fourteenth-century painting. Her husband, when he smiled, revealed bad teeth—yellow fissures and pits. It was a startling effect, as if a beautiful-woman mask were removed to show a skull. As they talked about housing in Binghamton, Edith Bryant edged in on them, a woman of over sixty, maybe close to seventy, red-headed and merrily wrinkled, bold-featured as a puppet. She was licking sauce or cheese from her fingers.

“You should just taste this, Peter! Hmm-huh! Dee-luscious!” Her voice was husky, intimate; her whole face twinkled. She cut her eyes up at Mickelsson coyly. “Ah we to understand that you really plan on livin out in those Endless Mountains?” She turned in a spasm of camaraderie to the Swissons, insisting on including as many as possible. “Don’t ya’ll just love that name—the Endless Mountains?” She insisted on the slightly self-mocking ya’ll as urgently as she insisted that they all have a wonderful time—a little-girlish grand old lady craning her powdery face toward the Swissons, eyes sparkling still more brightly, throat-cords straining. Fixing again on Mickelsson, she crooned, “I bet you just love it, Peter. The Endless Mountains! Isn’t that something from Poe or Hawthorne? Romantic gloom and all? I am most certain Zarathustra would approve!” (Edie Bryant was, she would tell you if you asked her, just a plain old gal from Atlanta. Here people were well-to-do. Her husband, who seemed much more classy, vaguely Bostonian, hailed from Pittsburgh. He had not worn, tonight, his Tyrolean jacket.)

“I suppose he would,” Mickelsson said carefully, not wishing to be drawn too far.

Blickstein arrived with his martini, with two immense olives, and Mickelsson took it from him, bowing.

Edie touched the Swisson woman’s arm with her fingertips and threw a bright,