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

faded blue workshirt, bib-overalls, heavy boots. … What would the old man think, walking in on this—the glittering silverware, the china, dirty now, the once-sparkling wine and water glasses smudged by lips and fingers? (It would be different with the real-estate salesman Tim Booker. Tim would be delighted.) Beyond the lace-curtained windows of the Blicksteins’ diningroom, Mickelsson could see only darkness. The conversation droned as if the dinner were taking place in a room at the bottom of the sea. The girl he’d met in the kitchen was clearing plates now, speaking to no one, meeting no one’s eyes. When she reached past him to take his plate, Mickelsson drew back to make it easier for her and said, “Thank you.” She showed no sign of hearing. Perhaps it was something about the way she moved, slowly raising the plate and drawing it toward her; the thought of rattlesnakes leaped into his mind.

He must shake this mood, he told himself. These people were his friends.

Blickstein said, leaning forward to look past Kate Swisson, his cheeks and jaw as muscular as his arms, “Pete, how’s my boy Nugent doing?”

“No problem, so far as I can tell,” Mickelsson said. Blickstein was looking at Jessica, making sure he hadn’t interrupted. It was curious that Blickstein remembered the young man and knew he was in Mickelsson’s class.

Tom Garret said, leaning toward them across the table, pivoting on his elbows, his short, thick hands folded for prayer in front of him, “Nugent? Is that somebody I should know?”

Everyone was listening.

The dean was embarrassed. “Well,” he said. His right hand made a kind of brushing motion, but he couldn’t seem to think what to say.

Gretchen Blickstein, at the foot of the table, called out, “Now I remember what I wanted to ask! Fred, whom are you voting for?”

Rogers smiled sorrowfully and considered his plate. He looked up with sagging eyes at Mickelsson, then solemnly raised his spoon to clink it three times against his water glass. “My friends,” he said like a funeral director, “friends and dear colleagues, in these trying times—”

“Hear, hear!” Phil Bryant said, and clinked his glass with his spoon, his handsome, wrinkled face grinning all over.

“No speeches!” old Mrs. Meyerson said, batting her hands about, crazy as a loon. But the majority was against her.

In the livingroom after dinner, while Blickstein poured liqueurs, Tom Garret sat down in the chair beside Mickelsson’s, cocked his knees out, and leaned toward the coffeetable, smiling his amiable Southern smile. His skin glowed. “Pete,” he said, “how’s Al Blassenheim doing? You’ve got him in P and A, right?”

“He’s doing fine,” Mickelsson said, turning.

Garret grinned, waiting for something more, then looked down. “Terrific kid,” he said. “I had him in Philos and Lit. He did me a wonderful paper on Wallace Stevens. ‘Beauty is momentary in the mind,’ so forth and so on—you know the passage. ‘But in the flesh it is immortal.’ ”

“Yes, he’s still working on it,” Mickelsson said a little testily (he disapproved of the Philosophy and Literature course) and glanced over at Jessica, who was watching them. When Garret raised his eyebrows, Mickelsson explained, waggling his hand, not wanting to make too much of it, “He’s not resigned, if you know what I mean. He’d like to have it both ways.”

Garret nodded, grinning. Jessica asked, “What do you mean, Pete?”

“Oh, you know. He’d like to take the view that evolution stumbles blindly, but also he’d like to believe that after Nature’s done her stumbling, God gives out grades. What survives is not just what’s fit but what fits God’s plan.”

“That’s sort of nice!” Jessica said.

“It is,” Mickelsson said.

She looked at him thoughtfully, still smiling, her shadowy Oriental-Icelandic eyes narrowed, then over at Blickstein, who was coming toward her and Edie Bryant, carefully carrying their liqueurs. The small glasses glinted—dark, colored flames.

“But wouldn’t it be interesting if it were true!” Garret said, mainly to Jessica. “The whole universe just atingle with forms, waiting for matter to come up to them!”

“Like eggs waiting at the end of the cosmic fallopian,” Phil Bryant said, drawing up his chair. He chuckled heartily, like one who’s said something risqué, and glanced at Jessica.

Garret said, grinning, punching the air high above his shoulder, like a spectator at a racetrack, “Come awn, dinosaur! Come awn, Pax Romana!”

They all laughed, even Jessica, bravely agreeable. With her right hand, perhaps unaware that she was doing it, she fingered the softness of the couch beside her.

“Pax Romana?” Blickstein asked, eagerly grinning, handing Garret his glass.

“Just havin a little joke with the boys, sir,” Garret said. He once again sat still and formal, stocky, toeing out, his wide mouth impishly clamped shut; one could hardly believe that an instant ago he’d been clowning.

Blickstein gave Mickelsson his glass, eyebrows still lifted, waiting for enlightenment. A spark of red danced on the rim of the glass, then vanished.

“Philosophical discussion,” Mickelsson explained. “Whether or not Plato’s museum can be restored.”

“Ah!” Blickstein said, and straightened up, delighted that such things should be discussed in his livingroom, then looked around to see whom he’d missed.

“Well, you know,” Garret said, abruptly serious, still speaking mainly to Jessica, one had a feeling, though it was Mickelsson he looked at, “it’s easy to dismiss these ideas kids have, put them away in little boxes marked ‘Kant,’ ‘Hegel,’ ‘Whitehead,’ and so forth and so on. Kids don’t know how much argument’s already piled up against ’em. But I like the way they keep comin and comin, like termites. One morning you wake up and look around and—no castle!”

“Termites don’t eat stones,” Phil Bryant said, and chuckled.

Garret glanced over at him, friendly. “Sir?”

“Castles are made of stones,” Bryant said. His grin showed large and perfect teeth. He’d been an officer under Patton in World War II, had directed the mission stealing gas from ambulances for Patton’s famous drive. “Termites don’t eat stones.” He gave another little laugh.

Garret seemed to give it serious thought, his eyes fixed on the rose in the cut-glass bowl on