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

was not properly a part of the house but the lower story of a wing oddly jutting out behind the rest, its small back window looking up at the mountain. He paused for an instant, hearing something, then realized it was only the rumble of a train in the valley. The door from the workroom to the livingroom was open; the lock hadn’t worked in years. His feet found the buckled place on the livingroom floor.

When he switched on the light in the livingroom another memory jumped into him, another time and place where yellow light had leaped up on walls in exactly this way, like the first frame of a movie, starkly revealing black, curtainless windows. It was the office of his Providence psychiatrist, Dr. Rifkin; small, horse-faced, hair parted down the middle.

“These patterns you feel emerging, do they alarm you?” His voice resounded as if the room where they sat were stone.

“It bothers me that they’re elusive,” Mickelsson said. He riveted his gaze to the doctor’s scuffed shoes. “I just get them plain and then suddenly it’s as if someone’s turned the kaleidoscope.”

“Tell me this: Would I be able to see them?”

“I could prove to you that all maple trees have the same number of leaves,” Mickelsson said, evasive, “just as all human beings have the same number of arms and legs, except where something’s been torn off.”

Rifkin thought about it, no doubt concentrating on the words torn off. Mickelsson glanced at him, reproachful.

“All right,” Rifkin said, waggling his hand, his tone impatient, “maybe you’re right about maple trees.” He risked a little grin. “What does it mean? Is Somebody sending us a message?”

This time Mickelsson’s look was rather more than reproachful. They’d spoken before of Wittgenstein.

“Try it this way,” Rifkin said irritably, and leaned forward. “Is it bad that you’re unable to read the message? How does it make you feel? Guilty?”

“Uneasy. I don’t say there’s a message.”

Rifkin smiled. “Uneasy. That’s natural, isn’t it? You’re a professional philosopher.”

“Most philosophers don’t think dead animals are trying to tell them things.”

“That’s true. That’s a point.” He nodded, paused, then nodded again, as if seeing the problem in a new light. “Tell me about that—how it feels when dead animals talk to you.”

“I can’t remember.”

“Come on now. You remember that it happens. So how does it happen?”

Mickelsson cleared his throat. “It’s like trying to remember a dream. I’m walking along, thinking nothing, daydreaming …” He sank into silence.

Rifkin waited. Then after a moment: “Make an effort, Professor!” His face was childishly stern.

Mickelsson was unable to remember what they’d been talking about.

He seemed to remember the whole conversation clearly now, standing alone in the livingroom of the new house. Perhaps because now the pressure was off. He seemed to remember the doctor’s every gesture, though perhaps this too was phantom and illusion. But even now he could not remember or imagine what it was like to hear a dead animal speak. The mouth did not move, certainly. Perhaps it had something to do with the eyes.

He remembered his wife’s saying—calling late at night—“Talked to any interesting cadavers lately?” Anger had risen in him, he could almost have killed her; but he’d understood how painful and frightening it had been for her. “ ‘Madman Mickelsson,’ they say. Can you imagine how that makes me feel?” She’d been standing in the kitchen, hugging herself, though the room was of course not cold. “What about the children? What about Mark? You’re making him crazier than you are.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He felt no emotion at all.

In the kitchen, Mickelsson made himself one last drink. He was wide awake now. Since he had no gin, he fixed Irish and water. He sniffed the water suspiciously, but all was well; no rabbit had fallen into the reservoir as yet, or if it had, it was not yet smellable. He must remember to do something about his water supply. He thought of placing a note to himself on his refrigerator, where he had paper and magnets, but feeling through his pockets he found no pencil, only his pipe, which he took out and held in his hand. It crossed his mind that he might call his daughter; but according to the clock on the oven it was quarter to four.

With the drink in one hand, his pipe in the other, Mickelsson wandered from room to room, still in his suitcoat, scowling thoughtfully, his step just noticeably unsteady. In the livingroom he paused a moment, thinking of putting a record on the stereo—an excellent set, the first thing he’d bought after he’d left his wife—but he decided against it. Though he was thinking nothing, merely sizing things up, trying to shake the vision of those two black-coated men, inseparable in his mind from the nightmare trucks, he did not want Beethoven or Mozart intruding. He moved on, touching things, in his mind the image of the two men whirling around to face his headlights. He saw the image as a photograph his son might take, black and white, grainy. Soon he found he could see it only as a photograph, not as it had been. He raised his glass, looking at the hand that held it—steady as a rock, he discovered to his surprise.

He concentrated, smoking now—puffing fiercely—on how he meant to change the house. He’d paint the bedrooms white, or maybe get wallpaper, fill the rooms with antiques, make farmerish chests of pine and cedar; he’d wallpaper the livingroom and put down hardwood floors all downstairs, or maybe spruce. The workroom, he’d decided long since, he’d make a diningroom: white plaster, dark, exposed beams. Assuming the I.R.S. didn’t seize it, maybe attach his earnings as well. Assuming he could somehow pay his old bills and his wife’s expenses, take care of his children …

Images of the party drifted into his mind and out again—Blickstein bowing, European-style, to old Meyerson, Jessica sliding her eyes away, sly. He found himself recalling a different party, months ago; an image of