Mickelsson's Ghosts (20 page)

The white face went red, and the girlish mouth came open. “I didn't mean—” he began. It was the start of a lie, but he quickly caught it. Anger replaced fear, but then he caught that too. Of their own will, his shoulders heaved in a monstrous, meek shrug. He had large, shining tears in his eyes. “I just thought you'd like to read—” he said, and indicated the book in Mickelsson's hands.

“Mmm,” Mickelsson said, “yes I would.” He nodded. In fact, it was true.

The black boy, Mickelsson noticed now, was watching them, eavesdropping. Into Mickelsson's mind, against his will, came an image of the two of them going at each other, naked in some foggy green meadow—spectacular cinema in the style of
Barry Lyndon,
done on cheap Kodak celluloid that would fade in a couple of years, as
Barry Lyndon
had done (so he'd read in some newspaper) to pink or violet. He felt a great, depressing rush of guilt. Nugent was no dolt. If by some miracle they could get on the same wave-length, he thought—then cringed in disgust at the word
wave-length,
then frowned at his snobbishness.

“All I meant,” Nugent said, watching his face, “is, everybody hates it that the modern world's so civilized and boring and generally safe, so crushing to the human soul and imagination. Everybody wants to get back to simplicity. Windmills, tide-power, little communes in Vermont. Nobody has the faintest understanding of, well, you know, the
awful
part, the perdurable evils.” The catch came to his voice. Mickelsson squinted at him, thinking about the word
perdurable.
Nugent waved, almost gasping with frustration. “When I hear that business about how everything's evolving toward Wonderful, and things—”

“I know how you feel,” Mickelsson said. He looked down at his mail.

Nugent stepped back from him, almost military. “Right,” he said, as if in answer to some remark of Mickelsson's. “I realize you do. I know what you've been through. I know everything about you.” He looked away, embarrassed. “OK! You've got a lot to do, I know. …” He half turned to leave, his eyes hanging back. “By the way,” he said, “you never answered that note I left you, at your apartment.”

“Note?” Mickelsson said. Though he flushed with guilt, the truth was that he did not remember, that instant, Nugent's note under his door.

“Well,” Nugent said, and bowed, formal again, preparing to go. He suddenly waved, nearly a salute, and—flashing his unnaturally small, white teeth—smiled. Mickelsson watched him retreat, followed by the black boy, down the hall.

As he was unlocking the door to his office, the feeling came over him that someone—some further nuisance—was waiting inside. The feeling was so strong, however irrational, that he hesitated before turning the knob. The phrase
perdurable evils
drifted into his mind, and he shook his head. Then he remembered, and for the first time really noticed, that even stranger phrase:
I know everything about you.

The office, when at last he opened the door, was empty. Sudden depression flooded through him. He looked again at the letters in his hand. In the left-hand corner of one of the envelopes he found the name “Bauer” and a Florida address. No doubt because his mind was fixed on his university context, not the house in the Endless Mountains, he could think of no one he knew named Bauer and dropped the envelope, along with the others, into the chaos of papers and unopened envelopes on his desk.

7

It was the dean himself who opened the door for him, grinning, his muscular, round face tipped sideways, chin neatly cleft, his right hand reaching up to seize Mickelsson's upper arm. “Come in! Come in!”

Blickstein's suit was tight at the shoulders, his neck thick as a boar's. He'd been a wrestling coach and professor of phys ed, some years ago, before he'd gone into full-time administration. Not that Sheldon Blickstein was your common jock. He had a sharp, crafty mind and seemed to read everything, though he was shy about his knowledge and had cranky spots. (He believed and for some reason often insisted that Homer, the epic poet, was a woman.) His Ph.D. in education was from Columbia. As a student, people said, he'd been an activist, helping to seize buildings, shouting about peace and justice. Nonetheless he'd been a champion wrestler and had a tendency even now to put his hand on the back of your neck or on your shoulder in a way that suggested 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, seductive look at Blickstein to make him stay. Blickstein waited, obediently smiling, furtively tucking in the front of his shirt. “Peter's found himself a farm that overlooks the
very Susquehanna!”
She cast her eyes toward an imaginary mountainscape, her head drawn back grandly, her right hand—fingers aflutter—drawing in the mountains' details. “Well, I for one
approve!
Ya'll know that's where
Coleridge
wanted to have his
colony?
And where Captain John Smith found those Indian folk that were the model for Rousseau's ‘Noble Savage'? And to think!“—her attention was on Mickelsson again—“you live right
there,
on that river so romantically, so
very
poetically yearned after! Why just the
idea
makes me cry!”

“Wonderful place to live!” Blickstein said, shaking his head as if with envy. “Wonderful! Oh, excuse me.” The shirt and belt were where he wanted them now. He backed away, remembering some errand.

Edie flashed her smile, permitting him to leave, then, rearing back, fastened her jewel-bright eyes on Mrs. Swisson. “Listen, honey, why don't ya'll drive down sometime and see it all,” she challenged. “Might truly inspire you. So much beauty! And when the leaves get themselves into autumnal dress—my! It's rather like Vermont, only broader.” Her head swung toward Mickelsson. “Peter agrees with me, don't you?”

“I guess that's a pretty good description,” he said. Though he forced a smile—he did in fact like her: the brazen energy of the woman, the tyrannical insistence that they be merry—he felt like someone listening from beyond the grave, come back for a visit, weighed down, faintly pained by the trivia of all he's lost. Not that he blamed Edie. (It occurred to him now that he'd missed some party she'd invited him to. He could not have said by what subtle gesture she reminded him of it. She bore no grudge, she was letting him know; but she hadn't forgotten.) Why was it important, he wondered, that they all have a wonderful time?

Again Edie touched the Swisson woman's arm, though the woman had shown no sign yet of fleeing. Edie's eyes enlarged with interest. Her tightly curled, orange-red hair glittered, metallic, each hair exactly the same color as every other. Her head trembled a little with palsy. “I b'lieve one might call it
spiritual
country—though to my mind it's downright peculiar, what with the Mormons starting up there and all. Why, Peter, you're dwelling on
holy land!
That's where Joseph Smith had those
divine
visitations, where those
fabulous
tablets were given into his
very hands.”
She scrunched her face up to a self-scorning smile. “I know Peter knows all that stuff.”

“They've got a monument I drive past,” Mickelsson said. “Small, pretty shoddy. You'd hardly notice if it weren't for the historical marker.”

“Mercy no!” Edie agreed, and now it was Britt Swisson's arm she fondly reached for, widening and brightening her eyes again. “And there's
more. That's
not the whole of it by a long shot! Did ya'll know there are oodles of Pennsylvania Dutch out there? Entire villages of witches of the most vicious order?”

“Is that true?” Britt Swisson asked, glancing up at Mickelsson and raising his glass.