by John Gardner
What the Tillsons felt for each other Mickelsson couldn’t guess. She loved him, all right. (Now it was Ruth that he imagined coupling with. He imagined her crying out.) Ruth Tillson was the classic betrayed, still-doting wife. Every time Mickelsson had glanced at them, the poor big-bosomed, sad-eyed woman was clinging for dear life to her hunchbacked husband’s arm. She never spoke, it seemed, if she weren’t sure in advance that he’d agree. She’d spoken passionately only once all evening, leaning in toward the red-bowled candle at the center of the table as if almost forgetting that Tillson might be watching. The flame lit up her face and the cleavage between her fat peek-a-boo tits—brightening, dimming, intensifying the darkness of the tables, heavy beams, broad old staircase behind her. “Coffee and Coca-Cola,” she said, “will be the ruin of this country. It’s everywhere, you know.” She pointed at Mickelsson’s pipe. “Are you aware that tobacco is cured in sugar?” Then she drew back, touching her hand to her cleavage, calming herself. Mickelsson registered as a fact for possible future use that Geoffrey Tillson strongly disapproved of coffee, Coca-Cola, and tobacco. He wondered if Tillson’s mistress had been at the concert tonight, somewhere in the shadows, smiling at her hunchbacked, silver-bearded lover and his pitiful wife, her dear friend. He wondered if she smoked, used sugar.
In a moment Mickelsson would be asleep, the erection hunting through the world on its own. The voices he’d been hearing were now distinctly dream-voices, though the words were still unintelligible, a mumble like wind on an abandoned beach; and the people he’d gone with to the Firehouse Five (he could feel himself falling back from them, easing himself out of the light from the red glass bowl on their table) were no longer entirely fitting in with the waking world’s ways. Something he imagined Edie Bryant to be saying, when he brought himself awake enough to think about it, turned out to have to do with leaks in numbers, which in turn had something to do with his father’s death. All at once, in this faintly unpleasant half-dream, he heard Jessica laughing. Evidently something had just cancelled every trace of unhappiness in her life. Perhaps her husband was alive after all, had never been dead; it had all been a casual bureaucratic mistake. He began to thrust, against his will, his heart quickening, and exploded inside his dream of her. That instant a door opened, and the sounds coming through made him think of sweet Mexican sunlight on clean white tile-and-stucco walls. Mickelsson concentrated, listening with every nerve and hair, but nothing would come clear. (“Wait here, please,” someone said.) He wiped the sheet on the cold wetness and tried to make out what he was thinking.
Then, in the hallway outside his bedroom, he heard breathing, then footsteps, the creak of floorboards. He jerked himself awake—fought his way up out of sleep as from drowning and opened his eyes, half sitting up. Even wide awake he felt disoriented, as if he’d come to himself in a different house. Somewhere downstairs a child was crying. The sound was real, unmistakable, though of course it was impossible that the house should have a crying child in it. He looked around, trying to think how he might prove to himself that he was or was not awake. The crying stopped.
The footsteps kept coming, slowly, not at all furtively, the ordinary footsteps of stiff and uncomfortable old age. It was surely not a dream. Just outside his door a hoarse, somewhat feeble voice asked crossly, “You in there?” A moment later, a bearded old man with red-webbed, milky, near-sighted eyes and no teeth except a few in the front poked his head in at the door. He did not look at Mickelsson or seem to recognize his existence, but peered into an almost empty corner of the room, the corner where Mickelsson had placed an antique hatrack he never used. After a moment, touching his beard and muttering something, as if he’d made a mistake, had caught himself in a moment of senility, the old man drew his head in and backed out of sight. Mickelsson listened for the sound of the old man’s movement down the hall, but though he strained every nerve, he heard nothing more. At last he realized that, dream or vision, whatever it was, it was over. The old man, if he’d ever existed, had finished or abandoned his errand long ago.
6
By the time Peter Mickelsson reached his office the following morning, the snow had almost all melted. Except for frail icicles hanging from eaves and trees, they might have been back in September. Birds ran up and down on the wet, gray-brown lawn outside Mickelsson’s window; more birds watched from the bare branches, now and then flying down by paths as determinedly straight as guy-wires to join the activity of the birds on the ground or drive a few timid ones treeward. Students walked around in sweaters or light coats unbuttoned down the front. The day warmed more and more.
He’d arrived earlier than he’d needed to, feeling lively for some reason—perhaps his near-accident on the road last night had somehow gotten the old juices flowing—and he decided to see if, in the forty-some minutes he had available before class, he could make a small dent in the great pile of unopened mail on his deck. Casually he began to sort through the envelopes, intending to deal first with whatever seemed most urgent. Thus he came upon the letter with the name Bauer in the upper left-hand corner, and a Florida address. This time he recognized the name at once as belonging not to some professor he’d forgotten but “the doc.” According to the postmark, the letter had come nearly two months ago. He opened it.
She was planning to be in Susquehanna in late October or early November, she wrote. She had business, a legal matter that he might perhaps have heard about—she believed there had been some mention of it in the papers—and it had occurred to her that she might perhaps drop in on him in case he’d run across any problems in connection with the house—questions she’d failed to anticipate, difficulties she, after fourteen years in Susquehanna, might be able to help him resolve. If he wanted her to visit, he should write to her sometime soon at her Florida address.
Mickelsson read the letter through again. It was hard to imagine what sorts of “problems in connection with the house” she had in mind. But on one score at least, the letter relieved him. He had not just imagined seeing her last night—almost scattering atoms of the doc and her car (himself and his own car as well) from Susquehanna to Montrose. Today, according to his desk calendar, was October 27th. It was apparent, then, that she really had been up at his house, or somewhere nearby, and had been frightened by something. Useless to try to puzzle out what could have frightened her, knowing as little as he did.
No sooner had he told himself that it was useless than he knew he was mistaken and reached for the phone. He finally got hold of Jessica not at her office but at her house.
“Jessica,” he said, “this is Peter Mickelsson.” He put his voice on intense polite. “I hope I’m not calling you too early?”
There was a pause, then she laughed. “Peter, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I was just afraid I might have—” He thought about her question, imagining her look, then suddenly, throwing caution to the winds, asked, “Do I sound as bad as that?”
Again she laughed, this time thoughtfully. “First you tell me ‘This is Peter Mickelsson,’ ” she said, “and then you ask me, at half past nine in the morning, if you’re calling me too early. You know I get up with the sun.”
“I guess I forgot.” He glanced at his watch.
“So what is the matter?” she asked.
“It’s really nothing,” he said, and got out his pipe, set it on top of the pile of mail, and began to hunt through his drawers and pockets for matches. “I just need to ask you a question you may possibly know the answer to. Also”—he paused, then again took a chance—“I need to tell you I had a wonderful time last night.”
“Thanks. I did too, mostly. What was the question?”
He stood up to open the file-cabinet drawers and look for matches there. “You remember mentioning that Dr. Bauer—the woman I bought my house from—was being sued for malpractice? Do you remember the name of the people suing her?”
Waiting for her answer, he momentarily forgot his hunt for matches.
She said, �
�I don’t think I ever really noticed the name. I could find out, if it’s important.”
“Could you try?” he asked, and, abruptly remembering, returned to his hunt.
Jessica asked, “Where are you—in your office? How long do you plan to be there?”
“Another thirty minutes, then I have class. When it’s over—it runs for an hour—”
“I’ll get back to you before that,” she said. “Bye.”
“Thanks, Jess,” he said. “I can’t tell you how—”
She’d hung up.
Magically, matches appeared in his shirt pocket. He lit one and hurriedly raised it to his pipe. Sugar, he thought, and abruptly smiled. Crazy bastard! He thought of the big old-fashioned couch in Tillson’s office, how sometimes when you went there Tillson would be lying on it with his shoes off, his hand on his forehead in the gesture of some nineteenth-century heroine. With his suitcoat off, his suspenders loose on his white shirt, gray bags under his eyes, so dark one might have imagined he had lupus, he looked like a doll that had been meant to be comic, one of those apple- or potato-people, but had somehow come off unfunny, obscurely depressing, Rumpelstiltskin not destroyed by his own anger but merely beaten, dwindling toward old age.
Five minutes later Jessica called back. “Hi. Listen, the name of the girl who died was Deborah Vliet, but the people who are suing are her parents. Her maiden name was Sprague.” When Mickelsson said nothing, she said, “Hello?”
“I’m here,” he said. “I guess you caught me off guard. Sprague’s the name of my ghosts.” He half laughed.
“Ghosts?” she echoed; then, remembering: “Oh, that. Mickelsson, could you possibly divulge what this is about?”
“Tell you when I see you,” he said. “Have to make another phonecall now—at least I think I do. You wouldn’t know where these Sprague people live?”
“I imagine with a little detective work—”
“Never mind, I can do it.”
“All right,” she said, less than satisfied. If she was still full of questions, she contained them. “I’ll see you right after your class, OK? You’ll be there?”
“Sure,” he said. “Good.” By the time he got to good-bye, she’d hung up.
His second call he made to his neighbor John Pearson. The phone rang and rang. Just as Mickelsson was about to give up, the old man answered. He’d been out in the yard; something about a ram who’d hanged himself trying to break through an American-wire fence. When Mickelsson was able to get around to his question, the old man said, “Shore I know where they live. Right up the road about a mile and a half from me. They’re my next-door neighbors except for one place between, Dudaks’. Course I don’t see much of ’em. Odd bunch. Wouldn’t be suing the doc if they wasn’t. Tell the truth, I’m surprised they ever heard about lawyers. But you know how it is. People on Aid know more about lawyers and gettin things for nothin than people like you and me do.”
“Sprague doesn’t work, then?”
“Oh, he works accordin to his lights, I s’pose,” Pearson said. “He’s old.”
When it was clear he didn’t intend to elaborate, Mickelsson asked, “Do you know if they’re any relation to the Spragues that lived at my place?”
The line hummed and clicked while Pearson considered the question from various angles, or so Mickelsson imagined. At last the old man said, “I s’pose they musta ben.”
For the first time all semester, Brenda Winburn was talkative that morning, an effect of her romance with Alan Blassenheim, no doubt. Perhaps his admiration gave her the necessary confidence, or perhaps his apparent liking for Mickelsson had seduced her, made her willing to play Mickelsson’s game a little. “Did you see the article in Sunday’s paper,” she asked, “about the brothers who’d never known each other and were brought to America to be part of a study of identical twins?”
With a nod Mickelsson encouraged her to continue.
Though her look was still distrustful, as if prepared for lack of interest, scorn, or ambush from Mickelsson, Brenda continued with considerable ease and poise, her hands flat on the desk-chair top, one over the other. Her blond hair was drawn back tightly and tied in a bun, giving her small, almost lobeless ears a stranded look. On another day it might have seemed bizarre, but today the aliveness of her face—the blush of love, one might as well call it—made it difficult to think of her as anything but pretty. “One was named Stohr and the other was named something like Yufe,” she said. “One was raised a Nazi, the other one Jewish. They never saw each other since soon after they were born, but when they met at the airport they were both wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and double-pocket blue shirts with epaulettes, they both had little moustaches, they both flipped through magazines from back to front and had a habit of keeping rubber bands around their wrists. … I forget what else, but the similarities were amazing.”
“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” Mickelsson said. He added with a smile, lest he drive her back into her reserve, “I’m not sure I get your point.”
The class, taking its cue from him as always, waited politely. Even Nugent seemed to hold down his anger a little, keeping his face passive, his chin resting on his slightly loosened fist.
“Well, I was just thinking,” she said, “maybe when Aristotle was doing all that taxonomy he was aware, to some extent, that things were more set by Nature than his—you know—moral philosophy admitted. Maybe he just didn’t make the connection, I guess that’s possible. But maybe, setting down those different kinds of fishes and crustaceans or whatever—maybe he had an inkling that human beings have certain basic natures too, and that”—she glanced at Alan Blassenheim—“ideas … all that sort of thing … different kinds of actions … don’t really count much. Maybe our ideas and philosophies and all …” She looked down at her hands, calculating whether or not she ought to say it, then looked up and said, “Maybe all that is just cosmetics, if you know what I mean. Sort of just … polite behavior, like when whales or wolves touch noses or chimpanzees groom each other.”
The class looked from her to Mickelsson. He resisted the temptation to take the idea from her and bend it to the purpose of the course. “I’m not sure I follow the argument,” he said.
“It’s not an argument,” she said, suddenly smiling, and shrugged. “It’s just that, for example, this man Stohr, the one that was raised a Nazi, he was one of those Hitler Jugend, if that’s how you pronounce it, and when he was young he saw movies that said Jews were cockroaches and had to be gotten rid of, and then after the war when the Russians captured him and made him look at those pictures of the death camps and things, he felt confused and guilty, and he changed his mind to the same extent everybody else did in that situation—he didn’t really have any choice at all—but in all the important things, like what kind of glasses and shirts to wear—”
“Important things?” Mickelsson asked, raising his eyebrows.
She smiled, alarmed, and waved her left hand. “You know what I mean,” she said.
Nugent slid his eyes toward her, scornful, murderously impatient.
Blassenheim raised his hand.
“I’m not sure I do,” Mickelsson said, and decided to grant Blassenheim the floor.
“Nobody’s saying that killing people isn’t important,” Blassenheim said, and threw a look at Brenda to see if his defense was acceptable to her. “The question is why people do it, or don’t do it, whichever. We talk about people as doing what they do because they think of it as right, or at least, like, expedient. Like Plato’s principle that nobody chooses to do what he thinks will bring him pain. But she’s saying—Brenda’s saying—maybe that’s wrong. Maybe people choose ideas by style, they just sort of helplessly go with whatever’s in the stores that season—sort of a general ‘go with the group’ adaptation—but when they’re dealing with little, more specific styles, like when they choose their clothes, like their shoes and shirts and glasses, that’s more like straight genetic programming.” He sat back and waved his han
d, just an interpreter, not committed. Predictably, the class was amused.
“You really think blue double-pocketed shirts with epaulettes are programmed in our genes?” Mickelsson asked.
“You know,” Blassenheim said, “maybe not that directly.” He waved again.
“Interesting,” Mickelsson said, smiling at Blassenheim as if playing chess with him. They’d moved a long way from Aristotle, but no matter. “And what does that do,” Mickelsson asked, “to our theory of the Good? Are moral judgments and aesthetic judgments of the same kind? Are the Nazi ideal of human nature and the liberal ideal just alternatives of taste?”
Though he addressed the question to Blassenheim, it was Brenda Winburn who answered. “It wouldn’t necessarily mean absolute values are wrong,” she said. “God might have rules a snake can never figure out.” She leaned forward like a daughter pleading—as if Mickelsson and Reason were stern authorities who could be gotten around by bright eyes and a timid smile. As was no doubt the case. “If some genius figures out and tells us about a divine idea but it’s against human nature—how people really are, I mean, with all their programmed individual differences—it can’t last, he won’t be accepted.”
“Ah!” Mickelsson said, and raised a finger as if shooting the ceiling, “then in effect the ‘moral absolutes’ ”—playfully, he put on a German accent—“can exist, if at all, only in the actual behavior of human beinks!”
