by John Gardner
“You miss her a lot,” Jessie said, her sincere look of sympathy as artful as his story.
“She was a nice girl,” he said, a whimper escaping with the words. “She married badly.”
“I imagine it was somewhat more complicated,” she said. Her glance told him that she could have said worse.
He turned his head away, sick unto death of bullshit, especially his own. “Well, anyway—”
For several minutes, neither of them spoke. Furtively, Mickelsson blotted his tears with two fingertips.
“Marriages are hard things,” Jessie said at last (somewhat ponderously, he thought) and breathed a sigh. “My husband, Buzzy, was a great believer in presents. When he went someplace without me, which happened at least every month or so, he’d always bring back something crazy—native beads, bone headdress, expensive gowns. He often bought clothes for me—in fact he’d hardly let me buy them for myself. Which was nice, in a way; flattering. But also it made me feel like one of those motorcycles they put more and more lights on. He loved me, I’m sure, but he could never find the balance. At parties he’d always be there near me, hovering around, earnestly listening to everything I said, as if he’d never heard it before. I suppose in a way I was grateful. But sometimes when he’d smile that fond, practiced smile at me, as if to say to all the people, ‘Oh, isn’t she lovely! Isn’t she brilliant,’ I’d be tempted to push those crooked teeth in.” She grinned, then quickly made her face apologetic. She met Mickelsson’s eyes.
“He was a good man,” she said solemnly. She put her hand on Mickelsson’s chest, fingering the graying, curly hair. “He always wanted to be lord of his own house, though. A little like you, with Ellen. There was really nothing you could do about it. I’d fight him, argue with him, but it was impossible to get him to understand. He had a good trick. If I’d say one cross word—not to mention throw a dish at him—Buzzy would sulk for a week.” She smiled, meaning to lighten it, but her eyes showed the old irritation. “He used to do these things to me. He’d say, ‘Jessie, dear, call Dr. Brown for me, will you? Tell him I can’t make my appointment this afternoon at two.’ As if I were his secretary! Or, ‘Jessie, would you mind fixing dinner for three? I’m bringing old Dornsucker home.’ I’d be up to my ears in work, you know—writing some article, or whatever. … I don’t know how he ever got it in his head that in marrying a Ph.D. in sociology he’d bought himself a lifetime cook. I never gave in—at least not completely—but it was strictly one of those no-win situations. He was so sure he was right! Sometimes I’d show him articles in magazines—the fiercest feminist tracts I could find, things any normal wife would laugh at. He’d settle down in his black leather chair and put his horn-rimmed glasses on—he was never what you’d call a scholarly man, though he’d picked up somewhere an incredible amount of information about trees. … So anyway … he’d read the article very slowly and carefully, and when he’d finished he’d lay down the magazine and look at me, and after a while he’d say, ‘Ver-ry queer.’ ‘But what do you think?’ I’d say: ‘I mean, don’t you think there might be something to it? The old where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire principle?’ Buzzy would shake his head, maybe pull at his collar, and after a minute he’d settle himself and nod and smile and say, ‘Ver-ry queer.’ ” She sighed and slid her hand to Mickelsson’s belly. “What the hell. We made a life of it. I loved him terribly, especially when other women fell in love with him—which they did like flies around a honey-pot. Opening up the fronts of their blouses and leaning close, to talk. He never seemed to notice. What a dummy he was! That was part of why I loved him.”
She turned her face away.
“How did he die?” Mickelsson asked.
“Smoked too much, like you,” she said. “Lung cancer.” She sniffed. He hadn’t realized she was on the verge of crying.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Death is death,” she said, suddenly bitter. “It doesn’t matter all that much what the cause is. I’ll tell you this, though. If I were ever to marry again—”
(Alas, poor Mickelsson, pricking up his ears!)
“… it would be to someone wise and gentle and ugly, someone not famous or likely to become so; someone like—” She broke off abruptly, no doubt suddenly conscious of how far that description came from fitting Mickelsson.
“I’m ugly,” he said. “I can work on the rest.”
She laughed as if flooded with relief at his not having been hurt by her carelessness. Her hand moved gently on his resolutely sleeping cock. She said, “You’re crazy. You’re the handsomest man I know.”
He played the words over and over in his mind, baffled. What would make her say such a thing? He felt a little chill of panic.
Silence fell between them. It was Jessie who finally broke it.
“Everyone was wonderful when he died—the Bryants, Blicksteins, people I’d never really known, friends of Buzzy’s. Your colleague Edward Lawler. You know him, don’t you?” She raised her left hand to wipe her eyes.
“One of the best,” Mickelsson said. “I didn’t know Lawler and your husband were friends.”
“Buzzy had a thing for intellectuals. And of course there was no one else here who could speak those African languages he knew. They’d have lunch together and talk Swahili or something. I guess Professor Lawler enjoyed it too. He strikes me as a lonely man.”
“I suppose that’s so,” Mickelsson mused. It surprised him that the thought had never occurred to him, though as she said it now he knew it was true. Never in all the time he’d been here had he seen Edward Lawler at a party; he’d never even heard him mentioned except in connection with his learning. Was he married? A widower? Mickelsson imagined the handsome young man he’d seen in the photograph at Jessica’s, smiling with his lips closed to hide the crooked teeth—the charming, universally admired Buzzy Stark—seated in the faculty cafeteria with immense, short, black-suited Lawler, a man so shy, or so filled with distrust, one could hardly tell which, that he never ventured out without a book between himself and the world, some heavy old tome from which he never for an instant glanced up, even when, in one language or another, he said hello. There was something childlike, even weird, about Lawler’s parading of languages, a sort of boyish showing off. But that was part of the beauty of the man, that unworldliness, innocence like an angel’s. Had he looked up from his book while he and Buzzy talked their Swahili or Waringa? Probably not. Stark would be leaning forward, animated; Lawler would be sitting erect, slightly sideways to the table, mechanically sliding his fork into his potatoes, raising it to his mouth, lowering it again, his eyes on the book in his left hand, occasionally moving the food into the side of his mouth to bring out a few timid words, not as if conversing with Stark but as if reading aloud. It was his loneliness, perhaps, that made him seem so distant, so medieval, in fact so generally grieved and dismayed by everything around him, insofar as he saw it at all.
“So Lawler came to see you,” Mickelsson said.
“More than that,” she said. “He took care of everything—the burial plot, casket, funeral, the works.” She thought a moment, or remembered. “I didn’t want anything to do with it, it’s always seemed to me so pagan, and anyway I was a wreck.” She rolled her head on the pillow. “Boy! But somebody has to do those things, and Edward understood how I felt without my mentioning it. He was really good at it. The funeral was beautiful, simple and … elegant. Buzzy would have liked it. He always liked elegance—fancy cars and clothes. … I guess Edward knew that. Maybe it was one of the things they had in common.”
“Strange, isn’t it,” Mickelsson said, “the friendships that spring up. Lawler, this positively frightening intellect, and your husband—not that I mean to say—”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve thought about that too. It makes me feel rotten that I was never able to satisfy him that way. But I suspect he didn’t really like too much brain in a woman. At any rate, I know he was always surprised when he ran into it. Maybe I wasn’t as smart
as I thought. I may have bored him, tagging along like a kid sister, my eyes glazing over when he talked about trees—the way his glazed over when I talked about shopping in Entebbe or witchcraft in modern Nigeria. …”
Something came awake in him. “You knew the languages too, then?”
“Of course,” she said. She smiled and gave a suggestion of a lying-down shrug. “I’m a Jew!” That last was too hard for him. On second thought, it was all too hard for him.
“Are you crazy?” he said. She didn’t seem to notice that he was mimicking her. He rose up on his elbow, feeling sorrow partly at what Buzzy Stark had failed to see, partly at his own ignorance of African languages. He bent over her slowly and kissed her.
Mickelsson made lunch, feeling superior to Jessie’s late husband. He made what he made for himself almost every day, as for years he’d made it for his children: baked, open-faced sandwiches of cheese, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions, a little oregano; hearts-of-lettuce salad with the spiced buttermilk dressing Ellen had discovered long ago in San Francisco; and coffee. When he served it to her—at the low, glass-topped table in the livingroom—the diningroom was still unfinished—she looked up from the New Yorker she’d been glancing through, took off her glasses, and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Hey,” she said, “it looks good!”
When they’d begun on the sandwiches, he asked, “How are you doing with your Marxists?” He thought of Levinson, grieving, driving to Boston every two or three weeks to see his son. Guilt passed over him like a cloud.
“We get by,” Jessie said, and shrugged. She stopped to pat the side of her mouth with her paper napkin. “I’m a thorn in their side, but so far so good.” She took another bite, bending down close to the plate inelegantly. She was not careful to eat with her mouth closed.
“They’ve got no reason to cause trouble,” he said.
“That’s easy to say if you’re not one of them.” She smiled, still chewing. “I’m not good around fanatics. I don’t keep my mouth shut. I bait them. I tell students quite frankly what I think. Bad department citizen, as my chairman says.” She stopped chewing, squinting at some annoyance. “He’s right, but they make me furious.” She bit into her sandwich again and waved her left hand, keeping the floor. “How can they say things they know to be grossly oversimplified, and say them with such conviction—even feel such apparently authentic indignation when you dare tell them they’re crazy, as if you were the one telling lies?” She gave her head a little shake to drive the hair back. “There’s one of them, David Reese—very young, very nice boy really“—she stopped, eyes widening, and picked a crumb from her blouse—”except that he’s bonkers. He works like a dog, really dedicated teacher, students in there in his office all the time. … He makes ’em work like devils, not always the way you might wish he’d make them work—half of them can’t write an English sentence—but they all get A’s. …” She took another bite, chewed, then drank her wine as if it were grapejuice—all with hardly a pause. “I’ve tried to talk to him, because he seems nice—mild, kind eyes, good smile, real gentleness. … Believe me, it’s like talking to a Martian.” She shook her head, then rubbed her fingers on her napkin.
“I know,” Mickelsson said.
She looked up.
“I don’t know about Reese, but I know about fanatics. They really are Martians. There’s a philosopher named R. M. Hare, very popular these days. He’s got some interesting things to say about fanatics. Points out that, essentially, their code isn’t moral, in the usual sense; it’s aesthetic.” He looked down, aware that he was telling her more than she was interested in hearing. He picked the last piece of onion from his plate with his fingers and ate it. It occurred to him to wonder if Jessica minded the smell of onions on one’s breath.
“Go on,” she said.
“Listen, let’s go for a walk,” he said. “It’s beautiful out—getting warmer. I could show you the waterfall.”
“Why not?” She rose at the same moment he did, and they carried their plates to the kitchen.
It was true that the day had warmed considerably; by evening much of the snow would have melted. He took her gloved hand in his, leading her past the large, still barn, past where his night visitors had thrown his bottles and cigarettes, down the drifted meadow and along the winding path through pines and low brush to what had once, according to his neighbor John Pearson, been the pond of the Susquehanna ice-house. The sound of falling water was much louder now, almost a roar—not a true, natural waterfall, but water pouring over the break in the high spillway, plunging into a dark basin edged with ice, from there rattling away down the steep, shale-and-icicle-lined glen.
“It’s pretty,” she said. “Isn’t this close enough?”
Ahead of them lay a makeshift bridge of boards mounded in snow, patches of gray wood showing through. In the snow on the bridge and around it there were deer-tracks and the triangle tracks of rabbits.
“It’s nicer from the middle,” he said. He let go of her hand and took her elbow. She tried to pull away. He held on. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “See? Deer have walked across it.” He pointed to the tracks.
“Nothing doing,” she said. “I’m not a deer. Do I look like a deer?”
“A little.” He grinned.
She stared at him, then tried harder to pull away. “What are you, nuts?”
“Take my word for it,” he said, “it’s perfectly safe. I’ve walked across it a hundred times.” He gave a little tug at her arm, moving her two steps toward the bridge. “Come on,” he said with a laugh, “you’re acting like a city slicker.”
“I am a city slicker, God damn it.” With a sudden sharp jerk she pulled free of him. She moved three long steps back from the water, then stopped.
He stood still, looking at the snow between them like a hunter. “It’s a wonderful feeling, looking down from the bridge,” he said. He held out his arms. “I hate for you to miss it. Come on. Don’t be a coward!”
“You go look down.”
He thought, then shrugged. “It’s pretty from here too,” he said. He put his hands behind his back and, after a moment, moved toward her. Though he was sure she would run at any moment, she held her ground. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe we can come in the summertime, when it’s more peaceful and you can see the boards.” He smiled, then cautiously put his arm around her.
“Maybe,” she said. She stood rigid.
“Of course in the summer there are rattlesnakes.” He turned back to the water.
They stared together into the churning, dark basin, watching gray water from above plunge in. Beyond the basin bare willowtrees shone, dripping wet. There seemed a faint red aura around them.
“It’s spooky here,” she said.
He nodded. At last, some of the rigidity leaving her, they turned, together, moving farther away from the water, up the snowy bank. He said, “What I meant to tell you before, about this argument by R. M. Hare …” She kept walking. He took her gloved hand once more in his. “The thing about aesthetic arguments is that there’s no resolving them. One can debate whether a trumpet’s been played badly or well, but if one person loves the trumpet and another person claims it sets his teeth on edge, there’s no use trying to reason it out. De gustibus.” He glanced at her to see if she was bored. He couldn’t tell. “What R. M. Hare points out is that in some ways the affirmations of, for instance, a Nazi are like aesthetic preferences. A Nazi’s a man who has a certain ideal for human nature—or anyway so he claims—just as one might have an ideal for the sports car: precise steering, vivid acceleration, reliable brakes—”
He broke off. She said nothing, walking with deliberate steps up the snowy hill toward the outbuildings and house. “Nazis have an ideal,” he said, speaking more hurriedly. He could not have explained why it seemed to him important that he convince her. “Insofar as the Nazi’s not lying to himself—and they almost always are—the Nazi would say that even he himself, if it were proven that he has ‘the
inferior qualities of the Jews,’ as he thinks—he himself in that case should be exterminated. The Nazi, insofar as he’s not lying to himself, is a man who will let no ideal—least of all liberal concern for others—stand in the way of his vision of good.” Because she’d paused, he glanced at her and saw that she was looking up at where the road wandered into trees. He said, “Your Marxists are more like Nazis than they like to think. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Mmm,” she said. She asked, “Pete, are there wild animals around here?”
“Nothing that would eat you. There are supposed to be bears, but all people ever see is the tracks.” He dropped her hand and got out his cigarettes. He held the pack toward her. She shook her head, then looked up at the trees again. He lit one for himself and hauled in smoke.
They began to walk again, three feet apart, not holding hands, rising through stubble and snow toward the barns and road.
“Your Marxists believe in manipulating people—for people’s own good, of course. It’s that that makes them like Nazis.” He waved the cigarette, then on reflection took one last drag and threw it away.
She shook her head. “That’s stupid,” she said. “They care very much about people and … social justice.”
He bent down to scoop up the makings for a snowball. “Maybe. But they’re just as much social idealists as the Nazis were.” He packed the snowball tigher and tighter, not looking at it, gazing up at the house. “To use Kantian jargon,” he said, “the liberal’s ideal is a kingdom of ends in which all citizens are legislating members. The liberal won’t violate his fellow citizens’ freedom because freedom is the social value he believes in. Your Marxists don’t believe in that ideal for one minute.”
