by John Gardner
Mickelsson was the first to reach her after Garret. “Stay back,” he commanded, pushing away whoever or whatever pressed over him, “give her room!”
“Is there a hospital around here?” Garret asked gravely. Already he was lifting her in his arms.
“What happened?” Edie Bryant called. “I didn’t see it!”
“I bet it’s low blood pressure,” Ruth Tillson said. “I used to have that.”
Hardly aware that he was doing it, Mickelsson moved Ruth out of the way with one arm, then helped Garret carry his wife into the livingroom, then into the kitchen, heading for the back door, the quickest route to where the cars were parked. Tillson had managed to get ahead of them to hold the door open. Jessie ran after them with an afghan. In the starlight her skin seemed stretched over her skull, elegant and alarming. “Wrap this around her, Pete. It’s cold out.” She draped the afghan over Mickelsson’s shoulder. “I’ll call ahead and make sure the doctor’s there.” He nodded.
“It’s all right,” Garret was saying loudly, over and over, to his unconscious wife, to himself, to the friends around them. “You people stay here. We’ll call from the hospital, let you know what we find out.” Then, to Mickelsson: “We’ll take my car, it’s behind the others. I’ll give you the keys after we get her in.”
“I’ll bring your coat,” Miss Orinsky told Garret, then ran back to the house.
“Alan, you come with us,” Mickelsson said quietly, catching Blassen-heim’s eye. “Help Tom hold her while I drive.”
Blassenheim nodded, one startled jerk of the head, then hurried around them to open the back door of Garret’s Plymouth. When they had her inside, her head on Garret’s lap. Garret fished the keys from the overcoat Miss Orinsky had just given him and handed them to Mickelsson.
“Be careful!” Jessie said at the car window, bending down to look in. Her skin was waxy gray in the dim light draped from above the back door. For an instant her high-cheekboned, wide-mouthed face subsumed the world. On the dark lawn beyond her, snow was falling. The Blicksteins and Bryants stood half in, half out of the kitchen, their visages dramatic—Edie above all, drawn to her full height, solemn, gray and white, like a death god. The others were at the window to their left, pressing against the glass like children. Mickelsson got the engine started and realized only now that he wished Jessie were going to be there to help. As he backed out, she was already on her way into the house to phone the hospital.
“What do you think happened?” Mickelsson asked as they reached the dark, icy trees at the edge of town.
No answer came from the back seat, and he glanced into the rear-view mirror. Garret was looking straight ahead. If he’d heard Mickelsson’s question, he showed no sign.
For half an hour Mickelsson and Alan Blassenheim sat leafing through magazines in the chilly, dimly lit waiting room at the end of the Emergency Room hallway, an enlarged section of the hallway itself, listening to night sounds inside and outside—faraway footsteps, the clicking of fluorescent lights, distant trucks, voices of strangers. Except for a dark-bearded, early-middle-aged man in a brown coat and brown trousers who kept flipping through magazines in a distraught, bewildered way, licking his thumb each time he turned a page, they were alone in the waiting room—practically alone in the hospital, for that matter: there was the stocky, sixty-year-old nurse who’d met them at the door, chattering and solicitous—“Poor little thing! Wait here, please”—and the blond young doctor who’d come ten minutes later—“Tom Mowry,” he said, holding out his hand. They saw no one else. “People complain that the hospital’s not adequately staffed,” the doctor said. He pulled his coat off and hung it on a coatrack. “They don’t know what we go through just to keep up what we’ve got. Three of the doctors here have pacemakers. If they had any brains they’d be retired.” Then, rubbing his hands together like a craps shooter, he went into the room where the nurse had put Mabel—conscious now, lying with her eyes closed, her husband seated beside her—nodded a quick, apologetic dismissal to Mickelsson and Alan, then closed the door behind him. They heard voices, and after a few minutes the nurse came out, went down the hall to a room at the far end, then returned to the room where the doctor and the Garrets were. Mickelsson called his house and talked with Gretchen Blickstein, then briefly with Jessie, telling them what little news there was, that Mabel was conscious and the doctor was examining her. Everything was fine at the house, Jessie said. The party was going ahead full-steam, the guests all still in the diningroom. Then Mickelsson sat in the waiting room again, fallen out of time, as he always felt in hospitals—half reading, occasionally glancing down the hall, the rest of the time half listening to voices in his mind, memories or dreams.
Once or twice when he looked up he saw that, in the darkest corner of the waiting room, the man in brown was looking at him, his mouth slightly open, in his eyes a puzzled, troubled look, as if he were thinking of asking Mickelsson some question. Then, changing his mind, the man would straighten his black, coarse hair with his fingers, and look at his knees.
Alan Blassenheim sat bent forward, a Sports Illustrated open in his lap, clearly a magazine of no interest to him, though apparently the others were even worse. Each time he turned a page he did it with an irritable slap, then grabbed the edge of the next page as if to turn that too, but on second thought went on reading. Whenever Mickelsson shifted in his chair, however slightly, Alan would look up to make sure all was well.
Mickelsson’s eyes began to ache—the only lights were the lamp in the corner by Blassenheim and the dim light, a circular fluorescent, overhead—and he gave up for a while, dropping the tattered Newsweek back on the table and lowering his eyelids. He heard—or perhaps only saw, peripherally—the man in brown stir in his chair. Mickelsson glanced over at him and saw him rising, as if with slight difficulty, like a man in light shock, soundlessly moving his lips. The man wandered down the hallway, his steps almost silent—probably looking for a men’s room. Near the end of the hallway he opened a door and went in.
Mickelsson once more closed his eyes. He could hear faint, faraway machine sounds—pumps, furnace vents, refrigerators perhaps. Now and then Blassenheim turned a page. Otherwise, silence. He thought of Blickstein smiling with interest as he predicted Jessie’s advancing doom, and at the thought he felt a muscle in his face jerk. He heard someone groan, not far away, then realized that, in a kind of doze, he himself had made the sound. He glanced at Blassenheim, and their eyes met. They nodded like strangers on a train; then Blassenheim went back to his reading.
He decided to get up and walk. There seemed no one anywhere, though it stood to reason that on the floors above this one, the first floor, there would be sleeping patients in room after room. Looking in through a windowed door near the end of the hallway he saw the brown-coated man from the waiting room, seated at a glossy table, poring over a book. He had more books piled at his elbow. Mickelsson frowned, wondering what queer drama he was getting a glimpse of. He would no doubt never know. He found the men’s room and went in. When he came out again, the man in brown was at the waiting-room end of the hallway, looking out at snow, or looking at his reflection in the glass of the door.
Finally the door of the room where Mabel lay came swooshing open and Dr. Mowry and Tom Garret came out. While Tom came over, the doctor smiled distantly and went to another room farther down the hallway, near where the man in brown had been. Blassenheim dropped his magazine on the table and stood up.
“Everything’s OK,” Garret said and smiled. “They’re keeping her overnight, just to watch her.”
“I take it you’ll stay with her?” Mickelsson asked. “I’m sure we can find somebody to look after your kids.”
“No need,” Garret said, and raised his hand. “I’ll run home and see to things, then come get her in the morning. She’s asleep now—she’ll sleep right through. He gave her a sedative.”
“I’d be happy to babysit,” Blassenheim said. He stretched his chin, self-conscious.
&nbs
p; “Really no need,” Garret said. He picked up his suitcoat from the chair-arm where he’d dropped it, then got his overcoat from the rack. Blassenheim went around behind to help him on with them.
“So did they figure out what it was?” Mickelsson asked.
“Yes and no,” Garret said. He took a step toward the door, then paused. “Is this the way we came in?”
Mickelsson nodded, and the three of them moved together toward the door. The man in brown continued to gaze out, a book under his arm. He did not turn as they drew near. “And what was it?” Mickelsson asked.
“Well, it seems she ‘saw’ something,” Garret said, and gave them an evasive grin. Mickelsson held the door. They went out into the cold.
“What d’ya mean?” Blassenheim asked.
Garret threw out his hands in an exaggerated shrug. “Believe me, if I knew what I meant I’d tell you. She doesn’t know herself—I mean, she does know, but …”
Mickelsson stopped walking. “What?” he said.
Now Garret and Blassenheim stopped too. Garret’s face was still smiling, frozen. “I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said. When they went on waiting, not accepting it, he reached out and touched Mickelsson’s arm. “She saw a funeral, all right?” He shook his head. “She walked in that room where all of us were standing and instead of seeing us she saw these two people holding a funeral all by themselves.” He laughed.
Mickelsson and Blassenheim waited.
Garret looked down, raising his fist to his lips. After a minute he said, “She took some Darvon earlier tonight—malrotated colon. The doctor thinks it may have been the combination of Darvon and alcohol. That could explain the fainting, too.”
“I see,” Mickelsson said. As he opened the car-door for Garret, he asked, “What kind of funeral, did she say? Who had died?”
“A child,” Garret said.
Back at the house they said nothing to the others—it was Garret’s wish—of what Mabel thought she’d seen; but in the kitchen Mickelsson told Jessie what Garret had said.
She looked at him, sharp-eyed as a bird. “How did you feel?”
“Well, I was interested, I suppose,” he said. He leaned against the counter, swirling the liquid around and around in his martini glass.
“I should think so.” She moved her hand as if to touch him, then thought better of it. “And you didn’t feel anything—at the time she was seeing those things?”
“Or thought she was.”
“Oh, stop it, Mickelsson.” As if to take back the snap of irritation, she did touch him, lightly resting her hand on his arm.
He looked down. “I felt something, yes. A coldness, and fast-moving shadows.”
She asked, “Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” Her eyes met his, then skidded.
“I don’t know,” he said before he’d stopped to think. “I mean, yes, but—”
She nodded. “It’s all right. Stop worrying. Another time.”
“It’s just—”
Alan Blassenheim came into the kitchen for ice. He nodded, smiling one-sidedly, apparently thinking well of himself. Behind him, the Swisson woman poked her head in at the door.
“I wonder,” Mickelsson said. Blassenheim glanced at him, seeing whether he was the one addressed. “I wonder what that man in the brown coat was there for. Eerie, somehow.” When Blassenheim seemed not to follow, Mickelsson said, “The man in the waiting room, I mean.”
“What man?” Blassenheim asked.
Mickelsson looked away as if guiltily.
Blassenheim rolled a look back at the Swisson woman; it was for her that he was getting the ice. “I guess I didn’t notice,” he said. “I wasn’t really paying much attention.”
Jessie met Mickelsson’s eyes.
Then Edie Bryant was in the kitchen with them. “Git out! Git outl Everybody in the livinroom!” she called excitedly. “We’re to have Freddy at the fiddle and Lady Kate will sing!”
“Thank you, Alan,” Kate Swisson said, letting her head fall limply sideways, taking the glass of ice from him. “Now if I can just find some juice or something.” To Mickelsson she explained, shyly smiling, flutteringly helpless, “It’s my throat. It’s like this all the time, these days. It just scares me to death.” She touched her white throat with three long fingers.
“I’ll find you something,” Alan said. “I think there’s some grapejuice.”
“Alan,” Brenda Winbum called from the livingroom, “are—you—coming?”
“I’m getting Miss Swisson some grapejuice,” he called.
Mickelsson and Jessie moved into the livingroom as Brenda said, “Mrs. Swisson.” Her eyes locked angrily on Mickelsson’s for an instant. Then, guiltily, she smiled.
As soon as Brenda was out of earshot, Jessie said, “That young lady has a crush on you, Mickelsson.”
“Jessie, that’s silly. Look how jealous she is of Alan.”
“That’s at least partly for your benefit. She’s a very proud young woman.” She smiled, sliding a covert look back at Brenda. It was true, he saw, that she valued herself, and for good reason. But then what of Jessie, smiling down fondly at the poor innocent like some serene, possibly dangerous Chinese goddess?
In the corner of the room, with their backs to all the others, Tillson and Garret were in earnest conversation, Tillson’s hand on Garret’s arm, Tillson nodding, shaking his head, nodding again, speechless with interest.
10
When he awakened the next morning he was aware at once that the room was filled with bright, eerie light, and it came to him that, even as he slept, he’d been aware for hours that it was snowing heavily, a cold blizzard snow, wind whistling around the corners of the house, softly banging the shutters, knocking for admission. When he got up, shivering, and went to pull up the white windowshade, he saw, through the swirling clouds of whiteness, that snow lay deep on the porch roof and down on the lawn below, the road, the slope toward the pond beyond that, half hidden among pines—great unbroken drifts five or six feet deep, maybe higher. Even with the Jeep there was no possibility of his getting to school within the next day or two, assuming school would run, and if the icy snow kept falling and the wind kept blowing, no likelihood of his getting to school all week. All the shadows over his life—Donnie Matthews’ pregnancy the darkest of all—must sit tight, bide their time. He remembered “the blizzards in Wisconsin in his boyhood, how he and his cousins had dug tunnels through the drifts—labyrinths, large rooms, windows looking up at white light. Even his grandfather’s mood would lighten on days like this. He remembered the cold white light in the old man’s study in the manse, how the old man would stand, his shirt very white against the darkness of his suit, his white hands knotted behind his back, bent like a crow toward the window, almost smiling, his odd, bent nose aiming slyly to the left, teeth like a shark’s, nostrils flared as if sniffing things his straightforward eyes refused to recognize. His white hair glowed. “God is merciful,” he would say, apropos of nothing, as if the thought were unutterably baffling.
Even now Mickelsson could not quite help thinking of Donnie Matthews. It crossed his mind that this would be the time to go to her, bundle himself up like an Eskimo and laboriously struggle into town. No one else would be there. He could spend the whole day with her, work out calmly what they meant to do. More than the whole day. Several days, perhaps. They would make love, talk, make love, talk. … It was an at once appealing and sickening thought—the struggle into town perhaps the most appealing part of it. He remembered going out with his father and uncle for firewood in the winter, riding on the perfectly silent bobsled behind the shaggy brown Belgians, no sound but the whuff of wind and the creak of harness-leather, the collar bobbing slowly like an old man wagging his head from side to side, listening to music, the crupper now slack, now tight as a muscle cramp. He would explain to her his feelings, how it was not just a foetus but a child, his child and hers—not that he believed that it was knowably his; but no matter. A child. A living,
suffering being.
Something silver, the top of a garbage can, perhaps, moved solemnly across the snow, hardly touching it, leaving no track that he could see. He thought of all he ought to do at the university, fight for his department’s rights, protect Jessica, among other things—though the threat against her was not yet definite. Strange to say, he felt none of the anger at Blickstein he’d felt last night. Blickstein was, as surely as Mickelsson, an idealist at heart. But he had his job. It was as if years had passed since last night’s conversation. He put on his glasses, slippers, and robe, and went downstairs.
The kitchen phone had no dialtone—predictably, he realized, and felt pleased. Here as upstairs, the snowlight was astonishing. Outside the kitchen door, where the woodpile should be, there was a mountain of sugary brightness. It was incredible that just a few hours ago there had been cars outside that door, and that they’d driven home on the road in front, now invisible, markless. Had Tom Garret gotten back to his wife at the hospital? Not likely. But no way to find out—no phone, no means of transport; he owned neither skis nor snowshoes. So he need not think about it. Even to get wood for the stove, he found, he couldn’t get out through the back door but had to go out the front door, which opened onto the porch, and lug through deep snow around the side of the house to the woodpile and carry back fire-logs the same way he’d gone out. When he’d carried in four armloads, his boots, his gloves, all the openings in his clothing, were filled with snow.
From the few live embers among the ashes in the bottom of the stove he got a fire going. As soon as it began to warm the room, the cat appeared. The cat stood in the doorway between the study and the livingroom, his large flat head low, tail back, as if stalking, carefully keeping his distance from the Christmas tree, then suddenly, without a sound, ran to the rug between the stove and the couch, looked around suspiciously, then settled himself. Instantly he looked as if he’d been sleeping there for hours.
