Reinhart's Women

by Thomas Berger

  And yet, and yet... you could share a home with somebody, somebody of your own blood, you could sleep in the next room, you could vacuum their quarters and empty their waste can, and yet be utterly ignorant of an essential feature of their life.

  Reinhart chose the effective dresser drawer on his first try, merely by application of reason: it was on the last level before the floor. He kept his own nightgear in a similar situation. As he expected, along with several sets of pajamas that had perhaps been laundered once or twice, there were even more pairs yet in their original packages. These were invariably of a hard, flat fabric and in a single and simple color: beige, pale yellow, powder blue, or light green. Winona stayed with the matter-of-fact when it came to bedwear.

  Reinhart chose a new pair of blue pajamas for Mercer, shut the drawer, and straightened up, feeling a twinge in the small of his back: that kind of thing was routine when you were older, and often happened for no good reason, i.e., you made no real exertion, whereas you might lift a heavy weight with impunity. One wondered whether Nature was really on the ball at all times.

  He walked deliberately to his own room. Now that his daughter-in-law had been washed, it would be even more embarrassing to deal with her bare body.

  ...The aforementioned problem was shown to be an idle worry by his glance towards the bed. The blanket was obviously empty, yet in disbelief he wasted a moment by probing into its rumple. Mercer had gone!

  He ran into the hallway, but stopped and turned and came back to explore his small bathroom. He then sprinted into the living room, made the righthand turn, passed the dining table, looked into the kitchen, wheeled about, and dashed back.

  It was not out of the question that she could have hidden in a closet and emerged after he had gone by. Therefore he once again searched his own quarters, and because by now she might have gained Winona’s suite, he looked into his daughter’s bedroom and bath.

  It was not until his second trip through the front of the apartment that he noticed the door was ajar. No, it was simply not possible that she had gone out. For one, he had not heard a sound. For another, her wretched, reeking clothes were still on the floor of his bathroom. Persons whom one knows do not go into public stark naked, no matter how drunk. Still, searching the place again would clearly be useless. He would not find her within its walls. Reason must insist that she had gone elsewhere.

  There was one hope, not by any means farfetched: perhaps she had attired herself in garments from his closet or dresser.

  He opened the front door just enough to allow the thrusting of his head into the corridor. At the very outset of any emergency there is often a moment or two in which to admit doubt that there is an impending disaster. Suppose that Mercer, wearing, say, his raincoat, was waiting for the elevator out there. Or, at worst, was so occupied, though jaybird-naked, but no one had seen her yet. On this side of the building most of the tenants were employed persons who did not return until evening. Reinhart was the only live-in housekeeper of the fourth floor East, and though some of his neighbors had visiting maids, these women usually came towards the end of the week. The chances were excellent for evading a scandal.

  The only trouble was that Mercer could not be seen. He left the apartment and explored the length of the hallway, turning all corners and going through West after finishing with East. He had of course straightaway checked the indicator lights on the elevators. Neither car had been in use since he left the apartment. Again he had to consider what was left after all the eliminations: in this case, stairways. Hardly anybody used the stairs. If you had to choose an area in which to be disgraceful, there was none more inconspicuous. Despite the twenty-four-hour presence of a doorman and the locking of all exterior entrances, the stairways suggested, by their very nature, crimes against the person. If Mercer had gone by that route, she would be unlikely to meet anyone respectable, and all might still be well—unless of course she had been raped or killed.

  Reinhart chose the stairway on his own, east side. There was another on the west, but he must assume that even distraught drunks took the line of least resistance. He descended to the third level. Would she have gone on down directly to the ground, or might she have stopped off at one of the intervening floors? If he examined each floor uselessly, and she meanwhile headed for the bottom, there would be no reaching her before it was too late.

  He quickened his stride, but he touched every step, not daring to evoke from the distant past the reckless schoolboy style which consumed two at a time. The possibility of being crippled is something to be taken seriously after a certain age—whichever age one is in when the thought occurs.

  At the ground level he went through the door to the lobby. A bald man, carrying an oblong case, was just boarding one of the elevators. No one else was in evidence but the stately black doorman, who was gazing serenely, hands clasped in the small of his back, through his portal of plate glass.

  “Andrew,” asked Reinhart, and though no one else was present he discreetly lowered his voice, “have you seen a lady pass this way?”

  “A lady, Colonel?”

  “Young,” said Reinhart, “and perhaps—just a moment! You must have been on duty when she arrived, else how did she get in? Did a young woman ask for our apartment earlier today? Second, did the same young woman leave only a few moments ago?”

  “Well, sir,” said Andrew, “I saw no such young woman on her entrance. She might have arrived while I was on my lunch, at which time Joe DiLassi from the custodial staff watched the door for me. Or she could have come in through the garage. But not too many moments ago I did open the door to let out a young woman not known to me to be a tenant in this house.” Andrew had a rich bass voice. Reinhart wondered whether the man might have been a professional singer at one time, but never asked for fear that the speculation might be true and the career had ended thus.

  “Could she have been dressed in what might be men’s attire? Though of course it isn’t always easy to make that distinction nowadays.”

  “No, Colonel, not this lady.”

  “I see,” said Reinhart, putting his hands in the pockets of the terry-cloth bathrobe, which no doubt had dripped down four flights of stairs and across the lobby but had lost scarcely any of the water it had absorbed in the shower. However, one had been distracted. He was barefoot and, under the robe, naked.

  “You must be wondering,” he said bluffly to the impassive Andrew, “why I am dressed the way I am.”

  “No, sir. That’s not my proper concern.”

  Suddenly the correct question occurred to Reinhart: “How was the woman, the young woman you saw, dressed?”

  “She was not really dressed, sir,” Andrew replied. “She was wrapped in a towel.”

  “And you let her out?”

  “Sir,” Andrew said, manifestly taken aback, “I don’t think I have the right to restrain a citizen if she is going about her business, clothed or not.”

  “God,” grunted Reinhart. Closing his wet robe a bit more snugly (it had worked itself almost open), he strode out to the walk, abrading his soles, and scanned the world in both the directions that Mercer could have taken. Persons in passing cars gaped at him, which was not odd, but some did not, and that was. He saw no daughter-in-law.

  He returned, really outraged, now that he thought about Andrew’s failure.

  “Do you have an outside phone here?” he demanded. “Or do I have to go back to the apartment?”

  But at that moment a police car stopped outside, and two officers came from it into the lobby.

  “You put in the call?” the first of them asked Reinhart. “Which way’d she go?”

  “No, Officer, I put the call in,” Andrew said. “She went to the right. You might take a look down by the river. You can get there by going around that way: there’s a path.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Reinhart. “The river?”

  “You always have to consider that possibility with a demented person,” Andrew said.

  “He’s rig
ht about that,” said the second officer. The policemen ran out and disappeared down the gentle declivity to the right.

  “Thanks, Andrew,” said Reinhart, recognizing the doorman as not only an ally, but one possessing authority: a very rare item these days.

  “Sir.” Andrew touched the brim of his cap.

  “This is really terrible,” said Reinhart, who suddenly felt the cold of the tiles on which he stood barefoot, despite the worry that should have diverted all his attention. He stepped from one foot to another, several times, as if he rather were treading on embers. “I guess I’d better go back upstairs and get dressed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I can’t do much good here, in a wet bathrobe.” There was every reason for haste, but some inscrutable power of anxiety restrained him. He realized what it was, and he explained to Andrew: “The young woman was not in my apartment for immoral purposes.”

  “No, sir.”

  “She’s my daughter-in-law. She was ill, sick to her stomach, you see. I was washing her...” It wasn’t easy to make the situation clear.

  “You need not give me any idea of it at all,” said Andrew, who was as tall as Reinhart and heavier at the chin and around the waist. An imposing figure of a man; had his gray-green uniform not been unadorned, he might have been taken for some contemporary tyrant of the Third World.

  “I know I’m not, but—”

  “But thank you, Colonel,” said Andrew, who had the kind of voice that invariably sang “Ol’ Man River” in Reinhart’s boyhood. Such Mohicans were dwindling. “I don’t think she would have had time to drown as yet,” the kindly doorman added, “if she did go into the river, and very likely she did not.”

  Reinhart took the elevator and returned to the apartment. He gathered up the clothing that he had doffed in the intention of going to bed with Helen: an eternity of fifteen minutes ago. While dressing, he went through the living room, carefully evading the vomit, and looked out the picture window that gave onto the river. He could see no one that fitted into his disaster: not even the cops.

  He had got into his shoes and was headed for the door when Winona entered.

  “Good God, Winona, something awful...” But she was waving both hands at him.

  “They have her,” she said. “The ambulance came and took her to Willowdale. I wanted to go along, but she was violently opposed to that, so what could I do?”

  He sat down on the straightbacked chair usually employed for the holding of coats.

  “Poor Daddy,” said Winona, patting his shoulder. “How did you know?” She started into the living room.

  “Don’t go in there! I haven’t had a chance—”

  But she had already seen the mess on the couch and rug. She came back. “Poor Daddy, you’d better get to bed.”

  Reinhart got up. “I didn’t do that, Winona. That was Mercer. I was cleaning her up and turned my back for a second, and out she ran.”

  “Mercer?”

  “Of course,” said Reinhart. “That’s how she happened to be down there with her clothes off. They’re in my bathroom.”

  “Oh, God,” Winona wailed. “As if Mother’s not enough!”

  Reinhart squinted at her. “You weren’t talking about Mercer just now? You were talking about your mother? Your mother has been taken to Willowdale Hospital?”

  “I didn’t know about Mercer,” said Winona, hanging her head in a way that summoned up memory of her adolescent despair.

  “She was so drunk she was out on her feet. She was here when I got home—I suppose you know your mother had me thrown out of the supermarket. When I arrived here, Mercer had already vomited all over. I cleaned her up and put her to bed, but while I was getting out a pair of your PJs to put her into, she sneaked out of the apartment, naked except for a bath towel. She got all the way downstairs and out of the building, but Andrew quite sensibly called the police. They are still looking for her, I guess. I couldn’t help because I was soaking wet.” He did not find his own story at all credible. “It’s my fault, I’m afraid, all of it. I should have kept a closer eye on her.”

  Winona came and clung to him. “Don’t say that, Dad. You did everything right. It’s me who’s at fault. I gave Mercer my car and the apartment key.” She was on the verge of tears. “I’ve really been ruining your life lately, haven’t I?”

  Reinhart said: “Don’t be silly. ... I’d better go down and help the police look for the poor thing.” Actually he was somewhat out of patience with Winona by now.

  She was resisting his effort to go out the door. “See,” she said, “Mercer left a call for me at the agency. Because of some equipment trouble we got back from the shoot a lot sooner than expected. I picked her up at a drugstore where she was waiting. She didn’t seem drunk at that time, but maybe she was on something. Tranquillizers, maybe?”

  “Better get the story later,” Reinhart said, firmly detaching his daughter from him. “The poor thing’s out there someplace. Why don’t you come along and help search?”

  The intercom buzzed.

  It was Andrew. “Mr. Reinhart?” He had never before used that mode of address, and Reinhart believed, terribly, that it was now the introduction to disaster.

  “Yes, Andrew.”

  “She can’t be found in the neighborhood,” the doorman said softly. “But the police don’t think she came to grief in the river. There are some workmen down there who would have seen her. Perhaps she got into her car. A UPS driver told the officers he saw a naked lady driving a green automobile.”

  “That’s probably it,” said Reinhart. “She had borrowed my daughter’s Cougar, and that’s green. Thanks, Andrew.” He hung up and told Winona. “In a way we’re lucky, I guess, unless she cracks up somewhere. Better in a car than running along the street.”

  “For Blaine,” said Winona. “For us all. But hardly for her.”

  She had called him back to reason. “You’re right, of course. What am I saying? God, when she was in the apartment she was out on her feet. Driving a car! And we don’t have any way to look for her now if she took your Cougar. I suppose we should go down to the garage and see whether she did take it. But she must have. She arrived in it.”

  Winona looked up a number in the telephone directory and then dialed it. In a moment she spoke into the instrument: “Listen, I need your car right now. ... Well, postpone it. ... Yes, right now.”

  She hung up.

  “Who was that?” Reinhart asked. Somehow he did not believe it was Grace.

  Winona was moving towards the rear of the apartment. Her answer was curt and given without looking back: “An acquaintance.” She went into her bathroom and closed the door.

  Reinhart consciously avoided thinking about Genevieve, with whom he had had no connection, domestic or legal, in a decade. Consequently, he had no responsibility towards her. Moreover, she had reappeared in his life only to do him harm. It could be proved, to a neutral observer, that she had always been more enemy than friend. She belonged in the bughouse.

  He waited until Winona came back from the bathroom. “Listen, dear, when your friend conies with the car, maybe you could go look for Mercer? I’d better go see your mother. After all...”

  Winona showed a peevish expression. She looked at her watch. “Isn’t she here yet?”

  “It hasn’t been five minutes. Where does she live?” But Winona sniffed at the wall. “Dear,” he resumed, with a slight edge, “did you hear me say I think I’d better go to Willowdale and see your mother while you look for Mercer? If you have any idea where to look. And I suppose we’d better tell Blaine. By now it’s gone too far.”

  “Oh, sure, Dad.” Winona was a bit sheepish now. But the doorbell sounded at that point and she visibly hardened. These transformations amazed her father.

  She marched to the door and opened it. There stood a person almost as tall as Reinhart, dressed in a gray sweatsuit and sneakers.

  “You took your time.”

  “Oh, Winona—”

 
“Let’s have those keys,” said Winona.

  But Reinhart came forward. He saw no reason why he should play his daughter’s game (of which he could not understand even the rules) to the neglect of common courtesy.

  “Hello. I’m Carl Reinhart, Winona’s father. Darned nice of you to come so quickly. We have some family problems.”

  Winona sullenly backed up and the large young woman (for such she was) entered and, thrusting forth a fist comparable to his own, squeezed Reinhart’s hand.

  “Edie Mulhouse,” said she. “I’m a neighbor.”

  “Oh, yes.” But in point of fact he had never seen or heard of her. Edie had short, pale hair, pale eyelashes, and a scattering of pale freckles. Her build seemed of the sort called rangy, though it was hard to tell precisely in the baggy sweatsuit. But her shoulders were broad, and she looked almost six feet tall.

  “I’m on Five West,” she said.

  “Ah.” In a moment Reinhart would be uncomfortable. He was too weary to make polite conversation, and Edie looked as though she wanted to linger.

  But Winona stepped into the breach. In a falsely sweet manner, which Reinhart identified as being put on for him and not the recipient, she said: “Gee, Edie, it’s very nice of you to do this.” She reached towards the visitor, who in an almost agonizingly exquisite fashion unfolded her left hand to reveal two car keys on a plastic tab bearing a heraldic device. Winona snatched the keys in a style that suggested anything but mercy.

  Edie smiled at Reinhart.

  “Yes, indeed,” he said. “You’re very generous.”

  Edie looked as though she might cry out in glee, but Winona virtually pushed her towards the door, if not by actual physical power, then certainly by the brute force of the will.

  Edie said: “Garage slot 516W. Keep the car as long as you w—” At that point the door was closed in her face.

  In the current emergency Reinhart did not believe it sensible to chide anyone for rudeness. “What do you think?” he asked. “I’m always on shaky ground with Blaine, but shouldn’t we give him a call?”

  Winona ran her tongue inside her upper lip. “I guess we don’t have a choice.”