Reinhart's Women: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  Fortunately he had lived long enough to know that the best defense against any moral outrage is patience; wait a moment and something will change: the outrage, he who committed it, or, most often, oneself.

  Grace laughed curtly. “Head and heart!” she said. “I’m always the businesswoman.”

  Reinhart chuckled in relief: so that was the bifurcation.

  Grace said: “Mind giving me your credentials?”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Grace.”

  “This cooking of yours. Where were you trained?”

  Could he have heard her correctly? No one ever wanted to hear him on his favorite subject!

  “Well,” said he, swinging himself from a seat to a luxurious full-length stretch on the bed, “I have never taken a lesson in cookery. Years ago, when I was first married and my wife would be under the weather, I’d do a turn in the kitchen and maybe take one of those recipes off a can of something. You know, like the tuna casserole that is sometimes on a noodle box, or vice versa. Then—”

  “Carl,” Grace interrupted, “my idea was not to take you from grilled cheese to gourmet grub with all the steps between. The point is, you seem pretty knowledgeable about the subject. How?”

  “Diligence,” said Reinhart, “and caring.”

  “Come on, Carl,” Grace said impatiently, “I’m in earnest: I’ll tell you why in a minute, but first I want your story, as precise as you can make it.”

  Reinhart might have taken umbrage at her manner (where’d she get off, being so high and mighty, now?) had the subject not been that which was, after Winona, the dearest to him.

  “One improves through trial and error,” said he, “but the techniques can be learned easily enough, some of them on the TV cooking shows and others from books, those that take you through a recipe detail by detail, allowing for the pitfalls, like Julia Child’s, who is a genius as a teacher, and Michael Field’s, and Gourmet and other periodicals, including the ladies’ magazines that once recommended only the tuna casseroles. Now they’ll tell you how to make bouillabaisse and quiche and moussaka.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Grace. “And you’ve only worked at home? You haven’t cooked in a restaurant?”

  “Never. I’ve never even thought of doing any professional work. I really cook for the love of it—and I use the word advisedly. Winona”—for a moment he had forgotten the situation; now he felt strange about pronouncing the name to her friend—“my daughter hardly touches her meals.” Though apparently she gorged on high-calorie ice cream with her friend.

  “Carl, none of that serves my point,” Grace said rudely. “I’m not interested in the personal here, but rather in the public. You know Epicon, my firm. We’re expanding in the gourmet area. It’s my theory that we’re missing some big bucks unless we reach the people who eat fancy food. This is no small market. One way to escape the label of ‘just a housewife,’ which is about as popular nowadays as yellow fever, is to be at least a gourmet cook. Not to mention the growing number of guys like yourself who stay home and fix meals for the breadwinner. Isn’t it true that though men were traditionally supposed to be meat-and-potato eaters exclusively, still, when they cook, they often make Cordon Bleu dishes?” She answered herself: “You know they do.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Reinhart, “but I’m no authority: I don’t get around much any more, frankly.”

  “And that’s another thing, Carl. I think you should get out of that apartment more often.” Grace became positively avuncular. He could imagine her winking and digging him with her elbow, were he near enough. “Be better for Winnie, take my word for it.”

  What Reinhart found most outrageous here was that she would use his interest in cooking to promote her selfish plans to lure away his daughter.

  “Grace,” he nevertheless said with control, “you might be interested to know that I’m not standing in the way of your friendship with Winona. I gave her that assurance, and I believe she’s now working on her decision.”

  Grace breathed quickly. “That’s just the point, Carl. Let’s talk turkey: if Win moves in with me, where does that leave you? You told me you haven’t had a business in some years, or a job.”

  It was really majestic of him still not to lose his balance: perhaps the years had seasoned him. Apparently he had made these confessions to Grace on their two dates, and why not? He had trusted her to make the right interpretation: that only now, at long last, could he claim to be successful in life, now that he had withdrawn from the hurly-burly to make a home for his daughter. Was he not indeed an exemplification of the new kind of man made possible by the liberation of women? He had told his story in pride!

  “By your account I sound suspiciously like a bum,” he said, with more wryness than reproach. “There are still some women who call themselves housewives, or rather the more honorific-sounding ‘homemaker,’ and I’m sure they would insist that what we do is self-respecting, gratifying, and all the rest. True, it’s not the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge or a part of the aerospace program, but—”

  “Come on, Carl,” said Grace, jollying him in a coarse fashion, “self-pity’s not your game, old boy!”

  What a grating woman! Why could not Winona have chosen...? But at fifty-four he should be done with asking questions of Fate, whose answers were always implicit in the status quo.

  “The fact is that for many years it was my only game,” said he, “but you’re right about the ‘old boy.’”

  Grace said: “You’re jumping the gun by a long shot in this day and age. But I didn’t want to talk about dreary matters, believe me! Everything’s going to work out beautifully. Now here’s my proposition.” In a supreme effort towards charm, which with men anyway would not seem to be easily available to her, Grace said: “And if you don’t take it, I’ll spit in your eye.” Trouble was, she sounded as if she well might.

  “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” said Reinhart, reverting to a time even before his own for this quotation, a favorite of his father’s, who however always corrupted it in one way or another and sometimes combined it with “the whites of their eyes.”

  “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed,” said Grace, “the existing gourmet shelves in your typical supermarket don’t get much traffic, and in fact in some stores are downright seedy-looking. Also they’re usually poked away in some remote corner, where they’re an easy prey to shoplifters. Products not swiped are there for months. And this in the face of the greater-than-ever interest in the aforementioned gourmet cooking. Why?”

  At this talk of food Reinhart forgot his resentment. In fact he had something ardent by way of an answer. “Yes, I have noticed that, Grace. And I’ll tell you why that department is usually neglected by the public: it usually offers an eccentric choice of products, which are furthermore, some of them, not at all serious: things like cocktail franks and those dreary Japanese smoked oysters.”

  “No,” Grace stated firmly, “you’re wrong, Carl. The reason these things don’t move—and they are fine products, don’t knock them!—the simple reason is that the public is not aware of their use.”

  “That’s not true at all,” said Reinhart. With anyone else he would have felt he was being rude, but obviously Grace was immune. “A lot of that stuff is absolute crap! Why buy ready-made sauces, like hollandaise and béarnaise, when they’re inferior yet expensive as hell, and when furthermore they’re quite easy to prepare from fresh materials? And don’t tell me nobody knows about the gourmet shelf, with its lousy liver pâté and orange caviar and dip-mixes, because throughout my married years, which ended more than ten years ago, I was served them whenever we went to any neighborhood party.”

  “You’re showing strong feelings, Carl,” Grace pointed out. “Do you realize that you’re coming alive?”

  “Of course,” said Reinhart, “but it’s nothing new. You know I’m interested in food and cooking.”

  “O.K.!” she cried merrily. “I’m not debating w
ith you, pal. I want to hire you.”

  “Hire me?”

  “You heard it!” said Grace. “Let me sketch it out. I’m convinced that all it would take to get some real action with the gourmet products would be to highlight them with personal demonstrations. Picture this, Carl: you’re in professional apron and big white hat, stainless-steel table on wheels, with whatever implements, gadgets, you need, hot plates, et cetera, preparing dishes that would make use of the products we distribute. Huh?”

  “You’re not joking, are you, Grace?”

  She spoke in brisk reproach: “Carl, I wouldn’t have time.”

  “But, Grace, couldn’t it be that the gourmet line is doing badly because of the recession and inflation?” It had been ever so long since Reinhart had had to think about business, and considering his own lack of success at what in a more gracious time was called “trade,” he did not miss it. Yet an archaic sense of what was quintessentially patriotic in his place and time—he had been one year old when Cal Coolidge said “The business of America is business”—impelled him to put this question.

  But Grace had no sentimental reluctance to put him in his place. “Carl,” she said, “don’t worry your little head about such matters. They’re my responsibility. Just stick to your cooking.”

  Reinhart supposed wryly that he should feel as insulted as women of yore had felt when so disposed of by men—or, to be precise, as militant female publicists insisted that women had felt (his own mild-mannered father had habitually done this to Reinhart’s iron-fisted Maw, and she was wont publicly to applaud him for it)—but at his age it was simpler to admit the truth than to uphold principles for which one had no genuine instinct. And truly, Reinhart had always hated and feared the process of buying and selling. When he was young he told himself that this dread was due to his being a poet, but by early middle age he had had to recognize that his collected verse had yet to be written, whereas he had tried several business ventures (gas station bypassed by a new superhighway, movie house when TV came in strong, etc., not to mention involvements in various schemes with arrant charlatans) all of which had failed: in balance he could have been called, and certainly was by his wife and mother, a complete flop. At which point he came to keep house for Winona and was saved!

  He was now talking to the woman who threatened his sole achievement. Why was he not more resentful? Because he had always known it would come. The irony was that he had assumed he would be deposed eventually by a conventional figure like a husband.

  “This is so sudden,” he said now. “I really do have to think it over. ... I say this without animosity to you, Grace: Winona and I have had a nice life together. I suppose having just me as an intimate hasn’t been sufficient for her, and that’s understandable. I’m after all in my mid-fifties. I want you to know that I have always urged her to get out and circulate—and when she told me, a while ago, about you, I was taken by surprise, I’ll admit. But I’m proud to say I was consistent: I told her one should stick with a good friend.”

  “That would be like you,” Grace said, and he was touched.

  “Thanks. But as to my going back into the world, that’ll take some deliberation.”

  Grace spoke in the tone of a football coach: tough-but-for-the-players’-good: “Dammit, Carl, you’re not an old man. As President you’d be a youngster. There’s more than time enough to make your mark. This could be but the first step! How’s anyone to know of your culinary prowess if you hide your light under a casserole?” She made a flat chuckle.

  He laughed for another reason. “Do you realize that you have never even as yet looked at anything I’ve cooked? Let alone tasted it?”

  Grace grew solemn. Obviously she was here enunciating one of the tenets of her faith. “I know real quality when I see a person, Carl. After all, did I not pick Winona?”

  Assuming that her question had a sexual reference, he was repelled. Yet how could he protest without supplying an implication that would be unfavorable to his daughter?

  In fact he had again misjudged Grace, who proceeded to reveal that her meaning had been exclusively professional. “Did I not see her in the ads for Herk’s knitted ensembles and know she’d be perfect for our instant-cocktail mixes?”

  Herkimer’s was the big downtown department store. Winona modeled for their newspaper ads and for the special sales that were hawked on television. Indeed her married suitor was a Herkimer executive.

  “She’s worked for you?” Immediately he felt better. The image of Winona’s being picked up in a lesbian bar (if, to be sure, there was such a thing: his fantasies were necessarily based on what he knew about male homosexuals, nor was that much) had been persistent and repulsive.

  “You didn’t see the ads?” Grace asked with synthetic incredulity. “The concept was an innovation of mine. That sort of product is ordinarily only advertised nationally, with everything handled in New York, of course. There’s not a big market in instant mixes and never could be. So why then, you ask, do I throw away our good money on local newspaper ads? I even wanted to do TV spots, but on that I was voted down by my colleagues, who are all male, by the way.”

  Reinhart refused to feel guilty about that. “I gather you are preparing to announce a sudden burst of sales, a big run on instant cocktails.”

  “No sirree!” Grace cried in triumph. “During that campaign sales were no higher than ever. There’s no reason to believe a single extra can was sold by those ads, featuring your exquisite daughter against the background of the best local country clubs, Wynhurst and Checkhaven, and the Silver Huntsman Restaurant in Stricksville. Carl, are you telling me you didn’t see those ads?”

  “For some reason Winona didn’t show them to me. And I seldom see the papers of my own volition: I had been pretty well burned out so far as news goes when Vietnam and Watergate were done. But I’ll say this, Grace, if I do happen to come across a newspaper, I give most of my attention to the food advertisements, you’ll be pleased to hear.”

  “Be that as it may,” said she, “you haven’t asked me why I am so pleased at losing a fair amount of money on an apparently useless project. Here’s why: because it put Epicon on the map.” She made a sound that effectively constituted a verbal wink. “That it did the same for me is just between us.” Again that sound: a kind of chock.

  “Grace, am I correct in assuming that your company name is made up of the first two syllables of ‘epicure’ and the first of ‘connoisseur’?”

  “Carl, are you following my story?” Grace asked disapprovingly. “You’re really not picking up on my points. That’s hardly encouraging if we’re going to work together.”

  “I don’t think we are going to, Grace, with all respect.” He had suddenly arrived at that decision: her world, perhaps as much in its business phase as in its private character, was utterly alien to him. “But look here, I’m grateful to you for thinking of me!” He thanked her again and hung up. He would not go so far as to say anything about seeing her around with Winona.

  He switched on the television set that had its home on his dresser top and identified the intense green image of the typical Sunday-afternoon golf tournament. The competitors in this one were female, all of them with exceptionally sturdy calves, thighs, and behinds. Reinhart found most of them vaguely attractive, however. They looked like good sports and seemed feminine enough all the same, and he was comforted by the sight of their solid upholstery and, on the average, seasoned age, as opposed to the sinewy striplings of swimming competitions and gymnastics.

  ...Ah, Mildred Donleavy, her pleasant plump face shadowed by the bill of her white cap, was plotting the likely route of her putt. Her sandy hair was gathered into a neat bun; just above her waist bulged a roll, a little bolster, of flesh.

  A telephone rang and, startled by the jangle, Mildred missed her putt. There should be a rule against phones on golf courses! But when the second ring came, Reinhart identified it as issuing from the instrument at his elbow.

  “Dad, I trust I haven
’t woken you up.”

  It was his son. As usual Reinhart believed he detected an implicit criticism. But for many years now he had held his own against Blaine, who had undergone a total transformation since the late 1960s, in which era he had been an exceptionally obnoxious member of the “youth movement” or “counterculture” so beloved and encouraged by journalists and other rabble-rousers. Within a decade Blaine had become precisely what in his early twenties he had professed to despise most. He was now a stockbroker, with wife, two children, expensive suburban house with swimming pool, more than one gas-gluttonous car, and all the rest. He was also a regular churchgoer. His wife, first-named Mercer, came from a “good” local family.

  “What’s your pleasure?” he now asked Blaine.

  “Listen, Dad,” Blaine began angrily, and then he blurted: “Damn it all. I can’t talk about this on the telephone!” Suddenly he seemed on the point of tears.

  Reinhart had never liked Blaine, but if called upon he was capable of loving him, and almost everyone in distress evokes sympathy at the outset.

  “Well, then, why not come over here?” he asked his son. “If it’s confidential we’ll have total privacy. Your sister’s out for the afternoon.”

  “Damn her,” said Blaine.

  For a moment Reinhart was not sure he meant Winona, whom Blaine had habitually ignored all his life except to jeer at in her time of obesity. But the doubt was soon dispelled.

  “She’s just been here,” Blaine said, his voice contorted with loathing. “I threw her out. I don’t want my children contaminated. Dirty little bitch. Goddamned filthy little pervert.”

  It took all of Reinhart’s strength to keep control at this point. He said sharply: “Don’t speak like that about your sister, Blaine. I won’t tolerate it, I warn you. But if you’d like to talk rationally—”

  “I won’t come there,” Blaine said. He seemed to choke back a sob, but whether it was genuine or merely for effect Reinhart could not say. Blaine had a histrionic streak, derived undoubtedly from the maternal side.