Reinhart's Women: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  “I could come to you,” Reinhart told him, but with a hint of doubt. Blaine had never shown him an excess of hospitality. There were scorching days on which a dip in the pool might have been refreshing: his son had yet to issue an invitation however informal. Indeed in the several years Blaine had occupied the house, Reinhart had penetrated the front hallway but once. The holiday get-togethers had taken place at Winona’s apartment and in fact were confined to the lesser, secular fetes such as Lincoln’s Birthday and Labor Day. On the religious holidays Blaine consorted with his in-laws, the Seatons, to whom he had always been careful to deny his father access.

  And even at this apparent extremity Blaine was none too hospitable.

  “When you get here, pull down the road a little way, will you? Past the driveway, please?”

  “Shall I wear a disguise?”

  Blaine said: “Try to understand for once in your life, please.”

  Perhaps he had a point. Reinhart did have a certain guilt about his part in Blaine’s upbringing. Nor did he believe that an association with the “better” people of a town was necessarily contemptible. Blaine had already, at the tender age of thirty-two, made a conspicuous success, and it would have been difficult to prove that his father had helped him in any way.

  And finally Reinhart had to admit that Blaine’s outburst against Winona had enunciated a feeling he had himself secretly entertained but lacked the courage to reveal even to the mirror.

  “O.K., son,” he said. “But the only thing is, your sister’s taken her car. I’ll be coming by bus. What’s the nearest stop to you?”

  Blaine returned to his old character. “You don’t even have an automobile of your own?” He sighed in contempt. “Look, stay there. I’ll drive over. I’ll be grateful to you if you’ll wait in the lobby.”

  “I’ll teeter on the curb,” said Reinhart, “and try not to fall into the gutter.”

  CHAPTER 3

  REINHART HAD FORGOTTEN TO ask Blaine for sufficient time in which to brood over his costume. If he took it now, he ran the risk of making his son indignantly wait at the curb. On the other hand, Blaine was easily offended by his father’s attire. Perfectly decent trousers and a sports shirt should be acceptable for a Sunday in late March unless one expected to call upon the royal couple at Monaco, one would think, but Blaine had austere standards. For one, he deplored an open shirt collar on a man older than, say, forty. He had a point, of course: the neck begins early to deteriorate aesthetically and is at best not one of the glories of the human physique. But as it happened Reinhart’s Adam’s-apple was as yet not a pendulous eyesore, and anyway he had the illusion of being strangled unless the pulse at the base of his throat had unobstructed access to the air.

  His trousers were gray, his shirt a subdued plaid in shades of red. Surely a navy blazer would do on a Sunday afternoon: that was the point that should be remembered.

  But when the cream-colored Lincoln glided to the curb and the power window effortlessly lowered itself and his son’s face was seen, Reinhart could read immediately in the language of corner-of-eye, texture-of-lip, and angle-of-chin the message that once again he had failed to measure up.

  But this expression was the work of an instant. Once it had been registered by its target, Blaine exchanged it for the mask of tragedy, a set of feature which did not well accord with his physiognomy, which was by nature of a peevish cast and more appropriate to one of Molière’s disagreeable characters than to a Sophoclean hero.

  Reinhart hopped in. “What kind of mileage do you get from this heap?”

  “Whatever,” Blaine impatiently responded, tramping the accelerator while his father was still sinking through the deep-padded leather of the seat. Blaine had once been obsessed with world affairs—in his own warped fashion, of course, holding Amerika responsible for all the horrors of history—but nowadays it was almost impossible to catch him in any reference, however subtle, to the kinds of things that were international preoccupations. The oil shortage, for example.

  To confirm his sense of his son, Reinhart now asked: “Think there’ll be a fuel crisis by summer?”

  “How convenient that you don’t have a car,” said Blaine, swinging his own around the corner.

  “Of course, what I wanted there was your opinion.”

  “Dad, I’m afraid that to make ends meet nowadays I have to charge a client for that service. It’s all I have to sell, you know, and I have two children to support.”

  Sometimes it seemed to Reinhart that Blaine felt obliged to prove he was literally a son of a bitch. Apropos of which Blaine now said: “What this would do to Mother, I almost can’t bear to think about!”

  “That I don’t have a car?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Blaine cried. “At such times I know what she went through.” He flashed a hateful glance at his father. “I’m talking about that degenerate sister of mine! How can you be so tolerant? That filthy little scum, to think I grew up alongside her!”

  Reinhart spoke in an even tone. “I told you I won’t listen to that kind of abuse. Winona’s your own flesh and blood, and furthermore she’s a fine woman.”

  Blaine’s features suggested that they would have been coloring with anger under normal circumstances, but he still retained a good deal of the tan he had got in the Caribbean in the early part of the month, and therefore the effect of rising blood was lost.

  “Of course you would defend her,” he said, steering the car up the ramp of an expressway. “I expected that.”

  And for Reinhart’s part he had expected Blaine to have that very expectation. Next Blaine would graciously point out that his father was his sister’s helpless dependent. But why then had he come now to seek him out?

  “I have the unmistakable feeling,” said Reinhart, “that this discussion is only going to make things worse.” They were in the high-speed lane at the moment, else he would have asked to be let out at the nearest corner. He wondered at Blaine’s choice of a place to talk. The normal thing would have been to find a back street in some quiet district, not to join a clamorous rush of vehicles heading upstate. But any thought of Blaine’s characteristics inevitably reminded Reinhart of the boy’s childhood: they had never been pals.

  But his son now surprised him. “I knew you’d defend her,” he repeated, keeping his eyes on the road. He drove as efficiently as he did everything else. “Not because you think it’s a great thing that she’s queer—I haven’t forgotten your diatribes in the Sixties when, naturally, you used to accuse me! And not even because she’s your sole support, so far as I know—that would make sense. I wouldn’t fault you for that.”

  Reinhart realized from the last statement that Blaine was speaking the truth here, from the heart: his son condemned nothing done for a financial advantage, nor did Blaine recognize as serious any motive that did not have monetary gain as its goal. For example, he would have taken an altogether different approach to the matter at hand had Grace been paying Winona to be her friend: his concern then would have been only whether the fee was generous enough. ... So much for Reinhart’s cynical exaggerations: the solemn fact here was that Blaine was really not talking about Winona at all, and neither was he speaking about money.

  “The truth is,” he said, his mouth set, his hands clenched on the steering wheel, “that you have simply always hated me since the time I was born.”

  Reinhart made no immediate answer. He looked away from Blaine and watched the blacktop rush beneath them.

  “Among my other naïveties,” he said at last, “was the idea that one’s paternal job is over when the children reach their majority, that from that point on things are equal for a couple of decades, and then with old age the father becomes the child. When the circle is complete, the curtain is lowered, if you’ll permit the mixed figures of speech.”

  “That’s it, Dad,” said Blaine, “play with words. I wouldn’t recognize you as my father if you didn’t do that sooner or later. I’d think you were an impostor.”

&nbs
p; Now Reinhart looked at him. “But what you don’t seem to realize is that real feelings exist all the same. Words really do stand for something, after all, but maybe it’s not always what you expect. ... I’m embarrassed now, Blaine, if you want a confession. You’ve hit me dead-center. You’re not quite correct, but you’re not altogether wrong, and that’s what defies my powers at the moment.” He had the bizarre sense that he might burst out here, not in a sob but, terribly, in a guffaw—but with the significance of a sob: somehow even in projection he could not play it straight with Blaine.

  “Since at the moment I can’t really deal with it, let’s go back a bit to what led to this moment,” he said finally. “Winona came to see you a while ago?”

  Blaine grimaced and hit the wheel with his palm. “It’s rich, isn’t it? We’ve never been close in all our lives. She’s certainly the last person on earth I’d confide in, and as for her, I imagine she makes a good income from that posing, but what does she do with it? Has she ever come to me? You’d think, having her only brother in the field, she might want some help with investments... ah, well, the devil with that. ... So she shows up at my house on a Sunday afternoon. We have people coming for a buffet later on. The caterers are there—” He broke off in disgust, as if his sister’s arrival in itself constituted a shameful spectacle for which he would be despised by his temporary servants.

  Whenever Reinhart was on the verge of feeling some sympathy for Blaine, his son immediately relieved him of that obligation.

  Blaine resumed: “Luckily the children were upstairs—”

  Now Reinhart could not keep silent. “What does that mean, ‘luckily’?”

  Blaine shot his jaw towards the windshield. “I could just puke! The vicious little...” He nobly raised his chin. “So she asks to speak to me privately, and we go into the den, and she tells me she is thinking of moving in with some roommate, which would leave Daddy all alone in the present apartment, and she would continue paying the rent, of course, but wouldn’t he be lonely? What was my opinion?”

  Blaine flashed his lights to notify the economy car just ahead that he required the road just beyond it, and it obediently moved to the right.

  “Well,” said he, “I told her straightaway that she could forget about trying to foist the problems onto me, that she might think we had lots of extra room, but we most assuredly do not. We have hardly enough for our own household as it is, and then of course we must entertain people, and we have family responsibilities. Mercer’s family is accustomed to having a number of houses at their disposal, if, say, the Boston branch comes for a Midwestern visit in force, and then—”

  “Blaine, old chap,” Reinhart said, “perish the thought! I wouldn’t think of imposing upon you.” He could have made it a bitter statement, but he did not: the emotion would have been squandered. And of course it was quite fervently true that he would have moved to Skid Row in preference to living once again in proximity to his son, this time with Blaine as head of household.

  “At which,” said Blaine, ignoring Reinhart’s contribution, “the little hypocrite denied that she had meant that at all, that as the other child I was being merely asked for my advice, et cetera, et cetera.” He glanced indignantly at Reinhart. “I realize now that my dear sister has always been the most sinister sneak imaginable. I’ll tell you frankly that what I said to her was that I have my own responsibilities in life, that I can’t assume any more, but I do think the apartment would be a ridiculous burden on her: I’m sure a smaller place somewhere would suit you fine. Even a nice bright room. Why throw all the money away on anything bigger? You can’t use it.”

  Reinhart made what once was called a happy-go-lucky shrug. “Makes sense,” he said blithely.

  “I’m happy you agree,” said Blaine, nodding at the rushing road ahead. “Well, then, I suddenly got suspicious and I said, ‘Winona, I hope that what you’re contemplating is not living with a man. I know that’s popular nowadays with certain trashy sorts, but the best people still prefer the traditional ways, and my profession, for one, is very sensitive to such matters. Do you think a man would be very keen to let me invest his money if he knew my sister was living with someone who had no legal attachment to her? Suppose she got pregnant, and her roommate ran off in the classic way? Who would be expected to pay the bills? Forgive me for saying, ‘Not her father.’”

  “Certainly not!” Reinhart agreed with an enthusiasm that even Blaine took brief, frowning notice of before he went on.

  “‘Oh,’ said she, goddamn her! ‘Oh, you’ve got no worry about that.’ And, ass that I was, I fell right into the trap.”

  Reinhart could now see the essential cause of Blaine’s fury: he had always been the clever child, Winona the dope and dupe.

  “I insisted on my point, you see,” said Blaine, spitting his words now. “‘Don’t be too arrogant,’ I said. ‘No means is foolproof. We weren’t ready for our second child when Mercer somehow conceived in spite of never having failed to take measures, and I doubt very much whether you, with your woolly mind, dear sister, could be relied on to’—well, so forth and on and on, and of course, malicious as she is, she gave me enough rope.” Here Blaine again showed the tragic mask he had worn on his arrival. “When I was finally ready for the kill, she did it!

  “‘Don’t worry, Blainey,’ said she.” He spoke in a falsetto impression of his sister’s voice: “‘As it happens, my lover is a woman.’”

  Reinhart put his hands over his mouth. For him it had been greatly preferable to hear this information from Winona herself. To have it repeated now by another (and by such another) was excessively dispiriting. He came out to swallow some air.

  “It is unfortunate,” he said, “if you want my opinion. I can’t deny that. I doubt whether any person of the standard persuasion really thinks it’s preferable that someone is homosexual—still less a member of his own family. We can accept it, think it’s O.K., anybody’s right, not a hanging offense, and all that, and even applaud geniuses like Sappho and Michelangelo and Proust, but would you want your sister to be one? Not in the best of all worlds, probably.

  “Then if you’re a parent, you wonder about your own contribution, by commission or omission.” He winced at his son. “But finally you recognize that whatever else it might be, it is a fact. And most things of a sexual nature have developed naturally, however unnatural they might seem to some. That is, people don’t just up and decide to deviate from the norm and against their own will, even in our decadent place and time. They would seem to be impelled by some force or another.”

  “Hah!” savagely cried Blaine. “So are murderers!”

  Reinhart smiled at him. “What keeps striking me as ironic is a memory of ten years ago. As usual we were on the wrong side of the fence from each other, but in a decade we seem to have changed sides. More importantly, and with all respect, your position has always been extreme. If I recall, in those days any person who defied the generally accepted standards of conduct, political, moral, or sexual, was a hero to you, whereas you were ready to shoot anyone identified as conventional. Now sexual inversion is criminally loathsome?”

  One thing that was perhaps to be admired about Blaine: despite his emotion his control of the car was flawless. By now, by virtue of the expressway, they were clearing the outermost suburbs of the city, where there had still been fields when Reinhart came home from the War—more than thirty years before. Certain events seemed to remain in an eternal only-yesterday. To wear the clothes of a bygone era was to be in historic costume: pegged pants and padded shoulders were quaintly incredible, but it was still very real to remember the girl who broke one’s heart when one was so dressed.

  Blaine answered loftily: “I think my gradual change of opinion has made sense. ‘Show me a man who’s not a radical at twenty, and I’ll show you a man with no heart. Show me a man who’s still one at forty, and I’ll show you a man with no brain.’ Or however it goes. I’m not forty, but I am a husband, a father, and I have had a certain succe
ss in my profession. I don’t want to hit below the belt, but perhaps if I had had—well, no matter.”

  “I’ll go on for you,” said Reinhart. “If you had had a father who was like you yourself are now? Well, you did get shortchanged in that way. But consider this: maybe in that event you wouldn’t have had the burning desire to make something of yourself; maybe my bad example was as effective as a good one might have been. Think of this: if I were you, then perhaps you’d be me. Repulsive thought, eh?” Reinhart was joking bitterly, but speaking for himself, he thought he had got off lucky: there had been a brief period in his life when his goal was to be very like what Blaine was now.

  “Look here,” Blaine suddenly said in a mercantile sort of voice, “I’ve come up with a proposition that should put us all in a situation we can live with. Queers are notoriously unreliable. She may assure you that she’ll continue to look out for you financially—and sticking up for her as you have, you do have some claim on her good will—but next she’ll fall in love with some other female, maybe even a little child. My God, think of that, my sister trailing a Camp Fire Girl into the park!” He made a loathing face. “It’s just unthinkable, that dirty, detestable—”

  “Hell,” said Reinhart, “I wish you wouldn’t put me in the position where I have to repeat all that tedious rhetoric of the homosexual apologists: ‘alternate life-styles,’ et cetera. But I really don’t think it’s inevitable that a ‘gay’ person is necessarily an uncontrollable sex fiend merely because he or she prefers his or her own kind.”

  Blaine showed an odd expression. “I take it you have had a sheltered life in that respect.”

  Ah, thought Reinhart, you have not, is that it? But he had no wish to explore the subject of Blaine’s experience with his fellow man. Reinhart himself had felt the hand of Time upon his shoulder when, some twenty years before, he had sensed that he was at last beyond the range of homosexual solicitation.