Reinhart's Women: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  “O.K.! O.K.!” She crossed her legs and leaned forward over her knees. “I came to say good-bye.”

  This time it was Winona who did the courteous thing. “Where are you headed, Mother?”

  “California,” Genevieve said decisively, slapping her top knee as she leaned back. “I should have done that long ago, but the time never seemed ripe. But now’s the moment. Oh, I know it.”

  Reinhart stood up. “I’m sorry, Genevieve. Where are my manners? Would you like a cup of coffee or a drink?”

  “Carl, did you hear me? I’m getting out of your hair for good.” Genevieve spoke vivaciously, uncrossing and spreading her legs in an almost indecent movement even though she was wearing slacks. “I’m remarrying.”

  Winona stood up. “If you’ll both excuse me...”

  “No, Winona, I won’t,” said Reinhart. “I have some things to talk over with you when your mother leaves.”

  His daughter sat down.

  His ex-wife shrugged and said: “I can take a hint. I just wanted you to know that I’m riding high again.”

  Reinhart stood up. “So it would seem, Genevieve. No doubt your prospective husband is a wealthy and powerful business- or professional man.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you, Carl?”

  Reinhart said sincerely: “I shouldn’t have said that, Genevieve. I apologize. The fact is that it’s none of my business.”

  She rose from the couch. “You tell her she can come home now.”

  “You mean Mercer?”

  “Yeah, the society girl.” Genevieve snorted and turned to her daughter. “Good-bye, Winona. Be sure to let me know when you meet Mister Right. I’ll come back for the wedding with bells on!”

  Reinhart snapped his fingers. “I’ll bet you’re going to San Francisco. Isn’t that where your pansy brother Kenworthy has lived for years?”

  Genevieve looked stoically at the floor, then flung her head up sharply. This had been a gesture of her father’s. “I know you think you’ve given me a devastating shot,” she said. “But I didn’t come over here for petty bickering.” She put her hands on her hips. “Let me put it to you straight: I have got an opportunity out there, but I’ll admit I’m strapped at this moment. I need the price of the fare—one-way only, I assure you.”

  Winona went to the sideboard and opened the drawer in which she kept the big flat checkbook used to pay the household bills.

  “That’s to Los Angeles,” Genevieve said. “And better add enough for cab fare. That airport is supposed to be miles from town.”

  Reinhart said: “Just a minute, Winona.” He asked Genevieve: “She just the other night gave Blaine a sizable sum that was supposed to be spent on you. Is that all gone already?”

  “Oh, God, Daddy,” wailed Winona. “Let’s not have a scene.” She opened the checkbook and groped in the drawer for a pen.

  “I’m just trying to establish the truth,” said Reinhart.

  Genevieve said: “It seems to me that’s your lifelong complaint. It ought to begin to occur to you that life is just a collection of stories from all points of self-interest.”

  Winona ripped the check from the book, folded it in two, and gave it to her mother.

  Genevieve said defiantly to Reinhart: “You expect me to unfold it and examine it, don’t you? You haven’t ever thought I had any class.”

  This was a phony attack. From the first it had been Genevieve who was the snob.

  “If you say so,” was the best he could come up with. Besides, he was longing for her departure.

  She stood up. “Well, now you can all rest easy. I’m leaving for good. You won’t see me again.”

  “Mother...” Winona murmured feebly.

  “Good-bye, Genevieve,” said Reinhart. Staring at her, he began to walk towards the door.

  His ex-wife looked stubborn for a moment, but then she shrugged and followed him. At the door she took a kind of stand.

  “I caught you on TV, Carl. You have a lot of nerve, I’ll say that for you.”

  Reinhart opened the door.

  “If you could of found that kind of gall years ago you might have made something of yourself. What a con artist you are! Remember Claude Humbold? He couldn’t hold a candle to you. Cooking! What do you know about food aside from being a glutton?”

  As real-estate salesman for Humbold just after the War, Reinhart had met Gen for the first time. She was Claude’s secretary.

  She went on now: “And that boogie-woogie bugle boy, Splendor Mainwaring. The two of you were inseparable. Frankly I always thought you were a couple of qu—” Without looking back she called: “Oops, sorry, Winona.”

  Reinhart took her by the shoulders and steered her firmly out into the corridor.

  She made no resistance, but when he took his hands off her, she said: “What would happen if I screamed bloody murder? You know you can’t push women around any more.”

  “I’m sure that Winona would cancel payment on the check. For another, I’ve got a lot of friends in this building, including the owner’s daughter.”

  Genevieve’s transitions were breathtaking. She went from the onset of rage through a crooked, perhaps crazed simper, into a broad grin. She threw her open hand at Reinhart. “Congratulations, Carl! Put ’er there!”

  He didn’t understand this, but he shook with her anyway. “I hope things work out for you in California.” He suddenly remembered how frail her shoulders had felt under his fingers. “If they let you out of the hospital you must be in good health.”

  “I’m all right. I’ve got plenty of steam left. I just need a break.”

  “And you’ve got one waiting in California, right?”

  “That’s right.” Her eyes darkened with suspicion. “Don’t you worry about me, fella. Maybe I’ll take a leaf from your book and try television. At least I wouldn’t be any worse than you. And that’s the TV capital of the country, not a tank town like this.” She winked at him. “A TV chef, huh? I’ll bet you think you’re King Shit.”

  “You have a way with words,” said Reinhart. Nevertheless he walked her down to the elevator. He suddenly felt reluctant to let her go. “Hey, Gen,” he said, “remember Jack Buxton, the actor? Didn’t we see him together lots, in the old days, in the old movies?”

  “He kicked off yesterday. Good riddance. He was always a real scumbag. I happen to know, through some friends who are high in Chicago law-enforcement circles, that Buxton was arrested once for molesting an underaged boy, but the charges were dropped because the kid’s family didn’t want the publicity of a trial.”

  “Buxton?”

  Genevieve wore her tough-guy grin. She spoke in fake sympathy. “Aw, and he was one your idols too, wasn’t he?” She shook her head. “My, my. I wonder what that says about you.”

  “For once, can’t you put aside that malicious crap?” he asked. “I saw the man die, yesterday at the TV station. I was the last person to talk with him while he was still conscious. It’s really strange to remember that I started seeing him in movies when I was still a boy in high school, forty years ago, and then through the War. I even saw him at the Onkel-Tom-Kino, a German movie-house in Berlin! And then in the early Fifties, remember, before we got our first television, we’d go to the Regal on Friday nights? After we did have the set of course, we watched all his old films from the Forties and Fifties. I think that by that time his career had faded...”

  “Jesus Christ,” Genevieve said in contempt, “who cares? He was a forgotten ham actor and also a pervert, his pictures were stupid garbage, and if he suddenly dropped dead, it was probably as a result of an overdose of drugs.”

  “I wasn’t really thinking of him personally. I was thinking really of the recent past in what?—entertainment, publicity, or whatever: that funny illusionary plane of existence which one is in when watching TV or movies, where a Jack Buxton is a recognizable figure. It’s a shock to have it proved, and in a brutal way, that there is a real man who has served as a pretext for an image which consis
ts of impulses of light.”

  Genevieve punched the button for the elevator. The doors opened immediately: the car had been waiting. She said: “You haven’t changed. You’ve never learned: if you’re going to be an ass-kisser, then you ought to at least kiss the asses of winners.”

  She gave him the cocky World War II salute that in fact Buxton had specialized in cinematically. Was this a conscious parody or coincidence?

  “Good-bye, Genevieve.”

  “So long, sucker.” She stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind her.

  Reinhart stood in position for a moment. Despite his relief at any departure of hers nowadays, he felt as though it were a historic occasion, marking the end of something that should be ended.

  He returned to Winona. Already she seemed distracted by other matters.

  “Do you think that Genevieve alone is to be blamed for the trouble between Blaine and Mercer?”

  “Well, it’s a theory.” Winona frowned. “I wonder if the boys are asleep. Because if they aren’t, I want to go to my room and get something.”

  Reinhart spoke from experience. “No, it’s the other way around: you should go in if they are napping and stay out if not. Sleeping kids aren’t bothered by intrusions, but they tend to obstruct you when awake.” Apropos of nothing he asked: “Winona, you know our neighbor Edie Mulhouse, well—”

  “That creep. Has she come around looking for me?”

  “She’s not so bad,” said Reinhart, feeling, with this wan defense, like a traitor. “Did you know she’s the daughter of the owner?”

  “The owner of what?”

  “This apartment house. You know, the Mulhouse Corporation.”

  Winona shrugged indifferently. “If you say so. Excuse me, Daddy, I think I’ll just check on the boys, according to your theory.” She went down the hall.

  Reinhart went to the kitchen. His larder needed replenishment. He began to draw up a grocery list, but heard Winona’s good-bye shout from the door. This seemed rude of her. He came out.

  “You’re not leaving already?”

  She put the suitcase down. “I really have to... You were sure right about the boys: they didn’t even wake up when I got this off the high shelf and dropped it.”

  “I wish you would ask me to do things like that,” Reinhart chided. He looked at the suitcase, and then at her. “Have you made your permanent plans yet? Of course, at the moment Mercer and the boys are still here.”

  “You mean, will I be coming back?” She smiled in a fashion that was meant to be helpful but looked uneasy. “Gee, Daddy...”

  “I’m not trying to pry, believe me.”

  “I know you’re not. ... It’s just that...”

  Reinhart picked up the suitcase. It felt empty, but then women’s clothes weighed nothing. “I’ll go down to the car with you. By the way, I still have your Cougar. Do you need it?”

  Winona shrugged. “Not really, and you do.”

  As they went along the hall he asked about Grace. “I heard she was under the weather. Is that true? Because I have a couple of matters to discuss with her.”

  “She’s fine,” Winona said quickly. “I’ll remind her to call you.”

  “She is at home, then? I don’t want to disturb her. I can wait till she’s back at the office.”

  “She’ll call you,” Winona said firmly.

  They went silently down in the elevator, and then, past a gravely smiling Andrew, out to the front walk. Winona led her father down the street a way and stopped at a glistening vehicle. Reinhart had not kept up on the latest makes of cars in recent years, but there was no mistaking a Mercedes. This one was colored beige. Winona unlocked the trunk. The interior was a kind of handsome little living room.

  “A rich dwarf could make his home in there,” he joked as he put the suitcase therein. “Grace just buy this heap? She got rid of her Imperial?”

  Winona smirked uncomfortably. “I miss you, Daddy.” She kissed his cheek, got into the gleaming car, which was obviously brand new, and drove away.

  The telephone was ringing as Reinhart returned to the apartment. He took the instrument just inside the door.

  “This is Blaine. Put Mercer on the line.”

  “Blaine! God Almighty, you had us worried. Where have you been?”

  “I asked if Mercer was there.” Same old Blaine.

  “Well, she and the boys have been staying here, but she’s not in at the moment.”

  “When did she leave? How long has she been gone?”

  “That I can’t tell you, Blaine. She was here this morning when I left, at about eleven. I got home I guess an hour ago.”

  “You were out all that time?” Blaine asked in outrage. “Were the boys home alone?”

  As usual Reinhart was stung. “For God’s sake, you vanish for three days without a trace, abandoning your wife and kids, and then you have the nerve—”

  “Are you senile? Vanish? I’ve been out of town on business, but I’ve called her every day. I called earlier this afternoon, but nobody answered.”

  “I was here all last night,” said Reinhart. “The phone never rang.”

  “I talked to her in the afternoon!”

  “Where are you now, Blaine?”

  “At home. I just got back from Detroit. I took the night plane the other evening after seeing you and Winona.”

  “Why don’t you come over here now? Your life is your own business, but I seem to have become involved in this part of it. I want a better understanding than I have.” His son remained silent. “Blaine, did you hear me?”

  “All right,” Blaine said sullenly. “I’ll come.”

  “All right, then. Maybe Mercer will have returned by that time.” But Reinhart spoke this into a dead wire: his son had hung up in his usual graceless style.

  Reinhart had not had the heart today to so much as look into the bedroom currently being used by Mercer, and before going out that morning he had shaved, etc., in Winona’s bathroom, the one at present assigned to the two small boys, who were neater than their mother.

  Now however, distracted, he went for a pee in his own bathroom, with its wastecan overflowing with those female items of volume but no substance, such as wadded Kleenexes, discarded cotton balls, ex-tampon tubes. He washed his hands, planning to carry them wet to the kitchen and dry them on paper towels: none of cloth was available. If Mercer had showered today, she perforce used one from the heap of soaked terry-cloth on the floor between the toilet and the wall—unless of course she simply swathed her wet body in his thirsty-fabric bathrobe, which she had commandeered on arrival and never yet surrendered.

  He shook the excess water from his fingers and glanced briefly at his face in the mirror. A note was Scotch-taped to the glass.

  “Dad”—

  I had to go away—can you run boys home—or wait til B. gets in and hell do it.

  sincerly,

  M.

  When Blaine arrived, a half hour or so later, Reinhart assured him that the boys, still napping, were fine, but that Mercer had not yet returned. Meanwhile they might have a conversation in the living room, over a good stiff drink if Blaine would state his pleasure.

  His son stared at him, shrugged, marched in, and took one of the modern chairs that faced the couch. He rejected the repeated offer of a drink. He pointed to the sofa. Reinhart hesitated for a moment, and then, deciding this was hardly the moment to resist Blaine’s bullying in meaningless matters, took a seat where directed. (He thought he could see a faint stain on the cushions where Mercer had vomited, but that may have been a trick of light; the beige rug showed a blond patch, which was now more or less covered by the coffee table.)

  He opened his mouth to speak, and Blaine said: “No.”

  “But—”

  “No, Dad,” Blaine said curtly, “you don’t know anything about it”

  “I just wanted to say about Mercer—”

  “I don’t want you to say anything about her,” said Blaine. “That’s wha
t I mean. You don’t know what you would be talking about.”

  “I’d be the first to admit that,” Reinhart said. “I don’t claim any powers of analysis. Even at close quarters I’ve found her an enigma.”

  “Is that all you were going to say?”

  “If,” said his father, “that’s all you want me to say.” He would have to seek another means by which to introduce Mercer’s note.

  Blaine rubbed the right lobe of his nose with a thumb. As a gesture it was out of character. He sighed, lifted both hands, and brought them down on his thighs. He stood up. “I’d better get the boys.”

  Reinhart put out an arm. “Could you stay for a meal? You just got back from a trip, and your children haven’t eaten since lunch at their schools.” He rose. “Let me rustle something up.”

  “I just can’t spare the time. Some people are coming in from out of town. I really must get back—”

  “Sit down, Blaine,” Reinhart said, gesturing. “I can understand how a man will protect his pride, especially from other members of the family, but there comes a time. ... I’m hardly in a position to score off you. My failings are public knowledge, and your sister has only recently made her confession, though nowadays her ways would not necessarily be called even a weakness. The point is that no human being is without places of sensitivity.”

  Blaine’s sneering smile was not attractive. “Well, thanks, Dad. When I need some help you can be sure I’ll apply to you.”

  Reinhart drew the note from his pocket and handed it over.

  Blaine glanced quickly at the message, balled the paper, and thrust it in the pocket of his pin-striped suit-jacket.

  “I’m sorry,” said Reinhart.

  Blaine arched his eyebrows. “For what?”

  “Doesn’t that mean she’s walking out?”

  Blaine shook his head. “Certainly not. She had an appointment, that’s all. Probably one of her classes. She takes various courses. She did some modern dance, studied playwriting, even went to a class called ‘The Police and the Public,’ at the Catholic college over in West Hills. I think it’s admirable for a person to explore their potentialities.”

  “I think I really should tell you,” Reinhart said, grimacing, “a couple of times recently Mercer turned up over here, somewhat the worse for wear, as if more than drunk. Does she take any kind of medication?”