This Old Heart of Mine

by Thomas Berger

  “Oh hi,” said Maw to Reinhart as he entered the room. “Whajuh do with your father, bury him in the basement?”

  Reinhart looked around. “Dunno. He was just behind me.”

  “Aha,” Maw said. “It’s all right, I hear him in the toilet. I believe he’s coming down with something. You didn’t put that hose on him?”

  “Only by accident, Maw.” Reinhart went to his wife and, taking her two hands, prepared to help her leave the sofa. He winked at Genevieve, who must have had a bleak forty-five minutes, and informed Maw that they must go.

  “Go?” cried his mother. “Then who’s gonna eat my roast?” This hapened to be a polite lie; he had gone earlier to the fridge for a drink of ice water and seen no meat but wieners, and the oven, which had a Pyrex door, was empty. Maw maintained the illusion of hospitality, and he respected her for it.

  But when he sought to support her cordial fraud—“Sorry to have caused any inconvenience”—she viciously bit the hand that fed her.

  “You’re darn right you should be sorry, brother. That piece of meat cost your father a pretty penny, and for him it don’t grow on trees.” Maw had returned to her old condemnatory tone just at the time he joined the sewer project, and he couldn’t help thinking there was some connection. “He’s never been a big businessman,” she went on. “Just being an ordinary slob is good enough for him.”

  Genevieve had let his hands fall during this conversation and made no move to leave the couch. “Hadn’t we better go, honey?” he asked. It struck him when she answered, how much softer her voice was than his mother’s, indeed, softer than her own at home, virtually a whisper.

  “Your mother will want to finish her story,” Gen said, with a sanctimonious inclination of the head.

  “Oh do you, Maw?”

  “How’s that?” cried Maw. “Gee, I must need an ear trumpet, I didn’t hear a word. Couldn’t be anything wrong with your voices, so it must be me.” She smote her temple with an open palm.

  “Did you have a story that needed finishing, Maw?” asked Reinhart, wishing that his wife were in this instance less polite and more opportunist, while at the same time appreciating her tact.

  “Well sir, isn’t that something! I finally got me somebody who likes to hear what I say.” But in reality she glared at both of them: Maw worked best with her back to the wall, and the whole concept of gracious gain was alien to her. “Well sure, I was telling her about Margie Piatt, who was in your class but after graduating instead of going to college like yourself and of course not off to the Army, married a boy from Indiana and moved to Fort Wayne. That started it: one miscarriage after another. To date, poor girl has had five, I believe, or maybe six. Every time but the first she got as far as her”—Maw jabbed a forefinger towards Genevieve, whose name she had apparently never learned—“when boom! there you go. It’s mean, just downright mean, and I could of sat down and balled when I heard of it.”

  “Well, that’s about the size of it,” said Reinhart to Gen, feeling for her knee so as to distract her; he had been taken unawares, never suspecting that Maw would wield the knife against Genevieve so blatantly. Gen’s smile was a trifle sick, but no more so than when they had arrived.

  “Poor thing,” wailed Maw. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth all the pain and agony to bring forth a human being, just to have them walk right out of your house without so much as a thank-you and run off for the Army or wherever. Maybe it’s better to have your miscarriages and suffer severely only for a short time than to carry it out over a life long. Maybe—”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Reinhart, trying to hide Maw’s voice under his own. “Indeed, yes. Must get our girl home, and feed the cat and the dog, though not to each other, haha! Lots of chores, yessiree.” He ignored Gen’s wry look as he pulled her up, and informed Maw: “That big house keeps us busy. We may have to get a maid.”

  “Does it?” asked Maw. “I wouldn’t know, this bungalow being more than good enough for me, and I sure never got a helping hand with my housework. Recall when I was carrying you, your aunt offered to come in to run the sweeper, but I would druther have laid down and died than not been able all by myself to keep a nice place for your Dad to come home and hang up his hat and eat his hot grub.”

  “Oh, it isn’t Gen’s idea for the maid,” said Reinhart. “It’s mine. Actually she dotes on housework and got very sore at me once because I wasn’t letting her do enough.”

  Long before he finished his speech, though, Maw began to shout down the hall for Dad, and when that individual had sent back a muffled reply that he was on his way, she swung on her heel and stalked off through the dining room.

  Reinhart opened the front door, but Gen made him push it shut again.

  “You want to stay?” he asked incredulously.

  “She will have something for you,” Gen told him severely. “Take it and don’t be rude.”

  It was only a matter of moments before his little wife was proved to have second sight. Maw appeared carrying something wrapped in wax paper. She had never done this before. Of the household chores she disliked cooking most, and therefore would not have made a gift of food. Her strength was in the laundry department, but he could not recall having left any dirty clothes behind last time.

  “Take this, boy,” said Maw, shoving it at him.

  “Should I open it now?”

  “If you’re hungry,” his mother said, assuming a bluff stance before him, but there was vulnerability in her eye. “It’s a meat loaf. Probably isn’t any good. If you don’t like it, throw it to the dog.”

  Pregnant Genevieve shouldered her husband aside; for some reason he had been standing between his women, so that one could not see the other.

  “I’m sure it’s delicious,” said she. “Just delicious, and we will make supper of it tonight.”

  “Dinner,” Reinhart said instinctively, and saw the girls cooperate against him, Maw and Gen: he brought them together at the cost of himself. His wife made a negative sound, and Maw said: “I see Mr. Know-It-All gives you the same trouble he gave me.” She told Reinhart, “For your info, sap, supper is in the evening, dinner elsewhere.”

  “The latter is the main meal, Maw. See Webster.”

  “Why, you dirty—” she began as of yore, but had to call a quick halt before the suddenly asserted authority of Genevieve, five feet two.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Reinhart. It was so nice.” She indicated by a pressure on his arm that now Reinhart should open the door. Which he did with one hand, the meat loaf in the other like a football though rather more heavy. Dad lumbered up the hallway at that moment and made a melancholy congé He held an atomizer and sounded as though he had already developed quite a nice cold.

  “Look, Genevieve,” Reinhart had said into the telephone that day after leaving Claude and the Gibbons, “look, Genevieve—now don’t interrupt me until I’ve had my say. Fair is fair—huh?”

  “I just mean I’m not Genevieve. Dear me.”

  “Then who the hell are you?” He realized it was preposterous to be rude to a wrong number for which his own finger was responsible, and softened the pitch: “Aren’t you POmegranate 4321?”

  “I’m your mother-in-law. How are you today?”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Raven. I don’t think I have ever spoken to you on the phone before, and didn’t recognize—”

  “I seldom use it, I feel uneasy when I can’t see a face. Pardon?”

  “I didn’t say anything, Mrs. Raven. We have a bad connection.”

  “But then the advantage is you don’t have to meet an eye and all that sort of difficulty. I suppose I really prefer to use the telephone. Isn’t this nice! Have we ever talked so much together?”

  “Never,” said Reinhart.

  “I rarely talk to anyone, at least on this plane.” Her voice became very bright: “You might say, what’s the point when our days are so limited and we’ll probably be with a completely different crowd on the other side.”

  “May I ask,�
�� said Reinhart in some apprehension, “whether I am connected to the Raven residence?”

  Gen at once came angrily onto the wire: “How dare you talk to my mother behind my back?”

  “Now, I can’t control who will answer when I call POmegranate 4321, can I?” asked Reinhart. “Just think for a minute.”

  “Do you know what always strikes me, Carl? How you never face anything directly, but make a little wry question of it. I can just see your little sarcastic grin lurking at the comers of your mouth. You are an enormous person physically but you have the psychology of a weak and small someone. You’re always explaining things in a kind of crafty, sneaky way, as if the human you’re talking to is a dupe.”

  “I’ll ignore your abuse,” said Reinhart gravely. “If you were as ready to think carefully about a subject as you are to attack, toujours attack, why—I don’t want to quarrel, Genevieve, and I certainly have no intention to be wry or sarcastic…. How are you, by the way?”

  “I’m—oh, you’re just horrible. Of all the mean tricks I ever heard of, getting that awful woman to call up with a pack of lies.”

  “What lies?” he asked, rather than “what woman?” though he couldn’t identify either.

  “Do you think she dared to reveal herself?” cried Gen.

  “Now you’re putting everything as a question. Calm down and give mc a clear statement of the facts. This comes as a complete surprise to me, Genevieve—I might add, like everything you do.”

  “You are just a goof, sir. Because now I have grounds. I bet you never considered that feature. No sooner do I turn my back than you bring in your chippies. I will see that you are rejected from Vetsville on a morals charge.”

  Somehow she had found out about Bee Fedder without getting the whole story, which unfortunately he could never tell. As regards Bee, what kind of nut was she to have telephoned Genevieve?

  “You don’t even offer a defense, is that it?” asked Gen. “All right for you then. The die is passed. I hope you are satisfied that you have ruined my life.” But she didn’t hang up as he expected, rather stayed on, breathing indignantly through her mouth. Finally she said scornfully: “Did you think I would swallow that story?”

  “For the last time, my dear Genevieve,” Reinhart stated, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I did not get any woman to call you up, and if one did, it was to perpetrate a vicious hoax in the interest of my enemies. A man in the public eye attracts all sorts of cranks, willy-nilly.”

  “Thank you, kind sir, for confirming my own theory. She insisted you were grief-stricken over my departure, couldn’t eat, study, and were on the point of being asked to leave Vetsville—made you out the most miserable wretch this side of a kennel, and all for love. Well I’ll say this: not for one minute was I taken in, but I don’t believe in cruelty to dumb animals and because of this natural weakness in me was seriously considering returning to you on a trial basis, or at least until you would get up off your alleged bed of pain and begin to resemble an adult man. But now I am relieved to know this was girlish foolishness on my part, and that you are getting on famously, better than when you were tied down with me—what do you mean a man in the public eye?”

  Bee, he understood now, had tried to do him a kind turn. Wasn’t she nice! He had had little experience with girls in the relation of mere friendship—getting between their legs eventually and on whatever pretext was always in the back of his mind: but in the case of Bee, he was exonerated of that criminal intention before the court of experience, proving he couldn’t have her if he tried, which he had. Perhaps that’s the kind he should have married instead of this one the thought of whose round behind enchanted him even when listening over the telephone to her obloquy and threats. Love was sometimes crippling.

  “That’s why I’m calling,” he said. “If you’d be a little more patient, Genevieve. If I had to name one quality above all others that should be cultivated by human beings, it’s tolerance. There’s always a reason why the other guy acts as he does, Gen. He may still be wrong, of course—”

  “I’m warning you,” she said, “that I will disconnect in about ten seconds if you don’t cut fish or bait. You are hardly the person I would choose as my moral authority.”

  “All right, all right.” He symbolically threw up his hands. “I’ve just become the success you wanted me to be.” Speaking fast and ruthlessly, he told her about the sewer project.

  Only silence from her end. “Are we cut off?” he asked.

  A small voice, near tears, answered: “It was the fact that I wasn’t there. You consider me a detriment. Well maybe I am. I didn’t go to college. But I’m human! I suppose in the years to come you’ll forget that I predicted great things for you if you would just go out and get them. At the time I didn’t know it was I who you felt held you back. With me out of the picture you soon enough began to make progress by heaps and mounds. Well good luck to you, Carl, and if we meet someday—”

  “Gen now don’t be asinine. I’m going to give you another piece of news, after which I want you to go and pack up your pants and brassieres again, and I will be there shortly to bring you back here to your rightful abode. It is true that this good fortune came while you were absent, but it was as a result of your galvanizing me into action by going away. You must understand that!”

  Genevieve constricted her lips and said: “Carl, if this is a type of gag….” She swallowed, loud in his ear; she really was moved. “If you could tender some evidence of good faith….”

  “Talk to Claude if you don’t believe me,” said Reinhart. “But these crass material matters are not important enough to fake. ‘Come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures pruv.’” He burlesqued it a little in acknowledgment of her antisentimentality, but like all clowns was basically sad.

  “In that awful hut again?”

  “Certainly not!” Reinhart promised wildly, feeling unconditionally powerful at the thought that his love life was to be resumed, as if all the world could be cowed by an erection. “Just for a day or two until we regroup our forces….”

  “Carl don’t think I won’t hold you to it. I’ll tell Daddy and it sounds fine, but I’m sure there’s more than needs the eye.” But then her voice softened. “Meanwhile, I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Suddenly Reinhart’s pride demanded a more ardent expression than that. He after all had or would become a new person in accordance with her recommendations (and had already long forgotten that his change in fortune owed everything to chance and nought to his own initiative—he was frequently out of spirits but never morbid).

  “Is that all?”

  She protested: “Cah-rll, Othermay’s right in the extnay oomray!”

  “Well aren’t we married?”

  “Just -what should I say?” she whispered indignantly. “Something dirty?”

  “I don’t know, Genevieve, you are a married woman since April and a prospective mother since May, and yet sometimes I believe you haven’t changed one iota from the virgin you were in March.”

  “May I remind you, dear sir, that smutty talk on the phone is a criminal offense?” She spoke so officiously that for a moment Reinhart took her for the operator and hovered on the brink of a fantastic imposture designed to hoodwink the authorities.

  But he disciplined himself and went on to make his point: “What I mean of course is you still can’t see that intimacy is perfectly normal.” Hummmmmmm, said the dial tone that had replaced a living girl.

  Ten minutes later he went to fetch Gen home, just before dinnertime on a summer afternoon. He was sweating like a horse, but made an occasion of it and wore his tan tropical worsted with bow tie. Fortunately, her father turned up missing. Reinhart chose this time to wonder whether his habit of getting on well with women and badly with men meant his masculinity was above average or below: practically any mode of action could be proved queer in the long run. But even when he had difficulties with a woman, as in the case of Gen, it was interesting; trouble
is, men are bores.

  Having said goodbye to his mother-in-law, an intriguing person in her own way, which she had hinted at in the short conversation on the phone; one day when he found time he must interview her—Reinhart brought his wife to the car, her valise on his other arm. It was novel to have her back again after three days, a combination of alien and familiar. For one, she seemed to stand lower. When he asked why, her answer was New Look.

  “The skirt is longer, silly. Therefore the legs look shorter.”

  He felt himself blush at the mention of limbs. Face to face, she took the reunion with less wear-and-tear than he. She had a real fiber that he had always lacked. He might do worse than study the girl he had married.

  Having fired up the engine, Reinhart asked: “Shall we eat first?”

  But she was not amused by the old joke, just looked hurt and said: “I regard that as bad taste.”

  Within a fortnight they had moved into a large house two in from the intersection of Buena Vista Lane with Krausmeyer Street, still in the town, approximately two miles from Reinhart’s parents in distance and even more in tone, the neighborhood being principally German brick occupied by retired grocers; whereas that of his folks was chiefly one-story shingled, populated by depressed clerks.

  The first, or Vetsville phase, was now history, like the Continental Congress or the Beer Hall Putsch. Luckily, Fedder spent moving day at College—not that they transferred anything but a few books and the door knocker; the new place was furnished; the old stuff they simply abandoned—Fedder was not around to take leave of, and Reinhart didn’t dare communicate with Bee until, after arriving at the new residence and faking the loss of his fountain pen, he returned to the compound without Genevieve. He really had to thank his friend.

  He knocked her up, in the British sense, i.e., pounded on her door and she answered.

  “I just have a minute,” he said. “As maybe you didn’t realize because we didn’t hire a truck, we moved this morning. The point is, my wife came back to me. It’s now been about two weeks, and I’ve never got the chance to thank you for calling her.”