Reinhart's Women: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  In the midst of all this he was supposed to go on television and cook something in a hundred eighty seconds?

  He heard stirrings behind the door of his bedroom. He had talked with Grace on the extension near the front door.

  Mercer opened the door and came out, rubbing her eyes. She wore a pair of Winona’s pajamas, though not in the blue that Reinhart had chosen for her the day before, but in pink, and a borrowed robe.

  “Good morning,” said he, out by the phone, and she turned her head towards him as if in fright.

  “Oh. Hi.”

  “Winona came and took the boys off to their respective schools,” Reinhart said. “We saw no reason to wake you up. Was that O.K.?” Toby went to a private academy of some sort, and Parker to a “play school.” Winona had arranged the night before to collect them next morning, and so she had done.

  “That was a good idea,” Mercer said dully.

  But nobody should be kept standing in front of a bathroom when they first arise! Reinhart waved at her. “Go ahead. I’ll fix breakfast. Do you have any preferences? Or phobias, for that matter?” If Winona ate anything at all before leaving in the morning, it was likely to be something bleak, like wheat germ and skim milk. Of course she had a horror of eggs. “How does French toast strike you?”

  “Oh,” said Mercer, smiling vacantly, “anything, anything at all.”

  Reinhart was sorry to hear that unreliable phrase, but he went to the kitchen and broke an egg into a shallow bowl and agitated it with a whisk. For the boys he had made one-eyed sailors, i.e., slices of bread in each of which, in a central hole, an egg was fried. These had even made a hit with Blaine when he was little: Reinhart could number such successes on one hand without exhausting the supply of fingers.

  His version of French toast called for a topping of sautéed apples. He had a few red Delicious in a wire basket: they were in decline, but after the peeling and reaming and trimming of discolorations they yielded enough slices to cover two pieces of toast. He cooked them in butter until they were translucent, and then, turning up the heat, and keeping the apples in motion with a spatula, made them golden.

  He could still hear the shower, which was just behind the kitchen wall, and was beginning to feel some apprehension—given the fact that the bather was his daughter-in-law—when at last the water was turned off. He stepped into the dining area, which was glowing and warm from the bright sunshine this morning, and had just pulled one of the chairs from the table, expecting something of a wait if Mercer was finishing up in the bathroom only now—when that person came around the corner.

  Her hair was wrapped in a damp towel, and she wore his own terry-cloth robe, which he had left that morning, after his own shower, on the back of the bathroom door. She was barefoot and dripping. Apparently she had not dried herself before simply climbing into the robe.

  The whole procedure seemed to have its feckless side, but she was a guest.

  He held the chair for her. “Here you go, Mercer! The sun’s so nice here, I’ll set a place at the table.” He himself generally breakfasted off the kitchen counter, perched on a stool of appropriate height.

  It occurred to him that she might want to lend a hand in the place-setting, but she made no such offer. He got out one of the better, gold-edged plates from the low cabinet against the wall and the requisite cutlery from the set of silver purchased by Winona in an extravagant moment and rarely used since. And a good napkin, of the snowy kind.

  “Now,” said he, as she leaned aside so that he could arrange these things before her, “what’s lacking is a single rose, in a crystal bud vase.”

  Her face was as handsome as ever under the towel, but Reinhart really didn’t like to see a wet towel at table, not to mention his bathrobe, which had never dried from yesterday’s soaking and was furthermore too large for her in an unattractive way: absent was the charm of the spunky but modest girl, a standard role in pre-War films, who, overtaken by rain and darkness, ended up, in all innocence, wearing the hero’s oversized nightclothes, though he would not kiss her until they were engaged.

  Mercer said: “Oh, don’t go to any trouble. I just have black coffee in the morning. You wouldn’t have any cigarettes around? I ran out.”

  “No. Neither of us smokes.” He went into the kitchen.

  She persisted. “There’s not a machine down in the lobby?”

  He came to the door. “Not that I know of.” Actually, there was such a device, he now remembered, in the rear of the basement, outside the laundry room, but he had no intention of revealing its existence until breakfast was over. He turned up the heat under the teakettle, which was already full and warm, and took the canister of coffee beans from the refrigerator. For his standard lone breakfasts he was not wont to fresh-grind Mocha-Java, but this was an occasion.

  The kettle, warmer than one had thought, was already beginning its whistle. Before he had switched off the burner Mercer was in the doorway, china cup, sans saucer, dangling from a hooked finger.

  “Got to have my coffee quick as I can!” she said, with smirking affection for her own foible. “Where’s the jar? I’ll fix it myself.”

  “I was just about to grind some coffee.” He showed her the open canister.

  She scowled into it. “Is that coffee?”

  “That’s how it starts,” said Reinhart. “Then it’s ground.” He poured beans into the blender. “This is one way to do it, but there are hand-turned grinders and also little electric ones.” He pushed the button that caused the blades to whirl. “That should do it.” He took the top off the blender jar and displayed the contents.

  Mercer shook her head dubiously.

  “You see,” Reinhart said, “when you buy coffee in a can, the grinding has already been done.”

  “I’ve never made it except with powder,” said she. “I guess I never have thought about anything but instant.”

  “Well, why don’t you go out and sit at the table? It’ll take just a moment for the coffee to drip through. Meanwhile I’ve got half a grapefruit here.” He opened the fridge. “I’ll just put some honey on it.”

  “What I generally do is take a cup of coffee with me to the bathroom while I dry and brush my hair.”

  Reinhart patted her damp shoulder. “I want you to eat this breakfast, Mercer. It’ll do you a world of good, believe me.”

  He heated the milk and made café au lait for her. The slices of apple were arranged in orderly overlap atop the French toast, dusted with cinnamon and anointed with maple syrup. In accompaniment were three slices of bacon, cut from the chunk by Rein-hart’s own keen knife and thus not quite regular but thick enough to proclaim their substance, of a robust but natural hue and rendered absolutely of fat.

  Mercer ate a respectable amount from this plate, to her own announced surprise. Reinhart was enormously pleased to have cooked something that someone ate, and for the second time this morning, the boys having polished off their own breakfasts.

  After tidying things up, he poured himself a cup of coffee and went out to join her. But she was leaving the table as he arrived.

  “That was terrific,” she said, not looking at him and his coffee. “I’m going to get dressed.” And away, around the corner, she strode.

  Of course he felt let down. There was now no sense in sitting there to drink his coffee, with no company but her dirty implements of eating. He cleared the table and went back to the kitchen.

  An hour later Mercer was still shuttling regularly between his bedroom and his bath, effectively continuing to deny him access to either: which meant not only that he couldn’t brush his teeth, a function he was psychologically unable to perform until he had been up for several hours, but also that he had not had a change of clothing for more than a day. The older he got, the nicer his ways: even as late as the War years he might still display a teenager’s indifference to the freshness of his underwear, but nowadays, in an essentially sedentary existence, day-old drawers and T-shirt seemed lined with grit, and the thought of
his feet in yesterday’s socks was loathsome to him.

  It occurred to him that he might take this opportunity to clean Winona’s room, which no doubt would need some attention after the night spent there by the boys. But here again he was obstructed: this time because of modesty. Just as he arrived at the head of the hall on his first attempt, Mercer passed from bedroom to bathroom, still wearing the robe, but the belt had been unfastened and the garment swung open. Of course he had seen her in the altogether the day before, but now she was conscious—if you could call it that: she was oblivious to him.

  He turned and went back to the other end of the apartment. The sun continued to show itself genially, after a procession of gray days had crawled through the no-man’s-land between winter and spring. Reinhart was often indifferent to nonextreme weather, but a walk in the warm light, going down towards the river, might be just the ticket this morning, and he believed he should take Mercer along. She seemed all right thus far, even boringly so, occupied with the routine of getting into the day, but he did not like the idea of leaving her alone.

  After allowing more than enough time for her to clothe herself, he tried again to penetrate the hallway, but again he was obstructed, at least theoretically, by his daughter-in-law, who was in the act of going from bathroom to bedroom. Now the robe was missing, and though she was not in the altogether, she was hardly overdressed, wearing, as she did, only two pieces of flimsy underwear. For Reinhart this was no more erotic than his cleaning her of vomit the day before, but much more embarrassing. And this time she not only noticed him, but spoke, though did not, thank God, stop.

  “You didn’t find any cigarettes, by chance?”

  She was inside the bedroom by the time he answered. “I’ll tell you, I’ll go down and see if I can find a machine. Maybe there’s one in the rear of the building.” He had not forgotten the risk in leaving her alone, but had begun to feel a desperate need to escape until she was clothed. What bothered him, as always, was not really Mercer, nor himself, but his son. The classical theories of the emotions were usually fixed on the guilt felt by the child towards the father. Reinhart had felt little of this that had not been artificially stimulated by the trend of the times, but absolutely genuine was the wretchedness evoked in his soul by any thought of Blaine. He assumed that were Blaine to come here now and find Mercer in a state of undress, his son would believe him a degenerate—and perhaps be justified in so doing.

  He took the elevator to the ground floor and went through the corridor that led to the laundry room. He found the machine, had the right combination of coins with which to feed it, worked the appropriate button, and received the package of cigarettes: a brand chosen solely for its silver wrapper. This took no time at all, and he returned hastily to the apartment. Mercer had the capacity to make him anxious by either her presence or the threat of her absence.

  But she was there when he got back, and, thank God, fully covered at last—if only in the dressing gown she had worn when lying on the backseat of Winona’s car the evening before.

  “Say, Mercer,” Reinhart said. “It’s a nice morning. How about us taking a walk down to the river?”

  She was standing in the doorway of his bedroom. “Oh, I think I’m just going to stay here and watch television.”

  Of course this meant the set atop his dresser. His private quarters were apparently to remain off-limits to him so long as she stayed in the apartment.

  He shrugged. “Then do you mind if I get some things of mine from the closet?”

  She gave him a vague look which he interpreted as acquiescence, but preceded him into the room. He had hoped for some privacy as he rooted through his supply of clean underwear.

  The room itself was in remarkable disorder. How one slender young woman alone could have so twisted the bedclothes, distributed the pillows so widely (one under the chair, the other on the floor beneath the window), and have been so profligate with towels (one underneath the bed, another on the window sill, and still another draped over the little wastebasket), was beyond him.

  He opened a dresser drawer and took what he had come for. Mercer stood in front of his closet, and did not move away when he approached. It dawned upon him that she seemed lacking utterly in a sense of existence other than her own, either had no natural radar or disregarded it. Another oddity was that, having made so much of her need for a cigarette, when presented with a supply, she failed to extract one and light it up. In fact, she had dropped the unopened pack into the frozen maelstrom of bedding.

  “Excuse me,” Reinhart said at last, and sharply. “I want to get into the closet.”

  She moued and moved aside. He opened the door and took out a pair of trousers and a clean shirt, both on hangers.

  He remembered that she was more to be pitied, etc., and said, “Go ahead, put on the TV. But I don’t know that at this time of day there’s much but reruns of comedies from the early Sixties.”

  “I like the game shows,” said Mercer. She acted on his suggestion, and when an image appeared on the screen she increased the volume of the sound, even though a strident commercial was being broadcast at the moment, with a jangling musical accompaniment. That the product being hawked was a deodorant spray for the private parts of women was so preposterous and ugly a state of affairs as to be answered only with a jolly chuckle from Reinhart. But despite the noise, or perhaps because of it, Mercer seemed oblivious.

  He tried once more and now had to shout: “You might keep it in mind, taking a walk. I’d like one, myself. It really is a fine sunny day. ... I just got a bright idea: we might have a picnic on the riverbank. Not baloney sandwiches, either. I’ll make something more serious, a quiche or salade Niçoise. An iced bottle of, uh”—he caught himself—“mineral water.”

  Mercer smiled sweetly and nodded at him, though he believed it doubtful that she had listened. Without straightening the tangle of bedclothes, she flopped herself down upon them, shoulders against the headboard, and stared dully at the television screen.

  Jesus Christ. He left with his change of clothes and went across to his bathroom—compared to which the bedroom had been neat. More discarded towels, it went without saying. Unfortunately, though smaller than Winona’s, his was the one with the linen closet, from which Mercer had helped herself as if it were a giant box of Kleenex.

  He gave himself an electric shave and washed his face in his hands—the supply of washcloths, too, had vanished—and let the air dry his cheeks. In fresh attire he gathered up the bathroom laundry and added it to that from the built-in hamper, filling a pillowcase and a half. The sound of the TV across the hall was especially oppressive when the musical commercials came on.

  He had intended, while gathering up the towels Mercer had strewn around the bedroom, firmly to turn down the volume, but while crossing the hall had second thoughts about such rudeness. The poor thing...

  “Say, Mercer, do you mind—” he began as he entered the room. But he addressed an empty bed. She was gone again.

  Looking on the bright side, at least she was respectably covered. Her dressing gown lay in the overstuffed chair, and her street clothes were gone. Reinhart decided not to pursue her. Were he to admit to the truth, he might even allow himself to be relieved by her departure. His first move was to shut off the television. The room stank of smoke: she had finally opened the pack and, the ashtray told him, already had smoked about a third of each of three cigarettes. He opened the window and carried the trayful of butts across to the toilet.

  After putting the room in order, he dreaded what he might find in Winona’s suite, used by the sons of such a mother, but the marvelous surprise, in both bedroom and bath, was the general neatness. The boys had even pulled the bedclothes into shape (a bit crudely, but good God!) and hung up their washcloths and towels (after using them!) in a splendid try at military precision. Their toothbrushes were not in a perfect arrangement on the curb of the washstand, nor had the cap been replaced on the tube, but their grandfather himself was wont often to c
ommit these very misdemeanors.

  Indeed, this evidence that the boys were already, and untypically at their tender ages, responsible beings somehow made Reinhart feel better about Blaine’s family, wretched as were its adult prospects.

  CHAPTER 13

  AT THE TELEVISION STUDIO everyone encountered by Reinhart was young, slender, dressed in jeans, and quick-moving. They were also, all of them, unfailingly civil. When he realized that he was actually going to appear on TV that morning, he had dosed his coffee with brandy, but he remained anxious. The studio people needed him two hours before he was scheduled to face the cameras, which meant he had had to arise at four-thirty, after getting almost no sleep. The fact was that Mercer had, perhaps unfortunately, not gone on another binge, but rather had returned to her own house by cab and come back to the apartment in her own car, filled with suitcases containing clothing for herself and the boys. Reinhart had therefore spent another night on the living-room couch, and by the looks of things he could expect to remain there until Blaine turned up.

  He had not been able even to close his eyes before three A.M. For one, his daughter-in-law seemed to be making a heroic effort to stay on the wagon. This was certainly laudable, but resulted, inconveniently, in her drinking vast quantities of noninebriating liquids such as coffee, tea, milk, and the root beer which Reinhart had provided for his grandchildren: in fact, anything but water, which she could have obtained from the nearby bathroom. All else was to be found only in the kitchen, to reach which the living room must be crossed.

  For another, she habitually operated the TV set at too high a volume for anyone of his age to sleep under the same roof, even though the bedroom door was closed. And when he finally registered a gentle complaint, she was too contrite and turned off the set altogether—to put it on again half an hour later, when she no doubt assumed he would be asleep at last. But of course it took that long to get used to the silence, and no sooner had he done so than the noise began once more.