Reinhart's Women (18 page)

But they were alone in the hallway as he unlocked the apartment door.

“This is real nice,” said Helen in the foyer.

“There’s a river view,” said Reinhart. He helped her out of the trench coat, which he hung over a straightbacked chair. Whenever the need came to dispose of a guest’s outer clothing, he was reminded of a deficiency in the apartment: there was no closet near the front door. He and Winona were in their third year of residence and had yet to provide a halltree or row of hooks or whatever. Yet he forgot about the problem as soon as the guest went away. In his uncertainty now he spoke of this banal matter to Helen.

Suddenly he saw that she was now as uneasy as he was, rather, as he had been, for this state is oftentimes relieved when it is seen as shared.

He put his hands around her from the rear and lowered his face into her neck. How long had it been since he had last done that sort of thing? This was much too simple an embrace to try on a whore, and too immodest. The complicated ecstasies can easily be purchased, but nobody sells an honestly warm caress.

She took away his hands, but only to pull him by one of them into the short hallway that obviously led to the bedrooms. Her taking the initiative, in his domicile, excited him. He had always been aroused by sexual rudeness or arrogance on the part of a woman, though in early life he had never understood this.

Until this moment his bedroom had been a monastic cell. He went to the buttons of Helen’s blouse, she to his belt buckle. He would have lingered at the task, but she was impatient, and they were both undressed in no time at all.

He thought of something. There was an outside chance that Winona might come home early; accidental events were always possible. He stepped across his bedside rug and began to close the door. He could hear Helen draw the sheets over herself. Her body was as opulent as he had supposed: he was worried about doing justice to it.

Something hard to identify either by outline or movement entered the hallway. A shadow is exceptionally fearsome when one is naked, and for an instant Reinhart shrank back. But then he remembered Helen, whom he was obliged to protect as guest and as woman, and he projected his head through the doorway.

The figure had reached him. It was identifiably human by now, and smaller than he, but bent as he was he looked into its face. It was Mercer, his missing daughter-in-law.

She supported herself with two hands on the doorframe and made a strenuous attempt to speak coherently, but succeeded only in breathing on Reinhart. That such exhaust fumes were not colored blue was a wonder.

“Mercer,” said her father-in-law quietly. “You’ve given us all quite a scare.”

“Wwww...” said she, and spun suddenly about and staggered back up the hall, turned the corner, and by the sound of it, soon fell.

“I’m sorry,” Reinhart said to Helen’s face on his pillow. “That’s my son’s wife. I’ll have to do something about her.” He opened the closet and took his robe from the hook behind the door.

“Some days,” Helen said cheerily, “are like that.” She made no move to leave bed.

Reinhart closed the door behind him and went in search of Mercer. He came back immediately.

“Say, Helen,” he said, “I’m going to be occupied for quite a while. I guess you’re right about it’s not being our day.”

She climbed out of bed. Helen was really something to see, and she lacked absolutely in false, or perhaps even real, modesty.

“Can’t I help?”

“I don’t think so,” said he. “But thanks.”

“Is this an old story?” She began deftly to dress.

“I don’t really know. Until now I’ve been on only the most polite terms with the lady. My son and I aren’t the closest of pals. ... Listen, I really am sorry.”

Helen for the first time turned inscrutable. “Better get out there,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

It occurred to Reinhart that some member of his family, small as it was, had been available to ruin every effort he had made during the last fortnight.

CHAPTER 8

M
ERCER HAD THE THIN
, fine-angled sort of face that was once thought to be aristocratic, especially by those who had been filmgoers in the pre-War era. Whether cut of bone was still a criterion for good birth, or whether indeed there was still something, anywhere in creation, that deserved the designation of high-class, was one of the many matters on which Reinhart lacked authority.

His daughter-in-law was a slender, comely young woman, with good long legs, a flat chest, and skin that seemed always somewhat roughened by the weather. She had exceptionally fine hands, of which Reinhart was aware because in the six years of her marriage to his son his association with her had amounted to little more than a handshake on arrivals and departures. And all too few were even those occasions, owing no doubt to Blaine’s disinclination to frequent his father. But though Mercer might not be to blame for a negative situation, neither could she be commended for making the least effort towards the positive. Reinhart would not have been astounded had she failed to recognize him on a public sidewalk.

And even now, as he clasped her naked body to him, they were no more intimate except in the most superficial sense. Mercer in fact was unconscious.

Here he was, alone in a bathroom with an unclad young woman, himself quite stark beneath the terry-cloth robe, of which even the knotted belt had worked loose in his struggles to move her person, which could change in an instant from altogether inert to woodenly rigid, to rubbery elastic, to pluckingly prehensile. ... He had not performed such a job since delivering his father-in-law from the parking lot of a roadhouse bar many years before. At that time brute force was an available, even a gratifying technique. But you couldn’t handle a young wife and mother with the same means that were appropriate to a husky drunk you furthermore detested. Moreover, you weren’t getting any younger.

He had stripped and hauled her showerwards because she had vomited all over herself and, alas, not only down her bosom and through her lap and onto her shoes—no, she had also puked onto the predominantly pale-blue couch and the altogether beige rug and rolled over the one and tracked through the other. Even more regrettably, she had been drinking not gin or vodka or Italian vermouth or even dry sherry, but rather a fluid that was, at least when regurgitated, maroon.

He propped her now in the shower stall in his tubless bathroom, and because her knees threatened to buckle, he briefly held the knobby patella of the left one, so discouraging the incipient slump. Her sleek thigh rose above his wrist, her flat belly pressed against his shoulder cap. He could not help noticing when undressing her that her chest was not so flat as when she was clothed. She had indeed a remarkably shapely figure for a mother of two. These observations were not erotic, but rather in the service of a moral inquiry: why would such a young healthy body have nothing better to do on a standard weekday afternoon than fill itself with red wine?

When it seemed as though she might lean there in the tiled corner and not slide away, at least not until he quickly got the water flowing, Reinhart released Mercer’s kneecap (surely one of the most discreet below-the-waist points of contact, if contact had to be made, and it did), rose smartly from his bend, and seized the glass knobs that controlled the flow of water to the shower. The mix could be a tricky matter when one sought a compromise between melting iceberg and searing steam. In the strait compartment of tile, the characteristic stench of vomit could not be eluded. His own children had been great pukers when small, and in fact Winona, as might have been expected, was notable at the art or craft, performing it often, at a certain age, in public places: restaurants, movies, and of course on parents’ night at school. “Throwing up” had its endearing side for Reinhart, and washing the puker was to some degree an exercise in nostalgia, for it had usually been he, and not Genevieve, who had handled such emergencies as might soil the handler.

In mixing the waters to achieve a comfortable balance, one could not, when sharing a narrow cubicle with another body, avoid getting soaked. Almost immediately his terry-cloth robe absorbed several pounds of water. He had avoided looking at Mercer’s face, because though she had been consistent in keeping her eyes closed thus far, she might at any moment open them up, and her subsequent embarrassment would be a horror to him, for he would have no means of relieving it at this moment. Whereas if he could just get her cleansed, put into a pair of Winona’s pajamas, and tucked into bed, the worst of it would be in the past when eventually she came to consciousness.

But to clean her effectively he could hardly keep his face averted. God, there was puke on her fine chin and snot running from her delicate nose. This was, he had to admit, less repulsive on a handsome face than it would have been on someone ugly or old: yet another example of life’s inequity. Furthermore, one quick shot from the shower-head and her face was impeccable once more. He seized her, by shoulder and waist, and turned her under the spray of water.

He would have preferred to disregard the matter of soap, in applying which there could be no modesty, but when undressing her he could hardly have ignored certain olfactory suggestions that she had not lately had a good wash.

He lifted her over the curb of the shower stall. She had not yet come to, and he gently toweled her dry. Only a few more yards of thin ice to cross. He dropped the dampened towel and draped her trunk with a dry one. Obviously Winona should not be inconvenienced; he would sleep on the couch tonight. He lifted Mercer again and carried her to his own room. This was a more taxing job than any he had yet performed. He had to swing her this way and that to negotiate two doorways, and even slender young women are much heavier than they look. In the hallway the towel that had covered her slithered to the floor.

Reinhart was now carrying an unconscious, naked woman while himself wearing a soaking wet bathrobe that gaped open almost to the crotch. What a perfect moment for someone to burst in unannounced. Blaine, for example. Or, far worse, Genevieve! He actually listened in bravado-dread for such an intrusion.
Come on, it’s all I need!
But how could they get in? Well, how had Mercer penetrated the locked door? It might well be the kind of day when such things were arranged by the Fates, to whom it meant no more to spring a lock than to whip ex-wives into frenzies of hatred.

So goaded by resentment and self-pity, Reinhart managed to carry the leadenly limp burden to his bed. He covered Mercer with the spare blanket from the closet and then went to Winona’s room to fetch night clothes. His daughter’s chamber was scarcely uncharted territory. Winona would have hired a maid, but why squander money when he was home all day? He ran the vacuum twice a week, changed linens, and whatnot: little enough.

Winona had been none too neat as a fat girl, but as she turned sleek she became tidier in all respects. Of course, her appearance was her fortune. She could not be seen in clothes that had spent the night on the floor. Her walk-in closet was a rustling, ghostly forest of dry-cleaner’s plastic bags. Reinhart had no cause to inspect her more intimate apparel, but when by chance he was present as she opened a drawer, the contents thereof always looked so immaculate that he was once moved to ask whether she wore anything twice. “Oh, gosh, Dad, a few more times than that,” she had said solemnly. But not many more, he realized: which explained why when emptying her wastebasket, he always saw tumble forth so many of those little tags and labels, straight pins, and clear plastic.

And yet, and yet... you could share a home with somebody, somebody of your own blood, you could sleep in the next room, you could vacuum their quarters and empty their waste can, and yet be utterly ignorant of an essential feature of their life.

Reinhart chose the effective dresser drawer on his first try, merely by application of reason: it was on the last level before the floor. He kept his own nightgear in a similar situation. As he expected, along with several sets of pajamas that had perhaps been laundered once or twice, there were even more pairs yet in their original packages. These were invariably of a hard, flat fabric and in a single and simple color: beige, pale yellow, powder blue, or light green. Winona stayed with the matter-of-fact when it came to bedwear.

Reinhart chose a new pair of blue pajamas for Mercer, shut the drawer, and straightened up, feeling a twinge in the small of his back: that kind of thing was routine when you were older, and often happened for no good reason, i.e., you made no real exertion, whereas you might lift a heavy weight with impunity. One wondered whether Nature was really on the ball at all times.

He walked deliberately to his own room. Now that his daughter-in-law had been washed, it would be even more embarrassing to deal with her bare body.

...The aforementioned problem was shown to be an idle worry by his glance towards the bed. The blanket was obviously empty, yet in disbelief he wasted a moment by probing into its rumple. Mercer had gone!

He ran into the hallway, but stopped and turned and came back to explore his small bathroom. He then sprinted into the living room, made the righthand turn, passed the dining table, looked into the kitchen, wheeled about, and dashed back.

It was not out of the question that she could have hidden in a closet and emerged after he had gone by. Therefore he once again searched his own quarters, and because by now she might have gained Winona’s suite, he looked into his daughter’s bedroom and bath.

It was not until his second trip through the front of the apartment that he noticed the door was ajar. No, it was simply not possible that she had gone out. For one, he had not heard a sound. For another, her wretched, reeking clothes were still on the floor of his bathroom. Persons whom one knows do not go into public stark naked, no matter how drunk. Still, searching the place again would clearly be useless. He would not find her within its walls. Reason must insist that she had gone elsewhere.

There was one hope, not by any means farfetched: perhaps she had attired herself in garments from his closet or dresser.