Reinhart's Women (26 page)

“Oh, yes.” Winona said this fervently. “A lot.”

He very much did not want her to spell out how. “That’s impressive testimony. You might talk the idea over with Blaine and Mercer—and by the way, isn’t she taking a long while?” Luckily there was only a ventilation duct and not a window in Reinhart’s bathroom.

He and Winona were at the head of the hall when the door swung open and Mercer emerged. She had freshened her makeup and brushed her hair. She was an authentically good-looking young woman, not beautiful nor pretty, but simply damned well made. When Reinhart saw her in this way he sometimes thought of horses: she might appropriately be holding one by the bridle. Again, there was in her own neck a suggestion of the equine. He could easily be envious of Blaine: this was the kind of girl who would never have been aware of his own existence when he was young. And only yesterday he had stripped her nude and washed off the puke! Today she was revealed as being demented, whether permanently or for the drugged nonce. But there was no getting away from it: she still had genuine class.

“Ready to go?” he asked, jiggling the car keys.

“Oh, if you don’t mind,” said Mercer, with a dazzling grin that seemed to have no emotion behind it. “I really am in the mood to have some fun. I’ve been home all day.” She turned her smile on Winona. “Want to do a disco?”

Taken by surprise, her sister-in-law opened and closed her mouth in silence.

Reinhart said: “We’d better get you home, Mercer.”

“He
won’t let me out.”

“You understand, we can’t operate in that fashion. We’ll help you, but we won’t do anything behind Blaine’s back. ... By the way, I just remembered he said he was going somewhere. When will he be back?”

“Who knows?”

“Are you serious?”

Mercer gave him a solemn look. “I think I’ll just lie down for a while.”

Reinhart said to Winona: “Help her to bed in my room. I’d better go over and bring the boys back here.”

CHAPTER 12

“CARL, YOU’RE BOOKED TOMORROW
on the
Eye Opener Show,
Channel Five, to go on right after the seven forty-five headlines. Know the show?”

Grace Greenwood was on the telephone. Reinhart seldom watched TV before late afternoon at the earliest, but he was aware in a general way of the programs offered.

“That’s the local one, isn’t it?” Then he was belatedly struck by the meaning of the announcement that had preceded her question. “What do you mean, I’m booked?”

“I’ve got you a three-minute spot. What can you cook in that time? It should be something highly visual.”

He repeated his question. “I don’t understand.”

Grace chuckled with the sound of crumpling paper. She was in a capital mood, for some reason. “It all started with the cathoderay tube, I think. Get the rest of the explanation at the public library!”

“I’m sorry, Grace. I don’t know whether Winona mentioned that we have some difficulty et cetera in the family. It takes all my attention at the moment.”

“Carl, I’m
trying
to help,” cried Grace. “This might well lead to something, and it’s only three minutes. My God, do a Hamburg Hawaiian or something.”

In spite of himself he asked with horrified fascination: “Is that with pineapple and coconut?”

“Who knows?” said Grace. “I just made it up. But that’s the idea: something colorful, inventive. Lots of people watch that show, and everybody’s interested in unusual cooking nowadays.”

In fact, Reinhart knew nobody at the moment who was even interested much in plain eating, but it was true that he got no further than his troubled family these days.

“Tomorrow? God, Grace, I wish you’d asked me first.” Still, he could feel the faint stirrings of a vanity that had been so long quiescent, as was only appropriate in a man of his years and history. “Television! I don’t know that I’d have the nerve.”

“Well, just watch some of it and you’ll get plenty!” said Grace. “Wear your big white hat and apron, and half the battle’s won. I promised you’d be there at five thirty for make-up.” She gave him the address of the studios.

“I don’t want to be crude, Grace, but is this for free?”

“Certainly not, Carl. Epicon gets a plug for providing you and the products you use. You’re still working for us. Bye.”

He hung up, nodding wryly to himself. He still didn’t know what his fee or salary amounted to, and he was embarrassed to reflect that he could never bring himself to ask.

It was eleven
A.M.
, and he wore the clothes of yesterday, for the reason that Mercer was still in his bedroom, presumably asleep. And presumably Blaine had not yet got home to find Reinhart’s note on the whereabouts of his wife and children. The boys had been put in Winona’s room. Reinhart had slept on the living-room couch (which was
still
not quite dry from the scrubbing), and his daughter had gone to—where else?—Grace Greenwood’s.

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.