Reinhart's Women (3 page)

“As long as you’re happy,” he said, halting. “Winona has a professional reason for her diet, but even so I often don’t approve of it. I can’t get her to accept the fact that she first began to lose weight on my cuisine, but in a sensible way, and with no loss of nourishment or flavor.”

“Please, Carl, say no more on that subject,” Grace said. It was almost a command. Good, she was coming back to normal. But no sooner had Reinhart made that observation when Winona spoke up in obvious irritation.

“Daddy has a
very
good point, Grace, and you should listen to him.”

Reinhart was amazed by his daughter: where had this forceful style come from?

“Sorry, Carl,” said Grace, “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“You weren’t,” Reinhart said firmly. This still wasn’t going well, he was sorry to see, despite Grace’s heroic efforts to get on with her hostess, absolutely the reverse of what the situation should have been. He was really getting very cross with Winona, and had it not been she who paid the rent, he might have considered sending her to bed! This thought came to him as only in part a jest. Though his daughter supported him in money, he provided her security in every other respect, and he was aware that Winona expected him to wield the domestic authority.

She got his implication now. “You see,” she said to Grace in a more decent tone, “what Dad says about food is right, but my trouble is that all I have to do to gain weight is to smell something delicious, I’m sorry to say. Until not too many years ago I was a baby elephant. My brother used to call me that, and ‘whale,’ and other lovely names.”

Grace looked as though she might weep. In twenty minutes Winona had evoked from her a display of feelings that Reinhart had not suspected she had, and not once since the appearance of his daughter had Grace shown that part of her personality that had been salient in his previous meetings with her.

“That was because of the high-carbohydrate junk food you used to gorge on,” he now told Winona. He addressed Grace: “And so did I! At the worst point I was almost fifty pounds heavier than I am now, at ten years younger.” He expected Grace to show some amazement at this, as people could usually be relied on to do, but she merely smiled vaguely into the middle distance. “Well.” He made a gesture. “I’d better get back to my eggs.”

No one offered to stop him, and he returned to the kitchen. He tasted the liquid, which had reduced somewhat in the simmering. Despite the sugar it was still slightly tinged with acidity, but this condition would surely be corrected when the cooked mushrooms were added, even though they had themselves been sprinkled with lemon juice: you learned such things with experience. He heated butter and oil in a skillet and quickly sautéed the mushrooms. When that was done, it was time to poach the eggs in the perfumed bath of wine and stock and bacon and onions and garlic.

The
oeufs en meurette
when done were pinkish gray, not in themselves a ravishing display, but they were masked in the velvety, rich brown sauce made from the poaching liquid, thickened and augmented by the mushrooms, and they were mounted on the croutons fried golden in hot butter.

Reinhart had opened a fresh bottle of the same wine that had been used for the poaching, and he had made a simple salad of washed and dried watercress without dressing. To follow was only a sorbet of fresh pears, made of the puréed poached fruit and egg white. Some light sugar wafers. And no more to the brunch but Mocha-Java, with heavy cream: too early in the day for the inky-black infusion of “espresso.”

This meal represented Reinhart’s ideal of great flavor and no bulk. He was pleased with himself as he carried the
plat de résistance
into the dining ell off the living room. The plates were heating on a Salton hot-tray on the sideboard. He put them in place on the table and poured the wine. There was a dramatic moment at the outset of any meal, just before anyone took the first bite, when the napery was spotless, the cutlery unsullied, the wine gleamed behind crystal, the dishes were at their visual perfection—a good moment, but not the best to Reinhart, who was a cook and not a maître d’hôtel.

No, the best time of all was when the persons for whom he had provided the meal began to eat it! He went around the corner to fetch Winona and Grace.

The door to the hall was open, and the living room was empty.

Before he reached the doorway Winona came through it from the corridor, scowling inscrutably. When she saw her father she lowered her head for an instant, then raised it and said wretchedly, “I guess you’re ready to shoot me.”

Reinhart did nothing for a moment, and then, sighing, he embraced his daughter and led her to the sofa.

“We’re going to have a man-to-girl talk,” he said to Winona, who was displaying her old schoolchild sheepishness, her head inclining towards his shoulder. “The fact is, Winona: you’ve spoiled me rotten!”

From the side of his eye he could detect her flinching smirk. “I mean it! I’m the spoiled one, and I’m responsible for this awful waste of your youth.” She made some childish murmur of contentment. God, how hard it was to say this! What dad did not want to keep his daughter home forever?

Reinhart rose and stood before her. “It’s simply not right that we each be the only member of the opposite sex that the other has as a friend! I’m not suggesting it’s perverted or anything of that sort, but it simply isn’t balanced. You know, that’s one criterion of a meal: whether it’s balanced. Cream soup, stewed chicken, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, and blancmange, however well prepared each by each, would be a white horror in the ensemble!”

“Dad—” Winona began.

“No, Winona, we must face the fact that you’re not sixteen any more. You’re almost twenty-six. You’re not in school. You have a profession, and a very lucrative one, in this town. If you went to New York, or even Chicago, you could be positively rich, I’m sure, modeling for Cover Girl or Clairol Herbal Essence or something on TV for hair or skin or whatnot.”

“Daddy—”

“I realize that you felt Grace would alienate my affections towards you.” Reinhart took long strides to the windows and back. In the river below were two barges in tandem. He had mostly stayed home for some years: the world outside, especially from the height of this apartment, was more and more a mere picture. Often he even ordered food from a high-priced store with delivery service: Winona could afford it. He had not had a lady friend in time out of mind. And now this!

“Don’t think I’m criticizing you, dear,” he said, coming back to a position before the couch. He laughed for effect, but the irony was real enough. “How could I, when you pay the rent?”

Winona made an unhappy expression: she hated him to mention that. She disliked his making reference to anything that could be interpreted as being personally negative. In that attitude she was unique in all the family, at least since the passing of his own father years before, and in truth Reinhart had always considered his dad a bit simple-minded. He had always believed that his mother’s predominant feeling towards him was contempt, and a final proof was provided from the grave: her will had ignored both himself and his favorite child in favor of his son, Blaine, a fellow with whom Reinhart had seldom seen eye to eye in whichever era.

“Daddy,” Winona began once more, “you don’t—”

“No,” said Reinhart, “of course I’m not angry. But I’m afraid that I feel responsible for what had to be an unpleasant experience for poor Grace. I’m going to have to call her up and apologize, Winona.” He smiled at her. “I won’t bring any more ladies home from now on, I promise. But I wish you would think about what I said. We both, but you in particular, young as you are, need
some other friends.
And listen here—don’t forget that I’ll be jealous of your young men! That’s only natural, close as we are. Now, shall we eat, before my lovely eggs are completely cold?” He clapped his hands. “Something new for you. I know you don’t care much for poached eggs, Winona, but these are pretty special—poached in wine, with mushrooms! I know you’ll adore them!”

In truth he was fairly certain she wouldn’t like them at all, and had really prepared the dish to impress Grace Greenwood, who would probably not have liked it either, judging from what she had ordered on their two dates at restaurants.

Winona had hung her head during all his comments, raising it only to protest feebly from time to time. But finally she made a great gasp and spoke as loudly as she could in the soft voice in which she had never failed to address him.

“Daddy! You’re just going to have to listen to me!”

“O.K.,” said Reinhart. “I’m sorry, Winona. I didn’t realize—uh, go ahead, please.”

She stared at him for a while. Had he not known better, he might have believed her emotion to be self-righteousness: something he had never detected in Winona in all her life.

“Dad, I did not first meet Grace Greenwood in this apartment.”

“You didn’t?” Reinhart cocked his head. “Huh.” Suddenly he had a premonition that he should be seated. He chose a low, overstuffed chair across the coffee table from his daughter, the kind of chair from which, in his heavy days, he would not have been able to rise without heroic effort.

“In fact we’ve known each other for a while,” said Winona.

“Then why,” Reinhart asked, pointing, “why then did you ask about her favorite color?” It struck him that his own question was silly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Winona answered. “It’s the kind of thing you say. The fact is, I know her pretty well, you see.”

“I see,” said Reinhart.

His daughter grimaced. “But I don’t think you do, really. ... Anyway, that’s why we acted so funny.”

“Why couldn’t you have just admitted that you knew each other? Is there some law against that? Why wouldn’t I have been pleased to know it?”

She grinned wildly. “I guess it
was
dumb, but once these things begin, well, you know how it goes, one expects the other will say it, and then neither one does.”

Suddenly he thought: Well, what does it matter? He slapped his knees. “Sure you don’t want to eat my special eggs? It’s a classic dish, you know. I really made an effort.”

“God,” Winona groaned, “don’t make me feel worse.” She put her flawless face into her cupped hands.

“I didn’t mean that, dear. Everything’s got snarled up today! What I meant was, it’s O.K. with me that you and Grace already knew each other.”

“Oh, Dad...” Winona took her hands away from her damask cheeks. It had more than once occurred to Reinhart, looking at her, that his daughter might single-handedly evoke all the clichés that were applied to beauty: peaches & cream, silken, velvet, and so on. “Daddy, it’s
how
we’ve known each other.”

Reinhart looked towards the windows and enjoyed the glistening floor between the shag rugs: he had himself put that shine on the parquet with real wax and a rented buffer from the True Value hardware store.

“We’ve been close friends for a while,” Winona went on, biting her underlip. “I didn’t quite know how to approach the subject with you, so she had the bright idea of the meeting-you-as-if-by-accident. It seemed a good idea when I heard it, I don’t know why now. It was stupid and, worse, dishonest. Not that I’m criticizing her, though: I was a full partner.”

“Not that I’m criticizing
you,”
said Reinhart, “but what was all the skulduggery about? Why should I object to your being friends with a bright, successful, and prosperous woman like Grace?”

“Well,” said Winona, “there was an idea, you see, of sharing an apartment.”

“With Grace?” Reinhart almost shouted. “My gosh. That is some idea. You little matchmaker, you. Were you anticipating that Grace and I would get married, or would it be some up-to-date living in sin?” He was pretending to be in robust good humor while all the time feeling a looseness at the core.

Winona was softly weeping: Reinhart went across to the sofa and held her. “Daddy,” she said, “how could I ever leave you?”

“Darling, you won’t ever have to.”

“Well, that was the reason, anyway.”

“The reason for what, darling?” Reinhart’s own eyes were moist. You could not call a life a failure when you had produced a child like this.

“The reason why we broke up, Daddy. Grace says she can’t go on unless we live together.”

Reinhart nodded. For an instant he held Winona as tightly as before, and then he relaxed his grasp. After a moment he stood up.

He spoke as lovingly as ever. “You wanted me to see that Grace was a fine person. You’re certainly right about that, dear. I think the idea was a pretty good one on the part of two very decent women. And listen here, Winona, when you get a good friend in life, you want to hang on to her.”

Winona’s fine eyes began to widen. “Dad, I hope you’re not thinking exclusively of my welfare. You always do that, you know, and I won’t put up with any kind of sacrifice on your part. I love you, and I won’t have it!”

“Oh, I’m not being excessively noble,” said Reinhart. “I think you are so fond of Grace that maybe you’d hate me, without even realizing it, if I came between you.”

Her expression was anguished. “Don’t say anything like that, ever! Didn’t I just send her away?”

“Take my word for it, Winona. I’m a veteran in the contradictory forces of the heart.”

Winona began to weep again. “You know, I was telling Grace—it will be much harder with him than if he were the usual bigot. Damn it, Daddy, can’t you make it easier by being even a
little
nasty?” She was now grinning slightly through her tears.

“Don’t talk like that,” Reinhart said furiously. “Talk about not making it easy on somebody!” He cracked his fingers. “Do you know why I’m such a tolerant fellow, Winona? Because I’m too chauvinist, that’s why! I come from a generation of men who weren’t concerned that much with women. When I was young I was obsessed with whether
I
was
virile
enough. We young men were all like that: it was the constant preoccupation in the Army, for example. Even our humor dealt with it incessantly:
fruit, fairy, swish, pansy, fag,
the words themselves were enough to provoke a guffaw. Then I’ll tell you something else: if we did hear of a girl who preferred her own kind, we assumed she was some poor little bitch who had simply never met the right man.”