Reinhart in Love (31 page)

Reinhart cooked because he believed that carrying a child was enough for a girl of twenty; with the same motive he performed the other chores: garbage-emptying, eradication of tea-stains from the sink, dish-washing, and the lot. Marriage for him was the marvelous opportunity to use the energy he had stored up for years as a large man who did little. He even purchased another set of basic dumbbells from York, Pa., to replace those that Maw had sold as scrap metal, and in the interstices between his duties exercised for the first time since 1941. By means of these and several performances of the act of love every night, he lost seven pounds in a month; he was still 220 but not flabby.

In the middle of June, when the weather had turned warm enough for Gen to eschew her slip and wear only pants and brassiere under the blue housecoat which her husband opened so often that the zipper was fouled and its function taken over by safety pins, Reinhart let the federal government assume from the state the provision of half his livelihood. Under the GI Bill he enrolled in the Municipal University in the City, and began to draw the stipend of $90 a month. For which he was obliged to attend summer-session classes, three each morning starting at eight, ending at eleven. He made the ten-mile trip, to and fro, in the Gigantic, and by talking real estate to his fellow students between bells, justified the gas-and-oil charges he added to Claude's account at the local Flying Red Horse, which the boss never paid anyhow.

The day Maw had fried him the pork chop, his second Monday of school, he next stopped to claim the laundry from a sullen Chinese whose iron had made sinister little burns at the points of the collars of all his shirts, and then drove to the mud slough, with its permanent tire grooves, in the front yard of Quonset No. 10, or as he had had a jeweler etch into the brass doorknocker, gift of his aunt:
SANS
SOUCI—REINHART
.

Some relentless college girl had lately been hired to divert the children on balmy days, in a simulated summer camp on the other side of Vetsville, now that they were on vacation. Unharassed, Reinhart walked to his screen door and shouted “Hi-ho.” The dust cloud raised by his arrival preceded him through the entrance. “Geneveeeeve,” he sang, as was his wont, before looking round the one partition, a kind of baffle just inside the door, which kept area snoopers from seeing, in one wink, right through the house and out the rear exit. He stepped beyond it into the one room that was their all: standard sofa in foreground; double bed made up as a parody of another sofa, against the wall in the middle; sink beside the back door, cabinets above, stove nearby, but the midget refrigerator was closer to the bed, for the outlet was there. Scattered in attendance to these main furnishings were lesser conveniences: straight chair or two; one overstuffed, with footstool and extra pillow; magazine rack; bookcase holding Reinhart's old notebooks, zoology text, and a dog-eared copy of King
Arthur
, with “Carlo R. age 10” in a childish mess on the flyleaf. Dad's wheeled chaise longue, really a garden item, had been assembled and put outdoors. Gen sometimes lay there of an afternoon, unless the nearby garbage can, murmurous haunt of flies, had not been collected for an inordinant while and sent forth its effluvium. It was marvelous how she had lost every trace of her premarital snobbery.

As he entered, this valuable person was lying on the real sofa, looking towards the fake one, which wore as cover a huge cloth of dim Paisley, woven by ostensibly indigent Hindus, for it was stamped “India” and had been bought locally for one dollar. On the cover lay a paperbound book, on
its
cover the title
Check for a Short Bier
. Gen whiled away the nine months with reading of this kidney, which Reinhart not only approved; he had suggested it. Nothing like vicarious violence to give you the illusion of movement while you lie still.

“Honey!” shouted Reinhart with his customary ebullience, and kissed her mouth, nose, ears, and forehead, and ran his hand into the housecoat. “What's new with the heir?”

Sitting in the sun had brought out a few amber freckles below her eyes. She was the same girl who had worked in the office, only now relaxed in every part, softer but as firm. For once Reinhart had done something to somebody that agreed with them!

“Oh,” she answered with a drowsy smile, “I told you it's much too early. Would you mind reaching me over that book?”

Doing so, Reinhart renewed his acquaintance with the title. “What does that refer to, hon? Is a midget the victim?”

“He works in a circus,” said Gen. “You get all the circus life as setting.”

“Gripping?”

“Very,” said she, taking the book with limp fingers that lost their purchase before she had conveyed it to her lap. “Oops.”

“No, no,” cried Reinhart, “don't you bend over. Let me get it.” He reclaimed the book from the uncarpeted floor, and saw light through one of the cracks there. “We have natural air conditioning,” he noted. “Comes in handy on these hot nights.”

She continued to wear the fixed smile produced on his entrance. It was her standard countenance day in and out; he had never seen anyone so perpetually pleased.

“Any mail come? Any calls?”

“Your government check and a thing about a sale at Milady's.”

“Look, sweety, why don't I take you down there and get a new dress? We have the money.”

“Why?” she said lackadaisically. “In three months I won't be able to wear it…. Then there was a call from a Mr. Melville.”

“Yes,” said Reinhart. “But you mean Mr. Mellon. He's that ex-sailor who lives in Hut 25. Looks like I've made a sale. Isn't that nice! Do you remember, from when you worked at the office, the five-room cottage on Chrysanthemum Lane, one-car garage, automatic-stoker furnace, quarter acre of fruit trees, sixteen-five? Wonder where Mellon suddenly got the money.”

“I could have got it wrong,” said Gen, “but I thought it was Melville.”

“Aren't you glad you don't have to work at that typewriter any more!” said Reinhart in a statement rather than a question. “By the way”—he sat on the floor at her legs—“the Mellons have a couple of cute kids. We'll keep up with them and when ours is big enough we can take him over there to play under those apple trees. Nothing like eating green apples when you're a kid. Then you get sick and your mother gives you castor oil in orange juice. Did you ever do that?”

He reached up and pulled her face down to meet his. Gradually rising while still fastened to her lips, he lifted and carried her front-piggyback, losing his trousers en route, to the pseudo couch-real bed. The skirt of her housecoat was already up when they arrived, and today she wore no underwear at all.
Fortiter in re
met
suaviter in modo
, and both in due time reached that moment of absolute integrity, until which time was cyclical. They at last pulled apart to cool, with a suction-noise of navels; he placed his finger in the recessed button of hers and said: “When I was small I thought babies came out here, somehow. It took me years to learn about life. … I looked at a marriage book in the library the other day: we can still do it for months…. But you're perspiring. Better let me put something over you—summer, contrary to popular opinion, is a great time for colds.” He drew the Indian thing over her and dressed himself.

“Shouldn't I make you some lunch?” she asked, her cheeks flushed fruit-pink. A damp curl lay asymmetrically on her forehead, and much of her breast was exposed above the cover.

This was one of their family jokes, and Reinhart gave the traditional answer, which was amusing if you were part of it: “Sure, breaded veal cutlet with tomato sauce.”

“No,” said Gen, “I don't mean the kidding.” She waved the petals of her hand. “You work so hard and I lie around all day. Are you sure a pregnant woman can't do anything? Not according to the doctor.”

“Ha!” said Reinhart. “The doctor! What does he know? He has to deal with those slobs who, if you'll pardon the expression, keep their wives constantly knocked up and make them scrub floors as well. So naturally he makes the best of it, telling the prospective mothers that a little hard labor won't hurt them. No, absolutely no. I don't want you to do anything but produce a new life. To see you work would offend me. As if creation isn't labor enough! You let me handle everything else. I've got the energy and strength of a dozen of the washed-out people you see these days everywhere you look.” He thrust one wrist underneath the overstuffed chair and, keeping his arm almost straight, lifted it a yard off the floor. He replaced it in slow motion, the hard way, and said: “I'm very bright in class, too, and make penetrating comments. It is all the bunk that you can't be strong both in muscle and brain.”

In the kitchen corner, while continuing his lecture, he washed his hands and opened a can of tuna. “You see, it's a question of will, not any mystical thing about aptitude or talent. In Psych we are messing with aptitude tests, which is why this comes to mind. Imagine having to take a test to find out what you're interested in. It goes like this: Do you like to sing? Yes. Dance? Yes. Enjoy being the center of attention? Yes. Diagnosis: You are psychologically equipped to be an entertainer.”

He mashed the tuna into some mayonnaise. “Of course, you could never figure that out by yourself. Without the help of some bore with his categories, you thought you'd make a good accountant.” He used his newest gadget, an ice-cream scoop that expanded and contracted with a touch of the thumb, to deposit a ball of tuna fish onto a lettuce leaf. With sliced tomatoes, his plate was as professional as any handed over a drugstore counter.

“But you see, it's will. Everything's a question of will. You have to
want
to be an entertainer, say. Then the talent will appear. Take me. I never thought I could cook, and never even tried it. But now I want to, so I can.
Voilà
, Madame!” Having placed two buttered Rye-Krisps on the plate, he swept it to Genevieve. “Anybody can do anything. Everybody can have his own Renaissance.”

But she had gone to sleep on one cheek, her mouth crumpled like a child's, one hip high. He might just slip his hand under … no, the poor girl was weary. He sat on the floor nearby and, resting the plate on the hassock, ate her lunch.

The telephone rang as Reinhart was washing the dishes. Always here or when one is on the toilet, he complained to the dishtowel on which he hastily dried his wet hands so that he would not be electrocuted. But he spoke enthusiastically into the mouthpiece.

“Mr. Reinhart?” asked the caller, from a throat rich as cream. On the repetition, it lisped to boot: “Misthter Carlo Reinhart?”

“Yeth,” replied Reinhart in his automatic sympathy and then hid behind a cough.

“I believe your thecretary may have—I called before. My name ith Melville. To get to the point, I am an author.”

“How interesting!” said Reinhart. “Yes, sir. Well, sir. I have just what you want. Don't make a move until you see what I've got to show you. How does this sound: a barn, Mr. Melville. Now wait a moment—a barn with electricity and running water. Bohemian but convenient. Asphalt tiles on the floor. Gas space heater. Half acre with trout stream. I know how you authors love barns. I can pick you up in fifteen minutes, and we'll drive out. It is out of town a ways but that's the privacy you fellows like. Where are you staying?”

“Why?” Melville asked suspiciously.

“So I can pick you up.”

“Oh. At the moment I am in the City. Downtown. In your county courthouse.”

“Ah,” said Reinhart, “no doubt doing one of those exposés, eh Mr. Melville? Well, you just hold on there, I'll pick you up at the main entrance in about thirty minutes. O.K.?”

“Yasss,” answered Melville, exhibitionistically abandoning his lisp. He sounded like a pretty weird bird, but Reinhart assumed that was normal for the profession.

“You were right, hon,” he said to Genevieve, hanging up. “It
was
Melville, and he's an author, and they've all got money. I know he'll fall for that barn, because authors are also famous for being impractical. Look, we'll keep up with him after the sale and be invited there to those literary parties where they drink Scotch and make little smirking comments—you've seen them in the movies. But I wonder where around here he'll find other writers to come to them? Ah well, enough of that. Will you be O.K. now? Want me to run up some new magazines or a Coke from the drugstore?”

“Oh, are you leaving?” asked Gen, awakening with her hair flat and her eyes wild. “I must have dropped off.”

“No, no, no! Don't get up.” Reinhart came to her bed and kissed her goodbye. “Just don't worry about a thing. I've got it all taken care of. There's a tuna plate all prepared in the fridge, and a milk bottle full of iced tea. I'll be in and out of the office all afternoon; in case you want to get hold of me, leave a message with the phone service. Claude still hasn't hired another secretary, by the way.”

Gen became alert at any mention of the office. Reinhart believed she had enjoyed working there, and he looked forward to inviting her down for a visit after the baby came.

“Oh,” she said brightly, “he's saving the salary. He's up to something, the big crook. I wish I could get a glance at his files. Who does his typing now?”

“He takes it to some public stenographer, I think. Of course, as yet I haven't had need of any for myself. But I feel it in my bones that a sale can't be far off. And then you know what I'll do to celebrate, Gen? I'll buy you a big—”

“Carl,” she broke in, beseechingly. “Carl, would you let me type the Agreement to Buy? Please? I've got my portable here.”

Reinhart guessed aloud that that would not hurt her, if she kept the vibrations down by not typing too fast, but to himself he reflected on the caprices of women. He had taken her away from all that; yet, to go back to it was the favor she asked, not gems or furs or costly scents. Sigmund Freud had made a useful confession, quoted just that morning by the Psych instructor: “The question I have never been able to answer in thirty years of research into the feminine soul is, ‘What does a woman want?'”