Reinhart in Love (48 page)

From this reaction Reinhart took courage to accept his own theory, which had been rather desperately formulated: he could not bear to have his father believe that he was out of control, or that he was crooked, for that matter. He understood for the first time that when he had become a man, the exterior representative of his conscience had changed from Maw to Dad, and he breathed easier. Foolishly, for however successful the sandhog example, it was soon exhausted, and Dad obstinately returned to the issue.

“The only thing is,” said he, still squeezing his sweater in the damp places—he hadn't forgotten that, either—“I been along the whole route of the sewer and haven't found one place where they started to dig.”

Reinhart impatiently expelled his breath. “What are you snooping around for, anyway, Dad? I thought your business was insurance.”

“Why,” his father answered, taking no offense, “I'm a taxpayer.”

A sacred word, and Reinhart pulled in his horns. A taxpayer had even more rights than a veteran, standing in relation to the latter as the Lord to Jesus, and of course properly there should be no clash between the two: the fellow who paid for it and he who defended it. The Gibbons regularly invited the public to attend council meetings and inspect the jailhouse; the sewer could hardly be exempt if the citizenry footed the bill.

So Reinhart smiled tremulously at his progenitor and said: “They do that later, as I pointed out; they first situate all the manholes, then the diggers come along. All very simple, Dad,
when you're in a position of responsibility.”
He relied on Dad to take the hint when it was put with so much regard for his feelings, and Dad did, throwing his head back to sneeze and then lowering it to follow his son upstairs.

Genevieve, so to speak twice as big as life, sat upon the living-room sofa listening to Maw. She had returned to Reinhart three months before, and was now in her high time with a great swell beneath her maternity smock that would have impeded her running away again. Nevertheless he always felt some anxiety when out of her presence; and when in it, kept close company so as not only to block any flight by force if necessary, but also to anticipate and dispose of the circumstances in reaction to which she might wish to flee. He had become far more subtle a husband than he once had been. For example, he delegated to her many of the duties he used to perform himself—some of them, such as taking out the garbage, even demeaning. He knew pain as he watched her bend with difficulty to extract the paper bag from the kitchen step-on can and carry it to the back porch, worry the lid off the big galvanized container, and drop in the parcel before the liquid from the wastes had caused it to disintegrate. Sometimes she didn't quite make it, and orange rinds, eggshells, and veal-cutlet leavings were scattered wide. Nor would this stir her husband to report with the mop; he had sworn never again to usurp her functions, notwithstanding the gritting of his teeth, which sometimes worked independently of his resolutions; when you truly loved someone, you had the strength to let them clean up their own messes.

Not, certainly, that Gen found her chores pleasing, but like all women she had an instinct for reality, and he at last had come to understand it, which in turn gained him her respect. These interlocking arrangements were what marriage consisted of, being but translations into other areas of existence of the basic connection of the genitalia which your amateur supposes is all.

Anyway, there sat Gen, as it were a giant Easter egg in her lap and noncomment on her face, while Maw talked from across the room—from as far across as possible, as it happened, from a chair in the corner beyond the cabinet radio. They had never been close, these two, and perhaps never would be. But they seldom met, so it was no issue.

“Oh hi,” said Maw to Reinhart as he entered the room. “Whajuh do with your father, bury him in the basement?”

Reinhart looked around. “Dunno. He was just behind me.”

“Aha,” Maw said. “It's all right, I hear him in the toilet. I believe he's coming down with something. You didn't put that hose on him?”

“Only by accident, Maw.” Reinhart went to his wife and, taking her two hands, prepared to help her leave the sofa. He winked at Genevieve, who must have had a bleak forty-five minutes, and informed Maw that they must go.

“Go?” cried his mother. “Then who's gonna eat my roast?” This hapened to be a polite lie; he had gone earlier to the fridge for a drink of ice water and seen no meat but wieners, and the oven, which had a Pyrex door, was empty. Maw maintained the illusion of hospitality, and he respected her for it.

But when he sought to support her cordial fraud—“Sorry to have caused any inconvenience”—she viciously bit the hand that fed her.

“You're darn right you should be sorry, brother. That piece of meat cost your father a pretty penny, and for him it don't grow on trees.” Maw had returned to her old condemnatory tone just at the time he joined the sewer project, and he couldn't help thinking there was some connection. “He's never been a big businessman,” she went on. “Just being an ordinary slob is good enough for him.”

Genevieve had let his hands fall during this conversation and made no move to leave the couch. “Hadn't we better go, honey?” he asked. It struck him when she answered, how much softer her voice was than his mother's, indeed, softer than her own at home, virtually a whisper.

“Your mother will want to finish her story,” Gen said, with a sanctimonious inclination of the head.

“Oh do you, Maw?”

“How's that?” cried Maw. “Gee, I must need an ear trumpet, I didn't hear a word. Couldn't be anything wrong with your voices, so it must be me.” She smote her temple with an open palm.

“Did you have a story that needed finishing, Maw?” asked Reinhart, wishing that his wife were in this instance less polite and more opportunist, while at the same time appreciating her tact.

“Well sir, isn't that something! I finally got me somebody who likes to hear what I say.” But in reality she glared at both of them: Maw worked best with her back to the wall, and the whole concept of gracious gain was alien to her. “Well sure, I was telling her about Margie Piatt, who was in your class but after graduating instead of going to college like yourself and of course not off to the Army, married a boy from Indiana and moved to Fort Wayne. That started it: one miscarriage after another. To date, poor girl has had five, I believe, or maybe six. Every time but the first she got as far as her”—Maw jabbed a forefinger towards Genevieve, whose name she had apparently never learned—“when boom! there you go. It's mean, just downright mean, and I could of sat down and balled when I heard of it.”

“Well, that's about the size of it,” said Reinhart to Gen, feeling for her knee so as to distract her; he had been taken unawares, never suspecting that Maw would wield the knife against Genevieve so blatantly. Gen's smile was a trifle sick, but no more so than when they had arrived.

“Poor thing,” wailed Maw. “Sometimes I wonder if it's worth all the pain and agony to bring forth a human being, just to have them walk right out of your house without so much as a thank-you and run off for the Army or wherever. Maybe it's better to have your miscarriages and suffer severely only for a short time than to carry it out over a life long. Maybe—”

“Yes, indeed,” said Reinhart, trying to hide Maw's voice under his own. “Indeed, yes. Must get our girl home, and feed the cat and the dog, though not to each other, haha! Lots of chores, yessiree.” He ignored Gen's wry look as he pulled her up, and informed Maw: “That big house keeps us busy. We may have to get a maid.”

“Does it?” asked Maw. “I wouldn't know, this bungalow being more than good enough for me, and I sure never got a helping hand with my housework. Recall when I was carrying you, your aunt offered to come in to run the sweeper, but I would druther have laid down and died than not been able all by myself to keep a nice place for your Dad to come home and hang up his hat and eat his hot grub.”

“Oh, it isn't Gen's idea for the maid,” said Reinhart. “It's mine. Actually she dotes on housework and got very sore at me once because I wasn't letting her do enough.”

Long before he finished his speech, though, Maw began to shout down the hall for Dad, and when that individual had sent back a muffled reply that he was on his way, she swung on her heel and stalked off through the dining room.

Reinhart opened the front door, but Gen made him push it shut again.

“You want to stay?” he asked incredulously.

“She will have something for you,” Gen told him severely. “Take it and don't be rude.”

It was only a matter of moments before his little wife was proved to have second sight. Maw appeared carrying something wrapped in wax paper. She had never done this before. Of the household chores she disliked cooking most, and therefore would not have made a gift of food. Her strength was in the laundry department, but he could not recall having left any dirty clothes behind last time.

“Take this, boy,” said Maw, shoving it at him.

“Should I open it now?”

“If you're hungry,” his mother said, assuming a bluff stance before him, but there was vulnerability in her eye. “It's a meat loaf. Probably isn't any good. If you don't like it, throw it to the dog.”

Pregnant Genevieve shouldered her husband aside; for some reason he had been standing between his women, so that one could not see the other.

“I'm sure it's delicious,” said she. “Just delicious, and we will make supper of it tonight.”

“Dinner,” Reinhart said instinctively, and saw the girls cooperate against him, Maw and Gen: he brought them together at the cost of himself. His wife made a negative sound, and Maw said: “I see Mr. Know-It-All gives you the same trouble he gave me.” She told Reinhart, “For your info, sap, supper is
in the evening
, dinner elsewhere.”

“The latter is the main meal, Maw. See Webster.”

“Why, you dirty—” she began as of yore, but had to call a quick halt before the suddenly asserted authority of Genevieve, five feet two.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Reinhart. It was
so
nice.” She indicated by a pressure on his arm that now Reinhart should open the door. Which he did with one hand, the meat loaf in the other like a football though rather more heavy. Dad lumbered up the hallway at that moment and made a melancholy congé He held an atomizer and sounded as though he had already developed quite a nice cold.

“Look, Genevieve,” Reinhart had said into the telephone that day after leaving Claude and the Gibbons, “look, Genevieve—now don't interrupt me until I've had my say. Fair is fair—huh?”

“I just mean I'm not Genevieve. Dear me.”

“Then who the hell are you?” He realized it was preposterous to be rude to a wrong number for which his own finger was responsible, and softened the pitch: “Aren't you POmegranate 4321?”

“I'm your mother-in-law. How are you today?”

“Sorry, Mrs. Raven. I don't think I have ever spoken to you on the phone before, and didn't recognize—”

“I seldom use it, I feel uneasy when I can't see a face. Pardon?”

“I didn't say anything, Mrs. Raven. We have a bad connection.”

“But then the advantage is you don't have to meet an eye and all that sort of difficulty. I suppose I really prefer to use the telephone. Isn't this nice! Have we ever talked so much together?”

“Never,” said Reinhart.

“I rarely talk to anyone, at least on this plane.” Her voice became very bright: “You might say, what's the point when our days are so limited and we'll probably be with a completely different crowd on the other side.”

“May I ask,” said Reinhart in some apprehension, “whether I am connected to the Raven residence?”

Gen at once came angrily onto the wire: “How dare you talk to my mother behind my back?”

“Now, I can't control who will answer when I call POmegranate 4321, can I?” asked Reinhart. “Just
think
for a minute.”

“Do you know what always strikes me, Carl? How you never face anything directly, but make a little wry question of it. I can just see your little sarcastic grin lurking at the comers of your mouth. You are an enormous person physically but you have the psychology of a weak and small someone. You're always
explaining
things in a kind of crafty, sneaky way, as if the human you're talking to is a dupe.”

“I'll ignore your abuse,” said Reinhart gravely. “If you were as ready to think carefully about a subject as you are to attack,
toujours
attack, why—I don't want to quarrel, Genevieve, and I certainly have no intention to be wry or sarcastic…. How are you, by the way?”

“I'm—oh, you're just horrible. Of all the mean tricks I ever heard of, getting that awful woman to call up with a pack of lies.”

“What lies?” he asked, rather than “what woman?” though he couldn't identify either.

“Do you think she dared to reveal herself?” cried Gen.

“Now
you're
putting everything as a question. Calm down and give mc a clear statement of the facts. This comes as a complete surprise to me, Genevieve—I might add, like everything you do.”

“You are just a goof, sir. Because now I have grounds. I bet you never considered that feature. No sooner do I turn my back than you bring in your chippies. I will see that you are rejected from Vetsville on a morals charge.”

Somehow she had found out about Bee Fedder without getting the whole story, which unfortunately he could never tell. As regards Bee, what kind of nut was she to have telephoned Genevieve?

“You don't even offer a defense, is that it?” asked Gen. “All right for you then. The die is passed. I hope you are satisfied that you have ruined my life.” But she didn't hang up as he expected, rather stayed on, breathing indignantly through her mouth. Finally she said scornfully: “Did you think I would swallow that story?”