Reinhart in Love (50 page)

So the sewer project was
that
crooked. He hadn't dreamed. The contractual shenanigans had been normal enough, the point of small-town government being that relatives and friends get the favors, not gangsters as in the big cities or storm troopers as in foreign countries. Insofar as Reinhart had a political faith, it was more strengthened than violated by the neighborhood fraud, which he saw as a guise of love. But this one looked unfair: they really should build some kind of sewer. When Dad objected, who would put up with anything, decent men should listen.

However, he regretted exposing the whole thing to Gen at dinner, for women are notorious for having no principles. They ate in the breakfast nook, the dining room being so large that only two people felt stranded, like survivors around an ice floe; whereas in the nook their knees touched cozily. That was naturally
all
he got nowadays. There were theories that you could continue to make love almost up to the birthday, but he couldn't see it after Gen had begun to swell. Anyway, as he had always maintained, marriage had other compensations—for example, just looking at the childish white mustache left from her last drink of milk.

“You see the spot we're in, hon,” he said after giving her Dad's information.

“I told you Claude is never on the level.” She drank more milk, this time without wetting her upper lip; he realized the first time had been specially arranged for him: wives are capable of such niceties. “Well, it's not likely you can do anything, so I would forget it.” She took a miniscule forkful of Maw's meat loaf, which was inedibly dry; whether that owed to its original composition or Gen's sabotage—she had heated it overlong—Reinhart couldn't and surely didn't want to say. He himself was off his feed, eating four or five slices merely to fill the void.

“That's pretty cynical,” he stated with a frown. “You see, I don't mind a swindle—for instance, like the Army, since we won the war. But in this case a lot of sewage is going to—oh, excuse me, you're still eating.”

She dropped her fork. “I'm quite finished, though it was very good.”

“It was awful,” said ruthless Reinhart. “My mother couldn't fry a decent egg. Why lie when you don't have to.”

Genevieve lowered her eyes and munched on a sweet pickle. “Because there's the human element.”

“All right, and that's what I mean about the sewer. The scheme has now assumed an inhuman air, if you ask me. You know I was with the medics in the Army and we were taught something about sanitation. I believe I am safe in saying that pestilence owing to improper sanitary facilities has mowed down more people than all your wars. You know, these local things aren't all just corny ways to waste your time as long as you can't get to New York or Paris.”

“Whoever said they were, Carl?” Genevieve reached up to arrange a string of ivy drooping from a small wall-pot. She had lost interest in the subject, now that it appeared he would talk his qualms away and they would continue to live in the big house and enjoy the other advantages of corrupt prosperity. Like most women, she had no sense of real power; pride meant nothing to her. If the baby was male, Reinhart must assume responsibility for his education lest Gen bring up a sissy, that is, a boy who confuses charm with character.

“I did, for one,” Reinhart answered, as she got up to serve his coffee, East Coast style, with the dessert. “You'd be surprised at the big ideas I had when I left the Army. Or rather, not ideas, I suppose, but wants. You understand that during the war I went halfway around the world. I don't mind telling you that even yet I haven't given up all my dreams.”

Genevieve ran thick cream over his baked apple. “This is just a suggestion,” she said decently, “but wouldn't it help if your hopes were specific? You know, like wanting to be an attorney?”

“I'm sorry,” Reinhart responded frostily, “that I'll never measure up to your father.”

“Now who meant that?” She shook her head, on which the hair was rather lank nowadays and in front brushed across from one side to the other, secured by one bobbypin. Neither did she wear much make-up: her face was clean and faintly freckled, with that bare, soft cast of feature that you see on someone just wakened from a good night's sleep. Luckily the nook was not the booth type, for with her belly she couldn't have sat in it without Reinhart's expanding her space by diminishing his, which owing to his own girth he could not have done comfortably.

“If I interpret you correctly, then, you are advising me to go back to school?” For he hadn't at the onset of the fall semester, sewage and culture being too incongruous a mixture even for him: the ideals of the Renaissance were impossible of attainment in the middle of the twentieth century.

“Golly.” Gen turned away to show her sensitivity. “I don't want to bud into your affairs.”

“I'll tell you this much,” said Reinhart. “I always want whatever will make you proud of me.”

Genevieve had the tip of her left index finger between her teeth, but probably was not genuinely attending to the matter. She was not much good at discussing problems, preferring to reach her beliefs in private and promote them sneakily. She would not have been one to toss the logos around with Socrates, but then neither would any other woman, so much the worse for the Greeks.

“I wonder if it's a boy whether he will hate me.”

“Carl, do you feel well?” Gen's eyebrows really showed some distress, which gave him a nice feeling.

“That's just something you learn in the study of psychology…. Uh, would you fetch me more coffee.” The latter was more command than question. He watched her struggle up and waddle to the stove. With his long arms he could have reached the percolator from where he sat, but that wouldn't be showing her she was needed.

“Love,” he went on, raising his replenished cup, “from the point of view of depth psychology, is a very complicated emotion, including many hostile factors. St. Augustine, an early psychologist before the field was known as such, stated that the source of evil, as well as good, was love.”

Gen set the coffee pot down upon the table and said: “That clenches it for me. I think you'd make a marvelous psychologist. How long would that take?”

“Genevieve, we are making a point, not discussing my career. Keep the personal element out of it for a moment…. It is
common
for a son to
loathe
and
abominate
his father.”

She clasped hands across her belly, as if to protect it, and warned: “Oh Carl, please don't talk like that, even if in fun.”

“As a matter of fact,” Reinhart stated dispassionately, “I am very fond of my old man. But that may be because we are so different. He has no ambition, and that helps. But what if our son turns out just like me? There might be a clash, and that's all I meant.”

“In that case I'm sure you'll be understanding,” said Genevieve. “As you were with my brother.” She employed no irony. “He certainly admires you, and sends regards in every letter.”

Reinhart had heard this before but never grew accustomed to it, with his shaky conscience towards Kenworthy.

“How is he getting along, by the way?” His coffee was a little acid on the tonsils.

“Wonderfully. He is a pharmacist's mate on the
USS Trout
, at present on patrol in Alaskan waters. The Navy made a man of him, there's no question about it. He's grown a half inch and put on fifteen pounds. Recently the crew gave an original stage show on the base, and he played a girl. Good-looking, too. Did I remember to give you that snapshot?”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “Swell. … On the other hand, if we have a daughter, you may run into a ticklish situation.”

“Oh Carl, let's not talk of that silly stuff; it really sounds deformed.”

He pushed back his chair and crossed legs. “I was wondering, dear, whether a cigar would nauseate you.”

“I'll just switch on the exhaust fan.”

But he waved her down and performed this chore himself, being a man who cherished the moral distinctions: the serving up of his sustenance was the woman's role, whereas that which concerned the indulgences—tobacco, drink—was his.

That is how Reinhart and Genevieve got along in the third stage of their relationship (1—premarital; 2—newlyweds; 3—reconciliation and preparation for parenthood). Reinhart was serious, even sober, yet if the occasion seemed to call for it, he might crack a joke. His style was more vivid than hers. He was oftentimes ebullient, and if a song could be heard behind the bathroom door, it was surely the work of the master rather than the mistress. But Gen had a sort of common sense that he had often heard imputed to women but never before seen at close range, it being a thing one never notices in his mother.

His moods were more violent than Genevieve's. Because she was pregnant he tried to spare her the worst of them, crept rather up to his attic study and punched the rafters when upset by a joint of meat all gristle or a neighbor's guest whose car blocked the driveway: so much of everyday life consists of these petty frustrations unknown to the rich and glorious, who shrug them off onto lackeys—Reinhart's conception of the advantages of power frequently took this negative cast, and he asked himself whether he were really cut out for anything big.

Fortunately, they were both elastic, because you ran into such things as this: a throat-clearing mood sometimes stole over Genevieve, and she would flutter her palate every ten seconds for hours, didn't even know she was doing it, in a kind of substitute for smoking or chewing gum. After the first minute it became unbearable and even retreating to the attic was no good; the insidious tremor seemed to penetrate floors and climb heights, or perhaps it was just that he could imagine her still doing it, below. But when you love a person and live in proximity to her, you understand that there are reasons for every phenomenon, usually of a nervous nature. It has long been said that everybody these days is a bundle of jangling ganglia, but beyond stating this truism your average individual disassociates himself from the problem like Pontius Pilate.

Not Reinhart, whose new home came equipped with a radio-phonograph long as one living-room wall. Of course its original guts had gone flooey, but on top of the cabinet sat the extra turntable which the home technician installs in such cases, having washed his hands of the regular repairman, who is a bandit and charges your eyeteeth for doing a job that won't last a week. The cabinet-top apparatus worked however, though you saw undue wire. On this arrangement, when Gen began to clear her throat, Reinhart would lose no time in placing a record chosen to ease her. Not a word, mind you, or a frown on his part, nor a beefing up of the volume to drown her out: it was to be a true if temporary cure. If he had chosen well—South American tunes, with their jerky rhythms, seemed to be more successful than the typical oleaginous ballad—Gen would stop humph-ing; the inner uncertainty of which the ticklish throat was but a symptom, soothed, without the possibility of her developing a phobia towards the doctor, who stayed anonymous.

She, too, the situation reversed, was subtle, if not to the same degree (but he was a year older and had far-flung experience): owing no doubt to his present high responsibilities rather than Gen's cuisine, which was above all bland, Reinhart's meals did not digest so readily as they had in the carefree days of yore. He was wont to utter odd sounds after dinner—not outright belches, certainly, but their suppressions, as well as certain faint gurgles, susurruses, and even squeaks.

Genevieve's technique: In the downstairs lavatory, where, following the instructions of the dentifrice commercials, he went after every meal to brush his teeth, he would find the toothpaste hidden behind a Pepto-Bismol bottle. In the living room a roll of Turns lay alongside his favorite ashtray. And if he stepped to the kitchen for a drink of water, there was the cylinder of Alka-Seltzers, a midget monolith erected on the embankment behind the sink….

Naturally there were traits of each that exhausted the other's capacity for adjustment, and sometimes corrective measures were so unobtrusive as to be overlooked entirely. Gen had not really reformed from her old habit of never quite closing things, from jar-tops to closet-doors, and she was one of the few people whom a dripping faucet doesn't bother. If she opened a large root beer, say, and couldn't drink it all at once, she would return the uncapped bottle to the fridge, where naturally it went flat in ten seconds—all the while the rubber-cork gadget thoughtfully provided by Reinhart went unused. But then, and perhaps worst of all, Genevieve didn't mind later drinking still root beer; indeed, would not even notice the bubbles had fled.

Reinhart's habit that most annoyed Gen (judging from her reaction) was rubbing his head while he talked. How long he had been wont to do this he could not have said: no one else had ever pointed it out; it was his sniffing that Maw had always objected to, but that tic disappeared when he had outgrown adolescence. Nowadays it seemed he could hardly utter a word without putting a hand to his scalp—at least, so stated Genevieve.

Again it was his head in another of Genevieve's criticisms: he didn't take it to the barber nearly often enough. She was particularly averse to sideburns verging on the feathery, maintaining that feature linked a man to the Kentuckians who emigrated north to work in the factories of Ohio, a race which the aborigines in Reinhart's town put only just above the Negroes. Having for years worn a crewcut and only recently let his thatch grow towards a length that an executive might show without embarrassment, Reinhart could only, as of this time, offer a feeble rebuttal to his wife's argument. Thus, another point of abrasion between them.

But, like the others, ridiculously inconsequential when you thought of all the problems that could arise from the impulse of the sexes to couple. Illegitimate births and VD of course were always on the increase. But to make it legal solved nothing. The divorce rate climbed. Naive brides were forever made frigid by the terrors of the wedding night. Husbands were castrated by the loss of their independence. More than half the national wealth was controlled by widows, who endowed dog kennels, Hindu seers, and health-food maniacs.