Reinhart's Women (27 page)

“You didn’t find any cigarettes, by chance?”

She was inside the bedroom by the time he answered. “I’ll tell you, I’ll go down and see if I can find a machine. Maybe there’s one in the rear of the building.” He had not forgotten the risk in leaving her alone, but had begun to feel a desperate need to escape until she was clothed. What bothered him, as always, was not really Mercer, nor himself, but his son. The classical theories of the emotions were usually fixed on the guilt felt by the child towards the father. Reinhart had felt little of this that had not been artificially stimulated by the trend of the times, but absolutely genuine was the wretchedness evoked in his soul by any thought of Blaine. He assumed that were Blaine to come here now and find Mercer in a state of undress, his son would believe him a degenerate—and perhaps be justified in so doing.

He took the elevator to the ground floor and went through the corridor that led to the laundry room. He found the machine, had the right combination of coins with which to feed it, worked the appropriate button, and received the package of cigarettes: a brand chosen solely for its silver wrapper. This took no time at all, and he returned hastily to the apartment. Mercer had the capacity to make him anxious by either her presence or the threat of her absence.

But she was there when he got back, and, thank God, fully covered at last—if only in the dressing gown she had worn when lying on the backseat of Winona’s car the evening before.

“Say, Mercer,” Reinhart said. “It’s a nice morning. How about us taking a walk down to the river?”

She was standing in the doorway of his bedroom. “Oh, I think I’m just going to stay here and watch television.”

Of course this meant the set atop his dresser. His private quarters were apparently to remain off-limits to him so long as she stayed in the apartment.

He shrugged. “Then do you mind if I get some things of mine from the closet?”

She gave him a vague look which he interpreted as acquiescence, but preceded him into the room. He had hoped for some privacy as he rooted through his supply of clean underwear.

The room itself was in remarkable disorder. How one slender young woman alone could have so twisted the bedclothes, distributed the pillows so widely (one under the chair, the other on the floor beneath the window), and have been so profligate with towels (one underneath the bed, another on the window sill, and still another draped over the little wastebasket), was beyond him.

He opened a dresser drawer and took what he had come for. Mercer stood in front of his closet, and did not move away when he approached. It dawned upon him that she seemed lacking utterly in a sense of existence other than her own, either had no natural radar or disregarded it. Another oddity was that, having made so much of her need for a cigarette, when presented with a supply, she failed to extract one and light it up. In fact, she had dropped the unopened pack into the frozen maelstrom of bedding.

“Excuse me,” Reinhart said at last, and sharply. “I want to get into the closet.”

She moued and moved aside. He opened the door and took out a pair of trousers and a clean shirt, both on hangers.

He remembered that she was more to be pitied, etc., and said, “Go ahead, put on the TV. But I don’t know that at this time of day there’s much but reruns of comedies from the early Sixties.”

“I like the game shows,” said Mercer. She acted on his suggestion, and when an image appeared on the screen she increased the volume of the sound, even though a strident commercial was being broadcast at the moment, with a jangling musical accompaniment. That the product being hawked was a deodorant spray for the private parts of women was so preposterous and ugly a state of affairs as to be answered only with a jolly chuckle from Reinhart. But despite the noise, or perhaps because of it, Mercer seemed oblivious.

He tried once more and now had to shout: “You might keep it in mind, taking a walk. I’d like one, myself. It really is a fine sunny day. ... I just got a bright idea: we might have a picnic on the riverbank. Not baloney sandwiches, either. I’ll make something more serious, a quiche or salade Niçoise. An iced bottle of, uh”—he caught himself—“mineral water.”

Mercer smiled sweetly and nodded at him, though he believed it doubtful that she had listened. Without straightening the tangle of bedclothes, she flopped herself down upon them, shoulders against the headboard, and stared dully at the television screen.

Jesus Christ. He left with his change of clothes and went across to his bathroom—compared to which the bedroom had been neat. More discarded towels, it went without saying. Unfortunately, though smaller than Winona’s, his was the one with the linen closet, from which Mercer had helped herself as if it were a giant box of Kleenex.

He gave himself an electric shave and washed his face in his hands—the supply of washcloths, too, had vanished—and let the air dry his cheeks. In fresh attire he gathered up the bathroom laundry and added it to that from the built-in hamper, filling a pillowcase and a half. The sound of the TV across the hall was especially oppressive when the musical commercials came on.

He had intended, while gathering up the towels Mercer had strewn around the bedroom, firmly to turn down the volume, but while crossing the hall had second thoughts about such rudeness. The poor thing...

“Say, Mercer, do you mind—” he began as he entered the room. But he addressed an empty bed. She was gone again.

Looking on the bright side, at least she was respectably covered. Her dressing gown lay in the overstuffed chair, and her street clothes were gone. Reinhart decided not to pursue her. Were he to admit to the truth, he might even allow himself to be relieved by her departure. His first move was to shut off the television. The room stank of smoke: she had finally opened the pack and, the ashtray told him, already had smoked about a third of each of three cigarettes. He opened the window and carried the trayful of butts across to the toilet.

After putting the room in order, he dreaded what he might find in Winona’s suite, used by the sons of such a mother, but the marvelous surprise, in both bedroom and bath, was the general neatness. The boys had even pulled the bedclothes into shape (a bit crudely, but good God!) and hung up their washcloths and towels (after using them!) in a splendid try at military precision. Their toothbrushes were not in a perfect arrangement on the curb of the washstand, nor had the cap been replaced on the tube, but their grandfather himself was wont often to commit these very misdemeanors.

Indeed, this evidence that the boys were already, and untypically at their tender ages, responsible beings somehow made Reinhart feel better about Blaine’s family, wretched as were its adult prospects.

CHAPTER 13

A
T THE TELEVISION STUDIO
everyone encountered by Reinhart was young, slender, dressed in jeans, and quick-moving. They were also, all of them, unfailingly civil. When he realized that he was actually going to appear on TV that morning, he had dosed his coffee with brandy, but he remained anxious. The studio people needed him two hours before he was scheduled to face the cameras, which meant he had had to arise at four-thirty, after getting almost no sleep. The fact was that Mercer had, perhaps unfortunately, not gone on another binge, but rather had returned to her own house by cab and come back to the apartment in her own car, filled with suitcases containing clothing for herself and the boys. Reinhart had therefore spent another night on the living-room couch, and by the looks of things he could expect to remain there until Blaine turned up.

He had not been able even to close his eyes before three
A.M.
For one, his daughter-in-law seemed to be making a heroic effort to stay on the wagon. This was certainly laudable, but resulted, inconveniently, in her drinking vast quantities of noninebriating liquids such as coffee, tea, milk, and the root beer which Reinhart had provided for his grandchildren: in fact, anything but water, which she could have obtained from the nearby bathroom. All else was to be found only in the kitchen, to reach which the living room must be crossed.

For another, she habitually operated the TV set at too high a volume for anyone of his age to sleep under the same roof, even though the bedroom door was closed. And when he finally registered a gentle complaint, she was too contrite and turned off the set altogether—to put it on again half an hour later, when she no doubt assumed he would be asleep at last. But of course it took that long to get used to the silence, and no sooner had he done so than the noise began once more.

At the studio he was seated in a corridor through which many people walked briskly. Finally one of them, a young woman of characterless brunette good looks, stopped and introduced herself as Jane.

She consulted a piece of paper affixed to a clipboard. “You’re the chef, O.K.? We’ll get you into make-up in a few minutes, O.K.? You want to check your pots ’n’ pans ’n’ stuff?”

He followed her, around little clusters of people and lights and cameras and cables, onto what was obviously a corner of the set.

“You’ve got a whole kitchen here.” It looked like a permanent installation and had everything one would need, within two walls without a ceiling.

“We do a cooking segment of some kind every day,” said Jane. “Sometimes we just dye Easter eggs or make Play-Doh from flour and salt.”

Reinhart opened the copper-colored refrigerator. Just inside, on gleaming chromium-wire shelves, was a large glass bowl filled with eggs and a generous chunk of butter on a plate of glass. A glass canister bore a solid white label, imprinted in large black letters:
GRATED CHEESE.

“Everything there?” asked Jane. He had ordered these omelet-making materials the day before.

“Except salt and pepper,” said Reinhart. “I gather they’ll be over here.” He turned to the free-standing counter that would face the camera. He had not seen much of this show, but he had watched other programs on which cooking was done. Ah, yes: electric burners were built into the top of the counter, and a ceramic jug stood nearby, holding spatulas, big forks, etc., and salt and pepper were alongside in large white shakers, again labeled in black.

“Oh, and the skillet. I was going to bring mine, which is seasoned, but my boss insisted on one that her company is apparently thinking of putting on the market, in a new line of cooking utensils.”

“Grace Greenwood,” said Jane. “Yeah, she sent over some special stuff.” She poked amongst the open shelves below the counter-top, on the left of the burners. “Take a look. It should all be here.”

Reinhart bent and found a skillet, a lightweight stainless-steel job with a thin wash of copper on the outside bottom. “This is it?” He winced. “I’m going to have to be very careful to keep from burning the omelet. This is trash.”

Jane put one finger on the nosepiece of her glasses—which until now Reinhart had not noticed. “If it does burn, then just don’t turn it over on camera, O.K.?” She sniffed. “Don’t panic: this is the magic of video, remember.”

Some young man shouted her name, and she went away. Reinhart looked about: everything seemed a good deal smaller than anything he had ever seen on the screen. For some reason he thought he might have been more at ease had things been larger. He was suddenly jumping with nerves.

Jane returned and took him into a room where he sat in a kind of barber’s chair and was made up by a deft, laconic young man. When the job was finished, he ducked into a booth in the men’s room and drank some cognac from the half-pint in his pocket.

The well-known movie star Jack Buxton was urinating in one of the stalls as Reinhart emerged. Apparently they were to be fellow guests on the show.

Jane came from nowhere when Reinhart left the lavatory and led him back to a chair in the corridor.

“Sorry we don’t have a real Green Room,” she said.

“Wasn’t that Jack Buxton I saw in the men’s room?”

“He’s plugging his show.” Jane consulted her clipboard. “You go on the air at seven forty-seven, but we’ll do a run-through in about five minutes from now, so you’ll have your moves down pat. This is live, you know. We can’t do retakes.” She left the area.

And here came Jack Buxton. Reinhart seldom went to the movies nowadays, and he hadn’t seen a performance of Buxton’s in—God, could it be that long?

“Hi,” said the actor, flopping his large, heavy body into the chair next to Reinhart’s.

“Hi,” said Reinhart. “This is quite a pleasure for me. I’ve always enjoyed your pictures.”

Buxton’s face, perhaps owing to its familiarity, seemed enormous. He grinned at Reinhart. “Thanks, pal, I needed that. Listen”—he dug into an inside pocket of his Glen-plaid jacket and withdrew a leather-covered notepad—“I’ll send an autographed picture to your kids, if you give me the names and address.”

“My kids are grown up,” said Reinhart. Buxton’s long lip drooped. It was true he looked a good deal older than when Reinhart had last seen him. “But I’d like one for myself.” This lie failed to cheer up the actor by much, but he pretended to take the name and address.

Reinhart asked: “Are you in a new picture?”

Buxton inhaled. “I’m considering some scripts,” said he. “But I’m in town here to do
Song of Norway.”
He put his notebook away and adjusted his jacket. Like Reinhart he was wearing face make-up that made the skin look beige. The heavy pouches under his eyes and the deep lines flanking his mouth could be seen all too clearly at close range but probably would be diminished on their voyage through the camera.

“Oh,” said Reinhart, “I’ll have to see it.” If memory served, the vehicle was a musical: he hadn’t been aware that Buxton sang. The actor was best known for his war films.

“It’ll be my pleasure,” Buxton said, cheering up now, and he reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of tickets. “These are for the show only. Dinner’s separate, I’m afraid, but...”

Reinhart accepted the tickets with thanks. He joked: “I wouldn’t expect you to pay for the food I ate before going to the show!”

Buxton frowned. “It’s the dinner theater. That’s what I meant. It’s no comedown either. That’s the latest thing. I don’t mind it at all.”