Blaine passed a hand across his eyes. “Please,” said he, “I’m trying to be understanding, believe me. But how can I see these questions as more than hypocrisy? When any question of money comes up, you say you have no obligation. Then how can you really care? Forget it! I’ll carry on as best I can alone.”
Winona said: “Well, you know I won’t let you do that.”
“No, no,” Blaine cried, throwing his hand on a diagonal rise. “I’ve made my mind up now. I apologize for introducing the subject. You’re here for pleasure. Let’s finish up our wine and then go to the billiards room.”
“You have a pool table?” asked Reinhart.
“Doesn’t everybody?” Blaine obviously did not enjoy being taken literally in his self-righteous irony.
“All right, Blaine,” his father said. “I don’t want to be callous. And believe me, I don’t wish your mother bad luck of any kind. Furthermore, I do think Winona is right to feel a duty. But I don’t want her taken advantage of.”
Winona spoke with quiet force. “Daddy, I think this is really my affair, if you don’t mind.”
And all at once Reinhart was struck by a sense that beyond this point he would be out of order; perhaps he had already crossed the line. In his earlier life he had so often been the fool that in compensation nowadays he was capable of erring in overcaution, excessive shrewdness.
“You’re right,” he said to his daughter. To Blaine he said: “So, probably, are you. I’ll go shoot some pool by myself, if you’ll show me where.”
“Go out to the entrance hall,” said Blaine, “and turn right. The billiards room is downstairs. The door’s next to the closet where Winona put the coats.”
Reinhart followed these instructions and descended to what persons of a lower social order would probably have called the game room, though, true enough, it contained only a pool table. The multicolored balls were nicely collected into the classic vee on the vibrant green felt, which looked very new. Reinhart had not had a cue in his hands since the Army, and never in his life had he had access to such a glowingly virgin table.
He was choosing a stick from the rack on the wall when a juvenile voice said: “Are you allowed to be down here?”
“Yes,” he answered without turning. “I was sent here.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Reinhart turned, stick in hand. It was his elder grandson, age six. “You know, Toby,” he said to the boy, who was squinting suspiciously at him, “it would be nice if you greeted a guest in a hospitable way.”
“Why?”
“It would be classier. Hospitality is an old tradition in all societies, I think even among cannibals.”
“Put that stick back!”
Reinhart took a leaf from Toby’s book and asked: “Why?”
“Because it’s not yours.”
The easiest thing would have been simply to see the child as a monster, and admittedly Reinhart had sometimes given in to that natural identification. But with a little extra effort one could extend the leeway of a six-year-old. He winked at the boy and bent over the pool table again.
“Damn you,” said Toby. “I told you to put that stick down.”
“Now you’re getting nasty,” said Reinhart, sighting on the cue ball. “There’s a thing you should know about being nasty. You should be big enough or smart enough to get away with it without being treated even more nastily in return. Otherwise you’re a fool.” He slammed the cue ball, characterless bald eunuch that it was, into the rack of brightly colored spheres. That first impact always made a marvelous sound, and then came the blunt, subsidiary sounds as the balls struck the rubber banks and angled away to collide with one another, and then, in a kind of slow motion, two of them fell into as many pockets. This last seemed a gain, though he could no longer remember how to score any of the various pool games.
“You’re in big trouble now,” said Toby.
“No, I’m not.” Reinhart sank an easy ball: the One, as it happened, which had already been hovering on the very lip of a pocket. “Get yourself a stick, and we’ll have a game.”
“That’s just the point,” said the child. “That’s my stick that you stole.”
Reinhart had his doubts about the claim, but he sighed and handed the stick to Toby, who marched across the room and placed it in its slot against the wall.
“You’re not going to play?” asked his grandfather.
“And neither are you,” Toby said decisively, and he came to the table and leaned across it, with an aim to reach the switch of the big round lamp that hung above. But lacking an inch or so in length of arm, he threw a knee onto the edge of the table and tried to climb up. Reinhart inhibited this effort with a single finger on Toby’s shoulder. The boy then turned and punched and kicked at his grandfather but was maintained firmly at arm’s length.
Toby eventually exhausted himself, dropped his arms, and stood in silent sullenness.
“Come on,” said Reinhart, “why don’t we have a game?”
“I don’t want any presents from you anyway.”
Damn! Reinhart had of course brought a bandanna for Toby as well, but having dealt with Parker alone and gone through the little instruction speech on the uses of the cotton square, he had satisfied his own needs and forgotten the other grandchild.
But it would never do to reveal that to Toby.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “I was waiting for you to greet me politely before I gave you what I brought.”
“Don’t tell me that Parker greeted you politely!”
“I don’t know that he did,” said Reinhart. “But your brother is a little boy, hardly more than a baby. Whereas you should act like the young gentleman you are. Don’t you go to school and everything?” He reached into the pocket of his jacket in which he carried the other bandanna.
Toby scowled at the blue square when it appeared. “Is that your own handkerchief? Is it full of snot?”
“Certainly not. Here. It’s brand new, you can see that for yourself. I threw the sales slip away, never suspecting I’d need it.” He handed the bandanna to Toby and wondered whether he should repeat the how-to-use advice given Parker. You never knew what omissions would be resented by children.
So he began: “A bandanna will save your life in a sandstorm, and—”
“Oh, I know all that junk.”
But Reinhart nevertheless suspected that he had been right to give the boy an opportunity to reject him in this wise. “O.K. And you should also know how to say thank you.”
“Oh,” said Toby, “I don’t have to say it to you! My father says he owes you no thanks.”
To hear devastating truths from children is both better and worse than to hear them from larger persons. Better, because what can a child really do in the way of damage? Worse, in that one’s conscience seems to have taken an exterior form, appearing as a derisive midget.
He laughed loudly while thinking up an effective response. It was not a bad tactic. Toby looked with astonishment at the man who found funny what should be negative news. “He’s certainly right about that,” Reinhart said at last, laughing more. “He owes me no thanks, because I didn’t bring him a bandanna!”
It was not yet possible to tell whether Toby bought this. The boy looked confused at the moment. “Well, he says you don’t have any money anyhow. Aunt Winona has all the money, and if he wants some, he will have to get it from her.”
It would serve no cause to let Toby see his anger. Reinhart coughed, at which the boy shrank away and said: “Don’t give me your germs!”
Reinhart said, smiling: “Oh, your dad is a great one for getting money out of people. My gosh, he’s quite a guy! Who’d he say that to, your mother?”
“No!” Toby spoke with a child’s impatience. “To Grandma.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Grandma’s been taking care of us,” said Toby.
“Yes. I know your mother hasn’t been feeling well.”
“She goes away a
lot. I think she drinks.”
Reinhart’s response was involuntary. “Oh, that happens with a lot of people. It doesn’t mean they don’t like you.” If he had thought about it, the sentiment would never have been voiced, but sometimes the preposterous is just the right note to strike, that which agrees with life’s preference for burlesque to the deprivation of melodrama, not to speak of tragedy.
“O.K.,” sprightly said Toby, who anyway had not been downcast. Like his brother, he resembled Blaine in configuration of jaw and the spacing of his eyes, but unlike Parker he showed little physical suggestion of his mother, except in coloring. Reinhart saw nothing of himself in either grandchild.
“Do you like your grandmother?”
Toby said: “I’ll say this: she certainly knows her own mind.”
Reinhart frowned. “What does that mean?”
“I dunno. I heard it on TV.” Toby squeezed his bandanna into a ball and put it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Do you think television is a bad influence on children?”
This was the longest conversation Reinhart had ever held with either grandson. Blaine would never have tolerated it had he been present. In a sense the privilege was being bought at Winona’s expense.
He answered: “Probably, but if you think about it, what isn’t?” He leaned over the table and switched off the lamp that Toby couldn’t reach, and they both left the room by the light from the stairway. “I have to go see your father and your aunt now,” he said. “But maybe we can do something together sometime and take Parker too. Like going to the circus or the rodeo when it comes to town?” But he had no real hopes of getting Blaine’s permission.
Toby asked: “Do you go to bars and take dope and have sex with hookers?”
“Not much,” Reinhart answered soberly. “I’m pretty old for that kind of thing.”
“Uh-huh,” said Toby. “Well, I’ll see you, Grandpa.” He dashed on ahead, taking the steps in a series of leaps, and soon his lithe body vanished through the doorway to the ground floor.
CHAPTER 11
REINHART KNOCKED ON THE doorjamb at the entrance to the library, and entered boldly. He expected some resistance from Blaine, but in point of fact his son smiled at him.
Blaine asked: “How’s your game?”
“Huh?” For a moment Reinhart was at a loss with this reference. “Oh. Gosh, I haven’t held a cue in years.”
“That’s a championship slate table,” Blaine said genially. “You won’t see many of those.”
Reinhart looked at Winona with some concern. “How are you, dear?”
She shrugged. “Fine, Daddy.”
“We’ll have to play sometime,” said Blaine, rising from behind his desk. “Unfortunately I don’t get much opportunity to use that table myself. No sooner do I pick up the stick when the phone rings.” He grinned at the carpet and threw his arm in a sweep at the bookcase. “And those pricelessly bound volumes are waiting for me when I get a moment to relax—if it ever comes.”
Reinhart’s spirit fell. Blaine seemed in an ebullient mood, which could only mean that he had taken savage advantage of his sister.
“You’ve got an impressive place here, Blaine,” he said. “Young as you are, you’ve done so well. You’re to be congratulated. I’m proud of you.”
His son peered suspiciously at him for a moment and then said: “That’s true. But I’m not made of money. We all have our responsibilities.”
For a moment the two men looked at each other, and then Blaine turned to Winona, who had just risen from her chair, and said: “We must get together more often. Laving in the same town, really, why...” His voice fell away as he slid towards the door.
It seemed that they were being led out to dinner. Reinhart wondered who had cooked the food. But when they reached the front hall Blaine went to the closet and brought back their coats. Winona got into hers in the same stoical fashion in which she did everything at her brother’s house.
Reinhart accepted his raincoat in one hand and asked: “Are we going out to dinner at a restaurant?”
Blaine smiled bleakly. “That’s generous of you, Dad, but I’ll have to take a raincheck. I’m going out of town in an hour. You see—” He broke off to open the front door and in fact never resumed, but simply showed them out.
“Do you realize,” Reinhart asked Winona, in a delayed reaction that had waited until they crunched together through the gravel of the driveway and climbed into her car, “do you understand that we were not given anything to eat?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said, turning the key in the ignition.
“Neither am I, but that’s not the point.” He peered from his window at the house as they passed it, going around the crescent drive. Blaine had turned off the front light before they had reached the driveway, and little illumination came from within. “I’m afraid Blaine has become really an eccentric miser.”
Winona braked at the exit onto the road. “His expenses are staggering,” she said.
Reinhart thought about this for a while. “I gather that he drove a hard bargain,” he said at last.
In silence she turned a corner laboriously. As in so many mundane matters, she was the old-fashioned girl: awkward driver, light eater, self-effacing with her brother, obedient to Dad. “Medical care costs a fortune.”
“Maybe your mother just has a temporary problem, what used to be called a nervous breakdown. Years ago those were common, and almost everybody had one at one time or another, and then they’d recover, and nobody thought the worse of them for it, either. On the other hand, real maniacs were confined in institutions and never let out if they were dangerous. Nowadays perfectly normal people are hospitalized and madmen often roam free, murdering people. But what I’m wondering is where was Mercer tonight? Did Blaine have her locked upstairs someplace? He is beginning to live like someone in a gothic novel.”
“Oh,” Winona said quickly, “she was probably just taking a nap.” Suddenly she seemed to have an interest in regarding her brother and his household as routine in all respects.
When they reached their apartment house she turned carefully into the entrance of the underground garage, rolling across the strip of front sidewalk. At the bottom of the descent she stopped before the locked door, and Reinhart claimed the key from her, got out, and unlocked the big portal to the garage, which proceeded to lift itself electrically. The security was efficiently managed in this building, but you could never be too careful: he locked his car door again for the short drive to Winona’s slot, and when they came to rest, he surveyed the concrete place through the window. Because of the endless energy crisis, it was lighted none too brightly.
Then he climbed out and pushed down the peg to relock his side of the car. In so doing he happened to glance into the rear of the two-door Cougar. There on the seat, in her green dressing gown, lay Mercer Reinhart. She appeared to be unconscious again.
Winona had closed her own door and started for the elevator. She had been distracted since leaving Blaine.
“Uh, Winona,” Reinhart said, in one of those voices in which you hope to be heard by the right person without disturbing the wrong one.
But in her state she failed to hear it, and in fact did not notice that her father had been detained until she almost reached the elevator.
He signaled her to come back. She had the car keys. When she reached him he pointed at the back seat.
“Oh, no!” She unlocked the door. “She’s not dead?”
“Not likely,” said Reinhart. He drew Winona from the slot and leaned in, pulling the seat-back down. “Mercer?” He was reaching towards her when her eyes glinted in the weak light. “Mercer, are you awake?”
She replied in a murmur: “No, thank you.” And turned over on the seat, her face to its back. Folded up as she was, she again reminded him of a child, indeed of Winona, who as a little girl was wont to snooze on the backseat in this fashion and then without warning sit up and be carsick—unless her brother sat alongside, in which case
she proved the perfect traveler.
“God,” said the grownup Winona, quailing. “I guess I’ll get the blame again.”
“We’ve got to get her upstairs,” Reinhart said, hoping it would not be necessary for him to do much manhandling, the backseat of a two-door being a bastard of a place from which to take anything the shape of a limp human being. Brooding about that, he suddenly became fed up, and leaned in and shouted: “All right, Mercer, rise and shine! Haul your butt out of there, on the double.”
The effect was immediate. His daughter-in-law rolled over, put a foot down, and projected herself out the door as he stepped aside. Her eyes looked perhaps wild, certainly bloodshot, but she stood as if at attention, and retied her sash and smoothed the gown.
“Now, Mercer,” Reinhart said firmly, though without the hectoring note, “we’re going up to the apartment. Can you walk O.K.?” At least she was shod in thin slippers.
She nodded, making big eyes.
“You’re not sick, are you?”
She shook her head.
“All right, Mercer, we’re heading for the elevator over there. Let’s go. Hut, two, three, four...”
She seemed a bit rigid but otherwise in serviceable condition. The elevator was coming down when they reached it. In a moment its doors slid away and a brisk young couple emerged. Reinhart did not recognize them, nor apparently did Winona. And anyway they greeted only Mercer, in her dressing gown, and went on into the garage.
Reinhart’s little party boarded the elevator. He asked Mercer, “Do you know those people?”
She smiled noncommittally and said: “Aren’t they nice?”
Winona stared warily at her sister-in-law from behind the barrier of her father, and when they reached the fourth floor she hastened ahead to unlock the door of the apartment.
“Now, Mercer,” said Reinhart when they were inside, “you go and lie down.”
He told Winona, “Take her to my room. And listen: please shut the door when you come back.”
While the girls were so occupied he went to his bathroom, where the clothing left behind by his daughter-in-law on the previous day now hung along the shower-curtain rod. Reinhart had hand-laundered these garments, including the wash-and-wear slacks, and they were now all dry. He collected them and took them discreetly down the hall to Winona’s room, passing the door to his own quarters, where Mercer was in the act of lying down. Did she remember having been there before?