Winona shut the door and joined him. “Here,” said he, handing her the clothes. “It all comes out even. She left these behind yesterday.”
“What a break,” Winona said with quiet emotion. “We can get her fully dressed, anyway. That’ll be an improvement.” She spoke even more softly: “It won’t make him think it’s so crazy.”
Reinhart pulled her into her own room and sat her down on the bed. “You’ve got some idea of concealing this episode from Blaine?” He turned so that he could keep an eye on the closed door of his bedroom. One did not leave Mercer alone with impunity.
“He doesn’t know that she has recently been coming to me,” Winona said, assuming a hunted look. “Or he’d have mentioned it, you can be sure of that.”
Reinhart paced the bedside rug. “Are you referring to the meeting you just had with your brother?” She nodded gloomily. Reinhart brought his two sets of fingers together. The situation was both gross and very delicate. “Let me, uh... This may not be any of my business, uh, Winona, but did he talk you out of a sizable sum of money for your mother’s medical expenses?”
She raised her head. Despite the sheepish expression she said: “It really isn’t any of your business, Daddy.”
A rebuff from Winona was so unusual that Reinhart’s astonished response took the form of a grin.
“You’re quite right when it comes to the figure,” he said, looking towards his bedroom door, “but I’m certainly involved in everything else.”
“It won’t affect the way we live.” Her smile was very tender.
Reinhart had not considered that subject in the light of her reconciliation with Grace Greenwood: who would live with whom and where? For so long he and his daughter had lived in eventless serenity—or at any rate, so it had seemed to him. But Winona very likely had had crises and recoveries of which he had known nothing. In the first few months after coming back from the War he had lived at his parents’ house: no matter what extravagance he had been involved in when at large, at home he maintained a bland façade; it was no more than good taste.
“Well, look,” he said now, “I’m going to have to call Blaine. I’ll take the responsibility here, if it must be taken, but I won’t put up with any of his nonsense. After all, I knew him before he could go to the toilet unassisted.”
This was supposed to be a joke, but Winona was not as amused as she might have been.
She winced. “It’s different with you, but then, you’re a man.”
He went to pat the crown of her lowered head, but refrained: that was model’s hair. What he really felt like doing was to give Blaine a brutal hiding. Alas, the boy had regularly inspired such feelings in his father from birth onward. That was the pity, and nobody was at fault. It is much easier to understand how the wrong people get married to one another than to recognize that Nature too makes mistakes. That is, it was his emotional error to have married Genevieve, but his connection to Blaine was through the most basic of physical elements, the chromosomes, etc.: this was a dirty trick of God’s.
He began: “All my life I’ve been trying to decide whether spelling things out, telling the whole truth, and so on, really helps, and I have never succeeded.”
But Winona looked up at him and said: “You know my brother’s style. Mother’s gone crazy because of my private life.”
“He actually said that?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I’d strike him if he were near enough,” said Reinhart. He thought for a moment. “First, I hope you know there’s nothing in the accusation. Nobody does anything of that sort because of somebody’s, as you say, private life. ... You know you have always been the most forgiving of women with the menfolk of your family, Winona. I have noticed that you are quite different when among your female friends. And that fascinates me.”
He wanted to say more; perhaps he was at last even ready to consider that Winona’s generosity towards himself and Blaine might be condescension on her part, a radical idea if seriously entertained by a father. But at this moment the door to his bedroom opened, and Mercer emerged.
When he moved quickly into the hall she smiled and said: “I’ve had a very nice time. I’m sorry I have to leave so early.”
“So am I, Mercer,” said Reinhart. “Won’t you come back here? Winona wants a word with you.” He stepped into his daughter’s bedroom. “Get her into the clothes, huh? I’m going to phone Blaine.”
Mercer continued to smile in her genteel fashion as she slipped by him in an almost Oriental glide. Reinhart went to the telephone extension in the kitchen and dialed his son’s number. There was no response to several rings, and he was about to hang up, assuming that Blaine had gone out to search for Mercer, when the instrument was lifted at the other end.
“Hello,” he said. “Blaine?”
“No.”
“Parker? Grandpa. I want to speak to your father.”
“Give me a dollar,” Parker said.
“You get him right now.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Parker, I want you to promise me something.”
“Huh?”
“When your father comes back, tell him to call me. Can you do that?”
“It would be nice if you tell me what you’re going to bring me next time.”
“Did you hear me, Parker?”
Someone else came on the line, lifting an extension in silence.
Reinhart said: “Blaine. Is that you?”
“No, I told you it was Parker.”
This was getting nowhere. Reinhart repeated his instructions and hung up.
He left the kitchen and was passing the front door when the nearby phone rang. He shouted to the back bedroom that he would get it, and picked up the instrument.
“Carl, believe it or not, I can make it now if you can.”
“Excuse me?” The female voice was familiar, but for the life of him he couldn’t immediately identify it.
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
He suddenly remembered: Helen Clayton. Huh. “Helen, I’m really tied up at the moment.”
“Well...”
“Really. I’ve got family problems. You remember yesterday afternoon?”
“Oh. Is she—”
“More or less. But listen, there was something I wanted to ask you about.” He cupped his hand around his mouth and both lowered the volume of his voice and increased its intensity, so as to be audible to her but not to the back bedroom. “You know your friend with the white Cadillac?”
“Who?” asked Helen.
“You know, the white car you got out of yesterday after lunch.”
“Carl, I told you I wasn’t free. Now, you’ve got no right to be jealous.”
“I’m not snooping, believe me, Helen. But a funny thing happened in connection with Genevieve, my ex-wife, you know. It seems she was seen getting into that same car that your friend drives.”
Helen was silent for a while. Then she said: “We were trying to help, Carl.”
“Help?”
“I saw her there screaming at you in the parking lot, so I mentioned it to my friend. He said he’d have a word with her, and I guess he did. Why? Didn’t it work?”
Reinhart was shaking his head. By chance he saw the etching on the wall above the phone but now could not find the configuration of the female sexual part or indeed any other. He asked: “Is your friend in the Mafia?”
Helen chuckled. “Naw, he’s Jewish.”
“Uh-huh. Well, she seems to have taken him for a gangster.”
“I could see that, yeah,” said Helen. “Well, O.K.. Does that answer your question?”
“I wonder why she’d get into the car with a strange man, though. Your friend, he wouldn’t actually threaten her, would he?”
“What do you mean?”
“Pull a gun or anything?”
Helen thought for a while. “Gee, Carl, I don’t know why he would. I couldn’t see any reason for it. He’s in business
, you know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Floor coverings.”
“Is that right?” She heard the girls coming up the hall. “Well, thanks, Helen. I’ve got to go now. I’ll get back to you.”
“I’ll try, Carl, but I don’t know...”
“Sure, Helen.”
Mercer came out of the hallway as he hung up, Winona behind her. Blaine’s wife wore her clothes of yesterday and carried the folded dressing gown over one arm.
To Reinhart she said: “Winona was just showing me her room. The colors are lovely, and I especially like her choice of fabric for the curtains.”
“Uh-huh,” said Reinhart, as if he were still speaking with Helen. “How are you feeling, Mercer?”
“Very well, thank you. And you?”
“In the pink,” he said.
Winona seemed more hangdog by the moment. Reinhart addressed her with fake verve: “Shall we get the show on the road?”
She handed him the car keys. “Do you mind, Dad?”
“Taking Mercer home?” he cried bluffly. “Is it likely I’d complain about being in the company of a good-looking girl?”
Each of them made some show of mirth. Mercer actually produced a whinnying sound: it was even possible she was genuinely amused.
“Oh, that would be very kind. I’m sorry to put you to this trouble, but...”
Reinhart bit his lip. On an impulse he decided to ask, flatly: “How’d you get here, Mercer?”
“It wasn’t far.”
“You walked from your house?”
“No, just from where my car broke down. ... Will you excuse me, please?” She pointed down the hall and proceeded in that direction. She went into the nearer bathroom, his own, perhaps familiar to her unconscious memory.
Reinhart shrugged at his daughter and spoke in a low voice. “God Almighty, that’s more than drunk. Her mind is gone.”
Winona peered down the hall. “She’s on something.”
“Can that be all, though? Can you get that demented on pills?”
His daughter nodded. “You can get anything.”
Perhaps Winona was right. Suddenly he wondered whether her own sexuality had been, was being, warped by some chemical means. Was Grace Greenwood slipping something into the Fresca? What a wild hope to have; but perhaps less preposterous than a great many phenomena that were now seen as commonplace. At almost hourly intervals he was reminded of how harmless had been the time of his own youth: the most vicious types of that era would today qualify as the most wholesome of citizens. The young toughs of high-school days freaked out on drugstore wine. Someone’s second cousin knew a swing musician who sometimes smoked reefers. The love that dared not speak its name was named only in jest.
“I guess one should hope it’s only drugs,” said he.
“You know, I was thinking,” said Winona, looking down the hall. “Grace has a good friend who’s a lady shrink.”
No matter how good your intentions, you immediately ask yourself: another one of them? Reinhart cleared his throat, expunging the thought. “You may be right,” he said. “It would be up to Blaine, or really, to Mercer herself, if she’s capable of making such a decision.”
“Some of the worst junkies in this country are young married women with children,” Winona said, with a TV reporter’s note that deepened her voice at the end of the sentence. She was probably repeating some news item verbatim. Reinhart had heard many to the same effect. “I know you’ve never cared much for psychiatrists, Dad.”
Reinhart felt a surge of affection for her. This was one of the times when, without warning, he thought of her as good old Winona—despite her current chic.
“But then, what do I know?” he asked in good humor. “Aw, it’s just that I crossed paths with one or two throughout the years, and of all people I have ever met they seemed to know the least about human beings. But, then, perhaps that’s the right idea.”
He could see that Winona paid little attention to his speech, for he knew her so well. Then she proceeded to prove again that he knew nothing.
“Dad,” she said, coming to stand in front of him and lowering her eyes, as if in a proper form of confession. “She’s really good, this doctor. She’s not a phony.”
He nodded. “I’ll take your word for it, dear. You went to her yourself, is that what you’re saying?”
“For a while. ... You’re not angry?”
“Winona,” said he, “I think I’ve been a jerk. I never meant to imply that you needed my approval to go to a psychiatrist—or to do anything else. I have seldom been able to remember what a good daughter you’ve always been—an amiable child, as I believe the term went in a more graceful era. You don’t have to share my tastes and opinions, nor apologize when you differ.” It was true that he meant this earnestly and that he was being hypocritical as well. What he really wanted was that she naturally and voluntarily agreed with him on all matters. “I take it you were helped.”
“Oh, yes.” Winona said this fervently. “A lot.”
He very much did not want her to spell out how. “That’s impressive testimony. You might talk the idea over with Blaine and Mercer—and by the way, isn’t she taking a long while?” Luckily there was only a ventilation duct and not a window in Reinhart’s bathroom.
He and Winona were at the head of the hall when the door swung open and Mercer emerged. She had freshened her makeup and brushed her hair. She was an authentically good-looking young woman, not beautiful nor pretty, but simply damned well made. When Reinhart saw her in this way he sometimes thought of horses: she might appropriately be holding one by the bridle. Again, there was in her own neck a suggestion of the equine. He could easily be envious of Blaine: this was the kind of girl who would never have been aware of his own existence when he was young. And only yesterday he had stripped her nude and washed off the puke! Today she was revealed as being demented, whether permanently or for the drugged nonce. But there was no getting away from it: she still had genuine class.
“Ready to go?” he asked, jiggling the car keys.
“Oh, if you don’t mind,” said Mercer, with a dazzling grin that seemed to have no emotion behind it. “I really am in the mood to have some fun. I’ve been home all day.” She turned her smile on Winona. “Want to do a disco?”
Taken by surprise, her sister-in-law opened and closed her mouth in silence.
Reinhart said: “We’d better get you home, Mercer.”
“He won’t let me out.”
“You understand, we can’t operate in that fashion. We’ll help you, but we won’t do anything behind Blaine’s back. ... By the way, I just remembered he said he was going somewhere. When will he be back?”
“Who knows?”
“Are you serious?”
Mercer gave him a solemn look. “I think I’ll just lie down for a while.”
Reinhart said to Winona: “Help her to bed in my room. I’d better go over and bring the boys back here.”
CHAPTER 12
“CARL, YOU’RE BOOKED TOMORROW on the Eye Opener Show, Channel Five, to go on right after the seven forty-five headlines. Know the show?”
Grace Greenwood was on the telephone. Reinhart seldom watched TV before late afternoon at the earliest, but he was aware in a general way of the programs offered.
“That’s the local one, isn’t it?” Then he was belatedly struck by the meaning of the announcement that had preceded her question. “What do you mean, I’m booked?”
“I’ve got you a three-minute spot. What can you cook in that time? It should be something highly visual.”
He repeated his question. “I don’t understand.”
Grace chuckled with the sound of crumpling paper. She was in a capital mood, for some reason. “It all started with the cathoderay tube, I think. Get the rest of the explanation at the public library!”
“I’m sorry, Grace. I don’t know whether Winona mentioned that we have some difficulty et cetera in the family. It takes all my attention at the
moment.”
“Carl, I’m trying to help,” cried Grace. “This might well lead to something, and it’s only three minutes. My God, do a Hamburg Hawaiian or something.”
In spite of himself he asked with horrified fascination: “Is that with pineapple and coconut?”
“Who knows?” said Grace. “I just made it up. But that’s the idea: something colorful, inventive. Lots of people watch that show, and everybody’s interested in unusual cooking nowadays.”
In fact, Reinhart knew nobody at the moment who was even interested much in plain eating, but it was true that he got no further than his troubled family these days.
“Tomorrow? God, Grace, I wish you’d asked me first.” Still, he could feel the faint stirrings of a vanity that had been so long quiescent, as was only appropriate in a man of his years and history. “Television! I don’t know that I’d have the nerve.”
“Well, just watch some of it and you’ll get plenty!” said Grace. “Wear your big white hat and apron, and half the battle’s won. I promised you’d be there at five thirty for make-up.” She gave him the address of the studios.
“I don’t want to be crude, Grace, but is this for free?”
“Certainly not, Carl. Epicon gets a plug for providing you and the products you use. You’re still working for us. Bye.”
He hung up, nodding wryly to himself. He still didn’t know what his fee or salary amounted to, and he was embarrassed to reflect that he could never bring himself to ask.
It was eleven A.M., and he wore the clothes of yesterday, for the reason that Mercer was still in his bedroom, presumably asleep. And presumably Blaine had not yet got home to find Reinhart’s note on the whereabouts of his wife and children. The boys had been put in Winona’s room. Reinhart had slept on the living-room couch (which was still not quite dry from the scrubbing), and his daughter had gone to—where else?—Grace Greenwood’s.