Reinhart discarded the butts in the pedal can and rinsed the heeltaps of powdered coffee from the cup. It was not until he opened the otherwise unused dishwasher that he saw the note, which was impaled on one of the little plastic-covered fence-palings around the wire tray designed to support glassware during the commotion of the wash.
Went out for burgurs.
M
The only thing that really annoyed him, he told himself, was the misspelling. How could anyone who lived in this culture make such an error? Jesus Chryst!
Cold roast chicken being one of the glories of the world, Reinhart ate his supper in good appetite. There was a virtue in dining alone. In Mercer’s presence he would have felt obliged to wash down his food with the homogenized milk he had laid in for the children. As it was, he could dig out of the broom closet the crisp little Chenin Blanc and quaff it in good conscience.
“Hi,” said Mercer, in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Mercer! I didn’t hear you come in: I was thinking.” In the grip of his old-fashioned, instinctive manners Reinhart left his stool. His daughter-in-law was both female and his guest. “May I get you anything? Coffee? Hey, where are the boys? Is it too late for them to have some of the meringue-and-whipped-cream cake I made?”
“Gee,” said Mercer, “they really stuffed themselves at Burger City. You know how kids are: eating makes them sleepy. They went right to bed.” She lowered her chin and up across her thick eyebrows gave him a long look of the sort that signals its maker’s preoccupation with another subject than that under discussion.
Reinhart asked: “Do you want to talk to me about something, Mercer? Let me get you a chair.” He did as promised, from the dining room. The kitchen was equipped only with the one stool, which, after he had seated her, he regained.
Mercer proceeded to sit there in silence. She was the sort who could persist in that sort of thing without apparent discomfort, but Reinhart was surely not. Nor did he even feel he could properly finish his wine. Unfortunately he had not got in one last swallow before she appeared, for he had had one coming for quite a while and had been prolonging the suspense: a little funny thing he had been doing with favorite foods and beverages since childhood.
Finally he rose and Saran Wrapped what was left of the chicken. The roast bird also gave him a pretext to say something pertinent as well as morally neutral: “Still a lot of chicken left, if you want a snack later. Remember it’s high in protein and low in calories, especially if you don’t eat the skin.” He shrugged and put fowl and plate into the fridge.
“I was thinking,” Mercer began at last. She vigorously rubbed an index finger beneath her nose.
Reinhart took his stool once more, but by the time he had sat down she had again established silence.
When he was certain of this, he said: “What were you thinking?”
She looked up. “Huh? ...Oh... well, I don’t even know if I could say it to anyone else.”
“Why, sure you could, Mercer,” said he. “If you wanted to, that is.”
Suddenly she grinned. In such an expression her nobility of feature disappeared entirely. A grin for her was a grotesque disguise. Furthermore it was utterly mirthless. Reinhart suddenly felt like slapping her face, to bring her out of it.
But instead he said: “Or then don’t tell it, if it’s embarrassing.” He eyed the wine bottle longingly when she turned her head away, but then plugged it with the cork and pushed it out of their lines of vision. There was still a good solid mouthful of it in the glass. What would be better, to let it sit there quietly or to empty it in the sink?
She stopped grinning at last and said: “The thing is, my parents always wanted me to have a profession. I mean, it was me who wanted to get married and have children.”
“Uh-huh.” She had taken him by surprise, but he thought quickly. “You mean, it was a switch, given your place and time.”
“That’s right!” Mercer said brightly. “Another funny thing is that I got really good grades in college, in the tough stuff like math and science. You can ask Blaine.”
“I wouldn’t call that funny,” said Reinhart. “I’d call it impressive. Blaine, you know, was a brilliant student, but I think he did least well in math.”
“I remember!” Mercer cried. She seemed happily nostalgic. “I really hated him then.”
“That’s right. You did know each other in college.”
“Well, I knew who he was, but he never noticed me.”
“He was probably too busy with his political protests and so on,” said Reinhart.
“I hated all that,” said Mercer.
So had Reinhart, but he was actually embarrassed to remember that period, from which nobody, of whatever stripe, emerged victorious. Suddenly defiant, he seized his wineglass and emptied it into his throat, then put it in the dishwasher.
This event had no discernible effect on Mercer. Now that he thought about it, she had been in residence for twenty-four hours and had spent at least part of that time alone in the apartment, and though he had concealed his few bottles of alcoholic beverages, she could easily have purchased her own. But he had seen no evidence of that. Nor had she acted as if drunk or drugged.
Mercer was shaking her head. She addressed the black-and-white vinyl tiles of the floor. “I should have gone into computers.”
Reinhart sat down again. “Excuse me?”
“Or something,” said Mercer. “But you see, it never occurred to me that you could think you were cut out for something naturally and then discover that you weren’t. That doesn’t seem to make sense, but actually it’s true.”
“That’s right,” said Reinhart. “It’s the damnedest thing, isn’t it?” For the first time he actually felt an affinity with his daughter-in-law. “I know just what you mean! For about twenty years I thought I was supposed to be a businessman. Isn’t everybody? You know. That everything I tried ended in failure made no useful impression on me: I always assumed that I hadn’t yet found the right business. I was in my late forties before I discovered the truth.”
“But,” said Mercer, “I was designed by Nature to be a mother, and if you bear young, then it’s certainly your job to care for them. No matter what they say, that’s obviously the way things were designed. And if you’re taking care of your children, you can’t go out and chop down trees and find food and do a man’s work. No matter what they say.”
“Mercer,” said her father-in-law, “I’m going to make some coffee. I hope you’ll join me in having some.” He put on the water. “I take it that by ‘they’ you refer to the people whose profession it is to harangue the populace in the interest of various causes that will obviously benefit the haranguers but be of dubious service to those listening.”
Mercer made a wry mouth. “Funny, isn’t it? He was a war-protester in college. But he told me once that secretly he would have liked nothing better than to be a fighter pilot or hero at hand-to-hand combat.”
“Blaine? I’ll be damned.” Did one’s son inherit, along with certain physical traits, one’s own fantasies as well?
The water was boiling. He had intended to make powdered coffee, but it was just as easy to grind some real beans and put the product into the four-cup filter pot and fill the top with water. He went to the dining-room china cabinet and brought back a pair of demitasses and the sugar bowl.
Mercer accepted the cup but spurned the sugar.
She rolled her eyes. “Let’s face it, we belonged to the wrong generation.”
“But then again,” said Reinhart, “who hasn’t?” But this was polite hypocrisy: there had been nothing wrong with his.
CHAPTER 15
NEXT MORNING AFTER BREAKFAST and the wait for the bathroom Reinhart eventually got himself cleaned and shaved and put together, and he left the apartment, intending to shop for food.
But while he was in the garage, unlocking the door to Winona’s car, he was hailed from across the way.
“Oh... good morning, Edie!” For it was that
tall young woman, at the door of her own automobile. He found himself pleased to see her. It had been years since he had known someone so slightly as to forget her when she was not present and yet feel a mild gratification when encountering her by chance.
He closed the Cougar’s door and went towards Edie. For a moment she looked as if, in a kind of panic, she might dive into her car and flee—never had he known a shyer person—but he slowed down, grinned less broadly, and looked not directly at her but just beyond, and she was able to hold her ground.
“Well,” he said, “well, well.” He decided to seize her hand and shake it, being certain that once contact had been made she would lose a good deal of her nervousness. This proved true.
She showed him owlish eyes. “Well... how is Winona?”
“She’s fine,” he said. “If you haven’t seen her for a day or so, it’s because she’s staying with a friend.”
Edie nodded vigorously. She was dressed in a beige cardigan, plain white blouse, and, he noticed, not jeans but what resembled the so-called sun-tan pants that were the summertime uniform of the U.S. Army in World War II. He always imagined that he could smell soap when near her.
“She must,” said Edie, “have lots of friends.”
“Enough, I suppose.”
Edie looked unhappy, and he immediately regretted having told her: after all, she was a defenseless creature.
“Speaking of friendships,” he said quickly, “we’ve also got a lunch to make up for. How about today?”
In answer she heaved a great sigh. Reinhart had never seen anyone do that at such a point, but he found it strangely attractive. Or perhaps it was strange that he found it attractive, for it might be taken as merely a helpless acquiescence to fate.
“O.K.” He beckoned and almost bowed. Something about Edie caused him often to come close to doing a parody of an old-fashioned gentleman. “Shall we step over to my car? Or rather Winona’s, which I have the use of at the moment.”
But suddenly she became defiant. “No, at least I can provide the transportation.” She marched around to the passenger’s door of her Gremlin, unlocked and opened it.
Reinhart didn’t mind being chauffeured. Now that he operated an automobile only sporadically—Winona generally drove her own car—he found that he no longer had the old ease that had once characterized his technique of driving, and the traffic seemed heavier and more uncompromising, despite the “fuel crisis,” which should in reason have had another effect. But then one’s sense of anything is highly colored by one’s age.
Having pulled out of the garage, up the inclined driveway, and stopped at its intersection with sidewalk and street, she turned questioningly to Reinhart.
“Take a left.”
She accelerated away. He noticed that she tended to take him literally, in her need to comply, but he had lived long enough not to confuse this with obsequiousness: there are people who perform this way because of a serious outlook based inconspicuously on self-respect.
When they had reached a street important enough to have traffic lights he asked: “What kind of food would you like to eat?”
“Oh, anything, really.” She was stealing little glances at him. She shook her head at the dashboard and swallowed with apparent difficulty. “Uh,” she said, “what’s it like, being on TV?”
Reinhart smiled expansively before he realized that he was doing so. When it did occur to him, he frowned: vanity in a man of his age was an embarrassment. “You saw me?”
“Oh, sure.” She how gave him a smile that could be called dazzling. Her teeth were slightly larger than average and absolutely perfect. “You were just terrific!”
“Thank you,” said Reinhart, crossing his ankles the other way. “Thank you very much.”
“Imagine that,” Edie said, “cooking like that. What a terrific thing!”
“You’re being generous.”
“Oh, I think it’s really great. But it’s hard to understand how Winona stays so slender, with you in the kitchen!”
“That’s simple,” Reinhart said. “She hardly ever eats anything I make!” He worried that he sounded indignant, and added: “Makes sense, of course, for a model. I’m not complaining. I cook in the spirit of scientific inquiry. I’m fascinated by what happens to flavors and textures when food is prepared in certain ways. But of course I myself like to eat. What I cook never goes to waste.”
“I’m certainly never going to miss that show from now on,” Edie said.
“Actually,” said Reinhart, “I was just making that one appearance on the program. I gather they have all sorts of guest cooks. I do some things for this food company, you see, to promote their products, and they booked me on the show.” He was reminded that Grace Greenwood had yet to be heard from on the subject of his performance. She had not even had the courtesy to return his call.
Edie stopped the car at a red light. They were now in an old-fashioned suburban shopping area, which, unlike the malls, had not been constructed for the role but had simply grown into it over the years and now was congested and somewhat down-at-heel and gave Reinhart the familiar feelings of nostalgia and despondency.
“See that delicatessen?” he asked, pointing. “My uncle took me in there once in 1936 or 7. We were coming back from a ball game. I had a cold roast-pork sandwich, heavily salted, on homemade bread. The proprietor was a Swiss. His wife made all the baked goods, and he made his own horseradish and sausages and of course all the cooked meats. Funny how I still remember that, though in more than forty years I’ve never been back.”
“Do you want to try it now?” Edie asked eagerly. “We could get something there for lunch.” She had a dreamy smile for the deli; she was probably sharing in his nostalgia.
“No,” he said decisively. “I’ll tell you why. It’s unlikely that the Swiss would still be there, and I really don’t want my memories polluted by the sight of what it may have become. But the idea of getting some takeout food is a great one on a day like this. We’ll pick up—not here, but in the next bunch of shops we come to—some cheese and decent crusty bread, if it can be found, and wine, and have a picnic. There are various parks to choose from, or we could just drive out into the country somewhere.”
He found Edie’s presence much more satisfying than that of any other female person he knew at this time, which might not be saying much had he not been able to include Helen Clayton, who was enthusiastically heterosexual.
Edie made an odd shrugging movement and hunched farther forward over the steering wheel. “I think a picnic would be great.”
“Hey.” He pointed to the shopping mall that was coming up ahead, the signs for its principal enterprises towering on great standards which rose from the flatness of a former meadow: BOGAN’S...TOP SHOP... KIBORWORLD. “Pull in at the Top Shop, and we’ll take on some provisions.”
“O.K.!” Edie made her agreement an ebullient little event. She slid the Gremlin into a parking space on the asphalt plain, and they entered this branch of the Top Shop, an even larger example than the one in which Reinhart had cooked crepes Suzette.
They went through the automatic doors and once inside stopped and looked at each other with affectionate smiles. Hers was only slightly below the level of his. He had not known so large a female person since he was in the Army. But unlike Edie, Veronica Leary, his friend in the Nurse Corps, had been a great beauty. Of course he himself had been but twenty-one years of age at that time.
“Well,” he said finally, breaking the deadlock of genial silence, “shall we go see whether they have any edible cheese?”
They loped in step for a while and with a purposeful air, but had no reason to suppose they were nearing the dairy section. There was here the kind of vastness on which progress had no effect, as when one drove towards a distant mountain: for every step they took, the farthermost wall receded in the same degree.
But at last they reached the long, open, refrigerated trough that held the various products which took their origins from the m
ilch cow, and Reinhart was about to sift through the packaged cheeses in search of one that would bear being eaten, when, down at the bottom of the aisle, he saw a familiar figure.
It was Helen Clayton, at work alone. She stood before a metallic table which held paper-platefuls of cubed cheese. There were two kinds, bright orange and off-white, and in each cube was an embedded toothpick. Helen extended a plate to anyone who passed her.
Each saw the other at the same moment. Helen’s greeting was to elevate her paper plate. Reinhart’s wave was a kind of salute.
“Would you be offended if I talked to that woman down there?” he asked Edie. “She’s a business associate.”
Edie simpered at the extraordinary suggestion that anything would offend her.
“I just want to say a word to her about business,” he nevertheless found himself explaining almost guiltily. “It would be boring for you. Look through these cheeses and choose something you like.”
Helen greeted him breezily when he reached her table. “Hi, there!” She thrust the paper plate at two female shoppers in turn. Then there was a lull in the traffic. She put down the selection of samples and gave him a more personal grin. “Whatcha doin’ in this neck of the woods? Grace send you to check up on me?”
“Pure accident,” said Reinhart. “Just was passing by and dropped in to pick up a few things. Speaking of Grace, she hasn’t been in touch since I did the TV thing. I thought it was successful, if I do say so myself, and the television people seemed to like it. They said something about inviting me back. But Grace hasn’t even returned my call.”
Helen made a slow wink. “She’s having love problems, I believe. I didn’t get this assignment from her. I hear she’s been out sick for a while.”
Reinhart felt an involuntary wave of revulsion. He simply couldn’t help it: Nature did assert itself from time to time. “Oh. Well, that’s the way it happens, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Helen said with a wry mouth. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”