Reinhart in Love (11 page)

“Is that all?” Reinhart asked. “I guess I can manage that, the sitting there, I mean—but what good will it do?”

“You have no idea,” Splendor replied, taking the crook of his arm and applying pressure towards the front door, “how beneficial a white man, a white man with fair hair and blue eyes, of the king-size, if you don't mind my saying it, would be to my humble efforts.”

Suddenly Reinhart was out on the porch with the medical course under his arm instead of Splendor's hand, and his host could be seen only as an obstruction within a rapidly diminishing rectangle of light. “Wait a minute!” he cried, thrusting back the screen and getting his fingers inside the inner door. With superior weight he could have forced Splendor back, but chose rather to offer him the alternative of letting his guest re-enter or maiming him.

“Yes?” asked the interne when he again came into full view.

“Remember me?” Reinhart said in snotty humor. “I'm collecting money for the Old Soldier's Retirement Fund.”

Unsmiling, Splendor wanted wanly to know if he had forgotten something.

“Yes, but I've forgotten what.” He remembered when he saw Loretta prowling quietly down the passage from the kitchen, all great soft eyes and tender mouth and long tan legs.

“Miss Mainwaring, it's been more pleasure than I can say.”

Her brother said: “Don't try then, Carlo. There are people with whom the amenities are useless.” With a sigh, a promise soon to get in touch, and an adjuration to learn his Goodykuntz from the lessons, Splendor tirelessly applied himself for the second time to Reinhart's departure and succeeded unconditionally.

Feeling his overcoat pockets, Reinhart discovered that Mr. Mainwaring had indeed confiscated the last cigar.

Now Reinhart needed no urging to look at Dr. Goodykuntz's text. He wanted to find a particularly glaring piece of quackery that, when contrasted with established medical practice—of which he remembered a modicum from his Army first aid—would convince even Splendor Mainwaring that his mentor was not only a fake but a criminal; something like treating polio with the Dutch rub, was what Reinhart sought. But as it happened, stretched on the rack of the couch later that night, holding in one hand the Zippo's blue-and-yellow flicker—he dare not illuminate the table lamp, honoring Maw's claim that it could miraculously negotiate fifteen feet of hall and two right angles to murder her sleep—and in the other the three-ring notebook, he read precisely one sentence of the second lesson, “General Osteology continued: the Fibia and the Tibula constitute the bonal structure of the calve of the leg,” when he heard Maw bound from the bedroom on naked soles and be sick in the bath. Even when under the weather, she was athletic, and came running out again, screaming over the toilet's Niagara: “Douse that light, you dirty dog,” and vaulted bedwards, presumably kneeing the lump of Dad, who let out air.

In the succeeding hour, she repeated the performance thrice, while Reinhart listened in the darkness, cramped with the general guilt which comprehends all specific ones from the dawn of man: but for the grace of God, there vomit I. He wished he were capable of some other emotion than regret. For all his added flesh and veteran memories, and the seams of heart that, like the fabric of an auto tire, show from travel, it was if he had never, three years ago, marched away. Maw suffered, or enjoyed, one of her spells, and it seemed queer to him that she had waited so long to institute it; he was home two weeks, and she never had needed time to work up to anything, being able to fall ill on the instant the world, or a son, did not go her way.

Along towards dawn, all crumpled at the middle from being repeatedly vaulted over, Dad stumbled through the living room to the secretary desk just beyond Carlo's head and clutched the telephone, grunting till Dr. Perse agreed to come. Obviously the doctor then returned to bed, for he did not arrive at the house before ten A.
M
. and when he did was still snorting from the night's phlegm. The doctor knew Maw of yore, not to mention Carlo, whose navel in fact he had knotted more than two decades earlier. He had not bought a suit of clothes since, if one went by the salt-and-pepper jacket, back-belted, he wore as he entered now and headed straight for Reinhart, who though dressed was yet snoozing in the living room, the nearest recumbent figure to the door.

Quick as a wink, Dr. Perse had Reinhart's shirt up and an ancient stethoscope, of which the hard-rubber cup was chipped like the rim of a bottlecap, applying suction to his stomach.

“Gee,” said the doc through his white mustache. “Oh my, you're in trouble. Sounds like a crowd of elves are in there, eating popcorn. Lay off bananas, herring, egg-drop soup, mutton, and shirred eggs.”

Reinhart protested, striving to rise.

“Don't fight me, Ralph. I know the history of your system since you were small enough to swim in a teacup. Still got the sneezes, too, I'll warrant. Therefore lay off all raw meats.”

Reinhart struggled, but the old doc was incredibly strong and held him down with the stethoscope as you might pin a beetle to a cork.

“Don't fight me, Paul. I pulled you wet and hairless into this world and you weren't much then, nor will be unless you get off your back and play more with other kids.”

At length the ex-corporal managed to explain to Perse the proper state of affairs—though not without promising to eat wheat germ, charcoal, etc., and eschew cumquats, mussels, and guava jelly—“If you ever go to Cuba, take your own food along,” said Doc—and got him down the hall to the right patient.

If anything, Maw looked healthier than ever, there in her bed of illness, both
HIS
and
HER
pillows propped behind her Psyche knot, flannel nightgown arms rolled up to where her big biceps stopped them. With her fair hair and muscles, Maw might have been Holland's entry in the Olympic high hurdles. However, the whites of her eyes were pinked with self-sorrow and when she saw the doctor she gasped and began to slide beneath the covers as if they were water and she an amphibian.

“Not
her!”
blurted the doc in stage astonishment. “Oh, never! That girl's built of steel tungsten.” He stepped to the bed, cupped his hands, and shouted down, but as if from a distance. “Hallooo there! I say Miz Reinhart, you can't fool Powell Perse, M.D. Come out, you strapping wench, I see youuuuuu.”

Without showing her face, Maw extended a coquette wrist from the blankets, and Doc, creaking at many of his articulations, sat bedside and felt its pulse while eying his dollar watch on a chain of braided hair with dependent Elk's tooth, and humming what Reinhart was at the point of identifying as “Lady of Spain” when it ceased at an arbitrary note.

Doc chided: “You young girls are all alike, your giddy heads filled only with parties and proms and beaux.”

Maw emerged from the purdah of the sheet as a gigglish maiden, mouth curved like a barrel-stave ski, eyes like jacks: grotesque, and looking ten years older.

Reinhart refused to witness any more of this; he could never understand why his mother would not, like everyone else, use a mixture of pleasure and pain instead of taking them singly. Either she was a charwoman for fourteen hours a day, or an invalid for twenty-four. Who knew how long her current recumbency would last? With Dad doing the chores and creeping around as if he had piles and couldn't sit, and chiding Carlo for indifference.

Carlo now went into the kitchen and indifferently stuffed himself with a second breakfast, two more eggs, a slice of fried boiled ham large as your shoe sole, and two and a half pecan rolls from the familiar cellophane package which made its contents sweat: the icing was all sticky. Yes, he grew fatter and fatter, and knew not what to do about it. Demonically he gouged out cavities in the center of the rolls and pushed into them stout bullets of butter. He could hear Maw and Doc in some push-pull gaiety over the purple-pills-or-the-red-ones. Maw shrilled: “Now Doc!” Doc boomed: “Now Miz!”

Reinhart drank a cup of coffee with sugar, and then in a spasm of swinishness made himself some hot chocolate, so sweet he gagged. He swore he could feel the molecules of starch and sugar being translated into pounds of lard at his midsection, like the lead waist-weights of a diver. He was going down, down, down in the quicksand of suburban faeces: your only real horror, making concentration camps and secret police a sport. What an ass he was not to have stayed in Middle Europe, joined some ruthless movement, and maltreated small-businessmen.

On the other hand, he expected a summons at any moment, from an unexpected quarter: some slight acquaintance come suddenly into power and wealth, would cable; or he would be chosen, by chance, as sole heir to an aging tycoon, whose bibliomancy was potent enough to find him in the phone book, where he wasn't listed.

Paradoxically, the telephone did ring at that point, and he fell over several articles of furniture, breaking one, a Louis Krantz chair from the matching suite of same, in his haste to answer: “I accept!”

The voice that wheedled through the coils in the black earpiece was old, all right, far enough away to have its origin in Manhattan, and spoke of a splendid opportunity—to work for Humbold. It was Dad.

“But first, how's Maw?” Dad sneezed directly into the phone; it sounded like some crank had blown up the Bell System's main transformer. “I'm coming down with something, myself. Likely the flu.”

“Where are you, Dad? Out of state?”

“Just at the corner drugstore, Carlo, and on my way home. I nearly collapsed while on the rounds collecting my premiums. Thought I'd better stop here first and load up on Vicks, Rem, Analgesic Balm, Ex-Lax, Kleenex, and a Benzedrine Inhaler or two. Will you just check a minute on our atomizer—the bulb may be rotten. Also the toilet-paper supply—Maw uses the Kleenex, but t.p.'s good enough for me to blow my nose in.”

Reinhart laid down the receiver alongside a Dresden shepherdess, product of Japan, and went to the bathroom, feeling very giddy, as if, indeed, he must go
to the bathroom
. He saw Doc depressing Maw's tongue with a stick as he passed her room; in one second she would bark in Doc's face, which was averted to avoid just that.

When he opened the medicine chest above the washstand, the coiled copperhead of an enema hose sprang out and struck Reinhart at the jugular. He wrung its neck just back of the shiny black head. Ah, the atomizer! Just there behind a cartridge clip of cocoa-butter suppositories. He reached for it, but the heebie-jeebies split his vision and he saw two hands where but one was extended. The rectal bullets began to fire at him like dumdums. He seized the atomizer and, crouching below the washbowl, down by the gurgling gooseneck, in which was stuffed a wet rag, sent up a burst or two of ephedrine spray.

An ominous quiet reigned on the middle shelf as his head rose slowly to its level. Then hell broke loose. A red hot-water bag slapped him to the floor, and Argyrol made brown water on his chest. Gauze wound him in cerements, assisted by Adhesive Tape, who paid out white binding as it traversed his trunk on its unicycle. He fought back, crushing Merthiolate, who died in a pool of gore. Under an enfilading fire of codfish-oil pellets, he crawled to the linen closet and pried open the door, seeking asylum as if in a church, never suspecting the ambush that lay in wait. Down sprang the bath brush, the boa constrictor of the rubber spray with its evil pimpled mouth, the toilet swab, bath salts and bubble bath, a reserve phalanx of Lifeboy, washcloths and Cannon towels, pillow cases, shave stuff, Epsom salts, bicarbonate, Dr. Scholl's, Lydia Pinkham's, rubbing alcohol, camphor ice, hair tonic, Nervine, Stanback, Empirin, Anacin, and Bayer's, the bath mat, rubber gloves, hair clippers, corn trimmers, mustard plasters and a thing for cuticles; floor mop and dust rags, Sani-Flush, Drano, Bon-Ami, Lysol, Listerine, Windex, and the bottles, capsules, tubes, boxes, canisters, jars, casks, decanters, canteens, buckets, tubs, carboys, firkins, and demijohns of outmoded prescriptions. Down came the footbath, leg splints, back braces, and a crutch; an eyepatch, an enamel basin, a portable urinal shaped like a duck; a doughnut cushion for the rump, a cane for the gout, a truss, elastic stockings, finger stalls, oral, anal, and axillary thermometers; depilatories, deodorants, dental floss, Vaseline, Noxema, Iodex, suntan lotion, zinc oxide, and manicure equipment; wrist straps and bellybands, an athletic supporter, an insulin set; compresses, traction bandages, and tourniquets; a fever chart and a blood-pressure gauge; an ice bag and nose drops, eyewash, forceps, scalpels, tweezers, throat swabs; Absorbine Jr., Vitalis, Pepsodent, Mexican Heat Powder, Unguentine, Castoria, Alka-Seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer, and Eno Effervescent Salts; Sal-Hepatica, Pond's Honey and Almond Cream, Zymol Troches, and creosote shampoo…. A final avalanche of Waldorf Tissue buried Reinhart beneath scores, hundreds, thousands of rolls, carrying tens, nay, hundreds of thousands of thirsty-fiber sheets.

And everything in the linen closet was but a duplicate of that more quickly to hand in the medicine chest and on the top-of-toilet. When, beaten, Reinhart ceased to struggle, it grew very quiet under the mélange, except for certain siftings when he breathed; a kind of existence might have been feasible there, with instant nourishment from the vitamin capsules and instant embalming in Lysol if one died. And Dr. Goodykuntz talked of nonchemistry.

No, they did
not
need ass-wipe in the Reinhart household—thus did responsibility at last rear its uncomfortable head from the burial mound, and in answer Carlo must needs struggle up and go inform his father. Who by the time he reached the phone had desperately rung off and bought a regiment-sized carton of the item in question, along with the other medicaments promised, and indeed was already on the front porch with them, struggling at the door.

“Ah-oof,” groaned Dad when he was in, dropping the packages every whichway. “I'm in bad shape, Carlo. Might as well face it. I'm on the way out. The job devalves on you now.” He wore his hat like a clown, down so far on the back of his head that it fanned his ears. He grasped the hog's thigh of Reinhart's upper arm. “How you feeling? Looked a bit peaked. What's that dried blood on your chest?”