Reinhart in Love (36 page)

All in all, they had both of them made mistakes. In future he must be more elastic, and she less secretive. That, he believed, took care of it, but as he nodded confidently towards the front door, he was already half mad with loneliness. He needed only one person at any given time to conspire against the world with, but he
did
need that one. Once you were married, not even a friend could fill the role: it had to be a wife, or perhaps a mistress; something to do with sex, though not in the narrow terms of a lay. A pity that when he was on the verge of important discoveries in this area, his wife had to leave him. Feeling stale, he made the fourth trip of the morning into the back yard. There was no place else to go, especially now that he hadn't the car. Brooding had robbed him of time: the noon whistle groaned from town. Before Monday he had to finish
Anna Karenina
, two chapters in Psych, and a story in French about the inevitable M. et Mme Morel et leurs enfants, but he had lost his drive in those disciplines.

“Hi fella,” shouted someone across the baked-mud sea between Reinhart's hut and the next. Without raising his head Reinhart knew the call issued from a neighbor so amicable that he had been avoiding him since moving in. Ordinarily he couldn't endure people who were that friendly, feeling awful impulses to punch them suddenly in the mouth and see how they would take
that
: did affection without cause ruin them for reasonable resentment? But now it was as if heaven had sent succor.

“Hi, Fedder.” Reinhart waved to him in the fashion of De Gaulle re-entering Paris. That is, whatever his troubles, he still wished to keep a certain interval between them.

Olympian or not, the greeting more than sufficed for Fedder, who took it as license to troop over in a pair of tennis shoes that were gauchely white and too large, slapping the ground like the flippers of a seal. He also wore Army suntan trousers and a T-shirt stenciled uss TICONDEROGA, followed by the last name of a person not himself: his entire wardrobe was war-surplus.

“Hi fella,” Fedder repeated when he arrived at close quarters.
“Buon giorno!
How's the lit major?”

Reinhart cupped a hand at his ear and opened his mouth, not putting his incomprehension into words because of a reluctance to encourage Fedder's breeziness.

“English lit, no?” asked his neighbor. “Aren't you in the Comp Lit that meets tennish at one-two-oh Coote? I see you every morning on my way to Econ. I'm pre-law.”

“But I don't major in it,” Reinhart explained. “I guess you might say I‘m pre-psychiatric.”

“Working your way up to the insane asylum?” boldly joked Fedder; yet his face was shy and he looked at Reinhart's toes; he wanted so much to be friends that his judgment was warped as how to go about it. Why is acceptance more attractive to him than self-sufficiency? Reinhart wondered, continuing in his analytic mood.

“Listen, Carl,” Fedder blurted, nudging Reinhart's elbow with his own, his forearm very moist—indeed, Fedder's whole person ran with sweat, and he whipped out an olive-drab handkerchief and mopped his neck—“Carl, I put you up for membership in the Vetsville branch of Citizens for World Government, and we won't take no for an answer.”

“I'm afraid you‘ll have to,” Reinhart answered bluntly. He hated to be called by his first name as overture to some plea.

“You're joking,” said Fedder. “You writers are always interested in the good of mankind.”

For a moment, Reinhart answered internally: That's right, we are, and warmed himself at the candle Fedder had lighted for his exalted profession. For shame. He pinched himself and asked a question that skirted the issue.

“How do you know so much about me?”

“That's all right how I know,” Fedder said cutely, simpering and with his head held on the bias. “Never you mind about that.” Fedder's hair was clotted with damp and plastered to his scalp like that of the ad-buffoon who uses the greasy tonic rather than the product that attracts the broads. What lies were circulated in the interests of commerce! Fedder had the face of a Boston terrier, dressed like a vagrant, sweated like a glass of beer on a muggy day, and yet was intimate with Genevieve—how else would he have known about Reinhart?

Why, why, why? What have I left undone? Reinhart asked himself tragically. I was trustworthy, loyal, helpful, cheerful, thrifty, clean, reverent—he recited the Boy Scout Law in unprecedented self-attack (he had never been a Scout), and detected with the greatest alarm his growing taste for the wry and even the sour.

“That's all right,” Fedder continued naïvely. “I know
all
about you. Now what about World Guv? And once we nail you for that, next comes the Vetsville Civic Committee. And have you thought about the AVC—you certainly wouldn't be the American Legion type. The good people are in the majority here. We've a few Yahoos, but a lot fewer than most communities: 90 per cent of our male inhabitants go to college. What a chance for rational community planning, huh? If only we can incorporate on our own. That's all that's holding us back at present, but once we break loose on our own—well, we'll have grad students in government for our town councilors, a philosophy major for our mayor, and each and every one of us will have a direct voice in public affairs, through a sort of Swiss canton arrangement. How about that: Why should we let politicians be contemptible? For the triumph of evil it is necessary only that good men do nothing.'” He reapplied the Army handkerchief to his sopping forehead.

What shall I do with my wife's lover? thought Reinhart. Beat him, kill him, or exchange civilities in the European style? He sees me safely into the Comparative Literature class, then races here to my home. The insolent swine, to confront me like this! However, he is far from nonchalant; look at him sweat.

“How did you know I wrote?” Reinhart asked obsessively, for purposes of espionage disguising it as a light, simply vain enquiry. “Have you read my stuff?”

But Fedder, sucking on an empty pipe, had long left that subject. He shifted his feet, blankly said: “Pardon?” and returned to his own interests. “Have you and Jenny talked over the sewer?”

Now it was remarkable that Reinhart maintained his calm demeanor, but he did. Outwardly, he said only: “Mmm,” and squinted judiciously, in which he was assisted by the blinding sun, Fedder having maneuvered him around till it was directly in his eyes.

“In case she hasn't fully checked you out,” said Fedder, hooking his thumbs through his Army-surplus web belt, talking through his pipe as it were, “when this was a CCC camp years ago, it was in remote country—five miles from town. Wow, that was roughing it! And those fellows had slit trenches and chemical toilets. Came W.W. Two—well, they didn't need another reception center with Fort Budge so close, but if you remember your armed forces, you know the way they ran through supplies. Idea! said the bigwigs. Flashing lightbulbs, etc., as in the funny papers. A Q.M. depot! And so it was, manned by only a battalion, but they got their indoor toilets and branch to the main sewer, which by this time, the town having expanded to within two miles, went so to speak right by the door on its way to empty into the Mohawk River.”

Fedder went on talking while breathing in, which of course he did through his empty pipe, as if he were under water and that his sole communication with the air. “Now a sewer that is sufficient, say, for four or five hundred men—however large a quartermasters battalion is—”

Reinhart interrupted Fedder at that point. “Just what branch of the service were
you
in?” There were perhaps countless better questions, but this was in no sense a substitute for them, or evidence that Reinhart was nonplussed: at that moment he had a serious interest in the man's service record, with an idea that were Fedder a combat veteran he might have some small excuse for his outrages: being cuckolded by a hero was surely better than by a 4-F.

But Fedder's voice rose triumphantly over Reinhart's inquiry: he was an absolutely invincible fanatic when it came to sewers, and Reinhart's only comfort lay in supposing that if this was the sort of thing “Jenny” found fascinating, so much the worse for her.

“—insufficient for a community of the size of Vetsville. The problem is simply this: we have outgrown bur pipes!” Fedder positively shouted for joy, as if it were an accomplishment to produce more sewage than the next guy. He himself produced more perspiration than most; he was gushing water like a statue in a public fountain. “Now this is the procedure: we petition the town council to—”

A howl of engine and a squeal of tires announced the return of the Gigantic, out front, and no doubt the return of Genevieve logically followed—at the moment, though, Reinhart was not as much impressed by that event as by Fedder's reaction to it: the neighbor broke off the rant about his precious sewer and bent forward, turning his eager muzzle in the direction of the car-noise.

“Is that—” Fedder began, but before he could say “Jenny” again, Reinhart's shoes caught him hard in the buttocks, launching him on a brief flight. He met the earth like a cat, paw-breaking his descent rather gracefully.

What Fedder did post-fall, Reinhart couldn't have said, for the counterfeit writer had turned away from his adversary and gone to meet his wife. He no sooner rounded the corner of the Quonset than she saw him through the windshield.

“Come here and take these packages!” she ordered shrilly. She had changed to a pair of striped shorts that verged on the brazen: a close observer could almost have seen her discreets. This was a mother-elect. Nevertheless, Reinhart did as told and gathered an armload of bundles from the front seat, his strategy being to continue for a while to pay out rope to her. The packages felt like food.

“You haven't been getting enough to eat?” he asked with a faint sneer. “I'm not a good provider—is that what you're saying?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” answered Genevieve, twitching her hip. “I'm just going to do something on my own for a change.” She piled more parcels on top of those he already held, obstructing his view, then led him into the hut like a blind man. He craftily bided his time, doing an excellent job of transport, unloaded carefully on the drainboard of the kitchen sink, and began to unwrap item by item in search of perishables that should be refrigerated without delay.

“You can let that go,” Gen said authoritatively.

“But I always—” Reinhart began in wonder.

“I
said,”
said Gen, “I'm going to do something on my own for a change. Didn't you understand?” Suddenly she produced a pack of cigarettes, popped one out, lighted it, smoked it furiously once, coughed terribly, put it out under a drizzle of water from one of the taps—which for some reason affected Reinhart like the scraping of metal on concrete—and dropped the butt soggily into the sink, abandoning it there.

“Ugh,”
was the sound Reinhart made, staring at the butt. He was helplessly aware that he became more and more plaintive. For example, he found it impossible at this time to charge her with frequenting Fedder: she might have some ruinously good justification. After all, under the regime of Carlo I, it was true, her functions tended to be perhaps too severely circumscribed. Probably he could delegate certain powers to her without damaging her character, though of course he relied on her understanding that such errors as he had committed could be laid at the door of too much, rather than too little, love. And what about the baby? He wished he could talk to Maw about what she did while pregnant with him, but that subject conjoined with that individual resulted in his always feeling at once curiously weak and preposterously misinformed.

He said subtly: “Oh, I almost forgot to mention. The guy from next door was over. He seems to be a friend of yours.”

Gen pushed him aside and began herself to unwrap the packages. From one of them she extricated a great crown roast of beef, its standing ribs wearing little paper pantaloons; from another, an armload of asparagus. There were other goodies in the same vein, scarcely less expensive, and several bottles of the highest type of booze: wine from France and his old friend Courvoisier. Putting the fruit into the refrigerator, she withdrew from it the box of Camembert that Reinhart had just placed there.

“No, no, no,” she said. “Must let it ripen. … Oh yeah, the man from next door was over yesterday and left a petition for you to sign. I stuck it in the bookcase.”

Is that all? murmured Reinhart to himself. It was probably what she would have said had there been more—but could a wife be disloyal who planned such lordly meals for her spouse?

“He's quite a jerk, isn't he?” Reinhart asked happily, trying to fit a long, thin loaf of bread into their short, squat breadbox. Nothing would serve but cutting it in two.

“Noooo,” screamed Genevieve, causing him to drop the knife. “Are you out of your mind?” But it was rather a defense of the loaf than of Fedder; she demanded in the name of freshness that it be kept whole.

“I trust you'll shave sometime this afternoon,” she said after the disposition of the food. The last item, for which she let water into a vase, was a bouquet of yellow and white flowers, which, centered on the card table, changed the character of their home; from a machine for living it had become a house of love and light.

“Gen, if you can do it, so can I. I apologize,” said Reinhart. Yet he still did not feel up to telling the truth about Melville's-Splendor's-his short story. “You know,” he said facetiously, with a sweep of the arm to symbolize the marvelous dinner they would have before nightfall, the first ever prepared by his wife, “quarreling is not so bad when it ends with this kind of reconciliation.” Then, as a man will when one thing goes well, he looked for supporting pleasures, and thought of how he had kicked Fedder's ass for what turned out to be no greater crime than promoting a sewer.