Reinhart's Women by Thomas Berger

I really want you to take it. And if you think she got the idea to please me or something, you’re wrong. She was already looking for somebody who would fill the bill. When she heard about you she was interested, but she was really sold by meeting you and seeing for herself that you have a marvelous personality. You’re just the kind of person who can charm the pants off those housewives.”
    Reinhart felt himself blush. The image was almost indecent for a man of his years—and also exciting, of course. But that his daughter should conjure it up was unsettling, even though she. ... He asked himself a wretched question: Was she now exempt from the usual rules that governed the association of daughter and father?
    “Yes,” he said sardonically, “I’m notorious for driving women wild. Your mother could tell you that.”
    “Oh,” said Winona, “by the way, Mother’s back in town.” She ran her fingers along the lapels of her terry-cloth robe, as if this were information which he could accept casually.
    There were days on which one was hit with everything at once.
    “Has she got in touch with you?”
    “Blaine told me.”
    “That’s more than he told me. I spent some of the afternoon with him. I understand you saw him earlier.” At her look he said quickly: “I think it’s great that you two have got closer!”
    “Huh?” The comment seemed to startle her. “Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, I thought I should warn you.”
    “Thanks,” Reinhart said, “it is helpful. But you know I can’t decently discuss your mother with either you or Blaine....” He went into the kitchen, but turned in the doorway. “If she’s ‘back in town,’ then it’s more than a visit?”
    “I don’t know. That’s all he said. We were talking about other subjects.”
    Reinhart said: “I really shouldn’t say much about your brother, either, Winona, but I hope you’re not too hurt if he isn’t always as sympathetic as he should be.”
    “Funny you say that now. He’s nicer these days than he has ever been in all my life! I don’t like to be cynical, but I do wonder if that’s because of his trouble.”
    “Trouble?”
    She raised her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that. He asked me not to. Gee.”
    “Better go the rest of the way, dear, as long as I know there’s something I’m not supposed to know.” Funny the way that sometimes works out: the precise details are often anticlimactic.
    “Mercer has left him.”
    Reinhart repeated this, again with a purpose to get past the worst moment. How much of life passes in this fashion!
    “So that’s what he meant, poor devil,” he said mostly to himself, with reference to Blaine’s cryptic remarks about women. “God, how rotten for him.” He pulled a chair from the dining-room table and sat down. “Did she take the children?”
    “No. She simply took off.” Winona shook her head. “He’d die if he thought I told you.”
    “Yes, and isn’t that awful?” Reinhart made a doleful sound. “I wish I knew some way to earn his trust, but this has been a lifelong thing—Your mother has come to look after the kids, then? I hope they get fed properly.” He was as scrupulous as he could be when speaking of Genevieve in front of Winona; therefore two truths went unuttered. One, Genevieve was responsible for Blaine’s distrust of him in the first place; the situation had no hope of being improved if she was nearby to feed her son more poison. Two, Genevieve was an even viler cook, when she deigned to prepare food at all, than his late mother, whose only culinary technique had been frying-to-ash. Indeed, it had been the combination of these two women, between whom he had spent more than four decades, that drove him into the kitchen. “So you saw her then?”
    “Mother—or Mercer?”
    “The former,” said Reinhart. “Had she already arrived at Blaine’s house?”
    “She was upstairs, I think. She didn’t come down. Maybe she didn’t know I was there.”
    “And you