The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  In college they had avoided each other slightly, as women who are attractive in conflicting styles often do—for the same motive that prevents Atwater’s Supermarket from placing cases of ice cream and sherbet next to cartons of beer. But now that they had both been purchased and brought home, this ceased to matter.

  That first day Erica accompanied Danielle back to her house and stayed there, drinking coffee and talking, for two hours. Soon they met or telephoned almost daily. Erica recommended to Danielle her pediatrician, her garage, her cleaning woman, and those of her acquaintances she thought worthy of the privilege. They lent each other books, and went with their children to fairs and matinées and rummage sales. Muffy Tate and Ruth Zimmern (known as Roo) also became inseparable.

  Equally agreeable, and more surprising, was the friendship that developed between Brian and Leonard Zimmern. For years, both Erica and Danielle had had the problem that their husbands did not get on very well with any of their friends’ husbands. Now they realized, with relief, that this was not due to prejudice or character defects. It was merely that men of their age (Leonard was then forty-three, Brian forty-one) could not be expected to become intimate with the fledgling editors, lawyers, artists, teachers, etc., whom their wives’ friends had married.

  Since they were in different divisions of the university Leonard and Brian could not share the concerns of colleagues; but this very fact prevented competitive jockeying and the tendency to talk shop on social occasions, so tiresome to wives. Neither could hinder or further the other’s career; so they were able to risk disagreement, to speak their minds freely. The differences of temperament and background which had made Erica and Danielle fear they would quarrel actually endeared the men to each other—and to themselves. Leonard congratulated himself on a range of interests and sympathies that allowed him to get on with a WASP political scientist, while Brian felt the same in reverse. Moreover, the existence of the friendship proved to both men that any revulsion they might feel from some of the pushy New York Jews or fat-ass goyim bastards they ran up against professionally was ad hominem and not ad genere.

  Even the fact that Danielle did not really care for Brian; and that Erica, though she liked Leonard, found him physically unattractive (too thin, and with too much wiry black hair all over his body) helped to stabilize the relationship. The sort of complications which often occur when two couples spend much time together were avoided almost unconsciously, by mutual consent.

  “I see they’re at it again.” Danielle gestures with her head at the field next door. The bulldozer has now made what looks like an incurable muddy wound there, with the white roots of small trees sticking up from it like broken bones. “I thought maybe they wouldn’t come back this year, the way building costs are rising.”

  “That’s what I hoped, too.”

  “What you should do, you should plant some evergreens; then you won’t have to look at it.”

  “I’d still know it was there.” Erica smiles sadly.

  “Or you could put up a redwood fence,” continues Danielle, who has learned since Leonard’s departure to take a practical view of things and cut her losses. “That’d be faster. And if you did it now, before the people moved in, they couldn’t take it personally.”

  “Mm,” Erica says noncommittally, pouring her friend a cup of coffee. Redwood fences, in her view, are almost as bad as ranch houses.

  “Thanks.” Danielle sits down, spreading her full purple tweed skirt. “You’ve been drawing,” she remarks, glancing into the pantry, where Erica’s pad lies open on the shelf. “Let’s see.”

  “Just sketching. I was trying to work out something for the Ballet Group; Debby asked me to do a program for their spring show. Freezy, of course.”

  “That’s slick.” When alone, Danielle and Erica use the language of their college years; the once enthusiastic phrases have become a sort of ironic shorthand.

  “Virginia Carey is doing the poster, but she told them she hadn’t time for the program.”

  “Yeah, man.” Among the old slang, Danielle, since she started teaching, mixes that of the present generation.

  “I don’t mind really. I’m better on a small-scale. I know that.”

  “There’s one thing about posters: they get thrown away,” Danielle says encouragingly. “People save their programs for years.” Erica does not reply or smile. “Maybe you should do another book.”

  “I don’t know,” Erica sighs, stirs her coffee. In the past she had written and illustrated three books dealing with the adventures of an ostrich named Sanford who takes up residence with an American suburban family. These books had been published and had enjoyed a mild success. (“Gentle and perceptive fun for the 4-6 age group”; “The drawings are lively, delicate, and colorful.”) But the last of the series had appeared over two years ago. Erica does not want to write any more about Sanford. For one thing, she cannot think of anything else for him to do. And she does not want to write any more about Mark and Spencer, the children with whom Sanford lives. She knows that they would have grown up by now, and what they would be like.

  A silence, broken only by the regular humming of the new refrigerator. Aware that she is being dull, even unfriendly, Erica rouses herself. “How’s your class going?” she asks.

  “Oh, okay. Hell, you know I really love teaching; the only thing that gets me down is De Gaulle.” This refers to the head of the French department, whose name is not De Gaulle. “He asked me again today how my thesis was getting along, in this smiling threatening way. You know I can’t do any work on it until I have some time off, and I can’t afford time off. But he has no conception of what my life is like. I ought to be at the grocery right now, there’s nothing to eat at home.”

  “Would you like to have supper with us? You could bring Roo and Silly. Brian’s not coming back till Friday.”

  “Well ... yes, why not? Or you could all come to my house. I’ve got to shop anyhow.”

  “No, let’s eat here. I ought to be home when Brian calls.”

  “All right.”

  For a few moments both women are silent, thinking the same thing: that Danielle now has to come to dinner behind Brian’s back, and how uncomfortable that is. Danielle, however, blames the discomfort wholly on Brian, while Erica blames it partly on Danielle and partly on her ex-husband.

  It is nearly two years now since the trouble between Danielle and Leonard Zimmern started. At first, as often happens, their disagreements brought them closer to their best friends. Danielle confided in Erica, and Leonard in Brian; the Tates spent hours discussing the rights and wrongs of the case, and more hours conveying their decisions to the Zimmerns. It was their often-expressed conviction that Danielle and Leonard were both intelligent, serious, decent people who had deep affection for each other, and that they would, with help, be able to work out their difficulties.

  As time dragged on, however, it became more and more clear that the difficulties were not being worked out. This was very depressing and annoying to Erica and Brian, who had put so much thought and effort into the case, and whose opinions and advice had been neglected. Finally they declared to Leonard and Danielle that there was no point in talking about the problem any more; they just had to wait and hope. The result of this prohibition was to make relations between the couples strained and artificial. Whenever they met, it was as if they were actively supporting rival parties, Marriage and Divorce, but had agreed not to discuss politics. The agreement, however, did not preclude wearing campaign buttons and carrying signs. Brian and Erica, without intending it, found themselves silently demonstrating their support of Marriage in a rather theatrical way; smiling fondly more often than necessary, deferring to each other’s opinion, holding hands at the movies, etc.; while Leonard and Danielle, more noisily, demonstrated the opposite.

  After Leonard left home, early last year, things got even worse. The superior political qualifications of Divorce was the last matter the Zimmerns agreed upon. Bitter quarrels over money and object
s began; recrimination and self-justification; deception and self-deception. Friends and acquaintances of the couple began to choose up sides, declaring that Leonard (or Danielle) had after all behaved pretty unforgivably, and that it would therefore really be wrong to forgive him (or her).

  The Tates, however, refused to choose sides. They announced that they still loved and respected both the Zimmerns and intended to remain friends with both of them. This high-minded and generous impartiality naturally irritated everyone. Each party suspected that the Tates were really on the other side, and were only pretending sympathy for theirs. Possibly they were even conscious spies. At the very least, Leonard finally admitted, he was hurt and surprised that Brian and Erica could still feel the same toward Danielle after what she had done to him and the children. Danielle thought the same in reverse; and she said so whenever they met, which was beginning to be rather less often.

  The attachment between Erica’s and Danielle’s husbands, which had once helped to cement their friendship, now threatened to drive them apart. The continual recital by Danielle of Leonard’s many faults and crimes did not move Brian. Leonard was his friend, he finally told her outright, and he refused to judge Leonard’s character and behavior—or, presently, even to discuss it.

  There were also social difficulties. If the Tates had Danielle to a party, they could not have Leonard, and vice versa. Moreover, if it was a dinner party, there was the problem of finding an extra man whom Danielle would not resent being paired with, or suspect of having been asked “for” her, or both. Danielle despised the idea of her friends’ matchmaking: she could take care of that problem herself, she declared. It became easier to have her alone, or with her children, to family suppers where such suspicions could not arise.

  If Leonard was invited to dinner, on the other hand, he usually asked if he might bring along some girl always a different and hateful one. Most of these girls were not intrinsically hateful; but the way they sat in Danielle’s place at the table all evening, their eyes fixed proudly upon Leonard as he spoke about politics and the arts—just as Danielle’s once had been—was horrible to Erica. She ceased having Leonard to dinner at all, and only asked him to large parties where she would not have to notice his girl friends.

  But when Danielle heard of these large parties from mutual acquaintances she became upset, and since it was not her nature to conceal her feelings, the next time she came to supper she mentioned them. She also asked what Leonard’s current girl friend was like, which was not quite fair. On one occasion she remarked bitterly that she understood quite well why the Tates had asked Leonard to their last such party instead of her: it was because he was an important professor and literary critic, while she was just a deserted housewife and underpaid French instructor.

  That night after Danielle had left, Brian announced that he was tired of seeing her. Erica replied that she was tired of seeing Leonard and his girl friends. After considerable discussion, it became apparent that it might be better to let both relationships cool off for a while.

  In effect, this turned out to mean that Brian went on seeing Leonard and Erica went on seeing Danielle, but both avoided mentioning it. A fog of silent discomfort settled over that area, and was not much dissipated last fall when Leonard went back to New York alone.

  Erica and Danielle are still best friends, but their friendship now is full of Swiss-cheese holes in which sit things which cannot be discussed, which have to be edged around. Brian is in one of these holes, a rather large one. He has moved onto Leonard’s side: he resents Danielle because her obstinate and promiscuous behavior has driven his friend out of Corinth. Erica, on the other hand, sympathizes with Danielle’s view, which is that Leonard had taken her and the children to a distant provincial town and abandoned them there, probably on purpose, to live on macaroni and cheese, while he has returned to New York and eats every night in gourmet restaurants.

  Danielle breaks the silence. “Is there more coffee?”

  “What?”

  She repeats the question.

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” Erica stands up. In slow motion, she tests the white Pyrex pot with her slim pale hand, lifts it, and pours, off-center. An umber lukewarm stream runs across the blue-sprigged oilcloth. “Oh, how clumsy. I’m sorry.” She reaches for a sponge and slowly wipes the table, wrings the sponge out into the sink, and sits down again.

  Danielle looks at Erica, registering her appearance, which is dim today, even washed-out. Characteristically, she meets the problem head-on. “Hey. Are you feeling low about something?”

  “Not especially. Sort of betwixt-between. I think it’s the weather, and ... Erica pauses. The local climate, the encroachment of Glenview Homes, the fact that she has been asked to do elaborate artwork without remuneration, are too familiar to explain her mood. “And Brian’s being away, that—” She swallows the rest of the phrase, recalling that Leonard is now always away; that from Danielle’s point of view she has little to complain about. “And the children.”

  “Oh?”

  “They were rather tiresome this morning. So loud. And rude too, really. It used to be fun getting up and having breakfast with them, but now—Whatever I cook, they don’t like it; they want something else. They’re so awful to each other; and they don’t like me much either. And I don’t always like them. Sometimes I think I hate them.” Erica laughs to take the weight off this declaration, which she had not intended to make. The fact that she hates her own children is her darkest, most carefully guarded secret. Even to Danielle she has never fully revealed it. In public she speaks of them as everyone else does, with proud concern or humorous mock despair. Her acquaintances protest that on the contrary they have always found Jeffrey and Matilda most polite (as apparently they can sometimes pretend to be). Then, in a light, humorous tone, they complain amusingly of John’s room or Jerry’s attitude toward homework, which makes Erica wonder if they too might be harboring monstrous lodgers. When Susan says, smiling, that her children are “quite dreadful,” does she mean in reality that she dreads them? When Jane exclaims that her daughter is “hopeless,” has she indeed lost hope?

  “Adolescents ought not to be allowed to live at home. There ought to be a law against it,” she says, hopping back into the convention.

  “You’re telling me. I thought last night, when we were arguing about what to do with those mud turtles, how I’d love to give Roo to Reed Park along with them, and the hamsters and the chameleon and Pogo. They could all live in a cage there together and kind people could feed them through the bars.”

  Danielle, unlike Erica, can afford to be frank about how awful her children are. It is self-evident, at least to Danielle’s self, whose fault it is: that of their father, who has deserted them and given them neuroses, so that now Roo prefers animals to people, including her former best friend Matilda Tate, and Celia, age eight, has become shy and withdrawn.

  Erica laughs. “I’d like to send mine there too sometimes. Both of them.” She looks around guiltily at the kitchen clock, but it is only three: Jeffrey and Matilda won’t be home for half an hour. “It’s not really that I don’t like them any more,” she lies. “It’s just that I don’t know how to cope with them. And I know it’s my fault if they’re difficult.”

  “Your fault? Why shouldn’t it be Brian’s fault?”

  “Well, because I’m their mother. I must be doing something wrong—Oh, I know I am. This morning, for instance. They were late for school and they started shouting at me, and I shouted back at them.”

  “Hell, everyone loses his temper sometimes. You can’t always be right.”

  “Mm,” Erica replies, not expressing agreement. Her greatest ambition is to be right: seriously and permanently in the right. Until recently, that was where she usually felt she was. “It’s the same with the house. Lately, it’s as if everything I do goes wrong.” She laughs consciously.

  “But you’re the best housekeeper I know.”

  “Not any more. I keep forgetting to b
uy detergent and I leave the parking lights on in the car and I lose the library books. Brian keeps asking what’s wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” Danielle pronounces, “Everyone forgets things like that sometimes. Brian’s just making you feel guilty.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Certainly not consciously.”

  “It doesn’t have to be conscious,” Danielle says impatiently. “Men can make you feel guilty, and stupid and incompetent, without even trying. Because that’s how they really believe women are.”

  “Uh.” Erica makes a deprecating noise. She wishes she had never mentioned Brian. But it is too late: Danielle is already off again on her new hobby-horse, the awfulness of men. Erica sees this horse as a large gray-white wooden nag mounted on red rockers, unattractively and aggressively female.

  “It’s the truth. And what’s worse is, we accept that judgment. They get us to believe at one and the same time that we can’t do anything right and that everything is our fault because we don’t.”

  “You make it sound like an international conspiracy.” Erica smiles.

  Danielle shakes her head. “There doesn’t have to be any conspiracy. It’s all been going on so many hundreds of years that it’s automatic with them.” She leans forward; Erica imagines her urging the old gray mare on, its coarse white hair and tail, and her own dark mane, flowing roughly in the wind. “You know that conference I had Monday with Celia’s teacher? Well, at first, like I told you, I felt Mrs. Schmidt was being overanxious. Celia didn’t mind her nickname, I thought. She knew we meant it fondly, that nobody thought she was really silly, any more than they thought her sister was a kangaroo. But yesterday I was talking to Joanne—you know, the woman I met at that last WHEN meeting ...