The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  “It’s not so much that I can’t stand my psych seminars—It’s just that I want to do something you really respect—It’s because, you know, I’m emotionally fixated on you, I guess you dig that.” She raised her round blue eyes, but not her face, to his.

  Reviewing history now, Brian realizes it was at this moment that he should have been frank. He should have met Wendy’s offensive head-on; made it clear at once that he wasn’t the sort of professor who encouraged, or even allowed, the emotional fixations of students. He should have recommended that Wendy either unfix her feelings or stop coming to see him. Instead he chose to pretend that nothing had happened, to treat what she had said as unimportant. He assured Wendy in a light, humorous tone that it would pass; that she was confusing appreciation of his ideas with something else. He waffled—the word was accurate, suggesting something cooked up, full of little square holes.

  In effect, on November 11 of last year he had given Wendy Gahaghan permission to be in love with him, and to add this to the list of problems she came to discuss with him, two or three times a week now. The convention was maintained, on his part at least, that the attachment was a sort of mild delusion from which she would eventually recover, and which was therefore to be treated with humorous tolerance. Wendy accepted this convention to some extent. She refused to admit that she was deluded in loving Brian, or that a cure was likely; but she preserved a certain detachment from her infatuation. In his presence, at least, she took the sort of ironic, stoical attitude toward it that he had known older people to maintain toward a chronic disease.

  In the weeks that followed it came to be assumed that when Brian asked, quite routinely, how she was, he was inquiring about the state of her disease, her hopeless passion for him. “Well, I thought I was a little better, until I heard you talk at the Department Colloquium last night. What you said about Cordell Hull was so beautiful, I couldn’t stand it,” she would report. Or, “I’ve really been trying to get over it. I was rapping with Mike Saturday night; he said what I needed was a good fuck, that was all. So we tried it ...Uh-uh. It didn’t work. I mean, it was okay: Mike’s a nice guy, and he’s very physical—But this morning it was like it never happened, sort of.” Wendy would have gone on; but Brian, with a sense of moral scrupulousness, always changed the subject—whereas the truth was that he should never have allowed it to come up at all.

  This state of things continued for about three weeks. Then two events of little apparent importance, but far-reaching effect, occurred. First, on December 3, Wendy contracted the Asian flu. For over a week she did not come to Brian’s office. His first reaction was slight relief, followed in a day or so by concern. He thought back to their last meeting, and remembered her complaint that every single time she saw him she adored him more. “Well,” he had replied jokingly, “in that case perhaps you’d better see less of me.” Unaware that Wendy was in the infirmary with a fever of 103 degrees, he told himself that she must have taken his advice; that this would be hard for her, but that it was probably the right decision. In the days that followed, he found these thoughts repeating themselves in his head with irritatingly increasing frequency.

  The second event of slight apparent importance involved the Sayle Chair of American Diplomacy—not in the symbolic, but in the physical sense. Six years ago, when Brian inherited the Sayle Chair, he had also inherited an actual piece of furniture: an ancient, battered Windsor armchair with a high round back and a cracked leg, which had been presented to the first incumbent by some waggish students about 1928, and bore a worn label in imitation nineteenth-century penmanship: “Wm. M. Sayle Chair of American Diplomacy.” This object now occupied a corner of Brian’s office, which was already too small in his opinion, without serving any useful purpose. Nobody could sit on it safely; you could not even put many books on it.

  Gradually, Brian had begun to feel that the Sayle Chair did not like him; doubtless it thought he was not of the stature of its previous occupants. For a while he tried hanging his raincoat over it, but this only made it even more obtrusive. It looked like someone tall and thin and round-shouldered, probably Wm. M. Sayle, crouching in the corner with his head down. Brian would have liked to throw the chair out, but that was not feasible, for it had become a Tradition in a university which valued Tradition.

  On the morning of December 12, there was a knock at Brian’s door.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi.” Wendy Gahaghan, in her fringed leather costume, entered the office.

  “Well hello, stranger!” Brian forgot that Wendy had been avoiding him for her own good—his voice expressed only pleasure, and slightly injured surprise.

  “I had the Asian flu,” Wendy panted, out of breath from running up two flights of stairs. “I was in the infirmary, I couldn’t even call you.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Under her long, untidy, damp-streaked hair (there was a cold rain outside) Wendy was paler than usual. “You look tired.”

  “Yeah, I just got out this morning.” She smiled weakly.

  “Well, sit down then, rest yourself—No, not there!” he cried, as Wendy sank into the Sayle Chair. Too late: there was a sharp crack; the seat split, the left front leg collapsed, and Wendy collapsed with it. Her legs sprawled out, her books skidded across the gray vinyl floor.

  “Ow, ooh!” she shrieked as she landed hard on her back and the chair fell forward on top of her.

  “God damn.” In what seemed to him slow motion, Brian got around his desk and crossed the room. He lifted the chair. “Are you all right?”

  “I guess so.” Wendy flexed her arms and legs. Her fringed cowhide miniskirt had been pushed up to the waist, below which she was now covered only in a transparent pale nylon membrane, faintly shiny, like the sections of an orange or pink grapefruit. “Yeh, I’m okay. Hey.” She smiled weakly; but made no move to adjust her skirt or get up. “I broke your chair.”

  “It was cracked already,” Brian said. “I told you before not to sit there.” He set the chair down; it sagged lamely against the bookcase.

  “Oh, wow.” Wendy began to laugh. From where he stood above her, the effect was strange. Her transparent eyes rolled back; her mouth opened, showing wet pink depths; her full hips shook inside the nylon membrane. Brian felt a strong mixed emotion which he chose to interpret as impatience.

  “Here, get up,” he said firmly, almost angrily, holding out his hand.

  Responsive to his mood, Wendy stopped laughing at once. She scrambled up off the floor, looking frightened; her hand in his felt cold and small. Brian removed the Times and some books from another chair and pushed it forward. Wendy sat down.

  “Hey, listen, why I was laughing. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—See, I didn’t know your chair was broken. I thought you just didn’t want me to sit in it all this time because I wasn’t worthy of it” She grinned timidly. “I thought you were saving it for, like, important people.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know it. Oh, I’m always so stupid, stupid, stupid.” She hit her freckled face with her small freckled fists, half humorously, half melodramatically. “You probably must hate me now,” she added.

  “Of course not.”

  “But I ruined your famous chair.”

  Both Brian and Wendy looked at the Sayle Chair, which was down on one knee in the corner; its right arm hung broken at its side. It could be thrown out now, he realized. It would be thrown out.

  “Looks like it,” he agreed, smiling.

  “I guess you’ll never forgive me.”

  “I’ll forgive you,” Brian said generously. “As long as you don’t break anything else.”

  No reference was made that day to Wendy’s infatuation; nevertheless the situation had changed, in some way Brian did not understand. In the days that followed, instead of being aware of her desire only for brief moments while she was in the office, he felt it continually. The waves of her passion reached him like the vibrations of a distant bombardment, out of sight and almost inaudi
ble, but still shaking the stale academic air. Also he could not forget the sight of her lying on his floor. The image kept returning, photographically sharp: the lank yellow silk hair loose on the marbled vinyl, the matching curlier hair visible through the glossy nylon membrane. There was a hole in the hose just inside the left knee; a slightly convex circle of pink flesh appeared in the hole, and a long run, or ladder, pointed up to heaven—Trite, ridiculous, vulgar.

  Alternating with this image in Brian’s mind was a sense of his own self-denial. A pretty young student was passionately in love with him, but he refused to take advantage of her infatuation, which few men in his position would have. He had tried to do the right thing, to cure her of her attachment. He had rationed her visits to twice a week, and limited them to a half-hour; he had encouraged her to see and screw other people; he had refused to discuss her feelings at any length. That these methods did not work, that she was still in love with him, was not his fault.

  Christmas vacation arrived. Brian had resolved that during this period he would cease to think about Wendy. It proved difficult. Continually, and often at inconvenient times, he saw her face; he heard, inside his head, her small almost childish voice. “I guess you’ll never forgive me,” the voice said. “I want to give myself to you completely,” it said. And Brian would look across the table—or across the bed—at his wife, who had never given herself completely to anyone; who merely lent herself. Graciously and sometimes even enthusiastically, yes. But like an expensive library book, Erica had to be used with care and returned on time in perfect condition.

  Perhaps illogically, Brian had felt that he deserved an unusually merry Christmas; that Erica and the children ought somehow to reward him for his self-denial, his loyalty, by giving him at least a little of the sort of unquestioning love he was refusing for their sakes. Instead, Jeffrey and Matilda were uncooperative, dissatisfied with their presents, and sulky because there wasn’t enough snow on the ground for their new skis. And Erica, as if perversely, seemed to become less understanding and affectionate every day. She complained a great deal of how difficult the children were, blaming herself compulsively, without trying to do anything about it. She seemed not to realize that he had the same problem, only geometrically multiplied. She had to cope with two adolescents; he had to deal with several dozen—equally ill-mannered, uncooperative and dissatisfied.

  For Brian’s students are by no means all as appreciative as Wendy; many are indifferent to what he has to teach them, or even hostile. Wendy understood this, and sympathized. Erica did not: when he complained she thought he was exaggerating, remembering her own more tranquil and earnest college days. The reassurance she offers seems thin and shallow. When she tells Brian not to worry, that he is a brilliant professor, this statement is not based on knowledge, but merely on the wish to reassure, even to shut him up. She is not really interested in his problems, or concerned with his welfare or pleasure. Often she argues with him, and is unwilling to make love when or as he likes.

  The truth is that sexual novelty has never been Erica’s forte. Though passionate, she is a traditionalist. The suggestion that she wear her new lace bra or her patent-leather boots to bed, or assume some unusual position, is apt to provoke suspicion and unease. If he even mentions it Erica will suspect that Brian is tired of her as she really is; she will feel hurt. She will suspect that he is trying to make fun of her, to exploit her, even to humiliate her.

  Sometimes, if he waits until Erica is warmed up, he can introduce desirable novelties without her objecting, or even noticing. But on New Year’s Eve, after a boring party at which Brian had drunk more than he wanted without feeling any better, he went too fast.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Erica exclaimed as he lifted her off the bed onto the floor. “Ow, too cold!”

  “Come on. Let’s lie down here.”

  “Well, at least get the quilt,” Erica said, her pelvis and voice tensing. “Put it under me ... Wait ... No, on the rug, that way. All right, go ahead.”

  What followed, for both of them, was not more satisfactory than usual, but less so. It was further marred for Brian by the persistent image of Wendy Gahaghan lying on his office linoleum—exposed, silent, willing. He knew from hints she had dropped, anecdotes she had told, that she was not similarly wary of innovation. He knew that he could without a word have fallen on her there on the floor and possessed her in any way he liked, and earned only her passionate gratitude in that moment, early in the morning of New Year’s Day, the tide of Brian’s resolve had changed. Slowly at first, it began to flow in toward the shore, covering the stern moral rocks with foamy waves of self-justification. He did not, however, give up the idea of himself as a serious and responsible person, concerned to obey the categorical imperative and seek humanistic goals.

  What he did was to turn the problem inside out. Wendy was suffering (he told himself), and had been suffering for perhaps a year, from unconsummated love. It was the worse for her because, in her world, such feeling was so rare as to be almost unknown. Among her friends even the most transitory physical attraction was consummated as a matter of course, and at once. But romantic passion, as De Rougemont has pointed out, is a plant which thrives best in stony soil. Like the geraniums in Erica’s kitchen, the less it was watered, the better it flowered. That was why Wendy loved him; while for the boys she casually slept with she felt little.

  Therefore, Brian argued with himself as the soapy waves of false logic sloshed toward the shore, what he really ought to do was to sleep with Wendy himself, as soon as possible. She would see then that he was only a man like other men; her disease would be cured. He owed it to her to provide this cure, even at the cost of deflating his value in her eyes and ruining his moral record. He didn’t want to commit adultery, he told himself, but it was his duty. It was a choice between his vanity, his selfish wish for moral consistency, and Wendy’s release from a painful obsession.

  Looking back now, Brian finds it hard to understand how he had entertained such self-righteous nonsense; how he, a serious political scientist, had been able to fool himself with the old means-end argument. For he had applied this argument to himself as well as to Wendy; he had hoped to cure his obsession as well as her passion by sating it. He had been intermittently aware, he recalls now, that outsiders might not appreciate the extent of his altruism in screwing Wendy Gahaghan, if they heard of it—but he had counted that almost one more thorn in his martyr’s crown.

  He did not realize then that he was already becoming addicted to Wendy, and that he was planning to increase the dose partly because he needed to quiet the anxiety that he was in every sense, including the most private, a small man. In a shady part of his mind which he did not usually visit he wished to learn her opinion on this matter. Erica could not judge it, any more than she could judge his professional competence, since, having known no other men, she had no means of comparison. It was true that earlier in his life several women had assured Brian that he was of average size. But what if they had been politely lying? Or what if he had shrunk, in fifteen years? Brian recognized the childish, neurotic stupidity of these ideas, but he could not suppress them entirely. “Just once; just one shot, that’s all, to cure you both,” his addiction whispered; and at last he promised it what it wanted.

  When Wendy appeared in Brian’s office after Christmas vacation he was momentarily embarrassed. He had denied her for so long that changing direction was awkward. Fortunately, almost miraculously, she provided him with an opening.

  “How are you?” he, asked, falling into the traditional starting gambit.

  “Just the same.” Wendy grinned. “Or worse, maybe.”

  “I’m sorry.” Uncharacteristically, Brian had risen when she knocked, ostensibly to shelve some books, but in fact to get out from behind his desk—that old defensive fortification which had now become a military, impediment.

  “Nothing helps any more. Being away from you hurts. And being here hurts worse, some ways.”

  “I d
on’t like to see you unhappy.” Having replaced his books, Brian was now standing next to Wendy. He thought that he hadn’t realized before how small she was, how childlike. He towered over her not only intellectually and chronologically, but physically. A pleasant sensation.

  “I know.” She gave a little apologetic smile and shrug. “If you would kiss me, just once, I’d feel better.”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about that,” Brian said, smiling down. “I think just possibly you might be right.” He had imagined that he would explain his analysis of Wendy’s problem and outline the solution he proposed, before putting it into practice. But events moved too fast for him. It was not until the next day that he was able to present his theory—which, by then, was already being proved incorrect.

  Waiting in his office now, Brian vows to himself that the end of his affair will be better governed than the beginning. His two previous attempts to break it off had not worked because they were based on a faulty political analysis of the situation—possibly due to unconscious resistance on his part. Wendy does not care if his wife knows of the affair; among her friends such matters immediately become public anyhow. She knows also that her work has not fallen off since January; and even if it had fallen off, she wouldn’t have cared.

  But there is one thing which will convince her that the affair must end; one sentence Brian can speak which will make her almost as eager to end it as she had been to begin. When she comes in today, Brian can tell her that his own work is suffering; that he has been unable to write his new book, a project she regards with awe.

  “Too much of my energy is going into our relationship,” he will say, in a few minutes now. “There’s not enough left for my work.”

  And what is more, this will be the literal truth. It is not only that his affair with Wendy consumes certain hours; more profoundly, it consumes the emotional and physical energy which at other times has been sublimated into the writing of political history. As his roommate had put it once back at Harvard, when Brian made a similar choice before an important exam: “Brian thinks it all comes out of the same faucet.”