The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  But the woman who was restored to him when Jeffo was eight weeks old was worth waiting for. Whether the cause was physiological or psychological, Erica had matured sexually. She retained her verbal modesty, but now she spoke of Brian’s organ gently and affectionately as “it,” and in moments of enthusiasm as “he.” For fifteen years (with five more months off for Matilda) they had made each other happy.

  Now it is as if the bad, half-forgotten early period of their marriage had returned. In bed Erica is compliant; but He is called Thing again, and under the soft rhythm of her pleasure Brian thinks he can hear a counterbeat: the heavy creaking and thumping of a deadly struggle between his will to enter and her will to delay the invasion as long as possible so that the occupation might be as short as possible. His main weapons in this battle are force and persuasion; Erica’s fuss and delay. She can’t get into bed at night now until she is sure, absolutely sure, that the doors are locked, the gas turned off, the thermostat down, the cat shut in the pantry with a full box of Kitty-Litter, and the children sleeping soundly and warmly covered. Then it takes her up to five minutes to find and insert her diaphragm (she refuses to go on the pill because of blood clots), and longer to get out of her nightgown than it takes Wendy to undress completely. And these are only the preliminary maneuvers.

  A real victory for Erica took place on the few occasions when she was able to hold back the invading troops for so long that, fatigued and impatient, they discharged all their artillery at the frontier. But real victory for either side is rare. Usually, rather than face Erica’s wounded body the next day (“I’m still a little sore down there,” she would say, placing a cushion on her kitchen chair), he held back for a while. And she, rather than face his wounded spirit, finally gave way; but she gave way condescendingly, with a characteristic noblesse oblige. For as she became a woman, his young princess had developed a less impulsive, more gracious and queenly manner: a gentle, charming air of always being in the right. This was something Brian had not minded in the past; had even liked. Erica’s views had generally agreed with his, and reinforced them. For years they were moral and social allies; together they observed and judged the world. Now she judges him. They judge each other, and each finds the other guilty.

  Yes, perhaps, Brian thinks, standing among the lettuces. But he has committed no overt act of aggression against Erica, deprived her of nothing. He had held to the Kennanite principle of containment, of separate spheres of action. Within the family, the marital sphere, he had been faithful. The idea of sleeping with Wendy in the marital bedroom, even if it could have been done with absolute safety, revolted him.

  And even if he is guilty, he is guilty of adultery, a form of love. Erica is guilty of unforgiveness, a form of hate. Besides, his crime is over; hers continues. Three months have passed; but still in every look, every gesture, Erica shows that she has not forgotten, has not pardoned him.

  It is as if he has incurred a debt which his wife will never let him repay, yet which she does not wish to forgive. She likes to see me in the wrong, Brian thinks, looking across the dark lawn at Erica; she intends to keep me there, possibly for the rest of my life.

  Very well. If he is to be imprisoned for life in the wrong, why should it be a solitary confinement? Let him have some company there, the company of a warm and willing fellow criminal. Or, to change the metaphor, if he is to be hanged for his crime, he might as well be hanged for a ram as a lamb.

  Brian sets his rock atop the third garbage can and returns to the house. He passes through the rooms and enters the display case.

  “I was watching the fireworks,” he explains.

  “I hope the children will get home all right. I’m worried about their trying to hitchhike back in the dark,” Erica says in a thin voice. “You never know who might pick them up.”

  “You worry too much,” Brian remarks, sitting down and taking up the Village Voice where he left off. Erica does not reply. Silence.

  It is night out now. Brian turns a page; its shadow flaps slowly across the table. Hearing another sigh, he looks up at his wife. She is staring into the middle distance out of eyes circled in muted blue.

  Now Erica turns her head. For a moment their eyes meet; then both look down. Erica knows that Brian knows what she is thinking about, and he knows she knows he knows. This mutual knowledge is like a series of infinitely disappearing darkening ugly reflections in two opposite mirrors. But if he asks her what she is thinking, she will not admit it. She knows that he does not want to ask her anyhow; he does not want to bring up the subject again. And she knows she must not bring it up. So they say nothing. There is nothing to say.

  4

  A HAZY, HOT SATURDAY afternoon in September. Erica is at Danielle Zimmern’s, where she has gone in response to an agitated phone call. The Zimmerns’ dog, Pogo, has been hurt in a dogfight and rushed to the vet. Danielle and Roo are still anxiously waiting with her there, and someone ought to be in the house when Celia comes back from the children’s film show. So, leaving her own children with Brian, who was not pleased, Erica has driven over.

  Now, sitting but not rocking in a Victorian plush rocker, she looks around the living room. It is the first time she has been alone there since the days when she and Danielle used to exchange baby-sitting. The furniture is still in the same places; the squashy old sofa and chairs upholstered in green plush; the geometric-patterned Oriental rug bought at a house sale by Leonard—its worn spots cleverly recolored by Danielle, Erica, Muffy and Roo with felt markers one winter afternoon years ago.

  The rug still glows red and gold where faint oblongs of sun lie on it; the window is still laced green with climbing and trailing plants. But the room seems both more disordered and barer. Much more wall shows through the shelves beside the fireplace; half the records have gone with Leonard, and more than half the books. An early painting by Roo of a blue-striped cat browsing among giant tulips has been fixed with masking tape over the mantel in place of Leonard’s Piranesi, and the mantelpiece itself is littered with letters and plants and sewing as it would never have been when he lived there.

  But though Danielle’s house has changed externally with the departure of her husband, it remains in other ways more comfortable and familiar than Erica’s own, which is physically unaltered. It is not occupied territory: Danielle’s children have not yet become unfriendly aliens. Celia, of course, is only eight—a sensible, serious child, not old enough to become an alien. And Roo, though now thirteen, still scorns adolescent culture and is interested only in her animals. Erica, who likes most children, gets on with them as well as ever; that is, exceptionally well. She feels a deep affection especially for Celia, whom she has known since the age of four.

  Now that Leonard is gone, Danielle and her daughters live together in moderate harmony broken by brief rebellious skirmishes. Once or twice a week there is a conflict of interests: an outbreak of shouting and/or tears; then the loser retires from the field. Celia withdraws to her room; Roo barricades herself in the basement with her hamsters, her turtles, her fighting fish, Pogo, and any other livestock currently in residence. If Danielle loses, which happens more rarely, she retreats to her campus office.

  “Hell they’re no better than your kids, they can be really impossible,” Danielle had said inaccurately but kindly two weeks ago. “But when I can’t take it, I just go up to school.” She set down her coffee mug and looked across the kitchen table at Erica. “That’s what you need, to get out of your house sometimes,” she pronounced. “You need a job.”

  And after additional discussion, Erica had agreed that Danielle might be right. Very possibly she would enjoy working part-time; she would make more money than she did doing occasional artwork. But above all it would be a distraction, and she needed distraction. She spent too much time brooding about the children, and about what Brian had done last spring. She knew she ought to make some effort to distract herself from this henlike brooding: to, as it were, get up off the nest and stop incubating her grudge, he
r despair.

  “If you were working, you wouldn’t have so much time to worry about Jeffrey and Matilda,” Danielle said; she did not mention the other egg, since Erica had never told her about it. She had not done so because she knew too well what Danielle would say when she heard of Brian’s infidelity: how warmly she would welcome Erica to the shabby fellowship of mistreated wives; how coldly she would speak of Brian, whom she had never liked much in spite of his friendship with Leonard, and now liked less because of it.

  At Danielle’s suggestion, Erica went to the university employment office, and was offered employment doing library research three days a week for a professor of psychology named J. D. Barclay. She assumed Brian would approve, for at various times in the past he had suggested she might look for a job. But this time his reaction was negative.

  “No, I don’t like the idea, not at all,” he almost shouted. “I’m amazed that you should commit yourself to something like this without discussing it with me.” Calming down, Brian explained to Erica exactly how inconvenient it would be to the whole family if she were to start working now. The house and children would suffer from the diversion of her time and energy, he pointed out, and Erica herself would suffer. Being both delicate and conscientious, she would wear herself out, possibly even become ill.

  Besides, Brian said, this job was beneath her—routine academic drudgery. And she did not really need the money; she would be taking work away from some graduate student who did. Moreover, he finally admitted, smiling, he disliked the idea of her working for John Barclay. Not that he was jealous, Brian said—and they both laughed, for J. D. Barclay was a fat, fussy elderly man with very little hair. But he was convinced that Barclay had offered Erica the job because she was his wife. It would amuse someone like Barclay, who was definitely not a friend of Brian’s, to have Brian’s attractive wife working for him, and be able to order her around.

  The intensity of Brian’s reaction, the number of his arguments, surprised Erica; it also pleased her For the first time in many weeks her husband was really looking at her and talking to her about something which was not household business or a current event. He was smiling at her, laughing with her, telling her that she was dedicated, attractive and superior to drudgery. She had better things to do with her time, he said, than check Barclay’s references; and presently he led her upstairs and proved it, with a considerate attention he had not shown in months.

  Afterward, as they lay in bed, Erica told Brian that he was probably right. Upon reflection, next morning, the idea that she was not after all going to work for Mr. Barclay did not trouble her; but she felt regret that the discussion with her husband was over. She would have liked to continue longer; she began to wonder if it might somehow be resumed.

  The following day Erica reported to Danielle that she was not going to take the job. She had been impressed not only by the logic of Brian’s arguments, she said, but by the evident strength of his feeling. It was obvious that he wanted her not to work much more than she wanted to work.

  Danielle’s response was immediate and indignant. If Erica wanted to work at all, she announced, she had a right to; wasn’t it her life? It was not her obligation to consider the unconscious motives of J. D. Barclay or the financial needs of hypothetical graduate students. As for the domestic problem, if Erica was making $2.50 an hour she could hire someone else to clean the house and do the laundry, couldn’t she?

  Yes, Erica said; she could. And armed with these counterarguments she returned home, anticipating another long, stimulating discussion. In order to enjoy it fully, she waited until late that evening, when the children had finished doing their homework to rock music and gone to bed.

  “I was thinking some more about that research job,” she said. “I ought to let Mr. Barclay know by Monday if I’m going to take it; it’s only right.”

  “I thought we’d decided you wouldn’t,” said Brian, glancing at his wife briefly and frowning with impatience. “I thought we decided that two days ago.”

  “Mm, but you know, I was thinking about it again.” Erica smiled charmingly.

  “Oh, really.” Brian looked up; his frown and her smile collided in midair; both exploded.

  “Yes.” Erica kept her voice even and clear. “It occurred to me that I could easily manage it if I got someone to come in two or three afternoons a week. Someone who could be here when Matilda and Jeffrey got home; and maybe she could do some of the cleaning and laundry too. A sort of housekeeper. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “No, not very,” Brian replied. This was the wrong answer. He should have said, as he often did, that of course she could have help if she wanted it; whereupon she would have said, as she always did, that she wasn’t sure she wanted to have any other woman taking care of her house and family.

  “You know I don’t like to have strangers in the house,” Brian added.

  “I know.” Erica frowned; now he was saying her lines.

  “Anyhow, we can’t afford it.”

  This too was her line. Erica began to feel that she had decided against her job for Brian’s reasons and not her own. After all, her first impulse had been toward it. If she were to back out now she would have wasted a lot of time and effort for nothing, except possibly to prove her own cowardice. Privately, she had thought of the job as a test: in a week she would be forty, and she had never earned money for anything except writing stories for children and drawing pictures and baby-sitting. She had a fine college record, but that was nearly twenty years ago, and she occasionally doubted that her intelligence had survived its long hibernation. “If I were working we could afford it,” she said.

  “I don’t want strangers taking care of The Children,” Brian announced, his tone capitalizing the noun like a honorific or divine title—which it was. Though they considered themselves agnostics, during the course of their marriage the Tates had worshiped several gods, of whom the most prominent were The Children. Like most divinities, they were served only intermittently. At certain moments, to express disrespect for The Children would have been blasphemy. At other times they were treated as ordinary beings called Muffy and Jeffo—and sometimes even (under the names Mouse and Pooch) as household pets.

  Mouse, Pooch, Muffy and Jeffo had long ago left the house on Jones Creek Road, to be replaced by two disagreeable adolescents; but The Children remained. Public observance of the faith continued, though they were worshiped less frequently and more formally—mainly at religious holidays such as birthdays and Christmas, and during visits to and from relatives. That Brian should call upon them now seemed to Erica unfair. Still, if he could summon the old gods, so could she.

  “Darling, strangers take care of The Children all day,” she said in a clear soft reasonable .voice. “Their teachers at school are strangers, as far as you’re concerned,” she added, alluding to the fact that Brian had declined to go to any PTA evenings for the past year.

  “If one of their teachers wants to resign and come to work for us, that’ll be fine,” Brian said. “But you know the kind of person you’d be able to get.”

  “No.”

  “Some woman who can’t find any other sort of a job. Illiterate, undependable—very possibly sick in some way.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—There must be women who—” Erica gasped, stopped, rallied her forces. “If we were worried about that, she could have a checkup. Of course we don’t want Jeffrey or Matilda catching anything. She could go to Dr. Bunch.”

  “I didn’t mean physically sick; though that’s possible too I suppose. I meant in the head. The sort of person you’re likely to find is going to, at the best, neglect The Children.” Brian’s voice was beginning to get tight, as if a heavy rubber band of the sort which propels toy fighter planes were being wound up in his throat. Erica knew that if the topic of conversation didn’t change soon, he would take off. But she could not bring herself to change it.

  “I don’t see why—”

  “I’ve explained to you why.” Anothe
r twist of the rubber band. “I don’t want you to take on an exhausting job, and I don’t want you to hire anybody. I wouldn’t be comfortable if I knew, we were both away from home, and there was someone here who might hurt Matilda or Jeffrey, or burn down the house.” Brian’s voice was dangerously tight now, knotted.

  “No, of course not. Neither would I.” Erica beat off the implications of her husband’s remark. “I think you’re being a little ridiculous,” she added, laughing. “I imagine I could manage not to hire a psychotic housekeeper.

  “I’d rather be ridiculous than have to worry about The Children,” Brian hissed. The plane had taken off; he was, in effect, whirring about the room now, his face pale and hard, his eyes glaring.

  Erica cowered and flung up her arms. “Of course, if you feel that strongly about it,” she bleated.

  “I feel extremely strongly about it.” The plane buzzed overhead, once more, then cut its engines and returned to base. “You know that.” Brian grinned at Erica—the conspiratorial, condescending grin of a moral victor.

  “Yes.” She smiled weakly and falsely back.

  All the rest of that evening, and ever since, Erica has felt guilty. She has been exposed as selfish, greedy and thoughtless of her family’s welfare: the sort of woman one cannot trust to do the right thing. Even though she has not taken a job, or hired a psychotic housekeeper, she has wanted to do so. Therefore she is, and will continue to be, in the wrong. Whatever she says or does, Brian’s attitude implies, she will remain there.

  Light steps on the front porch; a harmonic screech as the screen door is pulled back.