The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  “Hey, wow!” Davidoff exclaimed, laughing good-naturedly. “Is that your lunch?”

  Equally annoying, and perhaps more disturbing, was Erica’s reaction that evening. She seemed to be aware only of the humor of the incident and not of what it implied about her own state of mind. “It was a mistake, that’s all,” she kept saying, obviously suppressing an impulse to laugh as Davidoff had done, but more ill-naturedly.

  “You already said that,” he told her. “What I was asking you is why you should make that sort of mistake. What it means.”

  “What could it mean?” Erica stopped smiling and looked at Brian in what seemed to him a disturbed way.”

  “Well, that you were disturbed, or unconsciously angry at me.”

  “Why should I be angry at you?” Erica’s tone was ambiguous; for a moment he imagined she knew everything. Fortunately, he was not startled enough to lose the offensive.

  “I couldn’t say. What concerns me is—” and he went on to list other failings of Erica’s which concerned him. But her question has remained hanging in the air ever since, half visible, like a cobweb. It is hanging there now. Suppose she does know, Brian thinks, only she doesn’t know he thinks she knows. But then, why doesn’t she tell him she knows? If she doesn’t know, then her behavior is crazy. Unless of course she is still angry about what she does know, about last spring. Should he admit that he knows this? Brian blinks; he feels as if spiders were at work in his head, spinning sticky gray webs of conjecture from point to point. Or are they in Erica’s head?

  But these spiders are not the most serious of Brian’s troubles this morning. His doubts about his wife’s mental condition, the dislike he feels for his children, and his professional irritations and disappointments, all are as nothing today to the problem of Wendy Gahaghan.

  To put it briefly, Wendy has recently become preoccupied with the idea of bearing a child—preferably Brian’s child. She mentioned this interest at first casually, some weeks ago, in reply to a compliment from him: “Yeah, they’re all light—only I sort of wish they were bigger.” She smiled confidingly. “When I have a baby, I’m going to breast-feed it for six months at least—that makes your boobs grow, you know.” A week later the theme recurred: “Gail says if it wasn’t for the population problem she and Danny would have five or six kids. I can groove on that, you know? I mean if you love somebody you naturally want to have as many kids with them as you can; like I’d like to have kids with you.”

  This remark made Brian uneasy; apprehensive. As a form of insurance, he told Wendy that he sincerely hoped her friends weren’t planning to become parents at once; he elaborated upon the harm which was so often done to society, to their children and to themselves by people who reproduced irresponsibly, before they were economically or emotionally mature. Ecologically speaking, it was just littering—in every sense.

  And then finally on Friday, when they last met—and at a very intimate moment: “You know, it’s funny how things work out, with heredity. I mean I was thinking just the other day, if you and I had a baby, what would it look like.” Brian refused to speculate on the appearance of this hypothetical infant. “I don’t know, and I don’t ever want to know,” he said. Drawing back, he looked at Wendy’s smooth, slightly convex belly uneasily, imagining it inflate before his eyes like a pale balloon. “That’d be the end of everything. Anyhow, you don’t want to think about babies now; your job is to think about finishing graduate school,” he added, smiling uselessly, for Wendy had turned her face away. “Okay?”

  A silence.

  “Okay,” Wendy finally replied, turning back, also smiling. But her smile was not very happy, Brian recalls, and she left soon afterward. Probably he had hurt her feelings.

  He had realized this even then, and planned to straighten things out when they next met on Tuesday; but there was an unexpected department meeting. He called the apartment that morning, something he always dislikes doing, and as he feared got only Wendy’s roommate. He left a brief, perhaps brusque message—no doubt hurting Wendy’s feelings again, for she has not called back. It is now Thursday noon, and she has still not called, nor come around to the office.

  What he has to explain to Wendy is that his reaction to her baby fantasy was not meant to hurt, but was natural, automatic. He is too old to have any more children (indeed, he sometimes thinks, too old to bear the ones he already has). But if Wendy has daydreams of becoming a mother, that too is only natural. He has daydreams himself: imagining himself nationally recognized as a political analyst; called to New York or Washington, legally and financially free to enjoy life there; to meet someone perhaps, in certain respects, like Wendy. He has entertained these fantasies as often as Wendy hers, and more foolishly—for she will presumably have children someday, but he will never be famous or free. He will have to sit in this same office until he retires, legally and financially bound to Corinth University and to three people toward whom he feels almost nothing now but obligation: a woman who hates him and is having a nervous collapse, and two revolting (in both senses) adolescents. It is the bitterness of this, perhaps, which made him speak hastily to Wendy, whose life is not over. He admits it. He spoke hastily to her, and harshly.

  All right, Brian thinks. I hurt Wendy’s feelings. It is up to me to apologize, to point out that I felt no revulsion from her maternal fantasies, only a practical concern that they should not become reality yet. What I should do now is call her up and explain this.

  Brian looks at the telephone on his desk, but does not lift it. It is noon, and Wendy is probably at home; but so, unfortunately, is her roommate, Linda Sliski—a skinny, long-haired girl with large hands and feet and a breathy manner, who sometimes trips on mind-expanding drugs. Brian regards Linda with wariness and antipathy, both because of what he knows about her and because of what she knows about him, Wendy insists that Linda is really straight and loyal, that she would never cop out, but he is not convinced. He has a recurrent dread that on one of her trips Linda’s mind will expand so far that his name will leak out through the cracks.

  Brian avoids Linda whenever possible. If he sees her approaching him on campus he turns onto another path, climbs unnecessary stairs, or abruptly enters the nearest building. In closed spaces such as the coffee shop, he either pretends not to notice Linda or gives her a rapid, hearty “Hello” and moves off as fast as possible. At his earnest request, Wendy has so arranged it that Linda is always out of the apartment when he comes to lunch. He feels a suspicious dislike of even speaking to her, how ever briefly, on the telephone.

  Frowning, tightening, his face, Brian decides to wait until tomorrow, when he will see Wendy, and not to worry about it meanwhile. Yet when he stops in the department office on his way to lunch and recognizes her handwriting on an envelope among the junk mail in his box, his facial muscles loosen in relief.

  “Good news, I hope?” asks Helen Wells, the department secretary, observing this relaxation.

  “No, just advertisements and bills,” replies Brian. Smiling, he takes his mail back upstairs to read in the privacy of his office opening it, as always, in reverse order of interest.

  Now At Last FUNK AND WHANG PUBLICATIONS Bring You What You As An Educator Have Been Asking For ...

  Dear Friend of American Liberties: On May 16 of this year C. Daniel Farber was arrested following an alleged sit-in and destruction of property at the Clinton County Draft Board. His bail was set at ...

  Dear Brain—

  I guess maybe this is the last letter I will ever write you which kind of blows my mind because I figured I would write you and rap with you the rest of my life. Which maybe wasn’t saying so much.

  The end of everything as you so firmly said so I’m splitting as you know, and want. I would have dug discussing what it means that it happened, getting into why and how but when I tried to bring up the topic I got such bad vibes from you I couldn’t hack it. Like Professor Frankel said I have sometimes the difficulty in expression. My hangup. I was too psyched yester
day when you didn’t come to take a chance on calling or going to see you in case I might like start screaming and really freak out, which was why I didn’t as undoubtedly you know because you know everything. It took me until this morning to stop being childish and personal and laying the blame on you which was a copout because we both knew and said from the beginning that if I got knocked up it was my responsibility or as it turned out irresponsibility. Anyhow I have to cope now. I got pretty flaky waiting for you to call but finally I accepted that you weren’t going to, that you had decided. If you know everything then you must be right it would have hurt worse to lay it on the line although I still can’t visualize how anything could hurt worse.

  I was going to disappear silently like WHOOSH Away Soil and Toil on the TV only I was afraid (and Linda agrees) that if I did you might have some doubts later and get racked up which would be a bad development because the whole idea is for Brian Not To Be Hassled, to be always and more and more calm and productive and together—as much as anybody can be in this American Century—granted that. And to finish your book which will be a beautiful child for you and the world. Don’t regret anything not ever I don’t. I wanted to love completely and give my whole self to you and I got my wish not the way I thought but that’s how it is with wishes. Zed says we all live many different lives and this one is over for me that’s all. I want to say besides, think of me some cold afternoons in your office but I know that’s an ego trip. Don’t think of me just remember how important what you are writing is and now nothing can get between you and it anymore. And take care of yourself.

  yours yours yours yours yours

  Brian’s first reaction to this document is bewilderment, followed, as he reads on, by great vexation of spirit. How can Wendy have become pregnant? Supposedly, she is on the pill; “what it means that it happened” therefore is that she has lost her balance and carelessly, stupidly, fallen off the pill. Next he is angry at his own stupidity, for not having foreseen this, prevented it; then again at her for not having told him, for having been so stupidly inarticulate.

  But after all, Wendy admits these faults. He reads her letter over again and is struck by her admission of weakness, her acceptance of responsibility, her generous refusal to blame or involve him. Believing that he knew what had happened, she has waited for him to speak. Since he has not, she accepts it. Without asking for anything, without making a scene, she declares her intention of leaving town, presumably to seek an abortion (“I have to cope now”).

  For a moment he considers allowing the misunderstanding to continue, accepting her generosity silently and letting her go—but only for a moment. To do that would be both morally and practically indefensible—both bad government and bad politics.

  Besides, he wants to see her. He must see her, must clear up the misunderstanding, assure himself of her emotional stability and continuing discretion, assure her of his continuing affection, his emotional and moral support—And his practical support. Legal operations cost a lot of money; illegal ones, not covered by Blue Cross, cost even more. Brian can afford to replace Blue Cross, and it is right that he should do so.

  Lifting the receiver, he dials Wendy’s number, planning what he will say (Why didn’t you tell me—How could you have thought I—). The phone begins to ring. (But there’s no need to break off your education, to drop out of school—A short medical leave of absence—Mononucleosis is the usual cover story—) The dead, even burr of a telephone sounding in an empty apartment; three times, four, five. Has she left town already?

  He sets the receiver back and begins to read Wendy’s letter for the third time. “Zed says we all live many different lives and this one is over for me that’s all” he reads; “... disappear silently ...The end of everything ...

  Brian half starts up from his desk, making the noise “Awff.” He controls himself, sits down again. He warns himself aloud not to leap to conclusions, while a voice located somewhere behind his left ear shouts silently into it that time is of the essence if a frightful disaster is to be averted. He dials Wendy’s number again, while another voice at the top of his head remarks how in crisis even sophisticated, educated men employ the rhetoric of cheap political melodrama; this fact has interesting historical applications, it remarks.

  Brr, brr, brr. But perhaps that wasn’t Wendy’s number. Brian replaces the receiver and consults a student directory. Though the figures appear to be the same, he dials them again, slowly, with fingers which feel swollen. Brr, brr, brr, brr, etc.

  All right, this is an emergency. He must think clearly, logically. If Wendy is not home, she might be somewhere on campus. Leaving a note on his door, he hastens out and spends the next half-hour in a rapid tour of the university, becoming, in spite of Wendy’s declared intention, progressively more and more uncalm and unproductive and apart. He looks for her in the reading room and in the library stacks, in three cafeterias and two coffee shops and the campus store. He looks also for Linda, whom he has so often in the past tried to overlook. But he cannot perceive them, though people in all these locations perceive him. Some of them stare at him, probably wondering what he is doing there. And what is he doing there? If Wendy plans to kill herself, or even if she only plans to leave town, she isn’t going to be reading in the reserve book room or eating one of her cream-cheese-on-raisin-bread sandwiches in the Blue Cow.

  This evidence of his mental confusion makes Brian stumble on the steps of the library. He stops, tries to catch his breath. He must clarify his mind, review the situation as a whole, make a structural analysis, reject extraneous data.

  Here in Corinth, because of its unique geological history, the means of suicide are always at hand. Wherever claustrophobia for life strikes, you are seldom far from the easy way, the traditional Corinth University way, out. Two of the bridges over the north ravine, and one over the south, are most popular. But the cliffs are everywhere, and at this time of day more private. Every year a few unhappy students, in the local phrase, “gorge out.”

  If Wendy has already leaped into one of these deep, fatal cracks in the landscape, there is nothing to be done, Brian thinks as he stands on the library steps panting and sweating, though it is a cool, cloudy day. Nothing to be done even if she is now on her way; there are too many possible spots, he could never find her. But she will be found, soon enough—Found, identified, examined; found to be with child, his child. The tragic event will be reported as usual in two discreet paragraphs on an inner page of the Corinth Courier, read with supper tomorrow by everyone in town, by Erica. His denials. “I haven’t seen her, spoken to her—hardly seen her, spoken to her” (more believable) “since last spring. Of course, I’m afraid, she was always somewhat unbalanced—” Unbalanced, fell easily. The event recorded at greater length, with a recent photograph in the student paper, read with breakfast next day by everyone; by Linda Sliski. Linda’s sorrow, her rage, her consciousness, the expansion of her consciousness into that of others, many others, expanding circles of others.

  “Good afternoon,” remarks a colleague, one George Chambers, passing Brian on his way into the library.

  “Mrm,” Brian replies, recalled to public awareness. He holds out his hand, palm up like a beggar, to give the impression that he has paused outside the library only for a moment, to test for rain. It is not raining, but looks threatening. A strong wind is blowing across the quad under dark, smoky, dirty-looking clouds. Rain is promised, lightning, thunder, hail. Automatically Brian begins to walk away from the library toward his office. Publicity, scandal, ruin. George Chambers, a family man of exemplary sensitivity, will no longer wish him a good afternoon, or any afternoon.

  Back at his office, panting and slightly giddy, as if he had just climbed a mountain instead of two flights of stairs, Brian again lifts the phone. He dials Wendy’s number and lets it ring, eleven times. As it rings he visualizes the apartment. He imagines the bathroom, which has pink walls, white tiles. The sink and tub are antique, rust-stained under the faucets. A razor blade rests o
n the rim of the tub, which is beginning to fill with blood, and with Wendy’s long pale hair. She has just cut her wrists, though inexpertly and perhaps not fatally; but, leaning over the rim, she has already lost consciousness. Slamming his office door behind him, Brian half walks, half runs through the building toward the faculty parking lot.

  Wendy’s apartment is on the second floor of an old frame house in Collegetown. It is approached by way of a steep flight of stairs, a sort of narrow chute-lined in red cabbage-rose wallpaper leading to a glassed door curtained inside with green burlap. Brian alternately knocks upon this door and shakes it by the cut-glass handle, calling out Wendy’s name and demanding that she let him in.

  No answer. He descends the stairs and goes outside, walking around the building and looking up at the windows of the apartment. It is hard to see anything, for the backyard is on a downward slope and littered with trees and drifts of leaves and rusted play equipment.

  Brian begins to climb the fire escape. Breathing hard after three flights, he draws level with Wendy’s bathroom. Between pink curtains he can see a corner of the mirror; then as he climbs further some toothbrushes of varied colors. The sink. The empty tub. Of course, he thinks on the way down, Wendy would never cut her wrists; she is afraid of blood.

  Standing in the yard, frowning up at the second floor, Brian suddenly sees in his mind right through the brown shingles into Wendy’s kitchenette. Wendy is there; she is kneeling on the spatter-pattern linoleum, with her head inside the stove. The vision is so clear that he can even see the two metal racks which normally occupy the oven, and upon which Wendy has in the past broiled Swiss-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches for his lunch. To make room for her head, she has removed these racks and placed them against the wall. Brian hurries into the building again and up the cabbage-lined chute. Again he rattles the door handle, and shakes it.