The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  Erica rests her elbows on the sill, looking out over the lovely empty world, contemplating with wonder her own state of mind. She had expected to feel some moments of painful satisfaction at having made the right decision about Wendy, but not this continuing joy. Is it true, after all, that virtue is rewarded?

  Of course there have been some difficult moments. But she would not have had it otherwise; without them, her happiness might have seemed too dreamlike; almost unreal.

  Many of these moments have come about because she is still outwardly living a lie, though not one of her own choosing. As yet the real story behind the separation is known only to Danielle and to Wendy’s roommate. Everyone else in Corinth believes that the Tates have parted because of mutual dislike. It is Brian, of course, who has invented this fiction. He has made her promise to conceal the truth until after their divorce—in order to protect Wendy, he claims. But it is really himself he wishes to protect, for Wendy has no social shame, and would be proud to announce her condition from the steps of the college library through a microphone. Erica acceded to her husband’s demand very reluctantly. In her view it was not only dishonest but foolish. It would not prevent scandal, but merely postpone it—and very likely accentuate it. For now, when the real facts are uncovered, one of them will be that Brian and Erica have been lying to all their acquaintances for several months.

  Already many of these acquaintances are not satisfied with the report of mutual incompatibility; they want to know the details. Was it sex? money? relatives? drink? They have invited Erica to lunch and to parties in order to pursue the investigation. Usually, she has gone, and smilingly endured their covert or overt scrutiny, their pitying and prying remarks; she has met their tactful or tactless inquiries with calm self-possession. This restraint was painful at first, but she kept silent by reminding herself that her inquisitors would learn the truth soon enough. Then they would remember how she had said with a fine smile that this separation was the best thing for everyone. By now she no longer regrets her promise to Brian; she feels as if she were walking through the world carrying within her a wonderful secret, which like Wendy’s child grows larger every day.

  Concealing the facts from her own children has been harder. She and Brian had given out the official version together at a special family council; they had decided beforehand, not without acrimony, what to say. Brian had wanted to break the news gradually, and speak now only of a temporary separation. But she had insisted that even if they didn’t tell the whole truth, they must not tell any lies which the children would remember later. They mustn’t promise that the separation would be temporary; Brian mustn’t say that he had to be alone because of his work. She had spent wearisome hours convincing him of this, and more hours devising honest but evasive answers to every question she imagined the children might ask.

  When the council finally took place it was anticlimactic. Brian and Erica made the short, neutral statement they had agreed upon; Jeffrey and Matilda received it stolidly, without apparent curiosity. Pressed for an opinion, they became even blanker. Their father was going to be away from home for a while—but he had been away before, lecturing and at conferences; and this time he would still be in town and would see them regularly. So what was the big deal? It was okay by them. No, they had no questions.

  During the next few days, however, both Jeffrey and Matilda approached their mother separately. Erica had anticipated and even hoped for this. When Matilda asked how long Dad was going to be gone, she had her answer ready (“I can’t say now. It depends on a lot of things ...). As she spoke she looked at her daughter and felt, for the first time in months, a deep rush of natural sympathy—not so much maternal as simply female. As a child, Muffy had been strikingly pretty, like her mother: slim, graceful, elfin. Now, at thirteen-and-a-half, she was pudgy and shapeless. Her beautiful pale brown silk hair had been split and roughened and streaked orange by cheap dyes; her mouth was full of orthodontic hardware. But beneath this appearance, beneath the badly patched jeans and the baggy sweatshirt with ZOWIE! printed on it in comic-book lettering, was—or one day would be—a woman like Erica herself. Like Erica—or Danielle, or Wendy—Matilda would grow up, fall in love, have children, and be disillusioned by some man. And this man already existed, somewhere in the world. At that moment, wherever he was—standing in line for a Thanksgiving film matinée in some small town or big city, walking in the country, playing football in a vacant lot, or in some college stadium—he was slowly moving, walking, running toward this house, toward Matilda. It might take him a long time, but eventually he would get there, and get at her, and it would all begin over again.

  “... so we just have to wait and see,” Erica concluded, touching the shoulder of Matilda’s pink ZOWIE! sweatshirt gently.

  “You think Dad could be gone a month, maybe?”

  “He might.” Erica smiled, conscious of all she could not say now, would be able to say later.

  “If he doesn’t come back—” Matilda looked up at her intently, as if she had understood somehow, instinctively—as if she knew that Brian would not come back, and was glad of it.

  “Yes, ducky.”

  “Well then, Mummy.” Muffy’s eyes lit, and she spoke with her old warm, childish eagerness. “Can we get a TV?”

  “Certainly not.” Erica ceased to smile.

  “Why not? You said it was Dad who didn’t like TV.”

  “He doesn’t like it, and I don’t like it.” Erica tried to control herself and speak more evenly.

  “You said you didn’t care.”

  “I did not, Matilda.”

  “You did too. Anyhow, what about majority rule? It’s two against one now, because Jeffrey wants TV too ...Oh yeh? ...You always give us this bullshit about fairness and democracy, but you don’t mean it ... phony ... mean ... She continued in this manner for some time, becoming whinily insistent and then abusive, finally referring to her parents as “senile freaks.”

  Erica managed to remain calm, even forgiving. She looked at the mouthful of metal and rubber from which this abuse was issuing and thought of the fairy tale in which every word the ugly daughter utters comes out a toad. It was really as if Muffy had fallen under a bad spell—the spell of Brian’s lies. If Erica could have told her the truth she would have had other things to think of than TV, and this bad unreal scene would not be taking place.

  When Jeffrey accosted her a few days later Erica was more on her guard. He appeared at the kitchen door when she was cooking supper, and barked, “Hey. What’s for eats tonight?!”

  “Kangaroo burgers, baked kangaroos and kangaroo sticks.” This was an old family joke, meaning that the answer to a question was obvious, just as now: the hamburgers were simmering in onion sauce on the stove, the potatoes visible through the oven door, and she was at that moment scraping a carrot under the tap.

  “I just asked,” Jeffrey grumbled, not smiling. He slouched into the room and remarked in the same noisy, offhand way, “Listen: this business of Dad moving out. I don’t get it.”

  “Really?” Erica stopped scraping. “What don’t you get?”

  “The whole scene. I mean, you don’t fight or anything, like Joey’s parents.”

  “People don’t have to fight to be better apart for a while.”

  “But what’s the hassle then? How come you can’t hack it with Dad?” Jeffrey continued in the hip speech he has begun to affect. “I mean, he zaps everybody sometimes, but he’s not basically such a bad cat.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t explain it to you now.” She smiled at him, conscious of exerting calm patience.

  “When can you explain it?” Jeffrey began to drum with the joined fingers of one hand against the counter, an irritating nervous gesture that he must have picked up from Brian.

  “I don’t really know.” She shut off the faucet and laid the wet carrots on the cutting board which Jeffrey had made for her in seventh-grade shop, when he was all right and everything was all right. “It depends on a lot of things—�
� But Jeffrey, unlike his sister, did not wait to hear the prepared speech through.

  “Yeh, you said that already.” His adolescent voice broke awkwardly. “Only you never tell us anything. It’s just, like stupid.”

  “Please don’t interrupt me, Jeffrey. I’m telling you something now. I was saying that when two people have differences, they may not know right away whether—”

  “What differences, man?”

  “—whether they will turn out to be unimportant, or not; they may need time to think things over and consider them,” she continued, chopping the carrots into small strips with a knife. “That’s why we all have to—”

  “Oh, fuck it,” Jeffrey exclaimed. He turned and left the kitchen loudly, and Erica did not forgive him as she had forgiven Matilda.

  Nor does she forgive him now. For one thing, he is older than Matilda: he is fifteen, not a child. He should realize that there might be things she cannot tell him yet; he should have the tact—And why should he assume the separation is her fault, that she cannot “hack it”—whatever that means—and tell her that Brian is not a bad cat?

  That’s what you think, Erica says to herself, reviewing the conversation as she looks out the attic window over the winter landscape. And it occurs to her that Brian is, precisely, a bad cat; she recalls a specific former local cat, a sneaky prowling tom named George who lived on Jones Creek Road when the Tates first moved there. George, who belonged to a nearby farmer, habitually killed songbirds, and twice in rapid succession knocked up the Tates’ Flopsy before they had her fixed. Flopsy died of old age and overeating two years ago; and George is dead long since, his back broken by a truck hauling out dirt from the first of the Glenview Homes, but Erica has not forgiven him.

  Jeffrey blames her already, she thinks, though he knows nothing about the separation. When she can answer all his questions, will he change his mind? She is not sure. Beyond the clumsy childish egotism he shares with Matilda, another manner has begun to appear: a noisy male coarseness of speech and gesture. Picking him up after school, she has seen him (before he saw her) in a group of loutish half-grown boys, all laughing grossly and shoving each other as a group of girls passed. She has found a magazine called Penthouse among the candy wrappers and grit and wads of used tissue under his unmade bed. Perhaps, even when he knows the truth, Jeffrey may think his father not such a bad cat.

  But Matilda will understand; as time passes she will understand better and better what Erica has done, and sympathize more and more with Wendy, a woman like herself; indeed a girl not much older than she.

  The shadows of high clouds pass over the fields beyond Erica’s attic window, stippling the ground with paler and darker patches of light, like an impressionist painting; and a similar affect of light passes over her mind as she thinks of Wendy. She smiles, recalling Wendy’s affection, her continuing eager gratitude, her appreciation of the obstetrician recommended by Erica, and of Erica’s understanding when she has morning sickness or cramps in her legs (appreciating it even more because Brian is impatient with such complaints); her new look of health and enthusiastic happiness. Perhaps at times Wendy’s happiness is too enthusiastic: the truth is that, unlike Erica, she is a good loser but a poor winner. In defeat she is gentle and resigned; in victory she has a tendency to exult, even to crow. But, considering everything, Erica does not find this very hard to overlook.

  What disconcerts her more is Wendy’s blind admiration of Brian. That she should love him and believe in him is of course desirable; but she seems to have no ability to judge him in anything, let alone oppose him. And without this moral independence it will be hard for her to be a really good mother, for there are moments when even the best husband must be overridden. (Erica recalls, as she often does, how Brian once tried to make her leave for a weekend in New York although Jeffrey looked flushed and had a low fever. “It’s nothing,” he had insisted; but it was German measles.) It is clear to her already, though not to Wendy, that Brian is not sufficiently aware of his responsibility to the baby; that his attitude toward it is impatient and peevish. For instance, Wendy tried recently to talk to him about names. She wanted to give the child a unique, meaningful name; among those she and Linda liked, she said, were Laurel and Lavender. Or if it was a boy, perhaps Sage. “Why not Spinach or Cabbage?” Brian had scoffed. But Wendy attributed his callousness to the fact that she had approached him at a bad moment. (“It was all my fault really. I’m so dumb; I’m always interrupting him when he’s trying to concentrate.”)

  She will have to stand by Wendy after the child comes, to watch over them both. The prospect makes her smile firmly and nod her head. Then she frowns, recalling that it is almost a week since she last saw Wendy. They had planned to meet for coffee on campus Tuesday, but at the last moment Wendy couldn’t come because Brian needed her to read proofs of an article out loud to him. Erica suspects this excuse; but she does not suspect Wendy. She believes that Brian heard of their appointment and invented the need to read proofs; she thinks he is deliberately trying to discourage their meeting for some reason—perhaps social embarrassment, perhaps mere jealous spite.

  Men are often jealous and suspicious of friendship between women, though they value it among themselves. According to Danielle’s feminist friends, this is because it contradicts their idea of women as lacking the political virtues, as desiring neither liberty, equality nor fraternity. (“You notice you never hear anyone talk about sorority.”) We are held to be capable of devotion to our husbands and children, but catty and competitive with all other women, without true affection for them.

  Whereas the truth is, as anyone can see, that women are far better friends to each other than men are. We are not naturally so selfish and aggressive, and we do not have to be. Brian is directly in competition with his “friends” in the political science department here, and indirectly with those elsewhere. Or, if they are much older (or younger) than he, he looks to them (or they to him) for professional advantage. Only rarely, as with Leonard Zimmern, can he have a friendship untainted by either rivalry or calculation—and then it must lack professional intimacy, for Leonard is in another field. Women, however, are all in the same field, yet not in competition. Brian must hoard his ideas for publication; but if she passes on a new recipe she earns her friend’s gratitude and loses nothing.

  Another cloud passes over the sun, shadowing the view. Erica recalls that her children will be arriving on the bus from New York in less than an hour. She must finish up here, hang the winter clothes in the proper closets, put on her coat, and drive downtown. Conscientiously, she follows this program. But at the bus station she is informed both by a hand-printed sign on the counter and by a rude young man behind it that the 3:20 from New York will be an hour late.

  To pass the time she decides to go to the library. Leaving her car, she walks up the shabby end of Main Street, by cheap small groceries, bars, beauty shops, garages, a Chinese restaurant and a narrow store she doesn’t remember having noticed: the Krishna Bookshop.

  Erica halts. For weeks, in the retroactive amnesia which follows upon shock, she has forgotten Sandy Finkelstein. Now she remembers that her old Cambridge acquaintance, or someone else of the same name, is the proprietor of this shop. Beyond the printed sign hanging inside the glass door (YES, WE’RE OPEN) is a narrow room lined with bookshelves, occupied by two people. One is a girl with fuzzy hair in a duffle coat; the other a man. His back is turned to Erica, but something about the uneven droop of his shoulders, the way he now reaches up one long arm for a book, seems familiar.

  Erica pushes the door open. The man glances around at her briefly, nods—but with no sign of recognition—bends to retrieve a book he has just dropped, turns back, and continues his conversation.

  She advances two steps into the store, and stops beside a colored astrological poster, uncertain. That man looks too old, too bald; also he didn’t seem to know her. Perhaps she only imagined it was Sandy.

  Talking rather excitedly (something about the n
ew moon) the fuzzy-haired girl walks past Erica to the front desk, followed by Sandy’s aging namesake. She hands him money, receives change and the wrapped book, and leaves with friendly exclamations:

  “You oughta come out to the farm again for dinner, okay? How about tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be happy to, if I can get a ride,” Zed says in Sandy’s voice—gentle, light, dry.

  “Oh, no problem. Mike or Stanley oughta be coming in with the truck sometime. I’ll tell them to stop on their way home and pick you up, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  But if it really is Sandy, he is sadly changed. He looks tired out, shabby, in poor condition. His face, with its blurred pale scarecrow features, is badly creased around the eyes; and the thick energetic red hair which was one of Sandy’s few good points has faded and slid down off his head, as if in exhaustion. It lies now in dingy rusted curls around the base of the freckled crown.

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Peace, Jenny.”

  Jenny makes a peace sign in return, hunches her shoulders under the heavy coat and goes out. Zed follows her to the door and reverses the sign hanging on it so that the other side faces out (SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED). Then he turns and stands with his back to the door, looking across the shop at Erica, smiling, but very slightly.

  “Aren’t you Sanford Finkelstein?” she asks, also smiling, mainly with embarrassment.