The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  For Brian, the last four-weeks have already been an education: not in art history or European civilization, like that he plans for Wendy, but in her own field of social psychology. As his separation from Erica became known to all his acquaintances, and his attachment to Wendy to some of them, he has learned firsthand what is meant by “role typing” and “social cathexis.”

  Marital difficulties, he has discovered, are socially equivalent to a childhood or trivial illness—colic, chicken pox, flu. Everyone who hears of them is openly concerned; they express mild regret (“Sorry to hear about you and Erica”) mixed with curiosity (“How is it going?”) and a compulsion to relate their own experiences with the same ailment (“You, know Irene once moved out on me? Yeh, she took the kids and went to her mother’s for three weeks”) and to offer advice (“That’s how women are; you have to give them time to cool off”).

  Adultery, on the other hand, is a social disease. Like halitosis or the clap, it is what only your best friend or worst enemy will mention, though everyone talks about it behind your back. Brian can therefore only guess how widely his affair is known, or how it is generally regarded, though he is aware that both his best friend in the department (Hank Andrews) and his worst enemy (Don Dibble) think less of him for it.

  Not all Brian’s lessons in social psychology have been as hard as this. He has found it a great relief not having to face, every day, Erica’s spoken and unspoken reproaches; and an even greater relief to get away from Jeffrey and Matilda—from their noise, their rudeness, their greed. He recalls something Leonard Zimmern said long before his own divorce: that most men don’t want to leave their wives half as much as they do their adolescent children.

  Now that he has vacated it, Brian realizes he has been living in a hostile camp, among people who at best tolerated, at worst exploited and defied him, for a long while—in a sense, all his life. What amazes him most is that this discovery has come so late; for instance that he could have lived forty-six years without knowing what it is to be really loved. His parents’ affection, though genuine, was always conditional on good behavior; as was that of his other relatives and his teachers, from nursery to graduate school. The girls he knew before marriage were all self-seeking; even when they claimed to love him, they strove to withhold some part of themselves, either physical or emotional, according to current social custom, in the hope that he would commit himself further to obtain it.

  As for Erica, Brian has always known that she cared less for him than he did for her. From the start he was the one who loved, while she allowed herself to be loved. That was her nature, he had told himself. It was not as if she preferred someone else; indeed she very evidently preferred him. Brian could accept that; did accept it for nearly twenty years—until he met Wendy, who never judges him, withholds nothing, cares more for him than for herself.

  Of course this unconditional love has disadvantages. Sometimes Brian feels like a man with a new, overaffectionate pet, whose constant and obvious devotion is half a source of satisfaction, half an embarrassment. He cannot romp with Wendy as often as she, or he, would like—he has to conserve energy for his work. He has had to teach her to restrain herself in public: not to lick and paw him; to sit, quietly, and not disturb him when he is working. But overall her effect has been energizing, even exhilarating. He has not perhaps spent as much time on his book as he should, but what time he has spent has been productive.

  As he paces the hall, of the Frick, Brian glances alternately at a guidebook he has purchased, and into the galleries, planning what he will show Wendy, and in what order. The dining room, with its rather simpering portraits of English beauties, can be skipped. The two smaller rooms beyond—all light, elegant eighteenth-century French furniture and decorations—seem at first glance just right to begin with: a pleasant if frivolous contrast to the gray, dirty city outside. But after a second look he rejects them. There are altogether too many babies in the painted wall panels by Boucher. Indeed, the panels of the inner room, which represent the arts and sciences, are entirely peopled by babies: plump, coy infant poets; chubby infant astronomers and musicians—figures which cannot help but recall Wendy’s obsession with the possible genius of her unborn child.

  Better to start across the way, in the Fragonard Room, where the panels portray an elegant pastoral love affair, and the only children present are winged cupids. It is not the sort of art Brian usually pays any attention to, but today one of the paintings titled “Reverie,” catches his eye. This shows a very pretty young girl, fair, round-cheeked, sitting dreaming at the base of a tall sundial in a relaxed attitude. He has often seen Wendy sit so, on the floor in his apartment, with her head tilted back and one arm flung out along the couch. Indeed, Wendy could almost have posed for this picture, in the proper fancy dress, with her hair curled and lightly powdered.

  When they are abroad next summer—or even this weekend here in the city if she feels well soon enough—he must take Wendy shopping. He doesn’t know much about women’s clothes, but he is aware that hers are not only ridiculous but unbecoming. The heavy leather browns and tans of her American-Indian getup, the dirty yellows and reds of the East Indian prints, are suited to women of a darker complexion. Wendy ought to wear rose, creamy white, lavender, like these French girls whom she resembles; also her clothes should fit, rather than hang. Something might be done about her hair, too.

  Looking at the painting again, Brian feels, as the artist clearly intended him to feel, both romantic and sensual. The girl is young but not, to judge by her pose and hints in the other panels, innocent. Her charmingly but almost indecently low-cut dress suggests experience, and so does the way her knees are spread under the long draped skirt, and one hand placed strategically in her lap. The thick column of the sundial, with its round tilted top on which a naked cupid marks the hour of noon, is surely phallic. An observer is meant to imagine himself stepping up over the carved and gilded frame into that leafy sunlit garden, lifting those folds of pink and white silk ...

  He checks his watch. Wendy is nearly due, so he returns to the museum entrance, but she is not there. This irritates Brian, who dislikes waiting for women at the best of times, and has suggested that she arrive early. Now there will hardly be time for them to look at anything seriously before their appointment with “Dr. Friendly.” (Impossible to guess what impulse of self-deception or black comedy had made the abortionist choose this alias.)

  Brian walks back through the rooms toward the West Gallery, where the most important works of art hang. It will be a relief when this day is over, he thinks; when this month is over. Reason has fought a hard battle; Wendy’s mind, under the veneer of education, is illogical and stubborn. She may look like a graduate student, a liberated woman, but basically she is no different from the girls in the Fragonard Room: feminine, emotional, driven by instinctive forces beyond her own control. Though exasperated and exhausted by the struggle, he knows he cannot really blame her—that is what women are born for, as the numerous simpering Madonnas on these walls testify, from Byzantine icons to Renoir. He recognizes the strength and inevitability of Wendy’s wish to have a child; but he is determined not to become personally involved in this process.

  The logical conclusions of his argument—have not escaped Brian. Fond as he is of Wendy, he knows that their relationship cannot be permanent. Eventually she will need to have children; she will marry someone nearer her own age. Eventually he will return to Erica and his family—probably when Jeffrey and Matilda are somewhat older. But not now; not yet.

  He walks down the long gallery inspecting the paintings. Wendy’s attention should be called to the Rembrandts and the Goya; the rest can be passed over more rapidly, since they will not have much time now. But as he dismisses them Brian notices one picture which appears to his heightened and impatient perception almost symbolic: Veronese’s “Allegory of Vice and Virtue.” It seems to him that the features of the handsome youth who is rising from his seat beside Vice into the embrace of laurel-crowne
d Virtue (but looking back over his shoulder) might be his own at an earlier age. Virtue, who is somewhat taller than the young man, wears an expression of calm and loving Solicitude. Though he has evidently sinned with plump, blond Vice, she intends to take him back; she wraps her blue mantle around him forgivingly and protectively.

  Erica should see this painting; there is a lesson there for her. But she would not heed it; she has not forgiven him yet and may never forgive him now. Most wives would be relieved and grateful for what is about to take place, but he knows Erica will be furious. She will pretend regret for the baby, but Brian suspects that all along the baby was just an excuse to get rid of him. Otherwise, why should she have been so eagerly self-sacrificing, so willing to dispose of him “for his own good” and the good of another woman’s unborn brat? Tall, cool, unforgiving, this modern Virtue spurns the hero; she turns away and wraps her satin cloak around herself.

  Brian checks his watch again and realizes that Wendy is now almost fifteen minutes late. He walks rapidly back through the rooms. In the front hall he pushes through the turnstile and goes to the door, but Wendy is not coming along the street in either direction. Something has delayed her: her mother? the bus? It is annoying, because they are due on Park Avenue at Eighty-seventh in three quarters of an hour.

  Perhaps he should call, just to be sure. He goes back into the museum, receiving a sour look from the guard at the turnstile, and finds the public telephone, which is not well located for seeing Wendy if she should come in. His dime produces no dial tone, and after losing twenty cents he notices a discreet Out of Order sign in italic penmanship. Swearing, he makes another even more rapid tour of the galleries, and again returns to the front door, squinting through the cold drizzle along Seventieth Street for a phone booth. There seems to be one at the far end of the block and across Madison Avenue; but if he goes to it he may miss Wendy. And since this is New York, it is also likely to be broken.

  Feeling more and more irritable, Brian turns back into the building for the third time. As he clicks through the turnstile the guard, a tall cavernous figure in the style of El Greco, addresses him. “You going in or out, mister?” he asks sarcastically. “This ain’t the subway,”

  Ignoring the remark as it deserves, Brian continues with an air of purpose to a room called in his guidebook the Living Hall, which is strategically located so that anyone visiting the Frick must pass through it to reach the major galleries; it also commands a view of the courtyard in case Wendy should choose that route. This room is dominated by an imposing fireplace, over which looms El Greco’s “St. Jerome as a Cardinal”—the guard at the entrance transfigured. He points sternly to an illuminated page of his Vulgate. The text is indecipherable, but from its location in the volume and his expression, it must be one of the more hysterical prophets. “This place is damned, and all its inhabitants,” he seems to inform Brian.

  On either side, Holbein’s Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell face each other across the empty marble hearth: the scholar, saint and gentleman’s son from Oxford; and the son of the Putney brewer, the shrewd, hard politician who in a few years will destroy him.

  Neither More nor Cromwell are looking at Brian, but as he stands there he feels their attention—even, before long, their disapproval. The expression of More, who had been one of his early heroes, combines sorrow and resolution: it is that of a ‘Harvard professor who finds himself forced to fail a once-promising student. Both as a fond husband and father and as a loyal Catholic, he cannot sanction Brian’s recent behavior. His grief at seeing him there on the carpet, with a wad of twenty-dollar bills where his heart should be, is restrained but profound. In a moment he will repeat sadly, almost to himself, the words from his Utopia which he knows Brian once copied onto the flyleaf of a Coop notebook with secret high resolve:

  For it is not possible for al thinges to be well, onles al men were good. Whych I thinke wil not be yet thies good many yeares.

  As for Thomas Cromwell, he has little interest in past promises, or in moral questions. This hard-headed administrator, with his heavy ringed hand and his narrow moneylender’s eyes, has no time for such nonsense. He measures value in terms of accomplishment: deals made, problems solved, opponents eliminated, cash coming in. At certain moments in his career, for instance at long-winded departmental meetings, Brian has silently called upon this man, who in an incredibly short time and almost single-handed brought the English church under submission to the state. Sometimes the ghost has responded; has given him the energy to interrupt tedious arguments and propose cutting through petty scruples and red tape. But Cromwell’s attitude toward Brian today is one of cold scorn. He condemns him as a clumsy and impolitic small fool who has allowed mere women to get the better of him; who has failed to make it either as a good man or a bad one, “You still think’ that little whore is coming, do you?” he asks suddenly, hardly moving his tight lips.

  Disconcerted, and not only that he should imagine a picture to speak, Brian turns his back on the three portraits and looks at his watch. It is twenty minutes to two; unless Wendy arrives almost at once she will be late for her appointment. For the first time it occurs to him that something has gone seriously wrong. Wendy has come down with the intestinal flu since he spoke to her yesterday, or she has been mugged by a mugger on her way from Queens to Manhattan.

  He starts back through the galleries, forcing himself not to hurry, even pausing at moments in front of some painting. The Fragonard girl is still dreaming of her lover below the sundial; but this time she has a different look. Her abandoned pose, the swelling of her breasts (now too large to be properly contained by her silk bodice), and a fullness in the face which he has lately noticed in Wendy, all suggest the same thing: that she is already, as she would put it, enceinte. And is not the naked cupid above, whose shadow falls toward the number XII, unmistakably demonstrating that it is too late?

  Brian pushes past St. Jerome at the turnstile and out onto the damp cold front steps, where for some time he paces back and forth, continually consulting his watch and becoming damper and colder. Finally, at three minutes to two, he makes a rush through the drizzle toward the distant phone, looking back over his shoulder at intervals. Reaching it, he hesitates, wondering how long Dr. Friendly will wait for his thousand dollars (minus the two hundred he has already received)—fifteen minutes, surely?—and decides to call Wendy’s house first.

  This telephone seems to work, but Brian hesitates; he stands listening to the dial tone, reluctant to dial, to speak to Wendy’s mother again. He has never met Mrs. Gahaghan, and does not want her to hear his voice too often. Also he feels uncomfortable because when she does hear it she responds as if he were Wendy’s age, rather than only two years younger than she. But the phone is humming, time is passing, and he is cold. He dials the number.

  “Hello?” The formal, wary, falsely genteel voice of Mrs. Gahaghan.

  “Hello, is Wendy there?”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry.” Her tone changes to one of informal, good-natured regret. “Wendee’s already gone back to college.”

  “Already gone?” Brian feigns surprise, for this is what Wendy had planned to tell her parents. “When did she leave? ...You see, I was planning to meet her,” he adds.

  “Oh, dear. You were expecting to meet Wendee today?”

  “Yes, about half an hour ago.” Brian tries to project a light, careless tone through the electrical connection.

  “Oh, dear me. I’m awful sorry. I guess she must of forgot about it. She left right after breakfast for the university, she got a ride with her roommate Linda, do you know Linda?”

  “Yes, I know Linda,” Brian says through his teeth.

  “She was planning to take the bus, see, but then last night Linda was over and she’d heard of a ride back to college with some friends, of course that’s much nicer than the bus, and Wendee hasn’t been feeling very well this vacation and she wanted to get back to her work, she has an examination coming up, I’m sure you know how that is, and
I’m afraid she didn’t think—I know she’ll be very sorry when she remembers—”

  During this speech Brian holds the telephone farther and farther away from his head, causing Mrs. Gahaghan’s apologetic quacking to dwindle to a distant twitter. When she runs out of breath he brings it back. “Yes ...Thank you ...No, that’s quite all right ...Don’t worry about it,” he says, and hangs up.

  For the next hour, like Burgoyne at Saratoga, Brian does not allow himself to speculate on what has happened. He concentrates on arranging the practical details of his retreat: telephoning Dr. Friendly, canceling the hotel reservation, returning the two tickets to Little Murders, and getting his car first out of the parking garage and then out of the Friday afternoon Manhattan traffic.

  But once he has crossed the George Washington Bridge and turned north on the thruway, there is plenty of time to think. There is time to rehearse his conversation with Mrs. Gahaghan; and also his conversation with Dr. Friendly, in the course of which the doctor reminded him 1) that he, Dr. Friendly, is a very busy man who has given up one of his few opportunities to spend time with his own family on a national holiday in order to help Brian but; 2) that he does not do this sort of thing for money, but because he believes in Human Rights; and 3) that he has, nevertheless, extremely heavy expenses. Brian would have liked to make an abrasive remark at this point. Instead he controlled his tongue, and—with considerable effort and the promise of an additional fee—managed to arrange another appointment for the following week.