Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

“What?” Brian says, looking up from his coffee and the Village Voice.

“I was thinking about the children,” says Erica, who is not aware of having sighed aloud. “I’m not sure we should have let them go alone.” She uses the word “we” with an effort, for it is Brian who gave permission for the excursion.

“They’re not alone,” he says impatiently. “They’re with three thousand other people.”

“That’s what bothers me. Among three thousand people there’s sure to be some bad characters.”

“Don’t worry about it. Most of them are kids. Or students.”

“What difference does that make?”

No reply. Erica opens her workbox and selects a spool of thread. Lately she has been much troubled by fantasies of awful things that might happen to Jeffrey and Matilda, fantasies which she fears from her reading may also be wishes. But adolescence is a precarious time, and crowds at night are dangerous. Somewhere in the huge, dark stadium there are teenage hoods looking for boys like Jeffrey to rob and bully; there are depraved older men looking for silly, reckless young girls like Matilda. But it is no use saying this to Brian. He doesn’t care what happens to the children—No, worse than that; he himself is one of the bad characters. He has already seduced a girl half his age.

Erica looks up at her husband, an important professor aged forty-six, well dressed, small and compact in build, with a handsome, steady face, reading the paper. What had happened between him and Wendee was three months past. He just didn’t think about it any more, he had told her last week, with such casual impatience that she at last believed him. He doesn’t think of Wendee; he doesn’t think of her, Erica; he doesn’t think of the children. What does he think of, for heaven’s sake? No doubt, of recent American political history; of the Cold War, about which he is writing a book.

It seems to Erica horribly unfair that she should continue to find herself brooding, almost obsessively, about a girl she has never seen, while Brian, who has lain naked on top of this girl and partly inside her on his office floor, is able to forget.

But why his office floor? Well, because there was a blizzard outside, Brian had explained stiffly, and they didn’t want to walk to Wendee’s apartment in College-town and back again; there wasn’t time. It was details like that which caused trouble. If Erica had known either more or less it would have been better, she thought. Instead she had just enough information to be able to visualize the scene. She involved herself emotionally by the imaginative effort of completion. As if she were watching television on a defective set, she created a whole reality out of speckled hints and blurry shadows. She created the naked arms and legs on Brian’s floor, which was of vinyl mottled green-gray and glossy with institutional wax, slightly chilly and dusty to the touch; the hissing of the radiator, like a coiled iron serpent; the sleet and snow beating and melting down the office window.

This vision and others like it come to Erica against her will and desire at the worst possible moments, blotting out will and desire. When Brian touches her, even casually, she stiffens. When they lie together she cannot free herself of the thought that every gesture he makes, every caress, has been sketched on Wendee’s body; that every whispered word has already been breathed into Wendee’s ears; every sigh of passion—

“What’s the matter?” Brian asks.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You made a noise. You were groaning.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

—That Brian should have forgotten only made it worse. If he had loved the girl passionately, seriously, that would have been more tolerable. Had they been carried away, snowed under by a blizzard of real feeling, they would have had some excuse. Instead Brian tried to excuse himself by assuring Erica that the affair had been minor, casual. “It just wasn’t that important,” he had said several times, as if unaware how much this devalues both of them.

Erica sighs again and rotates the skirt she is hemming. Of course some professors became involved with their students; she knew that. Girls got crushes on them—it was a recognized occupational hazard, which had existed when she was in college. It had never happened to Erica, but several of her friends had at one time or another thought themselves in love with some professor. Conventional morality being different then, they did not undress in offices so readily, but tended more to tears, declarations and gifts of homemade fudge and homemade verse.

But there is a new sort of student now: less romantic, much more matter-of-fact about sex—and Wendee apparently is one of them. Suppose you are a middle-aged professor, and such a girl comes into your office and boldly declares that she wants to. sleep with you—no strings attached, no emotional commitment. It is, after all, the stock situation of most men’s fantasies. Erica could see how many might jump at the chance.

But she would never have expected it of Brian. She had always thought of him—he had thought of himself, and apparently still does—as a serious, responsible person. He saw a reason and purpose to life; he disliked frivolous and meaningless pleasures. He therefore had little time for things like watching television and going to large parties. Occasionally, for instance when alone at large parties where TV programs were being discussed, Erica had regretted this. But simultaneously she had admired Brian for his position; valued his influence. Without it, she sometimes thought, who knew how shallow her life might have been, how much time she might have wasted? The world would be a superior place if most people in it were like Brian Tate, she often thought.

And all this virtue had been false. Brian had sat opposite her night after night, as he is sitting now, and delivered his moral opinions, blaming his friends who got involved with students, listening to her accuse herself of being a bad mother, while all the time—

“Amusing letter here on those women’s rights protesters,” he says, lowering the Voice and looking at her over the top margin. “Did you read it?”

“What?” Erica turns her head, pushing aside her hair, which needs to be cut, washed and set.

Brian repeats himself; ending with a little chuckle which invites her to join in.

“Oh. Yes.” Erica does not laugh; she smiles briefly. “I saw it.” She does not say she read it, which would not be true. She hates the Village Voice, and it also bores her. Their subscription is about six months old—it dates, that is, from the beginning of Brian’s involvement with Wendee, and might well, Erica considers, have ended with it. Instead the paper keeps on coming, full of dull, obscene political articles and advertisements for light shows and used Army coats. That Brian still reads it means to her that he has secretly abandoned the adult side and gone over to the adolescent enemy, represented by Jeffrey, Matilda, Wendee and all their invisible friends.

“This about their list of grievances,” Brian says, chuckling encouragingly.

“Mm, yes,” replies Erica, who has no idea what he is referring to. It is not enough; Brian returns to his paper, disappointed.

All right, so he is disappointed. But how can he expect her to laugh with him now at women, at their grievances; above all at a letter? How can he not be reminded of another letter, a really amusing letter?

As a matter of fact, one of Erica’s first ideas after reading that letter had been that it was intended to amuse—that it was some sort of esoteric joke. A colleague had sent it—Leonard Zimmern, perhaps; there was no Wendee. Another possibility was that Wendee existed but was mentally deranged; and her husband no more responsible than she, Erica, had been for the men who used to call up and breathe at her over the phone when they lived in Cambridge. If you have a certain appearance, these things happen to you.