Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

At the end of the garden he stops for a moment among some lettuce which has gone to seed, steadying his rock, catching his breath. He contemplates the woman exhibited on the back porch as in a lighted display case, and compares her to a Radcliffe student he had met one evening some years ago after a public lecture at Harvard. A beautiful, fresh young girl—slim and delicate, with small, perfectly finished features and curly dark hair cut short behind and falling into her dark-lashed eyes in front—from which she would, with a graceful, impatient gesture, toss it back as she spoke. Her manner was gay, almost childlike, yet at the same time serious and even dignified. “A young princess,” Brian had thought.

He began to take her out, and was extremely pleased When he realized she preferred him to her many other admirers, though not extremely surprised. He was, after all, several years older than most of them, and people in the Government Department agreed that he had an important future ahead of him. But Brian was astounded, presently, to discover that Erica was still a virgin at twenty. He felt awe and gratitude to Fate for having, as it were, signaled his importance by saving this special treat for him.

Since she was an intelligent modern girl, and in love, Erica slept with Brian before their marriage—but not very often, nor with very great success. He had experience enough to know that in spite of her sighs of pleasure she did not really enjoy the sexual act. He had not been too concerned about this, thinking that she would learn after the wedding. But instead she unlearned—or rather, gradually ceased to pretend.

For nearly three years all his natural skill and invention, all the warm-up techniques he had heard or read of, were unsuccessful. Or, more accurately, they were too successful. Erica much preferred them to that for which they were intended to prepare the way. She loved it when Brian blew into her ear, gently bit the base of her thumb, or stroked her breasts in circles. She sighed and smiled and stretched like a cat when he licked a slow line down the length of her spine, and further. “Oh love, love,” she murmured. “Oh bliss.” If only he had been satisfied to stop there, he could feel her thinking. But no, he always had to bring out, or up, what she called “that thing.” “Don’t put that thing in yet please; daring; I’m not ready.”

“My cock, my prick, my penis for God’s sake,” he had shouted at her once. “Can’t you call it by its right name?” No, she couldn’t. She didn’t like any of those words; she never thought them in her mind and she couldn’t say them. She knew words for the other difficult parts of the body: “behind” for ass and “stomach” for belly, but there was no word for That Thing. Or occasionally, when Erica was really hurt or annoyed with him, Your Thing. Ordinarily, out of good manners, she overlooked the fact of his connection with the Thing, and when possible its very existence. She avoided looking at it directly, and never touched it unless she was specifically requested to do so. It was as if Brian were a neighbor who owned a particularly ugly dog. “The dog is scratching at the door,” you might say to him politely, not wishing to underline their relationship—but, in anger, “Your dog bit me.”

Two years passed in this way. Then Erica became pregnant. Her obstetrician, a cautious, prissy man, advised that she “avoid intercourse” from the sixth month on, and for two months after the birth—in effect, a five-month abstinence. Abstinence, that is, from the sort of love-making Brian liked; the sort Erica liked was allowed to continue. Brian began to look at girls on the street; though a sense of his own moral dignity, and fear of social exposure, kept him from approaching any of them.

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.”