Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

One windy evening not long ago, after this had happened, Erica got back into bed and asked Brian if he had ever thought that they might try to have another child before they were too old. But Brian replied that they were already too old. If they conceived a baby now, for example, he would be past retirement when it finished college. Besides, they had to remember the population problem. He forbore to mention what the babies they already had, had turned into, which was just as well, for Erica would probably have cried out, “Yes, but before that happens we would have at least twelve good years.”

Though equally awful, the children are awful in somewhat different ways. Jeffrey is sullen, restless and intermittently violent. Matilda is sulky, lazy and intermittently dishonest. Jeffrey is obsessed with inventions and space; Matilda with clothes and pop music. Matilda is extravagant and wasteful; Jeffrey miserly, and ungenerous. Jeffrey is still doing all right in school, while his sister’s grades are hopeless; on the other hand, Matilda is generally much cleaner than Jeffrey.

Erica knows and remembers that Jeffrey and Matilda had once loved her. They had loved Brian. Now they quite evidently do not like either of their parents. They also do not like each other: they fight constantly, and pick on each other for their respective failings.

The worst part of it all is that the children are her fault. All the authorities and writers say so. In their innocent past Erica and Brian had blamed their own shortcomings on their parents while retaining credit for their own achievements. They had passed judgment on the character of acquaintances whose young children were not as nice as Muffy and Jeffo—But everyone did that. To have had disagreeable parents excused one’s faults; to have disagreeable children underlined them. The parents might not look especially guilty; they might seem outwardly to be intelligent, kind and charming people—but inside were Mr. and Mrs. Hyde.

It was agreed everywhere, also, that Mrs. Hyde was the worse; or at least the more responsible. A father might possibly avoid blame for the awfulness of his children—a mother never. After all, they were in her “area of operations,” to use Brian’s term. An admirer of George Kennan’s early writings, he had long subscribed to the doctrine of separate spheres of influence, both in national and domestic matters; he attributed the success of their marriage partly to this doctrine. He might advise Erica on important policy decisions, but ordinarily he would not question her management of the home, nor would she ever try to intervene in his professional life. If he lost his job (which had never been very likely and was now impossible, since he had tenure), it was his fault. If the children became uncontrollable, it was hers.

The fact that they had been quite all right until last year was no excuse. Erica has read widely on the subject and knows that there are several unpleasant explanations of this. Only last week she came across an article which spoke of the tendency of women who marry older men to remain, and wish to remain, children: (Brian is now forty-six, seven years older than she.) It was pointed out that such women tended to identify closely, “even symbiotically” with their children. The author of this article would probably say that Jeffrey and Matilda are now struggling to break out of a symbiotic neurosis. Other experts might maintain that Erica has bewitched them out of spite and envy of their youth, energy and “developing sexuality,” while still others would assert that the children have been assigned to work out her and Brian’s repressed antisocial drives. And any or all of these experts might be right. Erica is not aware of these motives in herself, but that does not prove anything; naturally, they would not be conscious.

It is all academic by now, because now she consciously dislikes her children, and this alone would be enough to poison them spiritually, morally and emotionally. She dislikes them for being what they now are, and for having turned her into a hateful, neurotic, guilty person. For if the truth were known, that would and must be her reputation in the world.

Outside, the bulldozer continues to operate. Crack; crunch; smash. Blackberry and sumac bushes are uprooted; wide muddy wounds are scraped in the long pale winter grass. What is happening to Jones Creek Road seems to Erica all of a piece with what is happening to Jeffrey and Matilda: natural beauty and innocence are being swallowed up in ugly artificial growth, while she watches helplessly.

Eight years ago, when the Tates first moved to Corinth, they found on this back road a big deserted, sagging gray farmhouse smothered in broken dark pines. It had been for sale for over a year, but they were the first to see its possibilities. The trees were thinned, the house remodeled and painted yellow; suddenly they owned a beautiful, even a rather grand place, only a few miles from campus.

Not far enough, as it turned out. Three years ago Jones Creek Road was widened and resurfaced, and the first ranch homes began crawling toward them over the hill to the west, blocking their sunset. Brian and Erica, realizing what was happening, tried to buy more land around their half-acre. But it was too late; the developer was not interested. Each subsequent year the bulldozers have moved nearer; soon they will be surrounded.

The Tates have talked about moving farther out, of course; but to be safe now they would have to go ten or fifteen miles, beyond the school district. Besides, Erica cannot bear to abandon her house: the chestnut woodwork she has scraped and scrubbed and refinished; the double daffodils and white narcissus she has planted under the old trees; the asparagus and strawberry beds—hours, years of loving labor.

It is not only the ruin of the landscape which is so painful, but also the redefinition of this part of town, now renamed “Glenview Heights”—what it means now to live there. Not that their new neighbors are poor white trash—indeed, most of them are richer than the Tates. The Glenview Home to their left, a “Charleston” model with false white pillars and wrought-iron balconies glued to the façade, costs twice as much as their house; the “Paul Revere” next to it not much less. The Homes are full of expensive built-in appliances; their carports bulge with motorboats and skimobiles. The children who live there watch 25-inch color TV every evening, their eyes reflecting the artificial circus lights. Jeffrey and Matilda watch with them when they are allowed. “You’re not against television on principle; you just don’t want to spend the money. You want us to freeload off the Gobrights and the Kaisers,” Jeffrey had accused recently, voicing an opinion which Erica suspects is shared by her neighbors. She knows that the Glenview Homeowners, who are mostly not university people, regard her as unfriendly and a little odd, though she has tried to maintain cordial relations, and has never mentioned aloud that she believes them partly responsible for the awful change in her children. And even if they are, she is not exonerated, because it means that the heredity and environment provided by the Tates were faulty or ineffective. Anyhow, why mention it? It is already too late, and it will go on being even later.

Jeffrey will be living at home for nearly four more years. Matilda will be with them for nearly six more years. As Erica is contemplating these facts, with her head on the damp table the telephone rings.

She sits up, rubs her eyes dry, and answers.

“Hello this is Helen in the Political Science office, how are you today? ... Oh, I’m very well too ... There’s a letter here for Brian, it’s marked ‘Urgent—Personal,’ and I wondered ... Well, if he’s going to call you tonight, that’s fine ... That’s a good idea. I’ll phone Mrs. Zimmern in the French department now and ask her to pick it up ... You’re welcome.”