Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

“Dr. Bunch never tells anyone anything. He doesn’t talk to you at all if he can help it.”

“That’s right. But what’s worse is that he never listens to you. I don’t know why everybody goes to him. I only wish we had a GP in town like that vet, whatever his name was.”

“Dr. Bernard M. Kotelchuk,” says Roo, who has just come downstairs.

Erica laughs. “Really?”

“That’s his name. I saw it on a sign in the office. He’s going to come next week and see my turtles.” Roo falls solidly into a chair.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” her mother suggests.

“Why not? I asked him, and he said he’d like to come. He’s very interested in turtles.” She sits forward belligerently. “Don’t you think Dr. Kotelchuk is a person of integrity?”

“I’m sure he’s a person of integrity. But he might be too busy to come.” Danielle sets down her glass and looks at her daughter. “Rod, your shirt! You look as if you’d been in a fight yourself. You’d better go and take everything off. Put the jeans and shirt in cold water in the bathroom sink, to soak out those bloodstains. How is Pogo?”

“She’s asleep on my bed.” Roo stands up.

“And you might as well take a bath too.”

“I don’t need one. I had a shower last night, and a bath the night before, and the night before that.”

“Okay ... What a relief Lennie’s gone back to New York,” she adds after Roo has clumped upstairs. “I should be over it by now, but every time he comes I get uptight about having the house picked up and the kids clean. ‘Civilized people bathe themselves every day,’ he says.” Danielle imitates her husband’s precise, cool diction.

“Mm,” Erica assents, not adding that she shares this view. Danielle too, in her opinion, could have used a bath and clean clothes. Her red Mexican cotton dress is badly wrinkled; her brown feet stained with dirt.

Danielle’s slovenliness is a recent development. Like her house, she has altered since Leonard left, and in some of the same ways. There is less of her—nearly ten pounds less—and what remains is more untidy. The elaborate, almost European elegance she had gone in for during her marriage—the silk blouses and lace-patterned stockings, the smoothly shining constructions of hair, as carefully braided and rolled as French pastry—is gone. Danielle still looks European, but no longer in the style of the aristocracy. Now she wears bright, heavy, embroidered peasant dresses; her legs are bare and often unshaven; her hair is roughly held back by a leather thong. It is as if, lacking a man’s love, her sense of her own value has decreased. But this is an uncomfortable thought; Erica puts it aside and tries to attend to what her best friend is saying.

“—in his new place on West Fourth Street he’s got a built-in kitchen and everything organized. His ideal environment.” Danielle laughs briefly and pours herself more sherry.

“Brian says there’s only one room, not much larger than this,” Erica reminds her comfortingly. “And no view. Just a brick wall.”

“Yeh, he complains about that. He always looks on the down side, especially around here of course; he doesn’t want me to get envious. I’m supposed to feel sorry for him and think how hard his life is.” She laughs again harshly. “But he’s pretty well suited. He never could take being responsible for a whole house. And you know the yard drove him nuts. As soon as he got it in order something would start growing and fuck it up again.”

“I remember how cross he was about Matilda and Roo playing with the gravel, getting it into the grass.”

“Yeh. He never liked living with children. I think that’s the real reason he left.”

“Mm.” Over the past, fifteen months Danielle has put forward many possible real reasons for Leonard’s departure. When she does so her voice becomes rough, her language coarsens; but her eyes—wide, brown, damp—give her away; In spite of everything she is still, as Jeffrey or Matilda would put it, hung up on him. Erica imagines Leonard as a free-standing metal coatrack of the type placed by Corinth University in the corners of offices. She visualizes Danielle, hung up on one of its raised metal arms by the back of the neck of her red dress, the yoke of which is embroidered with yellow birds and flowers; Danielle has hung there, swearing and sweating, kicking and struggling to get down, for a year and a half. Erica feels thankful that she has never been in that position.

“—and of course he loves living in Manhattan, but he complains all the time how expensive it is and how much better off we are here. He’d like to cut down on what he’s sending us. Or stop it entirely.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Erica says.

“Don’t kid yourself.” Danielle leans forward, putting her empty glass down on Leonard’s teak coffee table, now marked with overlapping rings. “Men will do anything they can get away with. And in this society they can get away with a hell of a lot. Look at my husband.” Though their divorce is over a year old, Danielle still speaks of Leonard as her husband. “Nobody thinks the worse of him for taking his family to the middle of nowhere and then deserting them. If I’d left the girls and Lennie here in Corinth and gone back to New York by myself, everyone would say I was very irresponsible, immature and selfish—if not sick.” Danielle laughs. “Oh, well.” She leans back into the soft, dusty pillows of the sofa, resting her head on one raised brown arm and putting her dirty brown feet up on the coffee table. “So how’s everything at your house?”

“All right, I guess,” Erica lies.

“Did you go back and see about the job yet?”

“No. I called and told them I couldn’t take it. Brian’s so set against the idea, it didn’t seem worth arguing about it any more. And it’s not as if I were absolutely dying to do library research.”

“No.” Danielle frowns. “But you did want a job. After all, it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Oh, don’t say that.” Erica giggles sadly. “That’s what Brian says. He thinks it was very underhanded and thoughtless of me to go looking for work without consulting him first. It makes him feel he can’t trust me.”

“It makes him feel he can’t trust you, ” Danielle mutters with emotion. “That’s really—” She swallows and is silent.

Since she has never told Danielle of Brian’s untrustworthiness, Erica looks at her friend with surprise. Apparently, news of Brian’s behavior last spring has somehow reached her. She hesitates, doubting whether she should admit it now. After all, the affair with Wendee is in the past; she is trying to forget it, and has partly forgotten it. Danielle too says nothing; she folds her arms and looks out the window, visibly setting her jaw. Presumably she thinks Erica is ignorant of what Brian has done; that she remains a pitiable dupe. But Erica has no wish to support this character in addition to that of betrayed wife.

“I didn’t know you knew about all that,” she therefore says finally.

“I didn’t know you knew. Oh, shit I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.” Erica smiles weakly.

“Here, have another drink.” Danielle slops sherry into Erica’s glass. “I only just heard this week,” she apologizes. “I thought about calling you, but then I thought, Well, hell, how do I know it’s true, I didn’t see it.” Her usually strong voice wavers.

“Of course, I understand,” Erica says, touched—and rather proud to realize that her friend is more upset now than she.

“How did you hear about it?” Danielle asks.

“I found the letter the girl wrote to him.”

“Then it is true.”

“Yes.” Erica smiles again, conscious of doing so bravely. “He admitted it.”