Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

Abandoning her suitcases in the middle of the rug, Wendy takes the nearest chair, which happens to be Brian’s—something she could not have known, but which makes Erica shiver nevertheless. I must not be mean or hysterical, I must behave well and do the right thing, Erica tells herself, sitting down formally opposite Wendy on a straight chair which she has not sat in for three years. A pause; but she is not obliged to break it.

“I’m not going to take up that much of your time,” Wendy finally begins, moving forward to the extreme edge of Brian’s chair as if to demonstrate this. “All I wanted to tell you is, I’m sorry for the hassle I’ve caused around here.” She takes a breath.

“Yes,” Erica says neutrally. Since she will probably never see her again, she is cataloging Wendy’s appearance for future reference: pale round face, conventional childish features, bitten nails.

“I mean, it’s racked me up all along what I was laying on you, somebody I never even met, you know?” Wendy’s hands are clutched together in her lap; her voice is high, uncertain. A faint New York accent—lower-middle-class. “I used to think how you were living right here in town and you knew all about it. And if you wanted you could probably report me to the grad committee and get me thrown out of school. Or you could come over someday and shoot me. Only you never did, you know?” Wendy’s voice catches again. Erica realizes she is not merely guilty and nervous, as she ought to be, but actually frightened.

“No,” she agrees, trying to ease the tension a little. “It never occurred to me.”

“I mean, what I did to you, it was shitty. Some of the professors around here, their wives probably wouldn’t give a damn. But BRIAN.” She pronounces his name with a special exhalation of air, of awe. “I mean, if you did shoot me, everybody who knew him would say, ‘Well, okay,’ you know?”

The idea that Brian is of such unique importance and value that infringement of rights in him would justify murder annoys Erica profoundly, although (or even because) she might have subscribed to it in the past. Naturally, she does not show this annoyance. “I wouldn’t know how to shoot anyone,” she merely says, smiling briefly.

Wendy smiles back; her smile is timid, grateful. She has small uneven white teeth, like a child.

“The other thing I wanted to say, it’s that you shouldn’t blame Brian.” She takes another breath. “I mean the, uh, you know, relationship wasn’t his idea. I like persecuted him into it. If it wasn’t for that, I bet he wouldn’t have ever got off with any chick.”

“Perhaps,” Erica says, thinking that Wendy is deceived, for Brian is off with another chick even now, and one reportedly much inferior to her. Her defense does not persuade Erica of Brian’s relative innocence, but rather the reverse. It demonstrates that Brian had not only seduced this girl last spring, but had somehow managed to convince her that it was all her fault. Just as he has so often tried to convince Erica that everything was hers. She’d like to tell him—

And she will tell him. I had a visitor today, she will remark calmly after supper tonight, when the children are out of the way, when Brian is fed, relaxed and expecting no unpleasantness. Who do you think it was? she will ask. A visitor to lunch. And then bring up the other one, because it is time for that. Yes.

“Look,” she says aloud, speaking for the first time in a normal conversational voice. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Or something to eat, perhaps. Have you had lunch?”

“Oh no, no thank you.” Wendy looks frightened again; can she suspect that Erica, having neglected to shoot her, now intends to poison her?

“I haven’t eaten lunch yet myself,” Erica continues reassuringly, standing up. “I’m going to make myself a tuna-fish sandwich, and you could have one too if you like.”

“No thanks, really. I better not.” Wendy also rises. “Hey,” she adds, trailing Erica toward the kitchen. “You hafta believe me, you know. I mean about Brian. That he’s not responsible.”

“Brian is a grown man,” Erica says, opening the refrigerator to remove milk, lettuce and a bowl of tunafish-salad mix; and shutting it again with the emphasis her tone lacks.

“But it was my fault really. For months I kept coming around to his office, and he always wasn’t having any. He tried to help me get over it, he was beautiful about it, and so patient and intelligent, well you know how he is, but I couldn’t. I just cried all the time and kept saying how I was going to have a nervous breakdown if he didn’t love me.”

“I see,” Erica remarks, rinsing two pieces of lettuce in the sink under an unnecessarily hard flow of water.

“But that was straight, you know,” Wendy insists. “I figure I would have flipped out pretty soon.” She makes the gesture of someone exhausted or insane flipping a pancake, in demonstration. “I was really flaky.” Erica takes a loaf of whole-grain rye bread out of the bread drawer. “I’m not getting across to you,” Wendy says anxiously. “You’re not listening to me; you’re just angry.”

“I’m not angry, at you, ” Erica corrects, opening the mayonnaise jar. “I think it’s very honest and decent of you to come and see me like this.” In her head, she contrasts the natural whole-grain honesty and decency of Wendy’s conduct, her willingness to accept blame, with the slippery opaque homogenized mayonnaise behavior of Brian.

“I had to, because I probably won’t be back here for a long while.” Wendy shrugs wearily, and leans against a cupboard. Her raincoat has fallen open; under it she is wearing a leather vest and skirt trimmed with long untidy leather fringe.

“You’re leaving Corinth for good?” Erica asks, thinking that according to Brian, Wendy had already left town in June. Either he has neglected to mention that she has returned for a visit (by the look of the suitcases, a lengthy visit) or he does not know it.

“Yeh. I hope it’s for good.” Wendy grins, sighs. “I’m taking the bus to New York this afternoon.”

“Ah.” In all their years here Erica and Brian have never used the bus, which takes six uncomfortable hours to reach New York, but always a car or the more rapid and expensive plane. “Have you seen Brian?”

“No; not since last Friday. He doesn’t want to see me again.”

“But he knows you’re going to New York?”

“He knows I’m splitting.” Wendy’s voice rises and wobbles as if she were going to cry. “It’s what he wants.”

Splitting = leaving town, Erica translates. But Wendy also appears to be splitting in another sense, of which her fringed and shredded clothes are the visible sign. Though Brian has long since lost interest in this miserable girl, she still has a crush on him—is even now being cut into shreds and torn apart by this crush.

“And do you want to leave town?” she asks, trying to speak gently.

“I hafta leave town.” Wendy gasps, swallows. “Not just on account of what’s happened, but if I stay I know I’ll hassle Brian and keep him from working on The Book. That’s the really heavy thing.”

“How do you mean, heavy?” Erica arranges her sandwich on a willow-patterned plate.

“You know—serious. Important: I mean, compared to The Book, none of us are important, you know? Not even Brian, maybe.”

“I don’t think I follow you,” Erica says, turning up the flame under the coffee pot.

“You know his book, on American foreign policy?”

“I know about it, naturally. I haven’t read any of it yet.”

“But you know what it’s about, and that he’s going to show how this really beautiful plan Kennan had after World War II was shucked because of selfish establishment politics and intrigues. He’s going to explain the whole thing, and if The Book is published in time, and the right people in Washington read it, it’s going to really zap them. And that could have a fantastic effect, you know? Like once they realize what happened before, they would reverse their strategy, and stop trashing the rest of the world.” She looks at Erica with absolute, almost hysterical sincerity. “There’s no way of predicting for sure, but it could happen, you know?”