Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

“I suppose it possibly could,” Erica admitted, wishing that Wendy would stop asking her if she knows things.

“Well, then. Say The Book wasn’t finished, and so our policy wasn’t changed and the world was destroyed, all because I wanted so bad to see Brian and get fucked?” Erica flinches at the term; Wendy, not noticing, moves nearer, gazing at her with intensity. “I mean, what I believe is if you really love somebody you hafta want what’s right for them irrespective of if it hurts you personally. Like what my roommate Linda says about Madagascar. The way you know you really love a guy is, suppose he was to get a telegram saying he could have whatever he wants most in the world if he would move to Madagascar, and suppose you got this telegram first. Would you rip it up and destroy his future, or would you give it to him?”

“Mm,” Erica says, moving back from this outburst. “It’ll be easier for you both if you’re in New York,” she says, trying to speak in a calming voice.

“It’s like the only way. I mean, we both realize if I’m here I won’t be able to leave him alone, because I tried that already last summer. I swear to stay away but then I get racked up about something and telephone, you know? Or I freak out completely and go to the office. And even when I’m seeing him it’s no good: I want to see him more, all the time, and there’s bad scenes, like last month in the coffee shop. It’s a bummer, really.”

Reminded by the word “coffee,” Erica turns off the flame under the pot, pours a cup, and sits down at the kitchen table. But she is also reminded of something else. Coffee shop. Last month. Last summer. A few moments ago she had a vision of Wendy as splitting, torn apart. Now, instead, she begins to see her as several figures coalescing. It is as if she, Erica, had been stunned or drunk for months and was just coming out of it. Like a cartoon character she sits frowning, watching the stars and asterisks fade; three images blend into one. The beautiful blonde she was seeking last spring; the pudding-faced ugly one she has sought all fall; and the weary, overwrought young girl who now stands in her kitchen—can they all be the same person?

Erica shakes her head slowly, to clear it, and looks at the single image. “Let me ask you something,” she says, speaking carefully. “Are you a psychology graduate student?”

Wendy takes a moment to register this. “I guess not, not any more,” she says then, looking at Erica with a dazed, bitter expression. “I didn’t tell them yet, but starting today I guess I’m just a grad-school dropout.”

Returning to consciousness, the animated-cartoon cat sees her several vibrating, threatening enemies reduced to one small, almost, pathetic mouse—a mouse who has taken her request for information as a catty remark. Brian has had only one affair, and that affair is now over. Both Erica’s invisible rivals are simultaneously defeated, rejected.

Erica has always been a good winner: generous, modest, charming. (She is less a good loser, but fortunately she has seldom since childhood been in that position.) She realizes that she does not wish to cause Wendy any more pain than she is obviously suffering now—that she is in fact sorry for her.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean—Listen, please, Wendy. If you don’t want any lunch, at least sit down. You look exhausted.”

“I am sorta spaced out.” The mouse slumps into a kitchen chair, “I didn’t sleep last night. I figure maybe I’ll get some sleep on the bus.”

“Are you going home?”

“Uh uh. Not right away. Ma’d be too psyched if I was to just walk in and tell her I quit school and the whole bit. She comes on enlightened, but she’s really a pretty square type. I’m going to stay with a married girl friend in Jersey City, she’ll lend me some money. And I’ll try to get some kind of job when this hassle is over.” Wendy puts a hand on her stomach and grins oddly. “Then maybe I’ll break the bad news to Ma.”

“Mm,” Erica says, not listening, trying to arrange her new information. All this time, Brian has had only one affair; but he has had it all this time. When he promised to end it last spring, when he said it was over, he was lying. Only now, only since Friday in fact, is it really finished. And when he blamed her for still brooding about it last summer; when he wondered audibly if she was mentally unbalanced, this fall—Erica feels as if she were being poured full of boiling soup; a hot furious bubbling and trembling in her chest and arms. What lies Brian has told, what hypothetical pomposity he has shown; what guilt, what awful waste of energy and feeling he has caused her!

Now phrases Brian has used in the past about his affair begin to return. “It meant nothing ...I don’t think about it ...It just wasn’t that important.” To him, that is. To Wendy it was important, painfully important—and still is, though Brian evidently is tired of her.

“Why don’t you have a cup of coffee,” she suggests gently.

“Well. Okay. I mean if it’s no trouble.”

“Would you like sugar? Cream?”

“Everything you’ve got, please.”

Erica sets her blue enamel sugarbowl and cream pitcher before Wendy, who proceeds to dilute her coffee into a sort of hot ice-cream soda; perhaps it is more comforting that way. And Wendy obviously needs comfort. Brian has refused to see her any more; he is tired of the feelings he has aroused in her. In order that he need not be reminded of them, Wendy is leaving town, dropping out of college. On Brian’s recommendation, no doubt.

And now it occurs to Erica, with a black bitterness like her own coffee, that twice this autumn Brian has separated women from their chosen work, merely for the sake of his own selfish male convenience and peace of mind. First, through emotional and moral blackmail, he prevented her from taking that job in the psychology department. Now, presumably by the same means, he is forcing Wendy to leave graduate school.

“Do you have to quit school right now,” she asks, sitting down again. “The term’s only half finished. You’ll lose credit for your courses.”

“Yeh,” Wendy agrees dully.

“Can’t you wait until the end of the semester? Till Christmas, at least.”

“Uh uh.” Wendy shakes her head. “I should, maybe; I thought about it, but I know I’m not strong enough to stay here without bugging him. Anyhow I can’t afford it now.” She takes a breath, then lets it out, seeming to collapse inwardly.

Erica picks up her tunafish sandwich, looks at it, and puts it down. Rage at Brian, who has caused this collapse, pity for herself and for Wendy, rise in her throat, almost choking her.

“Please, have some of my sandwich,” she says, moving her plate across the kitchen table toward Wendy.

“I better not ...Well; if you’re sure you don’t want it ...Thanks.” She smiles weakly, childishly.

“You’re welcome.” Erica smiles back. She thinks that she is behaving rather well to Wendy, better than Brian has behaved. Brian has acted very wrongly, with deliberate and unprincipled selfishness. This idea does not completely displease her. In a husband, active is always preferable to passive misbehavior. It is not nice to think that Brian has callously and casually seduced and then rejected Wendy, but what is the alternative? The alternative is to think of him as a passive victim of circumstances, the sort of weakling whose life can be pushed around by sad pale little girls.

“You know, you’re a lot different from what I expected,” Wendy remarks, looking up from her coffee.

“Oh? How?”

“I thought you’d be much—I don’t know—bigger and madder.” She takes another bite of sandwich. “I mean, you know, I used to wonder all the time about what you were like. Brian would never rap with me about you. The only data he ever gave out was that you were taller than him. And then one time he was telling me about some fraternity party where these boozed-up guys knocked over a punch bowl on you, and it sounded like you never even lost your cool. So I got this idea you were some kind of frozen lady giant eight feet high.”