Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

But she must not give way to morbid imagination; she must be calm, cheerful, rational when she goes upstairs. Erica adds sugar and milk liberally to the bloody coffee, takes two deep deliberate breaths, and picks up the tray.

“Wendy?” There is no answer to her knock; Erica enters the spare room, which is dark and rather cold. She sets the tray down and raises the blind, which has been lowered so far that its end lies limp on the radiator. Even then the room is grayed, obscure; white mist presses up against the glass.

“Wendy?” No response. In a cage by the window some; shredded newspapers and shavings begin to squeak and rustle about; one of Roo’s gerbils raises its muzzle and front paws. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Wha?” The voice comes not from the pillow, which has been abandoned at the bed head, but out of a snarl of sheets and blankets halfway to the foot.

“It’s quite late, you know.”

The mound of bedclothes moves; and Wendy puts her head out from it. “Erica? Wha time is it?”

“About eleven.”

“Oh, wow.” Wendy squints, rubs her eyes, and sits up on her haunches, in a short crumpled cotton nightgown. She looks plump, worn and not quite clean, with unshaven prickly legs and stained feet. Her hair, snarled with sleep, hangs like limp shredded wheat.

“How do you feel?” Erica asks.

“All right, I guess.” Wendy grins feebly! “Hungry.”

“I brought you some breakfast.”

“Breakfast? Great.” She smiles as the tray is lowered onto a chair by the bed, not seeing there what Erica sees. “Hey, raisin toast, fantastic.”

Squatting on the rim of the bed, she pushes her hair out of the way and begins to eat, while Erica stands watching, planning what she is about to say. Wendy—or no, better she herself—must call the number Brian gave her and make an appointment for as soon as possible. Brian will provide the necessary cash from his famous separate account, but will not be told where or when the operation is taking place.

Someone will have to go to New York with Wendy; her roommate, or the friend in New Jersey. Erica wants to help; but to accompany Wendy on the long bus ride to the city, to walk the Manhattan streets looking for the address, to sit in the waiting room while behind a closed door the bleeding fried eggs—No, she can’t do that, that would be going too far, in every sense. And besides, she has to stay with The Children.

But if she is afraid just to go to New York, to wait in the next room, what must Wendy feel? At the moment, apparently nothing. She is eating with small eager bites, shoving egg onto her fork with a piece of toast, lifting it, chewing.

Erica opens her mouth, but something keeps her from speaking: reluctance to interrupt Wendy’s innocent enjoyment, or perhaps the social rule—learned so early it is almost instinctive—that nice people don’t discuss medical problems during meals.

Wendy drinks from the mug, sets it down, and wipes her mouth with the back of her paw.

“How come you’re so good to me?” she asks. “I mean,” she adds, since Erica does not at once reply, “considering what I did to you, it really kind of zaps me out, all this.”

“But you didn’t do anything to me, ” explains Erica, sitting down across the room in Leonard’s former desk chair and rotating it toward the bed.

“Sure I did.”

“Not to me personally. You didn’t owe me anything—you didn’t even know me then.”

“You think that matters?”

“Of course.” Erica does not add the moral—that now Wendy knows her and thus owes her—she barely even thinks it.

“But still.” Wendy grins uneasily. “Why should you want to help me?”

“Well. Partly because I think women have to stick together. Like Danielle said yesterday: we’re all members of an underprivileged majority, and if we can help each other we ought to.” Wendy’s plate appears to be empty. “Are you finished with breakfast? Would you like more of anything?”

“No thanks. That was great.” Wendy sags back against the wallpaper, hitching up one shoulder of her nightgown.

“You’re welcome.” Erica transfers the breakfast tray to the desk and sits down in the bedside chair. “I’ve been doing some research,” she begins in a reassuring voice, “and I think I’ve finally got some results.”

“Results?” Wendy looks perplexed, not reassured.

“Yes, I’ve heard of a doctor now, in New York, and I thought I might call him—”

“You don’t have to do that, I—” Wendy interrupts.

“I know I don’t have to do it,” Erica interrupts back. “But I want to do it.” She smiles kindly. “And I think I should call now, this morning, because it’s really better not to lose any more time, and make an appointment for you.”

“I don’t know if I wanna see him.” Wendy huddles her knees up to her chest and pulls the nightgown down over them to her feet, so that her body is enclosed in crumpled cotton like a small bundle of unhappy washing.

“But this is a very good man; he’s supposed to be extremely careful, reliable—” She speaks gently, not allowing any vexation to show.

“I don’t mean that. What I mean is, I’m not sure I wanna see any doctor now. I think maybe I hafta, like, go through with it.”

“Go through with it? But what on earth for?” Erica forgets to modulate her voice.

“Because maybe I should. See, the thing is.” Wendy fixes her eyes on Erica. “Last night, well I guess early this morning really, about five, I woke up. And I couldn’t get back to sleep again, I was so psyched up about everything. I thought how I was making all this grief for you and Danielle, and what I ought to do is just go down to the Greyhound station and take the next bus to New York whenever it was. So I got up and dressed and went out. It was pretty freaky really, because it was still completely dark, and more or less raining. I was walking along not paying much attention where, and then the street stopped and there I was right by the edge of the gorge.

“And I thought, Why not? I thought how I wanted to make Brian so happy and give him everything, but all he’d got from me actually was a lot of heavy trouble so that he like never wants to see me again. And if I went and had the abortion, I would be like ripping off all this bread from him, hundreds of dollars.” Wendy’s voice weakens; she lowers her face to her knees. “Well, anyhow, it seemed like the fastest way to solve everybody’s problem,” she says hoarsely. “And I thought, God will forgive me; he’ll understand. I mean if he exists.

“So I sorta got up on the wall,” she continues behind her knees, in the thin confiding voice of a schoolchild describing her trip to the park. “I can’t stand heights usually, you know. I don’t even like crossing the bridge to campus. That open grid really freaks me out, and if I look down, everything starts to spin. But it was so dark last night I couldn’t see anything; I could hear the water running, but I liked that. I mean it seemed right, you know? The end of the year, rain falling, leaves falling, water falling. I thought how I’d kind of loused up in this incarnation, and maybe next time I’d be reborn as something easier like a cow or a tomato plant.” Wendy grins.

“Well, so I was sitting there on the stone wall, getting really soaked, shivering. But I thought how it didn’t matter because I wouldn’t have time to come down with flu or anything. I hung my legs over and squinted down between them into the gorge, to make sure there wasn’t anything in the way like a tree or a rock, because I didn’t want to miss and just get smashed up. And then I happened to look across to the other side and there was a light on in one of the dorms. Somebody was still awake studying; or maybe they had got up real early. I remembered reading how John Stuart Mill used to rise before dawn to work on his philosophy by lamplight. And Brian—at Harvard he used to stay up studying almost all night sometimes, you know? And then it hit me that maybe I wasn’t important, but here, inside me”—Wendy lowers her knees and lays one fist on her nightgown—“there was somebody that had half Brian’s genes, and maybe it was destined to be as brilliant as him; maybe a great genius. And years from now some night when everybody else was asleep they could be sitting up at some university working and studying. Only if I got off that wall on the wrong side, they would never get the chance.” Wendy’s last words catch in her throat and come out damp; she begins crying.