Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

She will have to stand by Wendy after the child comes, to watch over them both. The prospect makes her smile firmly and nod her head. Then she frowns, recalling that it is almost a week since she last saw Wendy. They had planned to meet for coffee on campus Tuesday, but at the last moment Wendy couldn’t come because Brian needed her to read proofs of an article out loud to him. Erica suspects this excuse; but she does not suspect Wendy. She believes that Brian heard of their appointment and invented the need to read proofs; she thinks he is deliberately trying to discourage their meeting for some reason—perhaps social embarrassment, perhaps mere jealous spite.

Men are often jealous and suspicious of friendship between women, though they value it among themselves. According to Danielle’s feminist friends, this is because it contradicts their idea of women as lacking the political virtues, as desiring neither liberty, equality nor fraternity. (“You notice you never hear anyone talk about sorority. ”) We are held to be capable of devotion to our husbands and children, but catty and competitive with all other women, without true affection for them.

Whereas the truth is, as anyone can see, that women are far better friends to each other than men are. We are not naturally so selfish and aggressive, and we do not have to be. Brian is directly in competition with his “friends” in the political science department here, and indirectly with those elsewhere. Or, if they are much older (or younger) than he, he looks to them (or they to him) for professional advantage. Only rarely, as with Leonard Zimmern, can he have a friendship untainted by either rivalry or calculation—and then it must lack professional intimacy, for Leonard is in another field. Women, however, are all in the same field, yet not in competition. Brian must hoard his ideas for publication; but if she passes on a new recipe she earns her friend’s gratitude and loses nothing.

Another cloud passes over the sun, shadowing the view. Erica recalls that her children will be arriving on the bus from New York in less than an hour. She must finish up here, hang the winter clothes in the proper closets, put on her coat, and drive downtown. Conscientiously, she follows this program. But at the bus station she is informed both by a hand-printed sign on the counter and by a rude young man behind it that the 3:20 from New York will be an hour late.

To pass the time she decides to go to the library. Leaving her car, she walks up the shabby end of Main Street, by cheap small groceries, bars, beauty shops, garages, a Chinese restaurant and a narrow store she doesn’t remember having noticed: the Krishna Bookshop.

Erica halts. For weeks, in the retroactive amnesia which follows upon shock, she has forgotten Sandy Finkelstein. Now she remembers that her old Cambridge acquaintance, or someone else of the same name, is the proprietor of this shop. Beyond the printed sign hanging inside the glass door (YES, WE’RE OPEN) is a narrow room lined with bookshelves, occupied by two people. One is a girl with fuzzy hair in a duffle coat; the other a man. His back is turned to Erica, but something about the uneven droop of his shoulders, the way he now reaches up one long arm for a book, seems familiar.

Erica pushes the door open. The man glances around at her briefly, nods—but with no sign of recognition—bends to retrieve a book he has just dropped, turns back, and continues his conversation.

She advances two steps into the store, and stops beside a colored astrological poster, uncertain. That man looks too old, too bald; also he didn’t seem to know her. Perhaps she only imagined it was Sandy.

Talking rather excitedly (something about the new moon) the fuzzy-haired girl walks past Erica to the front desk, followed by Sandy’s aging namesake. She hands him money, receives change and the wrapped book, and leaves with friendly exclamations:

“You oughta come out to the farm again for dinner, okay? How about tomorrow?”

“I’ll be happy to, if I can get a ride,” Zed says in Sandy’s voice—gentle, light, dry.

“Oh, no problem. Mike or Stanley oughta be coming in with the truck sometime. I’ll tell them to stop on their way home and pick you up, okay?”

“Fine.”

But if it really is Sandy, he is sadly changed. He looks tired out, shabby, in poor condition. His face, with its blurred pale scarecrow features, is badly creased around the eyes; and the thick energetic red hair which was one of Sandy’s few good points has faded and slid down off his head, as if in exhaustion. It lies now in dingy rusted curls around the base of the freckled crown.

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Peace, Jenny.”

Jenny makes a peace sign in return, hunches her shoulders under the heavy coat and goes out. Zed follows her to the door and reverses the sign hanging on it so that the other side faces out (SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED). Then he turns and stands with his back to the door, looking across the shop at Erica, smiling, but very slightly.

“Aren’t you Sanford Finkelstein?” she asks, also smiling, mainly with embarrassment.

“I was.”

“You were? ”

“Are you Erica Parker?”

“I was.” Erica smiles fully, then laughs. “Sandy—” She moves nearer, holding out her hand. Zed hesitates, then takes it with his, which feels dry and cold.

“I’m awfully happy to see you again,” he says.

“Yes, so am I.” This was one of the nicest things about Sandy, she recalls: his childlike directness. But how changed and worn he is! He looks older than Brian, though he must be four or five years younger, and his freckled skin is lined and gray. She might not have recognized him on the street, except possibly for his eyes, which are still pale and wide under sandy eyebrows with an expression of perpetual surprise. “How long has it been, eight or nine years?”

“Nearly ten. We met at the ballet in New York just before Christmas in 1959.”

“Did we?” Erica frowns. “Yes, I think I remember. What ballet was it?”

“The Nutcracker. You had on a purple dress and were with your son, and another little boy named Freddy and his mother. She was very pregnant.”

“Emmy Turner. That must have been just before she had Hannah. What a fantastic memory! You probably still know all those Greek verbs, too, that I’ve completely forgotten.”

“Some of them.”

“I thought you were in Japan.”

“I was in Japan.”

“But you came back.”

“Apparently.”

Erica laughs again; she recalls this tone, and looks at Zed with reminiscent affection. “You know, you’ve been here all year, and I never knew it until about a week ago,” she says, altering the interval out of politeness.

“Yes. I thought that.”

“You thought that? You mean you knew I was here in Corinth?” He nods. “You should have called me.” He shrugs. This too she remembers about Sandy: his shyness and lack of social initiative. He was always willing to accompany her wherever she happened to be going, at any time—to Sage’s grocery, the library, the Fine Arts Museum in Boston, or Filene’s Basement—but he seldom suggested any excursion himself; and when invited to a party he usually did not come.

“I don’t like telephones. Evil spirits of the air, a friend of mine in Tokyo calls them.”

“But in Cambridge—”

“I didn’t like them then either. I never phoned if I could help it. I always came over to Edwards House to see you, if you remember.”

“You didn’t come to see me here.” Erica smiles, but she is thinking that perhaps this was just as well. The effect on Brian and the children of this pale, shabby ghost from her past; their probable impatience and irritation, even rudeness; the probable effect of this rudeness on him—