Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

Beyond its practical advantages, the Frick Museum has an important symbolic function—a lesson to teach. More than any public collection can, it stands for a way of life: for elegance, art, taste and civilized living conditions—in fact, for all that Wendy has to gain by having finally listened to Reason. In these high, airy rooms is the concentrated essence of everything lacking in her background and education—a sample of what he will show her next summer when they go to Europe. Wendy has never been abroad except for a three-week tour which seems to have consisted mainly of driving through foreign cities during heavy rain in sightseeing buses crammed with American students, all singing popular American songs. She has never met any Europeans except hotel managers and shopkeepers; never been to Sadler’s Wells or the Prado, or eaten in a good French restaurant. All this, and much more, he can give her, will give her—as otherwise he never could have, for as he and Erica proved years ago, it is neither economically or socially possible to tour Europe with a small child.

For Brian, the last four-weeks have already been an education: not in art history or European civilization, like that he plans for Wendy, but in her own field of social psychology. As his separation from Erica became known to all his acquaintances, and his attachment to Wendy to some of them, he has learned firsthand what is meant by “role typing” and “social cathexis.”

Marital difficulties, he has discovered, are socially equivalent to a childhood or trivial illness—colic, chicken pox, flu. Everyone who hears of them is openly concerned; they express mild regret (“Sorry to hear about you and Erica”) mixed with curiosity (“How is it going?”) and a compulsion to relate their own experiences with the same ailment (“You, know Irene once moved out on me? Yeh, she took the kids and went to her mother’s for three weeks”) and to offer advice (“That’s how women are; you have to give them time to cool off”).

Adultery, on the other hand, is a social disease. Like halitosis or the clap, it is what only your best friend or worst enemy will mention, though everyone talks about it behind your back. Brian can therefore only guess how widely his affair is known, or how it is generally regarded, though he is aware that both his best friend in the department (Hank Andrews) and his worst enemy (Don Dibble) think less of him for it.

Not all Brian’s lessons in social psychology have been as hard as this. He has found it a great relief not having to face, every day, Erica’s spoken and unspoken reproaches; and an even greater relief to get away from Jeffrey and Matilda—from their noise, their rudeness, their greed. He recalls something Leonard Zimmern said long before his own divorce: that most men don’t want to leave their wives half as much as they do their adolescent children.

Now that he has vacated it, Brian realizes he has been living in a hostile camp, among people who at best tolerated, at worst exploited and defied him, for a long while—in a sense, all his life. What amazes him most is that this discovery has come so late; for instance that he could have lived forty-six years without knowing what it is to be really loved. His parents’ affection, though genuine, was always conditional on good behavior; as was that of his other relatives and his teachers, from nursery to graduate school. The girls he knew before marriage were all self-seeking; even when they claimed to love him, they strove to withhold some part of themselves, either physical or emotional, according to current social custom, in the hope that he would commit himself further to obtain it.

As for Erica, Brian has always known that she cared less for him than he did for her. From the start he was the one who loved, while she allowed herself to be loved. That was her nature, he had told himself. It was not as if she preferred someone else; indeed she very evidently preferred him. Brian could accept that; did accept it for nearly twenty years—until he met Wendy, who never judges him, withholds nothing, cares more for him than for herself.

Of course this unconditional love has disadvantages. Sometimes Brian feels like a man with a new, overaffectionate pet, whose constant and obvious devotion is half a source of satisfaction, half an embarrassment. He cannot romp with Wendy as often as she, or he, would like—he has to conserve energy for his work. He has had to teach her to restrain herself in public: not to lick and paw him; to sit, quietly, and not disturb him when he is working. But overall her effect has been energizing, even exhilarating. He has not perhaps spent as much time on his book as he should, but what time he has spent has been productive.

As he paces the hall, of the Frick, Brian glances alternately at a guidebook he has purchased, and into the galleries, planning what he will show Wendy, and in what order. The dining room, with its rather simpering portraits of English beauties, can be skipped. The two smaller rooms beyond—all light, elegant eighteenth-century French furniture and decorations—seem at first glance just right to begin with: a pleasant if frivolous contrast to the gray, dirty city outside. But after a second look he rejects them. There are altogether too many babies in the painted wall panels by Boucher. Indeed, the panels of the inner room, which represent the arts and sciences, are entirely peopled by babies: plump, coy infant poets; chubby infant astronomers and musicians—figures which cannot help but recall Wendy’s obsession with the possible genius of her unborn child.

Better to start across the way, in the Fragonard Room, where the panels portray an elegant pastoral love affair, and the only children present are winged cupids. It is not the sort of art Brian usually pays any attention to, but today one of the paintings titled “Reverie,” catches his eye. This shows a very pretty young girl, fair, round-cheeked, sitting dreaming at the base of a tall sundial in a relaxed attitude. He has often seen Wendy sit so, on the floor in his apartment, with her head tilted back and one arm flung out along the couch. Indeed, Wendy could almost have posed for this picture, in the proper fancy dress, with her hair curled and lightly powdered.

When they are abroad next summer—or even this weekend here in the city if she feels well soon enough—he must take Wendy shopping. He doesn’t know much about women’s clothes, but he is aware that hers are not only ridiculous but unbecoming. The heavy leather browns and tans of her American-Indian getup, the dirty yellows and reds of the East Indian prints, are suited to women of a darker complexion. Wendy ought to wear rose, creamy white, lavender, like these French girls whom she resembles; also her clothes should fit, rather than hang. Something might be done about her hair, too.

Looking at the painting again, Brian feels, as the artist clearly intended him to feel, both romantic and sensual. The girl is young but not, to judge by her pose and hints in the other panels, innocent. Her charmingly but almost indecently low-cut dress suggests experience, and so does the way her knees are spread under the long draped skirt, and one hand placed strategically in her lap. The thick column of the sundial, with its round tilted top on which a naked cupid marks the hour of noon, is surely phallic. An observer is meant to imagine himself stepping up over the carved and gilded frame into that leafy sunlit garden, lifting those folds of pink and white silk ...

He checks his watch. Wendy is nearly due, so he returns to the museum entrance, but she is not there. This irritates Brian, who dislikes waiting for women at the best of times, and has suggested that she arrive early. Now there will hardly be time for them to look at anything seriously before their appointment with “Dr. Friendly.” (Impossible to guess what impulse of self-deception or black comedy had made the abortionist choose this alias.)