Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

Brian pushes past St. Jerome at the turnstile and out onto the damp cold front steps, where for some time he paces back and forth, continually consulting his watch and becoming damper and colder. Finally, at three minutes to two, he makes a rush through the drizzle toward the distant phone, looking back over his shoulder at intervals. Reaching it, he hesitates, wondering how long Dr. Friendly will wait for his thousand dollars (minus the two hundred he has already received)—fifteen minutes, surely?—and decides to call Wendy’s house first.

This telephone seems to work, but Brian hesitates; he stands listening to the dial tone, reluctant to dial, to speak to Wendy’s mother again. He has never met Mrs. Gahaghan, and does not want her to hear his voice too often. Also he feels uncomfortable because when she does hear it she responds as if he were Wendy’s age, rather than only two years younger than she. But the phone is humming, time is passing, and he is cold. He dials the number.

“Hello?” The formal, wary, falsely genteel voice of Mrs. Gahaghan.

“Hello, is Wendy there?”

“Gosh, I’m sorry.” Her tone changes to one of informal, good-natured regret. “Wendee’s already gone back to college.”

“Already gone?” Brian feigns surprise, for this is what Wendy had planned to tell her parents. “When did she leave? ...You see, I was planning to meet her,” he adds.

“Oh, dear. You were expecting to meet Wendee today? ”

“Yes, about half an hour ago.” Brian tries to project a light, careless tone through the electrical connection.

“Oh, dear me. I’m awful sorry. I guess she must of forgot about it. She left right after breakfast for the university, she got a ride with her roommate Linda, do you know Linda?”

“Yes, I know Linda,” Brian says through his teeth.

“She was planning to take the bus, see, but then last night Linda was over and she’d heard of a ride back to college with some friends, of course that’s much nicer than the bus, and Wendee hasn’t been feeling very well this vacation and she wanted to get back to her work, she has an examination coming up, I’m sure you know how that is, and I’m afraid she didn’t think—I know she’ll be very sorry when she remembers—”

During this speech Brian holds the telephone farther and farther away from his head, causing Mrs. Gahaghan’s apologetic quacking to dwindle to a distant twitter. When she runs out of breath he brings it back. “Yes ...Thank you ...No, that’s quite all right ...Don’t worry about it,” he says, and hangs up.

For the next hour, like Burgoyne at Saratoga, Brian does not allow himself to speculate on what has happened. He concentrates on arranging the practical details of his retreat: telephoning Dr. Friendly, canceling the hotel reservation, returning the two tickets to Little Murders, and getting his car first out of the parking garage and then out of the Friday afternoon Manhattan traffic.

But once he has crossed the George Washington Bridge and turned north on the thruway, there is plenty of time to think. There is time to rehearse his conversation with Mrs. Gahaghan; and also his conversation with Dr. Friendly, in the course of which the doctor reminded him 1) that he, Dr. Friendly, is a very busy man who has given up one of his few opportunities to spend time with his own family on a national holiday in order to help Brian but; 2) that he does not do this sort of thing for money, but because he believes in Human Rights; and 3) that he has, nevertheless, extremely heavy expenses. Brian would have liked to make an abrasive remark at this point. Instead he controlled his tongue, and—with considerable effort and the promise of an additional fee—managed to arrange another appointment for the following week.

As well as rehashing the past, Brian has time to think about the future. He curses aloud as he contemplates the student conferences and the committee meeting that must now be canceled, the new hotel reservations that must be made, the twenty-dollar bills that must be withdrawn from the bank; the renewed negotiations with Wendy, who will have to be convinced of the reasonable thing again, and driven to New York again. This time he must keep her away from Linda Sliski, and from Erica and Danielle. He must not let her visit her family; he must not let her out of his sight for a moment.

Brian feels an angry exhaustion, a kind of battle fatigue—almost a desire to give up the struggle. But he cannot afford to give it up. If Wendy remains pregnant, she will expect him to marry her. Erica will expect this too, and so will Danielle, and Linda, and presently Mrs. Gahaghan, and all Wendy’s sisters and cousins and aunts. He can imagine how they will all set upon him, using every unfair weapon in the female arsenal: tears and scoldings, injured looks and righteous nagging, sexual blackmail and moralistic whining and threats of suicide. He can see them now in his mind, a band of harpies charging toward the New York State Thruway over the nearest icy hill—hair flying, claws outstretched—followed by dozens more, hundreds, a whole monstrous regiment of women.

The men of his acquaintance will not stand with him against this onslaught, though they will censure him if he goes down before it. Brian recalls the earlier imaginary unanimous opinion of his colleagues on the Curriculum Committee that for him to break off his long-standing alliance with Erica Tate and suddenly form one with Wendy Gahaghan would be morally and politically indefensible. In a few cases this opinion will make no difference; whatever he does, Hank Andrews will remain his friend, and Donald Dibble his enemy. But if he marries Wendy, Hank’s wife (an elegant shy young woman who quietly admires Erica) will not invite them to dinner very often. John Randall’s wife (a well-bred elderly beauty who is a famous local gourmet cook and has always been fond of Erica) will probably not invite them to dinner at all. Chuck Markowitz and his wife will perhaps still invite them; but since Lily is a militant vegetarian, her dinners will consist, as usual, mostly of steamed wheat and raisins and fried eggplant, a type of nourishment he already gets too much of from Wendy and her friends.

Essentially, all Brian’s colleagues will think less of him if he leaves his wife and children for Wendy—including those who might condone a discreet affair. A few may envy him sexually, but not very much, and not for very long. As soon as Wendy’s pregnancy becomes public knowledge even they will look down “upon him, and laugh silently, as he would do in their place.

And if Wendy remains pregnant and he does not marry her, he will also be censured, especially by members of her generation. When his students and graduate students find out (and some of them will inevitably find out, or at least hear rumors) they will think him selfish, untrustworthy, uptight and square. In other words, whatever he does, he will be condemned and ridiculed by at least half the world.

By the time Brian is a hundred miles out of New York the repetition of these ideas and recollections has become intolerable to him. It is for this reason that, somewhere near Liberty, he stops for two bedraggled young people holding up a damp, stained cardboard sign reading CORINTH U. As a rule he declines to pick up hitchhikers—not as a precaution against robbery, but because he prefers his thoughts to their conversation.

In the rear-view mirror, as he slows down, he can see the two students jogging toward him along the dirty shoulder of the road through the rain. They are about the same size and wear the same anonymous, androgynous jeans and boots and parka, making it difficult to tell of what sex they are, even when they reach the car.

“Hey, thanks.” They pile in behind with their knapsacks, breathless. “We thought nobody was ever going to stop. How far you going? ...Corinth? Wow, beautiful.” Brian identifies one by its rudimentary pale mustache as male; the other by its voice—a warm, dominant contralto—as female.