Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

She must camouflage the loss, but is uncertain how to begin. Brian prefers the natural look, and as a natural beauty it is years since she used anything but a little rose lipstick and blue eye shadow—not even mascara, for her lashes and brows are naturally thick and dark. She owns no other cosmetics. But Matilda has recently begun to accumulate all sorts of bottles and tubes; they fill a shelf of the cabinet already. Opening a jar almost at random, Erica smears a thin paste, smelling faintly of medicinal soap and designed to cover adolescent acne, over the fine dry creased surface of her skin. The stuff coats her eyebrows and eyelashes; she wets them to remove it, and when this is ineffective, colors them brown again with Matilda’s mascara, and rubs her own blue shadow over her lids. She outlines her mouth with the eyebrow pencil and paints it rose-mauve. Then, stepping back, she looks into the glass. The total effect is somewhat masklike and artificial, and the pink paste has turned her eye shadow an odd, bruised lavender—but at least she does not look quite so old. She fluffs her hair out with her hands and goes to tell the children she is leaving.

Matilda, by the sound of it, is in her room. Erica climbs the stairs and knocks loudly on the door; when there is no answer she pushes it ajar. Matilda is lying on her bed with her eyes shut and a school text open face-down on her stomach; the hoarse screams of a rock group issue from opposite speakers. Erica looks from one to the other with a sense of fatigue. For the last month Matilda has been complaining that her own phonograph is lousy and is messing up her records, making it necessary for her to play them downstairs in the sitting room. The house has resounded with frenzied thumping and shouting, and the angry voices of Jeffrey and Matilda quarreling over when, how loud and for how long she could use the machine, while Erica struggled to control her own voice and act as referee. Finally, in a moment of exhaustion, she told her daughter to take the family stereo upstairs. The result has been that Erica cannot play her own records, and there is a constant faint background of bad music throughout the house at all hours.

“Matilda!”

“Yeh.” Matilda half opens her eyes. Though both children have continued to change for the worse, the change in her has been the most upsetting lately. A few months ago she was a plump, sulky child. Now she is a sulky adolescent, almost embarrassingly developed for a thirteen-year-old. None of her clothes fit or suit her, and none of her old friends. Boys, some of whose voices have already changed, have begun to phone, asking for “Tilda.” She has been forbidden to date until her fourteenth birthday, next month; but she goes for long walks after school and has been seen in disreputable hamburger joints in Collegetown. Erica wonders at intervals if she ought to speak to her seriously about birth control.

“I’m going to Danielle’s party now. I want you to have your bath and be in bed by nine-thirty. This is a school night.” The last sentence sounds suddenly loud, for the record has ended.

“Yeh.” The tone of Matilda’s voice suggests that she has no intention of being in bed by nine-thirty. She raises her head. “Hey, you look flaky.”

“Flaky? What does that mean?” But another disc has begun to blare from both sides of the room; Matilda has shut her eyes again, and her mother lacks the energy to pursue the question. She stops on her way downstairs at another mirror, but can see nothing flaking. Perhaps it was a kind of compliment?

Jeffrey is in the kitchen eating again and possibly doing his homework; at least there is a book propped in front of him.

“I’m going out now. If you need me for anything you can call Danielle’s house. And I’d like you to be in bed at ten, please; this is a school night ...Jeffrey, really. You might answer me.”

“What for?”

“So that I’ll know you heard me.” Erica strives to keep her tone friendly.

“How could I not hear you? You’re standing right nexta me.”

“It’s a matter of good manners.” No reply. “And Jeffrey, you really shouldn’t eat so many chocolate cookies; they’re bad for your skin. If you’re hungry, why don’t you have some fruit? An orange, or one of these bananas, Jeffrey?”

“Look, why don’t you blast off?” her son growls. “I thought you said you were gonna.”

Erica opens her mouth to expostulate, then shuts it because she is not sure she can do so calmly. She might shout, might howl, lose control of herself. To avoid this she retreats to the front hall, where she puts on her coat and boots. Carrying her shoes in a plastic bag with the legend Superbread printed on it, she leaves the house, not even slamming the door behind her.

At Danielle’s all the lights are on, and through the porch window her living room has the bright, empty, pre-party look of a stage set. Danielle, in her red mumu, opens the door.

“Yes? Oh, Erica, come in. I was afraid it was Mrs. Heyrick again.”

“Has she been complaining?”

“You said it. I thought I’d head her off; I told her this afternoon I was having a party so she could make all her fuss then. But she was just over ten minutes ago asking if it was possible for me not to play the phonograph because her husband doesn’t feel himself.”

Danielle laughs roughly. For over five years, ever since the Zimmerns moved to Corinth and into this half-house, she has been at war with the owners of the other half, an elderly couple named Heyrick. Battle was joined almost at once, on a hot September morning when Mrs. Heyrick, from her front porch, observed Silly squatting in a bed of petunias with her skirt lifted.

“What are you doing, little girl?” she cawed, rising to her feet.

“Watering the flars,” replied Silly, then aged three.

After going indoors to skewer a small veiled hat to her hair, Mrs. Heyrick proceeded down her front walk, along the street under the elms and up the adjoining walk, where she rang the doorbell and informed Danielle that this was a nice neighborhood and that her daughter was old enough to know better and to wear panties.

The resulting conflict had continued ever since, finding new grounds without wholly abandoning the old ones. It waxed and waned with the seasons: during the winter months there was usually a cooling-off period, with only occasional skirmishes about noise and the removal of snow; as temperatures rose and the un-nice behavior of the Zimmerns and their friends became more visible, it heated up again.

Had Erica and Brian found themselves in such a situation they would have moved out as soon as possible; but the Zimmerns declined to do so. Leonard, who while he lived in the house took an equal share in the war—and in Erica’s opinion sometimes went out of his way to provoke it—considered it a matter of principle. “Not on your life,” he exclaimed once when she suggested moving. “Why should I let a couple of senile anti-Semites turn my family into Wandering Jews?”

“Since Leonard left, active hostilities have been carried on principally by Danielle and Mrs. Heyrick, a scrawny lady with a penetrating whispery voice and a large collection of small hats. Mr. Heyrick plays only a supporting role, his frequent ailments serving as ammunition for his wife.

“How’s everything going?” Erica asks,, following Danielle into the kitchen, where platters of party food are ranged along the counter.

“Not bad. I forgot to get more flour, so I decided not to bother with those cheese puffs. There’s really nothing much for you to do—well, maybe you could cut some rye bread. Here. Roo’s made all the dips, that was a big help. She’s trying to bribe me.” Danielle grins at her daughter, who is scraping out the blender and licking the spatula. “She wants to start a gerbil factory in the sewing room.”