Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

“Really?” Erica looks at Roo, who is silent.

“I told her, Yeh, that’s fine, but where am I going to sew? Also I don’t want a couple dozen gerbils running around the house; two is bad enough. And don’t tell me you’d keep them in their cages,” she adds, as Roo opens her mouth to protest. “Pretty soon you’d feel sorry for them and let them out for exercise, just like you do now with Victoria and Albert.”

“If you would buy me a horse, I wouldn’t want to raise gerbils,” Roo says abruptly.

“That’s silly.” Danielle stops slicing a red Edam cheese. “You know I can’t afford to buy you a horse.”

“I do not either know it. You always say that, but it doesn’t mean anything. You have hundreds of dollars, I saw your bank book. If you thought it was really important, you would do it.”

“Why do you want a horse so much, Roo?” Erica asks, more to relieve the atmosphere than out of curiosity, for what Leonard has called Roo’s Houyhnhnm Complex is of many months’ standing.

“Because horses are the most noble, beautiful, wonderful thing in the world; I wish I’d been born a horse.”

“You have riding lessons now, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Roo admits. “But—”

“More than lessons. She can go out to the stables any time she wants,” Danielle explains, arranging half-moons of red-rimmed cheese on a plate. “St.” Bernard fixed it up with his neighbors.”

“But isn’t that enough?” Erica asks.

“No.” Roo speaks with intensity. “I want a horse of my own. That’s another reason I want to start breeding gerbils, see, so I can save up for one faster.”

“You’re not going to make much money on gerbils,” Danielle says, starting on a block of pale-brown goat cheese. “Already they’re advertising them in the paper for five dollars a pair, when Victoria and Albert were twelve from Contemporary Toys last Christmas. Everybody has gerbils now, and they’re all breeding. In a few months people will be giving them away. Anyhow you know how you are, Roo—you’ll get attached to all those dozens of babies, and you won’t want to sell any of them.”

“I will too. As long as I know they’re going to good homes. And I’m not going to start with dozens. I just want to keep the litter Victoria has. Why can’t I do that?”

Danielle sighs. “I haven’t time to argue about it now; I have to get dressed. Don’t cut any more bread, Erica, that’s plenty. Come on upstairs with me. There’s something I want to tell you.”

In the bedroom, as Danielle drops her shoes and begins to pull off the flowered gown, Erica approaches the Victorian chest of drawers and its wide mirror, raising her hands in a pretense of tidying her hair. The first glance is reassuring: at three feet the slightly yellowed glass reflects a very pretty, slim young woman. Only as she leans forward over the chest is the image flawed, the face seen to be finely wrinkled around every feature under a pink dusty coating of Matilda’s acne-proof paint Close up against the glass, Erica looks as if she had walked into a spider’s web.

“You know Bernie went to the Co-op with me today, to help carry home all the food and drink for tonight. We got some of that new Chilean wine, I don’t know how people will like it, but I think ...

Though she has turned away from the mirror, Erica is still not listening seriously. She is not very interested in exotic wines, and still less in Dr. Bernard Kotelchuk. Instead she is studying her friend to see whether she too has become suddenly old. As usual, Danielle is without ordinary modesty; as she pulls off her black tights and unhooks a worn leopard-print bra (36 C) it is possible to make a complete survey. Even at close range her face, with its strong, simple lines and high color, seems merely weathered, as if she had just come in from outdoors. There are shallow folds on either side of the generous mouth and between the dark brows, but no wrinkles. But Danielle’s body looks heavy, used. The full breasts have begun to descend; there are broken veins in the brown thighs and lumpy rolls of flesh over the hips—and the broad curve between them, once as smoothly tan as a sand dune on a summer’s day, is marbled and puckered with the scars of appendicitis and childbirth.

Women age like wild apples, Erica read once. Most, fallen under the tree and ungathered, gradually soften and bulge and go brown and rotten; and that is what will happen to Danielle. Others hang on to the branch, where they wither and shrink and freeze as winter comes on. That is how it will be with her.

“Anyhow, the big surprise of the day was,” Danielle continues, with a pause and deepening of her voice which finally reclaims Erica’s attention, “he wasn’t joking; he was serious. St. Bernard really wants to marry me.” She grins and pulls open her top drawer.

“No! Actually?” Erica laughs. “You mean he proposed to you formally in the Co-op liquor store?”

“That’s right.” Sitting on the edge of the wide bed, Danielle bends and begins to ease on her pale-gray pantyhose.

“How bizarre.” The proposal surprises Erica; not because of Danielle’s ruined beauty (her friend is still far, far more attractive than Bernie Kotelchuk deserves), but because it is incongruous with her idea of his motives. As she imagines he would put it: Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap? “Whatever did you say?”

“I told him I’d think about it.” Danielle stands and pulls the cloudy gray nylon up to her waist, veiling the damaged summer landscape of hips and belly. “After all, it’s a long time since I had that kind of proposal.” She laughs a little uneasily, and shrugs first one and then the other shoulder under the straps of a white-lace bra.

“Mm.” Erica frowns; she doesn’t like to hear her friend mock herself.

“There’d be some advantages to it, you know,” Danielle continues from within the new dark-red brocade dress she has made for this party. “I’m used to Bernie now; I’m even kind of fond of him. And of course the girls are crazy about him. If I got married, we could all move into his house in Brookdale; Roo could have her horse; and there’s lots of kids in the neighborhood for Celia to play with, so I wouldn’t have to drive her everywhere like I do now. And I’d never have to speak to Mrs. Heyrick again.” Danielle pulls her dress down and turns to Erica. Her expression is almost but not quite serious.

“That would be a great advantage, of course,” Erica says, giggling. “The only trouble is, you’d have to speak to all his Brookdale friends and neighbors instead.”

“I know.” Danielle makes a face. “All those pie-baking women that knew his wife. They’d never forgive me for marrying him.”

“Never.” Erica is still laughing.

“And they’re not the only ones. My parents would be hurt because he’s not Jewish. Especially my mother.” Danielle has stopped laughing. “And you can imagine what Leonard would say.”

“I can.” Though Danielle had never mentioned Bernard Kotelchuk, Leonard has somehow learned of his existence. Since January, when he discovered a reprint of one of Dr. Kotelchuk’s articles on the diseases of young swine in Roo’s room, he has referred to him as “the pig pediatrician.”

“I wonder why he asked you to marry him?” Erica continues, since her friend is silent. She has no hesitation about speaking this way, for Danielle has declared several times that she is merely making temporary use of Bernie; and even more often that she has no intention of ever marrying again—that she considers it a stupid, antiquated and exploitative institution. “Maybe he thinks he should offer at least once to make an honest woman of you. He must know you’d refuse.”

“I thought of that too,” Danielle says after a slight pause. “I asked him if it was that, but he insists he’s in love with me.”