Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

“No thanks. I’m not thirsty.”

“Well then. Come and talk to someone.” Erica reconnoiters the crowd in the next room and selects a professor of French named M. Alain who is known for his good will. She propels Zed to his side, introduces them, and suggests the neutral topic of Japanese theater, a sample of which has just been presented locally.

Cheered by having accomplished a good deed, Erica heads for the kitchen to see whether she can do another. She finds Danielle simultaneously spreading pâté on squares of toast and talking on the phone.

“Yes ...All right ...You’re welcome, good-bye.” She puts the receiver down with some force. “Dhhh. That was Mrs. Heyrick again. She wants to know can we please, please, be a little less noisy. Mr. Heyrick has a migraine headache.”

“He would,” Erica says, thinking that she too has a headache. “Can I do anything?”

“Yes. We’re running out of glasses already. Everyone must be leaving them around.”

“I’ll go and see what I can find, and wash some.”

“That’d be great. I didn’t think so many people would come.”

Why not, you invited them, Erica thinks as she returns to the living room with a tray and begins to collect used glasses. She has nearly a dozen and is on her way back when the front door opens and a person Danielle hasn’t invited enters—not Brian, but the next-worst thing: his lawyer, Jack Lucas. Jack is accompanied by, and has evidently come with, a friend of Danielle’s named Nancy King. Erica looks at them with a heavy, angry feeling, for Jack is not only Brian’s lawyer and hence her enemy, but also one of the unattached men she had in years past flirted with and later chosen as a possible escort. She had even, before Brian went to him, had the fantasy that Jack would refuse to take the case out of admiration for her. That he should come with Nancy is another blow—for until recently Erica has never had anyone else preferred to her by those whom she preferred.

“Erica!” Nancy whinnies, galloping toward her and pawing her arm. “Lovely to see you. It’s been years. You know Jack, don’t you?”

“Of course we know each other,” Jack cries, smiling broadly and hobbling up as fast as possible. He is literally dragging his feet, or at least one foot, which is in a cast as a result of one of his continual skiing accidents. “How are you, Erica?”

Jack leans forward; guessing his intention, Erica tries to retreat, but there is a wall behind her and her hands are full; she can do nothing but turn her head at the last moment, so that Jack’s belligerent kiss explodes damply on her cheek.

“Must get these glasses back, Danielle needs them,” she insists, escaping. She hastens into the kitchen to complain to her friend (“YOU might think he would have known—would have had the good manners not to—”). But Danielle is not there.

She washes and dries the glasses and takes them back to the dining room, where Danielle is laughing with Bernie Kotelchuk in a noisy group. Frustrated, she takes her complaint back across the room.

“Jack Lucas just came in,” she announces to Clara in an angry whisper.

“Oh, yes?” Clara turns toward her, smiling. “That’s nice.”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s extremely rude. He must have known I’d be here.”

“Heavens, Erica.” Clara shakes her head, laughs gently. “If Jack or I couldn’t go anywhere we might meet someone we’ve got a case pending against, we’d both have to stay home most of the time. In this town.”

“I suppose you’re right”

“Of course I’m right.”

“Mm.” Erica hesitates. “But now he’s here, will you speak to him?”

“Why, of course I’ll speak to him!” Clara stops smiling. “Jack and I are old friends.”

“I mean, about the agreement. You can ask him why he hasn’t answered your last two letters.”

“I couldn’t ask him that now,” Erica’s lawyer says firmly. “This is a social occasion.” She gives Erica a smile of maternal disapproval mixed with pity, as if she were a child who wanted to bring up some silly old quarrel at a party. “Why, hello, Nancy. How are you?”

“Beautiful.” Nancy, who is of course also one of Clara’s former clients, embraces her warmly, while Erica slides away, feeling worse than before.

The front hall, where she goes to recover her composure, is again empty except for Zed, who is now crouched on the rug reading one of Danielle’s books.

“Sandy?”

“Hello.” He straightens up, smiling sheepishly.

“You’re not enjoying the party. Didn’t you like Monsieur Alain?”

“He was all right. But then these other people came up. A very angry man who was always laughing, with a bristly beard and a sad wife. I forget their names.”

“The Diacritis,” Erica supplies with a sigh. “He’s the chairman of Danielle’s department.”

“I see.”

“But what happened?”

“I said something he didn’t like. He was complaining about how hard it was to stop smoking; When he goes to a party where there are people like Monsieur Alain with cigarettes, he gets very angry and wants one too. He asked me what I thought he should do about it. I suggested he might stop going to parties, or else, what a Zen Master told me once, he could try to experience his desires fully without satisfying them. Then he figured out I was the nut who runs that bookshop, and started to abuse me.” The telephone in the hall beyond Zed begins to ring. “So I got out of his way. Do you think I should answer that? ...Hello ...Yes, just a moment ...It’s the next-door neighbor. She wants to speak to Danielle.”

“Oh, Lord. I’ll get her.”

Erica makes her way back through the party, delivers the message, and returns. “Danielle’s busy now, she says to tell Mrs. Heyrick she’ll—Sandy! You hung up on her.”

“She hung up on me.” Zed grins. “She was worried because there’s a car parked in front of her driveway. She was afraid there might be a fire or some other emergency and she couldn’t get out. But I told her she needn’t worry, because both the lights are in watery signs tonight, and Jupiter is conjunct Uranus. Only good adventures can happen.”

“Oh, Sandy. How could you make fun of her that way?”

“I wasn’t making fun of her.”

“But that’s what she’d think. She must be furious.” Erica looks toward the wall which divides the two halves, of the house, imagining Mrs. Heyrick in the room beyond, which is the mirror image of this one; she is standing facing Erica, furious, in her perpetual hat. What is to be done now?

She looks into the living room. In the far corner, Danielle is laughing tipsily and leaning on Bernie Kotelchuk, who is even more red-faced than usual—obviously drunk. A feeling of exhaustion, disgust and hopelessness comes over her.

“Where are you going?” she adds, as Zed moves past her toward the hall closet.

“Away.”

Erica opens her mouth to protest, shuts it, opens it again. “I’ll drive you home.”

“You don’t have to do that, Erica,” he says in a strained voice. “I can walk.”

“It’s too cold out. I’d like to get away for a while anyhow.” She swallows. “I’m not enjoying this party much either.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll tell you about it on the way downtown.”

It is not only cold outside, but starting to snow. The hill is already slippery, making conversation difficult; by the time they reach the bookshop Erica has only half expressed her resentment at Nancy and Jack.

“Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea?” Erica hesitates, checks her watch. It is not yet ten. She feels cold, damp; her mind is clogged with depression. There is nothing to go home to except the mess Jeffrey and Matilda will have made of her house, especially her kitchen; and she doesn’t want to return to the party, where Mrs. Heyrick and the Diacritis have probably already begun to complain to Danielle about Zed and ask who on earth brought him. “All right. For a few moments.”