Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

14

ACROSS TOWN ON THE same cold March evening a very different social event is taking place in the apartment of Linda Sliski, Wendy’s nominal roommate. Danielle’s party is brightly lit and everyone is standing up, talking loudly. Here it is smokily dim; the few guests are sitting or lying silently on the floor, passing around a joint. When it reaches Brian he does not take a drag, but hands it on to Wendy, who is leaning against his leg with her head on his raised knee.

It is peaceful here, warm; a little too warm and too peaceful for Brian, who can’t get any conversation going and whose left leg is starting to ache. But he is willing to ride with it; more, it is a matter of pride with him to do so. He believes that a political scientist, like a politician, should be able to fit into a wide range of social scenes.

It is as well that he feels this, for he has had few opportunities of late to attend more conventional parties. Like Erica, he has noted a falling off in his social life. However, he is aware of the correct explanation, which is that—in spite of their protests that this is an amicable separation—nobody wants to ask them both to the same party, because it is not the custom. The custom is to keep them separate; to invite the estranged husband to small dinners as an extra man, because he cannot cook for himself and is probably starving; while the estranged wife is asked to large cocktail parties for visiting celebrities, on the grounds that she needs to meet people.

In the case of the Tates this policy is irritating to everyone. Brian already feels overfed by Wendy, but would welcome the opportunity to have a few drinks and some interesting conversations before returning to Alpine Towers. Erica, on the other hand, does not want to meet visiting celebrities, and cocktail parties come at the worst time of day for her—the children’s supper hour. After serving the pizza, spaghetti or hamburgers they demand, she would be delighted to go out to a civilized meal, but nobody asks her.

Wendy is not so much irritated as depressed. She becomes weepy every time Brian goes out to dinner without her, and she believes he isn’t invited to large parties to which he might bring her because people disapprove of her and don’t want her in their houses. As for the hosts at these dinners and parties, they also are irritated and depressed because so many of their invitations are refused.

Brian cannot return even those invitations he does receive, because his apartment is too small and too full of Wendy. Nominally she is still living with Linda, but she is seldom there, and over the past months there has been a steady movement of her clothes and personal effects into Alpine Towers. By now it would be obvious to any guest who happened to open the bathroom cabinet or the coat closet that some woman is more or less in residence. Moreover, if he turned Wendy out while he, entertained she would be hurt, while if he did not it would amount to openly declaring that they are living together.

Though he hasn’t been asked to Danielle’s party, Brian is well aware of its existence. Several of his acquaintances have mentioned it, adding naively, or maliciously, that they hoped to see him there. His lawyer, Jack Lucas, even suggested that Brian might like to tag along with him and his date. Needless to say, Brian refused. He has never in his life liked to “tag along,” and if he were to do so in this instance, Danielle would probably ask him to leave.

Moreover, Brian is tired of Jack Lucas and his interminable negotiations. Leonard Zimmern—whom he saw recently in New York—has advised him to discharge Jack. (“Sure, he’s a nice guy; that’s the whole trouble. A divorce lawyer isn’t supposed to be a nice guy. You want fast action, go to Frank Panto. That’s what I should have done, but I was too dumb.”) As yet, Brian has hesitated to take this advice. He is unacquainted with Frank Panto; but like everyone else in Corinth, he knows the name. It often appears in the newspaper, in reports of trials for burglary, forgery, rape and drunken driving—and is always taken as a sign that the defendant is guilty, but having retained Panto, may with luck get off.

Brian does not like the idea of thus admitting guilt. On the other hand, he is weary of hearing from Jack that Erica’s lawyer has not yet answered his last letter or returned his phone call, or has done so only to propose ridiculously unfair terms. Leonard also has an opinion about these proposals: “Six hundred a month? You know what they’re trying to do, those harpies, don’t you? They’re trying to emasculate you, to cut off your balls. They want to get at you through your superego and destroy you economically. Clarabelle tried the same thing on me, but I finally beat her down.”

At times Brian thinks his friend may be right about Jack’s incompetence and Clara’s malice. More often, though, he suspects that Jack and Clara are in collusion—that they have agreed to delay the Tates’ divorce as they have in the past delayed the Zimmerns’, and others’, in the hope that time may effect a reconciliation. They may not have discussed it openly, but they are old friends, and understand each other almost without words. (“Real shame about the Tates.” “Mm, yes.”—A procrastination of six months or more—“Not exactly surprised re the Farrells.” “No; about time, some might say.”—Formalities concluded in two weeks.)

Though he suspects this, Brian has not yet challenged Jack on it, for in a way the delay is useful to him; it sets up a blockade between him and Wendy’s wish to get married. Actually she has not spoken of marriage in some weeks, but he can feel her desire for it all the time, just as he now feels the warm, heavy, slightly numbing pressure of her body against his leg.

There are other disadvantages in being legally separated. It is expensive, for one thing, and will be inconvenient and embarrassing if/when he decides to return to his family. He hasn’t given up the idea of such a return, though he tends to imagine it as taking place further and further in the future. He certainly doesn’t want it now, and Erica doesn’t want it, though it would be in her best interests. Living alone hasn’t been good for her; she has been ill often this winter, and looks thin and strained. Last Sunday when he went to pick up the children this appearance was so pronounced that Brian could not help commenting: “You’re very pale. Have you got another cold?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Erica replied bleakly.

“You’re overworking yourself, that’s what it is. If you gave up that ridiculous job—”

“If I gave up that ridiculous job,” she interrupted in a thin, strained voice, “I couldn’t buy groceries.”

Brian has managed not to brood about this conversation by telling himself that he is giving Erica so much of his salary now that it is he who can hardly buy groceries; that she is still living in a large comfortable house and not in a cramped apartment. He has repeated to himself the words of Leonard Zimmern: “You’ve got to be tough, or they’ll get you down with their female pathos and whining. Erica was never ill when I knew her.”

These techniques have been partly successful. Brian does not feel consciously guilty; he doesn’t even think about Erica very often. But he has bad dreams. Often they hark back to his war experiences, and repeat the nightmares he had just after his tour in the Pacific on a DE; nightmares involving confused orders and water and sticky darkness and loud noises. Only now Erica is in them. Last week he had one in which she appeared with large wings, perched on the porch roof of the house on Jones Creek Road, like a figure in Renaissance painting. It was a cloudy evening in this dream and the air was full of a dangerous waning noise like antimissile missiles which made him gasp and cry out, waking Wendy. “Hey Brian? What’s the matter? Is it one of your war nightmares? Wake up! What happened, tell me about it.”