Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

“I never told anyone.” She laughs again briefly, like a cough. “I felt too stupid, going all that way for nothing ...That last night, in their spare room—only they didn’t have a spare room, it was the oldest boy’s really, with newspaper-supplement photographs of Canadian sports stars tacked to the wallpaper—I thought—I lay awake, and I thought that the reason my father never came back to rescue me all those years was, he didn’t want to.” Her voice is strained. “He didn’t want the responsibility of children. He was really more or less a child himself.”

“Yes.”

“And I lay there in the bed, sort of diagonally across it because it was too short, one of those youth beds; and I made up my mind then that I would never be like that; and I would never marry anyone like that, anyone who wasn’t dependable and grown up, no matter how handsome and nice he was ...Oh, Sandy. Please don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“But you know, Brian wasn’t like my father when I married him,” Erica insists, sitting forward on the day bed. “He was serious, and responsible. I don’t know what happened.” She looks down into her mug of mint tea. “He changed. I suppose people do change.”

A silence. Then Zed says, “Brian didn’t change. He’s always been the same. A typical double Capricorn; he needs to appear responsible and serious in the eyes of the world. But most people are like that. They want to look good. You’re eccentric; you want to be good.”

“I’m not eccentric,” Erica exclaims, setting down her mug. “I’m quite a conventional person really. At least, I’ve certainly never thought of myself as unconventional.” She gives the last word, which was one of her mother’s terms of praise, a particular bitter intonation.

“Oh, Erica.” Zed does laugh now, out loud. “Don’t give me that. The conventional thing for you would have been to refuse to divorce Brian and refuse to speak to Wendy.”

This speech seems a little overfamiliar, even rude. But Erica decides to excuse it; after all, Sandy is a very old friend. “Maybe so,” she says. “At least, that’s what I guess Brian expected me to do. Really, what I think he wanted was to keep us both,” she adds.

“He would.” The tone in which Zed utters this reminds Erica of what she has once or twice thought: that Sandy not only does not care very much for Brian, but for some reason actually hates him. “With his Capricorn moon where it is.”

Erica does not comment. She frowns slightly, sits back. “Do you really believe all that?” she asks, in a cooler voice. “About the movements of the stars influencing people’s lives?”

“Not the stars, the planets.” Zed also shifts position: he moves his feet to the top of his ladder and rests his elbows on his knees.

“But it seems so deterministic.” She smiles now, glad to have changed the subject. “I look at the horoscope column in the paper sometimes—I suppose everyone does—and it’s always about how if you’re born in September, you’re very fussy and critical, and you can’t do anything about it, especially not on Wednesdays.”

“Those daily columns are a fraud. Dangerous, even; most serious astrologers despise them. The point of astrology is that every individual is unique. Of course, there’s fate—your planets—but there’s also human will. You can’t reverse your nature, but you can use it for better or worse. That’s very comforting; it provides both encouragement and an excuse, whichever you need at the time.”

“Yes.” Erica laughs. “But all the same—What good does it do, really?”

Zed smiles at her between his long narrow hands. “You’re still asking that. I remember back in Cambridge it was one of the things about you that most impressed me. I was less morally ambitious than you, even then. I didn’t aspire to do good; that seemed too difficult. I only wanted not to do harm.” He sighs. “Even that—I think sometimes I ought to close this place down and just do charts.”

“You think you’re doing harm here, in the bookshop?”

“Hard to say.” Zed has been unknotting his old black knit tie; now he pulls on one end, dragging it out from under the frayed collar. “It was all right at first. But now there’s too many people coming in all the time wanting me to solve their life problems—answer their spiritual doubts, tell them what to do, what to think. They write down whatever I say, including all the stupid things, and repeat them back to me. I don’t know how much longer I can take it. I’m not like your husband; I don’t like to be worshiped. It gives me claustrophobia.”

Erica laughs, starts to speak, and stops. She has always despised people who mock and disparage their ex-spouses, and has a horror of becoming one of them. Months ago she resolved never to speak against or even discuss Brian’s character with anyone but Danielle; she has cut off many conversations beginning “You know, I always thought Brian was—” with a cool “I’d rather not talk about him, if you don’t mind.” She is too fond of Zed to say this to him; instead she looks at her watch, sighs a little, consciously, and stands up.

“You’re leaving?”

“I think I’d better; it’s nearly eleven. I should go back to Danielle’s party—I sort of promised I’d help her clean up when it’s over.” Erica sighs again less consciously. For the first time in almost an hour she has remembered the woman she saw in the mirrors: worn, creased, no longer really pretty. It is this creased un-pretty person who must return to the party, and stay there perhaps for hours.

She lifts her fur coat from a stack of book cartons and begins to put it on; Zed scrambles off the ladder and attempts to help. “Here. Let me.”

“That’s all right.” Erica fastens her coat; she picks up a long rose-colored mohair shawl which has fallen to the ground, shakes out the dust, and wraps it around her head and shoulders. Zed, apologizing for the condition of his floor; follows her to the front of the darkened shop.

“It’s still going on,” she exclaims. Beyond the black silhouettes of books, the shopwindow is gray and clotted with wet flakes and clumps of snow.

Drawing back the bolts, Zed opens the front door on a solid block of heavy, exploding snow. Erica’s car, a few steps away under the street lamp, is a blurred white mound.

“Oh, heavens! Look at that.” She takes two steps out into it; is at once surrounded, blinded; retreats. “The street hasn’t even been plowed. What am I going to do?”

“You could wait here awhile, and see if it stops,” Zed suggests, shielding his face with one arm.

“Maybe I’d better.” Erica steps back into the shop, stamping her boots. “I wonder how long it’s going to last Did you hear any weather reports on the radio?”

“I don’t have a radio.” He shuts the door—the first time unsuccessfully, for snow has blown into the frame; then with a slam.

“I could call Danielle, I suppose.” Erica remembers that Sandy also has no telephone. “Is there a phone anywhere near here?”

“There’s one in the Chinese restaurant. But it’s probably shut by now.”

“You ought to have a phone.” Zed makes no comment. “Well, I expect if Danielle looks out of her window she’ll realize what’s happened, and ask someone else to help her. Her friend Dr. Kotelchuk, for instance.” Erica pulls off her shawl, which is filmy with moisture. “I mean her suitor,” she adds, loosening her coat and following Zed to the back of the shop.

“I can’t get over that you know,” she continues. “Did I tell you he proposed to her in the liquor store at the Co-op? I mean, really.” She laughs.

“He should have chosen a more romantic scene?”