Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

Whenever he speaks in public, as he often does, on American foreign policy; or when an article by him appears in some journal, his students and colleagues are reminded of his success. Brian is reminded of his failure. Why, he asks himself sourly, is he speaking on foreign policy instead of helping to make it? Why does he still discuss other men’s theories, instead of his own?

He cannot blame his failure on ill fortune. He had been born with all the advantages: the son of a well-known professor, nephew of authors and lawmakers, grandson and great-grandson of ministers and judges; healthy, handsome, intellectually precocious, well-loved, well-educated. But after all these gifts had been bestowed, some evil fairy had flown in through the delivery-room window and whispered over his crib, “He should be a great man.” All his life, that imperative has haunted him. His colleagues, born into cultural or economic slums, the ugly, clumsy sons of provincial neurotics or illiterate immigrants, might be proud of having become Corinth professors—not he.

As if symbolically, when he reached adolescence Brian did not grow as fast as his peers at Andover, nor in the end as far. When he entered Harvard (at sixteen) he was still small for his age. He would catch up, his relatives said, and he believed them; but he did not catch up. He remained, though not a very short man, considerably below the average in height: five feet five, if he stood up straight and held his neck in a certain way. Erica was nearly three inches taller. When she married him, she gave away to a Congregational church rummage sale all the high-heeled shoes which showed her spectacular long legs to such advantage, and accepted a lifetime of flat soles, because he was going to be a great man.

All these years, Erica (unlike his relatives) has never either overtly or covertly accused him of disappointing her. Only once years ago, after a New York party at which several famous persons were present, had she even admitted, laughing as she spoke and pulling a yellow flowered silk petticoat over her dark curls, that she would like Brian to be famous too. Previous to that evening, and subsequently, she had denied any such wish; but Brian was not convinced.

Erica had also insisted that same evening that she didn’t hold it against him that he had not yet become famous. It was bad luck, that was all, like Muffy’s allergy to house dust, and would similarly be outgrown. After all, she had added, still laughing softly, leaning on his shoulder to steady herself as she took off her white silk sandals—he was already a famous professor: hadn’t he just been given the Sayle Chair of American Diplomacy at Corinth? Brian had replied that this meant very little—only that Clinton had retired and he was now the senior man in the field. But (as perhaps he had intended) she took this protest for modesty.

Erica still expected him to become a great man that evening—next year, or the year after. But Brian suspected even then, and knows now, that he will not. It is too late, for one thing: he is nearly as old as Lindsay, and five years older than Bobby Kennedy would have been. Erica knows it too, and affects not to mind; or possibly does not mind. She has said that she is glad of it, because she values their privacy and dislikes official social life of the sort she had to be involved in during the two years when Brian was head of his department. If he were to become any more prominent she would see less of him, she has explained, and more of people she doesn’t care for.

Brian has done his best to become a great man. He has written many long and serious political articles; he has served without pay on committees and commissions; he has offered himself at various times and more or less subtly to the Democratic, Independent Republican and Liberal parties as an adviser on foreign policy. But his theories have attracted no real interest; his opinions have been voted down, and his offers declined.

He regretted this not only for personal reasons but because he sincerely believed, even knew, that he had much to contribute. He was one of the few people he knew, for example, who realized that political expediency and idealism are not incompatible. Yet for years he had been misunderstood, just as the public figure he admired most, George Kennan, had been misunderstood; he had been considered either a fuzzy-minded theorist or a small-minded politician.

Even within the university he has been disappointed in his ambitions. He did not want the Sayle Chair, which carried with it no reduction in teaching load or significant increase in salary; what he wanted was the chair, and the desk, in the office of the Dean of Humanities, or some similar large office. Everyone agreed he had done well during his turn as department chairman, and several of his colleagues appeared to think he would make a fine dean; but when the opportunity came none of them nominated him for the post.

Brian’s most inward belief is that all these defeats and his size are connected: that his appearance is the objective correlative of a lack of real stature. Years ago, some invisible force had set a heavy hand on his head to keep him from growing any taller, as a sign to the world. And this sign had been heeded. The opinions and candidacy of a man barely five feet five, weighing a mere one hundred and thirty-five pounds, were seldom taken seriously. It was felt everywhere that he was in every sense a small man, not suited to authority over anything beyond a small department. Had he been even a few inches taller, he might have fulfilled his promise and the expectations of his relatives—obeyed the imperative spoken over his crib. Conversely, once he had fulfilled this promise, his size would not have mattered. He never spoke of this to anyone, but he thought about it—not every day, but frequently.

Throughout his adult life Brian had behaved so as to compensate for, even confute, the sign set on him by fate. He had decided in college that he could not afford to make jokes or mistakes as a larger man might, lest he be thought lightweight. For a quarter-century, therefore, he had done and said nothing which would have seemed frivolous, injudicious or immoral in a university president or a candidate for Congress.

Was it the realization that all this solemn self-regulation had been for nothing—a foolish mistake, a long joke on himself—that had made him susceptible to Wendy Gahaghan? Brian does not know. He is aware of no decision to cast off his self-discipline; certainly of no decision to cast it off for Wendy.

Even as a political scientist he finds it impossible to determine when and how the affair had begun. Possibly it dated from the day two and a half years ago when he became aware that Miss Gahaghan, a small hippie-type blonde in his graduate seminar on American Institutions, was prominent among those students who remained after class to speak to him more often than necessary, and made excuses to consult him during his office hours. This might have been viewed variously: as apple-polishing, infantile dependency or simple academic anxiety. Which, Brian did not trouble to determine, since it would presumably end with the course.

American Institutions ended, but Miss Gahaghan, who had received a grade of B-plus from Brian, continued. She audited his undergraduate lectures; she waylaid him in the department office. Apparently she had formed some sort of attachment to him. This had happened before with students, and Brian had handled it, always successfully, as he tried to handle it now. That is, he began, slowly but steadily, to turn down the thermostat of his manner from faintly warm to neutrally cool. In the past he had never had to go below about 55 degrees to chill affections sufficiently; but Miss Gahaghan was not discouraged even by lower temperatures. She continued to come to his office; and he let her continue. He did not, in fact, turn the temperature down to freezing. Why not?