Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

Zed blinks, and the vision disappears. Again Erica laughs briefly, but this time it is the laugh of fear, thin and hysterical, of someone who sees that she has almost stepped off the edge of a cliff.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that,” she says. “Brian could never manage them.” She laughs again. “Besides, it wouldn’t be the right thing.”

17

AN ILL-ASSORTED COMPANY IS mobilizing on the Corinth campus this May morning, in Norton Hall—at other times the scene of ROTC exercises, basketball games, religious services, indoor track meets, rock concerts and fall registration. On the broad glossy varnished floor and in the surrounding tiers of stands diverse groups are gathering, like fugitives from all the other crowds that have assembled there in the past, or might do so in the future.

Many are students; there is a large gang of long-haired, noisy undergraduates squatting and lounging on the floor in the center of the hall, and several smaller bands, each distinctive in appearance. Here is a bunch of pretty girls in flowered and pastel jeans, from Home Ec; there a group of solemn and rather formally dressed law students. There is a small contingent from the Africana Center, all dashikis and Afros, and another of Asians in turbans and saris. A flock of secretaries has taken over one of the tables set up along the south wall, and are unpacking sandwiches and cartons of coffee. Nearby, a squad of antiwar veterans, in complete or partial uniform, is milling about one of their number who is confined to a wheelchair.

Here and there, you can see representatives of the United Campus Ministry, in motley, dress ranging from the loose white embroidered Indian shirt and dangling cross of Father Dave, the local radical priest, to the three piece gray flannel of the Methodist chaplain; there are also several nun’s habits, both traditional with starched white coif, and reformed. Over by the main entrance a party of graduate-student wives are pushing their giggling or complaining babies back and forth in strollers, or dashing away from their friends to chase toddlers down off the nearest grandstand, where a troupe of art students is encamped with paper streamers and gas balloons.

There is an air of determined holidaymaking; a clamor of talk punctured by shouts as people try to attract the attention of newcomers; continual motion among the groups and between each group and the headquarters of the Peace March, which is located on a low platform (sometimes used for boxing matches) at one side of the hall. The crowd is thicker there, and persons with an important, occupied air are sitting behind a table piled with papers. These are mainly men, and mainly professors; Brian Tate is among them.

“Fine turnout,” one of his colleagues remarks, coming up to help himself to two paper arm bands printed with blue peace symbols, and a bunch of handbills. “I’ll take a couple more of these for Walt and Jimmie, if I may.”

“Of course. No, it’s not bad. Considering everything,” Brian agrees modestly. He rises slightly in his chair to survey the hall. The march isn’t due to start for twenty minutes, yet already there must be nearly a thousand people here. The handbills and arm bands have been printed on time and without serious typographical errors; the weather is good—mild and overcast, but not raining; and all academic business has been officially canceled for the afternoon.

Sitting down again, he congratulates himself—not only on the probable success of the event, but on his decision, two weeks ago, to help direct it. He knew from the start that most of the organizational work would fall upon him, for the other leaders—Archibald Matlock of the English department, and Father Dave—are strong on commitment, but weak in practical knowhow. But he knew also that this was the opportunity he needed. If his reputation were ever to recover, it would have to be through something like this. Continued explanations of his real role in the Dibble affair would not suffice; like corrections to the newspaper story, they followed the original false account only limpingly and at a distance, in smaller type.

It was not enough that Brian should dissociate himself from the cause of antifeminism (refusing, for example, in spite of the generous fee offered, to contribute to an Esquire symposium on “Are Women Necessary?”). He must begin as soon as possible to attract public attention for other reasons; to associate himself with other, more appropriate—and more popular—causes.

But though he threw himself into the task with conscious energy, organizing the Peace March was much harder than Brian had anticipated. In part this was due to his success. Unexpectedly many groups responded to the initial canvas; his original plan had to be expanded, and expanded again, as pledges of support came in.

Beyond this, however, the job was complicated by the end-of-term press of work, and, most of all, by unexpected events in his own life: a series of awful revelations from which he is not yet recovered. Indeed, Brian thinks wearily, he may never fully recover.

The crisis began without warning a few days after he had agreed to work on the Peace March—at bedtime one evening when he mildly chided Wendy about her increasing weight. He was relating, as they undressed, a conversation he and Father Dave had had that afternoon with the editor of the local paper. The man was interested in their plans, and had promised to send a reporter and photographer to cover the story. If all went well, a photograph of the front-line marchers would appear on page one of the Courier. Since Wendy would presumably be in this picture, Brian suggested, she might try to take off a few pounds around her middle before May seventh.

He had spoken lightly; he was surprised therefore when she replied, in a voice full of choked feeling, that she couldn’t take off any pounds. “Why not?” Brian asked, perhaps a little sharply, but still smiling. “It’s only a matter of eating less—cutting out some of those late-night snacks, so you’ll get a little smaller.”

“I can’t get smaller,” Wendy insisted, laughing oddly. “All I can ever do now is get larger, and larger and larger and larger.” With a hysterical sob, she collapsed upon the bed in her underwear.

Brian was used by now to Wendy’s tears; he knew that the fastest way to dry them was to step forward and take her in his arms. But instead he stepped back. He looked at Wendy hard, and saw that she was thick in the waist, not from overeating, but because she was at least four months pregnant.

It was the first of a catastrophic series of mental detonations. As if the smooth white plaster walls and plush tan carpeting of his apartment were being strafed by an invisible fighter plane and exploding in a line of ugly holes, Brian realized: first, his own obtuseness—why hadn’t he noticed sooner?—and second, Wendy’s falsity. This simple, ingenuous girl, whom he had believed so candid, so devoted, had been systematically and sordidly deceiving him.

Questioning her, he dragged out the facts. Wendy had known that Brian did not trust her to remember to take her birth-control pills (quite naturally, after what had happened last fall); she had known that he occasionally counted them. Therefore, twenty-five days a month for the last four months she had flushed one pill down the toilet; and on the remaining five days she had inserted a series of unnecessary tampax into herself, removed them unused, wrapped them in paper, and placed them in the kitchen garbage can. Her only excuse was that she had been afraid to tell him the truth. Perhaps, Brian said furiously, she had imagined that if she did not tell him, it would go away?

Wendy, sobbing, admitted that she had had this thought; that she had hoped for a miscarriage. “But I don’t now, you know,” she added, half sitting up. “Not since last week, it was Thursday. On Thursday I felt Life.” She capitalized it with her voice as if speaking of the periodical, and laid her hand reverently on her thickened waist. A rapt, stubborn, stupid look came over her tear-streaked face; a look he had last seen in the Frick Museum on many painted female faces. “It zapped me like a bomb: there’s a person growing in there. I mean, that’s really outasight.” She giggled weakly at her own pun.