The War Between the Tates: A Novel (26 page)

She will have to stand by Wendy after the child comes, to watch over them both. The prospect makes her smile firmly and nod her head. Then she frowns, recalling that it is almost a week since she last saw Wendy. They had planned to meet for coffee on campus Tuesday, but at the last moment Wendy couldn’t come because Brian needed her to read proofs of an article out loud to him. Erica suspects this excuse; but she does not suspect Wendy. She believes that Brian heard of their appointment and invented the need to read proofs; she thinks he is deliberately trying to discourage their meeting for some reason—perhaps social embarrassment, perhaps mere jealous spite.

Men are often jealous and suspicious of friendship between women, though they value it among themselves. According to Danielle’s feminist friends, this is because it contradicts their idea of women as lacking the political virtues, as desiring neither liberty, equality nor fraternity. (“You notice you never hear anyone talk about
sorority.
”) We are held to be capable of devotion to our husbands and children, but catty and competitive with all other women, without true affection for them.

Whereas the truth is, as anyone can see, that women are far better friends to each other than men are. We are not naturally so selfish and aggressive, and we do not have to be. Brian is directly in competition with his “friends” in the political science department here, and indirectly with those elsewhere. Or, if they are much older (or younger) than he, he looks to them (or they to him) for professional advantage. Only rarely, as with Leonard Zimmern, can he have a friendship untainted by either rivalry or calculation—and then it must lack professional intimacy, for Leonard is in another field. Women, however, are all in the same field, yet not in competition. Brian must hoard his ideas for publication; but if she passes on a new recipe she earns her friend’s gratitude and loses nothing.

Another cloud passes over the sun, shadowing the view. Erica recalls that her children will be arriving on the bus from New York in less than an hour. She must finish up here, hang the winter clothes in the proper closets, put on her coat, and drive downtown. Conscientiously, she follows this program. But at the bus station she is informed both by a hand-printed sign on the counter and by a rude young man behind it that the 3:20 from New York will be an hour late.

To pass the time she decides to go to the library. Leaving her car, she walks up the shabby end of Main Street, by cheap small groceries, bars, beauty shops, garages, a Chinese restaurant and a narrow store she doesn’t remember having noticed: the Krishna Bookshop.

Erica halts. For weeks, in the retroactive amnesia which follows upon shock, she has forgotten Sandy Finkelstein. Now she remembers that her old Cambridge acquaintance, or someone else of the same name, is the proprietor of this shop. Beyond the printed sign hanging inside the glass door
(YES, WE’RE
OPEN) is a narrow room lined with bookshelves, occupied by two people. One is a girl with fuzzy hair in a duffle coat; the other a man. His back is turned to Erica, but something about the uneven droop of his shoulders, the way he now reaches up one long arm for a book, seems familiar.

Erica pushes the door open. The man glances around at her briefly, nods—but with no sign of recognition—bends to retrieve a book he has just dropped, turns back, and continues his conversation.

She advances two steps into the store, and stops beside a colored astrological poster, uncertain. That man looks too old, too bald; also he didn’t seem to know her. Perhaps she only imagined it was Sandy.

Talking rather excitedly (something about the new moon) the fuzzy-haired girl walks past Erica to the front desk, followed by Sandy’s aging namesake. She hands him money, receives change and the wrapped book, and leaves with friendly exclamations:

“You oughta come out to the farm again for dinner, okay? How about tomorrow?”

“I’ll be happy to, if I can get a ride,” Zed says in Sandy’s voice—gentle, light, dry.

“Oh, no problem. Mike or Stanley oughta be coming in with the truck sometime. I’ll tell them to stop on their way home and pick you up, okay?”

“Fine.”

But if it really is Sandy, he is sadly changed. He looks tired out, shabby, in poor condition. His face, with its blurred pale scarecrow features, is badly creased around the eyes; and the thick energetic red hair which was one of Sandy’s few good points has faded and slid down off his head, as if in exhaustion. It lies now in dingy rusted curls around the base of the freckled crown.

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Peace, Jenny.”

Jenny makes a peace sign in return, hunches her shoulders under the heavy coat and goes out. Zed follows her to the door and reverses the sign hanging on it so that the other side faces out
(SORRY, WE’RE
CLOSED). Then he turns and stands with his back to the door, looking across the shop at Erica, smiling, but very slightly.

“Aren’t you Sanford Finkelstein?” she asks, also smiling, mainly with embarrassment.

“I was.”

“You
were?
”

“Are you Erica Parker?”

“I was.” Erica smiles fully, then laughs. “Sandy—” She moves nearer, holding out her hand. Zed hesitates, then takes it with his, which feels dry and cold.

“I’m awfully happy to see you again,” he says.

“Yes, so am I.” This was one of the nicest things about Sandy, she recalls: his childlike directness. But how changed and worn he is! He looks older than Brian, though he must be four or five years younger, and his freckled skin is lined and gray. She might not have recognized him on the street, except possibly for his eyes, which are still pale and wide under sandy eyebrows with an expression of perpetual surprise. “How long has it been, eight or nine years?”

“Nearly ten. We met at the ballet in New York just before Christmas in 1959.”

“Did we?” Erica frowns. “Yes, I think I remember. What ballet was it?”

“The Nutcracker. You had on a purple dress and were with your son, and another little boy named Freddy and his mother. She was very pregnant.”

“Emmy Turner. That must have been just before she had Hannah. What a fantastic memory! You probably still know all those Greek verbs, too, that I’ve completely forgotten.”

“Some of them.”

“I thought you were in Japan.”

“I was in Japan.”

“But you came back.”

“Apparently.”

Erica laughs again; she recalls this tone, and looks at Zed with reminiscent affection. “You know, you’ve been here all year, and I never knew it until about a week ago,” she says, altering the interval out of politeness.

“Yes. I thought that.”

“You thought that? You mean you knew I was here in Corinth?” He nods. “You should have called me.” He shrugs. This too she remembers about Sandy: his shyness and lack of social initiative. He was always willing to accompany her wherever she happened to be going, at any time—to Sage’s grocery, the library, the Fine Arts Museum in Boston, or Filene’s Basement—but he seldom suggested any excursion himself; and when invited to a party he usually did not come.

“I don’t like telephones. Evil spirits of the air, a friend of mine in Tokyo calls them.”

“But in Cambridge—”

“I didn’t like them then either. I never phoned if I could help it. I always came over to Edwards House to see you, if you remember.”

“You didn’t come to see me here.” Erica smiles, but she is thinking that perhaps this was just as well. The effect on Brian and the children of this pale, shabby ghost from her past; their probable impatience and irritation, even rudeness; the probable effect of this rudeness on him—

“I don’t like automobiles.” Zed glances toward the street, where automobiles are parked, with a grimace she remembers well. “No. That’s not the whole truth. I thought of calling, or getting somebody to give me a ride out to your house. But then I thought, If it was meant to happen, it would happen. God’s will.” He smiles oddly, and looks at Erica. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

“It’ll take a few minutes.” Zed goes to the back of the shop and passes behind a curtain made of faded orange-striped madras bedspread. There is the sound of water running unevenly. She waits, looking at the shelves which line the room, the books with odd titles and obscure publishers, a notice announcing classes:
MONDAY—ASTROLOGY. WEDNESDAY—BEGINNING MEDITATION.

“You give lectures here, as well as selling books?” she says when Zed reappears.

“Not really. Seminars. I don’t perform like Levin or Jaeger. I couldn’t if I wanted to; and I don’t want to. Though that’s what they’d like, most of the people who come.” Zed grins.

“Because they’re lazy, you mean?”

“Not so much lazy as intellectually passive. A lot of kids get interested in mysticism because it looks like a way out of all the pressure that’s on them. A way out of the system.”

“And they’re wrong?”

“No, they’re right. But that doesn’t mean there’s no work involved. Not just study—they don’t usually object to that; they’re used to it. They’ll do anything you tell them, really. Except think.” Zed smiles. “They have this idea that the Path is a sort of conveyor belt that’ll carry them along to enlightenment without any serious effort on their part. If they have questions, they think all they have to do is ask me.”

“But if you know the answers—” Erica tries to keep irony out of her voice. She doesn’t want to mock Sandy; she is sorry for him, and mildly curious.

“I don’t know the answers,” Zed says impatiently. He sighs and leans back against a shelf, where his elbows make two indentations in a row of works on alchemy. She can see the nearer one, white and knobby, through a raveled hole in his gray sweater. “I tell the kids who come in here, ‘Don’t lay that guru trip on me. I’m not qualified.’ I know something about meditation, and I can tell them what books to read, and what not to do if they want to get onto the Path, and that’s about all. If they want a real teacher they’ve got to go somewhere else: to the Zen-Center in Rochester, or to New York. Or the Far East. There’s the kettle.” He straightens up.

This time Erica follows him down the dingy narrow room and past the bedspread to another even narrower and dingier room. Shelves and cartons of books take up most of the space, along with a narrow studio couch. In one corner there is a paint-streaked sink with dishes and pans stacked on the ledge beside it, and a row of canned goods, tomato soup and peas and applesauce, above. Hanging from nails are what must be Sandy’s clothes: a long overcoat, two long-armed wool shirts and some crumpled striped pajamas.

“Do you live here, too?” she asks.

“It’s convenient.” Zed shrugs. “And cheap.” The kettle is wheezing and spitting; he lifts it from the hot plate and tries to pour into a teapot on the shelf above. “Oh, blast.”

As the hot water slops over, and he grabs for something to mop up with, Erica remembers another afternoon tea nearly twenty years ago. Sandy is sitting opposite her at one of the small square tables in Schrafft’s on Brattle Street. In front of each of them is a glazed paper doily with spiderweb designs punched out in opposite corners, and a cup and saucer with a green
S
monogram in Gothic script. Sandy raises the dark-green teapot and tilts it over her cup, and its oval top falls off, slopping hot water on the varnished wood. She can hear him cry “Oh, blast,” just as he did now, and see him lifting aside the cups and the silvery aluminum sugar bowl with its two handles like arms akimbo, and the plate of cinnamon toast cut into four parallel strips; mopping up awkwardly with his own and then her paper napkin; finally bending under the table to retrieve the top of the pot, because no one in rural Waterford, New York, ever taught him that you don’t pick things up off the floor in restaurants.

It is not, however, an instance of Proustian recall, the discovery of a lost memory. Erica has thought of this scene many times, because it took place during the most important conversation of her and Sandy’s acquaintance. The subject of this conversation was, Whether it is worth doing anything after you realize you will never be first-rate at it. Or, as he puts it—referring to a philosophy essay on which he had labored for three weeks—“if you know it will always be an A-minus, never an A. Once you’re sure of this, shouldn’t you just quit the field?”

But Erica, who had the same problem, found herself taking the other side. As Sandy rose into view above the table again with his red hair awry and the top of the teapot in one hand, she heard her own voice maintaining a position she had not, up to that moment, known she held. You didn’t leave the field, she insisted; you only moved to another part of it, where the ground wasn’t so hard. Take her cousin at MIT. He couldn’t do theoretical physics as well as some people, but he would still be a good engineer. Or suppose, like her, you knew you probably weren’t going to become a first-rate painter, she went on with conviction, gazing across the damp table at Sandy. You didn’t give up art. Instead you concentrated on what you could do, didn’t he see? Which in her case was small amusing line drawings.

“Yes; I see,” Sandy had replied; and for once he seemed to be considering Erica’s argument seriously, as possibly true and not just an expression of her own opinions. This was rare; in spite of his chronic shyness and naïveté, it was difficult for anyone to make an intellectual impression on Sandy. Perhaps, as a rural smalltown boy, he had picked up the automatic agrarian suspicion of all theorizing.

Subsequent events seemed to prove that this time, though, he had been convinced. Not only did Erica follow her new rule from that day on—Sandy also seemed to be following it. The trouble was, he didn’t seem to know where to stop. Leaving behind the heights of logic and metaphysics, he moved down to the less difficult slopes of ethics and aesthetics; then, the next year, still lower, to the history of philosophy, with special emphasis on the Oriental tradition. After finishing his degree, he associated himself with less and less reputable institutions, finally ending up with a part-time appointment in a California city college.

But no matter how far he descended, Sandy never seemed to reach his level of competence. Probably this was mostly due to self-doubt rather than lack of ability, Erica thinks sadly, watching
him
now as he spoons sugar clumsily from a cardboard box into a stained cup with no handle—why doesn’t he just pour it? Sandy had a good mind, and he always worked hard. But even now, on the lowest and muddiest slopes of philosophy (if it can still be called that), even here, in this dingy shop surrounded by half-literate tracts and astrology posters, he doesn’t feel competent. It is really pathetic. For over a year he has been living in this dismal back room on Iona canned peas and Heinz vegetarian baked beans, too shy to presume on their past acquaintance, thinking perhaps she wouldn’t want to see him now he has sunk so low. Something must be done about this.