The War Between the Tates: A Novel (27 page)

“You must come to supper sometime soon,” she therefore says, following Zed back into the shop and watching as he sets his improvised tea tray (a length of unpainted shelving) on the counter by the door.

“I’d like to.” He unfolds a metal chair for Erica and takes the stool for himself. “I have a class tonight, though, and tomorrow I’m going out to Vinegar Hill—the commune. I could come on Sunday,” he adds hopefully, handing a thick crockery cup full of dark reddish tea across the counter to Erica.

“Sunday, then.” Though she had in mind a date further off, Erica smiles with some kindness.

“If you’re sure you want me. I’m a vegetarian now, you know.”

“That’s all right. I’ll make a cheese soufflé, or something.” Yes; and without having to worry any more about how the soufflé, or Sandy, will irritate Brian.

“And I haven’t any car. But don’t worry about that. I’ll get out there somehow.”

“Mm,” Erica says, not really listening; it has occurred to her that there is something she must tell Sandy. “Brian won’t be there, you know,” she begins, her voice faltering slightly. “He and I ...

“Yes, I heard about it.”

“Oh? I suppose everybody has, by now. There’s so little to talk about in this town ...How did you hear about it?”

Zed pauses, looking at Erica over his mug. “Wendy told me.”

“Ah.” Erica tries to swallow this information, which tastes unfamiliar and hot, like her tea. She sets the cup down. “You know the whole story, then?”

“Just what she’s told me.” His manner is vague, mild; but Erica is not fooled. She recalls how after quizzes in Greek class, when she asked Sandy how he’d done, he would reply in the same vague, self-deprecating tone. He knows everything.

“I haven’t seen her for a while,” he adds. “I may not be up to date.”

“Neither have I.” Erica looks at the floor, considering. Brian would be furious that someone like Sandy should know his story; yet she cannot blame Wendy for confiding in him. It was always terribly easy to tell things to Sandy, even things you wouldn’t tell your best friend; perhaps partly because he was so dim and out of it all.

“She admires you very much, you know.”

“Yes.” Erica lifts her face, on which a look almost of pride has appeared. “It was all an awful muddle really. I just tried to sort it out the best I could.”

“Wendy said you were incredibly kind to her. She thinks you’re a fantastic, beautiful person.” Zed smiles. “She admires Brian too—maybe even more,” he adds in a different tone.

“Oh yes, she thinks he’s—” Erica begins shrilly; then stops herself, for she has resolved never to criticize Brian to anyone except Danielle. “I don’t blame Wendy,” she continues more evenly. “Not for anything really. She’s a nice girl. A little naïve and weak, that’s all ...You’re shaking your head. Don’t you agree?”

“I was shaking it at them.” Zed indicates the door of the shop, outside which two young people are standing. As Erica watches they turn away with disappointed expressions. “But I don’t agree, not exactly. After all, weakness can be a strategy like any other.”

“A strategy?”

“Or say a
modus operandi.
I see it here in the store all the time. And I know from my own experience. If you give up the struggle for conventional goals—money, status, power—a lot of energy is released, for one thing.” He refills the cups, and continues, speaking more slowly, “Also, you have certain tactical advantages. The battle isn’t always to the strong, as we learned in History I. The weak have their weapons too. They come and collapse on you, like defeated nations, and you have to take care of them. ‘Oh! What shall I do now?’ they cry. So you tell them what.” He grins mockingly. “Then they go and do it, and whatever happens after that is your responsibility. I’ve had to make myself a rule: never give advice to anyone.”

“Yes, but she was so helpless—so desperate really,” Erica says, almost to herself. “She couldn’t—I had to—” she utters, and stops.

“I know that.” Zed looks at her. “I don’t mean it’s calculated,” he continues. “Or even conscious, most of the time. But it works. How do you think Wendy got what she wanted from Brian in the first place? Essentially it was the same as it was with you. She went into his office and fell apart. Typical double Cancer.”

“She fell apart,” Erica repeats, passing over the astrological joke, if it was a joke. She has a vision of Wendy crying and vomiting into her kitchen sink.

“It didn’t work for a long time. Your husband kept giving her the wrong advice, the kind she didn’t want. He told her to find other interests, study harder, try cold showers—”

“But she didn’t take that advice.” Erica frowns; she feels a little dizzy.

“Oh yes she did. She took it, but she kept coming back again and saying it hadn’t worked. That’s how it’s always done. It’s a very old strategy, thousands of years old—It’s the standard method for getting into a Zen Buddhist monastery, for instance; I’ve used it myself.” Again Zed glances past Erica to the door. The two young customers have returned, with a third, and are gesturing through the glass; one holds up a book. “Just a second; I’ll tell them to come back later.” He stands up.

“No, don’t do that,” Erica says, looking at her watch. “Let them in; I have to leave now anyway to get my children.” She begins to gather her things. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

“Well. All right.” Zed goes to the door, motioning to the people outside with the patting gesture that means “Wait a moment.” “What time shall I come?”

“About seven? Then I can give the children their supper first.”

“Fine.”

“And I’d better tell you where I am, and how to get there; it’s a little complicated. If you could give me a piece of paper, I’ll draw a map.”

“You don’t need to do that; I know where you are,” Zed says, turning his sign so that CLOSED faces in again, and unbolting the door. “I’ve always known where you were.”

I
N THE VESTIBULE OF
the Frick Museum, shortly past noon on the day after Thanksgiving, Brian Tate strolls back and forth, occasionally glancing at two carved chests and a small bronze sculpture group depicting the triumph of Reason over Error. From time to time he pats the front of his jacket in a quick, concerned way which would inform an experienced pickpocket (who fortunately is not present) that a large sum in cash is concealed there. He is dressed more soberly and formally than usual, and his expression is one of confidence and well-controlled tension, like an officer directing a military operation—in fact, very like that of General Burgoyne in Reynolds’ portrait, which hangs in one of the rooms he has just passed through.

Already today Brian has accomplished much. He has risen early, forced Jeffrey and Matilda to rise, breakfast, pack, and leave his mother’s house in Connecticut; he has driven to New York, garaged his car, bought Cokes and snacks for the children, put them on the bus for Corinth, and seen it depart—completing all these maneuvers in such good time that he was half an hour early at the Frick. His first action there was to make a quick reconnaissance of the galleries, in case Wendy had arrived even earlier. But the museum is unusually empty; it is an unpleasant day, promising cold rain or sleet, and there are only a few well-dressed old ladies and ill-dressed art students wandering about.

Brian has chosen the Frick as a rendezvous for several reasons. First, it is easy to find and convenient to the address he and Wendy must proceed to later. Second, it is one of the few remaining places in Manhattan where it is possible to sit down in pleasant surroundings without buying food or drink. Also it provides the first-comer with something agreeable and educational to do while waiting, instead of wasting time. Even more important, it is never crowded. The Met and the Modern are mobbed by humanity during vacation, and among these mobs some of Brian’s students or ex-students are statistically likely to appear. The Guggenheim is quieter, but its design is unsuited to a meeting—besides, it always makes him dizzy, as if he had been swallowed by a concrete snail.

Beyond its practical advantages, the Frick Museum has an important symbolic function—a lesson to teach. More than any public collection can, it stands for a way of life: for elegance, art, taste and civilized living conditions—in fact, for all that Wendy has to gain by having finally listened to Reason. In these high, airy rooms is the concentrated essence of everything lacking in her background and education—a sample of what he will show her next summer when they go to Europe. Wendy has never been abroad except for a three-week tour which seems to have consisted mainly of driving through foreign cities during heavy rain in sightseeing buses crammed with American students, all singing popular American songs. She has never met any Europeans except hotel managers and shopkeepers; never been to Sadler’s Wells or the Prado, or eaten in a good French restaurant. All this, and much more, he can give her, will give her—as otherwise he never could have, for as he and Erica proved years ago, it is neither economically or socially possible to tour Europe with a small child.

For Brian, the last four-weeks have already been an education: not in art history or European civilization, like that he plans for Wendy, but in her own field of social psychology. As his separation from Erica became known to all his acquaintances, and his attachment to Wendy to some of them, he has learned firsthand what is meant by “role typing” and “social cathexis.”

Marital difficulties, he has discovered, are socially equivalent to a childhood or trivial illness—colic, chicken pox, flu. Everyone who hears of them is openly concerned; they express mild regret (“Sorry to hear about you and Erica”) mixed with curiosity (“How is it going?”) and a compulsion to relate their own experiences with the same ailment (“You, know Irene once moved out on me? Yeh, she took the kids and went to her mother’s for three weeks”) and to offer advice (“That’s how women are; you have to give them time to cool off”).

Adultery, on the other hand, is a social disease. Like halitosis or the clap, it is what only your best friend or worst enemy will mention, though everyone talks about it behind your back. Brian can therefore only guess how widely his affair is known, or how it is generally regarded, though he is aware that both his best friend in the department (Hank Andrews) and his worst enemy (Don Dibble) think less of him for it.

Not all Brian’s lessons in social psychology have been as hard as this. He has found it a great relief not having to face, every day, Erica’s spoken and unspoken reproaches; and an even greater relief to get away from Jeffrey and Matilda—from their noise, their rudeness, their greed. He recalls something Leonard Zimmern said long before his own divorce: that most men don’t want to leave their wives half as much as they do their adolescent children.

Now that he has vacated it, Brian realizes he has been living in a hostile camp, among people who at best tolerated, at worst exploited and defied him, for a long while—in a sense, all his life. What amazes him most is that this discovery has come so late; for instance that he could have lived forty-six years without knowing what it is to be really loved. His parents’ affection, though genuine, was always conditional on good behavior; as was that of his other relatives and his teachers, from nursery to graduate school. The girls he knew before marriage were all self-seeking; even when they claimed to love him, they strove to withhold some part of themselves, either physical or emotional, according to current social custom, in the hope that he would commit himself further to obtain it.

As for Erica, Brian has always known that she cared less for him than he did for her. From the start he was the one who loved, while she allowed herself to be loved. That was her nature, he had told himself. It was not as if she preferred someone else; indeed she very evidently preferred him. Brian could accept that; did accept it for nearly twenty years—until he met Wendy, who never judges him, withholds nothing, cares more for him than for herself.

Of course this unconditional love has disadvantages. Sometimes Brian feels like a man with a new, overaffectionate pet, whose constant and obvious devotion is half a source of satisfaction, half an embarrassment. He cannot romp with Wendy as often as she, or he, would like—he has to conserve energy for his work. He has had to teach her to restrain herself in public: not to lick and paw him; to sit, quietly, and not disturb him when he is working. But overall her effect has been energizing, even exhilarating. He has not perhaps spent as much time on his book as he should, but what time he has spent has been productive.

As he paces the hall, of the Frick, Brian glances alternately at a guidebook he has purchased, and into the galleries, planning what he will show Wendy, and in what order. The dining room, with its rather simpering portraits of English beauties, can be skipped. The two smaller rooms beyond—all light, elegant eighteenth-century French furniture and decorations—seem at first glance just right to begin with: a pleasant if frivolous contrast to the gray, dirty city outside. But after a second look he rejects them. There are altogether too many babies in the painted wall panels by Boucher. Indeed, the panels of the inner room, which represent the arts and sciences, are entirely peopled by babies: plump, coy infant poets; chubby infant astronomers and musicians—figures which cannot help but recall Wendy’s obsession with the possible genius of her unborn child.

Better to start across the way, in the Fragonard Room, where the panels portray an elegant pastoral love affair, and the only children present are winged cupids. It is not the sort of art Brian usually pays any attention to, but today one of the paintings titled “Reverie,” catches his eye. This shows a very pretty young girl, fair, round-cheeked, sitting dreaming at the base of a tall sundial in a relaxed attitude. He has often seen Wendy sit so, on the floor in his apartment, with her head tilted back and one arm flung out along the couch. Indeed, Wendy could almost have posed for this picture, in the proper fancy dress, with her hair curled and lightly powdered.

When they are abroad next summer—or even this weekend here in the city if she feels well soon enough—he must take Wendy shopping. He doesn’t know much about women’s clothes, but he is aware that hers are not only ridiculous but unbecoming. The heavy leather browns and tans of her American-Indian getup, the dirty yellows and reds of the East Indian prints, are suited to women of a darker complexion. Wendy ought to wear rose, creamy white, lavender, like these French girls whom she resembles; also her clothes should fit, rather than hang. Something might be done about her hair, too.