The War Between the Tates: A Novel (31 page)

But she knows that she is not broadcasting now. The station has gone off the air, perhaps permanently, and yet these same men, or others like them, have begun to appear at her house, ostensibly to borrow tools or bring their children to visit hers. Others have tried appearing in the university building where she now works and suggesting coffee, or, more crudely, driving her home from dinner parties in the wrong direction and then suddenly stopping the car. But though their means differed, their ends were identical. As she said to Danielle, they only wanted one thing. (Danielle’s response, as rather often lately, was not satisfactory: “Hell, I don’t know. I used to think, if they only want one thing, the poor bastards, why not give it to them?”)

What infuriates Erica most about these men is their patronizing attitude. They all seem to believe, and some have openly, jokingly declared, that they are doing her a favor. When she declines this favor they smile knowingly and renew their attack, for they assume she must be in a state of sexual starvation, and would be grateful for the opportunity to have intercourse with them.

Needless to say, Erica was not grateful. The surprised politeness with which she had at first received these men’s attentions was quickly replaced by cool disinterest. If they were still not discouraged she showed moral indignation. This was not well received. When Erica explained that she had resolved never to do to another woman what had been done to her, or reminded her suitors that they were married, some of them laughed and asked when she was going to start living in the modern world; others sighed and began to complain in a disgusting way of their wives’ sexual inadequacies. One or two even became sneering: they said or implied that if Erica didn’t want them she must be frigid, and it was no wonder Brian had left her.

Another thing which dismays Erica is that several of her rejected suitors are the husbands of acquaintances whom she had always believed happily married—who no doubt still think themselves so. She feels a painful sympathy for these deluded women, and it has occurred to her that it might be right to tell them the truth about their husbands, but so far Danielle has dissuaded her. (“Believe me, they won’t thank you. Maybe if it was a real affair they might want to know, some of them.” She smiled cynically. “But not a business like this. Even if they don’t blame you for the whole thing, they’ll dislike you for it, and take your name off their party list. Or else they won’t believe you. Hell, you remember that time Ruth Taylor came around and said she thought I ought to know that Leonard had tried to feel her up at the English department picnic? I practically threw her out of the house.”)

Erica is still not sure Danielle is right, though. Her friend is negative about everything lately; she has become so bitter that it is almost painful to visit her. Roo and Celia are not happy either. It is going to be a sad Christmas for them. Not only did Leonard refuse to invite them to New York, he has also declined to come to Corinth to see them until after New Year’s Day, claiming that he has to work on an important article. (“Important article, my foot,” Danielle said. “It’s some girl’s ass that’s the important article.”)

Moreover, Danielle has just had a very bad experience, one which might have sent a less tough and experienced woman—Erica, for instance—into a nervous collapse. This event had occurred last Friday, when she received an unexpected visit from Dr. Bernard Kotelchuk, the veterinarian who had treated Pogo in September. Dr. Kotelchuk had called occasionally since then to see his former patient and the rest of the Zimmern menagerie; he had become popular with Celia and Roo, who has nicknamed him “St. Bernard.” Erica had met him only once; he appeared to her as a large, doggy, coarse-looking, inarticulate man of about fifty who smelled faintly of disinfectant and was losing his hair.

Last Friday Dr. Kotelchuk arrived without warning at the peculiar hour of 8:45 a.m., just after Danielle’s children had left for school. He had hardly been in the house ten minutes when, as Danielle put it, “he practically raped me on Roo’s bed with six gerbils watching.” “I fought him off as hard as I could at first,” she told Erica. “It wasn’t so easy: he must weigh about two hundred pounds. I was going to knee him in the groin like in that self-defense book, but then it occurred to me that he had probably saved Pogo’s life, and if he wanted sex that badly, why should I make such a fuss about it? I mean, it didn’t really matter to me; it didn’t hurt or anything. So I stopped fighting him and lay there, and it was just like nothing was happening. The only thing I thought was, Well, at least I’ve still got that loop inside me; I won’t have puppies.”

Yesterday evening, in answer to Erica’s anxious inquiry, Danielle insisted that she was all over the incident; but Erica doesn’t believe her. No matter how experienced you are, that isn’t the sort of thing you recover from in a few days. And when you are already as badly hurt by men as Danielle has been, it could have lasting psychological effects.

For a long while Erica has hoped that Danielle would recover from her bitterness toward the other sex with the help of some kind, sensitive man who would be wise enough to approach her gently and slowly. What happened Friday seems likely to set this recovery back months, perhaps years—assuming recovery is possible. Or that there is anyone in Hopkins County worth recovering for. Erica remembers how she used to think that Danielle and the Hens were prejudiced against men. Individually they might have had bad experiences; but not all men were like the ones they have known, she can remember saying to Danielle. Brian Tate, for example, was not like that; he was decent, serious—Of all the women she knows, she had been the most deceived, just as now Wendy is the most deceived.

One of the most miserable hours of the past miserable week was the one Erica spent having lunch on campus with Wendy. It had been a long time since they met. For some weeks Erica had kept expecting to run into Wendy, and Brian, at one of the many parties given at this season. She had explained to all her friends that there was no reason not to invite both her and Brian, and she was sure that she would be able to meet him calmly, and behave in a generous forbearing manner when he showed up with his pregnant hippie girl friend. But she was given no opportunity to exercise this forbearance; and she realizes now how naïve it was of her to have imagined that Brian would ever choose to appear in public with a pregnant hippie.

It was dreadful just to look at Wendy now; to see her no longer confident and blooming but sallow, weary, with a nervous tremor in her voice. Worse still was the way she parroted Brian’s arguments, acquiescing in her own defeat. She didn’t reproach him for anything—only herself, for having caused him inconvenience. “I mean, I’ve got years to have kids,” she bleated, pushing aside a half-chewed cream-cheese sandwich. “But if Brian doesn’t finish his Book now, when it’s published it could be too late to save this country. I could like kill myself when I think how much time he’s already lost because of my stupid behavior.” And Erica could not find it in her heart to tell Wendy that she
was
like killing herself; that no book was worth this double human sacrifice. That would only make her more tense and unhappy—as tense and unhappy as Erica herself.

Pity and self-pity are catching up with her again as she sits on the floor in her daughter’s room, tempting her to get into the washer again, to give in to despair. She must find something useful to do quickly. She remembers the rule a counselor at camp once taught her: whenever you feel awful, go do something for somebody who feels worse. Psychologically cynical, perhaps—but over the years Erica has found it effective. Now, for instance, she could pack up what is left of Matilda’s toys and take them over to the Zimmerns’. The dollhouse, too; even if it can’t be repaired, at least it will be out of her sight.

Erica finds Danielle at home in her kitchen, where she is cutting the meat off the roast chicken they had last night for Sunday dinner, and looking rather better. Her hair has been washed and brushed, and she has on a new red ribbed sweater.

“Look at all that,” she says, gesturing with her knife. “I can’t plan meals right yet; I still think in terms of a normal family. And I keep forgetting about Roo and her stupid diet.”

“I know.” The strain at the Zimmerns’ has been increased recently by Roo’s conversion to vegetarianism. Not only did she refuse to eat any roast chicken, she did her utmost to prevent anyone else doing so. (“Do you know how they kill the poor, poor chickens?” she asked, staring emotionally at her mother, her sister and Erica in turn. “They grab hold of them and screw their poor heads tight into a sort of big vise, like the one in Industrial Arts, and then they take this big, sharp, bloody ax—” But at this point Danielle sent her daughter out of the room. )

“She told me this morning she can only have unfertile eggs for breakfast. Where the hell am I supposed to get unfertile eggs?” Danielle laughs.

“I thought all eggs nowadays were unfertile,” Erica says, trying hard not to think of Wendy’s fertile egg.

“So did I. But apparently not, at least not at the Co-op. Here, let’s have some coffee, it’s pretty hot. I can’t keep up with her any more. The rules keep changing too fast.”

“Thank you ...But that’s how it is with everything. You know what I feel sometimes?” Erica adds, sitting down on a kitchen stool and warming her hands on the mug of coffee. “As if I’d got into a time machine, like in one of Jeffrey’s science-fiction stories, and been shot forward into the wrong time. Nineteen sixty-nine—it doesn’t sound right, it’s a year I don’t belong in. It doesn’t even feel real. Reality was when the children were small, and before the housing development.”

“And before Lennie and Brian left home. Yeh. I know what you mean.”

“You see, we know all the rules for that world,” Erica goes on. “Where to shop, what to read and talk about and wear, whom to have for dinner and what to serve, what kind of sandwiches to make for each lunch box, everything. But now we’ve got moved into nineteen sixty-nine by mistake. The A & P has burned down and you can’t park on campus any more and everybody’s children have got big and awful. Everything’s changed, and I’m too tired to learn the new rules. I don’t care about nineteen sixty-nine at all. I don’t care about rock festivals or black power or student revolutions or going to the moon. I feel like an exhausted time traveler. All these new developments they have, maybe they’re interesting or depressing or amazing, but they have nothing to do with real life.”

“Future shock.” Danielle laughs.

“I want to go back where we belong, back to when we were first here, and you used to bring Roo and Silly over to play dolls’ tea parties with Muffy.” Erica looks at her friend for the confirmation and humorous sympathy she has learned to expect, but Danielle is busy again with the dismantled chicken. “How are Roo and Silly, I mean Celia, anyhow?”

“Fine. They’re all excited because Bernie promised to take us out to the country this afternoon to see his neighbor’s stables.”

“Bernie?” Erica sets her mug down. “Do you mean Bernie Kotelchuk?” Danielle nods. “I thought you weren’t ever going to speak to him again.”

“Yeh, I know. But when he came over last night, after you’d gone—Hell, you know, what happened before, it was partly my own fault.” Danielle stops chopping chicken and turns to face Erica, leaning back against her kitchen counter. “I mean, I told him when he got here there was nothing doing, that the other day was a big mistake. He took it very well. He said okay, sure, he understood; he even apologized. He said he hadn’t planned to lay a finger on me when he came to the house that morning, but when he saw me with my hair down and barefoot, and only what he called my ‘nightie’ on, he lost control of himself. It never occurred to me I wasn’t dressed properly. I mean, my nightgown’s not transparent or anything—it was the red one, you know, that I wear around the house all the time.”

“The long sort of Hawaiian mumu, with the big white flowers?”

“That’s the one. Utterly decent. Hell, it was invented by missionaries in Hawaii to cover up everything. But apparently Bernie was brought up in a different tradition. Polish or whatever it was. Respectable women don’t go around barefoot in their nighties. If I didn’t want to screw, I should have put on a flannel bathrobe and pink fuzzy slippers before I let him in ...Well, anyhow he apologized. And he looked at the turtles, and I put Celia to bed, and then Roo went to bed, and we sat around, and I poured us some Scotch—you know all those ladies in Brookdale who want to marry Bernie and keep having him to dinner with elaborate food, baked ham and three kinds of pie, only they never give him anything decent to drink ... Well, there we were ... So it happened again.”

“You mean—”

“Yeh.” Danielle looks away, then back, smiling with something almost like embarrassment. Erica does not smile. It is bad enough that her best friend should have been raped once by a stupid, coarse, red-faced veterinarian. That she should passively let it happen a second time worries Erica even more. She decides to speak out.

“You know, you don’t owe that creep anything just because he looks at sick turtles and once took care of your dog. After all, that was his job. I think you should tell him to stay out of your house. If he has to sleep with somebody, why doesn’t he go and sleep with one of those women who are always feeding him out in Brookdale?”

Danielle shrugs. She puts the cut-up chicken away in the fridge and moves onto a stool opposite Erica. “He can’t, unless he plans to marry them,” she says. “And even then probably not until after the ceremony. He explained it all to me last night. Those people operate on a different system. They’re all good churchgoing widows and spinsters who were friends of his dear departed wife. They play by the old rules and don’t commit fornication.”

“But that’s not your fault! You don’t have to let him use you sexually just because nobody else he knows will.”

“He doesn’t use me, really.” Danielle looks down into her coffee and then up again, almost defiantly. “I mean, it wasn’t so bad this time. In fact”—her face reddens—“it was sort of fantastic. I was surprised.”