The War Between the Tates: A Novel (35 page)

Officially, for instance, Brian isn’t living with Wendy, but alone. Erica, according to her promise, has never contradicted this, though surely by now some people must have heard the real truth, or part of it. But she has no idea who these people are. Which of Danielle’s guests still believe the official version, which know the whole story? And which, aware of Wendy’s existence but no more, regard Erica as yet another middle-aged wife whose marriage has failed—another deserted woman whose husband has, as Leonard Zimmern once put it, traded in a forty for a twenty?

The doorbell rings again; more voices below. Erica looks for a last time into the two mirrors and, sighing, leaves the bathroom; she descends the stairs, fixing a social smile on her chalky face.

Already the rooms are filling; Danielle is an impulsive last-minute hostess, and has invited most of her freshman seminar, all the members of her feminist rap group, and several neighbors. But the bulk of the party is composed of her colleagues in Romance Languages and their spouses. These tend, as usual, to cluster in tight small groups, laughing and speaking rapidly in foreign accents, and occasionally in foreign tongues. Erica passes among them, smiling and nodding; pausing sometimes for a few words, but always keeping her predetermined interval of two and a half feet. It is not as easy as she had hoped, because of the Romance Languages habit of standing rather too close—close enough to breathe, and in some cases spit, on one’s companions. But Erica manages it. Over the last months she has learned to keep her distance with everyone—a distance not only physical but psychological.

For years she had enjoyed and excelled at that sort of harmless flirting which is not intended to lead to assignations and fornication but is only a pleasant way of passing time and informing the other person that they are attractive. Now the gay, confiding manner which she used to put on for parties is as inappropriate as a low-cut dress—and for the same reasons. It makes women look at her with wifely suspicion; it causes men to move deliberately and crudely toward her—or worse, deliberately away, with an expression of No Thanks.

“Hiya, Erica!” Chuck Markowitz, one of her former pursuers, greets her noisily, not at all abashed—perhaps not even recalling the day last December when he came up the road from his Glenview Home with his new snow blower, offering to clear her driveway after the first big storm of the winter. Since Chuck was a neighbor, a junior colleague of Brian’s and about ten years younger than Erica, she accepted gratefully and without suspicion. Even afterward, when be was having coffee in her kitchen and complaining humorously about family responsibilities (his wife Lily was then eight month’s pregnant with their second child), she remained off guard. She was therefore first flabbergasted, and then very angry when he put down his cup, leaned across the table toward her and said, “Hey, Erica. You, uh, wanna make out?”

“Hello, Chuck. How are Lily and the baby?” Though she has not spoken to him face to face since December, Erica has often driven by the Markowitz’s Glenview Home and seen Chuck working with his snow blower, pushing before him the large machine with its bright-red nozzle extended and spurting snow, its vigorous mechanical noise. Occasionally he has called and offered again to clear her driveway; naturally, she has always refused.

As soon as she politely can, Erica disengages herself from Chuck. Smiling and nodding at arm’s length, she makes her way through Danielle’s guests toward the dining room, where Dr. Bernard Kotelchuk stands behind the long oak table pouring drinks with large gestures, a loud red tie and an offensive hostlike manner.

“Good evening, Mrs. Tate! How’re you doing tonight?”

“Fine, thank you.” She smiles thinly, irritated to be addressed as “Mrs. Tate,” though aware that his intention is not facetious, merely formal.

“What can I give you?”

“Some white wine, please.”

“Coming up.”

Erica moves away with the glass, sipping sparingly from it: not only is she aware that she will have to drive home—she knows that she is being watched. Because of her separated condition, if she seems to be even slightly high both men and women will look at her with suspicious pity: is Poor Erica starting to drink?

The party is in full blast now, its density and volume increasing every moment Nervously scooping up cheese dip with a cracker, though she is not hungry, Erica scans the room. Years ago, and again for a time this winter, she went to every party with the fantasy that someone would be there—” someone whom (though they had never met before) she would recognize who would recognize her.

Foolish; pathetic. As usual, she knows every grown man present tonight, and doesn’t want to know any of them better. Most of them are out of bounds anyhow, being married—as is most of the male population of Corinth over thirty. Among the remainder there are two or three men (not now present) whom Erica has finally decided she might be willing to go out with. It is not that her opinion of men has altered, or that she has any desire to become romantically involved. But it would be nice sometimes to have a respectable, attractive escort to concerts, films and art shows.

As yet, however, none of these men has offered to escort her. The only man she has gone anywhere with for nearly three months is Sandy Finkelstein, who is neither respectable nor attractive, though he is—just as, long ago, in Cambridge—usually available. There are problems even with Sandy: he can’t afford to go to anything that costs money and will not let her pay for him; he has no car and his appearance is weird. Last Sunday at the afternoon concert he wore a secondhand Army overcoat he had bought for two dollars, and a red knit hat with a long tail and tassles like one of the Seven Dwarfs.

Erica thinks of something Danielle once said: that what men do if they can afford it is take a naive young woman, give her a couple of babies and a big house to look after, and then after fifteen years of hard work they discard her. By that time she’s used goods; damaged merchandise. Nobody wants her any more. Except maybe the sort of man who buys day-old bread and gets his clothes at church sales.

But she must not think that way. She is at a party, where people have come together to have a good time. She scans the room, looking for someone to talk to; but they all seem to smile and then turn away, avoiding her. It is a strange sensation. For years, as a beautiful, happy young woman, she was the object of general admiration and attraction; last fall when Brian first left she was also surrounded, wherever she went, by interested sympathizers and wolfish husbands. But now her story is no longer news, and as a lonely middle-aged woman with moral principles she is dull, an embarrassment. As Danielle said, it gets later and the buses run less often—finally not at all.

Taking a deep breath, suppressing these thoughts, she scans the crowd again and then moves through it toward Clara Dickson, her lawyer—also once Danielle’s. Indeed Clara, a motherly broad woman, long happily married, has helped to end most of the local unhappy marriages Erica knows of.

“Hello, Clara. How are you?” Good manners demand that she should not ask instantly whether Jack Lucas is still dragging his feet about the settlement; Erica begins the conversation by inquiring about Clara’s many grown and successful children. Before she can finish this polite ceremony they are interrupted by neighbors of Clara’s who are remodeling a house on the lake and intend to explain the process room by room. Discouraged, smiling chalkily, Erica drifts away, waiting for a better opportunity. She moves through the guests, keeping a becoming distance, stopping at intervals to smile, deplore the weather, and parry inquisitive remarks with conventional answers. (“How are you these days?” “Oh, fine.” “Well, what’s new with you?” “Oh, nothing much.” “And how is all your family?”)

In the front room, away from the bar, the crowd is thinner; in the hall there is only one person: a tall, very shabby, dim looking man standing by the stairs reading a magazine.

“Sandy.” Erica smiles. It is a relief to see someone who knows her story and won’t ask questions, and it is mildly pleasant to see Sandy. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

“Neither did I.” Zed puts the magazine down.

“I’m glad you came.” Erica smiles, but with mixed feelings. She had asked Danielle if she could invite Sandy for his own good, so that he might again meet people of his own age, background and intellectual sophistication. For in spite of his shabby appearance he is an intelligent and sophisticated man; he has been kind to her this depressing winter, and Erica wants to repay him—to restore him to his right place in the world.

But now that he is here, Sandy looks incongruous and uncomfortable. He has put on his only respectable shirt—a frayed white oxford button-down, an apparent survival from his years of teaching—and a narrow, limp black knit tie. The effect is somehow to make him seem even more of a dismal outcast than he does in his secondhand pants and sweaters.

Still, since he
is
here, he can’t spend all evening in the hall reading the
New-York Review of Books.

“Have you had anything to drink, yet?” she asks. “There’s tonic and orange juice if you don’t want liquor, or I could make you some tea.”

“No thanks. I’m not thirsty.”

“Well then. Come and talk to someone.” Erica reconnoiters the crowd in the next room and selects a professor of French named M. Alain who is known for his good will. She propels Zed to his side, introduces them, and suggests the neutral topic of Japanese theater, a sample of which has just been presented locally.

Cheered by having accomplished a good deed, Erica heads for the kitchen to see whether she can do another. She finds Danielle simultaneously spreading pâté on squares of toast and talking on the phone.

“Yes ...All right ...You’re welcome, good-bye.” She puts the receiver down with some force. “Dhhh. That was Mrs. Heyrick again. She wants to know can we please, please, be a little less noisy. Mr. Heyrick has a migraine headache.”

“He would,” Erica says, thinking that she too has a headache. “Can I do anything?”

“Yes. We’re running out of glasses already. Everyone must be leaving them around.”

“I’ll go and see what I can find, and wash some.”

“That’d be great. I didn’t think so many people would come.”

Why not, you invited them, Erica thinks as she returns to the living room with a tray and begins to collect used glasses. She has nearly a dozen and is on her way back when the front door opens and a person Danielle hasn’t invited enters—not Brian, but the next-worst thing: his lawyer, Jack Lucas. Jack is accompanied by, and has evidently come with, a friend of Danielle’s named Nancy King. Erica looks at them with a heavy, angry feeling, for Jack is not only Brian’s lawyer and hence her enemy, but also one of the unattached men she had in years past flirted with and later chosen as a possible escort. She had even, before Brian went to him, had the fantasy that Jack would refuse to take the case out of admiration for her. That he should come with Nancy is another blow—for until recently Erica has never had anyone else preferred to her by those whom she preferred.

“Erica!” Nancy whinnies, galloping toward her and pawing her arm. “Lovely to see you. It’s been years. You know Jack, don’t you?”

“Of course we know each other,” Jack cries, smiling broadly and hobbling up as fast as possible. He is literally dragging his feet, or at least one foot, which is in a cast as a result of one of his continual skiing accidents. “How are you, Erica?”

Jack leans forward; guessing his intention, Erica tries to retreat, but there is a wall behind her and her hands are full; she can do nothing but turn her head at the last moment, so that Jack’s belligerent kiss explodes damply on her cheek.

“Must get these glasses back, Danielle needs them,” she insists, escaping. She hastens into the kitchen to complain to her friend
(“YOU
might think he would have known—would have had the good manners not to—”). But Danielle is not there.

She washes and dries the glasses and takes them back to the dining room, where Danielle is laughing with Bernie Kotelchuk in a noisy group. Frustrated, she takes her complaint back across the room.

“Jack Lucas just came in,” she announces to Clara in an angry whisper.

“Oh, yes?” Clara turns toward her, smiling. “That’s nice.”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s extremely rude. He must have known I’d be here.”

“Heavens, Erica.” Clara shakes her head, laughs gently. “If Jack or I couldn’t go anywhere we might meet someone we’ve got a case pending against, we’d both have to stay home most of the time. In this town.”

“I suppose you’re right”

“Of course I’m right.”

“Mm.” Erica hesitates. “But now he’s here, will you speak to him?”

“Why, of course I’ll speak to him!” Clara stops smiling. “Jack and I are old friends.”

“I mean, about the agreement. You can ask him why he hasn’t answered your last two letters.”

“I couldn’t ask him that now,” Erica’s lawyer says firmly. “This is a social occasion.” She gives Erica a smile of maternal disapproval mixed with pity, as if she were a child who wanted to bring up some silly old quarrel at a party. “Why, hello, Nancy. How are you?”

“Beautiful.” Nancy, who is of course also one of Clara’s former clients, embraces her warmly, while Erica slides away, feeling worse than before.

The front hall, where she goes to recover her composure, is again empty except for Zed, who is now crouched on the rug reading one of Danielle’s books.

“Sandy?”

“Hello.” He straightens up, smiling sheepishly.

“You’re not enjoying the party. Didn’t you like Monsieur Alain?”

“He was all right. But then these other people came up. A very angry man who was always laughing, with a bristly beard and a sad wife. I forget their names.”

“The Diacritis,” Erica supplies with a sigh. “He’s the chairman of Danielle’s department.”

“I see.”

“But what happened?”

“I said something he didn’t like. He was complaining about how hard it was to stop smoking; When he goes to a party where there are people like Monsieur Alain with cigarettes, he gets very angry and wants one too. He asked me what I thought he should do about it. I suggested he might stop going to parties, or else, what a Zen Master told me once, he could try to experience his desires fully without satisfying them. Then he figured out I was the nut who runs that bookshop, and started to abuse me.” The telephone in the hall beyond Zed begins to ring. “So I got out of his way. Do you think I should answer that? ...Hello ...Yes, just a moment ...It’s the next-door neighbor. She wants to speak to Danielle.”