The War Between the Tates: A Novel (36 page)

“Oh, Lord. I’ll get her.”

Erica makes her way back through the party, delivers the message, and returns. “Danielle’s busy now, she says to tell Mrs. Heyrick she’ll—Sandy! You hung up on her.”

“She hung up on me.” Zed grins. “She was worried because there’s a car parked in front of her driveway. She was afraid there might be a fire or some other emergency and she couldn’t get out. But I told her she needn’t worry, because both the lights are in watery signs tonight, and Jupiter is conjunct Uranus. Only good adventures can happen.”

“Oh, Sandy. How could you make fun of her that way?”

“I wasn’t making fun of her.”

“But that’s what she’d think. She must be furious.” Erica looks toward the wall which divides the two halves, of the house, imagining Mrs. Heyrick in the room beyond, which is the mirror image of this one; she is standing facing Erica, furious, in her perpetual hat. What is to be done now?

She looks into the living room. In the far corner, Danielle is laughing tipsily and leaning on Bernie Kotelchuk, who is even more red-faced than usual—obviously drunk. A feeling of exhaustion, disgust and hopelessness comes over her.

“Where are you going?” she adds, as Zed moves past her toward the hall closet.

“Away.”

Erica opens her mouth to protest, shuts it, opens it again. “I’ll drive you home.”

“You don’t have to do that, Erica,” he says in a strained voice. “I can walk.”

“It’s too cold out. I’d like to get away for a while anyhow.” She swallows. “I’m not enjoying this party much either.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll tell you about it on the way downtown.”

It is not only cold outside, but starting to snow. The hill is already slippery, making conversation difficult; by the time they reach the bookshop Erica has only half expressed her resentment at Nancy and Jack.

“Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea?” Erica hesitates, checks her watch. It is not yet ten. She feels cold, damp; her mind is clogged with depression. There is nothing to go home to except the mess Jeffrey and Matilda will have made of her house, especially her kitchen; and she doesn’t want to return to the party, where Mrs. Heyrick and the Diacritis have probably already begun to complain to Danielle about Zed and ask who on earth brought him. “All right. For a few moments.”

A
CROSS TOWN ON THE
same cold March evening a very different social event is taking place in the apartment of Linda Sliski, Wendy’s nominal roommate. Danielle’s party is brightly lit and everyone is standing up, talking loudly. Here it is smokily dim; the few guests are sitting or lying silently on the floor, passing around a joint. When it reaches Brian he does not take a drag, but hands it on to Wendy, who is leaning against his leg with her head on his raised knee.

It is peaceful here, warm; a little too warm and too peaceful for Brian, who can’t get any conversation going and whose left leg is starting to ache. But he is willing to ride with it; more, it is a matter of pride with him to do so. He believes that a political scientist, like a politician, should be able to fit into a wide range of social scenes.

It is as well that he feels this, for he has had few opportunities of late to attend more conventional parties. Like Erica, he has noted a falling off in his social life. However, he is aware of the correct explanation, which is that—in spite of their protests that this is an amicable separation—nobody wants to ask them both to the same party, because it is not the custom. The custom is to keep them separate; to invite the estranged husband to small dinners as an extra man, because he cannot cook for himself and is probably starving; while the estranged wife is asked to large cocktail parties for visiting celebrities, on the grounds that she needs to meet people.

In the case of the Tates this policy is irritating to everyone. Brian already feels overfed by Wendy, but would welcome the opportunity to have a few drinks and some interesting conversations before returning to Alpine Towers. Erica, on the other hand, does not want to meet visiting celebrities, and cocktail parties come at the worst time of day for her—the children’s supper hour. After serving the pizza, spaghetti or hamburgers they demand, she would be delighted to go out to a civilized meal, but nobody asks her.

Wendy is not so much irritated as depressed. She becomes weepy every time Brian goes out to dinner without her, and she believes he isn’t invited to large parties to which he might bring her because people disapprove of her and don’t want her in their houses. As for the hosts at these dinners and parties, they also are irritated and depressed because so many of their invitations are refused.

Brian cannot return even those invitations he does receive, because his apartment is too small and too full of Wendy. Nominally she is still living with Linda, but she is seldom there, and over the past months there has been a steady movement of her clothes and personal effects into Alpine Towers. By now it would be obvious to any guest who happened to open the bathroom cabinet or the coat closet that some woman is more or less in residence. Moreover, if he turned Wendy out while he, entertained she would be hurt, while if he did not it would amount to openly declaring that they are living together.

Though he hasn’t been asked to Danielle’s party, Brian is well aware of its existence. Several of his acquaintances have mentioned it, adding naively, or maliciously, that they hoped to see him there. His lawyer, Jack Lucas, even suggested that Brian might like to tag along with him and his date. Needless to say, Brian refused. He has never in his life liked to “tag along,” and if he were to do so in this instance, Danielle would probably ask him to leave.

Moreover, Brian is tired of Jack Lucas and his interminable negotiations. Leonard Zimmern—whom he saw recently in New York—has advised him to discharge Jack. (“Sure, he’s a nice guy; that’s the whole trouble. A divorce lawyer isn’t supposed to be a nice guy. You want fast action, go to Frank Panto. That’s what I should have done, but I was too dumb.”) As yet, Brian has hesitated to take this advice. He is unacquainted with Frank Panto; but like everyone else in Corinth, he knows the name. It often appears in the newspaper, in reports of trials for burglary, forgery, rape and drunken driving—and is always taken as a sign that the defendant is guilty, but having retained Panto, may with luck get off.

Brian does not like the idea of thus admitting guilt. On the other hand, he is weary of hearing from Jack that Erica’s lawyer has not yet answered his last letter or returned his phone call, or has done so only to propose ridiculously unfair terms. Leonard also has an opinion about these proposals: “Six hundred a month? You know what they’re trying to do, those harpies, don’t you? They’re trying to emasculate you, to cut off your balls. They want to get at you through your superego and destroy you economically. Clarabelle tried the same thing on me, but I finally beat her down.”

At times Brian thinks his friend may be right about Jack’s incompetence and Clara’s malice. More often, though, he suspects that Jack and Clara are in collusion—that they have agreed to delay the Tates’ divorce as they have in the past delayed the Zimmerns’, and others’, in the hope that time may effect a reconciliation. They may not have discussed it openly, but they are old friends, and understand each other almost without words. (“Real shame about the Tates.” “Mm, yes.”—A procrastination of six months or more—“Not exactly surprised re the Farrells.” “No; about time, some might say.”—Formalities concluded in two weeks.)

Though he suspects this, Brian has not yet challenged Jack on it, for in a way the delay is useful to him; it sets up a blockade between him and Wendy’s wish to get married. Actually she has not spoken of marriage in some weeks, but he can feel her desire for it all the time, just as he now feels the warm, heavy, slightly numbing pressure of her body against his leg.

There are other disadvantages in being legally separated. It is expensive, for one thing, and will be inconvenient and embarrassing if/when he decides to return to his family. He hasn’t given up the idea of such a return, though he tends to imagine it as taking place further and further in the future. He certainly doesn’t want it now, and Erica doesn’t want it, though it would be in her best interests. Living alone hasn’t been good for her; she has been ill often this winter, and looks thin and strained. Last Sunday when he went to pick up the children this appearance was so pronounced that Brian could not help commenting: “You’re very pale. Have you got another cold?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Erica replied bleakly.

“You’re overworking yourself, that’s what it is. If you gave up that ridiculous job—”

“If I gave up that ridiculous job,” she interrupted in a thin, strained voice, “I couldn’t buy groceries.”

Brian has managed not to brood about this conversation by telling himself that he is giving Erica so much of his salary now that it is he who can hardly buy groceries; that she is still living in a large comfortable house and not in a cramped apartment. He has repeated to himself the words of Leonard Zimmern: “You’ve got to be tough, or they’ll get you down with their female pathos and whining. Erica was never ill when I knew her.”

These techniques have been partly successful. Brian does not feel consciously guilty; he doesn’t even think about Erica very often. But he has bad dreams. Often they hark back to his war experiences, and repeat the nightmares he had just after his tour in the Pacific on a DE; nightmares involving confused orders and water and sticky darkness and loud noises. Only now Erica is in them. Last week he had one in which she appeared with large wings, perched on the porch roof of the house on Jones Creek Road, like a figure in Renaissance painting. It was a cloudy evening in this dream and the air was full of a dangerous waning noise like antimissile missiles which made him gasp and cry out, waking Wendy. “Hey Brian? What’s the matter? Is it one of your war nightmares? Wake up! What happened, tell me about it.”

And Brian told her, ill-advisedly. For after she hugged and soothed him she asked, “How come you always dream about Erica? Maybe you’re still in love with her.”

“I’m not in love with her,” Brian insisted. “I wish she’d get the hell out of my dreams.” Wendy remained silent, unconvinced. “She had wings like a harpy,” he added, and went on to relate this to Clara Dickson’s impossible demands.

But Wendy was not persuaded. “I d’know. Maybe she’s asking for so much bread on purpose, to zap the proceedings. On account of she wants you back, account of she’s still in love with you.”

“Erica is not in love with me,” Brian insisted with still greater conviction. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think she’s ever been in love with me.” In the dark, Wendy murmured doubtfully. “Look, let’s go back to sleep. I have two classes tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just—I mean, shit, you never dream about me.”

“I don’t have to dream about you,” Brian said in his fondest tone, and with an appropriate gesture. He could feel her relax then; she returned the gesture, laughed warmly, and flopped back onto her stomach. She always slept that way, often with one fist in her mouth, like a child; and now, like a child, she was asleep again in a few moments. But Brian lay awake for over, an hour, while the wailing noise of his dream came and went in his mind.

The joint comes around to Brian again: a thin, wrinkled cigarette, pinched and wet at one end. Again he passes it on. He has no moral objection to marijuana, but he dislikes its effects. When he smokes grass he enters into a dull, stupid, sensual state in which the world is brightly colored and flattened out like the sort of abstract painting he finds most boring. He has the sense of being slowed down and speeded up alternately: a minute passes infinitely slowly, and quarter-hours disappear between two sentences. Wendy and her friends, with their childish sense of an infinite future, may think this amusing; but Brian finds it disagreeable: he does not wish to have big bites of time taken out of his life. Still worse than these sensual distortions is the intellectual effect of the drug. Meaning and order are blurred, and rational argument and comparison become impossible.

Besides, it makes social life boring. When drinks are served, people become more lively and communicative; they talk and move around more. Grass has the opposite effect: look at Linda and her guests, lying about for the last half-hour almost silent, like cows on actual grass.

Brian is seriously concerned about Wendy’s constant use of marijuana. She and her friends cannot seem to get together socially without lighting up a joint, and hardly a day goes by that she doesn’t smoke at least part of one, often (as now) mixed with hash to make it stronger. Possibly the stuff is harmless in small amounts, but what is a small amount? Without federal controls, how can anyone know how much they are getting? Also, he has read that the effect may be cumulative over months or years. Besides, it is a drug, and leads to stronger drugs: to LSD, speed and heroin; to addiction, weird delusions, mental and moral collapse, overdose and death. Nobody has proved that marijuana itself is not addictive, at least psychologically. And apart from everything else, it is illegal. It is distributed by criminal organizations part of whose profits go to bribery, corruption and possibly murder, and the use of it makes one a criminal. Right now Wendy and her friends are breaking a federal law. They could be arrested and tried and sent to jail; and so could he, as an accessory. Probably the judge would be especially hard on him because of his age and position.

Brian sighs and reaches past Wendy for another can of beer, and as he does so her peaceful bovine smile is replaced by a look of anxiety. He knows what this means: she is worried about his constant drinking. She has discovered that he and his friends cannot seem to get together socially without opening a bottle; that hardly a day goes by when he doesn’t have at least a glass of vermouth before supper, often mixed with gin to make it stronger.

In fact Wendy thinks of alcohol much as he thinks of drugs. In her view, grass makes you relaxed, happy and at peace with the world; it refines and heightens perceptions. Alcohol blurs the senses and causes you to become noisy and violent. Besides, everyone knows the stuff is addictive. A small amount—a can of beer or a glass or two of wine—might be harmless, but it is apt to lead to the use of stronger and more dangerous drinks: to loss of physical control, shouting, fighting, vomiting and fatal auto accidents; eventually to impotence and visions of snakes and cirrhosis of the liver. And apart from everything else, it is a gross commercial rip-off. A bottle of whiskey costs six to eight dollars, and a lot of that is taxes, which means it goes to supporting corrupt government and killing people in Vietnam.