The War Between the Tates: A Novel (47 page)

Astonishingly, his prayer was heard. Two days later when he walked into his apartment at the end of a long day, Wendy stood up out of her chair by the window and announced that she was leaving him. It wasn’t anything personal, she insisted. She loved Brian, but she just couldn’t hack the idea of marriage, or of living in Corinth the rest of her life. Also, she didn’t want her baby to be brought up here. “You see,” she explained, “the stars can’t do it all. I hafta figure out how the kid can have the best developmental experiences. If I stay here and get into this academic life style, he’s bound to pick up some of its hangups and shitty mental sets.” Therefore, Wendy continued, while Brian stood stupefied by the door holding his briefcase and that evening’s newspaper, she was planning to split after finals for a far-out commune she’d heard of in an unpopulated part of Northern California. Pressed, she admitted that she would be accompanied on this journey by an old friend named Ralph. And how did Ralph feel about her pregnancy? According to Wendy, he was tolerant, even enthusiastic. “Ralph wants to work out a total relationship. He really digs kids. He doesn’t care whose kid it is; he hasn’t got your thing about possessions. He lives completely in the Now.”

Brian’s reminiscences are interrupted by the sight of someone coming toward him, picking her way among groups of sitting and squatting peace marchers; someone he is, for the first time in over a year, very glad to see: Erica Tate.

“Oh, there you are,” Erica says. She is looking well, though too thin; her hair is brushed back from her face, accentuating this. She is wearing a green sleeveless dress, and her paper arm band with its blue peace symbol is fixed high on a slim bare arm. “I left the station wagon down on Tioga Street, across from the orthodontist’s. So I can drive you back here all right.”

“That’s fine,” Brian replies; like his wife he speaks in a careful, almost formal manner. “Thank you.” He smiles cordially, as if they were on opposite sides of a conference table, negotiating some important treaty. “I’ll meet you there after all this is over.”

“I’ll probably be later than you are, though,” Erica says. “I mean, if my group starts—”

“That’s all right. I’ll wait.” Brian smiles again in the same manner. “I don’t have anything to do this afternoon. Classes have been canceled, so I won’t have to meet my seminar.” He is conscious of deliberately elaborating his point, as if anticipating simultaneous translation. “If you’d like to walk with us, though, that would be fine.” The Peace March is to be led by prominent representatives of the University, the Church and the Army (the wheelchair veteran, plus two of his buddies who will carry a banner).

“No, thank you,” Erica says with careful good will. “I promised Danielle and the WHEN people I’d go with them.”

“Ah.” Attempting not to convey annoyance Brian smiles some more—but briefly, for he also doesn’t want to seem relieved at not having to march beside Erica. In fact, he feels neither relief nor annoyance—only a desire that she shouldn’t be hurt or offended in any way.

Yet some emotion, some tension at least, must have shown on his face, for Erica frowns slightly, then smiles slightly, and finally offers:

“If you’d like to—I mean, would you like to come back to the house afterward for some lunch?”

“Thank you; that would be a help. The Faculty Club’s sure to be jammed by then.”

“Yes.” She opens her mouth as if about to add something, then shuts it. “Well, I’ll see you later,” she says. “I’d better get back to the Hens.”

Erica sets off in the direction of Danielle’s party, but before she reaches it she consults her watch, and finding that the march will not start for fifteen minutes, turns toward the washroom—not because she needs to, but in order to think over what has just happened and organize her mind. In inviting her to walk with him, Brian was in effect proposing that they appear together in public for the first time in over six months. She had declined, not in order to reject all that this might imply, but merely out of surprise and confusion of feelings. Whenever something sudden happens, her first impulse is to withdraw, consider the situation, regroup her forces.

Of course in a way she isn’t surprised, Erica thinks, shoving open the door of a long bare crowded room painted battleship-gray and smelling of pine antiseptic. There were signs of what might be coming when she spoke to Brian two days ago—even last Sunday evening, when after returning the children he came into the house, and upstairs to the study where Erica was working on drawings for the Art Festival. He shut the door behind him and told her, in a tight, strained, self-mocking voice, that Wendy was probably pregnant; not by him, but by a Pakistani engineering student, and that she had just left him for an unemployed Chicago film maker.

Erica’s first reaction to this earth-shattering announcement was compassion for Wendy. The poor girl, she thought; the poor, silly, confused child. But during the next few days some of her sympathy began leaking out through the cracks. It was reasonable that Wendy should grow disillusioned with Brian. It was forgivable, though very careless of her to have got pregnant again, and understandable that she should try to conceal the fact for a while. But that she should have been so casually unfaithful; that she should have so calmly planned to present Brian with someone else’s baby—that was hard to understand. Had she been lying to herself, then, or only to Brian and Erica, when she said last fall that she would “always belong to him completely”?

Erica found it all even harder to understand when, three days later, Wendy appeared in her campus office, on an afternoon when Erica was busy trying to get the files in order for her successor. She is moving next week to a better job at nearly twice the salary with the Department of Horticulture, working on their journal and—best of all—illustrating a book on ornamental grasses. Couldn’t they meet later? she suggested.

“But I got to talk to you now,” Wendy protested, clutching Erica’s desk and knocking over a stack of three-by-five cards. “I hafta ask you—to explain—I mean, you know about the baby and everything?”

“Yes, I think so,” Erica admitted, gathering the cards and starting to resort them.

“I guess you’re feeling sort of negative toward me,” Wendy remarked.

“Well, I—”

“Brian told me,” Wendy interrupted, pushing back the pale wisps of hair which covered her face. “He said you thought I was irresponsible. I know there’ve been some bad vibes, but I’ve got my head together now, and everything’s going to work out.” She smiled eagerly and sat down on the corner of Erica’s desk, knocking over the cards again with the fringe of her red wool poncho.

“Like I’m really happy I didn’t marry Brian,” she continued. “It would’ve been a big mistake: we don’t actualize each other’s potential at all. He’s got this set against social psychology, for instance. Well, in some ways he’s right, a lot of the professors in my department are off the wall, but I still hafta pass their courses.” She drew her legs up and sat on the desk with them folded under her, forming, in her poncho, a pyramidal shape.

“What got me most was I wasn’t any help to him in his Work, which was the whole idea you know? I really tried, but all I ever did was make him angry. Like when he read parts of his book to me he would get uptight because I never had any criticisms. It always sounded fine to me. Sometimes I tried to think up criticisms, but that just made him more angry on account of they were so stupid. He got so pissed once because I never heard of the Nazi-Soviet Pact that he started throwing his books onto the floor. I guess I should have heard of it; I realize now it was a big deal, but I wasn’t even born then.” A complaining tone had entered Wendy’s voice.

“Brian takes that sort of thing very seriously,” Erica said noncommittally, feeling obscurely unwilling to join her ex-husband’s ex-mistress in a discussion of his faults.

“Yeh.” Wendy sighed exaggeratedly. “He really does. Ralph, this guy I’m going to California with, he says there’s occupational diseases you get from being a professor, the way workers in asbestos plants get fibrous lungs. He says professors catch that kind of lecturing manner, you know, like Brian has, from talking in public too much. And they start organizing everything into outlines. Like one day he said to me, ‘Could you bring me the newspaper? It’s either a) on my desk, or b) in the bathroom.’ I told him, ‘Please don’t talk to me in outlines, okay? I’m not a class.’ Only he didn’t hear me.”

“No.” Erica could not prevent herself from smiling.

“It was that way the whole time, really, you know. That’s why I decided I’ve got to get out of this environment, before my kid catches the same disease.”

Now Erica frowned. It was this plan which had made her call Wendy “irresponsible”; for surely any child would be better off brought up legitimate in Corinth than fatherless in some squalid mountain cabin, miles from the nearest doctor or school. As moderately as possible, she expressed this view, concluding with the, suggestion that it was really not necessary to go to Northern California; that there must be some good commune nearby which would welcome a young married couple and their baby.

But Wendy shook her head, making wisps of pale hair fly. This place in California was special, and anyhow she wasn’t planning to get married.

“The way I feel now, I don’t ever want to be married to anyone,” she explained. “I figure it’s a bum trip. I mean if you’ve just got a relationship with a guy, that’s cool; you can be really straight with him. Like Ralph says, you know either of you can split any time, so if you stick it out it’s because you really dig each other. The world isn’t telling you you hafta stay with that dude whether you feel like it or not; in fact it’s probably making some hassles for you.”

“But that’s one reason why—” Erica interjected, while an unfavorable and suspicious opinion of Ralph began to form in her mind. “If you were to marry him, you’d have some security—”

Wendy shook her head even more vigorously. “That’d make me more insecure. Once you’re married you can’t ever tell if the guy comes home on account of he wants to, or on account of he has to. I mean, who wants to have somebody fuck you just because it’s his job?”

“I see your point,” Erica replied gently, but with some restraint, thinking that again—and probably not for the last time—Wendy was repeating as her own sincere opinion statements made to her by some man for selfish ulterior purposes. “But marriage isn’t only sex: it’s a social contract. If everyone thought like your friend, families would break up; parents would desert their children—”

“That’s different,” Wendy interrupted. “I couldn’t ever desert a kid. Like this baby.” She put a pink stubby hand, stained with ink, on the front of her poncho. “It’s really heavy; not like some guy you’re not even related to. I know already I’ll never leave him; I’ll always belong to him completely.” And, brushing aside some shreds of hair, she looked at Erica with an expression of fervent sincerity.

Feet are visible below the door, indicating that someone is waiting to use the toilet; so Erica stands up, letting the two strips of perforated paper on which she has been sitting fall into the bowl. She rinses her hands, glancing once into the mirror over the row of basins, where a thin, middle-aged woman is reflected between two smoothfaced girls.

Outside the washroom, Norton Hall is in noisy, churning motion; it is time for the march to begin. As quickly as possible, she makes her way through the crowd.

“Erica, here we are!” Danielle cries, waving from the grandstand. She is about halfway up, holding the stick of a large placard which rests on the bench below and bears, upside down, the astrological symbol for Venus and the motto WOMEN FIGHT FOR PEACE. Next to her stands Dr. Bernard Kotelchuk, in a loud red plaid shirt and a bow tie.

“Oh, hello,” Erica says to him with minimal enthusiasm, climbing up through a crowd of women. “Are you coming with us?”

“I’d like to. But Ellie’s friends won’t let me.”

“Joanne wants us to make a unified appearance.” Danielle shrugs. “She put it up to the meeting last night and they voted ‘no men.’ Silly, really.”

“It doesn’t matter; I can go with the vet-school contingent.” Dr. Kotelchuk smiles broadly. “See you later, Ellie.” He bends and kisses Danielle with a vulgar, smacking enthusiasm.

“He looks cheerful,” Erica Says, watching him descend into the crowd. “Resigned, even. Has he finally given up proposing to you?”

“Not exactly.” Danielle leans on her placard. “He asked me again just last night. I’d been reading an article in
Sisterhood
about marriage contracts, so I told him I’d marry him on certain terms.” She grins. “I said, first, I had to keep my job. I wanted separate bank accounts, and I’d pay half the housekeeping expenses and do the cooking, but I wouldn’t touch any of the cleaning or laundry—he’d have to do it himself, or hire somebody. And I said I had to have three weeks’ vacation by myself every year, with no questions asked afterward.”

“And what did he say?” Erica is smiling now, almost laughing with relief and anticipation.

“He agreed to everything. He said it sounded like a good deal; after all, he’s been doing all his own cooking and cleaning for two years. He said he was afraid I was going to ask for separate bedrooms.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I guess I’ll have to marry him.” Danielle shrugs, then suddenly smiles brilliantly. “It won’t be so bad. He’s a real help around the house, he can fix anything. Yesterday he put up that triangular screen in the attic that Leonard never could figure out, you know?”

Erica acknowledges that she knows.

“And he’s great for my ego,” Danielle continues. “He thinks everything I do is fantastic, and everything I say is brilliant. Well, you know, I’m sort of keen on him too. I guess I really love him.” Unexpectedly, she flushes and looks down.

Below on the floor of the hall the crowd is beginning to thin; the other Women for Human Equality Now are getting to their feet. Danielle raises her sign and follows them and Erica follows Danielle. She knows she ought to congratulate her friend, but cannot arrange the words in her mouth. “But why do you love him?” she wants to ask. “Nobody else loves him—none of all these hundreds of people here. I don’t love him; I don’t even like him.”