The War Between the Tates: A Novel (48 page)

“I can’t figure out why I didn’t say yes sooner,” Danielle continues, descending the grandstand. “I think probably it was a kind of mind set. You get into the habit of being angry and hurt by life, and then when something good happens you can’t accept it because it doesn’t fit the pattern. You really have to make a big effort to stop brooding over the past and all your injustices.”

“Mm.” Erica thinks that this is what she had said to Danielle herself, a long time ago. But now—

“Another thing that probably stopped me was Lennie. Not my parents so much. Mama will cry because Bernie’s not Jewish, and thank God that Grandpère didn’t live to see it, but they’ll come around eventually. But Lennie will make some lousy crack, and then he’ll sneer at us for the rest of his life.” Danielle’s voice is harsh.

“But what the hell right has he to think he’s so superior?” she adds, turning to Erica as they reach the floor of the hall. “Bernie makes a better salary than he does, and his work is a lot more use to the world than picking apart other people’s books. Anyhow, he should be overjoyed. Now he can sell the house, like he’s always wanted to, and buy himself a summer place on Martha’s Vineyard or in Sag Harbor, or wherever all the fashionable intellectuals are going now.”

“Mm.” Danielle is going to leave town, Erica thinks as, jostled by feminists, she is propelled through the doors of Norton Hall into the cloudy spring noon outside. She’s going to move to Brookdale, and I probably won’t see her very often. Everyone is going away: Danielle and her children, and my boss, and Wendy; Sandy has already gone. He wouldn’t even stay a few more days for the march.

“Leaving May fourth!” she had exclaimed as they sat having tea in the Krishna Bookshop for what turned out to be the last time. “But that’s the day after tomorrow.”

Sandy nodded slowly.

“But you’ll miss the big peace demonstration. You must stay for that, at least.”

“There’s no point. I wouldn’t go on it anyhow.”

“You wouldn’t go?” She lowered her mug of tea. “But aren’t you against this war?”

“I’m against every war.” He smiled in the faint, irritating way Erica associated with his religious fixation. Under further questioning it came out that he had never been in a peace march, or any political demonstration; had never written to his congressman, or signed a petition; and had not even voted since 1954. “I’ve been trying to detach myself from all that,” he explained, resting his face in his bony hands and looking out at her from between them. “It doesn’t matter, you know. It doesn’t do any good.”

“That’s a defeatist attitude,” Erica said, thinking that she had been right all along; Sandy was like an ostrich, hiding his head from the world in the sands of mysticism—just like the hero of her books, who had his own bucket marked
SAND
for use in emergencies. “If everyone thought like you—” She broke off, recalling that this was their last meeting. She didn’t want to quarrel with Sandy; she was grateful to him, Not only for keeping her company all these months, but for something more important.

The trip he had taken her on had, as she hoped, been good for her work. It had inspired her—but not by supplying her with new and exotic images and patterns. The revelation instead had been that the most ordinary things are rare and strange; glorious, full of meaning. This unexpected vision had survived her trip. It was, whenever Erica chose, with her still; so that now, here on the bookshop counter, the thick white crockery cup with its dull-green stripe and chipped rim, the hexagonal wooden pencil, the piles of stacked change, the dagger-shaped brass letter opener—all were touched with this glory. All of them could, if she had time, be added to the collection of drawings of simple important objects she is now making.

The Peace March did matter, she told Sandy; it was part of what she had been trying to tell him all along, she said: that the real world and what you did in it mattered.

“You haven’t had much luck with that effort, have you?” he remarked. “Just about as much as I’ve had trying to teach my students to detach themselves from the world.” Sandy filled their mugs again. “They think they’re free because they’ve quit school or got away from their parents. But usually it’s right out of one bag into another: laws, duties, obligations. Did I show you the list of rules for membership in the bookshop that Tim and Danny have drawn up?” He sighed. “Well, it’s one of the principles of astrology: you can’t learn anyone else’s lesson. What you have to do is keep learning your own, over and over again.”

“But you worry about other people,” Erica said. “You can’t help that.” She hesitated, remembering how chilly and silent Sandy had grown last week when she told him she was concerned about his future.

“For instance, Wendy,” she said instead, “Of course she hasn’t behaved very well. But now she’s going off, pregnant, with someone who has no intention of marrying her. She doesn’t know how they’re going to get to that commune place, or even where it is, or what they’re going to live on. Brian tried to give her some money, but she wouldn’t take it—she said it had bad karma. It’s all so vague and uncertain. It worries me awfully.”

“A real Virgo. You’ve got to have everything neat.”

“It’s true.” Erica laughed. “I keep wishing I knew somebody in California, so I could give her a few names and addresses. I really want to do something for her. I wondered if you—”

“Haven’t you done enough?”

“I—what do you mean?” Something ambiguous and cold in his tone struck Erica. “I tried to help last fall. But you know that didn’t work out.”

“No.” Sandy grinned. “God is good to us. He doesn’t always grant our wishes.”

“I suppose you’re right. It would have been a mistake for her to marry Brian.”

“It would have been a disaster. But maybe that’s what you wanted.”

“No, I didn’t,” Erica says, wounded. “I wanted them both to be happy. It was very hard for me, but I thought I ought—That’s a mean thing to say.”

Sandy, provokingly, continued smiling. “You know, Erica, that’s how you always manage it. When you want to do something, you convince yourself that it’s a duty which demands great self-sacrifice. Like when you dropped Greek ... Or in my case,” he added, almost under his breath.

Erica heard this; she knew that something important and dangerous had been said, something she would have to think about—But not now, not yet! Frightened as well as hurt, she counterattacked. “If you thought it was such a mistake for Wendy to marry Brian, why didn’t you say so? Why didn’t you try to stop it?”

Sandy shrugged. “I don’t believe in interfering in people’s lives. What will be, will be.”

That was mean too, Erica thinks as she and Danielle proceed past the squash courts under pink flowering trees. Almost deliberately, as if he had wanted to quarrel with her at their last meeting, so that they needn’t meet again; so he could be completely detached, free of all human ties. But it was mean all the same. And also untrue—as she had discovered after he left town.

The truth had come out by accident in a conversation with Brian last Sunday. It was a mild evening, and they were standing outside talking after Jeffrey and Matilda had gone into the house.

“So Wendy came around and gave you her version of events,” Brian said. “How long had you known she was pregnant, by the way?”

“I guess about two weeks,” Erica replied, puzzled by this question. “Since you told me.”

“I didn’t mean—that is, I just wondered if you might have heard of it sooner. Everyone else in town seems to have known for months: Linda Sliski, and the rest of that female gang, and that fellow in the occult bookstore—all her pals.”

“In the bookstore?” Erica said, her voice rising. “Do you mean Sandy Finkelstein? Do you mean Sandy knew Wendy was pregnant, the whole time?”

“So it seems.”

“But he didn’t tell ... anybody,” Erica exclaimed, substituting the last word for “me.”

“Says who? For all I know, he told everyone who walked into the store.”

“That’s awful.” Erica clenched her jaw; her head felt tight, like a bad headache coming on. “You know what?” she added after a pause. “Sandy never said anything to anyone, because he wanted you to marry Wendy. That’s why he told her all that stuff about children belonging to God, so she wouldn’t feel guilty about presenting you with someone else’s baby.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” replied Brian, who now that Zed had left Corinth preferred to regard him as a harmless ninny. “Why would he want that?”

Erica, who could have told him why, remained silent. For the rest of her life, probably, she would remain silent. It would be hard enough for them without that, if they did eventually decide ...

Already on Sunday, as they stood talking on the lawn in the mild, misty evening, she had thought that Brian might want to come back home. She is surer of it now. He hasn’t mentioned the matter yet, but she knows he is going to mention it; probably today; perhaps within the next hour. He may say he wants it because of her, but that is only part of the truth. He is also embarrassed and worn out by the feminist crisis and the crises’ of Wendy, and tired of living alone. Also he thinks the children are getting better; and in a way he is right.

Of course they are older—Jeffrey is sixteen now, and Matilda fourteen—and therefore out of the house more. They are also marginally cleaner and more polite when in it. Erica really has very little to do with them; she maintains certain rules and schedules, but has more or less given up trying to control what they wear or eat or read or watch on TV. In return, they are minimally agreeable to her, like people forced by a war or flood or some other natural disaster to share living quarters. They have even made a few gratuitous gestures of good will: Jeffrey, without being asked, took down all the storm windows last month; and Matilda brought Erica’s stereo back downstairs.

But the real change is that they have become strangers. Their names, their faces, their bodies, their voices, their gestures, their tastes and opinions—all are unfamiliar. They are no longer monstrous overgrown versions of her children, but two young people Erica hardly knows. In a way it is a relief that nothing now remains to remind her of her beloved, lost Jeffo and Muffy.

And it is not only Muffy and Jeffo who have disappeared, or are disappearing. Everything and everyone is in flux now, confused, disintegrating in time and space. The campus elms are dying and being cut down; they are demolishing the old courthouse; Jones Creek Road is turning into Glenview Homes, and Danielle Zimmern into Ellie Kotelchuk. Her serious, responsible, loving husband has changed into an unreliable adulterer and reputed antifeminist; and she herself has become the woman in the washroom mirror.

In this last respect, Brian has changed less than she He is still the most handsome man Erica has ever met, though today he looked strained and worn. It can’t be good for him to live in that stale sealed-in apartment, without even a balcony outside so he could get a little air and sun. He tans readily, and by this time of year is usually already brown from working in the garden, but now the garden looks unpruned and shabby, and Brian pale and unhealthy, like someone who is sleeping badly and eating frozen dinners. Probably he isn’t taking proper care of himself because of self-hatred, a syndrome Erica knows very well. He is embarrassed and ashamed of his behavior over the past year, and he believes everyone is laughing and sneering at him because of Wendy’s pregnancy and all those stupid newspaper articles. No doubt some of them are.

If she doesn’t listen to him seriously today when he suggests moving back to the house on Jones Creek Road, it will be as if she wanted him to go on making himself ill in Alpine Towers; as if she were sneering at him too, and tramping on him when he is down, instead of magnanimously helping him up again.

On the other hand, if he does come home, she will have to be even more magnanimous afterward. She will have to make up her mind never to say anything that might remind Brian of how selfish and irresponsible and ridiculous he has been, of how much pain and embarrassment he has caused his family, not to mention Wendy Gahaghan and Donald Dibble and the Department of Political Science. That will be very difficult.

But she can do it, if she really tries. And Brian will be grateful—grateful enough, for instance, to agree that she should continue working. And perhaps there is something to be said for Danielle’s marriage contract idea. A separate bank account—A cleaning-lady once a week—A three-week vacation; and one for Brian too, that would be only right—

Erica has crossed campus now and turned downhill through Collegetown. The streets here have also been closed to traffic, and people stand watching the Peace March in the open doorways of shops, and on both sidewalks. Since most sympathizers are already marching, only a few of these people applaud or cheer. The majority look on silently, or whistle and call out wisecracks as the group from WHEN passes: “Burn your bras!” “Pussy power!” One makes an obscene gesture, another an obscene suggestion.

They wouldn’t dare do that if Brian were here, Erica thinks; if Bernie Kotelchuk were here. It was wrong of the Hens to exclude men; we need them sometimes, if only to protect us from other men. Danielle’s friends would say that was just another proof of our oppression—that when real equality is achieved, men won’t be necessary. Are the sexes, then, to live apart forever in warring camps?

Downtown, the vanguard of the march has reached its objective, a small park near the courthouse. In the center by the fountain, the leaders are gathered under a ten-foot-banner bearing the inscription HOPKINS COUNTY MARCH FOR PEACE, watching the park fill with then followers. Brian is amazed and pleased by their number and enthusiasm, and the number and inventiveness of the signs they carry.

WOULD YOU BUY A USED WAR FROM THIS MAN?

WHAT HAS THIEU DONE FOR YOU?

He sees many faces he knows: friends, students, colleagues, neighbors; his ex-lawyer, Jack Lucas; Wendy’s ex-roommate, Linda Sliski—And, yes, there is Wendy herself, accompanied by a tall red-bearded young man who is no doubt her present roommate, Ralph. She is wearing beaded moccasins and a long bunchy yellow dress made out of an East Indian bedspread, and is, to the informed eye, obviously pregnant.