by Alison Lurie
“But that’s not fair.”
“Of course it’s fair.”
“But it’s not his fault; it’s my own stupid fault. There was this all-night party and I missed a day and a half and then I thought I could make up for it by taking two pills at once, because I’m so stupid.” Wendy shows signs of beginning to cry again seriously.
“Please, Wendy. Don’t upset yourself,” Erica begs her. “There’s no use thinking about that now.” These remarks are not effective. “I’m sure it can’t be good for the baby,” she tries.
“No.” Wendy attempts to control her gulping sobs. “Yeh.”
“You’re overtired, that’s what it is. Why don’t you go back to sleep for a while? Danielle’s children don’t come home for lunch, so you can get a good rest. Come on now. Lie down.”
“Okay.” Wendy uncurls and subsides onto the bed, then half rises again. “You know what I want to do. I want to go down to the bookshop,” she announces.
“Bookshop?”
“The Krishna Bookshop. Do you know it?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“I want to talk to Zed. Do you know Zed?”
“No,” says Erica, who has not thought of Sandy Finkelstein once since she found Wendy on her porch.
“You oughta meet him, he’s out of this world. I mean like literally. He’s a renunciate; he’s renounced all material goods and possessive relationships. He doesn’t even drink coffee. He’s been on the Path for years. You know, the spiritual Path.”
“I see.” Erica has a vision of Sandy on the Path: it appears to her as a narrow dirt track, overhung with brambles, winding up haphazardly through a steep dark wood.
“He’s helped me a lot, you know. He’s very wise.”
A new and disagreeable possibility occurs to Erica. “Have you told him about all this?”
“Uh uh. I haven’t seen him since I found out for sure. Well, he sort of knows I’m in love with somebody but he doesn’t know who it is. He’s not interested in details like that, only in your spiritual development ... I think maybe I’ll go down there this afternoon and get him to look at my chart.”
“Chart?”
“My horoscope. Zed’s a really heavy astrologer.”
“Please, Wendy, don’t do that,” Erica asks. “I mean, too many people know about this already.”
“But Zed wouldn’t tell anyone. He’s a fanatic about keeping secrets; he’s a double Pisces, with practically all his planets in the twelfth house.”
“All the same, I’d rather he didn’t know. Not yet, anyhow. Please.”
“Well. Okay.” Wendy lies down again with a small sigh.
“Here’s your pillow.”
Erica covers Wendy, lowers the window shade and carries the tray downstairs. The plate is empty now except for a sticky yellow smear and some dark broken crumbs, and there is only a dirty sludge in the mug; but she does not like it any better.
She sets the tray on the kitchen counter and looks at the telephone beside it. Should she call that doctor now and make the appointment? Danielle is probably right: Wendy will go to New York if Erica tells her to. But if she goes only because Erica tells her to, whatever happens there will be Erica’s fault. It is all so difficult, so complicated. If she had refused to speak to Wendy yesterday, as some—perhaps most—wives would have, Wendy would be in Jersey City, and everything would have been over soon one way or another. But it is too late for that now.
Sometimes a miserable refugee cat or dog, abandoned by its owners, appears in your yard. If you keep your door shut until it goes away, nobody will blame you. But suppose you take it into the house, feed it, find it a place to stay. From then on you are responsible.
Of course sometimes the stray cat runs away again, as had almost happened last night. If Wendy had gone then, taken the bus to New York before anything more could be done for her, it would have been distressing, but also a kind of relief. There would have been no more responsibility and blame then for Erica and Danielle—only for Brian. If Wendy had done something awful and stupid (Erica does not think “killed herself”) there would have been unending guilt for him. All the rest of his life Brian would have carried this guilt on his back, like a phantom knapsack full of wet broken bloody rocks. No, no. Even now, she cannot wish him that.
But whatever happens in New York, there will be something in the knapsack. At the best, something halfway between a dead fish and a dead baby. Brian will haul it to campus, into his office and his classrooms; at night he will drag it home again. The ghostly knapsack will be propped against the wall of her sitting room, a dim, uneven canvas shape; later it will be collapsed, almost but never quite empty, in a dark corner of their bedroom; all night, night after night, year after year.
No, Erica resolves, settling the perforated chrome basket into Danielle’s sink to block the drainpipe, she cannot do that to Brian—or to herself. She cannot call that doctor—some other solution must be found. She turns on the water and squeezes out detergent, slides the frying pan into the hot suds, and begins to clear off Wendy’s tray, on which the surgical implements are beginning to turn back into ordinary tableware.
Suppose Wendy goes into a home. That means that for months she will be in some ugly institutional building somewhere in the state, forced to sew and sing hymns with a lot of other stupid, unhappy girls, all of them swelling larger and larger like balloons. Next spring sometime the balloon will pop, and a child, Brian’s child, will be released into the world. Official persons will take it away and give it to strangers, among whom it will continue to exist, imagined but always unseen, for the rest of Erica’s and Brian’s and Wendy’s life. All of them will have many years to think of this lost, unknown baby—child—boy or girl—man or woman. Is that any better? No, it is almost worse.
There must be some other way, Erica thinks, frowning and chewing the inside of her cheek as she rinses the dishes under the tap and sets them to drain. Suppose someone they knew were to adopt Wendy’s baby; someone really intelligent, kind, responsible—She tries to think of such persons, but no name comes to mind.
What if she, Erica, were to take the baby, to adopt it herself and bring it up, as E. Nesbit did with her husband’s illegitimate children, passing them off as her own? Admirable, noble, generous, romantic, Erica had thought when she read of this. To have a baby again—its plump face, its solid small weight against her left shoulder, its small fat hands catching at her hair—“Is that the right thing?” she asks, whispering the words aloud over the sink, above the white sudsy water. There is no reply; instead, as if she had opened a box of insects, a cloud of buzzing, biting problems and complications rises up, filling the kitchen with the whirr of wings.
First, could she get away with it? E. Nesbit and her husband were radical bohemians living in a big isolated country house; the Tates are part of a smalltown academic community. Is she going to pretend to be pregnant, buying phony maternity clothes, wearing an ever-larger pillow under her skirt for the next six months? Could she successfully fake a confinement and appear to go into the hospital, so that none of her friends suspect how admirable, noble, etc., she is being? If they don’t suspect, of course, they will probably pity her for having been careless enough to become pregnant again at forty, and/or condemn her for deliberately adding to the population problem. Those who know the family best may be surprised that the Tates want another child, after two such evident failures.
Perhaps it would be better to say that they were adopting a baby, though this too will require justification—indeed an elaborate rationale; and even then some people may wonder whose child it really is. Either way it means months, years, a lifetime of lying.
And what will Jeffrey and Matilda think when the baby appears? What is she going to tell them; or how is she going to deceive them?
And it is not only the deception, but the possibility of being found out in it. Too many people already know about Wendy, and it would be foolish to expect that none of them will pass it on, or wil
l add l+1=1 if a baby disappears from Wendy’s stomach and simultaneously appears in Brian’s house. Even more likely is that Wendy will disclose the truth herself. She may think she feels nothing now, but maternal instinct may catch up with her. Then she will want to see her child, to visit it; perhaps she will desperately want it back.
Even if Wendy were to forget the whole thing and move to Alaska or Hawaii, there would always be the apprehension that she might return, the knowledge that the child is really hers. And is Erica sure she can love Wendy’s child through years of Infant and Child Care: years of damp diapers, jars of strained apricots, broken push toys and bedtime tears? Can she swear that she will never blame its childish misbehavior on heredity?
Yes. She can swear this. But what about Brian? Even if he agrees to let her adopt Wendy’s child, how will he act toward it? Bad enough if he were to favor it over the others; still worse if he should particularly dislike it.
The crowd of buzzing complications are beginning to fly back victorious into their box, taking with them the tiny pink winged vision of a baby. Erica realizes that with the slightest encouragement she too could start to cry right here; to sob and shake. But she cannot allow herself that. She must remain calm and think clearly, because, at last, she has an important decision to make.
First, she must give up the idea of taking Wendy’s child. Considering everything, especially considering Brian, there are too many problems. She would prefer not to consider Brian; she would rather not think of him at all, but that is impossible. He cannot stay in “Detroit” forever; he will have to come back home, and she will have to see him. At first, just as before, he will be solemn and contrite. He will accuse himself, and figuratively pour ashes upon his head, but in reality his hair will remain quite shiny and smooth, sideburns and all. Then he will begin to explain how the affair with Wendy meant nothing to him and was not important; how the child means nothing and is not important. Gradually his smooth, shiny air of self-esteem will reappear. He will begin to think that it is time for Erica to swallow his version of events, and to forgive and forget again. Presently, if she does not do so, he will begin to feel righteously aggrieved.
Erica rinses Danielle’s frying pan under hot water and sets it upside down on the drainboard. She turns off the tap and lifts the metal basket from the sink. There is a sound of choking from below, the dirty water, floating gray curds of detergent, quivers as it is sucked down into the drain, which swallows it finally to the dregs with a nauseous gulp.
Looking ahead, down into the long dirty dark drainpipe of the coming winter, Erica can imagine that she might one day be able to accept what has happened; that she might be able to forgive. But the person she will forgive is not her husband Brian Tate, but a weak, shallow-minded, self-justifying middle-aged man of the same name. Such men often become involved in messy, loveless adulteries; and they are forgiven, because nothing better can be hoped from them.
But Brian will not only expect to be forgiven, and to have his version of events listened to and believed. At some time during this process he will want to move back into the house on Jones Creek Road, and presently he will want to move back into the bedroom. He will expect Erica to make love to him; to love him, although it has been proved he does not love her, or anyone.
And this is impossible. Erica can never like, much less love the person her husband has turned into. The very most she will ever be able to do is pretend to tolerate him, to remain silent as he rehearses his excuses and false protestations of love, to wait and watch for the next sign of deception, to be still under him at night with her teeth together. Lies, more lies, years of lies.
It is so much easier for Danielle. She does not have to have Leonard in the house; she need only see him a few times a year. She can say what she thinks of him without risking criticism, because everyone knows now what he is really like. And it is easier for Leonard too: he need not be reminded every day of how shabbily he has behaved. Really it is more charitable to let a man like that live where his faults will not be so glaringly obvious: among other shallow, undependable people who will forgive him because they are no better themselves. Or perhaps among naïve people who still believe in him, who accept his pretensions, as Wendy does Brian’s—and thus possibly motivate him to live up to these pretensions.
Wendy still thinks Brian is a great man, a hero; she thinks that the book he is writing will be a great book. This need not be wholly naïveté: very likely, when Brian is with her he plays that part, or more than plays it—he really is serious, dignified, affectionate, etc. Brian always behaves best when people are watching him, especially people he does not know too well; and after all, it has taken Erica herself nearly twenty years to find him out. If Wendy were to know him as well—A faint idea, like the shadow of a small fast plane or a large bird flickering in weak sunlight high over a field, crosses Erica’s mind at this moment, and is gone. But Wendy will never see Brian as he really is now; she will go through life mourning him as a lost hero.
Whereas Erica, very soon, will have to see Brian again. If she puts it off much longer she will seem hysterical, unforgiving; everyone will blame her. Then she will have to let him move back into the house. And when she does so, it will become a sort of prison.
She remembers a conversation she had once with Sandy Finkelstein, coming home from The Magic Flute on the streetcar along Mass. Avenue. He had been reading Dante’s Inferno, and was saying how he didn’t think the sinners in the first circle, in the whirlwind, had it so bad, because they were with someone they loved passionately. The real hell, he said, would be to be with someone you couldn’t stand. “Or someone you once loved, but now you hate them,” Erica suggested. “Like my mother. That would be the worst.”
In that same conversation Sandy had said what really gave him the horrors was all those people drifting outside hell in that sort of dirty fog, the ones who did neither good nor evil, but were for themselves.
There must be some other solution for all of them, Erica thinks; some way out of that fog. A moment ago there was a sort of idea in her mind ...She looks out the kitchen window into the misty narrow backyard. The shadow of the idea is returning; nearer this time, darker, more distinct—Yes. Now she recognizes it.
9
TEACHERS, ESPECIALLY UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS, often have an elective affinity with their subjects. Whether through original tropism, conscious effort or merely long association, language instructors born in Missouri and Brooklyn look and act remarkably like Frenchmen and Italians, professors of economics resemble bankers, and musicologists are indistinguishable from musicians. The similarity is usually only one of style; indeed most professors, at least at Corinth, tend to regard with suspicion and hostility any colleague who leaves the academy to practice what they preach.
These affinities also profoundly influence the functioning of the various Corinth University departments. They determine, for instance, which academic issues will take the longest to resolve and arouse the strongest feelings. Members of the math department tend to quarrel over the figures in their annual report, and members of the English department over its wording. In Psychology, analysis of the personality traits of candidates for promotion sometimes ends in ego-dystonic shouting; and the controversy over the new men’s washroom in the Architecture Building (during which two professors who had not designed an actual building in twenty years came to blows) has already passed into university annals.
But it is among Brian Tate’s colleagues that the effect of the law of affinities is most strongly felt. Since every member of the political science department is in outward manner and inner fantasy an expert political strategist, every issue provokes public debate and private lobbying. Even when there is little at stake, eloquent speeches are made; wires are skillfully pulled and logs rolled out of simple enjoyment of the sport.
In the past Brian has played the game with as much zest as any of his colleagues. Today it seems petty and tiresome. The transactions of the Curriculum Committee, of which he
is chairman, appear vain playacting, and the question it is discussing very trivial compared to that on his own agenda, viz.: How is he going to cope with his wife’s crazy demand that he divorce her and marry Wendy Gahaghan?
The issue which is now before the committee, and which has been before it for an hour already, plus nearly as long on Tuesday before the whole department, is known as the Pass-Fail Option. It first appeared last week in the shape of a petition signed by thirty-two undergraduate majors in Political Science, nineteen in other departments, four teaching fellows, and three persons giving the names of “Thomas Paine,” “F. Kafka” and “Janis Joplin.” These fifty-eight real and imaginary persons demand that students in political science courses be allowed to choose whether they shall receive a letter grade or merely an indication that they have or have not passed a course.
In practice it is likely that the Pass-Fail Option would have little effect. The experience of the history department last spring suggests that the only students who will opt for it are those who would prefer the euphemism Pass to the letter C. Nevertheless, the matter has provoked great controversy: Brian’s colleagues have made long and sometimes emotional speeches containing phrases like “freedom of conscience,” “academic integrity,” “evasion of responsibility” and “moral cowardice”—the last two of which he has heard in another context recently, in fact only a few hours ago, when they were used by his wife to describe his conduct towards Wendy.
Brian’s committee, which is supposed to study the petition and make recommendations to the department, is divided on the issue. Each of the four other members has, as usual, taken up a philosophical position which he is arguing in his characteristic style. For not only do professors resemble their subjects; these resemblances are subdivided within each department. Just as some instructors in art history take on what they imagine to be the appearance, manner and opinions of Renoir, and others what they imagine to be those of Jim Dine, so each of Brian’s colleagues imitates a school of political thought, if not a specific politician.