The War Between the Tates: A Novel

by Alison Lurie

  “What are you doing, little girl?” she cawed, rising to her feet.

  “Watering the flars,” replied Silly, then aged three.

  After going indoors to skewer a small veiled hat to her hair, Mrs. Heyrick proceeded down her front walk, along the street under the elms and up the adjoining walk, where she rang the doorbell and informed Danielle that this was a nice neighborhood and that her daughter was old enough to know better and to wear panties.

  The resulting conflict had continued ever since, finding new grounds without wholly abandoning the old ones. It waxed and waned with the seasons: during the winter months there was usually a cooling-off period, with only occasional skirmishes about noise and the removal of snow; as temperatures rose and the un-nice behavior of the Zimmerns and their friends became more visible, it heated up again.

  Had Erica and Brian found themselves in such a situation they would have moved out as soon as possible; but the Zimmerns declined to do so. Leonard, who while he lived in the house took an equal share in the war—and in Erica’s opinion sometimes went out of his way to provoke it—considered it a matter of principle. “Not on your life,” he exclaimed once when she suggested moving. “Why should I let a couple of senile anti-Semites turn my family into Wandering Jews?”

  “Since Leonard left, active hostilities have been carried on principally by Danielle and Mrs. Heyrick, a scrawny lady with a penetrating whispery voice and a large collection of small hats. Mr. Heyrick plays only a supporting role, his frequent ailments serving as ammunition for his wife.

  “How’s everything going?” Erica asks,, following Danielle into the kitchen, where platters of party food are ranged along the counter.

  “Not bad. I forgot to get more flour, so I decided not to bother with those cheese puffs. There’s really nothing much for you to do—well, maybe you could cut some rye bread. Here. Roo’s made all the dips, that was a big help. She’s trying to bribe me.” Danielle grins at her daughter, who is scraping out the blender and licking the spatula. “She wants to start a gerbil factory in the sewing room.”

  “Really?” Erica looks at Roo, who is silent.

  “I told her, Yeh, that’s fine, but where am I going to sew? Also I don’t want a couple dozen gerbils running around the house; two is bad enough. And don’t tell me you’d keep them in their cages,” she adds, as Roo opens her mouth to protest. “Pretty soon you’d feel sorry for them and let them out for exercise, just like you do now with Victoria and Albert.”

  “If you would buy me a horse, I wouldn’t want to raise gerbils,” Roo says abruptly.

  “That’s silly.” Danielle stops slicing a red Edam cheese. “You know I can’t afford to buy you a horse.”

  “I do not either know it. You always say that, but it doesn’t mean anything. You have hundreds of dollars, I saw your bank book. If you thought it was really important, you would do it.”

  “Why do you want a horse so much, Roo?” Erica asks, more to relieve the atmosphere than out of curiosity, for what Leonard has called Roo’s Houyhnhnm Complex is of many months’ standing.

  “Because horses are the most noble, beautiful, wonderful thing in the world; I wish I’d been born a horse.”

  “You have riding lessons now, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Roo admits. “But—”

  “More than lessons. She can go out to the stables any time she wants,” Danielle explains, arranging half-moons of red-rimmed cheese on a plate. “St.” Bernard fixed it up with his neighbors.”

  “But isn’t that enough?” Erica asks.

  “No.” Roo speaks with intensity. “I want a horse of my own. That’s another reason I want to start breeding gerbils, see, so I can save up for one faster.”

  “You’re not going to make much money on gerbils,” Danielle says, starting on a block of pale-brown goat cheese. “Already they’re advertising them in the paper for five dollars a pair, when Victoria and Albert were twelve from Contemporary Toys last Christmas. Everybody has gerbils now, and they’re all breeding. In a few months people will be giving them away. Anyhow you know how you are, Roo—you’ll get attached to all those dozens of babies, and you won’t want to sell any of them.”

  “I will too. As long as I know they’re going to good homes. And I’m not going to start with dozens. I just want to keep the litter Victoria has. Why can’t I do that?”

  Danielle sighs. “I haven’t time to argue about it now; I have to get dressed. Don’t cut any more bread, Erica, that’s plenty. Come on upstairs with me. There’s something I want to tell you.”

  In the bedroom, as Danielle drops her shoes and begins to pull off the flowered gown, Erica approaches the Victorian chest of drawers and its wide mirror, raising her hands in a pretense of tidying her hair. The first glance is reassuring: at three feet the slightly yellowed glass reflects a very pretty, slim young woman. Only as she leans forward over the chest is the image flawed, the face seen to be finely wrinkled around every feature under a pink dusty coating of Matilda’s acne-proof paint Close up against the glass, Erica looks as if she had walked into a spider’s web.

  “You know Bernie went to the Co-op with me today, to help carry home all the food and drink for tonight. We got some of that new Chilean wine, I don’t know how people will like it, but I think ...

  Though she has turned away from the mirror, Erica is still not listening seriously. She is not very interested in exotic wines, and still less in Dr. Bernard Kotelchuk. Instead she is studying her friend to see whether she too has become suddenly old. As usual, Danielle is without ordinary modesty; as she pulls off her black tights and unhooks a worn leopard-print bra (36 C) it is possible to make a complete survey. Even at close range her face, with its strong, simple lines and high color, seems merely weathered, as if she had just come in from outdoors. There are shallow folds on either side of the generous mouth and between the dark brows, but no wrinkles. But Danielle’s body looks heavy, used. The full breasts have begun to descend; there are broken veins in the brown thighs and lumpy rolls of flesh over the hips—and the broad curve between them, once as smoothly tan as a sand dune on a summer’s day, is marbled and puckered with the scars of appendicitis and childbirth.

  Women age like wild apples, Erica read once. Most, fallen under the tree and ungathered, gradually soften and bulge and go brown and rotten; and that is what will happen to Danielle. Others hang on to the branch, where they wither and shrink and freeze as winter comes on. That is how it will be with her.

  “Anyhow, the big surprise of the day was,” Danielle continues, with a pause and deepening of her voice which finally reclaims Erica’s attention, “he wasn’t joking; he was serious. St. Bernard really wants to marry me.” She grins and pulls open her top drawer.

  “No! Actually?” Erica laughs. “You mean he proposed to you formally in the Co-op liquor store?”

  “That’s right.” Sitting on the edge of the wide bed, Danielle bends and begins to ease on her pale-gray pantyhose.

  “How bizarre.” The proposal surprises Erica; not because of Danielle’s ruined beauty (her friend is still far, far more attractive than Bernie Kotelchuk deserves), but because it is incongruous with her idea of his motives. As she imagines he would put it: Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap? “Whatever did you say?”

  “I told him I’d think about it.” Danielle stands and pulls the cloudy gray nylon up to her waist, veiling the damaged summer landscape of hips and belly. “After all, it’s a long time since I had that kind of proposal.” She laughs a little uneasily, and shrugs first one and then the other shoulder under the straps of a white-lace bra.

  “Mm.” Erica frowns; she doesn’t like to hear her friend mock herself.

  “There’d be some advantages to it, you know,” Danielle continues from within the new dark-red brocade dress she has made for this party. “I’m used to Bernie now; I’m even kind of fond of him. And of course the girls are crazy about him. If I got married, we could all move into his house in Brookdale; Roo c
ould have her horse; and there’s lots of kids in the neighborhood for Celia to play with, so I wouldn’t have to drive her everywhere like I do now. And I’d never have to speak to Mrs. Heyrick again.” Danielle pulls her dress down and turns to Erica. Her expression is almost but not quite serious.

  “That would be a great advantage, of course,” Erica says, giggling. “The only trouble is, you’d have to speak to all his Brookdale friends and neighbors instead.”

  “I know.” Danielle makes a face. “All those pie-baking women that knew his wife. They’d never forgive me for marrying him.”

  “Never.” Erica is still laughing.

  “And they’re not the only ones. My parents would be hurt because he’s not Jewish. Especially my mother.” Danielle has stopped laughing. “And you can imagine what Leonard would say.”

  “I can.” Though Danielle had never mentioned Bernard Kotelchuk, Leonard has somehow learned of his existence. Since January, when he discovered a reprint of one of Dr. Kotelchuk’s articles on the diseases of young swine in Roo’s room, he has referred to him as “the pig pediatrician.”

  “I wonder why he asked you to marry him?” Erica continues, since her friend is silent. She has no hesitation about speaking this way, for Danielle has declared several times that she is merely making temporary use of Bernie; and even more often that she has no intention of ever marrying again—that she considers it a stupid, antiquated and exploitative institution. “Maybe he thinks he should offer at least once to make an honest woman of you. He must know you’d refuse.”

  “I thought of that too,” Danielle says after a slight pause. “I asked him if it was that, but he insists he’s in love with me.”

  “In love?” Erica giggles again.

  “Uh huh.” Danielle finishes zipping up the back of her dress and sits down again on the bed. “Well, you know, he hasn’t had much experience for a man his age. I used to think that when he praised me, when he told me how great I was in bed for instance, he was just being polite, I would think how I was probably a poor substitute for his wife Marnie, whom he always spoke of with such awe and restraint.

  “But the truth seems to be she was really rather a bitch. Not in ways anybody could see; but she was always getting at Bernie in private because he drank and smoked and didn’t go to church enough. He says he used to envy his friends who could grumble about how their wives burned the dinner or dented the car, or couldn’t manage a budget. But Marnie was a superb housekeeper, and an elaborate cook. She braided her own rugs and canned her own tomatoes and baked her own bread and spent all her free time doing good works. Everybody thought she was just about perfect. Bernie never told them she didn’t like to make love and thought he was a weak, corrupt, unreliable man who was a bad influence on his own sons. Partly he agreed with her, that’s the really sad thing. Sometimes when he was out of town he’d get drunk, or once in a while pick up a girl in a bar. Marnie never said anything, but he was always sure she knew. ‘How could she know a thing like that?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t know, but she did,’ he said. ‘She used to tell the boys she had x-ray vision and could see right into their brains.’”

  “That’s rather creepy,” Erica says, feeling distaste for both characters in the story. “And does he still get drunk and pick up women?”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t enjoy it much even then, he told me. He says he’s never known a woman who liked sex the way I do.”

  “Really.”

  “Well, it is good.” Danielle laughs with uncharacteristic embarrassment. “It’s funny, but he suits me better than even Leonard did. Of course Leonard was amazing in bed, but he was so unpredictable. He was always wanting to do something new. I used to like that too, but it didn’t always work out. Maybe I’m just getting old, but it’s nice to know what to expect, and not have to keep trying uncomfortable positions somebody saw in a book on Oriental art.”

  “I know what you mean,” Erica says, in full agreement for the first time in the conversation. “I feel exactly the same.”

  “Another thing, I think Bernie’s lonely,” Danielle continues, standing up. In front of the mirror she releases her dense dark-brown hair from its tight ponytail, and starts to brush it back and out from her head, so vigorously that the air in the bedroom crackles. “Both his sons are away now, and he doesn’t like living by himself. I’m afraid if I don’t marry him he’ll find somebody else.”

  “Well, if he does, so can you.” Erica says with some enthusiasm.

  “Maybe.” Danielle pauses, holding her brush out at the end of a stroke. “You know that old saying, about how men are like buses? And if you miss one. don’t worry, because there will be another along in a few minutes. Yep, maybe. For a while. But as it gets later they run less often.”

  “Yes—well.” Erica laughs uncomfortably. “I don’t know. You’ve always” found them without any trouble whenever you wanted them.”

  “That’s different” Danielle opens her make-up drawer. “If you just want to screw, there’s always somebody around. That’s all right for a while. But you get tired of all the coming and going.” She pencils her emphatic dark brows even darker. “I’m like Roo; I sort of want a horse of my own.”

  “Not a farm horse, though.” Erica smiles. “Not that Bernie Kotelchuk really reminds me of a farm horse, he’s more like—” She breaks off, noting Danielle’s expression in the glass. Perhaps it is just the effect of holding her facial muscles stiff while she outlines her eyes; all the same, Erica does not go on to say that what Dr. Kotelchuk reminds her of is a farm dog, that she can see him as this dog: a large old St. Bernard padding along a country road on a cold late winter night to where Danielle is waiting for the next bus—trudging up to her over the snow, slobbering over her, offering her his cheap domestic brandy.

  “I know you don’t fancy him much,” Danielle says, thickening her already thick lashes with mascara.

  “It’s not that.” Again Erica looks into the mirror where Danielle is framed by mahogany Victorian scrolls and leaves. With her hair down and her face made up, in the mahogany-red dress, she is still a very beautiful woman; much, much too good for Bernie Kotelchuk. “What I think is—” Downstairs the bell twangs. Danielle turns her head.

  “Oh, hell, there’s somebody already. Roo, honey! Could you answer the door? Say I’ll be right down.” She steps out of the mirror frame and goes to feel in the closet with one foot and then the other for her black silk pumps.

  “I’ll be with you in a few moments,” Erica says, moving toward the bathroom. While her friend clatters downstairs, she locks the door and inspects herself in both mirrors: the small one over the sink and the long one on the door. The result is the same. Up close under the light her face looks like a stone rubbed with pink chalk, powdery and worn. But as long as she keeps a certain distance from people—a bit over two feet—she will seem perfectly normal, though a little pale.

  This shouldn’t be too difficult tonight; indeed in some cases she will have cooperation. Among those who are sure to keep their distance are the men who tried to get too close last fall. Corinth being the size it is, Erica has not been able to avoid these rejected adulterers completely—especially since many of their deceived wives are close acquaintances who would be surprised and hurt if she dropped them without apparent reason. Several of them are coming tonight; and she will have to speak to them in a friendly, open way, and to their husbands; not showing what she knows, not knowing what she shows—and moreover, not knowing what they, or anyone at the party, know about anything.

  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 w
hose 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?”