The War Between the Tates: A Novel (25 page)

She can do what she likes now in her house; she can wear what she likes and cook what she likes. Brian will not come home at five-thirty tonight or any night to criticize the salad dressing or blame her for Jeffrey’s table manners or the fact that the plumber hasn’t come yet to fix the drip in the downstairs bathroom. She needn’t ask his permission to buy new curtains or have Danielle to dinner. And she doesn’t have to plead and reason with him if she wants to take a part-time job: all she need do is call the placement office as she did last week and say she can start on Monday. It vexes her that the job she has started is not as good as the one Brian forced her to decline: November is the wrong time to seek employment, and the best they could offer her was fifteen hours a week of typing and proofreading for a science journal. Still, it is a start.

More important, she has begun to draw seriously again. There is gradually taking shape in her mind a new children’s book, about a hare who lives in the northern forest, and turns white when the snow comes. She is not sure of the plot yet, but she has already completed some of the illustrations: large, delicately detailed ink-and-wash drawings.

Thinking of her book, Erica turns to the attic window. This is the one room which still has a view uninterrupted by ranch homes; it looks away from the city of Corinth over rising fields and woods bleached and stripped for the coming winter. As a local painter once remarked, nature is an instinctive psychologist of color: in summer she soothes the eye with cool greens and blues, but when the weather turns cold she puts on warmer hues. The late autumn landscape is all done in beautiful pale reds and browns, freckled with white from the first light snow. She must draw her next scene like this, from a height, with an oak tree there, the road there, the long field sloping up—

Erica rests her elbows on the sill, looking out over the lovely empty world, contemplating with wonder her own state of mind. She had expected to feel some moments of painful satisfaction at having made the right decision about Wendy, but not this continuing joy. Is it true, after all, that virtue is rewarded?

Of course there have been some difficult moments. But she would not have had it otherwise; without them, her happiness might have seemed too dreamlike; almost unreal.

Many of these moments have come about because she is still outwardly living a lie, though not one of her own choosing. As yet the real story behind the separation is known only to Danielle and to Wendy’s roommate. Everyone else in Corinth believes that the Tates have parted because of mutual dislike. It is Brian, of course, who has invented this fiction. He has made her promise to conceal the truth until after their divorce—in order to protect Wendy, he claims. But it is really himself he wishes to protect, for Wendy has no social shame, and would be proud to announce her condition from the steps of the college library through a microphone. Erica acceded to her husband’s demand very reluctantly. In her view it was not only dishonest but foolish. It would not prevent scandal, but merely postpone it—and very likely accentuate it. For now, when the real facts are uncovered, one of them will be that Brian and Erica have been lying to all their acquaintances for several months.

Already many of these acquaintances are not satisfied with the report of mutual incompatibility; they want to know the details. Was it sex? money? relatives? drink? They have invited Erica to lunch and to parties in order to pursue the investigation. Usually, she has gone, and smilingly endured their covert or overt scrutiny, their pitying and prying remarks; she has met their tactful or tactless inquiries with calm self-possession. This restraint was painful at first, but she kept silent by reminding herself that her inquisitors would learn the truth soon enough. Then they would remember how she had said with a fine smile that this separation was the best thing for everyone. By now she no longer regrets her promise to Brian; she feels as if she were walking through the world carrying within her a wonderful secret, which like Wendy’s child grows larger every day.

Concealing the facts from her own children has been harder. She and Brian had given out the official version together at a special family council; they had decided beforehand, not without acrimony, what to say. Brian had wanted to break the news gradually, and speak now only of a temporary separation. But she had insisted that even if they didn’t tell the whole truth, they must not tell any lies which the children would remember later. They mustn’t promise that the separation would be temporary; Brian mustn’t say that he had to be alone because of his work. She had spent wearisome hours convincing him of this, and more hours devising honest but evasive answers to every question she imagined the children might ask.

When the council finally took place it was anticlimactic. Brian and Erica made the short, neutral statement they had agreed upon; Jeffrey and Matilda received it stolidly, without apparent curiosity. Pressed for an opinion, they became even blanker. Their father was going to be away from home for a while—but he had been away before, lecturing and at conferences; and this time he would still be in town and would see them regularly. So what was the big deal? It was okay by them. No, they had no questions.

During the next few days, however, both Jeffrey and Matilda approached their mother separately. Erica had anticipated and even hoped for this. When Matilda asked how long Dad was going to be gone, she had her answer ready (“I can’t say now. It depends on a lot of things ...). As she spoke she looked at her daughter and felt, for the first time in months, a deep rush of natural sympathy—not so much maternal as simply female. As a child, Muffy had been strikingly pretty, like her mother: slim, graceful, elfin. Now, at thirteen-and-a-half, she was pudgy and shapeless. Her beautiful pale brown silk hair had been split and roughened and streaked orange by cheap dyes; her mouth was full of orthodontic hardware. But beneath this appearance, beneath the badly patched jeans and the baggy sweatshirt with ZOWIE! printed on it in comic-book lettering, was—or one day would be—a woman like Erica herself. Like Erica—or Danielle, or Wendy—Matilda would grow up, fall in love, have children, and be disillusioned by some man. And this man already existed, somewhere in the world. At that moment, wherever he was—standing in line for a Thanksgiving film matinée in some small town or big city, walking in the country, playing football in a vacant lot, or in some college stadium—he was slowly moving, walking, running toward this house, toward Matilda. It might take him a long time, but eventually he would get there, and get at her, and it would all begin over again.

“... so we just have to wait and see,” Erica concluded, touching the shoulder of Matilda’s pink ZOWIE! sweatshirt gently.

“You think Dad could be gone a month, maybe?”

“He might.” Erica smiled, conscious of all she could not say now, would be able to say later.

“If he doesn’t come back—” Matilda looked up at her intently, as if she had understood somehow, instinctively—as if she knew that Brian would not come back, and was glad of it.

“Yes, ducky.”

“Well then, Mummy.” Muffy’s eyes lit, and she spoke with her old warm, childish eagerness. “Can we get a TV?”

“Certainly not.” Erica ceased to smile.

“Why not? You said it was Dad who didn’t like TV.”

“He doesn’t like it, and I don’t like it.” Erica tried to control herself and speak more evenly.

“You said you didn’t care.”

“I did not, Matilda.”

“You did too. Anyhow, what about majority rule? It’s two against one now, because Jeffrey wants TV too ...Oh yeh? ...You always give us this bullshit about fairness and democracy, but you don’t mean it ... phony ... mean ... She continued in this manner for some time, becoming whinily insistent and then abusive, finally referring to her parents as “senile freaks.”

Erica managed to remain calm, even forgiving. She looked at the mouthful of metal and rubber from which this abuse was issuing and thought of the fairy tale in which every word the ugly daughter utters comes out a toad. It was really as if Muffy had fallen under a bad spell—the spell of Brian’s lies. If Erica could have told her the truth she would have had other things to think of than TV, and this bad unreal scene would not be taking place.

When Jeffrey accosted her a few days later Erica was more on her guard. He appeared at the kitchen door when she was cooking supper, and barked, “Hey. What’s for eats tonight?!”

“Kangaroo burgers, baked kangaroos and kangaroo sticks.” This was an old family joke, meaning that the answer to a question was obvious, just as now: the hamburgers were simmering in onion sauce on the stove, the potatoes visible through the oven door, and she was at that moment scraping a carrot under the tap.

“I just asked,” Jeffrey grumbled, not smiling. He slouched into the room and remarked in the same noisy, offhand way, “Listen: this business of Dad moving out. I don’t get it.”

“Really?” Erica stopped scraping. “What don’t you get?”

“The whole scene. I mean, you don’t fight or anything, like Joey’s parents.”

“People don’t have to fight to be better apart for a while.”

“But what’s the hassle then? How come you can’t hack it with Dad?” Jeffrey continued in the hip speech he has begun to affect. “I mean, he zaps everybody sometimes, but he’s not basically such a bad cat.”

“I’m afraid I can’t explain it to you now.” She smiled at him, conscious of exerting calm patience.

“When can you explain it?” Jeffrey began to drum with the joined fingers of one hand against the counter, an irritating nervous gesture that he must have picked up from Brian.

“I don’t really know.” She shut off the faucet and laid the wet carrots on the cutting board which Jeffrey had made for her in seventh-grade shop, when he was all right and everything was all right. “It depends on a lot of things—” But Jeffrey, unlike his sister, did not wait to hear the prepared speech through.

“Yeh, you said that already.” His adolescent voice broke awkwardly. “Only you never tell us anything. It’s just, like stupid.”

“Please don’t interrupt me, Jeffrey. I’m telling you something now. I was saying that when two people have differences, they may not know right away whether—”

“What differences, man?”

“—whether they will turn out to be unimportant, or not; they may need time to think things over and consider them,” she continued, chopping the carrots into small strips with a knife. “That’s why we all have to—”

“Oh, fuck it,” Jeffrey exclaimed. He turned and left the kitchen loudly, and Erica did not forgive him as she had forgiven Matilda.

Nor does she forgive him now. For one thing, he is older than Matilda: he is fifteen, not a child. He should realize that there might be things she cannot tell him yet; he should have the tact—And why should he assume the separation is her fault, that she cannot “hack it”—whatever that means—and tell her that Brian is not a bad cat?

That’s what you think, Erica says to herself, reviewing the conversation as she looks out the attic window over the winter landscape. And it occurs to her that Brian is, precisely, a bad cat; she recalls a specific former local cat, a sneaky prowling tom named George who lived on Jones Creek Road when the Tates first moved there. George, who belonged to a nearby farmer, habitually killed songbirds, and twice in rapid succession knocked up the Tates’ Flopsy before they had her fixed. Flopsy died of old age and overeating two years ago; and George is dead long since, his back broken by a truck hauling out dirt from the first of the Glenview Homes, but Erica has not forgiven him.

Jeffrey blames her already, she thinks, though he knows nothing about the separation. When she can answer all his questions, will he change his mind? She is not sure. Beyond the clumsy childish egotism he shares with Matilda, another manner has begun to appear: a noisy male coarseness of speech and gesture. Picking him up after school, she has seen him (before he saw her) in a group of loutish half-grown boys, all laughing grossly and shoving each other as a group of girls passed. She has found a magazine called
Penthouse
among the candy wrappers and grit and wads of used tissue under his unmade bed. Perhaps, even when he knows the truth, Jeffrey may think his father not such a bad cat.

But Matilda will understand; as time passes she will understand better and better what Erica has done, and sympathize more and more with Wendy, a woman like herself; indeed a girl not much older than she.

The shadows of high clouds pass over the fields beyond Erica’s attic window, stippling the ground with paler and darker patches of light, like an impressionist painting; and a similar affect of light passes over her mind as she thinks of Wendy. She smiles, recalling Wendy’s affection, her continuing eager gratitude, her appreciation of the obstetrician recommended by Erica, and of Erica’s understanding when she has morning sickness or cramps in her legs (appreciating it even more because Brian is impatient with such complaints); her new look of health and enthusiastic happiness. Perhaps at times Wendy’s happiness is too enthusiastic: the truth is that, unlike Erica, she is a good loser but a poor winner. In defeat she is gentle and resigned; in victory she has a tendency to exult, even to crow. But, considering everything, Erica does not find this very hard to overlook.

What disconcerts her more is Wendy’s blind admiration of Brian. That she should love him and believe in him is of course desirable; but she seems to have no ability to judge him in anything, let alone oppose him. And without this moral independence it will be hard for her to be a really good mother, for there are moments when even the best husband must be overridden. (Erica recalls, as she often does, how Brian once tried to make her leave for a weekend in New York although Jeffrey looked flushed and had a low fever. “It’s nothing,” he had insisted; but it was German measles.) It is clear to her already, though not to Wendy, that Brian is not sufficiently aware of his responsibility to the baby; that his attitude toward it is impatient and peevish. For instance, Wendy tried recently to talk to him about names. She wanted to give the child a unique, meaningful name; among those she and Linda liked, she said, were Laurel and Lavender. Or if it was a boy, perhaps Sage. “Why not Spinach or Cabbage?” Brian had scoffed. But Wendy attributed his callousness to the fact that she had approached him at a bad moment. (“It was all my fault really. I’m so dumb; I’m always interrupting him when he’s trying to concentrate.”)