The War Between the Tates: A Novel (2 page)

Eight years ago, when the Tates first moved to Corinth, they found on this back road a big deserted, sagging gray farmhouse smothered in broken dark pines. It had been for sale for over a year, but they were the first to see its possibilities. The trees were thinned, the house remodeled and painted yellow; suddenly they owned a beautiful, even a rather grand place, only a few miles from campus.

Not far enough, as it turned out. Three years ago Jones Creek Road was widened and resurfaced, and the first ranch homes began crawling toward them over the hill to the west, blocking their sunset. Brian and Erica, realizing what was happening, tried to buy more land around their half-acre. But it was too late; the developer was not interested. Each subsequent year the bulldozers have moved nearer; soon they will be surrounded.

The Tates have talked about moving farther out, of course; but to be safe now they would have to go ten or fifteen miles, beyond the school district. Besides, Erica cannot bear to abandon her house: the chestnut woodwork she has scraped and scrubbed and refinished; the double daffodils and white narcissus she has planted under the old trees; the asparagus and strawberry beds—hours, years of loving labor.

It is not only the ruin of the landscape which is so painful, but also the redefinition of this part of town, now renamed “Glenview Heights”—what it means now to live there. Not that their new neighbors are poor white trash—indeed, most of them are richer than the Tates. The Glenview Home to their left, a “Charleston” model with false white pillars and wrought-iron balconies glued to the façade, costs twice as much as their house; the “Paul Revere” next to it not much less. The Homes are full of expensive built-in appliances; their carports bulge with motorboats and skimobiles. The children who live there watch 25-inch color TV every evening, their eyes reflecting the artificial circus lights. Jeffrey and Matilda watch with them when they are allowed. “You’re not against television on principle; you just don’t want to spend the money. You want us to freeload off the Gobrights and the Kaisers,” Jeffrey had accused recently, voicing an opinion which Erica suspects is shared by her neighbors. She knows that the Glenview Homeowners, who are mostly not university people, regard her as unfriendly and a little odd, though she has tried to maintain cordial relations, and has never mentioned aloud that she believes them partly responsible for the awful change in her children. And even if they are, she is not exonerated, because it means that the heredity and environment provided by the Tates were faulty or ineffective. Anyhow, why mention it? It is already too late, and it will go on being even later.

Jeffrey will be living at home for nearly four more years. Matilda will be with them for nearly six more years. As Erica is contemplating these facts, with her head on the damp table the telephone rings.

She sits up, rubs her eyes dry, and answers.

“Hello this is Helen in the Political Science office, how are you today? ... Oh, I’m very well too ... There’s a letter here for Brian, it’s marked ‘Urgent—Personal,’ and I wondered ... Well, if he’s going to call you tonight, that’s fine ... That’s a good idea. I’ll phone Mrs. Zimmern in the French department now and ask her to pick it up ... You’re welcome.”

This conversation, though banal, raises Erica’s morale. It reminds her that she is successfully married, whereas Helen is a widow, and her best friend Danielle Zimmern a divorcée; that Brian is an important professor who receives urgent business letters; and that he calls home every evening when he is out of town.

She is encouraged to stand up, to clear the table and do the dishes and start her day’s work. She picks up the house, skipping the children’s rooms; washes out two sweaters; draws for an hour and a half; and makes herself a chicken sandwich. After lunch she goes shopping and to the bank, driving cautiously, for the sky has darkened again and an icy drizzle is falling from it. Her morale has fallen also, and a parody of Auden, composed by her friend Danielle some years ago, keeps running tediously in her head:

Cleopatra’s lips are kissed

while an unimportant wife

writes “I do not like my life”

underneath her shopping list.

She drives home, puts away the groceries, makes a raspberry mousse, and is mixing some lemon cookies when Danielle’s VW pulls into the driveway.

“What a hell of a day, huh? Spring, it says on the calendar ... Oh, here’s that letter for Brian, before I forget,” Danielle says, stepping out of her slushy boots on the back porch and coming into the kitchen in purple tights.

“Thank you. How is everything?” Erica puts the letter on a shelf in front of her cookbooks without looking at it. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Love it. The kids won’t be home till four, thank God.” Danielle pulls off her coat with the careless, angry energy that has lately marked all her actions, and flings it toward a chair. Twenty years ago, when Erica first met her, she had a similar energy—only then it was not angry, but joyful.

Erica and Danielle had known each other at college, though not intimately—Danielle being a year ahead, and in a different set. After graduation they lost touch; in the autumn of 1964, when Danielle’s husband joined the English department and the family moved to Corinth, Erica was not aware of it, nor did Danielle realize that Erica already lived there. But a few weeks after their accidental meeting at Atwater’s Supermarket, each accompanied by a nine-year-old daughter, it was as if they had remained friends uninterruptedly.

Danielle, like Erica, has been described by her admirers as tall, dark-haired and beautiful. But where Erica is narrow, in the shoulders and hips, Danielle is broad; she is deep-bosomed, and stands on sturdy baroque legs. Her hair is long, heavy and straight, with a russet overtone; her skin has a russet glow even in the northern winter, when Erica bleaches to the color of cream. People who do not much like Erica admit that she is pretty, while those (a larger number) who do not much like Danielle admit that she is good-looking.

In college they had avoided each other slightly, as women who are attractive in conflicting styles often do—for the same motive that prevents Atwater’s Supermarket from placing cases of ice cream and sherbet next to cartons of beer. But now that they had both been purchased and brought home, this ceased to matter.

That first day Erica accompanied Danielle back to her house and stayed there, drinking coffee and talking, for two hours. Soon they met or telephoned almost daily. Erica recommended to Danielle her pediatrician, her garage, her cleaning woman, and those of her acquaintances she thought worthy of the privilege. They lent each other books, and went with their children to fairs and matinées and rummage sales. Muffy Tate and Ruth Zimmern (known as Roo) also became inseparable.

Equally agreeable, and more surprising, was the friendship that developed between Brian and Leonard Zimmern. For years, both Erica and Danielle had had the problem that their husbands did not get on very well with any of their friends’ husbands. Now they realized, with relief, that this was not due to prejudice or character defects. It was merely that men of their age (Leonard was then forty-three, Brian forty-one) could not be expected to become intimate with the fledgling editors, lawyers, artists, teachers, etc., whom their wives’ friends had married.

Since they were in different divisions of the university Leonard and Brian could not share the concerns of colleagues; but this very fact prevented competitive jockeying and the tendency to talk shop on social occasions, so tiresome to wives. Neither could hinder or further the other’s career; so they were able to risk disagreement, to speak their minds freely. The differences of temperament and background which had made Erica and Danielle fear they would quarrel actually endeared the men to each other—and to themselves. Leonard congratulated himself on a range of interests and sympathies that allowed him to get on with a WASP political scientist, while Brian felt the same in reverse. Moreover, the existence of the friendship proved to both men that any revulsion they might feel from some of the pushy New York Jews or fat-ass goyim bastards they ran up against professionally was
ad hominem
and not
ad genere.

Even the fact that Danielle did not really care for Brian; and that Erica, though she liked Leonard, found him physically unattractive (too thin, and with too much wiry black hair all over his body) helped to stabilize the relationship. The sort of complications which often occur when two couples spend much time together were avoided almost unconsciously, by mutual consent.

“I see they’re at it again.” Danielle gestures with her head at the field next door. The bulldozer has now made what looks like an incurable muddy wound there, with the white roots of small trees sticking up from it like broken bones. “I thought maybe they wouldn’t come back this year, the way building costs are rising.”

“That’s what I hoped, too.”

“What you should do, you should plant some evergreens; then you won’t have to look at it.”

“I’d still know it was there.” Erica smiles sadly.

“Or you could put up a redwood fence,” continues Danielle, who has learned since Leonard’s departure to take a practical view of things and cut her losses. “That’d be faster. And if you did it now, before the people moved in, they couldn’t take it personally.”

“Mm,” Erica says noncommittally, pouring her friend a cup of coffee. Redwood fences, in her view, are almost as bad as ranch houses.

“Thanks.” Danielle sits down, spreading her full purple tweed skirt. “You’ve been drawing,” she remarks, glancing into the pantry, where Erica’s pad lies open on the shelf. “Let’s see.”

“Just sketching. I was trying to work out something for the Ballet Group; Debby asked me to do a program for their spring show. Freezy, of course.”

“That’s slick.” When alone, Danielle and Erica use the language of their college years; the once enthusiastic phrases have become a sort of ironic shorthand.

“Virginia Carey is doing the poster, but she told them she hadn’t time for the program.”

“Yeah, man.” Among the old slang, Danielle, since she started teaching, mixes that of the present generation.

“I don’t mind really. I’m better on a small-scale. I know that.”

“There’s one thing about posters: they get thrown away,” Danielle says encouragingly. “People save their programs for years.” Erica does not reply or smile. “Maybe you should do another book.”

“I don’t know,” Erica sighs, stirs her coffee. In the past she had written and illustrated three books dealing with the adventures of an ostrich named Sanford who takes up residence with an American suburban family. These books had been published and had enjoyed a mild success. (“Gentle and perceptive fun for the 4-6 age group”; “The drawings are lively, delicate, and colorful.”) But the last of the series had appeared over two years ago. Erica does not want to write any more about Sanford. For one thing, she cannot think of anything else for him to do. And she does not want to write any more about Mark and Spencer, the children with whom Sanford lives. She knows that they would have grown up by now, and what they would be like.

A silence, broken only by the regular humming of the new refrigerator. Aware that she is being dull, even unfriendly, Erica rouses herself. “How’s your class going?” she asks.

“Oh, okay. Hell, you know I really love teaching; the only thing that gets me down is De Gaulle.” This refers to the head of the French department, whose name is not De Gaulle. “He asked me again today how my thesis was getting along, in this smiling threatening way. You know I can’t do any work on it until I have some time off, and I can’t afford time off. But he has no conception of what my life is like. I ought to be at the grocery right now, there’s nothing to eat at home.”

“Would you like to have supper with us? You could bring Roo and Silly. Brian’s not coming back till Friday.”

“Well ... yes, why not? Or you could all come to my house. I’ve got to shop anyhow.”

“No, let’s eat here. I ought to be home when Brian calls.”

“All right.”

For a few moments both women are silent, thinking the same thing: that Danielle now has to come to dinner behind Brian’s back, and how uncomfortable that is. Danielle, however, blames the discomfort wholly on Brian, while Erica blames it partly on Danielle and partly on her ex-husband.

It is nearly two years now since the trouble between Danielle and Leonard Zimmern started. At first, as often happens, their disagreements brought them closer to their best friends. Danielle confided in Erica, and Leonard in Brian; the Tates spent hours discussing the rights and wrongs of the case, and more hours conveying their decisions to the Zimmerns. It was their often-expressed conviction that Danielle and Leonard were both intelligent, serious, decent people who had deep affection for each other, and that they would, with help, be able to work out their difficulties.

As time dragged on, however, it became more and more clear that the difficulties were not being worked out. This was very depressing and annoying to Erica and Brian, who had put so much thought and effort into the case, and whose opinions and advice had been neglected. Finally they declared to Leonard and Danielle that there was no point in talking about the problem any more; they just had to wait and hope. The result of this prohibition was to make relations between the couples strained and artificial. Whenever they met, it was as if they were actively supporting rival parties, Marriage and Divorce, but had agreed not to discuss politics. The agreement, however, did not preclude wearing campaign buttons and carrying signs. Brian and Erica, without intending it, found themselves silently demonstrating their support of Marriage in a rather theatrical way; smiling fondly more often than necessary, deferring to each other’s opinion, holding hands at the movies, etc.; while Leonard and Danielle, more noisily, demonstrated the opposite.

After Leonard left home, early last year, things got even worse. The superior political qualifications of Divorce was the last matter the Zimmerns agreed upon. Bitter quarrels over money and objects began; recrimination and self-justification; deception and self-deception. Friends and acquaintances of the couple began to choose up sides, declaring that Leonard (or Danielle) had after all behaved pretty unforgivably, and that it would therefore really be wrong to forgive him (or her).