The War Between the Tates: A Novel (21 page)

“So I sorta got up on the wall,” she continues behind her knees, in the thin confiding voice of a schoolchild describing her trip to the park. “I can’t stand heights usually, you know. I don’t even like crossing the bridge to campus. That open grid really freaks me out, and if I look down, everything starts to spin. But it was so dark last night I couldn’t see anything; I could hear the water running, but I liked that. I mean it seemed right, you know? The end of the year, rain falling, leaves falling, water falling. I thought how I’d kind of loused up in this incarnation, and maybe next time I’d be reborn as something easier like a cow or a tomato plant.” Wendy grins.

“Well, so I was sitting there on the stone wall, getting really soaked, shivering. But I thought how it didn’t matter because I wouldn’t have time to come down with flu or anything. I hung my legs over and squinted down between them into the gorge, to make sure there wasn’t anything in the way like a tree or a rock, because I didn’t want to miss and just get smashed up. And then I happened to look across to the other side and there was a light on in one of the dorms. Somebody was still awake studying; or maybe they had got up real early. I remembered reading how John Stuart Mill used to rise before dawn to work on his philosophy by lamplight. And Brian—at Harvard he used to stay up studying almost all night sometimes, you know? And then it hit me that maybe I wasn’t important, but here, inside me”—Wendy lowers her knees and lays one fist on her nightgown—“there was somebody that had half Brian’s genes, and maybe it was destined to be as brilliant as him; maybe a great genius. And years from now some night when everybody else was asleep they could be sitting up at some university working and studying. Only if I got off that wall on the wrong side, they would never get the chance.” Wendy’s last words catch in her throat and come out damp; she begins crying.

“I’m sorry—I had no idea,” Erica says, moving from her chair to the bed. She reaches across it and touches Wendy’s shoulder, smoothing it lightly but firmly as if she were making pie crust. “Danielle said you were restless, moving around last night, but I didn’t know—”

“It’s okay,” Wendy gasps. ‘It’s just that, Brian, I remembered when. He was telling me that.” She swallows with apparent difficulty. “I mean, like I knew all along he didn’t love me the way I love him, I could accept that, but I never thought he’d—Hey, this is sort of freaky,” she says in a different tone, looking up and focusing on Erica. “I mean, talking to you this way.”

“That’s all right.” Erica is still sitting on the edge of the bed, but she has stopped patting Wendy’s shoulder since it occurred to her that Brian also had patted this shoulder at one time; or rather many times.

“But listen.” Wendy makes an effort to. steady her voice; she swallows hard. “What I hafta ask you is, do you think I could be right? About the baby. I mean, did you ever feel the same about your kids, that their lives are very valuable, more than most, because of their heredity? Not only Brian, you know, but all those judges and people in New England history that he’s descended from. I mean, his kids might grow up to be important people, maybe very brilliant, great human beings.”

“Yes,” Erica admits. “I thought something like that once, when Jeffrey and Matilda were babies.” She does not add that she is almost sure now neither of them will grow up to be great human beings, or possibly even human beings. It would probably seem only one more reason why someone else (Wendy, for instance) should try to reproduce Brian’s valuable genes.

“So you think I should go through with it?”

“I’m not sure,” replies Erica, who is sure but wants to give the impression of reflection, and to marshal her arguments. “It’s a very serious responsibility,” she says. “I mean you can’t just have a baby. That’s only the beginning; it’s a lifetime job. A child needs more than good heredity, it needs a stable family, parents who—”

“But I don’t want to raise it myself,” Wendy interrupts. “I just think maybe I ought to
have
it, you know?” She sits forward. “There are homes you can go away to; Danielle said last night she might know of one. There was this place out on Long Island a friend of mine in high school went to. They took care of everything and found people to adopt the kid. Do you think it could still be running?”

“I suppose it might be,” Erica admits.

“It would be sort of a drag, because I’d have to stay there for like four or five months. My girl friend said they were always lecturing them and showing them these gross-out films on drugs and VD, and they made her go to church every day and take sewing lessons. But maybe I could work on my thesis some, at least do the reading. The place Sharon went was free, too. That’d be cool if I could find a place like that, so I wouldn’t be ripping off Ma or Brian.”

“You mustn’t worry about that,” Erica says firmly, standing up. “You mustn’t even consider it, Brian can certainly afford to pay for the operation.”

“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 will 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.