Free The War Between the Tates: A Novel by Alison Lurie Page B

cans,” he announces.
    “What? Oh, good,” Erica says dully.
    Often recently the Tates’ garbage has been disturbed at night by dogs or some wild animal. In the morning they find the cans overturned and bones, crusts, vegetable peelings, and shreds and chunks of wet newspaper scattered about.
    Brian crosses the yard. In the shadows by the trash bins he feels around for the three large rocks he has brought down earlier from the old stone wall behind the vegetable garden. He finds two, and lifts them heavily into place on top of the garbage cans. But he cannot locate the third rock—his hands, groping, meet only thready long grassland the slightly greasy rounded flanks of the plastic cans.
    As he starts around the house to get another rock, swearing quietly to himself, Brian passes the screen porch, which appears to him as a cube of artificially lit yellow space blurred by wire screening. It contains porch furniture, two lamps, and a beautiful woman who is sitting in a white wicket armchair, intermittently sewing. Though she does not know he is looking at her, she wears an expression he has seen often lately—one of melancholy and injured feelings.
    How long is she going to keep this up, for God’s sake? What more does she want from him? He had been unfaithful, which was not a good thing. All right. He has apologized; he has done his best to minimize the duration and importance of his affair. He has made considerable efforts to behave just as before or better: to go places with the children and inquire about their activities with a show of interest; to converse with and make love to Erica with a show of enthusiasm. He is careful never to make any remark which might even remotely recall Wendy. Officially, he has forgotten her.
    It would be reasonable, certainly, for Erica to forget her also, Brian thinks, crossing the loose uneven earth of the garden in the thickening dusk, since she knows that Wendy has left for Southern California, and for ever. He had told her about this as soon as Wendy announced her plans, assuming that she would be as relieved as he was, and that she might as well be relieved a fortnight sooner.
    And he was relieved. Wendy’s reaction to the end of the affair—her animal wails, her stunned-silences—had frightened him. He had tried to tell himself that it was a healthy abreaction: that she was just getting rid of all her feelings at once. When she was across the continent she would forget him, probably long before he had forgotten her.
    None of what he had predicted and hoped for happened. Wendy’s departure did little for his wife’s morale—and nothing for his own, since it never actually took place. At this very moment Wendy is still in Corinth, hanging about the campus and suffering.
    Brian had foolishly hoped and imagined that they would remain friendly: that Wendy would continue to come to his office, though perhaps less often, and talk to him. This had proved impossible. As soon as she got inside the door she began weeping; sometimes quietly, sometimes so loudly that he feared Steve Cushing next door would hear. Presently he had to ask her not to come any more, for her own good. The sentence of banishment was difficult to enforce. At first she continued to appear anyhow, though apologetically and always with an excuse—some academic question only he could answer, the promise of being perfectly good and just bothering him for a second. But almost at once she would begin to gasp for breath, to sob. Brian had to give up his habit of calling “Come in.” When he recognized Wendy’s knock, or, thought he did, he had to get up from his desk and go to open the door, not too far. “I’m sorry, but I can’t see you,” he would have to say in a forced calm tone, if it was she, or, “You know we agreed you wouldn’t come here this week,” and shut the door again. Even then Wendy did not always go away. She would wait for him to come out, shuffling up and down the Jar end of the corridor,