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

fixed with masking tape over the mantel in place of Leonard’s Piranesi, and the mantelpiece itself is littered with letters and plants and sewing as it would never have been when he lived there.
    But though Danielle’s house has changed externally with the departure of her husband, it remains in other ways more comfortable and familiar than Erica’s own, which is physically unaltered. It is not occupied territory: Danielle’s children have not yet become unfriendly aliens. Celia, of course, is only eight—a sensible, serious child, not old enough to become an alien. And Roo, though now thirteen, still scorns adolescent culture and is interested only in her animals. Erica, who likes most children, gets on with them as well as ever; that is, exceptionally well. She feels a deep affection especially for Celia, whom she has known since the age of four.
    Now that Leonard is gone, Danielle and her daughters live together in moderate harmony broken by brief rebellious skirmishes. Once or twice a week there is a conflict of interests: an outbreak of shouting and/or tears; then the loser retires from the field. Celia withdraws to her room; Roo barricades herself in the basement with her hamsters, her turtles, her fighting fish, Pogo, and any other livestock currently in residence. If Danielle loses, which happens more rarely, she retreats to her campus office.
    “Hell they’re no better than your kids, they can be really impossible,” Danielle had said inaccurately but kindly two weeks ago. “But when I can’t take it, I just go up to school.” She set down her coffee mug and looked across the kitchen table at Erica. “That’s what you need, to get out of your house sometimes,” she pronounced. “You need a job.”
    And after additional discussion, Erica had agreed that Danielle might be right. Very possibly she would enjoy working part-time; she would make more money than she did doing occasional artwork. But above all it would be a distraction, and she needed distraction. She spent too much time brooding about the children, and about what Brian had done last spring. She knew she ought to make some effort to distract herself from this henlike brooding: to, as it were, get up off the nest and stop incubating her grudge, her despair.
    “If you were working, you wouldn’t have so much time to worry about Jeffrey and Matilda,” Danielle said; she did not mention the other egg, since Erica had never told her about it. She had not done so because she knew too well what Danielle would say when she heard of Brian’s infidelity: how warmly she would welcome Erica to the shabby fellowship of mistreated wives; how coldly she would speak of Brian, whom she had never liked much in spite of his friendship with Leonard, and now liked less because of it.
    At Danielle’s suggestion, Erica went to the university employment office, and was offered employment doing library research three days a week for a professor of psychology named J. D. Barclay. She assumed Brian would approve, for at various times in the past he had suggested she might look for a job. But this time his reaction was negative.
    “No, I don’t like the idea, not at all,” he almost shouted. “I’m amazed that you should commit yourself to something like this without discussing it with me.” Calming down, Brian explained to Erica exactly how inconvenient it would be to the whole family if she were to start working now. The house and children would suffer from the diversion of her time and energy, he pointed out, and Erica herself would suffer. Being both delicate and conscientious, she would wear herself out, possibly even become ill.
    Besides, Brian said, this job was beneath her—routine academic drudgery. And she did not really need the money; she would be taking work away from some graduate student who did. Moreover, he finally admitted, smiling, he disliked the idea of her working for John Barclay. Not that he was jealous, Brian said—and they both