by Norma Klein
“I bet now that the movie’s opened, they will.”
“That’s what Joshua says . . . but it won’t be like that, Shellie. I’m not going to change. I might not even ever be in another movie.”
“But think how rich you could be!” Shellie bit into her tuna-fish sandwich.
“Yeah, that’s true. But Daddy won’t let me have the money to spend, anyway. He says I have to save it. Like for college and stuff like that.”
Shellie looked sympathetic. Her parents aren’t that well off financially. They live in Forest Hills and she has to share a room with her little sister Zoe, who’s eight.
“You know, one good thing about that movie,” Shellie said. We were just about finished with lunch. “They showed how really shitty it is to have stepparents.”
Shellie’s parents are divorced and remarried to other people. “Like how?” I asked, finishing my Tab.
“Oh, the way they never really like you as much as they like their own children. They pretend to in the beginning, but once they move in, they act really nasty or bored. And then you have stepsisters and stepbrothers, which is really a drag.”
“Yeah, well I guess that is hard,” I said. Suddenly I thought of Mom and Simon. I bit my thumbnail.
She made a face. “Listen, why worry about it if you don’t have to? Your parents get along, don’t they?”
I nodded. I tell Shellie everything, but I didn’t feel ready to tell her about the thing with Mom and Simon. “They both travel a lot with their work.”
“Gives them less chance to fight.”
I never thought of it like that. “Yeah . . . God, Deel’s been awful about everything.”
“She’s probably just jealous.”
“Yeah, she—”
Just then a girl in our class named Teresa Shapiro came over.
“Oh, uh, Rusty? I was wondering . . . could I interview you for What’s What sometime, about your being in the movie and all?”
“Sure.”
She smiled. “That’s really exciting. I saw it over vacation. You were great.”
“Thanks.”
After she left, Shellie smiled at me. “You’ll have Rusty Engelberg fan clubs after you.”
“Shellie, don’t, okay?”
“What?” She looked surprised.
“I just . . . I don’t want to make a big deal of it. It’s like Daddy calling me star. I’m the same person. I haven’t changed.”
“Sure.” Shellie looked sympathetic.
“If I start acting awful, will you promise to tell me?”
“Awful how?”
“Just, you know, stuck up or conceited.”
“Okay.”
One really good thing about Shellie is she isn’t the least bit jealous of my being in the movie. That’s because she wants to be a poet when she’s older. In fact, she’s already had four poems published. Not just in the literary magazine at school, but in a real magazine. And her father, who’s an editor, showed some of them to someone at the New Yorker and he said she was “extraordinarily gifted.” She’s one of these people who’s really shy and quiet till you get to know her, but when you’re alone with her, she’s not at all.
One weird thing happened at the end of the day. A girl named Lucia Tucker came up to me and said, “I’m not going to even see your movie,” and walked off. She’s not even someone I’m that friendly with. But the worst of all was when I was waiting to get the bus to go home. These three boys from my class, Roger, Nicky, and Evan, were standing at the bus stop. Evan is sort of nice, when he’s alone, but when he’s with Nicky and Roger he acts almost as dumb as they are.
“Hey, Rusty, you going to act some of the scenes from your movie at school?”
I shook my head.
He started waving one hand. “How tragic for a little governess to have hair that reminds one of—”
“Orange juice,” Nicky said.
“Not orange juice, dope! Marmalade!”
Evan said, “Hey, we’re embarrassing her. She’s trying to pretend she doesn’t know us,” as I started moving to the corner to get on the bus.
“What do you expect?” Roger said. “She’s a movie star.” Then he started yelling in this loud voice, “Hey, folks, see that girl with the red hair? She’s a movie star!”
Some people turned around to look at him.
“It’s called Domestic Perversions and it’s about this really horny girl who—”
Luckily at that point I got on the bus and couldn’t hear any more. I felt so awful. God, boys are so dumb! Is this going to happen every day? I kept having the feeling people were looking at me on the bus, that they’d all seen the movie and hated it. Probably they hadn’t, but I couldn’t wait to get off. Maybe I should dye my hair black so nobody will recognize me. Maybe I should go to another school under a different name. I could go to a boarding school. Maybe a boarding school in another country where no one would have ever seen the movie . . . I wish it had opened in June, just after school ended so by the time fall came, everyone would have forgotten. I feel so humiliated and awful.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” It was Deel. I hadn’t even seen her when I got home.
“Oh, hi.”
“Did something happen at school?”
I shrugged. “Nothing special.” I was afraid she’d just make fun of me, too. I went right into my room and fell asleep till supper. I know that’s a bad thing to do, just sleep to escape from your problems, but when I wake up, I usually feel better.
I did feel pretty good through dinner. Then we all sat down to watch Talk, the show with Mom and me on it. I didn’t think it was that bad. None of us said anything till the end when Mom said, “You know, I didn’t look so bad. Isn’t that funny? When I saw the playback last week, I thought I looked like a total mess, but here . . . I just shouldn’t have worn beige. It tends to look so drab. What did you think, sweetie?”
Daddy had a funny expression on his face. He kept staring at me. “What did you mean, Tati, saying we all go around without our clothes on?”
“What?” I didn’t know what he meant.
“You said we never wear clothes.”
“No, she didn’t Lionel. What do you mean?” Mom said. “She didn’t say anything like that. You’re imagining the whole thing.”
“Darling,” Daddy said, “I just sat here and heard her say we never wear clothes.”
“She didn’t! She didn’t say one word like that.”
“Yeah, she did,” Deel said. “She said, ‘It wasn’t a big deal to act in the nude because at home we go around without clothes a lot.’”
“Right!” Daddy said. “What did you mean?”
I tried to think. “Well, I just meant . . . Well, more Mom maybe . . . You used to more when we were little. I just meant some kids’ parents never ever let them see them naked, like it was some big mystery . . . and you’re not like that.”
Daddy got up and then began pacing back and forth. “Darling, we have to talk about this. You see, TV programs are watched by millions of people. And there may be things that you feel, or which have some truth in them, but when you say them right out like that—”
I felt bad, after everyone making fun of me at school. “I just wanted to show that you practice what you preach,” I said.
Daddy frowned. “What I preach? What do I preach?”
“Well, like about clothes . . . Like, Shellie went in by mistake to the bathroom and her father was in the shower and he started screaming at her to get out and wrapping towels around himself, like if she saw his penis or something, she might drop dead. You’re not like that.” Actually I haven’t seen Daddy naked since I was little, but he used to not mind if you came in when he was getting dressed.
“It’s the impression you’re giving,” Daddy said. “People are going to think of us as a family that spends most of their time sitting around stark naked!”
“Lionel!” Mom looked at him in amazement. “You’re being so literal. No one is going to think any
thing of the kind.”
“I thought you might mind about my saying I had a diaphragm,” I said. “I didn’t even think about the clothes thing.”
“Well, I was getting to that. . . Sweetheart, you know, one’s sexual life is, or should be, a private thing, an intimate thing.”
“Yeah?”
“To talk to your closest friends, to tell them certain things, is one thing, but to announce, right on TV, that—”
“Lionel, I am absolutely flabbergasted,” Mom said.
“About what?” Daddy said, confused.
“I thought Rusty did a marvelous job. At her age, being so open and relaxed . . . What is wrong with you? You should be proud!”
“I’m proud that she’s relaxed,” Daddy said. “I’m proud she’s a fine actress. I just don’t think she realizes the impression she’s giving of our family when she says these things.”
“But I said things that were true, Daddy,” I said.
“That’s not the point,” Daddy said. “It doesn’t matter if they are true or not.”
“It doesn’t?” I didn’t understand.
“What concerns me,” Daddy said, “is the way this is going to appear to the people listening to the show. To the average American a family that buys their fourteen-year-old daughter a diaphragm for Christmas, who go around stark naked all the time—”
“I just can’t believe my ears,” Mom said. “Since when are you so concerned about the average American? I thought you thought they were all total fools.”
“I never said that,” Daddy said, taken aback.
“You said everyone has to have their own standards and values apart from the common herd,” I reminded him.
“That’s true,” Daddy said unhappily, “but—”
“I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal about it, Daddy,” Deel said. “So the whole world knows she has a diaphragm? She’ll just get a lot of guys wanting to—”
“I will not,” I said.
“How about me?” Mom said archly. “Did I say anything to disgrace the family name?”
Daddy hesitated a second. “No, I thought you were . . . very composed.”
“Except for all that feminist shit,” Deel muttered.
Mom looked at her in surprise. “Why shit? I thought you—”
“Well, I wouldn’t think someone who goes around playing housewives who get all hysterical if their wash isn’t clean can exactly call herself a feminist.”
“Cordelia, you are such a snot nose at times,” Mom said. “Wait till you go out in the world! Wait till you have to earn a living.”
“Well, I can tell you one thing,” Deel said haughtily. “I’m not going to demean myself by doing TV commercials. I’m going to do something which will make the world a better place to live in.”
“Bravo,” Daddy said nervously.
“Oh, fuck it,” Mom said. “And I’m making the world a worse place to live in, I suppose? My earning money so you can go to the best schools.”
“Best!” Deel said. “It’s full of creeps.”
“What’s wrong with doing TV commercials?” I said. “I don’t see what’s so bad about it.”
“You wouldn’t,” Deel said. “You’d do anything just to—”
Daddy sighed. “I don’t know. I have a terrible headache. I think I’m going to lie down.”
“I think I’m going to lie down too,” Mom said. She put her arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. They both left the room.
“That was mean,” I said. “You made Mom feel bad. She can’t help how she earns a living.”
“He’s such a jerk,” she said.
“Daddy?” I was amazed since Deel always seemed to admire Daddy so much. “What do you mean?”
“He comes back and all of a sudden she’s drooling all over him, and when he’s not here, she’s—”
I felt nervous. “Ssh,” I said.
“Ssh what?”
“They might hear,” I whispered.
“So?”
“Come on in my room, okay?”
We went into my room. “What do you mean,” I said, “about when he’s not here?”
“Just her fucking around with Simon and God knows who else.”
“How do you know?” I said anxiously.
“Well, what do you think they’re doing?”
“I think they’re just friends,” I said.
“Sure.”
“Men and women can be friends.”
Deel looked at me. She hesitated. “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but one afternoon last week I came back early, like at one?”
“Yeah?”
“And Mom and Simon were on the living room couch and—”
“Did they see you?”
“Uh uh . . . I went out. So, this isn’t just idle conjecture. It’s hard fact.”
My heart was thumping so fast I felt sick. “Are you going to tell Daddy?”
“No! Why should I?”
“They still could be basically friends,” I said thoughtfully. I felt a little queasy.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, maybe just that one time, they—”
“Oh come on! You know how she acts with him. ‘Simon is such a warm, kind, intelligent person,’” she mimicked in Mom’s southern accent.
“I thought you liked him.”
“He’s okay.”
We sat there in silence.
“Do you think they’re going to get divorced?” I said anxiously.
Deel shrugged.
“Don’t you care?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Who would you want to live with,” I asked, “if you had a choice?”
“Daddy . . . Who would you?”
“Mom.”
Deel looked at me. “You’d like to live with her?”
“Yeah.”
“Ugh.”
“I guess I don’t feel the same way about her you do.”
“Guess not . . . Well, anyway, it probably won’t happen. She’s just at that age when women start getting nervous. Like in a few years they’ll be old hags and no one’ll want them so they have to—”
“Mom won’t be an old hag. She’s one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen.”
Deel went back to her room. I felt so lousy. First, school being so awful, then Daddy criticizing me for how I was on the show, then Deel saying that about Mom and Simon. I’m so glad she’s not going to tell Daddy. That’s one good thing. I mean, what good would it do? Daddy would just feel terrible. It’s not his fault he’s fat. When he was away, he bought this Scarsdale Diet book. Maybe if he sticks to it and loses fifteen pounds Mom will love him again the way she used to when they fucked in his office. Maybe she still loves him, but Simon is more . . . peppy. I’m glad they went in the bedroom together. I hope they do still love each other.
Chapter Fourteen
Joshua isn’t sentimental about things, so I didn’t even know if he was going to get me a valentine. But I got him one. It’s cute. It’s a Snoopy one of Lucy saying, “You’re everything I want . . . and I want a lot.” When I got home Valentine’s Day, there was a letter addressed to me: T. Engelberg. I ripped it open. It showed a little creature balancing on a ball. Inside it said: “Be my Valentine. I’m difficult but adorable.”
I called him up right away. “Josh? Listen, thanks for the valentine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Rust. I didn’t even think of it.”
“I thought it was cute.”
“What was cute?”
“Your valentine.”
“What valentine?”
“The one you sent me.”
“I didn’t send you a valentine.”
“You didn’t?”
“Uh uh . . . I forgot.”
“I wonder who it was from, then.”
“Woody Allen?”
“Sure.”
“I feel bad, Rust . . . I’m going to get you something. Can I bring it over l
ater?”
“Okay.”
“Yours was nice . . . I liked it.”
When Deel came home, I showed her the valentine. “Joshua says he didn’t send it. I don’t know who did.”
“Someone at school?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I looked at the envelope again. “Does this look like a T to you?”
Deel squinted. “I think it’s an L.”
“But it has that tail on top.”
“Some people do their L’s like that. It’s an L. Definitely.”
“So maybe it’s for Daddy.”
“Daddy?”
“Well, he’s an L.”
“Yeah. But who’d want to send him a valentine?”
“I don’t know.”
Mom came in around six. She’s started rehearsing for TWWAN again and she’s been pretty busy. “Hi, hon.”
I showed her the valentine.
“Cute . . . did Josh send it?”
“No . . . that’s what we can’t figure out . . .” I showed her the envelope. “Does that look like a T or an L to you?”
Mom looked at it. “Well, an L . . . Where do you get T?”
“That line on top.”
“Yeah, but a T would go straight across. It’s an L all right.”
I made a face. “I guess I shouldn’t have opened it then. It must have been for Daddy.”
“For Lionel?”
“Well, he’s L. Engelberg.”
Mom looked thoughtful. “Goodness . . . I wonder who sent it to him.” When Daddy came home, she said, “You have a secret admirer?”
Daddy looked at it, blushed, and said, “What’s this?”
“It came in the mail, addressed to you . . . Tat opened it by mistake.”
“I thought it was a T, Daddy, I’m sorry.”
“Let’s see the envelope,” Daddy said. He looked at it. “It is a T,” he said. “No doubt about it.”
“It’s an L,” Mom said. “Where do you see T?”
“I’ve never seen an L that looked like that,” Daddy said.
“I have,” Mom said. “Many times.”
“Joshua didn’t send it,” I said.
“Well, but I’m sure you have many other boys who—”
“I thought you’d be pleased, sweetie, to have a secret admirer,” Mom said.
“I’d be pleased if I did,” Daddy said. “But I don’t.”
