Domestic Arrangements

by Norma Klein

  Deel brought in the tea. “Sure you are,” she said. “I was in the library today and someone pointed to me and said, ‘Oh, that’s what’s-her-name’s sister.’ Great, I thought. I’ll go down in history as what’s-her-name’s sister.”

  “I thought you were going to go down in history as the first Jewish woman president,” I said.

  “That sounds more like it,” Neil said, lifting his tea glass. “I’ll vote for you, Cordelia.”

  “I will too,” I said.

  “Is that what they call a constituency?” Deel said.

  “You’ve got to start somewhere,” Neil said.

  “She’s going to be in People,’” Deel said.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, well . . .”

  “What I’d think would be hard,” Neil said, “is living the same life as before, but feeling changed.”

  “I don’t feel changed!” I blurted out. “I don’t! Everyone thinks I am, but I’m not.” I thought of Joshua and felt a pang. “I’m the exact same person.”

  “Sure, except now nine hundred thousand people have seen you naked,” Deel said.

  “I wasn’t naked,” I said, hurt. I felt like she was just trying to humiliate me in front of Neil.

  “What do you mean you weren’t naked?”

  “I had underpants on.”

  “Big deal . . . underpants!”

  I sat there, feeling angry. When I looked up, Neil was gazing at me pensively. “Did you bring your lute?” I asked, just to change the subject.

  “Yes, it’s right in the hall,” he said, smiling. “Would you like me to play something for you?”

  He went and got his lute and played some really beautiful songs. Listening to the lute is soothing, it made me feel better.

  After he left, I lay there on the couch, half dozing.

  “Listen you!” Deel said, shoving me.

  I opened my eyes. “What?”

  “Keep your grubby hands off him, okay?”

  “Huh?”

  “‘Did you bring your lute?’” she mimicked. “Cut that out. I mean it.”

  “What’s wrong with asking if he brought his lute?”

  “And sitting there batting your big silver eyes, quote unquote, at him. You’re as bad as Mom!”

  “Do you want me not to even talk to him?”

  “You can talk to him, but don’t flirt with him.”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “You were so.”

  I think Deel is really unfair. How is it flirting if you ask someone if they brought their lute? “I don’t even like him that way,” I muttered, closing my eyes again. “And I’m not interested in sex anymore.”

  “Sure,” Deel said.

  “I’m not . . . I threw my diaphragm away.”

  “You what?”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to do it with anyone.”

  “After all that fuss about getting it? You only had it a month.”

  “I know . . .” I opened my eyes. “Listen, don’t tell Mom or Daddy, Deel, okay? Promise?”

  She was frowning. “How come you threw it out? You could’ve just put it away for a couple of years.”

  “I just felt like it.”

  “Weird.”

  I wish I knew what Joshua had said about me to his brother, if he said he still liked me or what. Maybe he’s started seeing someone else already. Maybe Marjorie came back from Colorado, or he went up to Andover to visit Pam. She was always writing him saying he should visit her. Anyway, Deel doesn’t have to worry. I’m not going to steal her boyfriend, if that’s what he is, especially if he’s Joshua’s brother. What does she think I am?

  “Sweetie, where is Joshua these days?” Mom finally asked me when she came home. “He hasn’t been around much lately.”

  “I’m never going to see him again.”

  “Oh? Did you have a fight about something?”

  I hesitated. “Sort of.”

  “What about? Or don’t you want to talk about it?”

  “He was just interested in sex,” I said. “He didn’t really like me.”

  “Darling, I know that’s not true.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, the way he looked at you, acted with you . . . It was clear he was terribly fond of you.”

  “No, he just pretended.”

  Mom shook her head. “You can’t pretend about that kind of thing.”

  I didn’t really feel like talking about it anymore. I went back to my room to wait for dinner.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The people from People said they’d come on Friday afternoon when I got home from school. They said they’d come with a photographer, and they might have to come back a second time.

  “Darling, is that good for you?” Daddy asked Mom at breakfast.

  “Is what good for me?”

  “Well, they’re coming at three. Will you be home by then?”

  “Lionel! Of course I won’t be home at three! We have rehearsal.”

  “Cancel it . . . you’ve got to be here.”

  Mom looked at him indignantly. “You’ve got to be kidding! Cancel a rehearsal? What for? It’s Tat’s interview. Why is my presence necessary?”

  Daddy sighed heavily. “Your presence is crucial. We’ve been over this.”

  “In what way? What have we been over?”

  “The point is this, this article will be read by thousands of people and it’s terribly important that Tatiana not say anything that—”

  “Daddy, I can handle it,” I said. “Don’t be silly.”

  “Precisely!” Mom exclaimed. “Silly isn’t the word! Tat isn’t a baby. She’s an exceedingly self-possessed young woman who’s perfectly capable of doing an interview with People or anyone else for that matter. I’m not going to be some stage mother sitting holding her hand and nudging her every time she opens her mouth.”

  “But look,” Daddy said. “People is basically a sensational magazine, a scandal sheet of sorts. They are looking, actively looking for ways to make people look like fools.”

  “That’s a total prejudice,” Mom said. “In what way? What did they say about Isaac Singer that made him look like a fool?”

  “Tatiana is fourteen years old. She is not a world-renowned writer who won the Nobel Prize.”

  “What don’t you want me to say, Daddy?” I was really curious.

  “It’s no single thing,” Daddy said. He was silent. Then he turned to Mom. “It’s just one rehearsal. Just this one time, couldn’t you—”

  “Couldn’t I? Couldn’t you? Where are we? Back in the thirteenth century? If you want someone to be there monitoring her every word, you do it! You come home at three.”

  “How can I?” Daddy said. “We’re shooting in New Haven.”

  “Darling, that is your problem. But my rehearsal is every whit as important as your damn movie.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It is . . . You expect me to drop everything just because to you my work is utterly trivial and of no consequence, whereas what you do is world shaking. Well, I think that’s totally sexist and shitty and I don’t want to hear one more word about it!” She slammed out of the room.

  Daddy looked at me. “Well!” he said.

  “It’ll be okay, Daddy,” I said.

  “Maybe I will try to rearrange things,” Daddy said. “I might be able to make it by four.”

  “I won’t say the thing about your not wearing clothes,” I said. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  Daddy looked unhappy. “I just—”

  I looked at him soulfully. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I do, Tat . . . It’s just . . . You’re so open about things. You just say whatever you feel and that’s lovely in many ways, but these are journalists and—”

  “Don’t you like journalists?”

  “Oh, they may be perfectly nice people in their personal lives . . . but in this case their main function is to get a good story.”

  “Deel will be here,
” I pointed out.

  “True.” He just sat there staring at the wall. “I wish Amanda wouldn’t fly off the handle quite so easily. Why doesn’t she understand?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Women are very hard to understand,” Daddy said. “Women, wives, marriage . . . it’s all supremely confusing.” He stood up. “Look at me, Tat! Do I look thinner? I’ve lost ten pounds!”

  I hugged him. “That’s great, Daddy. Is it hard? Do you feel hungry?”

  “Starving. It’s painful beyond belief. I have pornographic dreams about hot-fudge sundaes.”

  “How much more do you have to lose?”

  “Ten pounds.”

  It’s good that Daddy has so much willpower. I feel proud of him. I wonder if it’s okay if I tell People that he’s on the Scarsdale Diet?

  The reporter from People was named Mike Nadler. He came with his wife who was the photographer. Her name was Trudy. I decided not to change into anything special, just to wear what I’d been wearing at school—jeans, my Disneyland T-shirt and a red long-sleeved shirt over it.

  “Gee, I love this apartment,” Trudy said, looking around. She went over to the window. “So much light! Have you lived here long, Tatiana?”

  “All my life . . . but Mom and Daddy used to live in New Haven before they had us.”

  “Was that a long time?”

  “No, because they . . . I think Mom was pregnant before they got married. See, Daddy was married before. To someone named Dora. Only Mom was in his class at Yale and they fell in love and—”

  “One thing led to another,” Mike said, smiling.

  “Yeah.” I was glad he understood. Maybe that’s how he met his wife.

  “Your mother’s done quite a bit of acting herself, hasn’t she?” he said. “TV commercials and so on?”

  “Yeah, and they’re writing her back into the script of The Way We Are Now.” I told them all about what had happened with Myra and Dr. Morrison and about her twin sister.

  “So, you’ve certainly grown up hearing a lot about the world of acting and film. Does your father—”

  “Well, he was a child actor . . . but he stopped. He said he heard himself once on a tape and it was so awful, he never did it again.”

  “Daddy must be rather self-critical,” Trudy commented.

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s a very serious person.” I didn’t want to tell them what he said about People because that might hurt their feelings since they work for it.

  “Maybe you’d like to show us around the apartment, Tatiana,” Trudy said. “Your room and so on. I’ll just keep snapping away. Does it bother you?”

  “Uh uh.”

  “The natural light is marvelous.”

  I showed them my room, my records, everything.

  “What a lovely dollhouse!” Trudy said, kneeling down to look into it. “Do you still play with it?”

  “Sometimes . . . not as much as I used to. The lights go on, see?” Daddy put them in that way when I was ten. It looks so pretty at night. Even the fireplace goes on.

  “This looks like a pretty average teenager’s room, I’d say,” Mike said, looking around at the Miss Piggy poster over my desk. “Would you say your life is pretty average too, Tatiana? Or can I call you Rusty? I gather that’s the name your friends use.”

  “Rusty’s okay,” I said. I smiled at him. I had the feeling he thought I was pretty.

  “You think of yourself as an average New York teenager?” he said.

  “Pretty much,” I said. Then I added, “In what way?”

  “Well, just to veer off onto a topic you’re probably sick of . . . But as you probably realize, there were certain scenes in Domestic Arrangements which caused a certain . . . stir, some alarm, one might say, among parents. I think those of us with children in their early teens all wondered, is this what’s really going on? Do you think it is?”

  I thought of what Daddy had said. I don’t know what he’d want me to say. “Um . . . what do you mean?”

  He looked a little uncomfortable. “What I mean is . . . would you say the degree of sexual expertise, if I can use that phrase, of Samantha is typical of you and your friends?”

  “No.”

  “In what way isn’t it? Could you clarify that?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, most of my friends aren’t actually . . .” I wasn’t sure if you could say fucking “. . . doing it.”

  “Having sex?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You say your friends aren’t?”

  “Right.”

  “And you?”

  I licked my lips. I kept thinking of Daddy. “I used to have a boyfriend, but I don’t anymore.”

  “Who was your boyfriend?”

  “Well he’s not anymore . . . and he wouldn’t like me to mention his name.”

  “This was someone your own age or—”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your own age?”

  “Well, he’s sixteen.”

  He nodded. “And, uh, would you characterize your relationship with him as, well, fairly intense?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You saw each other a lot?”

  I nodded.

  “And I assume sex played a certain role in your relationship?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “A major role?”

  I felt wary. “Sort of . . . But I’m not interested in sex anymore. I decided I’m too young.”

  Trudy smiled. She was taking photos of me while I was talking. “You’re fourteen now?”

  “I want to work more and . . . maybe act . . . Anyway I don’t believe in sex unless you really love somebody.”

  “Do you think that at your age love is really possible?” Trudy said. “I’m just asking out of curiosity, really. Our daughter seemed to feel—”

  I nodded. “Yes, I do,” I said. I thought of snuggling with Joshua under the quilt at Abigail’s apartment and how he used to look at me after we fucked and how we’d lie and talk in his father’s study. “Definitely.”

  “Were you in love with your boyfriend?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t care. It’s true, so why shouldn’t I say it?

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll be in love many times before you settle down with one man,” Mike said. “And needless to say, I’m sure many men will find you extremely captivating.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He smiled. “What don’t you know?”

  “Well.” I felt uncomfortable. “My father doesn’t want me to talk about personal things that much,” I blurted out. “He’s afraid I’ll say something dumb.”

  “I don’t think he has to worry about that,” Mike said. “You haven’t said anything dumb so far.”

  I felt really relieved.

  “Well, the thing is, I was on this show, Talk, with my mother. And I said something about how my parents used to sometimes go around without clothes on. I didn’t mean a lot . . . But Daddy was afraid people would think of us as this family that goes around naked all the time! So could you say that we don’t? I just meant that when I was little, if I happened to go in the room when he was getting dressed, he didn’t, like, scream bloody murder the way some fathers might.”

  “Would you describe your relationship to your parents as close?” Mike asked. He was writing down what I said, in shorthand.

  “Yeah, I would . . . I mean, I talk to them about different things.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, Mom talks to me about acting a lot, how she does it and stuff like that. Daddy likes to talk about more serious things—like politics? And art and literature and things like that.”

  “Your parents have been married how long, Rusty?”

  I thought. “Um . . . I’m not sure. I think it’s, like, well, Deel is sixteen, so maybe seventeen years?”

  “Would you describe them as happily married?”

  I nodded. “Umm hmm.”

  “That’s rare nowadays, as I guess you must re
alize.”

  I swallowed. “Well, the thing is, they married late. I mean late for Daddy . . . he was thirty-four. Mom was just twenty-three—so he, like, knew what he wanted because his first wife, Dora, wasn’t that smart. But don’t put that in, okay, because she might read it?”

  “I won’t,” Mike said, smiling.

  “And they believe in stuff like having friends and traveling and—”

  “Open marriage?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s where both husband and wife recognize that they’re separate individuals who have separate interests. They allow each other freedom to pursue those interests . . . Like Trudy and me.” He glanced over at her.

  “Yeah, that sounds like them.”

  “Well, I don’t know if we’re such a good example,” Trudy said.

  “In what way aren’t we?” Mike said, curious.

  “Well, we work together so much.”

  “Uh, right.”

  “And then, doesn’t open marriage mean both people having affairs?” Trudy said.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. No one spoke for a minute. “Anyway!”

  “My father got an obscene phone call last week,” I said, just to say something. “But we don’t know who it was from.”

  They exchanged glances. “What did it say?” Trudy asked.

  “Maybe you better not put this in,” I said. “But it was really weird! It was on his answering service. It was a woman. She said something dirty and then hung up. I erased the tape by mistake, so Daddy couldn’t hear who it was. Mom thought maybe it was the same person who sent him the valentine.”

  “The plot thickens,” Trudy said, smiling.

  “Let’s see,” Mike said, looking down at his notes. “I gather you have an older sister, Rusty? Would you like to say something about her? How you get along? Has there been any jealousy on her part about your sudden emergence as a public figure?”

  “Um, well, she’s going to go into politics. She doesn’t care that much about acting,” I said. “She thinks it’s dumb. She thinks it was gross that I did a nude scene.”

  “You weren’t totally nude,” Trudy said.

  “I know! But she thinks so anyway.”

  “How do you feel about that?” Mike said. “Was that scene difficult for you to do?”

  I shook my head.

  “How about the fact that, well, men meeting you are going to have seen you that way . . . Are you afraid they might start assuming, thinking of you in those terms?”