Domestic Arrangements

by Norma Klein

  “He has a friend there. That’s what he said anyhow.”

  “Yeah.” I felt really depressed. “Okay, well, thanks.”

  After I hung up, I sat there feeling bad. First of all, Joshua told his parents he was going to Andover when he was really flying out to California with me. So who knows if he really went there or not. Maybe he just uses that as an excuse since he knows Pam will back him up. But if he didn’t really go there, where did he go and how come he didn’t even tell me? I spoke to him two days ago and he didn’t say anything about visiting Pam. Then I started worrying maybe he really did go to visit Pam. I know I should trust Joshua, and I do, sort of. I mean, I think he really does love me and all that. That’s not the kind of thing you would lie about. But the thing is, Pam really does like him a lot. He’s shown me some of the poems she sends him and I once read a letter she wrote where she said what good comments he made on her work and how sensitive and perceptive he was. “I really miss the talks we used to have,” she wrote. “Somehow, letters aren’t quite the same thing.” What also bothered me was she didn’t even mention me! I wonder if she even knows I exist. Maybe she thinks he hasn’t slept with anyone since her. Joshua says they’re just friends, but that can mean anything. Mom says she and Simon are just friends and Daddy says he and Abigail are just friends. The point is, he should have told me he was going away. Or written me, or left a message with Beryl. That just wasn’t a nice, considerate thing to do.

  I guess I seemed sort of depressed when Felix and I did this TV show in the afternoon because afterward he said, “What’s up, hon? You seemed a little quiet.”

  “Nothing special,” I said. “I guess I’m getting tired. I wish I could just go home right now.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “Well, go back and nap . . . that always helps.”

  “Okay . . . should I come by and get you at five thirty?” We were supposed to go somewhere that night, too.

  “Sure . . . that’d be good.”

  But when I went back to my room, I couldn’t fall asleep, even though I lay there for over an hour in the dark with my eyes closed. I just kept worrying about everything. Finally I decided to get up. I took a shower and got dressed. I hate having to wear fancy things all the time and looking all done up. I wish I could just put on jeans and not wear makeup, like at school. I undid all those braids and for the first day or so my hair looked really frizzy and wild, almost as bad as the braids. So I washed it and now it looks pretty much the way it did before. Tomorrow I have to go meet those men who are doing Lolita. They said I should come after lunch. Kelly said there wasn’t anything set up for then.

  Chapter Twenty

  I knocked lightly on Felix’s door. There wasn’t any answer. I knocked again. “Tatiana?”

  “It’s open,” he muttered.

  I opened the door slowly. Felix was lying in bed with a washcloth on his forehead. “Hey, are you okay?” I asked, going over.

  “Oh, Felix,” he murmured.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I am sick as a dog.”

  “What is it?”

  “A migraine . . . Hon, listen, could you do me a huge, huge favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Take this washcloth and soak it in ice-cold water, wring it out and bring it back and put it on my forehead?”

  I did that. “Do you want me to, like, go away?”

  “Well, I guess you have to, don’t you? What time is it?”

  I looked at his clock. “Almost six . . . oh, I don’t want to do another show!”

  “Maybe we should both say we’re sick,” he said.

  “You really are sick.”

  “I just took this pill, which my doctor claims is some new medical wonder drug which’ll have me dancing down the aisles in half an hour.”

  “What should I do?” I asked him.

  “Say you’re sick.”

  “Won’t they be mad?”

  “Listen, they’ve squeezed us dry. We’ve done our thing.”

  “You don’t think it’s, like, an immoral thing to do?”

  “Sweetie, if that’s the most immoral thing you’ll ever do—”

  “Do you have her number?”

  “On the desk.”

  I called Kelly and said I was feeling really lousy. “It must be some kind of virus,” I said, trying to sound limp and exhausted.

  “You poor thing,” Kelly said. “I’ve heard something like that is going around.”

  “I’m really sorry about tonight,” I said.

  “Oh, not to worry . . . Felix’ll carry the fort. Maybe I’d better call him and check.”

  “Okay.” I hung up. “She’s going to call you,” I started saying just as the phone rang.

  “Sweetie?” Felix said. “Listen, I have terrible news for you. I am literally at death’s door. She is? Goodness, no, I had no idea. No, I’m afraid this is just a plain garden-variety migraine. Oh sure. No, tomorrow I’ll be righter than a trivet. Thanks, take care.”

  After he hung up, Felix winked at me. “We did it, kid.” He threw the washcloth on the floor.

  “Tatiana! I thought you had a migraine.”

  “You want to know something? I am feeling sen-sa-tional! That fool doctor knew what he was talking about.”

  I frowned. “Don’t you feel guilty? After they went to all that trouble.”

  He sat up. “You want to know something? I must have a criminal mentality. I don’t have even the smallest twinge of guilt. You know what I think we should do, Felix?”

  “What, Tatiana?”

  “I think we should call room service and order something fantastic. I know what I’m going to order . . . a turkey sandwich on white toast and a coffee frosted. That’s my favorite meal. I’m so cheap! What’s wrong with Marvin? Where’s he going to find a witty, charming friend whose favorite meal costs less than five dollars?”

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “Do you want to hear a long and mournful story?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, Marvin—you met Marvin, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure, on the set.”

  “Okay, well, Marvin . . . where shall I start? Marvin is Jewish, and his father was, like, a very big deal intellectually. Graduated Harvard at twelve, got his doctorate in Romance Languages at thirteen—”

  “Really?”

  “Really . . . wrote huge weighty tomes, one of which won the National Book Award. Heavy stuff. Breakfast conversation was the death of Freud. That was small talk.”

  “What was his mother like?”

  “The standard obsessive. ‘I don’t ask for anything, dear. Just grow up to be a genius, marry a college grad with money and have two point five darling kids I can show pictures of to my friends.’ Anyway, when Marvin was eighteen, his father killed himself. Really messy—a bullet through the head—and so the poor kid had nine million hangups in addition to the ones he’d have had being gay and a Jew. I mean, those are, like, the least of his problems. He’s supposed to be a genius, do great things. And he’s one of these pleasers, you know? He wants to please Mommy, he wants to please me. He worries if the elevator man doesn’t smile at him! He makes me look like the healthiest, most normal person that ever walked the face of the earth.”

  “You do seem normal,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

  “Me? Felix, bite your tongue. Listen, before we continue with the plight of Marvin, how about room service? What’ll it be? Champagne? Caviar? They’re paying so—”

  “I do like champagne,” I said. “Is that awful?”

  “It’s terrible . . . Felix, I’m never speaking to you again. And what with? Name your favorite.”

  I thought. “Do you think they’d have lox and cream cheese on a toasted bagel?”

  “But of course! You’re as cheap as I am, kid.” He called room service and ordered everything: a split of champagne, Nova Scotia salmon, the works. “Lox would’ve been okay,” I said.

  “Honey! Lox is for pe
asants. We’re movie stars, remember? You’re Carole Lombard, I’m Clark Gable. We’re celebrating.”

  “We are?” I giggled. “What are we celebrating?”

  “We’ll think of something. Wait, the night is young.” He sat up and turned on the light near the bed.

  “So where were we?”

  “That Marvin worries about a lot of things,” I prompted him.

  “Okay . . . so just to leap ahead, Marvin meets me. Now to you I might seem totally off the wall, but compared to the people Marvin was with, I am a calm, steady influence, a wonderful listener. He’d come home and pour out all his angst, I’d sit there, offer sage advice, witty rejoinders . . . it was perfect, till this thing . . . Do you know where he is right now?”

  I shook my head.

  “At the University of Vermont, and with who? With this evil, rotten, petty man named Louis-Henri Bizzel.”

  I frowned. “What’s so evil about him?”

  Felix sighed. “He’s not evil. Did I say evil? Look, here’s what he is. Here’s the story. When Marvin was in college, this guy was the head of the Romance Languages department and Marvin was a French major, because his mother once spent her junior year in Paris and it was the sexiest year of her life—before she met Marvin’s father, need I add. So, to make a long story short, Louis, who’s about fifty-five and the classic silver-templed ‘Come into my study for some sherry’ type, seduces more-meshugenah Marvin who doesn’t know up from down. It was just a pure father-figure thing, I mean classic, a textbook case. This man wrote books on Mallarme, Baudelaire; he was Marvin’s father—depressed, enigmatic . . . Marvin was just a total catatonic when he was with him, stuttered, overawed . . . and then with me he was, like, blooming! He looked better, he gained some weight, he was beginning to feel good about himself and then, suddenly, he called up Louis who said, ‘Why don’t you come up for the weekend?’ And . . . that was a month ago.”

  “That’s awful,” I said.

  “It isn’t just selfishness on my part,” Felix said. “Of course it’s partly that, I miss him, but Louis is bad for him, he becomes a nonentity when he’s with Louis.”

  “I’m worried about Pam,” I said.

  “Who is Pam?” Just then there was a knock at the door. A man brought in a tray with our food. Felix opened the champagne. They’d brought two glasses so he poured some for both of us. He said he’d have the frosted for dessert. “To love,” he said. “Wherever it may be found.”

  I clinked glasses with him.

  “What does Pam have that you don’t?” Felix said. “I can’t imagine.”

  “She writes poetry,” I said, biting into the bagel. It was really yummy. “She’s . . . sensitive and they talk about intellectual things.”

  “How about the sex part?”

  “Well, they did it once . . . so they could do it again.”

  “But I thought you and what’s-his-name made it up.”

  “Joshua. I thought so,” I said. “But I guess you never know.”

  Felix shook his head. “That’s for sure. Now who would believe this? Here we are—two beautiful, talented young people sitting alone, rejected, mournful . . .”

  “We’re not alone,” I pointed out. “We’re together.”

  “Right.” Felix started on the second half of his sandwich. “Hey, mine is great . . . how’s yours?”

  “Want a bite?” When he shook his head, I took another swallow of champagne. I was beginning to feel really good and cheerful. “Have you ever done it with girls?” I asked. I hoped that wasn’t too personal a question.

  Felix smiled. “Yes, Felix, I have done it with girls,” he said.

  “How was it? Was it awful?”

  “No.” He looked thoughtful. “I’d say it ranged from pleasant to excruciating.”

  “But pleasant was the best?”

  “Pleasant was the best . . . and it was pleasant only, let’s say, twenty percent of the time.”

  “Huh . . . but with Marvin it’s really good?”

  Felix sighed. “It’s not just that sex is good with Marvin. Everything is good. Talking is good. Not talking is good.”

  Felix is so nice! I wish I had a brother like him, someone I could tell anything to, who’d listen and be sympathetic. I lay back on the bed. “I feel dizzy and funny . . . but good.”

  “Me too.” He lay down next to me. I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “What was that for?”

  “Because you’re so nice . . . and I guess I’m a little drunk.”

  He reached out and touched my hair. “Thank God, you took those braid things out . . . your hair is so beautiful. How could you let them do that to it?”

  “Don’t ask me. ‘Pierre wouldn’t suggest it if he didn’t think it was right for you.’”

  He frowned. “My best friend in fourth grade had hair this color. He died of leukemia when he was eleven. I always feel sad when I see red hair. It makes me think of him.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Thor . . . Thor McGuire.”

  We lay there quietly. “I wish I had a brother like you,” I said. “Someone I could tell everything to.”

  “You have a sister, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not the same . . . she’s so jealous and competitive. Every time something good happens to me, she gets really mean.”

  “I have a sister,” Felix said, “but she’s not at all like you . . . She makes Kelly Neff look like Simone de Beauvoir. You know? Four tow-headed kids, a white frame house. When she reads, it’s Family Circle, or novels she gets off the rack at the IGA: Love’s Wildest Flame.”

  “How does she feel about Marvin?”

  He laughed. “Felix! If Harriet knew about Marvin she would faint away dead.”

  “Gosh . . .”

  “To her, Anita Bryant is one of the patron saints. She wrote her a fan letter.”

  “Families are weird.” It was funny. Lying there next to Felix I really began feeling attracted to him, even though I know he’s gay. I suppose it’s just that he’s so nice and really handsome, too.

  “Hey!” He smiled. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “I guess because I feel attracted to you . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Sweetie, don’t be sorry. I’m flattered.”

  “Do you feel attracted to me?”

  He touched my hair. “I think you’re one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen,” he said wistfully.

  “Would you like me to take my clothes off?”

  “Uh, let’s see . . . sure, why not? But Felix, the thing is, I—”

  “We don’t have to do anything,” I said. “Joshua and Marvin wouldn’t like it.”

  “Oh, the hell with Joshua and Marvin!” Felix said. He took his clothes off, too.

  Maybe this is hard to believe, but we didn’t fuck. Do you believe that? We really didn’t. We just lay in each other’s arms and kissed and talked and kind of stroked each other. And it was really, really nice. After a while I started getting sleepy and Felix pulled the cover up over me. Then he turned out the lights and I fell asleep. I slept much better that night than I did the whole time I was in California. When I slept in my own hotel room, I used to wake up in the middle of the night, at two, or three, and feel funny lying there all alone. But this time I slept straight through till eight, when Felix’s alarm went off. I sat up with a start. Felix was already up and showering. I waited till he was done and then I showered too.

  “I have this audition today,” I told him when we were both dressed.

  “You’ll knock ’em dead, kid,” Felix said.

  “I can’t sing.”

  “They’ll dub it . . . that’s no problem.”

  “I should’ve read the book.”

  “You read the script, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So . . . no problem. I’ll see you tonight?” He kissed me. “Thanks for keeping me company last night.”

  “It was nice.” I smiled at him. “You know
, I was feeling really shitty yesterday, and now I don’t at all. I mean, what Joshua does is his business. Why should I worry?”

  “Right . . . and if Marvin just wants to be miserable with Louis the Forgettable, that’s his shtick.”

  We grinned at each other. Who were we kidding?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There were two men who met me for the audition, the producer and the director; Jim Something and Greg Something. Jim was extremely handsome and tall with a blond mustache. He looked a little like Donald Sutherland. He had on a denim shirt and faded jeans. Greg was little with wild curly black hair and kind of squinty eyes. First we talked some in their office. It was a really gigantic room with big tall plants and a couch and a desk and some comfortable chairs, almost like a living room.

  “Well, I think we ought to say,” Jim said, “that we’re both really delighted you’re willing to consider the part of Lolita. We personally think you’d do a smash-up job.”

  “But the thing is,” I said, “I saw the movie. You know, the other movie with Sue Lyons? And she was blond so I don’t know if I look right.”

  “It’s interesting,” Jim said. “Most people seem to have that misconception . . . but, in fact, in the book, Nabokov says specifically that Lo has light gray eyes and auburn hair.”

  “I didn’t read the book,” I confessed. “My father thinks it’s a really good book, though. He said it’s a classic. He doesn’t think it’s dirty.”

  “Do you?” Jim said. Greg just sat there and stared at me really intently.

  “Um, think it’s dirty? Well, it’s sort of strange.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, I mean the girl . . . liking someone so old.”

  “He’s in his late thirties.”

  I felt bad. They were probably that old and I guess you shouldn’t call people old. “But she was thirteen.”

  “Yes,” Jim said. “But that age difference isn’t so unusual these days, is it? Twenty-five years.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Well, one certainly hears all the time of men who run off with women who are twenty or thirty years younger than them.”

  I swallowed. “I guess I don’t know anyone like that.”

  “It seems strange to you that a girl that age would like someone old enough to be her father?”