Domestic Arrangements

by Norma Klein

  “Yeah . . . well, the thing is, I guess most girls sort of like boys more their own age.”

  Jim and Greg smiled at each other. “Do you, Tatiana?” Jim said.

  “My boyfriend’s sixteen.”

  “Uh huh . . . is he . . . you really like each other a lot?”

  I nodded.

  They were silent a moment.

  “Well, Tatiana, the scene we wanted you to read first is the one where Humbert has just picked Lolita up at camp, after her mother’s death. She doesn’t know her mother has died yet. Do you remember that scene?”

  I nodded.

  “They go, as you may remember, to a motel and she, in effect, seduces him. He’s rather surprised at the extent of her experience. He had thought he would be the one to introduce her to . . . the pleasures of the flesh, as it were.”

  I just sat there, listening.

  “Now, one thing . . . you say you saw the movie. You may recall it was made in the sixties when there was considerably less frankness about many things than is the case today. We feel we want to capture more of the actual spirit of the book . . . and that will mean a much greater amount of frankness, nudity and so forth . . . How does that strike you?”

  I bit my lip. “I guess it’s okay,” I said. “If it’s intrinsic to the story.”

  “In this case we definitely feel it is.” He looked at me carefully. “Have you, uh, grown a lot in the past year, Tatiana?”

  “I think I’m five-three,” I said.

  “Well, I meant . . . now let’s see, how shall I put this? You know, Lolita is supposed to be . . . she—”

  “You don’t want someone with really huge breasts,” I said, to help them out. “You want her to look young, kind of.”

  He looked both embarrassed and relieved. “Right.”

  “I don’t think mine are that huge . . . but maybe they’ll get bigger. Mom doesn’t think so. She’s sort of flat-chested and she said she thinks I won’t get that big. I don’t know.”

  He nodded. “Well, I just thought I’d . . . that isn’t a primary consideration, but it does happen at times that you hire an actress for a part and by the time you’ve turned around she’s gained fifty pounds or grown half a foot . . . You don’t have a weight problem, do you, hon?”

  I shook my head.

  I read the scene in the motel. Jim read the part of Humbert. I think it went all right. Lolita is sort of a tough person. I imagine her like Angela Crashaw, this girl in my class at Hunter who says things like, “Lay off,” or “Oh, go take a powder.” Shellie can’t stand her.

  In the middle of the scene I said, “Could I . . . um . . . ask you a question?”

  “Sure, fire away.”

  “Is she supposed to like him?”

  He was silent a moment. “Well, yes, I’d say . . . the point is, he clearly is madly and insanely in love with her, and she . . . well, feels flattered, for one, at his adoration, and—”

  “I guess I don’t exactly see why he’s so insanely in love with her,” I said. “I mean, she doesn’t act that nice to him.”

  “True . . . Well, partly of course, he has this . . . fascination with young girls.”

  “Maybe he should’ve gone to a psychiatrist,” I suggested.

  Jim smiled. “Maybe . . . but then there wouldn’t be any novel, would there?”

  “I don’t know. There could be a scene where he goes to a psychiatrist.”

  I read that scene a couple of times, and then they wanted me to read this other scene where Humbert tells Lolita her mother is dead and she runs off and then comes back to him because she has nowhere else to go. I’m really good at crying. I don’t know why. I can just cry like that! It isn’t even hard for me. I just did that scene once.

  “That was really lovely, Tatiana,” Greg said. That was practically the first time he’d said anything. “That’s a very . . . complicated scene. You seemed to really get into it.”

  “Well, she seems sort of nicer in that scene,” I said. “Missing her mother and everything . . . I mean, I’d feel really awful if something like that happened to my mother, so I can imagine how she feels.”

  “You like to identify with the character you’re playing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay . . . well, now, you know this is a musical, and, of course, we can dub it . . . but do you think you could sing us something? Just to give us a rough idea of what we’d have to work with?”

  “Sure.” I’d decided to sing this Beatles song called “She’s Leaving Home” because I learned it at camp. I did a duet with Sara Winship. “There are two parts, though,” I said. “Could one of you sing the other part?”

  They looked at each other. “We’re awful,” Jim said. “We can’t sing to save ourselves.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “Just say the words, okay?”

  I’m a fair singer. I mean, I can carry a tune and my voice is pretty strong, but it doesn’t have that much “lustre” to it. I’m saying that not to be modest, but because the singing teacher at camp said so. Sara’s voice had a lot of lustre. This is how the song goes. The parts in parentheses are the parts Greg sang. That’s supposed to be her parents talking.

  Wednesday morning at five o’clock

  As the day begins

  Silently closing her bedroom door

  Leaving the note that she hoped would say more

  She goes downstairs to the kitchen

  Clutching her handkerchief

  Quietly turning the back door key

  Stepping outside she is free.

  She (We gave her most of our lives)

  Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)

  Home (We gave her everything money could buy)

  She’s leaving home after living alone for so many years.

  (Bye bye)

  Father snores as his wife

  Gets into her dressing gown

  Picks up the letter that’s lying there

  Standing alone at the top of the stairs

  She breaks down and cries to her husband,

  “Daddy, our baby’s gone.

  Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?

  How could she do this to me?”

  She (We never thought of ourselves)

  Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)

  Home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)

  She’s leaving home after living alone for so many years.

  (Bye bye)

  Friday morning at nine o’clock

  She is far away

  Waiting to keep the appointment she made

  Meeting a man from the motor trade.

  She (What did we do that was wrong)

  Is having (We didn’t know it was wrong)

  Fun (Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy)

  Something inside that was always denied for so many years.

  (Bye bye)

  She’s leaving home—Bye bye.

  “Nice,” Jim said thoughtfully when I was done. “Your voice has a very nice, plaintive quality . . . don’t you think, Greg?”

  “Perfect,” Greg said. “Did you ever study voice?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think with a little coaching . . .” Jim said. “It’s not like on the stage where you really have to project. We can do a lot with sound equipment to build it up. Well! The next thing may sound a little funny, but do you play tennis, Tatiana?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I wondered if you’d mind going out with us and hitting a few with Greg here . . . who’s a real hotshot.”

  “I’m not that good,” I said, alarmed. I couldn’t remember a scene where she played tennis. “Is that in the movie?”

  “Yes, it’s toward the end. Humbert is watching her play . . . Don’t worry about not being good. Lo isn’t supposed to be a star athlete, no little Chris Evert. Just play the way you would normally.”

  We drove to this club. They rented me something to wear, a white tennis dress with a halter to
p. One awkward thing was I didn’t have a bra, but I didn’t know if you could get one at the club. I like to wear a bra when I play tennis because otherwise my breasts jiggle around and it’s uncomfortable.

  “Try these two rackets,” the man behind the counter said. “I think they’d both do nicely.”

  I picked the Billie Jean King one. I hoped that might make me play well since she’s such a good player.

  What made me feel so bad was that if I’d known I was going to have to play tennis, I could have practiced with Deel or Daddy. They both play sometimes. Deel is quite good. She almost made the tennis team.

  I was surprised Greg was the one to play with me. Jim looked more like the tennis type, being tall and blond, but Deel says height isn’t that important. Actually, Greg was good. He was very quick and he hit everything back. “How about a set?” he said after about five minutes.

  “I can’t serve that well.”

  “Tatiana, remember, we’re not testing your tennis.”

  “You’re not?” I know they said that, but why play tennis with me if they don’t care how I play? That doesn’t make sense. I played just terribly. My serve is so weak; it isn’t really a serve even. See, the problem is, I know you’re supposed to throw the ball up really high and then smash down on it, but I’m always afraid if I throw it up too high, I won’t be able to keep track of it. So, I just kind of toss it up a few inches. Then it’s too close to me to really swing at it so I quickly whap it before it hits the ground. Deel says I look like someone swatting a mosquito. Sometimes it doesn’t even go over the net, and even when it does, it’s so soft a lot of people can just murder it. You know how usually people stand back at the back line to receive a serve, especially a first one? Well, with me, they stand right up in the middle of the court!

  I could tell Greg wasn’t trying that hard to put the ball away. However I’d hit it, he’d just hit it back, right at me, the way Daddy does when we’re volleying. He won anyway because I double faulted millions of times. I felt just awful. Here I’d done so well on the acting part and wrecked it just because I’m so bad at tennis! And my breasts kept jiggling, and Jim was watching me like a hawk through the whole thing. It was really humiliating. Finally after one set, Greg said, “I think I’ve had it . . . how about you, Tatiana?”

  “Me too.” I knew my face was probably all pink the way it gets when I’m out of breath. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have practiced more, but I didn’t know I’d have to play tennis as part of the audition.”

  “Honey, listen,” Jim said. “Your game is perfect.”

  “What?”

  “Promise me you won’t take a single lesson.”

  “Not even on my serve?”

  “I love your serve! Where did you learn to do it that way?”

  “I didn’t . . . I mean, that’s not the right way.” I guess he doesn’t play tennis much, or he’d know that.

  “And the way you kick up your left leg after you hit a backhand,” Greg said. “Is that your idea?”

  “It isn’t an idea so much,” I said. “It’s more like a nervous habit.”

  As we walked back to the club house, I said, “Usually I wear a bra . . . I mean, for tennis.” I just thought they ought to know that with a bra I’d feel more comfortable.

  “Why?” Jim asked.

  “Well, it’s just more comfortable. If you play without a bra, you jiggle around.”

  “Well.” He smiled at me. “You jiggle beautifully.”

  I felt uneasy. “But in a movie that wouldn’t be good,” I said. “Would it?”

  “It would be perfect. Does it make you uncomfortable?”

  I thought of how Mom said men always like to look at women’s breasts and you shouldn’t mind. “Sort of,” I admitted.

  “If you’re a movie star, you’re going to be the object of a lot of men’s fantasies,” he said. “That’s what movies are. Suppliers of fantasies for the masses.”

  “They are?” I didn’t know that.

  “Anyway,” Jim went on, “it’s not that different from life. In life you must be used to men ogling you and—”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not. They never do.”

  He smiled again. “They must, Tatiana.”

  “I don’t think so,” I blurted out. The whole conversation was making me feel awful. I wondered if that’s what Jim had been doing while I was playing tennis, ogling me. And I didn’t even know it. I just thought he wanted to see how I played tennis.

  “Tatiana?” Jim said.

  I looked up, startled. I guess I was in sort of a daze. “Uh huh?”

  “You look . . . worried about something.”

  I took a deep breath. “Was that what you were doing before, ogling me?” I asked.

  “I was trying to look at you through the eyes of the typical American male,” Jim said.

  “Horny, dumb, and five-foot-nine,” Greg muttered.

  “But you didn’t even care about my tennis? You just wanted to see me jiggle around?”

  “You know, it’s an interesting metaphysical question,” Greg said. “Which would one prefer to be—the ogler or the oglee?”

  “Is that a word?” I said. “Oglee?”

  “It ought to be if it isn’t,” Jim said. He reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “You were perfect, honey. You don’t have a thing to worry about. Let’s go get a drink, shall we?”

  The drink they bought me was wonderful. It was made of all kinds of fresh fruit and soda. They asked me how I thought the publicity had gone and I told them how I was getting tired, having to answer all those dumb questions again and again.

  “Well, that’s the life of a star,” Jim said.

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m not sure I want to be one.” I told them how I really wanted to be a doctor.

  “I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was your age,” Greg said.

  “You did?” Jim said. “The dog and cat kind?”

  “The All Things Bright and Beautiful kind . . . horses and cows.”

  Jim laughed. “Well, I was going to import rugs from Iraq and be a pimp in a harem.”

  “You missed your calling, James,” Greg said.

  “I know it’s a lot of work going through medical school,” I said, scooping up the strawberries at the bottom of the glass. “But I don’t mind. My boyfriend is going to make movies, direct them.”

  “What kind?” Greg asked.

  I hesitated. “More sort of serious movies . . . like Ingmar Bergman, you know, like with a philosophy of life?”

  “Those are the kind I like best,” Greg said.

  They drove me back to the hotel. It was nearly dinner time. “We’ve really enjoyed this,” Jim said.

  They said they’d call my agent to discuss the terms.

  While I was getting ready for dinner, I kept thinking of that word: oglee. It sounds so much like ugly, even though in a way it means the opposite, if it is a real word. I’ll ask Deel, she’ll know. She always knows things like that. I don’t think I want to be an oglee. I don’t care what Mom says. I don’t like it when men look at me that way, like I was a thing. It’s different if Joshua looks at me that way because he loves me. I guess I felt bad because it seemed they cared just as much or maybe more about seeing how my breasts jiggled than if I had a good singing voice or if I could act. If I’m going to be an actress, then how I act should be the main thing, shouldn’t it?

  That night was the last night before I went back to New York. Kelly Neff took Felix and me out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. She said she was glad we were both feeling better and that we had both been “terrific sports” about the whole thing.

  “How did your audition go, Tatiana?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said hesitantly. I’d ordered melon for an appetizer and they brought me this huge slab of honeydew, like a quarter of a melon, practically.

  I told them how awful I’d felt when they were watching me play tennis without my bra. “It was like all they
cared about was, you know, sort of evaluating my body.”

  “Did they make you undress?” Felix asked.

  I shook my head. “But it was like that . . .”

  “Well, look, they’ve got to sell tickets,” he said.

  I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Sweetie, tits and ass sell tickets. What can you do about it? That’s the world.”

  I almost choked on my melon. “How about acting?” I squeaked.

  “Acting sells one ticket per hundred thousand people . . . in a good year.”

  “Felix, I think you’re a little cynical,” Kelly Neff said crisply. She turned to me. “Didn’t they ask you to act at all, Tatiana?”

  “A little bit.”

  “There are millions of teenage girls with lovely figures,” she said to Felix. “But Tatiana has something extra.”

  “Am I denying that? It’s just what they’re buying and what she’s selling may not be the same thing.”

  Out here everything seems to be buying and selling, ogling and jiggling. I feel safer at home. Maybe this is more the real world, but I guess I’m not used to it. I like the world of Mom and Daddy and school. At least there I know where I stand.

  In a way it seems like I was away much more than just a week. I think it’s always like that when you travel. I’m glad I went. I didn’t enjoy it exactly, in the way you’d enjoy something if you were with friends, but I think I did a good job.

  I stopped at the newspaper stand to get some magazines to look at on the plane. I was standing there, looking to see what I hadn’t read, when I almost fainted. There I was on the cover of People! It was this big close-up of me, mostly my face, though you could see I was wearing the fox coat. Across the top it said: The Girl with the Silver Eyes. I looked around nervously. I was scared someone might recognize me. They had about fifty copies of the magazine, all piled on top. Right while I was standing there, a woman came and picked one up and bought it! I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if it would look funny if I bought it, but I didn’t think I could stand not reading the article. I wonder why Mom and Daddy didn’t mention it. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they wanted to surprise me. Finally, I picked up one copy and then I got Us and put it on top of People and I put a Marathon bar on top of that. The man behind the counter didn’t seem to notice.