Domestic Arrangements

by Norma Klein

  “Let me get you a drink, Charles,” Mom said.

  Charlie followed Mom into the kitchen. “She can talk, she can walk . . .” He winked at Daddy, who was wearing his Tolstoyan work shirt with a navy turtleneck underneath. “Cheer up, kid, fifty is young.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Mom said.

  “Life begins at whatever age you are . . . till you’re dead,” Charlie said. He grabbed me by the waist. “What do you do to this girl?” he said. “Look at her! She gets more radiant every second! It’s not possible. You’re giving her too many vitamins . . . Tatiana, stop taking those vitamins!”

  Mom came in with the punch bowl. Deel and I had cut up strawberries all morning to float on top. Daddy and Charlie clinked glasses.

  “To you, Lionel,” Charlie said.

  They drank and then Mom raised her glass. “To us,” she said.

  Daddy looked at her, puzzled.

  “It’s our anniversary,” Mom said.

  “What?” Daddy frowned. “But our anniversary is in—”

  “The anniversary of when we first slept together, to use the euphemism of that bygone age.”

  “It was on my birthday?” Daddy said, still looking surprised.

  Mom nodded and sipped her punch. “You see what a big impression it made on him,” she said to Charlie.

  “How old was I?” Daddy said.

  “Thirty-three.”

  Daddy groaned. “Was I ever that young?”

  “Where was it?” Deel asked. She loves to hear stuff like that.

  “In Lionel’s office.”

  “Did I have a couch in my office?” Daddy said. “I thought it was a kind of—”

  “No couch,” Mom said.

  “God, I must have been young.”

  “Daddy, how come you don’t even remember?” Deel said.

  “Well, I . . . What were the circumstances?” Daddy said. “Refresh my memory.”

  Mom was smiling. “I was interviewing you . . . for the school paper.”

  “Oh God, yes . . . of course.”

  “Why’d you want to interview him?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t . . . but I thought it would be a good ploy, you know, drawing him out, asking breathy questions.”

  “It worked, of course?” Charlie said, glancing at Daddy.

  “Like a charm.”

  “Wait a minute,” Daddy said. “My memory of this is totally different.”

  “What do you remember, Daddy?” Deel asked.

  “Well, I remember Amanda in my class . . . she was an excellent student,” he said to Charlie.

  “I can imagine,” Charlie said, smiling at Mom.

  “She was quiet, slightly demure, even . . . asked provocative, intelligent questions, wrote excellent papers. You got an A, didn’t you?”

  “B,” Mom said. “You were afraid if you gave me an A, people would think it was because we were—”

  “You deserved an A,” Daddy said. To Charlie he said, “She definitely deserved an A.”

  “I’m sure she did . . . A plus, if it were up to me.”

  “I thought you were married to Dora then, Daddy,” Deel said.

  Daddy looked uncomfortable. “Well, it was unraveling . . .”

  “What was Dora like?” Deel persisted.

  Daddy gazed off in the distance. “Beautiful . . . in the beginning.” He looked at Charlie. “Didn’t you think?”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Beautiful? No,” he said flatly.

  Daddy squinted. “Fragile, dreamy, delicate . . . a porcelain figurine.”

  “Maybe,” Charlie said. “I see what you’re getting at. A few cracks by the time I met her.”

  “Lionel idealizes women,” Mom said.

  “He does, doesn’t he?” Charlie said. “Bless his heart.”

  “So, did Mom, like, seduce you when you were married to Dora?” Deel said. I could tell she was getting all excited, hearing all these details of their private life.

  “Well, kind of, I guess,” Mom said.

  “I always thought I seduced you,” Daddy said.

  Mom smiled. “Men like to think that.”

  “When really,” Charlie said, “they’re just leading us docilely along, tugging gently at the rings in our noses.”

  “I love that image,” Daddy said, wryly.

  “Did Dora mind?” Deel persisted. “I mean was it like in The Way We Are Now with Dr. Morrison and Myra?”

  Daddy choked on his punch. “Well, I’d hate to think of my life being like a third-rate soap opera,” he said.

  “Lionel!” Mom stared at him.

  “What?”

  “A third-rate soap opera?” Mom’s cheeks were all pink. She really looked mad.

  Daddy looked like he knew he’d said something dumb. “No, third-rate was . . . I just meant—”

  Mom wheeled away. “We know what you mean. Just like you think Domestic Arrangements is a third-rate film. Everything is third-rate to you.”

  “Darling, no.” He tried to sound soothing.

  “Well, tell Charlie,” Mom said, still mad. “Tell him all you were saying about how Tat is going to be exploited. Tell him!”

  “Exploited?” Charlie said, looking at Daddy. “In what sense?”

  Daddy really looked embarrassed. “No, it’s just . . . that scene, you know, the hair-dryer scene. I just thought—”

  “Lionel,” Charlie said. “That scene is devoid of even the vaguest trace of sensationalism. I’d bring my Aunt Minnie in from Iowa City to see it. That scene will make people weep.”

  “Weep?” Daddy said.

  “Yes, weep,” said Charlie. “That expression with which Tatiana looks up at Winston, that wide-eyed, soft, radiant expression . . . there’s no dirt there. Anyone who can find anything salacious in that scene is a dirty old man.”

  “See!” Mom said triumphantly to Daddy. To Charlie she said, “He just thinks if it’s not Chekhov, it’s third-rate.”

  “Look, you have two choices in life,” Charlie said. “You can spend a vast amount of time and energy inveighing against the way things are, or you can learn to live in the real world and make the best of it. I’m of the latter school.”

  “Me too,” Mom said. “Sure, I could have spent the last decade auditioning for wretched little earnest off-off-Broadway plays which would run three seconds, and get wonderful reviews in the Voice, but so what? What would that prove?”

  “Of course,” Charlie said. “Instead you’ve used your skills, you’ve kept them alive.”

  “Exactly,” Mom said.

  Daddy looked sheepish. “People, please! I am being falsely maligned. Of course one compromises, I’m not saying that. I’m only saying it’s important to keep the flame burning.”

  “What flame?” Mom said.

  “The flame of idealism, of art, of something wonderful.” He gestured vaguely.

  “Listen,” Charlie said. “This movie is wonderful. This is a wonderful movie, and your daughter is a wonderful actress. Okay? This is fact. I don’t say it because I made it, I don’t say it because Tatiana is your daughter. I say that because I came out of that screening shaking.”

  “Okay,” Daddy said. “No, we’re eager to see it, Charlie.”

  “I am,” Mom said. “I’m eager.”

  I looked around the room. Deel wasn’t there anymore. I went to look for her. The front bell had started to ring and a whole lot of people poured in. Deel was in her room, sitting on the edge of her bed, smoking a joint.

  “How come you’re in here?” I asked.

  “You want me to get stoned in front of Daddy?”

  “No, I just meant . . . how come for the party?”

  “I hate parties!” Deel said. “I hate all their phony, dumb friends.”

  “Simon’s coming,” I said. “You like him.” Simon always plays Scrabble with Deel. They’re both very good. They play in French, even.

  “He’ll be busy. He won’t want to talk to me if he can t
alk to someone his own age. Anyway, Mom’ll probably be flirting with him like a maniac all afternoon.” She handed me the joint. “Want some?”

  “Okay.” I inhaled a little. I’m very suggestible when it comes to pot. A few puffs and I’m off.

  “That is so sick about Mom and Daddy,” Deel said.

  “What?”

  “She took him away from his wife. What a seedy thing to do!”

  “Well, but he said their marriage wasn’t that good . . .”

  “Yeah, sure . . . they fucked in his office! You heard her.”

  “Well, I guess she liked him a lot,” I said mildly. It’s hard to argue with Deel when she’s in that kind of mood.

  “Yeah? She probably just wanted to get his scalp for her belt,” Deel said, puffing ferociously.

  “Deel, you’re going to be, like, totally zonked if you—”

  Deel glared at me. “So I’m totally zonked? What’s it to you?”

  I swallowed. “Anyway, I don’t think that’s true, what you said about Mom. She fell in love with Daddy. She married him.”

  “What’s so wonderful about that?”

  “Well, first of all, if it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean, so? Do you wish you weren’t even born?”

  Deel just looked mournful. “Sometimes . . .” she said, frowning. “I hate the way Mom acts at parties.”

  “In what way?”

  “The way she acts with men, flirting with everybody, laughing hysterically at their jokes. It’s so sick. It’s so sexist.”

  “Well, she’s from the South,” I said.

  “So? Jane is from Alabama, and she’d rather be drawn and quartered than act like that.” Jane is Deel’s best friend. She weighs 160 pounds, and is even more active politically than Deel.

  “Mom says flirting is an art form, it’s like acting.”

  “Sure, she says a lot of dumb things. So what?”

  “Deel, come on . . . Daddy’ll be hurt if you sit in here all afternoon. Let’s go out and help serve, okay? We don’t have to talk to anyone.”

  I guess what I worried about was whether Deel feels bad about my being in the movie, and about how Charlie was saying how terrific I am. Deel would hate to act, it’s not that, but, well, I don’t know.

  I was glad when, later in the party, I saw Simon standing next to Deel, helping her serve the punch. You can always pick out Simon in a crowd. He’s six foot five, and kind of gangling. He reminds me a little of this actor Joshua likes, called Jacques Tati. He has a mustache, which he twirls sometimes when he’s nervous. He really likes Deel a lot. He says she has a truly original mind. That’s true, she really does. I think Deel might have sort of a crush on Simon. He knows all about drugs and isn’t at all moralistic about it, so I guess she feels she can talk to him more openly than she can to Mom and Daddy.

  Everyone said how pretty I looked, and admired my dress. Charlie went around telling everybody about the movie. I think he was getting a little smashed at the end. At one point, he grabbed my hand as I went by and suddenly said, almost like he was yelling, “Ladies and gentlemen . . . I want you to meet the new star of the eighties . . . Miss Tatiana Engelberg.”

  Everybody cheered. I think they were all sort of drunk by then. I felt really embarrassed; Charlie wouldn’t let go of my hand.

  “The new Brooke Shields, huh?” someone said.

  “Brooke Shields?” Charlie looked aghast. “Forget Brooke Shields, forget Mariel Hemingway, forget Bo Derek . . . forget everybody! This little girl, who never acted before, is going to knock you off your feet. Absolutely.”

  I tried to get him to let go of my hand.

  “She’s beautiful,” Charlie said. “Tatiana, don’t be bashful. It’s the truth. I am telling the absolute, unadulterated truth. Not one word of exaggeration, not one breath.”

  I tried to smile. Everyone was looking at me.

  Daddy came over. “Charlie, come on, calm down . . . eat some praline cheesecake, and shut up already.”

  But Charlie just reached out and took Daddy’s hand. “May I present the man who, single-handed, created what you see before you. Without these two splendid people—” he gestured toward Mom who was off at the end of the terrace with her shoes off, leaning on the railing, “—this creature, this enchanting, rapturous creature, would not exist.”

  Daddy had a lump of cheesecake on a fork. He stuffed it in Charlie’s mouth. He smiled at me. “Come on, Tat . . . come on inside.”

  “I feel embarrassed,” I whispered.

  “He’s looped.”

  Deel and Simon were sitting in a corner. “What’s up?” Simon said.

  “Charlie was just kind of ranting on,” I said, sitting down next to them.

  “That’s his manner,” Daddy said. He walked off to talk to someone.

  I could tell from looking at Deel that she was zonked. Her eyelids were drooping. “Oh boy, this party has gone on for eighty hours,” she said.

  “Play Scrabble with me,” Simon said.

  “You can’t at a party,” Deel said.

  “Who says?”

  “I’m stoned out of my mind.”

  “So am I.”

  Deel looked around nervously. “Don’t you want to talk to, like, regular people?”

  “I thought I was.”

  “No, I mean, them. People your own age.”

  “Not especially . . . Is there anyone my age here? I thought they were all—”

  Deel looked around. “Abigail,” she said.

  I remembered what Mom and Daddy had said. “I don’t think they’d get along,” I said. “I mean, in terms of romance.”

  “Who’s Abigail?” Simon asked.

  Deel pointed to her. She was out on the terrace. Abigail never gets that dressed up, even for parties. She had on a red Mexican skirt and a T-shirt.

  “Not bad,” Simon said.

  “Mom says she isn’t your type,” I told him.

  He laughed. “How come? In what way?”

  It’s always easy talking to Simon, much more than to Mom and Daddy’s friends in general. I guess that’s because he likes to joke around and stuff. “Well, Mom thinks she’s too . . . I guess serious for you. I mean, too women’s libish.”

  “Huh . . . and here I am, a guy with such diverse, and catholic tastes,” Simon said.

  “Mom thinks everyone is women’s libish who doesn’t drool continually over every man in sight,” Deel snarled.

  “Cordelia,” Simon said, smiling.

  “Well, it’s true . . . look at her!” Way far off, Mom was dancing in a circle with a fat man in a green checked shirt.

  “She’s dancing,” I said. “What’s so bad about that?”

  “Amanda is a lively, dynamic person,” Simon said. “I don’t think that’s so bad.”

  “That’s just because she drools over you and you fall for it,” Deel said. She looked angry, and walked off.

  Simon looked at me with widened eyes. “Oh dear,” he said, sighing.

  “Deel doesn’t like parties,” I said.

  “So it would seem.”

  I frowned. “Simon, I’m really worried.”

  “What about?”

  “That maybe Deel will be jealous of me once the movie opens.”

  “Yeah.” Simon looked understanding.

  “Daddy thinks the movie’s dumb, Deel’ll hate me,” I said. “I wish I’d never made the thing! I don’t even want to be an actress.”

  “Rusty, listen to me,” Simon said. “You did it, I bet you were terrific, and you don’t have anything to regret. Life is an adventure. Things happen you never expect—good things, bad things.”

  “Yeah,” I said uncertainly. “Joshua thinks I’ll get conceited and go off with older men . . . I don’t think I will. I don’t want to change.”

  “You’ll change,” Simon said. “Everyone does . . . but you’ll handle it, don’t worry. You’ll handle it beautifully.”

/>   “I will?”

  “Definitely. I don’t have a doubt in the world.”

  I looked at him gratefully. Mom came over, still barefoot. Her cheeks were pink, and her hair was all tousled. “Are you having fun?” she said to Simon.

  Simon nodded.

  “I’ve been making a total ass out of myself . . . George Phillips said he’d teach me disco dancing.”

  “We saw,” Simon said.

  Mom made a face. “Oh God . . . did I look awful?”

  “You looked great.” They smiled at each other.

  “You are a kind and generous person,” Mom said, looking right at him.

  Simon looked abashed. “Well, I try.”

  “Hey, where’s Deel?” Mom said, looking around. “Have you seen her, Tat?”

  “I think she felt sleepy,” I said nervously.

  “I’ll go look for her,” Simon said.

  I helped Mom carry some stuff into the kitchen. People were leaving. Only around eight were left, and most of them were still out on the terrace. “Simon was nice to Deel,” I said. “But she seemed in kind of a bad mood.”

  “He’s such a darling,” Mom said wistfully. “Isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he’s nice,” I said.

  After everyone had left, Daddy sat down on the couch and looked through my collage calendar again. “This is my best present,” he said, looking up at me. “It’s beautiful, Tat.”

  “I’m glad you like it, Daddy.”

  “It’s such a pity you don’t do any drawing anymore.”

  “I might, again.”

  “You have such a wonderful free line. It’s so inventive, really remarkable.”

  Luckily Deel was sleeping in her room at that point. I went to help Mom clear everything up.

  Chapter Seven

  The day before the screening, I called Charlie and asked if I could bring Joshua.

  “Is he the young man who used to come to the set occasionally?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one who wants to make wonderful and earth-shaking movies that’ll make the rest of us look like fools?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “By all means, bring him.”

  I feel mixed about bringing Joshua. I almost wish Charlie had said I couldn’t bring him. I’m so afraid he’ll hate it. Joshua has such high standards. Even movies that everyone likes, that get good reviews everywhere, like Kramer vs. Kramer, he doesn’t like that much. And I’m afraid he’ll say I’m awful. I don’t think he thinks I can act at all. And he’s not the type that pretends and says nice things to make you feel better.