Domestic Arrangements

by Norma Klein

“The Post thought I acted like I was in a trance.”

  “Well, you do have a kind of trancy look at times.”

  I looked at him. I knew he was teasing. “Wasn’t that nice of Mom? Saying you could stay as late as you want?”

  “Wonderful . . . Your mother’s a great person. I wish my mother was like her.”

  “She said you could stay every night till Daddy comes home . . . only I’m not supposed to tell him.”

  “How about Deel?”

  “Yeah, I thought of that . . . She’s sleeping at a friend’s tonight, though, so we don’t have to worry.”

  We had a really nice, relaxed evening. Mom went out and we just heated up some pizza and watched TV for a while. We don’t have any special room for the TV like Joshua’s parents. It’s just in the living room, but since no one was home, it was kind of private. Then we went into my room. Joshua helped me put the diaphragm in. I think we did it right. You have to make sure to use lots of jelly, so even if you didn’t put it in right, the jelly will kill the sperm. They give you a booklet that explains everything. For me it didn’t seem that different, but Joshua said it really was much nicer for him. I guess having something over your penis while you’re fucking is like swimming with your clothes on. Not that I can imagine what that’s like exactly, since I don’t have one (penis, that is). But really, the nicest part of all was just being able to lie together naked without having to worry about waking up. Also, having the house quiet, with Daddy and Deel away, was good, too. My bedroom is off the kitchen, pretty far away from Mom and Daddy’s, but still Daddy is a very light sleeper and I always feel nervous when he’s there. Mom says cannons could go off when she’s asleep and she wouldn’t hear anything. She has this odd sleep sound machine that she got at Hammacher Schlemmer, which makes a roaring sound. She got it when we were babies and used to get up at five and go screaming around the apartment. Now she says she’s addicted to it.

  In the middle of the night we woke up. That is, Joshua woke up and I heard him getting out of bed.

  “Where’re you going?” I whispered.

  “To the bathroom.”

  “Oh.” I hate having to get out of bed in the winter. I never can find my slippers and the floor is always so cold. I snuggled further under the covers. About one second later Joshua came back.

  “That was quick,” I said.

  “I didn’t go,” he said.

  “How come?”

  Joshua didn’t say anything.

  “How come you didn’t go?” I said.

  “Rust.”

  “Yeah?” He was acting really strange.

  “You know that tall skinny guy with the mustache?”

  “Simon?”

  “Yeah . . . Well he was walking down the hall to the bathroom.”

  “So?”

  “Well, he was, like, naked.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Rust. He was.”

  “What are you sorry about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I thought a second. “Why was he naked?”

  “Search me. I guess he was doing something he didn’t need clothes for.”

  “What?”

  “Well, maybe he and your mother . . .”

  “Mom and Simon?”

  “It could be. It certainly looks like it.”

  “Mom and Simon?” “Why not? They’re friends, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, but . . . not in that way. Do you really think—”

  “Look, Rust, I mean he may have just taken off his clothes because he felt hot for some reason.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  By this time I was wide awake. “Poor Daddy,” I said.

  “Oh, poor Daddy’s probably making it with some chick in Boston right this second,” Joshua said, getting under the covers.

  I sat right up. “Joshua, what a horrible thing to say! Daddy? He’s not like that. He’s not like your father.”

  “They all do it.”

  “They do not! Just because your father does seedy things with secretaries doesn’t mean everyone’s father does! Daddy thinks sex is a thrilling, important, meaningful experience.”

  “So?”

  “So, he wouldn’t do it with just anyone. He’d only do it with someone he really loved.”

  Joshua sighed. “Listen, you might be right, Rust, I don’t know . . . How about your mother? Is it a thrilling, important, meaningful experience for her too?”

  “Will you quit making fun of my parents?”

  “I’m not. I like your mother.”

  I thought about it a minute. “Maybe she’s in love with Simon.”

  Joshua didn’t say anything.

  “I guess she must be.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, she really loves Daddy, so if she did it with someone else, it would mean she loved that person more . . . for some reason.”

  “Maybe she’s just horny.”

  “Joshua! She’s thirty-nine years old.”

  “Don’t thirty-nine-year-olds get horny?”

  “No, not in that way. Anyway Daddy’s only been away two days. Oh, I hope they don’t get divorced.”

  Joshua held me close. “They won’t, Rust, don’t worry.”

  “But if she loves Simon a lot, more than she loves Daddy . . .”

  “You don’t know that . . . Anyway, usually they like to stay together because of the kids.”

  “Yeah . . . Only I’d hate to think that was the only reason.” I couldn’t think which I wanted to be true. I’d hate to think Mom was fucking with Simon for some dumb, silly reason, but on the other hand, I hope she isn’t in love with him the way I’m in love with Joshua. I don’t think people that age fall in love. I think it’s more that they’re more compatible with one person than with another.

  “Do you want to try again?” I said.

  “Sure,” Joshua said. His hand was between my legs.

  “No. I meant go to the bathroom. Maybe Simon’s back in the other room now.”

  “Later,” Joshua murmured, parting the hair. I guess he wanted to see if I was wet.

  “Josh?”

  “Umm.”

  “I don’t know if you can use it twice without taking it out and cleaning it.”

  “If you take it out, that does away with the whole point,” he said.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did the booklet say that? Are you positive?”

  Joshua was already in me. “Positive,” he crooned. I could tell he wasn’t even thinking about the booklet.

  He better not be lying.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the morning Simon wasn’t there. Mom was lying on the couch, reading the Sunday paper. Joshua was in the shower.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Oh hi, hon . . . Listen, I made some batter for French toast if you and Josh want some. It’s right near the stove.”

  “Okay.” I love French toast. I felt really funny with Mom after the thing last night. Maybe Joshua imagined it. People do have hallucinations, especially when they’re sleepy.

  “Did you go out last night?” Mom said.

  “Uh uh . . . we just watched TV.”

  “Simon and I passed the Coronet. There was a huge line.”

  I sighed. “I guess I’m glad it’s over,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The movie . . . the reviews and everything.”

  Mom smiled. “Hon, it’s not over by a long shot. It’s just beginning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ll have to do publicity, interviews . . . all that. I got a dozen calls yesterday at least.”

  I frowned. “Well, but I don’t have to do it if I don’t want.”

  “You ought to do some. It’s good to get used to all that—answering questions, TV. If you’re going to stay in this business, that’s all part of it.”

  “Well, I don’t think I necessa
rily do want to stay in it,” I said, biting my lip. “I mean, I don’t really want to be an actress.”

  “No?” Mom looked surprised. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know . . . You never know if you’re going to get parts. And it seems like people who are good don’t necessarily do well—all that.”

  Mom looked thoughtful. “Yeah, well, hon, it’s true maybe you’ve seen the hard side of it since Lionel and I are in it, but there’s so much—” she gestured “—joy in it, too.”

  “In acting?”

  “Yeah . . . I mean, you look at people with nine-to-five jobs and they’re plodding back and forth every day. Okay, sure, they have job security and all that, but they’re bored out of their minds and they collapse in a heap at the end of the day or drink half a bottle of Scotch. But with acting, at least when you’re doing it, you feel so alive. It’s such a high, like you’re floating.”

  I thought of that. “Yeah, but maybe there are other things that could make you feel that way.”

  “I never found any,” Mom said. “Oh, maybe sex . . . but nothing I’d want to turn into a profession.” She grinned.

  “Delivering babies,” I said.

  Mom looked horrified. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I would think it would be exciting.”

  “But that’s like an operation, women screaming and what have you. And what if they die?”

  Boy, she’s worse than Joshua. “They don’t die, Mom . . . and not everyone screams.”

  “I did,” Mom said. “I screamed my damn head off. See, the thing with acting which is so great is that it’s not real. You have all the feelings of real life, but it’s not real. No one really dies. It’s all . . . magical.”

  I nodded. “Well, anyway, I don’t have to decide now.”

  “No, of course not . . . But I don’t think you should make this a one-shot thing either—I mean, just do the one movie and then bow out. Take it where it leads.”

  “How about school?”

  “Well, school . . . You know everything by now, don’t you? Pretty much?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know everything.”

  “Listen, lots of the greatest writers and actors and painters never went to school at all. Life is a school. You just walk down the street and you learn as much as you ever will in a classroom.”

  “You don’t learn math.”

  “Math.” Mom looked disdainful. “But who needs math? You can hire some little man to do your taxes for you. Count on your fingers. Math is a waste.”

  “That’s not what Daddy says,” I pointed out.

  “True.” That didn’t seem to bother her much.

  At that point Joshua came out of the shower so we couldn’t talk anymore. I felt worried, sort of. First, I know Daddy’s opinions about all of this are totally different from Mom’s. He thinks school is extremely important and he wants Deel and me to do well and go to good colleges and all that. Not that that means he’s right and Mom’s wrong, but it just shows you can think two totally different ways about it. I think I’m somewhere in the middle. I don’t think I’d want to just drop out of school and make movies now, even if I could. I think it’s a weird kind of life. Felix went to Professional Children’s School and he never led a regular life, being with regular people. All he knows are actors and actresses. I wouldn’t like that. A lot of them are really phony, I think. I mean, they’ll talk in this really dumb way about acting and expressing themselves and all that. I want to know lots of different people, not just actors. And even though part of school is dull, some of it is really interesting and I don’t think I could learn about it just walking down the street. I wouldn’t learn about chemistry just walking down the street, or philosophy.

  Later in the morning, as Joshua and I were just finishing breakfast, Deel came home with Simon. She’d evidently run into him in the lobby. Simon and Mom greeted each other as though they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. I looked sideways at Joshua and he looked at me. But I felt really weird. I wish in real life you could just ask people what you want to know. I wish I could take Mom aside and say, “Are you fucking with Simon and do you love him and do you want to marry him?” But you can’t, especially with your own parents.

  The other bad thing is that normally the person I’d most want to talk to about it is Deel, because she’s the only one who’d care about it as much as I do. But now I don’t know if I should. I’m scared she might tell Daddy, or think it was disgusting. I know she likes Simon a lot, but maybe she’d be jealous because of that. If it was someone she didn’t like at all, like Charlie, she’d really be disgusted. I think maybe I’ll kind of hint around about it and see how she reacts.

  “When’s Daddy coming home?” Deel asked.

  “Tomorrow, I think,” Mom said. “No, wait, I think he said Tuesday or Wednesday.”

  In the kitchen, when we were alone, Deel said, “How come Joshua’s having breakfast here?”

  I hesitated. “Because he stayed over.”

  “Does Mom know?”

  “Yeah . . . she said it was all right.”

  “Did you try out your new acquisition?” She gave me a sidelong glance.

  “Yeah.”

  “How was it?”

  “It was good.” It would really be helpful if Deel knew something about sex other than from books. She’s read about nine million books on the subject, but I wish she’d actually done something. In fourth grade, she and Peter Town used to go into the bathroom and take their clothes off, but that was a long time ago.

  “Do you want to hear something really sick?” she said.

  “What?”

  “You know Greg Calabrese?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He is actually doing it with Fiona Stone’s mother!”

  “How do you know?”

  “Fiona came over to Jane’s and told us. I mean, they actually go out on dates and he sleeps over and everything.”

  “She’s divorced, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but she’s, like, Mom’s age. She’s in her thirties! You know what Fiona said? She said Greg came over one time and her mother had this man friend of hers over, and Greg started to cry.”

  “I guess he likes her a lot,” I said.

  “She’s thirty-eight and he’s seventeen. That is really sick.”

  “Well, if they like each other, I don’t see that it matters how old they are.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No . . . Daddy’s ten years older than Mom.”

  “That’s different. Anyhow, I thought it was pretty gross.”

  In the afternoon, Simon and Deel got into this long Scrabble game. I watched them play for a while. Joshua said he had to go home, but that he’d come back later. I felt a little funny, his staying over with Deel there. I wondered if Simon would be staying over again.

  Later in the afternoon, at around five, Mom and Simon went out. Deel was lying on the couch. She’d lost the Scrabble game, not by much, but that sometimes puts her in a bad mood.

  Finally I said, “I think Simon really likes Mom.”

  Deel shrugged. “I guess.”

  “I mean really a lot.”

  “Simon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, but he’s so much younger than her.”

  “Just six years.”

  “But at that age, that’s a lot.”

  “It’s less than Daddy and Mom.”

  “Men like women to be younger than them, though, mostly.”

  “How about Greg and Fiona’s mother?”

  “That’s an aberration. Anyway, Simon would probably like someone more in her twenties, someone more like a real actress.”

  “I think Mom’s pretty.”

  Deel made a face. “If you can see her face through all that junk she wears. When she smiles, she has all those lines around her eyes.”

  “She says that gives her character.”

  “If she let her hair get gray, and stopped dyeing it, she’d probabl
y look like ninety years old.”

  “Deel, come on! She would not!”

  “You’re the one that brought it up. I just think Simon has better taste than that. I mean, he may like her as a friend, someone to talk to about his problems.”

  I was quiet for a while. “How would you feel if he did like her that other way?”

  “You mean, like—”

  “Yeah.”

  “He never would. It’s too dumb to even think of.”

  “But if he did. Just try to imagine it.”

  “I’d think he was a dope,” Deel said savagely.

  “What would you think about her?”

  “Well, she’d be lucky if someone like Simon liked her. But it’s all so sick. Why imagine sick things?”

  “True.” Well, so much for talking about it with Deel.

  “You’ve got sex on the brain because of Joshua. People Mom’s age are into other things.”

  “And Daddy’s age too? How about Passages? You said—”

  “Oh, those are like businessmen and housewives and people like that. People who’ve led dull, dopey lives, and suddenly realize it when they’re middle-aged. The thing with Mom is just that she’s in a profession where all that matters is how you look, so she’s obsessed with that.”

  “I don’t think she’s obsessed with it. She just likes to look nice.”

  “Just because you’re like her.”

  “Sure, I like to look nice. That doesn’t mean I’m obsessed with it.” Deel didn’t answer. “What do you think you’ll be? Do you ever think about it?”

  “When I grow up?” she said sarcastically. “I think I’m going to be the first Jewish woman president.”

  “I mean really.”

  “I am. Don’t you think I’d be good?”

  I thought about it a minute. “Yeah, I do. I’ll vote for you.”

  “Well, there’s one vote. Now if I can just get a couple more—”

  “You’d have to go to law school,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, and I’d run for some other things first. Maybe Congress.”

  “Like Carol Bellamy.”

  “Or Elizabeth Holtzman . . . I guess I’ll run for Congress first, and then the Senate.”

  “That’s good, that you have it all planned out,” I said wistfully.

  “Well, you have your life all planned out.”

  “No, I don’t. What do you mean?”