by Norma Klein
“But you and Mom come from different backgrounds, too.”
“True.”
I looked at him intently. He was staring into space. “Daddy, what do you like best about Mom?”
Daddy laughed. “Why all these questions, Tat?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Well, I think Amanda is a very energetic, intense person. She . . . throws herself into everything she does with a great deal of . . . She’s very alive, she doesn’t equivocate.”
“What does ‘equivocate’ mean?”
“I mean, she doesn’t . . . she says what she feels. She’s very direct about things.”
“So, do you think you’re happily married?” I hoped he wouldn’t mind my asking such personal things, but I really wanted to know.
“Of course I do.” He frowned. “Don’t you think we are?”
“Sure, but kids don’t always know the real truth.”
Daddy was looking off out the window of the living room. “You see, marriage is a very complicated thing, darling. It involves a lot of compromise, a lot of rearranging of one’s own interests and needs in relation to another person.”
“Like how?”
“Well, like living in New York. I’m not sure Amanda would have chosen to live here if it weren’t that I had so many ties here. She might have been happier somewhere else.”
“Like where?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know . . . California, maybe. But the point is, one person gives in in one way, another in another.”
I sighed. “I guess it’s that so many people’s parents seem to get divorced.”
“Well, yes. It’s certainly a prevalent thing nowadays,” Daddy said. “But you don’t have to worry.”
I hugged him. “Good.” I hesitated a minute. “I’m not going to see Joshua anymore,” I said, walking over to the window.
“Oh? Why not?”
“I don’t think I . . . I don’t think he’s such a nice person. I think he’s selfish.”
Daddy cleared his throat. “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, Tat, but the fact is, boys his age, teenage boys, just do tend to be essentially exploitive in their relationships with girls. I’m afraid that’s a fact.”
“You mean, like, being mostly interested in sex?”
“That, and . . . well—”
“I don’t know about sex,” I said suddenly, turning around to look at him.
“What don’t you know?” he said in an affectionate voice.
“I don’t know if I like it!” I blurted out desperately. “I don’t know if I’m good at it.”
“Darling.” He smiled at me. “Come here.”
I went over and stood in front of him. “What?”
“There’s no such thing as being good at it.”
“There isn’t?”
“It’s not a performance, it’s . . . loving someone and expressing that love in a certain way.”
“Uh huh?” I liked that, that sounded nice. Daddy expresses himself so well about things.
“Joshua comes from a certain kind of background,” Daddy said. “It’s not his fault. If he uses his father as a role model—”
“I don’t think he does,” I said hastily. “He doesn’t like him.”
“Still . . . something may have rubbed off. And—”
Just then Deel came home. “Hi, gang,” she said cheerfully.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey, guess what? Lover boy’s brother was in school today.”
“Who?”
“Neil. He got back from Asia. The great one’s older brother,” she explained to Daddy.
“Deel, quit it, okay?”
“The amazing thing is, he’s really an interesting person. He was in India, he met all kinds of people involved in politics in East Germany. He said to me, ‘Most people think I’m radical . . . but compared to you, I’m like a member of Hitler Youth.’” She laughed appreciatively. “He’s a real iconoclast.” To Deel, that’s about the highest compliment you can pay anybody.
I was glad Daddy and I had that talk about sex and marriage and everything. Daddy is a very comforting person to talk to sometimes. He’s very solid. Sometimes that can bug you, but mostly it’s good.
Joshua began sending me these cards. They were little funny cards that said, “Do you forgive me?” or “Life seems bleak without you,” stuff like that. I just threw them away. I’m just going to work hard at school and keep up, so if I have to do this publicity trip and other things, I won’t fall behind. This awful thing happened in one of my classes. It was Science, where I usually do fairly well, but this year I haven’t done so well. We’re doing physics and Mr. Gerston, our teacher, doesn’t explain it clearly at all. During one class I just couldn’t understand one concept he was explaining so I raised my hand and said, “I don’t understand, Mr. Gerston, about kinetic energy?”
He looked at me, and then said in this really sarcastic voice, “I’m sorry you’re having trouble understanding, Ms. Engelberg. Why don’t you hire a tutor to help you?” When I didn’t say anything he went on, “Why don’t you hire a whole faculty? Or a whole school for that matter? The whole city? I’m sure you could afford it at this point.”
Everyone was laughing and I tried to laugh too, as though I thought it was funny, but I felt terrible.
“He’s awful!” Shellie said afterward. She’s been so good about everything. I’m glad I have one really good friend I can count on. Even the thing about the diaphragm. I felt so ashamed about doing such a crazy, awful thing that I’d decided not to tell anyone. I wrapped it up in tissue paper and put it in a Ziploc bag, and threw it out in the garbage can on the corner of our block. But when I told Shellie about it, about the whole thing, the fights, and everything, ending with that, she started to laugh. Shellie has this really all-out laugh. She doubled over, gasping, and said, “You? With a nail scissors? I can’t believe it!”
Somehow it suddenly struck me as funny too, and I began to laugh, remembering Joshua’s startled face when I hurled it in the wastebasket.
“What if you’d thrown it out the window?” Shellie said, wiping her eyes. “Imagine people walking down the street, minding their own business, when this thing comes winging down from outer space.”
“They’d probably have thought it was a flying saucer,” I said, giggling.
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Rusty’s diaphragm!”
When we stopped laughing, I said, “But seriously, I’m giving up on sex.”
“Don’t look at me. I haven’t even started yet!” Shellie has this boy she likes whom she met at camp, but he’s very intellectual and shy. They go to movies like Hamlet together and sometimes he holds her hand, but that’s about as far as it goes.
“Teenage boys are just sex maniacs,” I said. We were at our apartment.
“They are? Not Kenny.”
“He sounds nice,” I said wistfully.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind if he was a little more . . .”
“Yeah, but this way you know he really likes you. It isn’t like he’s seeing you just to have someone to fuck.”
“Was Joshua like that? I thought you said he wasn’t.”
I swallowed. Sometimes when I think about Joshua I feel just terrible, when I remember all the nice times we had together. “I don’t know. I can’t—” I broke off.
Shellie patted my shoulder. “I think he really liked you,” she said.
“But why did he act that way? I didn’t say I was going to act in that movie. I just said I might try out for it if the script was really good.”
Shellie thought a minute. “Maybe he’s insecure. He might think if you get that rich and famous, you won’t have time for him.”
“But I told him that wasn’t true.”
“Are you really going to be on the Today show?”
I made a face. “Maybe . . . isn’t that weird?”
“God, won’t you be scared?”
“It’s only for about fifteen m
inutes. It might not be so bad.”
There’s one thing I haven’t even told Shellie about. It’s that People wants to do an interview with me. They’re sending someone around the week after next. The reason I haven’t told her is I used to sometimes buy People or Us after school and Shellie would always say, “How can you read that junk?” She’d always buy Rolling Stone or Omni, this science magazine she likes. But the thing is, I don’t like all of People, but they do have interviews with interesting people sometimes, like Donna Summer. And they find out all those little things that you’re curious about but most magazines might think weren’t that important.
Deel, of course, thought the thing with People was gross beyond belief, even when Mom pointed out that they’d interviewed Isaac Bashevis Singer and Mary McCarthy and lots of good, smart people. “Sure, for every person like that, they interview nine hundred total blobs,” she sneered. Well, what do you expect from Deel? I was surprised that she didn’t take Joshua’s attitude about Lolita. “Yeah, it’s the kind of thing you’d be good in,” she said. “It’s your kind of thing.”
The weirdest thing of all is that Deel actually went out on a date with Joshua’s brother Neil. He’s the one they thought might be gay, the one who meditates. Deel says he’s not gay, he’s just sensitive. I don’t know if that means he’s made a pass at her or what. It’s sort of a touchy subject with Deel because she always starts to like boys and gets crushes on them, and then they tell her they really like her a lot, but just as a friend.
While I was sitting there talking with Shellie, Deel came racing in from Daddy’s study where she’d been reading. “You’ll never believe this!” she said.
“What?” both of us said together.
“What happened?”
“There’s an obscene caller on the phone!”
“Which one?”
Mom and Daddy have two phones, one with the same number as Daddy’s office phone, and one for their friends. “Daddy’s . . . come quick.”
“What’s he saying?”
“It’s a she.”
“A woman?”
“Yeah . . . she was leaving a message on his answering service.”
“A dirty message?”
We all ran in and Deel turned it on. I’m always uncertain about how it works. “Wait,” Deel said. She pressed a button and turned it back. Then she turned it on again. First Daddy’s voice came on, saying, “This is Lionel Engelberg. I’m not in right now, but if you wish to leave a message, you can do so after the beep.” Then there was the beep, a quiet one, and then this woman’s voice said, very slowly in this low, smooth voice, “Mr. Engelberg . . . I want to suck your long Jewish cock.” That was all. We all stared at each other in amazement.
“I never heard of that!” Shellie said. “A woman making an obscene call?”
“Me neither,” I said.
“Who do you think it is?” Deel said.
“I don’t know . . . it doesn’t sound like anyone special. Play it again.”
We played it again.
“God, you know who it sounds like?” Shellie said, putting her hand over her mouth.
“Who?”
“Ms. Dean.”
“Ms. Dean?” She’s the counselor in our school, the person you go to if you have any special problems. “It couldn’t be.” We played it back. “I don’t think it really does, not really.”
“Just the beginning part.”
“Maybe it’s just some weirdo that has a thing about Jews,” Deel said.
“That’s really far out,” Shellie said.
“Wait till Daddy comes home,” I said. “Maybe he’ll recognize the voice.”
When Mom came home, we played it for her. “That has got to be the strangest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, shaking her head. “Goodness! Maybe it’s the one who sent him the valentine.”
I’d forgotten about that.
“Does it sound like anyone you know?” Shellie asked.
“I don’t think so . . . At first I thought maybe . . . just a tiny bit like Paula Henz, but not really. I think it’s just she’s always saying how sexy Jewish men are . . . Play it again, Deel.”
I reached over to press the button, but Deel shouted, “That’s the wrong button. Oh, dope, you erased it!”
I felt awful. “How do you know?”
“You don’t press that button. You press this one.” She pressed it again. “See, it’s gone.”
“Well, we all heard it anyway,” I said.
“But now Daddy won’t be able to hear it and find out who it was.”
“Maybe he knows,” Mom said.
We looked at her. “How could that be?”
“Well, maybe it’s a friend of his.”
“A friend wouldn’t leave a message like that!” Deel said.
“A crazy friend, maybe,” Shellie said.
“A secret admirer,” Mom said. “It’s all very mysterious.”
When Daddy came home, we all ran out and began telling him at once. “Wait a minute,” Daddy said. “When did this take place?”
“This afternoon,” Deel said, “but el dopo here erased it by mistake.”
“Who was it, Daddy?” I said eagerly. “Who do you think?”
Daddy looked bewildered. “It was a woman?”
“Darling, did you think it was a man?” Mom said.
“Well, perhaps some gay man . . .”
“It was a lady all right,” Deel said. “A crazy lady.”
“Huh,” Daddy said. “Well, there are a lot of peculiar people in the city . . . What’s for dinner, darling?”
“What’s for dinner, darling?” Mom said. “Come on, kid! What’s the story behind this?”
“The story?” Daddy’s eyes widened. “There is no story. None that I know of.”
“Is it the person who sent you the valentine?” I asked.
“How should I know?”
“But Daddy, think,” Deel insisted. “Who do you think it could be?”
“Can I eat dinner and think at the same time?” Daddy asked.
“You’d better come up with something good,” Mom said.
“Sweetie, I have no more idea than you do . . . especially since the tape was erased. Who did it sound like?”
“No one I know,” Mom said. “A tiny bit like Paula Henz.”
Daddy burst out laughing. “Paula? Terrific. I love it. I’m going to call her up after dinner and—”
“I said a tiny bit,” Mom said. “It couldn’t be Paula.”
“Why not?” Daddy smiled. “I bet it’s Paula.”
“Lionel, seriously.”
“All these years, I never suspected . . .”
“Lionel.”
Daddy took a long sip of wine. “God, I hope it wasn’t Margaret.” Margaret is Daddy’s secretary, the one who’s fat and not at all sexy.
“Why in God’s name would you think of Margaret?” Mom said.
“She just seems like the type somehow,” Daddy said, thoughtfully.
“Margaret seems like the type to make an obscene phone call?” Mom said. “In what way?”
“Well, I guess I’m thinking of this girl who used to make calls like that to me at college,” Daddy said. “She looked a lot like Margaret.”
“What girl?” Mom said. “You never mentioned her.”
“It’s a sad story,” Daddy said.
“Who was it, Daddy?” Deel said.
“Well, this girl used to call me. I guess she found my name in the phone book, and we’d talk about personal things—”
“Obscene things?” I asked.
“No, it was just . . . I’d never met her. We’d talk about sex, loneliness, you know . . . It went on for months. Then finally we arranged to meet. I went to this hotel and looked around but I couldn’t see her. I saw this one girl, but I knew it couldn’t be her because she was fat, funny looking, forlorn.”
“But it was her?” Deel said.
“It was her,” Daddy said sadly.
“God, I hope you had sex with her,” Mom said.
“Darling, her hair was falling out. She had legs like—”
“This is the saddest story I have ever heard,” Mom said.
“Did she keep calling you after that?” Deel asked.
“A few times,” Daddy said, reaching for a raw carrot. “But the bloom was gone.”
“So, wait a minute,” Mom said. “The conclusion you draw from this is that forlorn, overweight women make obscene phone calls?”
“Well . . .”
Mom wailed. “Lionel, shame on you! Margaret? After all those years of loyalty and devotion?”
Daddy looked sheepish. “Okay . . . forget Margaret.”
I felt so mad at myself for erasing the tape. Now we’ll never know who it was. Unless that person calls back and leaves another message. I hope they do!
I kept thinking how, if I were still seeing Joshua, we’d joke about the obscene caller. I miss him at times like this. I miss him a lot, actually, though I haven’t said that to anyone. Sometimes just walking down the street I’ll think of him, or if I see some movie playing that he likes, or if I pass the Thalia or the Regency where we used to go to see old movies. I felt funny when his brother Neil came over one day with Deel. Deel and Neil. It sounds funny together.
I’d never met Neil since he was traveling around Europe when I started seeing Joshua. He’s not really handsome like Tommy, Joshua’s other brother. He looks a little bit like Joshua except he’s taller and thinner and has darker hair. He has a black beard and sort of longish hair in a pony tail. What he does is he plays the lute. He even makes lutes and things like that. He learned how from a man in Italy and now he’s thinking of doing that for a living. I didn’t know that many people wanted lutes, but evidently they do. He kept looking at me, but sort of shyly, as though he didn’t know what to say.
“I hear you’re a very good actress,” he said finally. Deel was in the kitchen making tea for both of them.
“Not really,” I said. I wondered where he’d heard that.
“Joshua said you were.” He kept staring at me. I wondered what else Joshua had said about me. That I was dumb and terrible at fucking? “I want to see your movie.”
“It’s not mine, exactly.”
“It must be hard, being famous.” He had very sympathetic dark eyes.
“I don’t think I’m famous,” I said.