Domestic Arrangements

by Norma Klein

  “Sweetie, you know, I wish you wouldn’t use the word fuck quite so often.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it’s . . . fuck is like sauerkraut. It’s such an ugly-sounding word.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe it’s a euphemism, but making love sounds more romantic to me.”

  “But nobody says that anymore, Mom, nobody my age.”

  “I know.” She looked wistful. “Fuck sounds so bare boneish, like two animals humping each other. Sometimes I worry that your generation is missing out on the romance of things.”

  I don’t think we’re missing out, not at all. I didn’t want to say it because I didn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings, but I think my generation is a lot better than hers and Daddy’s. I think we’re more honest about things. I know what she means about fuck, though. I used to think it wasn’t such a pretty word either. But lots of words aren’t and you still have to use them. Screw isn’t that much better. It sounds like something a carpenter would do. And Daddy always said “having sex” reminded him of ordering something in a restaurant.

  Joshua was good when I told him about Mom and Daddy getting divorced. I thought he might make some snotty remarks about “I told you so” but he didn’t. “It sounds pretty civilized, compared to some,” was all he said.

  “Yeah.” I thought of Henrietta Combine, whose father kicked her mother out of the house after she tried to hit him on the head with a frying pan and how they had to live with her grandparents in New Rochelle for seven months. And Jane Weston, whose father ran off with someone who had three children of her own and then he and that woman, who supposedly wasn’t even that nice or pretty or anything, had twins. I guess I’m pretty lucky.

  “Simon seems like a good guy,” Joshua said.

  “Do you think it matters that he’s seven years younger than Mom?”

  “Matters in what way?”

  “In any way?”

  “If it doesn’t matter to them, why should it matter to anyone else?”

  “True.” Joshua is like Deel in some ways—sort of detached about things. “You were wrong about Daddy,” I said.

  “I thought I was right.”

  “No! You said he was having an affair with his secretary. Abigail’s not a secretary.”

  “Well, secretary, film editor—same difference.”

  “What do you mean same difference?”

  “It’s the same thing. Just one rung up. It’s the same idea.”

  “Joshua! It’s completely different. Abigail isn’t some dumb blond secretary who just likes to fuck with married men.”

  “The Secretaries Union’ll get after you for that statement,” Joshua said.

  “The Film Editors Union’ll get after you,” I said.

  He hugged me.

  “I hope they’ll be happy,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “Oh, they probably will,” Joshua said. “For a while.”

  “Why only for a while?”

  “Everything’s for a while . . . life is for a while. No, it’s just sex is harder when you’re that age. Everything’s harder. Not like for us. For us it’s easy. We just look at each other and . . . boing!” He staggered, as though he’d been hit on the head.

  “Why do you always tease me?”

  “I don’t know. You’re just a very teasable person and a very—” He started sliding his hands under my shirt, up to my breasts.

  “Josh, I don’t think I feel in the mood for doing it tonight, is that okay?”

  He looked hurt. “How come?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t feel like it. And I thought, you know, you’d rather I only did it if I was really in the mood.”

  “You always seemed to be in the mood before.”

  “I wasn’t . . . I just figured I sort of had to, that you’d be mad if I didn’t.” I know this is odd, but before, when I never used to come when we did it, I figured one time was more or less the same as any other. But now that it’s gotten really good, I like the idea of it being special, not just always doing it every time we see each other.

  Josh was still scowling. “Is this some kind of power play?”

  “No! What do you mean?”

  “No sex unless you do what I want, that kind of thing?”

  “No, not at all.” I tried to explain how I felt about my parents putting pressure on me in different ways, like wanting me to be in Lolita or Daddy wanting me to break up with Joshua.

  “But it’s different with your parents,” Joshua said.

  “Yeah, but it’s the same issue, don’t you see, Josh? Wanting to please everybody and ending up doing things I know are wrong for me.”

  He grinned. “Sex isn’t wrong for you. It’s right. What could be more right?”

  I went up close to him. “I love doing it with you,” I said softly. “More than I ever did before. Don’t you believe me?”

  “Sure, Rust.” His voice got husky. “Of course I believe you.”

  “I don’t want you to watch me on the Today show, okay?”

  “Okay, but why not? Are you going to tell lurid stories about what a fantastic lover I am?”

  “No! I’ll just feel funny if I know you’re watching.”

  “I never watch the Today show,” Joshua said. “All those dumb celebrities shooting their mouths off. Big deal. Anyway, I have one right here and I can just turn her on whenever I want.”

  “You can not turn me on whenever you want!”

  He grinned. “Sure, I can. Where’s that knob?” He pretended to find one in the middle of my back. “Okay, here it goes. Instant color, sound . . .”

  They picked me up for the Today show in a limousine. Paula Myers, someone from publicity, went with me. I thought of what Felix had said about the Barbie-doll syndrome. She looked a lot like Kelly Neff, but she had a bigger nose. “It’s a pity about Felix,” she said.

  Felix was going to be on the show with me, but he had to go to the hospital to have his appendix out. “Yeah.” I was starting to feel a little nervous, the fact that it would be just me.

  “Carter Fenwick is a darling,” Paula said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  Actually, Carter Fenwick looks a lot like our social-studies teacher, Mr. Belinsky. That made me feel more relaxed, like I already knew him.

  When the cameras were on, he stepped up close to me and peered into my face. “I’m not trying to be rude,” he said. “But I’m trying to see if your eyes really are silver, Rusty. May I call you Rusty? I know the public at large knows you as Tatiana, which is certainly a beautiful name. Which do you prefer?”

  “Rusty, I guess.”

  “What color would you say your eyes are, Rusty? They look slightly blue to me, but they do have a silvery cast to them at a certain angle.”

  “I think they’re gray,” I said. “But it depends on what I wear.”

  “Well, we’ll let TV audiences decide for themselves, but I would say today they’re blue. That must be interesting—waking up with different color eyes each day . . . and your hair, Rusty. I seem to recall from Domestic Arrangements that you were, if not all hair . . . there was certainly a lot more of it than appears to be the case now. That wasn’t a wig, was it?”

  I shook my head. “I cut it.”

  “For any special reason?”

  I hesitated. “Well, I’m going to be in The Tempest this summer, my father’s directing it, I’m going to be Ariel, and I thought I’d look more like a fairy, a spirit, with short hair.”

  “That’s quite a change of pace from Domestic Arrangements . . . Do you think you can handle Shakespeare? I’m sure you can. I just ask because I would think it would present altogether different acting challenges.”

  “My father said he’d help me with the poetry part.”

  “Have you learned any of it so far?”

  “A little.”

  “How about reciting something for us?”

  “I could recite this song, i
f you want . . . I’ve been practicing it with my sister. She plays the lute.”

  “That would be lovely, Rusty . . . I’m afraid I don’t have a lute handy myself.” He called off stage. “Anyone with a lute out there? I guess not. Well, you’ll just have to make do without a lute.”

  Luckily I’d been practicing the song a lot and it’s pretty short. This is how it goes:

  Full fathom deep thy father lies

  Of his bones are coral made.

  Those are pearls that were his eyes,

  Nothing of him that doth fade

  But doth suffer a sea-change

  Into something rich and strange.

  Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

  Hark, now I hear them—ding dong bell.

  At one point my voice cracked a little, but I thought it went okay. “That was beautiful,” Carter Fenwick said. “Thank you very much, Rusty. I see you have a very lovely singing voice in addition to your many other accomplishments. And I imagine that will stand you in good stead in your first musical role, Lolita, which I understand will be going before the cameras this summer.”

  “Only I’m not going to be in it,” I said.

  He looked surprised. “That must be a recent decision.”

  I nodded. Actually, I’d just decided right then. It just came to me that I don’t want to do it. And I know now that I know just as much what’s right for me as Mom and Daddy do, maybe more. “I thought about it a lot, though,” I said.

  “What made you decide to turn it down?”

  “Well, I don’t want to be a star. It takes all your time and energy. I want to finish school. Maybe I’ll act a little in between, but that’s all.”

  “That sounds like a very sensible decision,” he said. “But it must be very hard, turning down offers like that, which I assume would make you a very rich young lady.”

  “My father would’ve made me save the money,” I said.

  He smiled. “Fathers are like that, aren’t they? Spoiling all the fun . . . Now just to divert for a moment, I imagine most of our viewers have seen Domestic Arrangements by now, and I wondered if you could tell us a little about how you came to be in the movie. I understand you hadn’t taken acting lessons and don’t go to any special school that emphasizes performing arts?”

  “Well, Daddy knew Charlie, the director? And Charlie said he especially wanted someone who hadn’t acted before. And he liked my hair. I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t that nervous for the audition because I never thought I’d get it . . . I was really surprised when I did.”

  “I think many people were extremely impressed by your capacity to hold the audience’s attention. You’re on screen almost all the time, even if you’re not always speaking.”

  I nodded.

  “Your mother’s an actress, isn’t she, Rusty? Did she give you any tips in that area?”

  “She said to always think of something the character might be thinking of . . . not to just start thinking things you would think of . . . I tried to do that, but sometimes I’d forget.”

  “It certainly wasn’t noticeable. You mean sometimes you’d be thinking, ‘I wonder what we’re having for dinner tonight?’ when you were supposed to be concentrating on seducing your stepfather, that kind of thing?”

  I nodded.

  “What did you think of Samantha, Rusty? Did you like her?”

  “No, not that much . . . I mean, if I met her in real life, I don’t think we’d be friends.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She’s not that friendly to girls. She seemed more like she cared a lot about what boys thought of her.”

  “Don’t your friends care about that?”

  “Sort of . . . but that’s not all they care about. They care about other things too.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as school or hobbies, what they want to do when they grow up, their parents, stuff like that.”

  “What are you going to be when you grow up, Rusty?”

  “A doctor,” I said firmly. “I’m going to deliver babies.”

  “That takes a long time, a lot of training.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “I’m prepared for that.”

  “I suppose one way in which your own background is very different from Samantha’s,” he said, “is that her life was concerned with coping with the complications of stepparents, step-siblings . . . whereas you, from what I’ve read, come from a very stable home.”

  I hesitated. “Sort of.”

  “You don’t?” He looked really surprised.

  “Well, my parents are getting divorced. They just decided to.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “They’re in love with other people so no one’s upset or anything.”

  “I see.”

  “They still love each other, but they fell in love with other people.”

  Carter Fenwick looked at me as though he couldn’t think of what to say. “That happens in the best of families, I guess,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “It does.”