Interior Design

by Philip Graham

  Fern wishes they weren’t nearing her block, now she just wants to listen and listen. Marjorie looks at her and grins. “You don’t talk much, but you don’t need to. Look, when I get an impulse, I follow it, and that’s what you did today. Twice. But you didn’t know it. Well, Fern, you’re going to be my ordinary housewife with hidden depths.”

  *

  Fern sits in her agent’s office, waiting, wishing Marjorie wasn’t so late. While Dougie reads the long-term contract Marjorie has offered, Fern glances at the walls and all the framed and signed photos of stars who seem to stare past her dreamily.

  Dougie waves the pages at her. “You’ve read this carefully, Fran?” Fern nods and doesn’t correct him. Just a week ago he didn’t return her phone calls.

  Dougie takes off his horn-rimmed glasses and pokes them at the contract. “This is unortho, very unortho. No script, everything improv? Only one commercial per sponsor and you don’t even know what you’re selling until right before the first take?”

  She wishes he wouldn’t clip his words like that, it’s so annoying, but Fern only stares at his pinched lips and says nothing. There’s more he could question—no outside work or interviews for the term of the contract—but she doesn’t want trouble. She wants to sign.

  He puts his glasses back on and sighs, his eyes larger as he stares at her silence. She can see he doesn’t think this will fly at all. “But it is your first break,” he says, “so I don’t want to push too hard, she might change her mind.” And when Marjorie finally arrives and sits before them Dougie only manages a lackluster, “Y’know, Fran and I have a teeny question about the interview clause…”

  “Donnie, Donnie,” Marjorie says, “for this project to work we need to stay mysterious, nest-ce pas? So no one gives interviews. Trust me, I know.” She points to her earrings: little plastic garbage cans, the lids bulging up with bright refuse. “I can hear America singing.”

  Fern giggles.

  “Don’t,” Marjorie says. “It’s bad luck to laugh at earrings, didn’t your mommy ever teach you anything?”

  *

  “Fern, Fern!” David shouts out, and she runs down the hall to the living room, in time to see herself in the center of the television screen. Her chin is resting on the redhead’s shoulder, surrounded by a wild, animated kitchen: the edges of the cabinets and the refrigerator door are off-balance, almost ready to fly away, but Fern is the still, steady center.

  As she watches the close-up of her large gleaming eyes, her little squiggle of a smile, Fern feels oddly fragile and she’s glad when the commercial ends. But David has long anticipated his invisible influence in this little drama, and he slaps a blank tape in the VCR and he won’t stop watching TV until her commercial finally returns. Then he can’t stop replaying Fern’s hand moving down that back, the widening of her excited eyes.

  The commercial becomes hugely popular. Soon Fern stands again before another blue backdrop, facing the cameras. Marjorie saunters up to her wearing cut-off jeans over white panty hose, and there are stick figures painted on the bright nylon fabric, engaged in awkward intimate acts like some child’s uninformed dream of sex.

  Marjorie whispers, “Liquid cleanser.” Then she sits back down by the cameras, her legs crossed. The raised arms of an ecstatic figure span her shin and one painted hand, spread across her knee, seems to be waving.

  Everyone waits. Fern’s own arm rises, her hand first circling in the air as if waving back, whether at that figure or at Marjorie, she’s not sure. Then she’s rubbing her palm against the air, scrubbing at a nothing that seems to surround her. She twists about, both hands now billowing, and she’s surprised at how easy it is to move in an acrobatic, widening circle until whatever she’s washing away is finally gone.

  “My, my, some great close-ups,” Marjorie calls out, and she walks over to Fern. “Now I’d like to work out some different angles.” She turns suddenly, back to the cameras. “Mick, dear, would you be a good shadow and follow me?” He just stands there by her empty chair, staring furiously at his pad. But Marjorie doesn’t see this, she is looking at Fern with admiration, and then she laughs, her lips round with pleasure. “This is just what the gals out there will like, they won’t know what you’ll do next.”

  *

  Fern turns off the faucet and lets the plate slip into the suds. “What?” she asks.

  “I said if that wasn’t enough…” David sips his beer and leans back in his chair, “this old guy jumps the turnstile—he can barely do it—and the cop on the beat chases after him. And ‘cuffs him. An old guy.” David looks at the ceiling, sips some more. “And then some turd mouths off because I won’t take a Canadian quarter.”

  Fern goes to him and tickles his knee with her damp fingers. “Poor sweetie, how are you ever going to write your great song with rotten days like this? I’m sure tomorrow will be better.”

  But David is in one of his moods: he cups an ear and mouths a silent response, as if he’s still inside his glass booth. Then he wanders down the hall and hums aimlessly, jiggling coins in his pocket—his usual rhythm section—but he can’t seem to find an opening into a new melody.

  Eventually he joins Fern on the couch and watches TV: two fat people wisecracking over a smoking barbecue grill. The laugh track laughs and then on the screen an acrobatic Fern is scrubbing away a malevolent cloud of grime.

  David rushes to the VCR and presses the Record button. He catches her last elastic movements as the bedraggled, illustrated kitchen around her becomes almost painfully pristine. “Jeez, what gave you the idea to do that?” David asks, pressing Rewind.

  Fern hesitates, wishing she had another romantic tale to tell him. “You,” she says, surprising herself. “I imagined we were washing each other in the shower.”

  David watches a few seconds of the replay and then he shouts, “Okey do-key!” He jumps up and dances with Fern’s peculiar scouring motions on the screen.

  The phone rings and Fern gets it. “Hello, doll,” Dougie says. “I think I can get you a spot on Letterman.”

  “But Dougie, no interviews, remember?”

  “What interview? There’s no interview. He just makes fun of you for five minutes.”

  Fern hears David pacing in the hall, jangling coins again. “I’m just not sure it’s possible,” she says.

  “You’re worried about that wacky contract you signed, right?”

  “We signed.”

  “Who knew, who knew?”

  Fern can hear David singing. “Don’t scrub the floor, scrub me,” he begins. It’s his first new song after a month of silence.

  “Dougie, look, I have to go, okay? Bye.” She listens to the unpredictable wavering of David’s voice, and she s pleased that her little lie has made him so happy.

  *

  Fern is soon accustomed to finding her accomplished domestic face on TV, in the center of animated kitchens of nervous color and edgy chiaroscuro. Artforum runs a review of her latest commercial and hails New Wave Domesticity. TV Guide reports that housewives buy whatever Fern sells, just so the spots will continue to run. Dougie keeps calling to tell her that People will be happy to proclaim her the National Housewife, if only she’d grant an interview. Fern is glad she can’t. She doesn’t feel very housewifely, even after devouring women’s magazines, memorizing newspaper recipes, and trying to learn knitting.

  She clicks away with her long needles during afternoon soaps, but the repetitive weaving of her hands lulls her too easily. She looks up at the television: a glamorous blonde hides a letter behind a sofa pillow just as a lushly handsome man enters the room. He greets her and sits down right where the letter is hidden. His thin smile defies interpretation as he stares into the camera. The music swells.

  Then Fern’s face is in close-up, her features filled with sudden surges of twitches and grimaces, while behind her is yet another animated background: a succession of homey meals prepared by invisible hands. The sound track is the grunt of the dishwasher, the groan of the vac
uum cleaner and the drunken whoosh of the clothes dryer, and every image and sound seems to change with each new flicker of pain on Fern’s face, until she reaches for a floating bottle of aspirin.

  Fern sets down her tangle of yarn and glances about her living room. If only I could make this writhe around me, she thinks. She scrunches her face, warps her lips at the inflexible furniture, and the phone rings.

  “Doll? I’ve got a bit part for you on ‘Home Improvement,’ and it’s just the beginning—”

  “Dougie, you know I can’t.” She contorts her cheeks and buckles an eyebrow at the all-too-solid coffee table.

  “Doll. It’s time to renegosh.”

  “Please, I don’t want to jeopardize—”

  “Okay okay okay. Remember, when you’re ready, I’m ready.”

  “I know.” Fern says good-bye, and she looks down at the confusing knot of her unfinished sweater. The phone rings again and Fern hesitates before picking up the receiver, she’s had enough nagging. But it’s Marjorie.

  “Fern? We have a shoot lined up for tomorrow morning—sorry it’s such short—”

  “That’s okay,” Fern says. She pauses. “Uh, Marjorie?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “I’d like to push myself more. How about telling me ahead of time what’s up so I can prepare?”

  “Prepare? I don’t know, kiddo, we’re doing so well the way we—”

  “You’re probably right,” Fern sighs. “It’s just that I had this impulse—”

  “An impulse. Well, why not take a chance? How about I give you a teeny hint?”

  Fern grins into the receiver. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll have a co-star. Female, and much younger than you.”

  “How much younger?”

  “Oh, don’t you want even a little surprise?”

  After saying good-bye Fern wants to treat herself to the biggest piece of chocolate she can find. She walks to the grocery around the corner, and in a cramped aisle of sweets she notices a graying woman peering intently at boxes of pudding on the shelf. Fern stops: it’s a pudding she did a spot for. She remembers how a spoonful of vanilla transformed itself into enticing, shivery shapes in front of her continually amazed face.

  The woman hesitates, her nail tracing the spoon on the cover of one of the boxes, but then she grabs it and drops it in her cart. How often do I hold that spoon in her mind? Fern wonders. She follows the woman to the checkout counter, then out the door and behind her on the crowded sidewalk. Fern imagines that she’s somewhere inside everyone walking by her, multiplied like the repeated images in a row of department store TVs. And where do I go when they stop thinking of me? A bit woozy at this thought, she stops at the edge of the park and sits down on a bench. Fern closes her eyes, and through the dull hum of traffic she hears the distant sound of laughter in the park. A girl’s laughter. That could be my co-star, Fern thinks.

  She follows the voice, each new happy burst leading her to a shaded clearing. A young mother lies on the grass while her daughter squirms all over her, transforming her into a shield, a ladder, a cushion. The mother seems to be snatching ten, fifteen seconds of sleep at a stretch. The girl awkwardly slaps her palms together: “Clap hands! Clap hands!” she sings out, her face alive with delight. Fern watches carefully and cups her hands around her eyes, creating a screen around them. Aha, she thinks—whatever I’ll be during tomorrow’s shoot, I’d better be tired.

  When Fern returns to her apartment she stands in the living room and tries to imagine a little girl at her side. What should they do together, and with what product? If only Marjorie were marching toward her, about to divulge the secret. Fern strains to hear whispered words that don’t come, and when she turns to the darkening window she can only see herself.

  Watching her reflection, she reaches her hand out, as if squeezing the shoulder of a child beside her. Pretending her knuckles are tickled by the girl’s long hair, Fern twirls a finger at an imagined strand. Then she hears David at the door, the bolts unlocking, and he’s walking down the hall, swinging an air freshener by its string. “Just one sniff and you’ll be mine,” he sings. He nuzzles Fern’s neck, and her almost invented child fades to nothing.

  Over dinner, while Fern tries to concentrate on the empty chair she’s pulled up to the table, David scats “Gimme gimme good margarine.” Later, his hands in the soapy sink, he serenades the stacked plates in the dish drainer with “Let’s dry off together tonight,” and he looks over his shoulder for her approval. Fern almost asks him to stop, but hesitates. Even if they do sound too much like jingles, she can’t help feeling pleased that she’s inspired David to create all these new songs.

  That night, with her musical David finally asleep, Fern lies beside him and again tries to conjure up the girl. What might a child want, so lonely in her own room—a glass of water? What might be keeping her awake—a strange sound in the toy chest? Or perhaps the carpet has come alive under the night light, making strange, barely visible ripples. But instead of hearing a girl’s pleading voice, Fern is filled with the thought of the rug under her own bed, its woolen weave disentangling itself, wriggling ominously and ready to reach out at the foot of anyone foolishly considering escape.

  *

  Fern crouches exhausted before the camera and, searching for an idea, she tangles her hand in the blonde hair of the little girl standing beside her. But the child can only offer a precociously well-choreographed smile and wait, and all of Fern’s inspiration is parked on the other side of sleep.

  Marjorie quickly calls off the shoot and sits beside her in a corner. “Did we over-prepare last night? A mistake, perhaps.” She shakes her head and her earrings, two bright plastic sailboats, bobble and sway. “Oh, storm-tossed waves!”

  Fern says nothing; her jaw hurts from stifling so many yawns.

  “Okay,” Marjorie says, and her fingernails flick at the air, as if any difficulty can be easily brushed aside, “we can continue in the afternoon. In the meantime, why not a little nappy? You can crash in my apartment.”

  So ashamed of her failure, Fern can’t even look at Marjorie. “I think I’d rather go back to my place, thanks.”

  “Compromise. A drive home.” Marjorie isn’t asking.

  In the car they’re both silent. “Hey,” Marjorie finally says, “you think you have troubles? Haven’t you noticed that Mick isn’t around any more? We broke up.”

  “You and Mick? You were—”

  “Yeah yeah. He wasn’t much, believe me, but I don’t like being dumped.” She pushes in the cigarette lighter with a deft slap of her palm. “Could you open the glove compartment, please?”

  Fern pulls on the tiny door. Inside are cans of imported cocktail sausages.

  “I’m absolutely starved. Would you be sweet and open one?”

  Fern pulls the tab and lifts off the aluminum top. The sausages are packed together in a viscous gelatin and she struggles to pull one out.

  Marjorie pushes Fern’s hand away and expertly lifts a sausage from the thick goo. The cigarette lighter pops back with a click. Her knees balancing the wheel, Marjorie pulls out the lighter and presses its red coil against the sausage. Fern hears sizzling.

  Marjorie eats the singed tip. “Revenge and protein, all at once. Want some?”

  Fern shakes her head no at the acrid smell and looks away.

  They’re at her block. Marjorie scribbles on a piece of paper. “Look, just in case you lose the keys to your apartment—here’s my address.”

  That afternoon, still under the spell of the odd hum that lingers after a nap, Fern hugs the little girl too tightly before the cameras, wanting so hard to possess the motherly moment that eluded her last night. This is the scene that David later can’t help but gape at in front of the TV: in a photorealistic kitchen that is alarmingly antiseptic, a daughter tucked in a mother’s enveloping arms reveals the urge to pull away when her smile erupts into a fleeting wince. But Fern won’t break her grip. David presses the Re
wind button and starts it again.

  “I pretended you were leaving me,” Fern lies, anticipating David’s question, “but I wouldn’t let you go.”

  David pulls away from that startling hint of secret distress flickering on the screen and turns to Fern. He grins and then walks slowly toward her, his arms outstretched in reconciliation. Laughing, he clutches and swings her around, and the apartment becomes a dizzy backdrop for the story she just made up. “How could I go when the floor shines so?” he sings, and Fern flinches in his twirling embrace.

  *

  Fern rushes toward the camera, her hair uncombed, her eyes puffy and slightly wild. She holds her hands up to her unsettled face. She is remembering her dream: returning from work, she discovers David’s clothes on the couch, arranged as if he had just disappeared. His shirt is stuck against the back cushion, the empty sleeve resting on the armrest, and the legs of his jeans hang down off the couch to the carpet, his hollow socks nestled in and dangling from his shoes. She pokes among his clothes and finds his underpants, slightly soiled. She feels the irresistible urge to do a wash, and as she gathers up his clothes she feels something crawling in them and realizes it must be David, tiny and naked. She drops the bundle.

  “Terrific,” Marjorie says, “we’ll keep that.”

  Fern blinks at the lights.

  That evening over take-out Chinese, David humming his latest little ditty across from her, Fern is certain she knows what the new commercial will eventually look like: she’ll be menaced by something like Unsightly Kitchen Mold, her mouth will be half-open in horror while the shadows of tentacles shift across her face. It seems so predictable now. With her chopsticks she picks a Szechuan peppercorn away from the Cashew Chicken and she deliberately chews on it, hungry for a nice sharp ache.