Читать книгу Domestic Arrangements - Norma Klein - Страница 14

Chapter Five

Daddy likes to talk to cab drivers. He likes to just start talking to people he doesn’t know, sort of joking around. When we got into the cab, the cab driver (his name was Juan Martinez) said, “You know, I was about to go off duty, but the little lady looked so cold and tired, I decided what the heck. That’s my trouble—I’m too good-hearted.”

“Oh, you can’t be too good-hearted,” Daddy said. “That’s not possible.”

“No, it is possible,” Juan Martinez said. “Let me tell you. You’re good-hearted and what good does it do you? Does anyone notice? Does anyone care?”

“I’m glad you stopped,” I said shyly. “I was tired.”

“It’s October,” Juan Martinez said. “October does it to me.”

“What does it do?” Daddy said. “Why October?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. He was looking at us in his rearview mirror. “You really want to know?”

“I do,” Daddy said. “I’m on the edge of my seat. Aren’t you, Tat?”

Sometimes I think Daddy teases people a little, but they don’t always seem to notice.

“Well, you may not believe this,” Juan Martinez said, “but I used to be the soccer champion of Brazil.”

“And then what happened?” Daddy asked.

“Then what happened? Then I had a family; then I had kids to support; then I came to this country and got a job driving a cab . . . and there you are.”

“What is it about October, though?” I asked.

“Well, that’s when I quit. I quit back in October 1967.”

“Do you miss it?” Daddy asked.

Juan Martinez looked at him. “He wants to know if I miss it,” he said. “What do you think, mister? Do you think I miss it?”

“I imagine you do,” Daddy said.

“You’d rather be driving a cab in this crazy city than out there with crowds cheering when you make a goal? You’d rather be bucking traffic, getting held up, sworn at?”

“No, I don’t think I would, now that you mention it,” Daddy said.

“Listen, I’m not complaining,” Juan Martinez said. “I had my moment of glory, right? I mean, lots of people, they spend their whole lives waiting. I had it. So they can’t take that away from me, can they?”

“They certainly can’t,” Daddy said. “Tat, do you have a single? This corner is fine,” he said. We were right at our house.

Juan Martinez took the change. “Everybody should have one moment of glory,” he said.

“Definitely,” Daddy said. “I couldn’t agree with you more. At least one.”

“Listen, mister,” Juan Martinez called out the window. “I hope you won’t be offended by my saying this, but you’ve got a gorgeous daughter, you know that?”

Daddy smiled at me. “Of course I know that.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You look after her,” Juan Martinez said. “You keep an eye on her.”

“I’m trying to do just that,” Daddy said as we walked into the lobby.

We looked at each other and smiled.

“You know, Tat,” Daddy said in the elevator, “I think there’s an object lesson in that exchange.”

“There is?” I thought he was going to say something about how I shouldn’t be conceited about my looks.

“What I’m thinking of,” Daddy said, “is what he said about a moment of glory. He’s right. We all have it, usually anyway, at one point or another, but it doesn’t always lead anywhere. You think it’s a high point and you’ll go on and on, but you don’t necessarily.”

I wondered if he meant about his having won the Emmy five years ago, and not having won another one. I remember when the shooting started for Domestic Arrangements, Mom said that she was worried Daddy would be envious of Charlie since he’d always had vague thoughts of making a feature film. He optioned a book for about four years and then the author sold it to someone else for more money. I think that made him feel bad.

“Do you know what I mean?” Daddy said.

“About the Emmy?” I said.

“No, about you, darling . . . You don’t know, but when Domestic Arrangements opens, you may suddenly get a lot of attention and, well, it’ll be a nice thing, but it’ll be helpful if you try to take it in perspective, appreciate it, but—”

“Don’t let it go to my head?” I finished.

“Right . . . Lots of people will be crowding around you, telling you you’re gorgeous and talented, which you are . . . but you’ve got a whole life ahead of you. It’s something you have to . . . work on. Things won’t always come that easily, just strolling in and getting a lead in a feature film without any acting experience. That’s great, but don’t expect life to be like that.”

“I won’t,” I promised him.

Mom was at home, stretched out on the couch.

“How’d it go?” Daddy asked, giving her a kiss.

She gestured. “Not bad . . . God, those writers are idiots! You have to sit there, listening to such total junk, and pretend it’s the most fascinating thing you ever heard. How was the show?”

“Fair,” Daddy said. “A lot of male organs, larger than life.”

“Huh . . . oh, honey, that reminds me, did you put those kidneys back? They were supposed to be for dinner. How’s Abigail? Still as relentless as ever?”

“Never saw the kidneys,” Daddy said. “Abigail’s fine, not especially relentless that I could see.”

“You should introduce her to Simon,” I said, taking off my boots.

“What?” Mom and Daddy said together, in horror.

I was taken aback. “Well, you just said”—I meant Daddy—“she doesn’t get that much money from her husband and you’re always saying”—I meant Mom—“Simon ought to get married, so I thought—”

“Tat,” Daddy said. “Abigail is a highly cultured, sensitive person. She loves ballet, she’s studied Oriental art. What would she talk about with someone like Simon?” He looked disdainful.

“Well, that’s hardly the point,” Mom said, bristling. “Simon likes women with some kind of spark, or pizazz. Abigail would probably bore him senseless, reading him the latest issue of Ms. from cover to cover.”

“What do you mean?” Daddy said.

“Well, darling, you’re the one that always said what a party liner she was about feminist things,” Mom said. “I’m only quoting you.”

“That was years ago,” Daddy said. “She’s softened considerably. I thought you said Simon didn’t know what he was doing as a director, that he just got the job because his father knew somebody.”

“That’s how he got the job,” Mom said. “But he’s earned his keep. The cast loves him now. He has them eating out of his hand.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Daddy said. “I thought all that LSD he took might have softened his brain.”

“Lionel! That’s his generation. They all take stuff. So what? Big deal. His brain is in fine shape.”

“Big deal?” Daddy said. “To be stoned for ten years?”

“He wasn’t stoned for ten years.” Mom looked at him indignantly. “He went through a brief period in which he experimented with drugs a little . . . God, you’re such a moralist!”

“It’s his chromosomes,” Daddy said. “Let him worry about them.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” Mom said. “When are you going out, Tat?”

“I’m meeting Joshua at eight.” They were both looking at me so I said, “I’ll be back at one, okay?”

“Fine,” they said together.

Mom and Daddy were having guests for dinner, and Joshua’s parents were going out, so we’d decided to spend the evening over there. Joshua’s father has a wide-screen TV and there was some movie on Joshua wanted to watch. Joshua is an old-movie buff. He likes to watch all the movies some director made, every single one. They have this thing where you can record movies that are on in the middle of the night or when you’re away, and play them back any time you feel like it. Joshua says he wants to make movies when he grows up. But he wants to make really good movies, not like Domestic Arrangements and not like the things Daddy does. He wants to make great movies, like Ingmar Bergman, or Lubitsch. I think he probably will. He’s a very determined person. He said the minute he saw me, he knew we’d go to bed together or he’d die. I didn’t think anything special when I saw him.

Joshua’s parents were just leaving when I arrived. Joshua’s mother was wearing a white fur coat. She had her hair in a gray turban. “Oh, hi, Tatiana,” she said, smiling stiffly. Maybe she felt funny after that talk with Mom and Daddy.

“Well, there’s the girl,” Joshua’s father said. “We had a nice time with your parents the other night, Tatiana. I’m glad we met them finally.” He had this sort of loud, booming voice.

“Yes, they were glad too,” I said hesitantly.

“Now I know where you get your looks,” he said. “Your mother is quite a looker.”

“Patrick, I think we really should be going,” Joshua’s mother said.

“The two of you should be in something together,” he went on, ignoring her. “You’d be sensational. I want to talk to my pal Dan about it. He’s looking around for someone to—”

“It’s past eight thirty,” Joshua’s mother said. “And I’m in a fur coat.”

“Sweetheart,” Joshua’s father said. “Don’t be so uptight. No one ever gets there on time.”

“Yes, they do. We just never do.”

He sighed, and rolled his eyes. “You see, the tyranny of women,” he said to Joshua and me. “How we are yoked and chained, but we submit.” He lowered his head like a bull. “I submit. Carry me off. Do with me what you will.”

After they’d left, Joshua shook his head and sighed. “The original wise guy.”

“Daddy didn’t like him,” I said.

“No one likes him.”

“Doesn’t your mother?”

“Are you kidding? How could anyone like him if they lived with him?”

“So, why doesn’t she divorce him?”

“I guess she figures why bother. He’s rich.”

“That’s gross, that she just stays with him for his money.”

“Yeah, well . . . I guess women do.”

“Joshua!” I looked at him indignantly. “Women do not! My mother doesn’t.”

“Your father isn’t rich.”

“He’s not poor . . . he says we’re comfortable.”

Joshua smiled. “Listen, Mom didn’t even want to go to the West Side to meet your parents. She was afraid they’d be mugged the second they went west of Fifth. She says she saw a cockroach walking up the wall of the restaurant.”

“Daddy liked her.”

“She liked him. She said he was very sincere.”

“He is.”

“Maybe we should fix them up,” Joshua said.

“Oh come on!”

“Why not?”

“My parents are happily married,” I said.

“Nobody’s parents are happily married,” Joshua said. “Some just put on a better front than others.”

“That’s really a cynical attitude.”

“Realistic.”

“Cynical.”

I glared at him. He came over in back of me and put his arms around me and hugged me. Then he slid his hands up under my shirt. “Hey, what’s this?” he said, touching my bra.

“I went out with Daddy this afternoon. He doesn’t like it when I go without a bra.”

“How does this work?” he said, trying to unhook it.

“It hooks in the front.”

He unhooked it and began stroking my breasts. “That’s more like it.” I could feel through his jeans he was hard already.

“Listen, I thought we were going to watch that movie,” I said, flushing.

“We can do both,” he said, reaching down to unzip my jeans.

“Joshua!”

“Why? You can’t do two things at once?”

“Not that.” I felt awful, that he would even want to.

“Hey.” He tilted my head up. “I was just teasing . . . it’s not on till nine.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“The study . . . my room’s a mess.”

Joshua’s room is always an unbelievable mess. Even Deel’s room, which Mom calls a “disaster area,” looks neat by comparison. His father’s study is really a big room with a fireplace and a big modular sofa that could seat around twenty people. I could tell that unless we fucked first Joshua wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the movie. He’s like that. If he gets horny, he can’t concentrate on anything. At first he tried to go slow, stroking me all over and kissing me, but then all of a sudden he began moving back and forth fast. His mouth was open on mine, hot, and he had his hands under my ass. “Oh, Rust,” he gasped. “Oh, oh—” Joshua really gets carried away when we fuck. Sometimes I almost feel scared, like he’s in a trance or something.

The bad thing is that I can’t get an orgasm when we fuck. I know you’re supposed to, but I can’t. Maybe I worry about it too much. But afterward when Joshua takes me in his arms and kisses me and strokes me, then I can do it. Maybe it’s partly because then he’s calm and loving, and I feel relaxed and good, whereas when we’re actually fucking, it’s like he’s a different person almost. I don’t make a lot of loud, groaning sounds like Joshua when I come. Joshua says I purr. He says I sound like their cat when you stroke her on her back a long time and she purrs and purrs.

Afterward he lay with his head propped up, leaning on his elbow, and stared at me with that intense expression he has.

“I’m scared,” he said.

“What of?”

“The movie . . . it’s opening in eight weeks.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I’m going to lose you,” he said dolefully.

“What do you mean?” I said softly. “No, you’re not.”

“You’re going to be surrounded by all these guys; older guys, suave, rich guys who’ll buy you champagne.”

“Joshua, come on . . . Think what a terrible person I’d be if that kind of thing mattered to me.”

“They’re going to feed you some line,” he said, ignoring me. “They’re going to tell you you’re gorgeous. They’ll have penthouse apartments, they’ll have coke in silver snuff boxes, they’ll have Japanese houseboys who’ll serve you pheasant under glass with seedless green grapes—”

I giggled. “Joshua!”

“Here I’ll be forlorn, mooning over your picture in the paper, going up to people at parties saying, ‘I once knew her, I once fucked her, she was once lying right in my father’s study staring at me with her big werewolf eyes.’”

“I’m going to love you forever,” I told him, putting my hand on his neck.

He melted. “No, you’re not, Rust.”

“I am, Joshua . . . why don’t you believe me?”

“Nobody loves anyone forever . . . especially at fourteen.”

“Juliet did.”

“No one in real life.”

“You’ll probably find some other girl. You’ll probably get together with Pamela.”

Joshua fucked with three people before he met me. Pamela was one. She’s in boarding school now, but she writes him these long, single-spaced letters and sends him copies of her poems in first drafts. She’s even had poems published in magazines. I saw her picture. She’s really tall and has a big nose and bright blue eyes. She looks like a better-looking version of Deel. Her parents were friendly with Joshua’s and they used to fuck in her parents’ roof garden in Scarsdale with all these plants and tropical birds all around. Joshua said one of the toucans shat on him once while they were doing it, right on his back.

He also once fucked with some girl at a party. They did it right there, at the party, under a big pile of coats. He didn’t even know her name till afterward. Her name was Georgette and he said she had great breasts. She went to Brearley and she’d already fucked with ten people. Evidently she liked to do it at parties. Anyway, they never saw each other again so I don’t feel so jealous of her.

Then there was Marjorie who was a mother’s helper for a family Joshua’s parents knew at East Hampton. Joshua’s parents had a house there one summer and this girl, who was in college, used to come over and use Joshua’s parents’ pool. He said she was skinny, but very friendly, and one day the two little kids she was looking after fell asleep and she asked Joshua if he wanted to go inside and have iced tea. He said she gave him a can of iced tea, and then she took her clothes off. Right there in the kitchen! She just took them off and then she asked if he wanted to see her room. He said he did. After that they fucked every day till the end of August when his parents went back to the city. She went to college in Colorado and said she’d write to him, but she never did. He said she really liked sex. I feel jealous of her, too. I feel jealous of Pamela because they used to talk about poetry and philosophy a lot, and other serious things, and I feel jealous of Marjorie because it sounds like she was more into sex than me and maybe fucking with her was more fun. Joshua said she always used to pounce on him. She liked to do it on top of him and all sorts of ways. He said she was a fun-loving person. She had her own horse at that college she went to.

“You know the reason Mom was so uptight about the thing with you?” Joshua said. “Last weekend Tommy was in and she found all this stuff in his drawer, coke, letters from girls. She really hit the ceiling.”

Tommy is Joshua’s older brother, not the one who’s traveling around Europe—that’s Neil. Tommy goes to this fancy prep school that Joshua’s father went to, Andover. He’s extremely handsome, almost like a movie star. He has really long, thick, dark eyelashes, and full lips, and a kind of slouching, brooding expression that evidently drives girls wild. He deals in drugs. Whenever he comes home on vacation, he gives Joshua whatever he wants.

“What did the notes say?”

“Oh stuff like, ‘My night with you was so wonderful,’ ‘I’ll never meet anyone like you . . . you’ve broken my heart.’ All that. How come I don’t get notes like that?” he said wryly.

“Do you want to?”

“Sure.”

“Should I write you one? I can if you want.” I took a piece of paper from the drawer, and a red Flair pen. I began to write. “Dear Joshua . . .” I looked up at him, smiling. “Now what?”

“‘I’ll never meet anyone like you,’” he said.

“That’s certainly true,” I said, writing.

“‘I love every inch of your sensational body,’” he dictated.

“Okay.” I wrote that.

“‘It’s incredible that such wit and charm could emanate from one person.’ . . . Um, let’s see. ‘Without you, life wouldn’t be worth living. I want to keep fucking with you forever.’”

I wrote it all down. Then I folded up the paper and gave it to him. I leaned over and kissed him. “It’s all true,” I said.

Joshua frowned. He bit his lip. “Rust, what I really want is—I want you to get older, but not different. I want you to grow, but not away from me.”

“Anything else?” I said.

“I want everyone to want you, but I want you to only want me.”

“Greedy.”

He laughed. “Of course.”

“You want everything.”

“Definitely. Why bother wanting less than everything?”

“Do you still want to watch the movie?”

He looked at the clock. “Oh, Christ, I forgot . . .” He turned on the set. We lay in the nude, watching. They sent up tons of heat in Joshua’s apartment. It’s usually 85 degrees. I know because there’s a thermometer in Joshua’s mother’s bedroom. We lay on our stomachs and every now and then Joshua would reach over and start stroking my ass, but he still kept watching the movie. Movies mean as much to Joshua as sex, which is saying quite a lot. I guess one difference between him and me is that he likes to analyze every movie he sees, to figure out why he liked it and what was wrong with it, and how he would have done it if he’d been the director. I tend just to like things or not. Joshua says I’m too easy to please. He says I like everything. That isn’t true. I didn’t like Star Wars and I didn’t like Carrie. There’re lots of things I don’t like.

After the movie we heated up some leftover pizza they had in the freezer and ate it in the den. Joshua had beer and I had Diet Pepsi. I’m not fat, but I don’t want to be, ever, so I weigh myself every day. We have a digital scale and you have to kick it before you weigh yourself. After you kick it, it says 000. Then you step on. You can step on fast or slowly. I haven’t figured out which way makes you weigh less. I weigh myself six times. Usually I get around three different weights and I pick the one I like best. Since I’m five-five, I think 115 is the best.

Joshua’s skinny. He’ll never have to worry about getting too fat.

“Are you staring at me because I look too fat?” I looked down at my belly. It did look puffed out a little, maybe from the pizza.

“Uh uh.”

“I gained two pounds,” I said nervously, “but I think I can lose them again. I might fast Monday.”

Joshua began squeezing me, my stomach, my breasts. “No, I like it. Those are two terrific pounds . . . Tat, come here.” He likes to fuck with me sitting in front of him. He likes me to wrap my legs around him. Then he goes into me and we rock back and forth, sitting up. He ran his hands up and down my back, my hair, my ass. “God, you feel so good,” he murmured. “What’s that perfume?”

“Honeysuckle . . . I got it from Mom.”

“Umm . . . oh wow!” Suddenly we lost balance. We rolled over onto the floor. Joshua’s penis came out of me. He pushed it back in again, hard, all the way.

“Wait . . . that hurts, Josh.”

“I’m sorry. Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” But in that position, where I’m lying on my back, he can’t seem to go slow the way he does when we’re rocking together, so it was over pretty quickly. When we were done, he flopped over onto his back and rolled his eyes back, like he was fainting. “Wow, that honeysuckle really did me in. Hey, did I really hurt you?”

“Only a little.”

“Should I kiss it and make it better?”

“Okay.” But as he started to, I said, “Josh?”

“Yeah?” He lay there, looking up at me like a cocker-spaniel puppy with his big brown eyes.

“The thing is, do you wish I was like Marjorie?”

“In what way?”

“About fucking. Being more . . . fun-loving.”

“You’re fun-loving, Rust.”

“More wild or whatever.”

“No, you’re good, Rust.” He looked at me earnestly. “You’re the best.”

“It’s just I’m sorry that I can’t come while we do it. I try, but I just can’t.”

“You will, don’t worry.”

“Will I?”

“Sure.” He began kissing me between the legs.

“Do you mind about it, though?” I closed my eyes.

“No . . . except I want you to be happy. I want to make you deliriously happy.”

I smiled drowsily.

“No, I mean it. I want you to be so happy that it’s like nothing else ever was.”

“Is it that way for you?”

He nodded.

That makes me feel so good, that I can do that for someone. I like making Joshua happy. It’s the best feeling.