Mom decided to have Simon tell Deel. I guess she chickened out. I don’t blame her. Simon and Deel went out one Saturday afternoon to a play and then they had dinner. The next morning I asked her how it had gone.
“You know about it, huh?” she said.
I nodded. I told her about walking in on them the week before.
“What’s weird,” Deel said, “is that he actually wants to marry her.”
“Why is that so weird?” I said.
“Mom?”
“You’re just prejudiced against her. She’s really pretty and nice.”
“Listen, I don’t care . . . let them do what they want.”
“Do you still want to live with Daddy?”
Deel looked horrified. “With some little six-year-old kid rampaging around the house? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“How did you know about Abigail?” I was really surprised.
“What do you mean, how did I know? They’ve been at it for years.”
“What?”
Deel grinned. “Sure . . . you could tell a mile away.”
“Tell what?”
“That she had a mad crush on him and—”
“But, how could you tell Daddy liked her?”
“Oh, Daddy’s pretty transparent in an opaque kind of way,” Deel said.
Deel is so smart. I remember how one of her teachers once wrote in a report that she was “terrifyingly perceptive.” Imagine figuring all that out! “Do you think she made that dirty phone call?” I said, suddenly remembering.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like something she’d do, exactly.”
Daddy was coming back that night from a trip. Mom had said she wanted that time to talk to him. “Poor Daddy,” I said. “He’s the last to know.”
“Oh, he probably knows,” Deel said. “He’s not so dumb.”
“How could he?” I said. “You mean they’ve been pretending all along?”
“Pretending what?”
“Pretending to be happily married when they weren’t.”
“They weren’t pretending anything . . . they were happy, more or less. They just happened to fall in love with other people.”
I guess what I can’t get over is how blasé Deel sounds. Maybe being in love with Neil has made the whole thing less important to her. “I might actually live with Neil,” she said. “He’s thinking of buying a loft with this friend in Soho.”
“Mom and Daddy’ll kill you!” I exclaimed.
“What do you mean? They’ll be delighted. She’ll want to be alone to cuddle up with Simon and Daddy’ll be getting it all together with Abigail. They don’t need us.”
That made me feel awful. “We’re still their children.”
“I’m not a child,” Deel said haughtily. “And neither are you.”
“Well, I still want to live with them.”
“With which of them?”
I thought a minute. “Maybe I could live part time with both.”
Deel looked thoughtful. “Listen, let me give you one piece of advice. Take weekends with Mom and weekdays with Daddy.”
“If you take weekends with Daddy, you’ll be stuck babysitting for Kerim.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Simon said Mom’s keeping the apartment.”
“Well, since it’s a co-op . . .”
“That’ll be good,” Deel said. “I can keep all my junk here.”
I stayed over with Shellie that night since Mom had said she wanted to be alone with Daddy. Shellie was understanding and good. Of course, her parents have been divorced and remarried for ages so it doesn’t seem so strange to her. “Yours stuck it out pretty long,” she said, impressed. “A lot longer than most.”
“I think they were happy,” I said. “I think they really loved each other.”
“Probably they did,” Shellie said. “They usually do in the beginning.”
When Deel and I got home Sunday night, everything looked just the same as usual. Daddy was in the living room, listening to music. But for some weird reason when I saw him, I burst into tears.
“Darling,” he said hugging me. “Don’t . . . it’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”
He said all this stuff about how he and Mom had stayed together because they loved Deel and me so much and wanted us to have a happy home, but now that we were older, it just didn’t seem possible anymore.
“Will you live way down in the Village?” I said.
“Definitely not,” he said. “We’ll look for something right around here.”
There were so many things I felt like asking him, like whether he and Abigail had liked each other a long time, like Deel said, but I didn’t know if I should. “Did Abigail send you that valentine, Daddy, the one I thought was addressed to me?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“Did she make the dirty phone call, too?”
“No,” Daddy said. “I don’t know who that was. It will remain one of life’s many unsolved mysteries.”
I know this is awful, but I feel a little bit jealous of Daddy having another child, even if it is a boy. “Are you going to have more children?” I said.
Daddy sighed. “I think Kerim is going to be enough for me, at my age,” he said.
“I’ll help you with him,” I said. “I think he’s cute.”
“That’s nice of you, Tat.” He beamed at me affectionately.
“Daddy, what if Mom hadn’t fallen in love with Simon and wanted to marry him? What would you have done?”
“I wanted us to stay together,” he said. “For you and Cordelia. I wanted you to have a solid base, something that would be there always.”
“But what about Abigail?”
He reddened. “What do you mean?”
“What would you have done about her? I mean, aren’t you in love with her?”
“Well, people work these things out,” Daddy said, tapping his fingertips together. “There are many ways—”
“No, what I mean is, wouldn’t you have felt funny? Being in love with one person and being married to another person?”
Daddy sighed. “Darling, all of this is much more complicated than it seems. People start out in marriage naturally expecting that, well, they’ll be in love forever, but inevitably—”
“Inevitably?”
“Maybe not inevitably, but often something happens and . . . well, one can’t just walk out like that. There are children, there’s a home. People fall in and out of love all the time. But it’s irresponsible to use that as an excuse to dissolve a marriage.”
“Do you think Mom is being irresponsible?”
He hesitated. “I didn’t say that.”
But I could tell that’s what he thought.
Poor Mom and Daddy! I feel so sorry for them. I remember how Deel and I used to worry about how they’d manage once we were both out of the house and in college. It’s true, they have jobs and interests and things like that, but it does seem like they spend an awful lot of time worrying about us and planning things around us. We were terribly afraid they’d both go moping forlornly around the house, totally at loose ends, like those people Deel read about in Passages. Now at least that won’t happen.
I hope they know what they’re doing, though. I hope they’ll be happy. It’s funny. All these years they kept giving me advice about what to do and I took it because I thought they knew everything about everything. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t blame either of them. I wouldn’t have liked it if they’d stayed together just for me and Deel, being in love with other people. I don’t care what Daddy says, that sounds awful to me. Well, I know one thing. When I grow up, I’m going to do it differently. I’m not going to marry until I find someone I know I can love forever. Even if that means waiting till I’m forty or never marrying at all! And if I have children, I’m going to be completely honest with them about everything. I won’t pretend to give advice, if I don’t know what I’m doing myself. I won’t put on a false front.
When I got home from school the next day, I found Mom in the bedroom, just staring out the window. It’s rare for Mom to just sit. She’s a very active kind of person. When I came in, she jumped. “Oh, hi, Tat.”
Ever since they said they were getting divorced, I have the feeling that Mom and Daddy have been avoiding each other. At least, they’re hardly ever both at home together. I went over and sat down beside her. I kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Are you okay?”
“Sure.” She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I just hope I’m doing the right thing. Do you think I am, sweetie? Tell me honestly.”
“You mean about Simon?”
She nodded.
“Sure, I mean, if you love him . . .”
“But, his being younger—”
“I don’t think age matters . . . anyway, I think Daddy’s wrong.”
“About what?”
“Well, he says you should have stayed together even if you loved other people. But that sounds awful to me.”
“I couldn’t live like that,” Mom said. “Maybe men can, more easily . . . What else did Lionel say?”
“Oh, stuff about sex, like he always does.”
Mom laughed. “What stuff?”
“I just think he wishes Joshua and me would stop fucking. He kept talking about how great celibacy is.”
“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.”
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, if 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.”