Don't Make a Scene Read online

  The following afternoon her parents knocked on her door at two.

  “Your father and I have been talking,” her mother began.

  “And I was talking to my old friend Milt Ostrowsky” her father continued. “You remember him. And Milt thought it might be a great idea for you to take a cruise. There's a singles cruise that leaves the New York docks every week for the Caribbean.”

  “Why would I go on a cruise?”

  “Okay, you don't like that idea,” Connie said, looking at Gene.

  “A singles cruise! I need that like I need a pet llama.”

  “Forget the cruise,” her mother said quickly. “You take a plane … to Greece!” She smiled at Diane broadly. “There's an adult artists’ camp that Ruth's daughter went to. She made ceramics. She had a wonderful time and met some very lovely people.”

  Diane leaned against the wall to stretch her calves. “I can't take vacation now.”

  “Well, nobody said right now,” Connie told her.

  “Who said right now? We were talking about next week!” her father said, and laughed.

  She stared at them.

  “Okay! You don't like that idea,” Connie continued: “What about this idea: You come with us to synagogue next week.”

  “Since when do you go to synagogue?”

  “We don't. But we thought since you're living here now, you might want to reconnect with old friends in town? No? She doesn't like any of my ideas, Gene.”

  “It's Saturday. I just wanted to hang out. That's my idea.”

  “Yes, it's Saturday,” her father said. “Diane should be allowed to hang out in her own home. Come, Connie.”

  They left, simmering with unsaid business. She could hear them whispering in their bedroom with an urgency that she hardly felt was warranted. Gene had gone to Columbia, Connie had gone to Barnard. They'd been introduced by friends in 1964, and had been together ever since. Diane supposed she could meet anyone on a singles cruise. But she wasn't looking for anyone. How did Federico Fellini find Nino Rota? Rota's festive music was perfectly suited to Fellini's amused examinations of human activity; the soundtrack to La Dolce Vita (1960), for example, acted like carbonated coffee racing through the veins. On the other hand, Luis Buñuel avoided music; he thought it made for too easy an effect. Still what was wrong with an easy effect, now and then? How many people saw Buñuel's films again and again?

  On Monday morning, the Renovation Committee approved the Wiley Hurtado Padrón design. Diane called the architects up to give them the good news. She got Chris, who sounded pleased and relieved. He suggested a meeting the week after Thanksgiving, and she wrote it down in her date book in turquoise ink.

  The next morning, Diane pedaled a bike without interest at a swanky gym in Midtown, trying not to watch sixteen or seventeen TVs, all on different channels, each displaying overgroomed anchors discussing plastic surgery, diet, exercise and holiday food. She was using the guest pass that Jan Mattias had given her the previous year as a Christmas present; he would no doubt give her another one just like it this year.

  As models, actresses and trophy wives in camera-ready shape wearing thong leotards passed by, Diane bore in mind Judy Garland, who never got over the fact that she didn't look like Lana Turner, and burst into tears day after day as stylists bound her in corsets to control her figure and stuck plugs in her nose to make it less puglike. Most of the members of this gym had had some kind of face work done; Diane doubted that half the breasts on display were real. The atmosphere changed completely when a minor celebrity entered the room and was received with slavishly deferential behavior. Diane made a mental note to cancel her trip to the Sundance Film Festival.

  Judy Garland took amphetamines to control her weight and sleeping pills because she was wired from the amphetamines and needed to rest for the next day's shooting. MGM repeatedly suspended her contract because she didn't show up for work, because she couldn't wake up from the sleeping pills. So then she took amphetamines to wake up, and became so dependent on them that her weight once fell to eighty-five pounds and she had to be fed intravenously. Diane didn't need the attitude of this kind of place, but she could definitely use a gym in the city. If she couldn't have an apartment, a shower and a locker would be helpful until she did. She made a mental note to check out the YMCA near the theater.

  On her way to the subway, Diane stopped into a beauty salon that didn't look too flashy, and made an appointment with a hairdresser. She wasn't waiting for Vladimir. She wasn't even thinking about him.

  That afternoon, Floyd pulled her out of a screening of House Calls (Howard Zieff, 1978) as per her instructions. Vladimir was on the phone, asking if he could make a date with her later that day, about five o'clock, to talk about specifics. He said “date,” not “meeting.” Of course, English wasn't his first language. Still, Vladimir had been in the United States for five years and in business for much longer. He knew the difference between a meeting and a date.

  Diane hung up with him and immediately called the salon to cancel her appointment. When Ingrid Bergman was brought to Hollywood for screen tests, David O. Selznick had immediately sat her down with a stylist to discuss how they would tweeze her eyebrows, fix her teeth and put her on a diet. “If you don't like the way I look,” Bergman asked him, “what am I doing here?” And that was the end of that. Interesting that Ingrid's beautiful daughter Isabella Rossellini, who famously said that she didn't have much use for makeup, turned around after her modeling contract with Lancôme had ended to open up her own cosmetics company.

  Feeling confident, Diane called the latest broker to make an offer on a small, dark, poorly located L-shaped studio for sale that she'd seen the day before. She caught the end of House Calls, a film in which Glenda Jackson must compete with every widow, divorcée and single gal in greater Los Angeles for the ultimate swinging bachelor, Walter Matthau. This wasn't a great moment in cinema, but for some reason the film retained positive associations for Diane. Peter Bogdanovich had said, “There's no way around it: Even outright trash can achieve a special glow for someone if the person associates it with a happy time in his or her life.” On the way out of the theater, she removed some old material from the bulletin board. Surely no one in Hollywood had ever told Walter Matthau what to do with his hair or his nose.

  Vladimir arrived in her office about a half an hour later than he'd specified, looking foreign and busy, his hair tied back in a ponytail with a rubber band. Diane offered him popcorn and soda, which he declined, and then she gestured to the sofa, where they both sat down. He looked at her intently as he questioned her about what kind of equipment she used to do her job and how often she used it, what storage needs she had, what kind of lighting she needed, what sort of changes she wanted made in her office. Although she appreciated his interest, it was clear that it was professional attention that was being paid. After a conclusive handshake in the lobby she drifted back to her office, angry with herself for having thought otherwise. Not everyone stood up to the moguls. According to David Daniel Kaminsky Samuel Goldwyn assessed his talents while he stood in front of him. “Now we have to be very careful with this kid, because he's not good-looking, he can't act, and he has no sex appeal.” The actor submitted to the Goldwyn touch, dying his hair blond and changing his name to Danny Kaye.

  She felt defeated looking at her to-do list, which she never reached the end of. When would she have time to shop for presents for “Season's Greetings,” the corporate holiday, which involved her employees, her boss, the plumber and perhaps now Chris and Vladimir. When would she have time to shop for “Chranukah,” the secular celebration of the retail aspects of both holidays, which involved her family and friends? And which friends? Her holiday plans this year included several stuffy cocktail parties sandwiched between obligatory family dinners (Uncle Mort would be present) and the annual big nothing of New Year's.

  She went to the corner and brought back twenty dollars’ worth of fruit. She had forgotten to tell Vladimir about her jui
cing needs. She set the machine on her desk and squeezed a large glass of grapefruit-orange-and-lime juice, and walked around the block, sipping and thinking. She would have to go to the Sundance Film Festival. A singles cruise was a ridiculous idea, though.

  When she returned, there was a message from the broker. Her bid had been accepted.

  She stood at her desk, which was littered with spent citrus halves, and felt relief surge through her body. Then a wave of panic hit her. She had bid on a one-room second-floor apartment facing an airshaft! Her lower back began to sizzle with flashes of pain. The bid was accepted—of course it was! Who else would want to live like that? Dark, small, airshaft! It was in the East Thirties. There was no subway service over there. The crosstown bus came once an hour! It would be an odyssey getting to work—it would almost be easier to commute from New Jersey! She called her parents in a panic.

  “It's called buyer's remorse,” her father said. “But you can get out of the deal. You haven't signed anything yet, have you?”

  She sat at her desk with her hand over her eyes. “Not yet.”

  “So call the broker and tell him you had a change of heart. If he gives you a hard time, tell him that you don't have a mortgage letter yet. Be prepared to be yelled at, and be prepared to find a new broker.”

  Feeling like a naughty ten-year-old, she did as she was told, received a lecture from the broker, hung up exhausted and snuck into the theater to watch The Goodbye Girl (Herbert Ross, 1977). She remembered that she and her friend Claire had approached a likely adult in front of the box office on the film's opening day, and each had given her the price of a ticket. (Was it five dollars? Less?) The Goodbye Girl was rated PG, and her mother only took them to movies she'd read reviews of. The film was another real-estate-driven New York love story. The apartment in question, Marsha Mason's two-bedroom with high ceilings on the Upper West Side, was opulent by current New York standards.

  When the lights came up she got to her feet and looked around and realized the upholstery was ripped on five seats in the row behind her. She felt too scattered to get anything further accomplished that day. She took the subway to Port Authority and lined up with all the married people who took the bus home to New Jersey. She wanted large doses of ibuprofen and a long, long shower.

  Her parent s were waiting up for her in their bathrobes. The fact that they were still awake at eight-thirty and that the talk was taking place in the living room and not the kitchen signified that it would be serious.

  “Poor darling,” her father said, patting the couch next to him for her to sit down. “You must have been so frightened.”

  “I knew it was a mistake. I just wanted to end the searching.”

  “Why didn't you at least discuss it with us?” Her mother paced in front of the fireplace. “Sometimes a person can use a sounding board. If you had come to us, we would have told you that you were insane. You wouldn't have made that mistake.”

  “It wasn't a mistake,” her father said. “It was a learning experience.”

  “It was impulsive, and I don't like her making decisions without thinking.”

  Diane hung over her toes, stretching out her back. “I just don't like this feeling, that I don't have a place to live.”

  “You do have a place to live.” Her father peered under her hair. “We love you, and we love it that you're around. Stay here indefinitely You're unbelievably welcome.”

  She wanted to burst into tears, or fall asleep. She wanted to get out of there. She sat upright. “You're very good to me,” she said carefully, squeezing her father's hand. “I love you, too. I need my own place.”

  “I brought some clothes to the cleaners,” her mother said.

  “I wish you hadn't.”

  “No problem! Everything was covered in cat hair. I'd like to take you shopping tomorrow. I was appalled by the state of your wardrobe.”

  “When have you not been appalled by the state of my wardrobe?”

  “Remember your old friend Leslie? I saw her today at the market. I told her you'd call. Her husband works on Wall Street, you know.”

  By this, Connie meant that Leslie's husband had access to men, appropriate ones, lots of them, some of whom had to be single. Diane pleaded exhaustion to end this talk. She took a shower in her old bathroom, noticing in the medicine cabinet a bottle of Herbal Essence shampoo that must have dated from 1978. It could be that, in this house at least, what she did and what she wore and whom she saw—her life, essentially—was rated PG, and could occur only if her mother had read a review and approved of it.

  The Goodbye Girl had planted a new thought. In spite of an aversion to shared spaces, Diane turned to the “Roommates Wanted” section of The Village Voice. She began squinting at what had to be psychotic cases listed in 6-point type. If she couldn't read the small print, wasn't she too old to have a roommate? This had to be a bad time to start such a project—wasn't everyone busy with holiday parties and such? She snuck down to the kitchen and turned on her mother's computer; she composed a message to her sister in the dark.

  “Dear Rachel, “Connie and Gene are lovable, hospitable and caring. But they seem to think I'm home for life-coaching and dating services. Also, the commute is killing my back. May I impose on you for a brief time while I search for an apartment? My hours are odd enough, and I am out enough, that we may never meet. I am quiet and I will respect your household routine and try not to be any kind of a bother.

  “Love,

  “Diane.”

  She wondered what her sister's e-mail habits were like. Could she have an answer by the following day, meaning she should take her stuff to work?

  She added:

  “P.S. Whenever is convenient for you, but the sooner the better. I feel like I'm in the tenth grade and falling behind in math.”

  On a frigid and windy Thanksgiving Day, Vladimir took the bus from Port Authority to Union City, New Jersey, for an early dinner at Bebo's. Vladimir had met Bebo in their first year in the architecture program at the University of Havana. Bebo wasn't Vladimir's only Cuban friend in the Tri-State Area, but he was the only one from that period that Vladimir was still speaking to. Bebo and Olga had two feral girls about a year apart, who spoke baby English and baby Spanish and vied for Vladimir's attention every other Friday night.

  “Look how he still wears his hair,” Bebo's father greeted him, grabbing his ponytail. Manuel was a pain in the ass, but he came by it honestly: he'd spent nineteen years in a Cuban prison for the crime of “Ideological Diversionism,” for refusing to participate in the sugarcane harvest of 1970. He'd also been caught with forbidden books, among them Animal Farm.

  “Come meet Olga's friend Carmen,” Manuel said, and made an obscene gesture indicating an appreciation of Carmen's attractions.

  Vladimir had no time to get annoyed, as the little girls threw themselves upon him and began to pull his hair while Carmen was presented. Carmen was plump and vivacious, no doubt available, wearing a short leather skirt. He was suddenly tired. He sat down on the couch, landing on a sharp plastic doll as the little girls kissed him savagely. Since the advent of these kids, it wasn't possible to see Bebo without them.

  Carmen had just come back from Havana with news, letters and gifts. “When I got to my mother's,” she said, telling her story directly to Vladimir as they moved to the kitchen and sat down, “I walked up the stairs. I greeted her, and we weren't in her kitchen for a minute—we hadn't even properly said hello—when there was a knock on the door: toe, toe, TOC!”

  She looked at him, waiting for a reaction.

  “It was the neighbor,” she went on, grabbing his hand to squeeze it, as if terrified. Why was she touching him? He pulled his hand away. “She pushes her way into the house, points to me, and says to my mom, ‘She can't stay here. You're only allowed to have two foreigners a year in your home. I'm going to report you.’ ” She looked up at him again. Olga must have told her about his situation. What did this woman want from him?

  “Down, no
w,” Bebo said, kindly and firmly, to the first daughter, who was standing on her chair. The child sent dishes and silverware clattering to the floor, but Bebo waited until she was seated before he picked them up. Everything with Bebo was relentlessly domestic; he seemed to go out of his way to emphasize what a good father he was.

  Diane Kurasik was attractive, if poorly proportioned, and clearly she was interested. What was he going to do about her, now that they had won the bid? He wanted to talk to Bebo about it, but it was unlikely there would be an appropriate moment for a private chat amid all this family chaos.

  “The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution has been watching her because my cousins stayed with her for two weeks last summer. So this bitch said I couldn't stay in my own mother's house. I'm a foreigner now.”

  “Where did you stay?” Olga asked, as she quieted the older daughter, who was bouncing around the kitchen.

  “With my cousin, Jorge.”

  “How's Cousin Jorge?” Bebo asked, as the other daughter shrieked.

  “He's something else,” Carmen said, and pulled the sobbing child onto her lap, no doubt to show how competent she was in the child business. As if he cared. “All he talks about, he and his friends, is getting money, getting ahead.”

  The child struggled and escaped from Carmen's grasp. Vladimir smiled.

  “You know, our generation, at least we believed in something,” Bebo said, feeding the younger daughter. “In love, in friendship. In good design!”