Durable Goods (11 page)

“Well,” Cherylanne sighs. “Do you want some angel food cake?” Sometimes it seems to me that the only thing in the world is people just trying.

W
e are in Cherylanne’s bed, our voices drunk sounding, showing how near to sleep we are. “The man puts it in the hole and moves it around,” Cherylanne is patiently explaining. “When he does it long enough, sperm sprays out. And that’s what makes the baby.”

“That makes me puke,” I say.

There is a long pause, and after a yawn Cherylanne says, “Sex is a beautiful mystery you can’t understand until you do it with the one you love.”

Well, it sounds to me like the man has all the fun. The woman must just lie there, thinking about what to make for dinner the next day, and the man moves it around until he gets some sperm out, which, according to everything, he enjoys quite a lot. And all this done pure naked, everything hanging out and unprotected! How would you ever be comfortable? How could you not be embarrassed forever? And then the next morning, the man right there, knowing everything that happened the night before.

“Do you really think you’ll like it?” I ask. “Marybeth Harris says it hurts like crazy for the
woman. Her cousin did it and told her everything. She
bled
from down there, and it wasn’t the curse, it was just from getting hurt!” Silence. “Can you imagine?”

Nothing. I rise up on one elbow, look down into her face. Her breathing is deep and regular, her own and private. I look at her eyelashes, long and curled slightly upward, the pretty shape of her mouth. I would like to wake her up and give her a big present. I hope she will find the right husband. Lately she wants a veterinarian.

I get out of bed, pull the sheet up over her. Everyone in her house is sleeping, and I feel the quiet over me like clothes. Outside, the clouds could be gauze pulled thin across the stars, and the moon is near-transparent, as though someone tried to erase it. Cherylanne’s window faces the parade ground just as mine does, but the angle, of course, is not the same. It can be so different to be only next door.

Once Cherylanne and I fell in a river together. We were walking at the edge of the bank, picking flowers. She slipped in some mud, and all of a sudden there was her surprised and scared face sticking out of the muddy water. “Get out of there!” I said.

And she yelled, drifting along in the current, “I can’t! I can’t!” I ran along beside her, reached out my hand, and when she grabbed hold of it, I fell in, too. We held on to each other and worked to keep our heads up. I yelled for help once, but it embarrassed me and, anyway, there was no one around. I don’t know what happened—the current shifted, maybe—but we were suddenly propelled straight toward the shore, and we were able to get out. I’d lost a shoe, and Cherylanne had ripped off some nails trying to grab on to things she passed. Otherwise, we were only wet. We laughed, but it was with our eyeballs wide around. When we got home, we went to my house first. My father asked what happened to us and I told him. I was a little bit proud. First he shook his head, disgusted. Then, “What were you doing by that river?” he asked. “What have I told you about that goddamn river? You had no business down there!” I stood wet and embarrassed and I felt more than heard Cherylanne leave. Later, I went to her house and threw up. Belle called my father, saying, “She’s sick. She’s in shock. These girls could have drowned! Don’t you know that?” He gave a long answer, and Belle said nothing and then she hung up. She turned around to look at me, her eyes
soft and sorry, and I wanted more than anything for her just to be quiet, not to tell me things I already knew and could do nothing about. And she was quiet. She walked away, made us some peanut butter cookies. At school the next day, Cherylanne and I told everyone how close we came to dying, how we swam out of the clutches of death in the nick of time and if they thought that was easy they were crazy.

I sit down at Cherylanne’s dresser, barely make out the outline of my head in the mirror. I put my hand out, search for a bottle of her perfume, find one, put some on my wrist. It’s the one that smells like baby powder and has an exclamation after its name, it is so happy about itself. I find her brush, pull it through my hair, see the beautiful blue sparks of electricity fly out. Cherylanne has a pink plastic lipstick holder, swirled with white like marble. It is filled with six tubes of lipstick, all in order according to shade. Barely There is the first one. I feel for the middle one, put some on. I cross one leg over the other, swing it, rub my lips together good. Her jewelry box is on the far right, with her many necklaces and rings and bracelets and pins. I start to reach for
the jewelry box, then stop. I am me and I live next door.

I want suddenly to be in my own room, with my faded blue sheets, with my cigar box full of dried flowers and horse chestnuts and the fragile bird’s nest I found at the base of a tree. A cat was hanging over that nest, evil coming out its eyes like headlights. I think about writing a note to Cherylanne, but it is too dark and, anyway, what would I say? She will forgive this; we were done with the best part of the sleep-over.

I tiptoe down the stairs, close the door quietly behind me. The key to our house is under the mat, and I slide it noiselessly into place, let myself in. I feel like a new person in my own living room. Say I were a thief, I think: what would I take? I would want the grandfather clock, the rocking chair. I would want the pillows on the sofa and the sofa, too. I would want the coffee table, the magazines on it, the sweet potato plant my mother started on the kitchen windowsill that now has overtaken the table at the side of the sofa. I would want the curtains, the air conditioner, the radio next to my father’s chair.
I would want the floors, the ceiling, the pattern of the shadows made by the setting sun. The Egyptians had a good idea—take it with you. Get buried with all you can, just in case.

I sit on the sofa, breathe in deep. I am not tired at all. I believe I will stay up all night, something I have never done but have always wanted to do. At some point, day and night are exactly equal. I want to see when it is neither one.

I do fall asleep, though, because a noise outside wakes me. I sit up straight and extra-alive. There is the screen door, then a slight creak as the front door opens. This is a real thief, and here I am sitting right in his aim. I swallow, bite my lips. “Don’t think about taking anything,” I will say. “I am right here, with a gun.” Then I will yell for my father, loud. I am a little worried about this part. In dreams, whenever I need to yell, nothing comes out.

But it is only Diane. She is on tiptoe, moving slowly toward the staircase. “Hey, Diane,” I whisper.

She stops in her tracks, grabs her chest, spins around. “What are you doing?” she asks. “What are you doing?”

“Shhhhhh!” I say.

“Never mind! You scared me to death!”

I shrug. “Sorry.”

“What are you doing down here?” she whispers.

“What are
you
doing?”

She comes closer, sits down beside me. “Well, what do you think?” She sighs, shakes off the last of her scare. The clock strikes three.

“I guess you’re sneaking in again,” I say. “You haven’t gotten caught one time.” Three o’clock in the morning, and she’s coming home! You can’t help but admire Diane.

She leans her head back, undoes her ponytail holder, shakes out her hair, and then looks at me, thinking something over. Then, “I’m just here to pack. I’m leaving again, Katie. I’m not coming back this time.”

I start to laugh. This is too familiar. And it doesn’t work. “You can’t.”

“We’re leaving right now for Mexico. Dickie went to get his things. He’ll be back in about twenty minutes.” Her whisper is so quiet but it seems to me to echo around the room.

“Oh,” I say. And then, “I won’t tell.”

“I know you won’t.” She pushes my hair back from my face. “Will you be all right?”

“Yeah!” It is too quick. We have both heard it.

“Why don’t you come?” she asks. “Go pack some things; I’ll take you with me. I’ll take care of you. I’m going to get a job down there. It’s cheap to live. Come on, you can come.”

“I can’t,” I say.

“Yes, you can.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well,” she says, “I’m going. I’ve got to pack.”

I watch her go upstairs, and then I go up to pack, too. Sometimes these things happen. You are walking along with only your legs saying where to go.

I creep into my room, turn on the light, find my suitcase at the back of my closet. I put it on my bed, open it. Then I stand still, listen. How can he sleep?

I put in some underwear, a clean pair of jeans, three tops. What else? I put in my toothbrush, a hairbrush, some barrettes, my mother’s perfume, my poetry notebook, and the book I am reading. But then, since it is from the library, I take it out.

Mexico! I believe it is orange and yellow there, the good smell of corn in the air. We will live in a house made of stone, with multicolored rugs and a fireplace stove. We will have lots of silver bracelets. Dickie will work and Diane will keep the house and I will go to school and speak Spanish. Whenever our Mexican phone rings, it will be a fresh new friend.

I hear Diane leaving her room, and come out into the hall to meet her. “I’m coming,” I whisper. She puts her finger to her lips, nods, points downstairs. Yes. I will meet her there. We are experts now at something we’ve never done. I go into my room to close my suitcase, then turn out my light. I feel a kind of excitement in me that seems false, like scary-movie excitement, when your heart is crying out and your brain is saying this is just fake so why don’t you relax. I think, this is the last time I will be in this room, forever. I think, I didn’t tell Cherylanne goodbye. Then I think, again, how can he
sleep?
I pick up my suitcase, go to stand beside his open bedroom door. “Dad?” I whisper. The shades are drawn; his room is purple black. “Good-bye,” I whisper. And then, “It’s all right.”

D
ickie is waiting outside, and he is surprised to see me, I can tell, though he is trying to make his face mainly polite. “Hey, look who’s coming,” he says, and then, to Diane, “Is she?” Diane nods, hoists my suitcase, then hers into the back of his truck. “Go ahead, get in,” she tells me, and I guess that I am to sit in the middle, just like I imagined. Everything they say to each other will have to pass over me. I can stay quiet as can be and still be in the conversation. I get in, Diane gets behind the wheel, and Dickie goes to the back of the truck. At first I think he is walking away, giving us the truck. But then Diane shifts into neutral, nods at him, and he begins to push. A silent leave-taking. This must be how they’ve done it before. I hold my breath until we are a good block away. Then Diane stops the truck and hops out to move to the other side. Dickie gets in and starts the engine. We are going. And in his bed, he is sleeping.

O
nce I got into bed with him and my mother. I was sick, full of longing for the feel of someone else’s normal flesh, and so I crawled in beside her. She awakened instantly, felt my forehead, and got up to get me something. “Don’t wake your father,” she said.

I lay still and listened to him breathe. There was a smell to him that I felt in my nose and in my throat. He was wearing a T-shirt on top; I didn’t know what on the bottom. I took in a ragged breath, closed my eyes, opened them. I could see the green glow of their alarm clock, hear a muffled, rapid tick. Where was my mother? He stirred then, reached out, and lay a heavy arm across me. I jumped, thinking he’d been going to hit me, and the movement must have awakened him. “What are you doing here?” he said. “What happened?”

“I’m sick,” I said, and then, “Mom said to wait here.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He felt my forehead. “You have a fever.”

“Yes.”

“Does anything hurt?”

“Just my throat. And my ears. And some in my stomach.”

“That’s a lot to hurt.”

“Well, only a little in my stomach.”

“All right.” He turned over, went back to sleep.

He doesn’t like people to talk about pain. Once he had to have an operation on his stomach. He never said anything about it—not before and not during and not after. When we went to the hospital to visit him, I saw him from outside his door before he saw us. His face was like before you have to make a big jump across something deep. Then when he saw Diane, my mother, and me, he changed into normal. He nodded and said to give him his robe, and he sat up and said he was taking us to the hospital cafeteria. And he did, walked slowly beside us in his paper slippers. His face was sick white and he was pushing a pole with a big bottle swaying on it. I got french fries and Diane got an ice cream sandwich and my mother got tea and he said, no, he didn’t want anything, he wasn’t allowed to have anything, but he paid. I was glad to see his same old
wallet in his robe. He watched us eat and then he went back to his room and got into bed and told us to go home. Before we left, he called my mother back. “Lock the windows,” he said. “Check the basement before you go to sleep.”

“I love you,” she said, and bent down to kiss his cheek. He stared straight ahead, nodded. After she turned to leave, I saw him pull one hand up slowly over his stomach, then the other. In school the next day, I cried thinking about it. I said it was because I had a headache, and I got to go home. My mother put me on the sofa under the afghan, brought me tomato soup with crackers crumbled on top, and looked at the Sears catalog with me. What I wanted—a red lawn mower, circle-stitch brassieres, a canopied bed—I circled in black. What she wanted—an electric dryer, new carpeting, and a yellow V-necked sweater, she circled in blue. All in all, it was worth it to lie.

F
or a while when I was younger, I used to pretend-run-away all the time. I would dump my doll out of her suitcase and use it to pack all my underwear in, and go far into a field that was behind the house we lived in then. There I would sit on a big rock and contemplate the distance around me in four directions. I would listen to the buzzing insects, make up ideas for new parents. Mostly they were tall and slender. She had long red hair with a wave over one eye. He had short blond hair and wore a blue blazer with a family crest. They had many kinds of drinking glasses and two servants. “Look at her!” they would say, introducing me to their astonished and jealous friends. “Lost, can you imagine! Turns out she’s real intelligent, too. Why, we just took her right in! Of course it helps that we’re millionaires, but we would have taken her even if we didn’t have one red cent.” I’d heard that phrase, “one red cent,” and it appealed to me. I used it whenever I could.