Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [0]
THE ART OF MENDING
SAY WHEN
TRUE TO FORM
NEVER CHANGE
ORDINARY LIFE
OPEN HOUSE
ESCAPING INTO THE OPEN: THE ART OF WRITING TRUE
UNTIL THE REAL THING COMES ALONG
WHAT WE KEEP
JOY SCHOOL
THE PULL OF THE MOON
RANGE OF MOTION
TALK BEFORE SLEEP
FAMILY TRADITIONS
THE YEAR OF PLEASURES
WE ARE ALL WELCOME HERE
THE HANDMAID AND THE CARPENTER
DREAM WHEN YOU’RE FEELING BLUE
“Elizabeth Berg is one of those rare souls who can play with truths as if swinging across the void from one trapeze to another.”
–Joan Gould, author of Spirals
“Lyrical… a tender, smart, and perfectly constructed little novel, suffused with humor and admiration for youth’s great capacity for love and instinct for truth.”
–Booklist
“Sensitive… unsentimental… a novel of quiet, understated strength … Berg’s genius lies in her characterization.”
–Book Page
“Hope and sorrow mingle in this finely observed, compassionate book.”
–Kirkus Reviews
“This beautifully told tale grips the reader from page one and does not let go.”
–Library Journal
Praise for Durable Goods
“A rich coming-of-age novel. Katie’s fresh yet wise voice evokes that tender passage from being a girl to being a grown-up.”
–The New York Times Book Review
“Wrenching… delicately nuanced… Berg handles the elements with sensitivity rather than sentimentality.”
–Chicago Tribune
“A gem with never a false moment… Durable Goods renders a pitch-perfect image of one girl’s adolescence…. On this small canvas Berg works miracles.”
–New Woman
“Painfully vivid and refreshingly candid… a sensitively told story of love, loss, and growth… It has a message worth heeding.”
–Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“A little gem of a book.”
–RICHARD BAUSCH, author of In the Night Season
Table of Contents
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Durable Goods
A Conversation with Elizabeth Berg
Questions for Discussion
About the Author
Copyright
FOR MY REAL FATHER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An acknowledgment page is a terrifying thing, because you are sure to forget someone you should have remembered. Nonetheless:
I want to thank Howard, Julie, and Jennifer for being my family and I want to thank Phyllis Uppman Florin for being my best friend. They give me the love that keeps the engine running.
I also want to thank these people for their support of me as a fiction writer: Sally Brady and the Wednesday morning group, Andre Dubus and the Thursday nighters, Mike Curtis, Jessica Treadway, Eileen Jordan, Stephanie Von Hirschberg, JoAnn Serling, Elizabeth Crow, Keith Bellows, Fay Sciarra, Nina the Tarot card reader, my agent Lisa Bankoff, and my editor, Rate Medina. They make me laugh, keep me inspired, buy me great meals, listen to my obsessing, and make me know that I am really lucky.
Most importantly, I want to thank you, the reader. I have always wanted to be in your hands. Let’s go.
Well, I have broken the toilet. I flushed, the water rose, then rose higher, too much. I stared at it, told it, “No!” slammed the lid down, then raised it back up again. Water still rising. Water still rising. I put the lid down, turned out the light, tiptoed out of the bathroom, across the hall, and into my bedroom, where I slid under my bed.
Now I hear the water hitting the bathroom floor. It goes on and on. Niagara Falls, where the honey-mooners go and do what they do. There is the heavy tread of his footsteps coming rapidly up the stairs. I hear him turn on the bathroom light and swear softly to himself. “Katie!” he yells. He comes into my room. I stop breathing. “Katherine!” I am stone. I am off the planet, a star, lovely and unnamed. He goes into my sister’s room. “What the hell did you do to the toilet?”
“I didn’t do anything!” she says. “I’m doing my homework! Katie probably did it!”
“She’s not even here,” he says.
“She is, too.”
Oh, my heart, aching and loud.
He comes out into the hall, yells my name again. I close my eyes. “She’s not here!” he says. “So don’t tell me she did it! You did it! And