Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [19]
She straightens. “I just wanted to know her name. Please.”
“Nancy Simon.”
Diane nods. “Where did you meet her?”
“When I am ready to tell you details about Miss Simon, you’ll know.”
Diane nods again. I have some questions, too. I have a lot of questions, too. But never mind.
She is black-haired, Nancy, her hair pushed back hard and high and see-through. Beehive. She looks younger than my mother did. She wears deep-blue eye shadow and two silver bracelets and a black dress and heels. She sits at the kitchen table, smoking, smiling at me. There is a trench coat lying across her lap, tan, soiled at the cuffs. “So you’re twelve, huh?” she asks. There is a tiny dot of spit on the corner of her mouth. I rub my own mouth to tell her, but she doesn’t understand.
“Yes. Almost thirteen.”
She raises her too-black eyebrows, jets out a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Cherylanne and I used to play dirty lady, just like that. Cherylanne’s name was Mitzi, mine Titzi. We swung our crossed legs, twitched our bottoms on our pretend bar stools, drank ginger ale from Belle’s good glasses, smoked pencils. We smoked just like Nancy Simon does.
“Almost thirteen,” Nancy says. “Well. Big girl!”
There is a place just before they make fun of you. That is where Nancy is. I look down, think of a reason to leave.
“Well,” I say, finally, “I have to do some homework. Very nice to meet you, thank you for coming.”
She stands up, totters a bit on her high heels, reaches out to touch my shoulder. “Nice to meet you, too, honey.” I smell her perfume, unwelcome in my mother’s kitchen. Unwelcome in my mother’s house.
“I hope to see you again,” she says. It is flirty, like I am the guy. Of course it is aimed for my father, who stands, arms crossed, at the other side of the kitchen. He doesn’t have anything army on.
“Okay,” I say. “Well, have a nice time.”
She looks at my father. Oh. I see. They already have.
I go upstairs and knock on Diane’s door, open it. “Are they gone?” she asks. I nod. “What a bitch,” Diane says. She is seated before her dresser mirror, combing out her hair. “What a whore.”
I shrug. “Are you going out?” I ask.
She sighs. “Yes.”
“What’s wrong?”
She turns around, her eyes suddenly blank. She laughs, a small sound. “I don’t know.” She looks up at me. “I really don’t.”
Later, when I am alone, I take out the shoe box. I stare at my pajama bottoms. What secrets lie in us. What perfection. I touch the dried blood. What told me to do this? What was the first step? Hormones, I know, but what are they? Can you see them? And if not, how do they know? When I asked these questions during our special hygiene class, the gym teacher told me to stop acting up. “That is not what we are talking about now,” she said. “Keep your mind focused. You have the same problem in basketball.” She was right. I am hardly ever focused. My mind is a slippery thing. Last time we played basketball, when the ball was thrown to me, I took off and ran with it like a football. It just made more sense to me at the moment.
I fold up my pajama bottoms into a neat square. My mother gave them to me. They are too small, but I am running out of things she touched to put next to me. I slide under my bed, lay the pajamas across my chest, close my eyes. “I hate you,” I say. “Look what you are missing.”
Her, on a half-circle kind of throne, little gold five-pointed stars floating around her head. She is wearing something blue that does not show the outline of her body. She glows. And she says back through healthy pink lips, “I miss you, too.”
She used to tell me, when I went to bed at night, that I should hurry and fall asleep. That way, the fairies would come and paint stars on my ceiling faster. I wanted to see them. It irritated me that I had to be asleep before they came. But it did teach me one good thing: just stop looking, and the magic will come.
I opened my eyes. “Where are you? Is that heaven?”
Nothing.
I slide out from under my bed, put my pajamas in the hamper. I stand by my window and look out at the dark parade ground. It has a fierce