Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [27]
“When?” I ask, and hear the lightness in my voice, the pain disguised.
“Three weeks,” he says. Then he stands up. We are done.
“There’s eight more weeks of school,” Diane says. “Can’t we finish? It’s my last year. I’m almost done.”
“Three weeks,” he says. His shirt is open two buttons, and I see the defeated sag of the top of his T-shirt. The light from the kitchen hums, shines down on the bits of scalp you see between the stand-up hairs of his crew cut. There is a little perspiration there, slick and see-through. I am afraid, seeing so much of him.
Diane swallows, looks left, then back at him. “Please?”
“There’s nothing I can do,” he says. “What’s the difference? You’ll finish there.” He turns to leave.
“Where are you going?” Diane says.
“Into the living room. That all right with you?” His back is straight as he leaves, his tread heavy and certain. There is no touching a back like that, asking it to wait.
After he is gone, Diane sits quietly, her face blank. Then she tells me, “Well, I’m not going.”
“You have to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do, too!”
She stands up. “No. I don’t.”
She goes upstairs to her room and I follow. “Can I come in?”
“What for?”
“To talk.”
“Not now, Katie.”
“Okay.”
I go into my room, look out the window. No stars, all clouds in the sky. I take in a deep breath, hold it, let it out. First, I’ll tell Cherylanne. She might cry. She thinks she looks pretty when she cries, she has told me. “I have a lovely laugh,” she said, “and I also look good when I cry. That is very unusual.”
I put on my pajamas, sit on my bed with my poetry notebook. I write, “Oh,” and nothing else comes. I cover my face with my hands. I make almost no sounds, crying.
On Monday morning, I go to Cherylanne’s house before school. She is seated before her mirror, making her hair into what she calls a Grecian ponytail. It is a bun toward the front, a ponytail in the back. When she has finished, she paralyzes it with hair spray. She centers her necklace, turns her face this way and that, bends over to pull up her nylons in the knee area. Then she stands, inspects her whole self. “Okay,” she says. “Ready.”
“We’re moving,” I say.
She stops, turns toward me. “You are?”
I nod.
“When?”
“Three weeks.”
“My Lord.” She reaches for her necklace. “Well. You can sit by me on the bus.” She regrets herself for a moment; I can see her thinking about how to take away what she has just given me. But she doesn’t take it back. And she lets me leave her room first. She is my friend; I have always known it. You can have a lot of shakiness on the outside and still know the inside is steady. Before we get off the bus, she removes her necklace and tells me I can wear it. I love that necklace. It is a gold heart, with rhinestones lined up coy along one side. Her name is engraved on it in fancy script. “You can keep it all day,” she says. “But now,” she bites her lip, mother to child, “this is real jewelry. Be careful.”
I clasp the necklace behind my neck. I have seen princesses bow their head for the crown, nuns kneel down for the veil. This is better. The pendant lies in my new valley, between my coming breasts, shows them off a little. The weight of the necklace is heavy and good. It seems like borrowed things are always that way, better than your own. All day long I will reach for that necklace, I know. And all day long I will find it there. All you have to say is, “I’m leaving,” and mean it true, say it to someone who would rather you not go, and little fancy things will start happening to you, bang, bang, bang.
Between math and geography, I tell Marilyn Mayfield, my in-school best friend, that I am moving. She covers her mouth, the outside edges of her eyes slant down, and she says, “Oh, no” in slow motion. Then she hugs me tight. She asks where I am going, and I tell her. She nods. And then we are done. There are lots of army kids at this school, and so the civilian kids, they know. What can you do? What can you say? You just keep on acting the same, even though there is a bright