Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [30]
I let it go. I made fun of him all the way home with the other kids. Now I see how that was a bad sin. I see lots of things now, and the knowledge takes its right place. I turn onto my side and go to sleep, another mystery, really, if you only think about it.
Cherylanne is sitting beside me on her bed, teaching me to make spit curls. “You make a lying-down C,” she says, bobby pins coming out of her mouth like bad-made teeth. “You anchor it down tightly, with two bobby pins lying at opposite angles from each other. Then, to make sure your curl will stay flat and flattering to the contours of your face, you can use some tape over the bobby pins. When you comb out, you can fluff with your rat-tail comb for a more natural look.” Her magazine would be proud: she has memorized all this. Probably inside her head as she speaks, little black-and-white how-to pictures run by, step by step. Still, it takes a talent. Cherylanne knows just how many petticoats to wear to make her skirt the right fullness. Her bangle bracelets jangle and collide on her arm and she ignores them professionally. “Generally, you always want to look natural so the man won’t know what you do to look so good; he’ll think you just are that way,” Cherylanne says. She finishes my spit curls, pulls her head back to regard with pride her excellent work. “Now, when you sleep tonight, you keep your pillow below your spit curls, or you’ll mess them up good. They’ll be sticking out of your head like handles.”
“What happens when you get married?” I ask. “What do you do then? If you wear your curlers to bed, he’ll see.”
“Well, you do it in the day, when your husband’s at work. Make sure it’s after your marketing—don’t be wearing rollers around on the outside. That’s tacky. You take your hair down just before he gets home. Spray your brush with his favorite cologne.” She throws that last one in, free.
Cherylanne may be right about all this. It is pretty much how my mother did it. Just before it was time for him she’d comb out her hair, too, though it was naturally curly, so she didn’t have to mess with making spit curls. She’d wash her face, put on a clean apron and red lipstick. She’d watch out the window for him. She loved for him to come home. Remembering her in her apron, the folds of it warm and fragrant with the smells of dinner, sets up in me a longing so strong I become breathless and have to lie down and close my eyes. I believe for a moment I am meant to be taken from this earth, float up straight to heaven, held in the center of a brilliant shaft of white light. It does not happen. My breathing returns, regular and imperfect. My eyes open. Cherylanne is leaning over me, saying, “Well, do you want to learn this or not? You’d better stop goofing around. “Now, this is important.” Apparently miracles are over for the time being.
Finally, he does call the MPs and the next day they bring Diane home. My father, Diane, and the two MPs have a short low-voiced meeting in the kitchen. I am not allowed to be in the room with them. I lie on the sofa, listen to murmurs, to the clock tick, to the wind rise up and settle down again. I can’t make out one word except for one of the MPs saying, “circumstances.” But when they are done, I see that something has changed. The puppy is here, for one thing. And there is a line around Diane that he can’t cross. They pass by each other with straight-ahead eyes. Their silence is whole and complete.
The packing boxes come. I like this part, seeing ordinary things get wrapped like presents, get taken from your sight until they reappear at the new place. You can count on some fragile things being broken; always