Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [31]
On Friday, five days before we are to leave, Cherylanne invites me to spend the night. Though I have always been honored whenever she’s asked me in the past, this time I am not so sure I want to go. I am almost done here. It seems important to keep things the way they usually are, so I’ll remember. “I’ll let you know,” I tell her after school. I have no homework. I have no books. My arms felt curiously light on the bus ride home, as if they were going to rise up and off me. I had only my bucket purse, a rabbit’s foot hanging sickly off the side. My report card will be sent to my new school, as soon as I know what it is.
“What do you mean you have to let me know?” Cherylanne asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” she says, “I could make other plans, you know. A lot of other ones. I turned down plenty of people in school today. I could have gone out in a car.”
I look at her, check for lies. This seems true enough. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be over after dinner.”
“We’ll do the Ouija board,” she says. “We can stay up all night and inquire of the oracle.”
I go into the kitchen, open the cupboard for a snack. Oreos. A handful is six. You fill the milk glass three quarters up, dunk one cookie, eat the next one dry. In the cardboard box, the puppy is sleeping. Diane has been coming home from school to let her out, and my father has not complained one time about her.
I go into my room, lie on my back, contemplate the ceiling. There are some good things about being in a new place. You have to remember where the bathroom is every time you need to go, and that is interesting. You sit in your new kitchen, looking around for fun. You notice. You have an edginess in you, like when you are waiting to be called on to read the long poem you were supposed to memorize. You are waiting for your new life to happen.
Downstairs, I hear the back door open. Diane. I come down to see if I can help with the puppy. But it is not Diane, it is my father. I stop short when I see him. He has not seen me. I can go back upstairs, free. He bends over the cardboard box, looks at the puppy. His face is plain and clean, like it is resting. He reaches out a hand, pets the dog, says words to her in a voice too low for me to hear. Then he sighs, stands up, hands on hips. When he sees me, he drops his hands, straightens, nods. “Has that dog been out?”
“No, Diane does it when she comes home.”
He nods again.
“How come you’re home?” I ask.
He sits at the table. “Why? Are you about to get caught doing something?”
“No.” Well, this could be a joke, him warming up. I sit at the table with him, finger the embroidery on the tablecloth. On the sofa, shoulder to shoulder with my mother, laying out colors of floss before she began this. The light coming in through the window at a four o’clock angle. I suggested deep pink, an apple green, a dark yellow, and she used every one.
“I’ve invited Nancy over for dinner tonight,” he says. “Would you like to join us?”
“Can’t,” I say. “I’m going to spend the night with Cherylanne and I’m eating with her, too.” I hope Belle won’t mind.
He unbuttons his top button. “Get me down one of those cans of Vienna sausages, will you?”
We are going to have a little party, refreshments. I get out the can, ask if I can open it. I like turning the church key, seeing the little sausages all lined up like eager kids