Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [38]
She packed a freezer chest with food for us. We ate ham sandwiches and slices of pie and potato chips and apples. We fought noiselessly, and every time we slept it was like a miracle, because we weren’t tired at all, we were ready to bust out of our skins from plain boredom. But we couldn’t stop, except for every four hours to pee and fill up the gas tank.
I hear the rumble of thunder and think how perfect it will be to sleep now, while it rains. Then I remember how my father never uses an umbrella. “Customs of the service,” he once told me, and showed me in The Officer’s Guide where it said, “There is a long-standing Army taboo against an officer in uniform carrying an umbrella.” I thought that was so queer I learned it by heart right then. My father doesn’t have a single question about it. He never uses an umbrella out of uniform, either. He stands straight up in the rain and lets it have him. Little streams of water slide down his face, into his eyes, down his neck, and under his shirt. Remembering this, something inside me takes an elevator to the next floor down. I don’t know why I get sorry for him this way. All of a sudden, I just do.
Of course he will be all right without us. Nancy Simon can cook him dinner in her own aprons, which probably look stupid. Maybe he will get truly sad sometimes, drop his face in his hands, and say, “Oh, I have gone and lost my children.” But Nancy will lay his roast beef on his plate, saying, “Now, now. What’s done is done,” and kiss him with her greasy lips. She will not do anything right, and I only hope he will notice.
I cannot sleep. For one thing, I am on the floor. It is the fair place; there is only one bed. Dickie volunteered to let Diane and me sleep there, but Diane said no. She said, “You don’t mind the floor, do you?” but it wasn’t really a question. She was a little sorry, but she is shaping her new life and she figured she might as well get going.
The floor is hard, of course, but that is not the problem. One problem is that there is a chemical smell to the carpet, mixed with cigarette smoke, and the combination is about to kill me. I am breathing through my fist over my nose. Also, the air conditioner is leaking. I can hear drops of water, see a fat stain spreading out on the wall. Another problem is that Dickie is snoring so loud that at first I thought he was just kidding around, trying to make me laugh. But he’s not kidding; he’s sound asleep and I guess Diane is, too. I’ve been watching her and she hasn’t moved even to turn over. I guess she stayed awake with him until the end. But I fell asleep almost as soon as we left, and I am done sleeping. Every time I close my eyes my body gets nervous, like I’m making a big mistake and it had better let me know. My eyelids jerk right back open like a Laurel and Hardy windowshade. The day is trying to get around the pulled-shut drapes; the world is in the go position.
I get up and quietly open the desk drawer. If there is some paper, I’ll write a letter to Cherylanne. “Guess where I am!” it will begin. But then I realize I don’t know where I am. There is no paper, anyway. There is only a brown book, with Holy Bible written in gold across the front.
I flip open to a page where Jesus is giving another speech. Everything He says is in red. I used to like Jesus. I thought He knew me. When I took communion, I believed that as long as the wafer was in my mouth, Jesus was in my heart. He was in my heart miniature but whole, with His own heart lit up and exposed and circled with roses and thorns. His arms were outstretched and His eyes were raised upward, which meant he was paying serious attention to me. I could speak with Him one-on-One, for as long as I could make the wafer last. The fact that other people had wafers made no difference: they had other arrangements. I was careful not to move my tongue against the wafer, which was lodged against the roof of my mouth, except for rare times when I really didn’t have much to say. Then I would release Him early. After all, He was busy. People everywhere