Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [45]
We have gone one hundred miles. We are going to go five hundred, he said. I see a billboard for A&W. One half mile up the road, turn right, go three hundred yards. “Look!” I say. “Can we stop?”
He shakes his head no. “I want to make time, Katie.”
I turn around to check on Bridgette. She is lying quietly, her nose on her paws, thinking. She is a good traveler. She doesn’t know she’s going to live in Missouri.
I turn back, say quietly, “We could just get one root beer float.”
“Did you hear me, Katie? What did I just say? What did I just say?” His voice is louder, on its way up. Now is where you must be quiet for a good ten minutes and let him cool off. It is better not to move anything on your body either. Invisible.
And yet. “This could be the last A&W in the whole world, with everything on sale today only,” I hear myself say.
He sighs, slows down, and puts on the turn signal. Well, I certainly know not to say thank you.
What must it be like, I think, driving out of Texas, in the opposite direction from your other daughter? Whatever he is feeling is letting him get me a root beer float, I know that. We see the A&W, a good big one.
“I thought Diane was the one crazy about A&W,” he says.
“No. It’s me, too.”
“Okay.”
We crunch in over the gravel and find a spot. “Two root beer floats,” my father tells a silver speaker, then adds, “And a burger, plain.” He looks at me, shrugs. “For the dog.”
I roll my window down all the way, lean my elbow out. It’s hot, the float will taste good. I realize suddenly that I am seated in my own place. This air, and the air around me, is mine, I know now. I look at my father, see Diane lost in his face, his own true regret. I feel some part of him come into me as though there were a thin wire connecting us, heart to heart, with all that must most be said translated into barely visible vibrations. I see his leg, see his bent knee, remember the times when I got to sit in the front for a while, between my mother and him. He would occasionally reach out to give me a horse bite. It hurt a little, but it tickled, too. I would look up at him, ready for my part, but he stared straight ahead, not acknowledging himself. He can only go so far in a good direction. Then something happens. He is all apart broken. For a moment I see him as someone other than my father, and he seems so curious to me, and sad, like an animal wrongly tied up. Then he is my father again and I see that he is only what I was given first. There are other places to look for things. I lean back against the seat, close my eyes.
I am back on the diving board, small against the night sky. The board is much higher now, silvery in the moonlight. And I walk toward the end of it, three steps, bounce high, point myself toward the water. I feel my hair straighten in the wind; it is such a long way down. I feel the cool night air against my body the most just before I enter the water. For a long time, I am propelled downward toward the bottom of the pool, but then all I do is arch my back, change direction, kick my feet once, hold my body straight, and let myself rise up.
I hear the inviting rattle of glasses, smell the hamburger. And now there is my father’s voice, his hand lightly touching my arm. “Hey, wake up,” he is saying. “Everything is here.”
DURABLE GOODS
A Reader’s Guide
ELIZABETH BERG
A Conversation with Elizabeth Berg
Q: When did you first start writing? Did you take writing in college? How long after you began writing serious fiction did you attempt a novel?
A: I always wrote as a vehicle for expression, but did not try writing for publication until my mid-thirties, at which time I started writing for magazines. I wrote essays and then short stories, then moved into novels. I did not take writing classes in college; rather, I concentrated my energies on dropping out. I attempted my first novel after I’d been writing stories for a couple of years.
Q: When did you write Durable