Durable Goods_ A Novel - Elizabeth Berg [6]
I step away. “Just get out,” I say. “I didn’t even say you could come in, for one thing.”
She stands up, looks at me for a minute, sighs. “Come on,” she says. I knew it. She will fix me.
She puts a towel down on her bed, tells me to lie on it. “You need to stop standing up,” she says. “Then it will stop bleeding better.” She starts counting my cuts until I ask her to stop. Then she says, “What did you do this for?”
“They make fun of me. They call me Gorilla Legs.”
“Well,” she says, “the hell with them.”
“I’m old enough, anyway,” I say.
She looks at me, her face turned slightly away in the way that she does. “How’d you like me to pluck your eyebrows?” she asks.
I hadn’t planned on such remarkable generosity. I can only nod.
“You’ve got to hold still,” she says.
“I will.”
“If it hurts, that’s too damn bad. You’ve got to keep still or my line will go crooked.”
“I will!”
“All right, then.” She goes to her magic dresser, takes out her tweezers. “Close your eyes,” she says, and begins. It hurts, all right. But I don’t react. “Left! (humph) Left! (humph) Left!” I am saying in my brain. When it is over, she hands me a face mirror. There is a little redness along my new, thin brow line. Otherwise I look good. I hold my chin up high and stare at myself while Diane gently picks at the toilet paper on my legs. “Ugh!” she says. I love her so much I want to reach out and touch her black hair. But I don’t. Diane doesn’t like to be touched by hardly anyone.
When Diane has finished, I stand up and thank her. “What are you wearing?” she asks.
“My black straight skirt, and my hot-pink blouse, with the big buttons.”
“All right,” she says, and I exhale, relieved. “You can wear a pair of my nylons,” she says.
“I can?”
“Don’t run them, and you wash them out good when you’re done.”
She hands me her garter belt and a pair of light-brown stockings rolled up perfectly and smelling like baby powder. She sighs then, a sadness in her, and waves me out of her room. I close her door quietly, to thank her.
I arrive first. Cherylanne is wearing a light-pink blouse and a pink skirt, nylon stockings, and pink flats with jewels all over the tops of them. “Well, I didn’t know you were wearing pink!” she says. She doesn’t even notice my eyebrows.
“Mine’s hot pink,” I say.
“Well, I am going to have to change,” she says, scowling.
“I will,” I say. “Sorry.” I go home and put on a yellow blouse, the first one I put my hand to. I want to get out of the house before my father comes home. He has already told me I could go, but he is an expert at changing his mind.
Downstairs, I hear the grandfather clock strike one. I cannot sleep. I feel a sweet warmth lying across my chest. I have gone over and over the events of the party. I want only to know how to work time, to make the party come back again and stay longer.
I get up, bring my pillow with me into the living room to press it against the air conditioner for a moment. Then I stretch out on the couch, lay my head against the coolness. I close my eyes, feel myself again in the arms of Paul Arnold. We slow-danced to “Theme from A Summer Place” moved around and around in our intimate circle. Cherylanne turned the lights off as soon as her parents shut their bedroom door. I pushed my face into Paul’s neck, felt the bristles at the end of his haircut, smelled his aftershave, its mysterious combination of scents that were not woman’s. He was wearing black pants, a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a watch, and a ring with a red stone. He danced with me over and over, pulling me closer each time. I knew he was tired of Cherylanne and he didn’t like Vicky Andrews for the way she bragged, so he was mine for the night. When we played spin the bottle, he was first and he cheated. He put his hand on the bottle to stop it when it pointed at me. Then, despite the complaints from the others, he looked right at me, held out his hand. He led me into the kitchen while Cherylanne watched the door. I had never felt so mature. I stood still in the center of the dark room.
“Have you