Durable Goods

by Elizabeth Berg

  I put the Bible back, shut the drawer, take an eyeball tour of the room. A double bed, brown-and-orange-striped bedspread, and iron-smell sheets. Two pillows, no extra—I used Dickie’s jacket for my pillow. A high, narrow rectangle of a window. A small desk below it. An orange chair in the corner, wooden arms. A nightstand and there you are, that is it. Oh, and a closet, small, with a few lonely hangers, not new.

  I tiptoe into the bathroom. Here is a tub and a sink and a toilet that comes with a break-away paper band that makes you feel like the Queen of Sheba, even if the toilet is five hundred years old. There are white towels and little bars of soap stacked up, enough so we can each have our own. Well, I could wash. I open a soap, smell it, turn on the water slow and quiet. I wash my face and hands, dry off, fold up the towel, wrap up the soap. Then I tiptoe to my suitcase, get my pen, and go back to the bathroom to write my name on my soap wrapper. I will use the soap here, then bring along what’s left. We will need soap. I look into the mirror for a while. I wish I’d brought a nail file. Cherylanne always carries one in her purse. In a nothing-to-do emergency, she will pull it out and get to work.

  I go out into the room and sit in the orange chair, watch them sleep. I am a little hungry. Where will we eat? I wonder. Probably at a restaurant with booths, and place mats with stars for cities. Who has money? I think only Dickie does.

  I get out my poetry notebook, close my eyes, and wait for an idea. Sometimes they are swirled around in there deep, and I have to tell them they can come out. But nothing comes to me. A, I think. Nothing. B. C. Nothing. D. E. Eternity. Eternity. I write:

  I hate eternity.

  Really, friend, don’t you?

  What could stay good so long?

  Not even a great zoo.

  Well, this is silly.

  I write:

  Think of how long

  Eternity can last

  Nothing. I take in a breath, sigh, then worry that it is too loud. I’ll go outside. I don’t like to think about eternity. It scares me. It’s like a too-tight winter muffler, acting like it’s there to help you when all it’s doing is cutting off your breathing. What could you do for so long? Sometimes when I think of heaven, I think all it is is people looking down and missing things. And if God came walking through and said, “Anybody want to go down there again?” everybody would raise their hand yes, even if their time here had been hard.

  I open the door. The rain has stopped, the sun is out, and the slice of day that leaks in falls directly on Diane’s face. She opens her eyes, crabby. Well, there is nothing to do about it now. “I’m going out,” I say, and she frowns, nods, turns over on her other side.

  I guess I have messed up. I will make it up to her later. But who could sit in a small dark room that is not your own, with nothing but two people sleeping, and you don’t know for how long?

  There is a small swimming pool in front of the motel. No one is in it. I wish I’d brought a suit, but of course I didn’t know you could go swimming when you are running away. I open the gate, go sit by the edge of the pool to hang my feet in. The water feels cool and fine, like liquid silk. I close my eyes, spread out my toes, make the pool bigger in my mind to feel more luxurious.

  I won’t get to go to the pool anymore with Cherylanne. The last time, I didn’t know it was the last time. I should have paid more attention. The best was our diving, how good we got at back dives. Of course, I never did learn the high dive. I see Cherylanne coming off it, one smooth letting go. She often smiled when she dived; I wonder if she knew it. I see myself back up on that high board, and hairs on the back of my neck rise up to remember it too.

  My father must know by now. He must have seen our empty rooms. Maybe he looked for me at Cherylanne’s. “I don’t know!” Cherylanne would say and he would not quite believe her, probably. Belle would have to come, put her arm on Cherylanne’s shoulder, say, “She was here last night, and then this morning she was gone. We don’t know anything more about it than that.”

  He would go home, mad. He would sit in his chair, think, I’m going to let them both have it this time. I shiver, pull my feet out of the water. They shouldn’t sleep too long. Only enough to be able to drive again. We can sleep in Mexico for a thousand hours.

  I get up, take a walk around the parking lot. There is a restaurant across the highway. I’ll have cereal. Maybe some eggs if they’re cheap. I’ll walk around the building slow fifteen times. If they’re not up, I’ll go make some noise in there.

  On my tenth time around, a man comes out of the office and asks if can he help me. “Oh, no,” I say. “I’m just getting some exercise.”

  He nods, looks at me like maybe I am crazy. But then he just goes back inside the office. I follow him. “Do you need any help?” I ask.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  He waits, opens his mouth, closes it. Then, “What unit are you in?”

  “Seven,” I say. “A green one.”

  “I think you’d better go back there,” he says.

  Well, now I have messed up twice. He could get suspicious. I could wreck everything. I will go back inside, sit quiet until they get up. I can play checkers in my head.

  I open the door and Diane rolls over again. “Close it!” she whispers, hard. I close it and she gets up, points to the bathroom. I go in and she follows me. “What the hell are you doing?” she says. “We’ve been up all night! You need to be quiet.”

  I nod, look away from her at my soap. That was from when everything was going fine.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m not tired.”

  She sighs, looks away, then back at me. “I’ll give you some money,” she says. “You can get something to eat. There’s a restaurant across the highway.”

  “I know,” I say. And I want to add all the other things I know are here: many varieties of weeds. Wildflowers, purple and pink and yellow. All the same kind of yellowish rock. One horny toad, at least. It takes forty steps to walk along the front and the back of the building, ten to get past the side. I guess I know there is a restaurant across the highway. I guess I don’t need Diane to tell me.

  She goes out of the bathroom, comes back with her purse, hands me a fiver. “Be careful crossing,” she says.

  “Do you want anything?” I ask.

  “Yes. Sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  I go outside, sit by our door. I don’t want to eat alone. I’ll wait until I’m too hungry to be scared of it. And then I’ll eat slow. For now, I’ll just watch whatever happens. Or doesn’t.

  We are on the road again, and I am sitting in the back of the truck. There’s some privacy here. Nobody is la-de-dah minding you. I can’t wait for this day to be over because it is nothing but bad. I ate a candy bar for breakfast, because I sure wasn’t going to sit in that restaurant alone. All the tables full of people sitting together, kids playing with their straws and talking a mile a minute, adults drinking coffee and smiling at them, Aren’t you cute? The hostess dressed in her puffy sleeves and little hat asking me, “Can I help you?” her eyes squinty with suspicion. Well, I just said no thank you, and went over to the vending machine. I got some change and bought a Nestle’s Crunch. I ate it by the pool and then I sat outside the motel room until they were ready to go. Dickie came out first, smiling and sleepy, and I was not in the mood to try to come up with something, so I didn’t say anything. He and Diane went to get coffee and I said, “Oh, no, I just ate,” and then I had to wait some more. I might as well have been Chinese-tortured. I made the bed in the motel room. I opened the drapes all the way. I dusted the tabletops with some toilet paper. And then they came back, Diane put the suitcases in the truck, and Dickie spread the map across the hood. Here was the dangerous part, with all of us thinking, Can he find us?

  And now we have passed through Beeville on our way to Corpus Christi. The ocean is there, I know. Diane wants to live near the ocean
, but in Mexico, and so naturally that is just exactly where Dickie is taking her. I knock on the rear window. It’s hot; I want back in the truck. Dickie slows, pulls over to the side of the road, and I climb in the middle.

  “Did you get burned?” Diane asks.

  I shrug. She must have been struck blind: I believe I look like Crayola violet-red.

  “We’ll stop for lunch soon,” Diane says.

  “Okay.”

  She turns to look out the window. Silence. This happens when you travel. First everyone talks a lot, then a little, then only the road talks. We haven’t stopped to look at anything. We are just getting away.

  “Armadillo,” Dickie says, pointing to the side of the road. It is dead, lying on its side, a sick cloud of flies above it. At their dirt home, I think of Mrs. Armadillo saying to her children, “Where could he be?”

  By now my father has called the MPs, probably the civilian cops, too. “Find my daughters,” he has told them, and they have said, “Yes, sir.” When they leave, he walks around the house. I know the walk. I know the eyes. I look behind us. Off in the far distance, one other truck. Black. Nothing else.

  Dickie slows the truck, starts pulling over to the side. There is a man hitchhiking there. He comes up to the window and Dickie nods at him. “Need a lift?” The man nods back, grateful.

  “Back of the truck okay?”

  “Fine with me,” the man says, and climbs in. He is old, and I wonder what he is doing hitching. Anyone can end up any way.

  “I’ll go in back, too,” I say. Dickie looks at Diane. She leans over to look at the old man, shrugs all right.

  I climb out, get into the back of the truck. “Hi,” I say, and the truck pulls out onto the highway.

  The man extends his hand. “Theodore Bender.”

  “I’m Katie,” I say. No last names. He could turn us in.

  “Where y’all headed?” he asks.

  “Oh, just out for a ride,” I say.

  The man nods.

  “Don’t you have a car?” I say.

  “Nope. Nor a house neither.”

  “Oh.” I look out at the flatness we’re passing through. The sky is deep blue, empty of the variety of clouds. The man stretches out, puts his head on his backpack.

  “I never have liked to be in one place only,” he says. “I like to keep moving. I do a few odd jobs, move along. You should stay out of the sun, little lady.” He closes his eyes. We are done talking. I had hoped for more. This trip is not turning out right one bit. All I have gotten everywhere are bad signs.

  When Dickie pulls into a restaurant parking lot, the man wakes up. “Guess this is my stop,” he says, and winks at me. Then he goes to the road and sticks his thumb out again. When will he decide to stop? I wonder. What will say to him, this is the place. When I come into our kitchen, it’s the dish rack I always look at first. The pots and pans always lie slanted on top of the plates and bowls; the silverware always stands up in neat rows; the dish towel always hangs folded on its circular hanger. But sometimes you don’t know what it is that tells you you are in the right place; there is just a kind of lying down of your insides, a message from yourself to relax, you are home.

  I am suddenly very tired.

  The restaurant tables are all lined up against the window. There are red-and-white tablecloths, and groupings of salt, pepper, and sugar all huddled together like family. The menus are old and good looking. I ask for a burger and fries and I can’t wait to get them. Dickie gets chicken-fried steak and Diane gets a BLT. Cokes all around.

  When the waitress leaves, I can see we are all in a good mood, the way ordering food makes you get. Well now, you think, your hands folded on the table. I am taken care of. All I do is wait now.

  Dickie looks out the window at the old man, who is still asking at the side of the road for a ride. “Wonder who he is,” he says.

  “He does odd jobs, and then he moves on,” I say.

  Dickie smiles. “What a life.”

  “I think I’d like it,” Diane says. “I do! Never stay anywhere.”

  “You don’t like to move all the time,” I say.

  “I don’t like somebody else telling me where to move,” she says. “But if I could decide when and where, I’d like to move around.”

  “Not me,” I say. I shift in my seat. Sometimes I forget how different we are. Diane never liked dolls. She doesn’t like to read. She can watch a sad movie like Imitation of Life, where I saw even GIs crying, and only say, “That was stupid!” at the end.

  I excuse myself to go to the rest room. I pass by a phone booth and it is empty, the door open. I go in and close the door, lean my head against the cool glass. A little fan is whirring and an overhead light has come on. We are open for business. I know how to do it. You dial O, say, “Make this collect.”

  I close my eyes, think of my old life. And when I see my things in my room, they lean forward to call me back. I think of Cherylanne, how when she sits on the low back porch her knees go together while mine go apart, and I wonder is she lying on her bed reading magazines, with hurt feelings.

  I put a dime in, dial O. I tell the operator I want to make a collect call, and I give her Cherylanne’s number. Cherylanne answers and I hear her asking Belle, “Can we accept a collect call?” Then there is Belle on the line saying yes, she will accept, and then, “Katie, for God’s sake, where are you, honey?”

  “Oh, I’m with Diane,” I say.

  “Where?”

  “Well, we’re on our way somewhere.”

  Belle’s voice gets low and serious. “Katie, your father is very upset.”

  I want to hang up. I have made a big mistake.

  “Just one minute!” I hear Belle telling Cherylanne. And then, back to me, “Katie, honey, you need to come home. Can you tell me where you are?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Can you just tell me where you are?”

  I swallow.

  “Katie?”

  “Can I talk to Cherylanne?”

  She sighs. I hear her muffled voice tell Cherylanne to give her back the phone when we are through.

  “Where are you?” Cherylanne asks. “Did you run away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “So. What are you doing?”

  “Katie, you can’t do this. This is not right. Your father is really mad.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He came looking for you, of course. And I didn’t know where you went. When did you leave?”

  “It was late. I don’t know.”

  “You’d better come back. This is not right.”

  Well, I am getting annoyed. How does she know what is right? “I told you I was leaving,” I said. “You never did believe me. But here I am.”

  “Where are you?”

  I look out at Dickie and Diane. Our food has come. They can’t see me in here. “I am pretty far away,” I say.

  “Where?”

  I wait, then say it. “Bayside. At a restaurant called Jenny’s. It’s on Highway 80. I don’t think you should tell.”

  “Should we come and get you?”

  And there it is.

  “Should we come and get you, Katie?”

  I hang up.

  I go to the bathroom, wash my face. I am burned a sorry red, all right. My skin will fall off later, like dandruff. I dry off carefully with a paper towel that feels like steel wool. I go back to the table, sit down. I’m not hungry anymore. You would think someone would notice my burn.

  “There’s your burger,” Diane says.

  I nod, pick up a french fry, put it back down. Diane stops chewing. “What?” she says.

  “I think I’ll go home,” I say.

  Her eyes widen. “Did you call him?”

  “No. But I think I’ll go home.”

  “Jesus!” She is angry-hurt. “Jesus!”

  “Take it easy, Diane,” Dickie says. “Lower your voice.”

  “I’ll bet she called him
!” Diane says.

  “Did you?” Dickie asks.

  “No,” I say. And then, “Cherylanne. I called her.”

  Diane stands up, grabs her purse. “Well, that’s it. He’s on his way. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Dickie sighs. “Look, Diane. He won’t be here for hours. Eat your food.”

  She sits back down, stares at me. “Why’d you do that? I’m trying to help you. What do you want, to go back and live with him?”

  Oh, the answer is sorrowful to me, too.

  We make the arrangements: they will leave. I will wait on the bench just outside the restaurant. Before they pull away, Diane hugs me. She’s hardly ever done that. I don’t know her smell. “When we get to Mexico, I’ll write you,” she says. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t you leave here, no matter how long it takes, okay? This place is open twenty-four hours; someone will be here all the time.”

  “Okay.”

  She is desperate looking, suddenly, and I feel sorry for her. “What will you do?” she asks.

  “I’ll just wait,” I tell her. “I have a good imagination.”

  She hugs me again, and there is a kiss on my hair. And then the truck pulls away and she is gone.

  I sit in the shade and chart the progress of the clouds. Later, I will eat again. I have a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket from Dickie. Diane is right: he is a good man. Picks up hitchhikers. Gives out money. Takes a woman wherever she wants to go.