Durable Goods

by Elizabeth Berg

  He brings the puppy. When he gets out of the car, he is holding her. She is wearing a little red leash and a collar. She stops to pee when he puts her down, and he is standing there holding onto the leash, and I walk up to him slow.

  “Where is Diane?” he asks.

  “She went on. She’s with Dickie.”

  He nods. “Do you know where she went?”

  “Mexico. She doesn’t want to come back.”

  No words. The space between us nearly solid. “Would you please get in the car now?”

  “Okay.” I come closer, take the leash from his hand. “You brought Bridgette,” I say.

  He nods. “Nobody to watch her.”

  He can drive for hours and hours, it doesn’t bother him. All he would ever ask is for my mother to rub his neck, get after the stiffness. He could go sixteen hours easy. I sit in the front for a while, then go to lie down on the backseat. When I wake up, dark is coming. I sit up, rub my face. The puppy is awake in her box, her two paws lined up neat in front of her like she is ready for inspection. “I think we should stop and let this puppy run around a little,” I say.

  He says nothing.

  “Dad?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “I think she needs out now, though. Could we just pull over?”

  He puts on the turn signal, pulls over. We take the puppy out, let her sniff. He stretches, rubs his neck. I let the puppy run, give her a stick to carry. “Where are we?” I ask.

  “Not so far,” he says. “Couple more hours.”

  He sits down on the ground and I sit beside him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” He sighs.

  I pick up the puppy, put her in my lap, but she wants down, so I let her. I let the silence be, too. Occasionally a car passes. There are grasshoppers here, leaping up all crazy about something every now and then. I am wondering what they eat, when I hear my father speak softly.

  “Pardon?” I ask.

  He turns to me. “I was talking about your mother.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know how much you miss her.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh, yes. She was … There’s nobody like her.”

  “I know.”

  “Her disease started out in one place, but then it just went everywhere. Nothing in her body could work right anymore. What killed her …” He stops, and I am careful not to move. Finally, he says, “What killed her is that she couldn’t breathe anymore.” He is saying this like the teacher called on him and he is giving the answer anyone would know. Silence. A car goes by, kicks up a piece of gravel that flies toward us, lands at my father’s feet. I would say I saw it and didn’t. “I want you to know she died peacefully, Katie.”

  There.

  “She talked about you and Diane before she died.”

  And there.

  He looks away from me, shakes his head. Then he turns back and sighs. “Okay?”

  I nod quick.

  “I don’t … I don’t think I’d ever like to talk about it again, Katie, okay? But you deserved to know. I should have told you when you asked.”

  I stand up, lead the puppy along on her leash. I guess she believes she is in a New York City parade: her step is high, her ears are swinging flirty. Not many people know about dogs’ moods, but I do. “She walks good,” I say.

  “Yes. She’ll be a fine dog, I guess.”

  “We should go home, Dad.”

  He is quiet for the rest of the way. All he says is “Here we are” when we get home. Then he goes into his bedroom and closes the door, and so do I. All my things, eager. I lie on my bed, then slide under it. I think, what happened? Well, I learned that the rest of the world is closer than I thought. There’s that. I cry a little, but mostly I only get peaceful. She would rub my back when I cried. She would say, “Oh, now. Look at this. Oh, my. Oh, dear. Yes, I know.” She knew the short little words to grief.

  Cherylanne and I go swimming the next day. I have everything back for a little while and I am so grateful. I memorize the light that bounces off the water. I study the bones in Cherylanne’s wrist. The towels that we lie on touch.

  Paul Arnold comes up to us as we are drying off after the first swim. He has hair above his belly button in curly rows. “I heard you ran away,” he says. I can see Cherylanne’s lips tighten. Happy as she is to see me again, she can’t stand that I am so interesting now.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “With your sister?”

  “Yes, and her boyfriend, Dickie. He has that truck?”

  Paul nods.

  “Well,” I say, “it was pretty exhausting and dangerous. I’m actually glad to be home.”

  He nods. Say he was my husband: I would have told him about running away while we were in bed. He would have pulled me over, the crook of his arm a house for me. He would have had me say the good parts twice. I would feel low down how much he loved me. Low down and all around.

  “We’re having a water war,” he says, interrupting my fantasy. “Want to be my partner?”

  Ride on his shoulders while he walks around tough. The idea is to knock another girl off another boy’s shoulders. I have never been asked.

  “Okay,” I say. And then, “Is there someone for Cherylanne?”

  He shrugs. “Sure.”

  “I am tanning,” she says, and closes her eyes snotty, but then when Bobby Simpson comes up to ask her to fight, she is on her feet in one second flat.

  I unseat three girls, but not Cherylanne. When we come up against each other, neither one of us tries. At the end, it is the two of us and we say we both win. Then we all go to the snack bar together, two boys, two girls, and I guess I have had a date. We are moving in three days, but it all counts.

  On the last day, after the moving van has gone, I walk around the empty house. There are marks on the walls, evidence of how we were. It is the loneliest thing, to see those last pieces of you that stay behind. I go into the laundry room, remember her ironing and folding. In the kitchen I turn the water on and off, open and close a cupboard door. I hear, “Kaaaatie!” Dinnnnnner!” and I whisper, “Coommming!” I push shut a partially open drawer. The sound echoes off the walls.

  I walk through the living room, which is bigger-seeming now. I am standing by the door when it opens and Cherylanne comes through it. She has been crying, and so of course this starts me in, too. We hug each other, make our little sob sounds together. It is a comfort to me that she feels so bad. “I brought you something,” she says, finally, and pulls out a small gift from behind her back. I open it, find an all-in-one makeup kit. Even Cherylanne doesn’t have this. There is miniature everything: shadow, mascara, lipstick, liner, blush, all in a beautiful shiny black box with a mirror on the inside lid. “Oh, thank you,” I say. “Did you get one, too?”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head, her eyeballs glued to the kit. “Not yet. And I’m waiting a good week to get one, in your honor.”

  “Well,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Will you write me?” she asks, and her voice is shaky sad again.

  “Of course,” I say.

  “Maybe you could send me some poems.”

  “Well,” I say, “you never liked them before.”

  “I know,” she says, and pulls out a lace-trimmed hanky to dab at her nose. “But now they will be mailed.”

  “Oh,” I say. “That’s right.”

  “Well,” she says, and sighs big. “I hate this part.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Okay. So—have a good trip and write me. Every day.”

  “I will.”

  “And I will, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” She shrugs, goes to the door, turns back. “’Bye.”

  I watch her going back home, and though the distance is very short, she runs. “Shut up, Bubba!” I hear her yell. He must have made fun of her crying. I wipe my eyes.

  I go upstairs, walk past my father’s empty bedroom, mine, the bathroom, then come to the closed
door to Diane’s room. I open it and see him in there, just standing in the middle of the emptiness. “Ready?” he asks, as though he has come in and found me.

  “I guess.”

  “Okay.”

  I look at his hands in his pockets. I believe he has put something in there, something he found in Diane’s room. I wonder what it is. But I won’t ask him. It is his. He looks around, scans the ceiling, the floor, the walls. I take him by the hand and lead him out.

  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 Goods—where were you? Where did the first idea for this novel come from? How long did it take you to write it? Were you surprised by its enthusiastic reception?

  A: I was living in Massachusetts, sitting at my desk one day writing a nonfiction snippet about how it felt to move so often, about what it was like being an army brat. That little section, which is in the novel, was so full of feeling for me, I knew there was a lot of material to be mined. So I began writing a novel. I wrote it very, very quickly—the material just wanted to rush forth. I think I might have finished it in about three or four months. I was thrilled that it was so well received.

  Q: How many novels have you written since then? What are your feelings about Durable Goods now as you look back after having written so many other books?

  A: I am currently in the middle of my thirteenth novel. I have also written a collection of short stories and two nonfiction books. I know that sometimes it happens that a novelist is embarrassed about their early works. For me, it’s the opposite: I believe Durable Goods is the best thing I’ve written.

  Q: These days, Katie’s father’s actions could land him in custody, and his children in foster care. But when Durable Goods takes place attitudes were clearly different. Could you talk about what parenting was like back then?

  A: The novel takes place in the very early sixties. At that time, I don’t think children’s feelings and needs were taken into consideration as much as they are now. Parents disciplined more often and more ferociously. Parents didn’t pay so much attention to their children’s opinions or desires. This was across the board. But in a military family, things could be exacerbated.

  Q: The title comes from a passage in the novel—but why did you you choose this specific title? Did you have any other ideas for titles? What function do you think a title performs for a novel?

  A: The title came as a suggestion from my agent. I had wanted to call it The King of Wands, which is a tarot card of a man who appears very fierce when in fact he is tender. Another consideration I had was Customs of the Service, which is a kind of guidebook for armed forces etiquette. I think titles are extremely important for novels: They can set the tone, tip you off, serve as shorthand for what the essential contents are.

  Q: Cherylanne is a great character, especially in how she uses beauty tips as a form of power and control, connection and communication, a way to be in the world. Where did she come from? Did you consult a huge stack of beauty magazines as you were writing the book?

  A: Cherylanne is a combination of fact and fiction. I knew two girls growing up who were obsessed with beauty tips and social etiquette. I admired and feared them. I looked at some old magazines for product names, but mostly I relied on my memory and then fictionalized.

  Q: At certain times, both Katie and Diane blurt out things that they know will probably make their father hit them. They say these things anyway. Are they somehow playing a part, however unconsciously, in the dire cycle of family violence?

  A: I think the girls blurt things out because they can’t help themselves. Sometimes they just need to rebel, even if they know they’ll suffer for it They do it to stand up for themselves, to subconsciously prove that someone is on their side and looking out for them, even if it’s only themselves; and they do it because, in the way of all adolescents, they are testing boundaries.

  Q: Durable Goods is thematically dense: It’s about friendship, family love and family damage, grief, growing up, forgiveness. Such themes can be intentional or the by-product of telling a story, depending on the writer. How about you—what were you consciously trying to write about? What theme, i
f anything, surprised you when you were finished? What issues and themes have you returned to, expanded on, embroidered in subsequent books?

  A: I never think much about what “themes” are in my novels. I start out with a broad idea of what I want to look at, and then let the book happen. I like to keep it pretty dreamy and vague when I’m writing it. When it’s done, I see things that I hadn’t seen in the writing process. With Durable Goods, I meant only to write about being an army brat. What emerged was a story about compassion—the need for it, the expression of it. I also learned a lot about what my feelings for my father are. I grew up afraid of him, but I came to understand that his heart is huge and that he is in fact a very sensitive man. I would have to say that I return to compassion in many if not all of my books. And the importance of friendship. Most of all, I want to show the great glory in our ordinary lives, in our ordinary selves.

  Q: Do you think Durable Goods has a hopeful ending? Do you really think Katie’s father can change?

  A: I do think Durable Goods has a hopeful ending, reflected in the fact that Katie asserts herself in asking her father to stop at the A&W, and he complies. Also, his bringing the puppy when he comes to get her is a kind of acquiesence on his part. He’s lost Diane; he’s learned something from that. Katie is aware of that.

  Q: What do you think saves Katie from being flattened by her circumstances? What kind of life do you imagine she goes on to lead?

  A: Katie is a character full of great hope and love. Where her resilience comes from is a mystery to me, but it probably has to do with how much she wants to love. As for the life she goes on to lead, that issue is addressed in the third book featuring Katie, True to Form. This novel was written because a fan told me she “had to know” what happened to Katie. I believe this novel lets you know what she will become.

  Questions for Discussion