Durable Goods (2 page)

D
ickie is waiting for Diane. He is standing out in the street beside his truck. That’s how perfect he is, he drives a truck. I watch him from the window for a while, then come out to tell him Diane’s almost ready. “Okay,” he says. “Thanks.” He smiles at me, revealing his dimples. One thing I love is dimples. I have tried to make them for myself by taping plum seeds to my cheeks as I sleep at night, by corkscrewing my fingers into my face during the day as often as I can remember. So far, nothing.

Dickie has on a clean white T-shirt and blue jeans, and black cowboy boots. He has green eyes and very black hair, wet-combed carefully into a perfect ducktail. He smokes. When he smiles at me, I smile back, then laugh a little. It just happens, like when you drop a plate loud in front of the whole restaurant. Giggle, giggle, giggle, like a dope. I hate myself.

“What are you up to tonight?” he asks.

I shrug. “Maybe the movies.”

“Uh huh.” He is tossing his keys from hand to hand. There is a square piece of gold hanging from
them. It has his initials: D.M. Dickie Mac, that’s his name. Once I heard Diane say, “D.M. Know what that stands for? Damn man.”

She was leaning back against the door when she said that, her face turned partly away from him. She had taken his keys, wouldn’t give them back.

“Come on, Diane,” he said. “I’ve got to go. Give me my keys.”

“What’ll you give me?” she asked, her eyebrows raised like a teacher’s.

She knows everything, Diane. She knows how to do everything.

After Dickie drives away with Diane, I ask Cherylanne to come over. I say to inspect me good, and never tell. I think there is something wrong. I undress, and she looks me over. “Turn to the side,” she says. And then, sighing, “Hold in your stomach. Good Lord, if you’re going to be a girl, you
want
to
learn
some things.” She regards me silently, and my heart sinks lower and lower until she shrugs and says, “Well, I’d say you have breast
buds
. I mean, you can tell they’re getting ready to come out.”

“Thank you,” I say. My relief loosens up my insides back to normal.

She lies down on my bed, spreads herself out like a starfish. “You can come over for dinner if you want,” she says. “We’re fixing to eat. My mom made chili.”

Cherylanne’s mother is named Belle. She’s lived in the same town in Texas her whole life. She uses bacon in her chili, and a lot of salt. I once watched her put the salt in, shaking and shaking the round silver container for about fifteen minutes, I swear. That chili is good, though. You always want more.

Belle was good friends with my mother. Near the end, my mother called her one day and said, “Oh, please, Belle. Take her for a while. For God’s sake. She keeps … playing her flutophone … for me.” Those days, my mother always sounded like she was saying a poem. She couldn’t do a whole sentence; it took too much air. So she would say pieces like that. Sometimes, even if you felt bad she was dying, you’d want to yell, “What! Just say it!” Even if you were loving her so much, your fists clenched and your heart feeling like it had a tight peel around it, you would get mad like that.

I had to go over to Cherylanne’s house until my
dad came home. My mother didn’t know I’d heard her on the phone. She just told me Cherylanne wanted me to come over. I played crazy eights with my head stuck down. I’d thought my music might help the pain.

Belle is not a friend to my father. She doesn’t much speak to him. She likes me, though. When I eat there she serves me first, and sends me home with leftovers. Plus, she won’t let Bubba, Cherylanne’s sixteen-year-old brother, tease me; and she lets him do anything else in the wide world he feels like. There’s nothing about Bubba that Bubba doesn’t like. He rolls his T-shirt sleeves high up, looks at himself in every mirror everywhere, even the toaster, with one eyebrow up a little. His brain must be near worn out with making up compliments for him to give himself.

Cherylanne hates Bubba. She says he is an uncivilized being that no woman will ever love, that he does not know the first thing about elegant living. Once he hit her in the stomach and knocked the air out of her and their mother didn’t do a thing about it. Cherylanne says her stomach is permanently bruised and that she could get cancer when she
grows up on account of Bubba. “This I will never forgive,” she said the night he did it. I felt bad for her, that her stomach got ruined so young in life. She was crying a little; I could see the tears trapped in her lashes. “Oh, Lord,” she said suddenly, closing her eyes and leaning her head back, “please don’t give me cancer of the stomach. I have a lot of living to do. Amen.”

“Amen,” I answered, humbled as always by the thought that He might actually hear.

I
am in bed when I hear Diane come home. My father is waiting. I hear him start to yell. She is late, I guess. No. It’s not that. It’s her outfit. He follows her up the stairs. “All in black,” he says. “What the hell is that? A rebel or something? Are you a rebel?” She doesn’t answer. I hear her door shut quietly, but then he opens it. “I asked you a question!”

“No,” she says low. “I am not a rebel.”

“You will not wear all black.”

Nothing. I know she is standing there, looking at him straight on.

“Is that clear?” he says.

“Yes.”

“Black is what whores wear!”

“You should know,” Diane says, unbelievably.

I hear furniture scrape across her floor. He pushes her sometimes before he hits her. I put the pillow over my head. I live on a farm, alone, with many animals. The sky overhead is flat and deep blue. No clouds.

I
am going to make Dickie Mac fall in love with me,” I tell Cherylanne.

She is dropping peanuts into a Dr Pepper. She takes a chew and a swallow. “Huh!”

“I can do it,” I say. “And then I’m going away with him.”

“Where to?”

“Not Texas.”

“Well,” she says, “I suppose not. I suppose New York City.”

“I suppose gay Paree,” I say. “I suppose I could go anywhere I want to that isn’t here.”

“I suppose your nose is a garden hose,” she says, inspecting her manicure. Bride’s Blush, frosted. Two coats, with a thorough drying in between. Your nails tell a lot about you, Cherylanne says. A good manicure is a big part of being well dressed. Dial the phone only with a pencil or a pen. Eat gelatin.

“Well, you can say what you want,” I tell her. “I am serious.”

“I suppose your brain is insane,” she says. “Your mind’s in your behind.” She will go on that way, sometimes.

“I mean it,” I say. “I’m leaving here soon. I’m just telling you.”

“Well, Dickie Mac will not take you anywhere. You don’t even have your figure!”

“So?”

“Men don’t run away with girls who are twelve.” She says “twelve” like she can smell it.

“Oh, I believe they do,” I say. “I have read many a time about that very thing.”

Cherylanne snorts. “I’m sure. Where?”

“In novels,” I say. That will quiet Cherylanne down. She doesn’t read novels. I believe if you asked her what a novel was, she would only say, “a book.” It’s magazines for Cherylanne. She fans them out on her made bed, saves back issues on the floor of her closet. She likes the beauty tips, the romance stories with illustrations of women with their hair blowing beautifully, the advice columns, the quizzes. She likes to compare her tan with the progressively darker girls in the Coppertone ads. She is second from the best. “Your gold will always show up best next to a tan,” she tells me. “The darker you get, the better you’ll look in white. You want to go for the dramatic look.” Also, she likes to send away for the things she sees advertised in the back pages: Garden of Eden Bust Developer, Ever Ageless Night Cream. She spends every cent she makes baby-sitting on things that don’t work.

“I’m having a party tonight,” Cherylanne says. “And Paul Arnold is coming.” Paul Arnold, number
two next to Dickie Mac. I try to hold my face still. “You want to come?” she asks.

I shrug. “Okay. Who else is coming?”

“Jerry Runk. Vicky Andrews. Bill O’Connell. Gary and Tim Nelson. Randy Dreaver.”

“No other girls?” I ask.

She is incredulous. “What for?”

I
am under my bed, thinking about the party. The sun is setting; it is almost time. Cherylanne’s father ordered a whole case of Coca-Cola. Belle has set out bowls full of potato chips and pretzels and California French onion dip. They will stay in their bedroom while Cherylanne has the party. They always do this, at her request. “You don’t want older people at your parties,” she says. “You want your guests to feel they can be themselves, and mix.” I know it is more than that. Cherylanne likes to play kissing games, spin the bottle. The kissers go into the kitchen. I guard the door. So far, I have not played. But tonight will be the night.

I push one hand up idly against the bedsprings, consider whether to shave my legs. Cherylanne advised me to. “The boys call you Gorilla Legs,” she said, confidentially. And then, seeing the shame in my face, she said, “Well, they
like
you. But they have … noticed.” I recall the nonchalance with which I have displayed myself—legs stretched out on the lawn before me in the early evening when the boys out on their bikes stop to talk; legs wet from the swimming pool, the hair (I now realize with horror) pressed flat and dark against them, sickening rivulets of water making their zigzag way down; legs revealed beneath the straight skirts I wore to school in the hopes that they made me more appealing than the full ones. Oh, I hadn’t known. I hadn’t known.

Cherylanne knew what to do. “Get Diane’s razor,” she said, “and your dad’s shaving cream. Then soap your legs up good, and go real slow so you don’t cut yourself. Go all the way up to the top. You want everything silky smooth, even the parts you can’t see.” I felt one of Cherylanne’s legs. There were sharp bristles that felt like pushing your flat hand against a hairbrush. “This is not silky smooth,” I said.

“Because,” she said icily, “I have not shaved yet. You want to shave just before the event. And when I do shave, my legs will be exactly silky smooth.”

“Okay,” I said.

Silence from her, except for a short little sniff.

I shrugged, apologized.

Of course I intend to do exactly as she says, except for the shaving cream part. Cherylanne doesn’t know everything.

I slide out from under my bed, stand at the top of the stairs, yell down, “Anyone home?” No answer. I fill the bathtub with water, get Diane’s razor from the linen closet. I will shave my legs and tonight I will dance a slow dance with Paul Arnold. Sometimes we call ladies’ choice. I get into the tub, soap up my legs, hold the razor above my ankle, and begin. I feel a thrill at the back of my neck. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I say. “I’m just shaving my legs.” And then, “Well, I was a little late. I had to finish shaving my legs.” The thrill travels down into the core of me, splays out like fireworks.

I pull the razor up in straight, careful lines. It is not so hard. I relax. There are some other things
I need to think about, to remember, about tonight. Keep my chin up. Cherylanne at first advised looking down somewhat, in order to make the boy feel important. But then when she watched me practice, she said, “Oh. Well, we’ve got a problem I hadn’t figured on. Double chin. You can work on that. Twice a day, on arising and before bed, pat your chin with your hand. Like this.” She demonstrated a flapping motion on the back of her hand, a rapid up-and-down attack on her not-double chin. “You can expect results in a few weeks,” she said. “For tonight, look up. And ask them about sports.”

When I come out of the bathroom, I see thin lines of blood running down my legs. They are everywhere, like roads on maps. I’ve been warned about this. I find the individual sources and cover them with pieces of toilet paper. Then I go into my bedroom to dress. I take off my robe, check for breasts. Nothing from the side, nothing from the front. I put on a T-shirt and underpants. I put on some Evening in Paris. Then I open my top dresser drawer and take out my mother’s bottle of Tabu, put a little of that on, too.

There is a knock on my door, and Diane comes
in and stops short, staring at my legs. “What’d you do?” she asks.

I shrug.

“Did you shave your
legs?”

I say nothing.

“Dad’s going to kill you.”

“He won’t even notice.”

“Ha!” She sits on my bed, shakes her head slowly. “Well, you damn near cut yourself to
death!”
she says. I don’t know how she can do that, swear so it rolls right off her tongue, when she is only eighteen. She says “shit” like she’s saying “Pass the butter.”

I look down at my islands of healing, the pieces of white toilet paper that have turned dark red, nearly brown. I pull one off, and the bleeding starts again.

“Well, don’t pull them
off
yet, dummy!” Diane comes over, squats down beside me to inspect the damage. “Jesus H. Christ.”

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.