Free Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg Page B

say. “I like onions.”
    Cherylanne sits on her dresser stool, regards me carefully. “Did you really drink beer?”
    “Sure did.” I hold my arm up in the air, let my wrist flop, my fingers fall. Say I had some rings and bracelets on; I’d look like Cleopatra herself.
    “Huh. Well, I wouldn’t be so proud and mighty if I were you. It’s a dent in your character. It’s something, once you’ve done, there’s no going back.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She turns to her mirror, fiddles with her clips. “You just can’t go back. Now you have gone and drunk alcohol.”
    “Well, la de dah.” I make a scared face. “I guess I’m going to hell now.”
    She stands up. “Since you are in such a bad mood, you can just leave. I had plenty to tell you. But now you can just forget it. Why don’t you just go drink some more?”
    I rise, languidly. “I think I will. I think I’ll have a big, fat whiskey.”
    Cherylanne is painting her toenails. Hard. She is trying to act like I’m not there. And here is some blessed and new strong thing: I don’t care.
    I come into the house, see him at the kitchen table. He is reading through a stack of official-looking papers. “Where you been?” he asks.
    “Cherylanne’s,” I say.
    “Doing what?” He doesn’t look up.
    I lean against the door jamb. “Oh, we went and tried clothes on at the PX. Then we played cards. I won every round. We ate some popcorn. And some cheese.”
    “Uh huh.” He turns a page. “Where’s your sister?”
    “Beats me. I haven’t seen her.”
    He looks up, something in his eyes, then changes his mind.
    “See you,” I say. I go up into my room, lie on my bed, stare at the ceiling. My brain is saying my name to itself. That is all. Just my name.
    W hen Diane comes home, he calls us into the kitchen, tells us to sit down. This could be anything. We sit straight, not looking at him or each other.
    “We’re moving,” he says.
    Now we look at each other. We have heard this many times, and yet I know that what we are both feeling is surprise. Each time, you learn a place forgetting that you must leave it. Each time, there is a pulling-away pain when it is time to go. I have been in so many classrooms, looking out the window and thinking about the others going on without me. Thinking that someone else will take my desk and I will be in a new one. I will stand before my-age strangers, kids jiggling their knees and smirking a little while the teacher lays her arm heavy and apologetic across my shoulders. “Class, this is Katherine. She’s our new girl.”
    “It’s Katie,” I will say.
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s Katie,” I will say again, and the teacher will say, “Oh, well, I guess she likes to be called Katie.”
    I will be looked at, my shoes and my hair and my outfit and the line of my lips. Then I will be talked about outside at recess or in the halls between classes, in old, formed groups. “She, She, She …” is all I will hear for a while. Faces will close up when I appear, smiles will be thin and false. Oh, one person will be nice to me at first, someone who also doesn’t belong; and we will sit together at lunch, lonely, anyway, knowing we are temporary to each other. Then, eventually, I will find my place. It is too hard to do this so often. Really, it is too hard.
    Diane sighs, picks at her thumb. “Where are we going?”
    “St. Louis,” my father says. “Missouri.”
    I realize I don’t know where Missouri is. Somewhere in the middle. And there is nothing I can put to Missouri. I envision the people there, all adults, standing in a circle, in dark clothes, their mouths open a little. The men have their sleeves rolled up, and they look suspicious. The women are stupidly kind. The land is flat and all one color. I don’t know why this vision comes to me. I accept my own wrongness.
    “When?” I ask, and hear the lightness in my voice, the pain disguised.
    “Three weeks,” he says. Then he stands up. We are