Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg Page A

The line of bushes in your front yard, here, flash: don’t forget. All of it fails. All of it fades.
    “Well,” Cherylanne sighs. “Do you want some angel food cake?” Sometimes it seems to me that the only thing in the world is people just trying.
    W e are in Cherylanne’s bed, our voices drunk sounding, showing how near to sleep we are. “The man puts it in the hole and moves it around,” Cherylanne is patiently explaining. “When he does it long enough, sperm sprays out. And that’s what makes the baby.”
    “That makes me puke,” I say.
    There is a long pause, and after a yawn Cherylanne says, “Sex is a beautiful mystery you can’t understand until you do it with the one you love.”
    Well, it sounds to me like the man has all the fun. The woman must just lie there, thinking about what to make for dinner the next day, and the man moves it around until he gets some sperm out, which, according to everything, he enjoys quite a lot. And all this done pure naked, everything hanging out and unprotected! How would you ever be comfortable? How could you not be embarrassed forever? And then the next morning, the man right there, knowing everything that happened the night before.
    “Do you really think you’ll like it?” I ask. “Marybeth Harris says it hurts like crazy for thewoman. Her cousin did it and told her everything. She bled from down there, and it wasn’t the curse, it was just from getting hurt!” Silence. “Can you imagine?”
    Nothing. I rise up on one elbow, look down into her face. Her breathing is deep and regular, her own and private. I look at her eyelashes, long and curled slightly upward, the pretty shape of her mouth. I would like to wake her up and give her a big present. I hope she will find the right husband. Lately she wants a veterinarian.
    I get out of bed, pull the sheet up over her. Everyone in her house is sleeping, and I feel the quiet over me like clothes. Outside, the clouds could be gauze pulled thin across the stars, and the moon is near-transparent, as though someone tried to erase it. Cherylanne’s window faces the parade ground just as mine does, but the angle, of course, is not the same. It can be so different to be only next door.
    Once Cherylanne and I fell in a river together. We were walking at the edge of the bank, picking flowers. She slipped in some mud, and all of a sudden there was her surprised and scared face sticking out of the muddy water. “Get out of there!” I said.
    And she yelled, drifting along in the current, “I can’t! I can’t!” I ran along beside her, reached out my hand, and when she grabbed hold of it, I fell in, too. We held on to each other and worked to keep our heads up. I yelled for help once, but it embarrassed me and, anyway, there was no one around. I don’t know what happened—the current shifted, maybe—but we were suddenly propelled straight toward the shore, and we were able to get out. I’d lost a shoe, and Cherylanne had ripped off some nails trying to grab on to things she passed. Otherwise, we were only wet. We laughed, but it was with our eyeballs wide around. When we got home, we went to my house first. My father asked what happened to us and I told him. I was a little bit proud. First he shook his head, disgusted. Then, “What were you doing by that river?” he asked. “What have I told you about that goddamn river? You had no business down there!” I stood wet and embarrassed and I felt more than heard Cherylanne leave. Later, I went to her house and threw up. Belle called my father, saying, “She’s sick. She’s in shock. These girls could have drowned! Don’t you know that?” He gave a long answer, and Belle said nothing and then she hung up. She turned around to look at me, her eyessoft and sorry, and I wanted more than anything for her just to be quiet, not to tell me things I already knew and could do nothing about. And she was quiet. She walked away, made us some peanut butter cookies. At school the