The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,16

my eyes and tried not to cry. I could see my bed at home, my heart-shaped pillow lying against the other pillows. And then he put his hand to my face and opened my mouth. “Don’t bite,” he said, and he was laughing a little, and then he was not, and the bed squeaked and squeaked and squeaked and squeaked. The barrette had slipped to the back of my head and it pressed into me, and I felt I could not move to adjust it. It ended up making a small wound that kept me tender for a long time.

Why tell more? The silent ride home? The way he barely looked at me when we said good-bye?

I am exhausted again. I am going to sleep until I wake up far away from this place I’ve been to.

Dear Martin,

Today, around noontime, I suddenly got tired of the car. And so when I came to the next town, I pulled over and parked next to a church and got out to take a little walk. It was a small town, the requisite town hall and police station and library all clustered together like gossiping friends. I sat on the steps of the town hall eating an ice cream and trying to decide which direction to go in. I could see some railroad tracks off in the distance and I decided to walk along there.

I’d forgotten all the pleasures of walking in a place like that—the low twist of anxiety about a train coming when you’re in a narrow spot, the crunch of gravel alongside the tracks, the splintery wooden slats beneath the rusty silver rail, the rare wildflower in among the weeds, bowing to the breezes. I passed an old gentleman also out walking, and we stopped to chat for a while. He was well into his seventies, perhaps even his eighties, and still good-looking, you didn’t have to stretch to say so. He wore a green plaid shirt tucked into khaki pants, a braided belt, a pair of ultramodern sneakers. He said he lived in a nearby retirement center, and needed to get out and walk daily to get away from the girls. “No offense,” he said, “but they get to be like horseflies. Oh, I like them, like to sit and play cards with them in the evening, they’re all wearing their sparkly earrings and such, but all day …” He said the ratio of women to men in the place was 11:1. I asked him how long he’d lived there and he said seven years, ever since his wife, Honey, died. “That wasn’t her real name,” he said. “Eleanor was her real name. But I never called her anything but Honey. It fit her, she thought so, too.” They had nine children, and all of them are still close. One of his sons worked at NASA, one daughter studied opera in New York, the rest were just normal, nice people, he said—Americans, he said. He asked how many children I had and I said one; and you know, Martin, I suddenly felt ashamed that we only had one. As though we were dabbling in family, not really serious. He asked where I lived and I said outside of Boston and he said oh, far from home, was I visiting? I said no, just … traveling. He said, well if I were there at dinnertime not to miss Randy’s Lunch, right downtown, best damned meatloaf in the state. He said he went and snuck a bite every now and then even though if his doctor knew, he’d have his head. “It’s not going to hurt me,” he said, leaning close, as though his doctor might have a microphone planted in the tree nearby. “I swear to God it’s what’s keeping me alive at this point.” He had dimples like yours, Martin, deep ones on either side of his face.

Do you know that you’re still handsome? When you look into the mirror, do you feel a tug of the old satisfaction? I’ve noticed I don’t look in the mirror much at all anymore. I used to be quite vain, I know. But it’s been a while since I turned any heads. This has been kind of hard for me. I never liked it when it was happening, it made me so nervous, used to be I couldn’t sit in a restaurant without knowing someone was watching me eat, well not just me, of course, men in restaurants graze on the good-looking