The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,27

made myself a bologna sandwich—anyway, after I finished crying, I called Ruthie and asked her if she thought I had done anything terrible when I was raising her. I said we were both old enough to talk about this now, and I was truly interested in knowing her real feelings. At first, she was kind of flustered, embarrassed—and she probably wondered if I were nuts—but then she said, “Well, mostly, you just taught me to trust myself.” And I said did I really do that? and she said yes. And I thought, how could I have taught you something I never learned for myself?

But maybe there was evidence for Ruthie’s strength of spirit, all along. When she was in junior high school, that most dangerous of places for girls, she went through a very rough time with her friends. What happened is that she got pushed out of her group. I saw it coming, but I couldn’t tell her. I had no idea how to say, Honey, I don’t think they want you anymore. I thought they were crazy. I wanted to hurt them. I saw one of their group, Lindsay, in the drugstore one day when all this had started happening—the chicken calls, the way Ruthie’s Saturdays were suddenly blank—and I thought about telling the clerk I’d seen that girl shoplifting—many, many times. I thought about grabbing her by her pert blonde ponytail and holding the spiral-bound notebook I was buying up to her neck. But I didn’t. I smiled at her. I said how’s your mother. I said tell her I said hello. And when, after a period of isolation, Ruthie determinedly brought home a new friend, I made cookies. The effort of starting a friendship was showing in both of their faces, it was as though their underwear was excruciatingly tight. I overdid it, of course; I made three kinds of cookies, I folded the paper napkins into swans; I made a show of exiting so that they would know they were free to tell delicious secrets. They sat so straight and quietly at the kitchen table, and after I left I sat in the living room holding a magazine on my lap and craning my neck to listen to their soft, short sentences. I wanted to be able to tell Ruthie how to be popular, how to make and keep friends. But I was—and still am—pretty much a loner, one who wearies of almost anyone’s company much too soon. My mother told me that when I was four, I came inside from where I’d been playing with another little girl, my first play date, and said she should go home now. Seven minutes had passed. Even when I got older, I’d be sitting with a bunch of college friends and suddenly have to leave. They were good-natured about it, they knew me. “Uh-oh!” they’d say. “Nan’s gotta go, get out of the way!” I wanted Ruthie to be different from me, to be someone who could make casual conversation without clenching her fists, who could be comfortable at a party. Well, she is that. She is quite sociable. But she is like me, too. Thus the miracle of mothering. Thus the duck who puts her head under her wing but still watches her ducklings bustling about her, their heads held high.

Suddenly, I miss the scent of Martin. Isn’t it funny, he has turned out to be the one I can be with the longest.

Dear Martin,

I am pulled over in a roadside rest. The sun is starting to go down, and the colors are spectacular. I thought that rather than risk an accident, I’d pull over and watch, and write to you.

I was thinking today that maybe you should retire, take an early retirement. Now, don’t start huffing and puffing and thinking up all your fancy arguments. Just wait, I want to tell you something.

I don’t regret the fact that I was the one to stop working to raise Ruthie. When we brought her home from the hospital I hovered over you every time you even held her. I knew you were her father and half responsible for her in every way, but I have to tell you, Martin, as far as I was concerned, she was really all mine. I made her baby food, I picked out her toys and her clothes, I took her to school every first day, I pulled her shades down for her naps, I took her to the doctor, I braided