The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,28

her hair and buckled her shoes and mounted her artwork on the refrigerator. And I wanted to. I wanted to. Once she got into the teen years, you and she seemed to get closer and that was fine with me, too. I had had my hands to her when she was still wet, was how I saw it. Now I could step back—keep watching, but step back. And then back further.

All during those years of Ruthie growing up, I was also the one to cook and shop and clean, and I didn’t really mind that, either. Of course there were some bad days. Remember the time Ruthie was napping on a Saturday afternoon and I sat in the living room literally tearing my hair out and saying I was too smart to do this, that a chimpanzee could do what I was doing—better!, that I had to have more challenge and stimulation in my life or I was going to die? I remember you trying to help, suggesting I get a job, and how I screamed at you that I could never do that, I couldn’t leave her with someone else. It is such a violent love, that of a mother for a young child. And I had to be there, no matter the cost. I knew I was missing some things, I could feel some brightness of mind dulling; but on balance I loved what I did.

I remember once when Ruthie had just turned three. I was in the kitchen, I’d just finished putting everything in the pot for stew, and the carrots were such a deep orange, the peas such a deep green, and I’d gotten a beautiful loaf of peasant bread and it lay on the cutting board looking so … French. It was time now to just wait for the smell, my favorite part. I’d put in a few extra cloves, stuck them into a whole onion, in a line like a careless necklace. I took off my apron and came out into the hall and Ruthie had lined up all her dolls and stuffed animals along the wall and she was sitting before them on her little wooden step stool, holding a book in her lap. “What are you doing?” I asked her, and she said teaching school. I said Oh, and I went into the living room and read the paper—well, I looked at ads for the fancy brassieres, read the recipes and the arts page—but mostly I was listening to Ruthie “read” her book about birds, one of her favorites. “Some birdies fly high in the sky,” she said, in a high, clear voice that was learning pleasure. “Some birdies live in the nest.” And then, ad-libbing, “with their mommies.” I put down the paper and leaned back in the chair and thought, I can never be anywhere else. There is nothing that comes close to this. Outside, it snowed; fat, lazy flakes, drifting with soft intention toward the place they were meant to land.

I mean to tell you that I was mostly content, Martin. I carried on sometimes, I know, but I was mostly deeply content.

But now I want, well, I don’t know, I guess I want a shared something with you. I want you to cook with me, to do a marinade for the swordfish while I do the salad. What have you been working for, Martin, if you don’t get the chance to do these things? I know you’re not domestically inclined; I know you’ll never take up needlepoint or quilting like some men do. But Martin, could you please just think about stopping work to see what happens? We are so lucky to have that option, why don’t we use it? I don’t want to go to Greece or Tuscany or do any of that fancy traveling stuff. I always hated traveling, you know that, the notion of figuring out how many pairs of underpants to bring used to make me depressed. You must be thinking that I’ve changed my mind, that I’ve begun to love travel, look at what I’m doing now. I know exactly how your face looks if you are thinking that, too, and the place in your cheek where your tongue is. But this doesn’t feel like travel to me. It feels too much my own to be like travel, if you know what I mean.

So with our free time, if we get to have it, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere. I just want