The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,36

come back. But the bread crumbs got blown away.

Now I’m away. And leaving no bread crumbs behind me.

Well. Perhaps I will be a bit of an archaeologist after all.

Dear Martin,

I went out to a mall today, and sat for a long time on one of the benches. I had never done this, spent such a long time watching the comings and goings of people, and I enjoyed it. At one point, a young man sat next to me, perhaps twenty years old, very attractive. He and I struck up a conversation, he told me he had just dropped out of college and his parents were furious at him. I asked what he’d been studying, and he said that was just it, he hadn’t been studying anything, not really, because he had no idea what he wanted to do. He was as drawn to astronomy as he was to medieval history as he was to Beat poetry. He even liked the business classes he took. I said that was wonderful, that kind of wide appreciation. He said he thought what it really meant was that he just wasn’t ready for college, what he was ready for was living some real life. I said that sounded reasonable to me, it wasn’t like the days when you had to worry about the draft. I said sometimes getting a job and just waiting awhile was the best approach. He said well, actually, he’d thought maybe he wouldn’t work at all, that he’d just … Ah, I said. And he looked at me and I was gratified to see that he was embarrassed. I asked him if he were living at home. He said yes, but it was no skin off his dad’s nose, he was loaded. His mother, he said, was dead. I said I was sorry and he said, well, it was a long time ago. I said that even if his father were wealthy he still should get a job, that if he wanted to live real life, he needed to do that. He said he guessed so. Then he asked where I lived and I said outside of Boston and he said oh, was I visiting here and I said, well. And then I told him the whole story. He was fascinated. At one point, he even slapped his knee in approval. And then he sat back a bit and said, “So you were my age in the sixties, huh?” I suddenly felt very old and exposed, rather like my age spots had taken on a phosphorescent hue, but I said, yes I was. He said don’t get me wrong now, but … free love. Was that real? I said, It certainly was. I wasn’t embarrassed at all, which surprised me. I thought, if Ruthie asked me about this, I’d probably be uncomfortable. But talking to a stranger, well, that’s different. What was it like? he wanted to know. I said well, sex just wasn’t a big deal. If you met someone and you liked him, you were as likely to sleep with him as not. It was like a fancy handshake, didn’t mean anything, really, didn’t mean you were a couple. He said, I thought women liked commitment. I said some did, some didn’t. He said, I thought all women did. I said, it was a different time. He looked at me rather closely then, and I could see he was trying to imagine how I looked back then, and I could tell when he saw it, too. His demeanor changed; he began flirting. He asked what was I doing for dinner, and I knew he was thinking, maybe I could get her. Maybe I could sleep with a sixties woman.

I remembered one morning not long ago when I got up and my hair was messy, but not unattractively. It was a day when I’d gotten enough sleep, and had not had too much salt or a drink the night before, and had slept on my back, so my face looked pretty damn good. Those days still happen every once in a while. I know you know that, Martin, you always say, “You look pretty, Nan,” on those days and it is kind of a bittersweet thing because we both know that tomorrow I won’t. But anyway, it was one of those days, I was having a good face day and my hair was correctly tousled and I thought I looked sexy, pleasantly whorish with my robe open too far,