The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,39

the closet shelf were some shoe boxes and I pulled one down, looked inside and found her Doggie, his ears worn thin as paper from her using them to rub her nose when she sucked her thumb. Once, when we were on vacation, she left Doggie at a restaurant. We drove back ninety miles to get him and I didn’t say a word the whole way, I couldn’t. Now he lay in a shoebox, treasured in absentia. I smelled him and I could smell Ruthie, the way she used to smell when she was little and had just woken up. I put him back on the shelf and I left the top of the box askew, so he could breathe.

I went back into the bathroom, intending to put on the clothes I’d brought in there with me, but I didn’t. Instead, I sat on the edge of the tub and I was thinking, first I fill up the tub with water again, to help facilitate the bleeding. That much I know. There was an emery board lying next to the bathroom sink and I picked it up and drew a line across my wrists. Then I thought, no, that’s the wrong way. You go up and down. To go crosswise is to be back in college, wanting the odd admiration that comes from wearing bandages over your wrists. This is different. This is coming from a true fatigue, a wish lacking in drama, flat with its plainness, but oh, so sincere.

I turned on the tap, and the tub started to fill. I got a razor from the medicine chest, the kind with one side protected, the kind you use to cut off calluses. I didn’t want to hurt myself while I was hurting myself. When the tub was half full, I got in and put the razor to my wrist. I held it there, the sun glinted prettily off it, and I started to cut but then immediately stopped and got out of the tub and the next time the phone rang I answered it and I was very cheerful. I thought, most of my brain is normal. But somewhere in a dangerous corner, it is not. I thought, how long can I cross my legs and converse, put away the coffee cups, bring in the morning paper? I don’t think much longer. I am so exhausted, I just don’t think much longer.

So. That is what came before what happened last night.

I was sitting out on the porch of my tiny cabin, thinking, where do I go tomorrow? In what direction? I was imagining a compass drawn on a map, a smiling sun with four of his fat rays labeled in old-fashioned script, N,S,E,W, when I heard the sound of twigs snapping. I thought for a moment it was an animal, but then I saw the shape of a person coming toward me. I stood, backed up to the door, felt my heart beating in my throat. A man said, oh, sorry, did he startle me? I said no no, not at all. Yes I did, he said, and I said you’re right. He stepped forward into the small island of yellow coming from my porch light. His hands were in his pockets, his face apologetic. He said he was from the cabin next door, he’d just arrived that night. I took a walk in the woods, he said. Didn’t see anything. Don’t know how I could have, though, I didn’t even have a flashlight. Got pretty spooked, he said, it’s some intense dark out there. I said probably there was a flashlight in his kitchen drawer, there was one in mine. Right-hand side. In with the church key and can opener, all that stuff. He said oh really he hadn’t looked in any of the drawers. I thought, isn’t that the difference. The woman makes a home immediately; the man walks in to claim it, then leaves it. In my cabin, there was a glass full of wildflowers on the little kitchen table. The towels in the bathroom hung evenly. My magazines lay neatly stacked on the small table by the sofa, a collection of rocks I’d found and admired nearby. Nan’s here, the cabin said. If anyone wants to know.

I invited the man in for tea. He seemed so forlorn. He reminded me of little boys I’d seen standing on the edge of a group, so obviously excluded it broke your heart to watch them. He nodded, came