The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,7

comes from mistakes so many women make early on in a marriage. When we got engaged, I stopped driving my own car. I rode shotgun every time we were together. The default settings on the mirrors, on the closeness of the seat to the wheel, they were yours. Remember when that car caught on fire, the engine? Maybe it was auto grief. Don’t think I’m crazy, Martin. I have only gotten out my shovel, to dig a bit. I’m just pointing out what I uncover. You can look or not. I want the difference to be that I don’t put the thing back on the shelf because you say it’s not worth seeing.

I just read this letter over and I see that there is a lot of anger here.

I’m sorry.

Love,

Nan

I am staying at a bed-and-breakfast on the edge of a lake. The windows are wide open and the wind has come in to snoop around, to lift the doilies, to blow up the edges of the bedspread, to push at the closet door, creating a low and urgent rattle. I can hear waves lapping at the shore and the sound is faintly obscene. There is an owl hooting somewhere out there, but I can’t see him.

I took a walk earlier, just around the block. The sidewalks heaved crazily, damage from the tree roots below, and at one point I tripped and nearly fell flat on my face. An older man walking behind me came rushing up, asking if I were all right. I said I was fine, thank you. He said, wasn’t it a lovely evening? and I said it certainly was. Good weather will do this to people, bond them in their gratefulness. The man was wearing wrinkly clothes and he had prickly looking gray stubble on his face. Cactus man.

He told me he’d been a lifer in the US Army. “Logistics,” he said. “Know what that is?” Not exactly, I said. “Well,” he said, “it’s the most important thing. First ones in, first ones out.” Uh-huh, I said. I didn’t want to talk army. The sky was a mixed color, peaches and blue. I wanted to think about that. Or I wanted to think about the fact that this old guy was once my age. He was once younger than I, and I imagined him slicking his hair back to dance in the moonlight with girls whose perfume scent frightened him and aroused him. How different they were, dressed in smashable taffeta, so carefully arranged in hair and in makeup and in words. Everything about them practiced, and he raw and improvising. The pearl of their teeth through the passion of their dark lipstick, should he? The shadowy and too tender indentation at the base of their necks, how could he? We passed a small library and the man said, “I know all the gals in there.” I thought, I’ll bet he does. I’ll bet he comes in regularly, leans on the counter and chats and chats and chats with the “gals” and they chat back, and when they turn away from him they smile at each other with a gentle weariness. I’ll bet his name is Willy or something like that, and he puts down beer in the VFW hall in the late afternoons, his hat pushed to the back of his head. I’ll bet he has many keys on his key chain and that the fob is tacky and meaningful. Baloney must be in his refrigerator. His socks must be thin and cheap and the blue that turns purple, and he must not be strict about how many days in a row they are put to the task.

Our steps made such a fine sound on the roller-coaster sidewalks. Our conversation was so light and arbitrary and I felt like my imagination was off the leash and rolling in the grass that had turned bluish in the setting sun.

I still feel that way now, that my imagination is free, that I have a red carpet unfurled before me like Dorothy’s yellow brick road and I can go on and on. Speak, this journal says. I’m listening to you. Go ahead and say anything. Confess. Exult. Weep. Nothing makes me walk away. Nothing bores me. The truth is always interesting, whatever form it takes.

I am washed up and settled in for sleep in a stranger’s bed, which always feels luxurious to me. There is something about being handed buttered toast as opposed to making it yourself, and there