The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,8

is something about lying against another person’s selection of sheets. Not a hotel’s choice, a person’s, who had a dialogue in their mind before making their selection. Too many violets? No, I don’t think so, and look at the blue next to them, that’s nice.

I’ve been thinking about that waiter Lawrence’s house. He did have an amazing amount of angel paraphernalia—calendars, wallpaper, figurines, many pictures, bookmarks, coffee mugs, even a bathroom rug. I’m afraid he was on the way from refreshingly eccentric to fearfully peculiar. Such a slight and delicate thing he was, the waist of a woman dancer, a wrist with skin so translucent I could see the blue lines of his veins like an etching. We had some tea (Celestial Seasonings, of course), and he told me he was a little sad that angels are so popular now, because he’d loved them long ago, from the time he was a little boy; and when too many people love what you do, some of the pleasure is lost. When he was seven, he’d used the shoelaces from his sneakers to anchor an angel figurine at the head of his bed. Unfortunately it had fallen and given him a black eye.

He had difficulty holding jobs, and thought perhaps what he’d do next was apply at the dry cleaner. No customer contact required, he said, he’d just work in the back, alone. He thought it would be hard for him to get into trouble there, didn’t I agree? and I said yes, that was probably true, and I tried to sound optimistic, but the truth is it tore at my heart a little that such a true and friendly person must keep to himself.

He asked me where I was going and I said I wasn’t sure. I said I was a fifty-year-old runaway and he said really! and there was some admiration there and suddenly I felt it for myself.

Today, when I was driving down a small, winding road, I came to an albino squirrel, stopped in the middle of the road. It was frozen in place. I didn’t have time to stop but I didn’t hit it; it was between the wheels. And I was so relieved and then I thought, well, that was probably purposeful; isn’t that interesting; that squirrel has learned that if you don’t quite make it across, you just hold still and the cars will go over you. But it bothered me, and about ten miles down the road I felt like going back to see if the squirrel had made it over to the side of the road. My first thought was, you can’t do that. You’ll waste a good half hour. And then I thought, you can too. And I did go back and I saw the squirrel off to the side of the road, dead. Some car had hit it after all, because it hadn’t had the courage to honor its own correct instinct. And I began to cry because I had this thought about people, that they do this all the time, deny the wise voice inside them telling them the right thing to do because it is different. I remembered once seeing a tea party some little girls had set up outside, mismatched china, decorations of a plucked pansy blossom and a seashell and a shiny penny and a small circle of red berries and a fern, pressed wetly into the wooden table, the damp outline around it a beautiful bonus. They didn’t consult the Martha Stewart guide for entertainment and gulp a martini before their guests arrived. They pulled ideas from their hearts and minds about the things that gave them pleasure, and they laid out an offering with loving intent. It was a small Garden of Eden, the occupants making something out of what they saw was theirs. Out of what they truly saw.

Then I started thinking about what else Martin might have done with his life if he hadn’t been a salesman. And I think that once in a very great while he thinks about that too, sits outside at night, alone, wondering, and I know the notion pokes at a soft place in him. He is very successful, but he is embarrassed by what he does, he has told me. He wanted to study astrophysics, but when he was ready to apply to graduate school, he saw that there were so many people around him who knew more than he. Not to be racist, he said, but