The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,9

Jesus, those Chinese guys. Who could compete? On Saturdays, Martin would be on the campus smoking a little dope and playing a lot of Frisbee—mostly with dogs who wore kerchiefs around their necks—and he would see the Chinese guys in his classes coming from the library when it closed and think, No, I don’t think it runs so deep in me. He went into business. Put his telescope in the basement next to the TV trays we got for a wedding gift and never use but can’t throw out. And then I thought of how his bald spot is growing larger and how he was impotent for the first time in his life not long ago and it made me feel so tender toward him I almost called him. But he would not be at the kitchen table thinking about such things. The conversation would not have worked. When are you coming home? he would have said.

After lunch (a perfect cheeseburger at a dime store in the middle of a real Main Street), I passed by a house that stood all by itself, just at the edge of town. It was a chartreuse color, awful really, but at least different. I saw a woman sitting on the porch, watching her children play in the yard, and I remembered my desire to talk to other women. It occurred to me that I could really do it. Well, I could try. I pulled into the driveway, and the woman shaded her eyes against the sun, looking to see who I was.

“I’m not anyone,” I said, getting out of the car. And then, “You don’t know me.” She didn’t say anything. I said I was not a salesperson or a Jehovah’s Witness and then she smiled, relaxed. She asked if I were lost. I said sort of. She was awfully young, a pretty woman, her short, dark hairdo and large round eyes reminding me of a chickadee. She wore a sweatshirt and jeans and lovely pearl studs in her ears—dressing up a bit of herself so she wouldn’t forget how, no doubt. You will see this in mothers of small children: they dress up from the neck up. Everything else is in danger of peanut butter.

I sat down with her—although a step below her out of some sense of propriety—and one of her children, a boy who looked to be around four or so, came running up at full speed, then stopped dead in his tracks before me. I said hello and he said nothing, just looked at his mother. “She’s lost,” the mother said. “She just needs directions.” “Oh,” he said, in that kind of adenoidal voice kids often have. Then he ran off to join his slightly younger sister, who was adjusting her doll in the buggy with straight-mouthed determination. The boy faced away from her, made a gun out of a stick, fired into the woods at the enemy. The ancient roles.

I used to play with my cousins in the basement of our grandparents’ house. They were the warriors; we girls were the nurses, left to talk quietly to each other and make a hospital from towels we found in the laundry and lawn furniture stored in the cobwebby furnace room. One by one, the boys showed up with whatever wounds they described to us: “My guts are hanging out, right here, see? Pretend it’s just all gloppy intestines, real slimy.” Or “My bone is sticking out of my arm plus my ear got shot off.” Or “I’m dead. You have to wrap me up like a mummy and call my parents.” We cared for them, smiling with a kind of bruised superiority, silent.

The young woman asked me if I would like a cup of coffee. I said I would love one. She said she’d be right back and then when she stood up, there was just the tiniest hint of fear in her, a hesitancy—as though she were thinking, Wait, should I leave this stranger out here with my children, should I be getting coffee for someone who might be a bad headline tomorrow? But I looked at her and smiled my intentions and this worked; people still often communicate best without words. The woman came out with a yellow mug with blackberries painted on it and we drank our coffee and I told her about what I was doing. Said I’d decided I needed a trip away, just by myself, that my husband was back home, we were