The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg

parents and children given reins so big to hold it makes them perpetually cranky. She was pregnant with a fourth, and she was wearing a faded blue maternity top with one of those silly bows at the neck. But on her it looked kind of good. She was a serene woman, very plain looking but also pretty, her hair held back with a brown barrette so simple and inexpensive and true it made me want to go home with her and be her child, too, I knew she’d do a good job bringing me up. There was an old couple there, out for dinner just like the commercial, remember that commercial I used to cry over where they go out for dinner at McDonald’s?
    I’m a little drunk now, Martin. I bought a bottle of wine and I see that I have finished a good two-thirds of it. It’s rather an odd feeling, being drunk all alone. I don’t believe I’ve ever done it. No, I haven’t. I feel a little weird, which I don’t like, but I also feel like I couldn’t possibly be scared by anything right now, and I like that very much.
    I just reread this letter and it seems I’m not making complete sense. However I will mail it anyway. You’ve certainly seen me worse. Haven’t you.
Love,
Nan

Last night I read a magazine article about how girls get gypped in school. I am so happy this kind of thing is finally being recognized. They also talked about twelve being the age when things start to change for girls, the time when they start to lose their power, and I think they’re right .
    I remember coming home from seventh grade at the beginning of the year and having a certain routine. I’d get six Oreo cookies and a tall glass of milk. I’d go to my room and ask not to be disturbed, say I was doing my homework. I didn’t do homework though, not right then. I’d lie on my bed eating the cookies dunked precisely to the pre-fall-apart stage and reading Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I allowed myself one story a day, and I made the last cookie and the story end together, and to this day I have never found a more pleasant ritual, including sex. After I finished reading, I would lie on the bed and think, I am going to be a writer. I am going to live in a fancy penthouse in Manhattan and have a martini served to me on a silver tray every night before dinner. I am going to have brown half-glasses and a big vocabulary .
    After that I would look at my rock collection, which I kept in egg cartons at the back of my closet. And then I would think, I am going to be an archaeologist. I am going to wear my digging shorts on the plane. I am going to always be the one to say, “Here it is!” I will be covered with ancient dust, holding something so valuable in my hands it will make us all tremble. I will have a helmet stained with my own sweat and a leather backpack. I had such a clear vision of what that backpack would look like. There would be a place at the bottom for my teddy bear; no one would know but me .
    After I did my homework, I would think, I am going to be everyone’s favorite teacher. I will wear scarves and beautiful earrings so I will be fun to watch as I pace in my interesting classroom where there are no grades, where everyone passes so long as they try. I will say things so intriguing kids will say “Huh!” out loud. Every day after class a bunch of them will crowd in a circle around my desk until I have to say “Come on now, you’ll be late for your next class,” and they will all groan .
    Then, at night, before I went to sleep, I’d read teen magazines, which I’d just discovered. I read about where hems should fail and how faces should look and what to say to boys to lure them and hold them. And I thought, wait. I don’t think I can be this. It began to occur to me that I was a failure. I lost my grip. By the middle of the year, the phone replaced Hitchcock and my sure dreams of being everything. On my dresser, tubes of pink and coral lipstick and sable-brown mascara appeared, blemish creams, concealer. Concealer, yes. The rocks in my closet