The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg Page B

on her apron, her face splotchy, and she put the spoon back in the casserole and served it and we all ate it. And now I think, then what? Then, that night, she took off her skirt and hung it up on her skirt hanger and then she took off her sweater and folded it with tissue to prevent marks and then she washed her face, moisturized it, and went to bed in a blue negligee that my father bought her and later lifted out of the way while she stared at the ceiling thinking, I guess I am getting old, now .
    Something else. About a week before I left, I was lying in bed, holding my rock, and I began weeping so loudly I woke Martin up. What is it, he asked, and I said my God Martin I’m just so scared and so sad. He said why? What are you so sad about? I said I don’t know, I just don’t feel I understand anymore what life is for, what’s it for, what is the point in it? He said there is no point. Then he sighed this big sigh and said, You know, Nan, ever since I’ve known you, you’ve looked for meaning and excitement in life. But life is by and large meaningless and dull. I said nothing, I stared at the still curtain hanging at the side of the window and in a few minutes he went back to sleep. I lay there for a good hour, not crying anymore, just thinking. And I see now that I was thinking he was wrong, although I didn’t quite know that at the time. The thought was not in words, it was in the form of a dull nudge. And it was that nudge that got me to find this journal, and get going on this trip. And now, in my own stillness, I hear something. “Where have you been?” my inside body whispers to my outside one. Its sense of outrage is present, but dulled by the grief of abandonment. “I had ideas. There were things to do. Where did you go?”
    What can I answer? Oh, I had some errands to run. I had a few things to do. I needed to get married and have a child and go under ground for twenty-five years, be pleasantly suffocated. I meant to come back. But the bread crumbs got blown away .
    Now I’m away. And leaving no bread crumbs behind me .
    Well. Perhaps I will be a bit of an archaeologist after all .

Dear Martin,
    I went out to a mall today, and sat for a long time on one of the benches. I had never done this, spent such a long time watching the comings and goings of people, and I enjoyed it. At one point, a young man sat next to me, perhaps twenty years old, very attractive. He and I struck up a conversation, he told me he had just dropped out of college and his parents were furious at him. I asked what he’d been studying, and he said that was just it, he hadn’t been studying anything, not really, because he had no idea what he wanted to do. He was as drawn to astronomy as he was to medieval history as he was to Beat poetry. He even liked the business classes he took. I said that was wonderful, that kind of wide appreciation. He said he thought what it really meant was that he just wasn’t ready for college, what he was ready for was living some real life. I said that sounded reasonable to me, it wasn’t like the days when you had to worry about the draft. I said sometimes getting a job and just waiting awhile was the best approach. He said well, actually, he’d thought maybe he wouldn’t work at all, that he’d just … Ah, I said. And he looked at me and I was gratified to see that he was embarrassed. I asked him if he were living at home. He said yes, but it was no skin off his dad’s nose, he was loaded. His mother, he said, was dead. I said I was sorry and he said, well, it was a long time ago. I said that even if his father were wealthy he still should get a job, that if he wanted to live real life, he needed to do that. He said he guessed so. Then he asked where I lived and I said outside of Boston and he said oh, was I visiting here and I said, well. And then I told him the whole story. He was fascinated. At one point, he even slapped his knee in approval. And then he sat back a bit and said, “So you