The Pull of the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

coming into my own. Extraordinary to suddenly think of this as a time for gain. Martin used to say, imitating his funny old grandmother, “Oy, I can’t vait to get home and take my goidle off.” Well, my girdle’s off. Flung into the wind. What luxury, the feel of one’s true flesh beneath one’s own hand .

Dear Martin,
    I am at a booth in a diner, and I just ordered your favorite breakfast: two over easy, sausage, home fries, wheat toast. As you know, I don’t like sausage as much as bacon, but I am doing this in honor of you. Well, not in honor of you. In remembrance of you. Because I kind of miss you.
    I didn’t sleep much last night, and so I have that fragile kind of feeling. You know how I get when I’m tired, when any negative thing can seem to poke a hole right through me—a newspaper headline, running out of Kleenex, the messiness of a little girl’s braids. You know how I get. I think it’s something you were always very patient about, really, and I don’t think I ever thanked you for it.
    Well, the waitress just brought the coffee and I must say it is the best I’ve ever had—caramel-colored from the real cream, a slight taste of pecan that makes you almost want to chew. This diner is called the Metro. Not many people are here right now, and you can hear bits of conversation. Two old guys in the corner, their pants hiked up to their armpits, are talking about their blood pressure medication—“Doc told me I could expect that, but hell, who needs it?” one of them is saying, with the tremulous kind of outrage that is soft at the center, that breaks your heart. Even as I approach old age, I can’t stop looking at older people and assuming they were never young. Whereas they can’t believe they are now old. One of my grandmothers used to say, “I wake up every morning and look in the mirror to see if I’ve started to go backward yet. I never have.” And then she said to me, quite seriously, “Darling. Don’t get old.”
    In a booth at the other end of the room are two young mothers, their babies in strollers beside them. I’ll bet they’re talking about their husbands. Do men ever do that, Martin? Talk about their wives at some length? Try to figure them out?
    Before my eggs arrive I want to tell you what I did last night. I spent the whole day doing not much more than driving. I passed so many lovely things—a wide brook that followed alongside the road and made a wonderful sound—I turned off the radio to hear it. There was a long patch of woods with DO NOT ENTER signs all over the place, and I confess it made me want to ENTER . I miss being young and rebellious. I wish I’d gone to more protest rallies. Remember when everyone was going to Washington that time? It was before I was with you. My current flame, a wild-eyed artist named Chico, came to get me to go, but I said no, I was too tired. I said I was too tired! I thought my whole life would be one opportunity after the other to make important statements.
    Chico painted on huge canvases, often with his feet. He swam naked in a pond that was behind his crooked house, and it always pissed him off that I wore a bathing suit when I went in. He had a rowboat, and once when we were out in it he dove in the water and took the boat’s rope in his teeth and swam me back to shore. I suppose I was meant to be impressed or something but I was just annoyed. He gave me crabs, Chico. I was so embarrassed to have them. I remember when I told you, years later, that I’d had them—I thought you should know—and you said, so what? Everybody had them. I said did you? and you said sure, that you and your roommates used to have races with them across the lid of the toilet seat.
    Not that you really need to know this, but my eggs are here. More later.
    Well, I’m through with a delicious breakfast where the home fries were not made from canned potatoes, and the waitress has just said, Sit here as long as you want, honey, take your time, tell me when