The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg

sitting on the edge of the bed thinking about what I wrote in here last time. I think every woman I know has a story like that, some incident of paralyzed humiliation involving a man and sex. I’ll bet if you asked any woman, was there ever a time when you … Oh yes, they’d say. There was this one time … My best friend in college told me that she once watched her fraternity boyfriend spray semen around the room, holding his penis in his hands like a fire hose. And she lay in bed, one leg pulled up prettily, genuinely confused, thinking , is this what it’s supposed to be? Where is the romance? At least she wasn’t frightened .
    I visited a trailer park today. I turned down the gravel road, drove slowly, looking at the way the trailers were all decorated: curtains, little picket fences protecting a line of garden, an attempt at a patio under an awning. So many of them seemed so desperate to look as though they weren’t trailers at all. And I wondered why those people just didn’t get a co-op, some nice little place that didn’t have wheels. There was a woman about my age outside hanging wash on a miniature clothesline. I pulled up, got out and introduced myself, said I was just having a look around. Go right ahead, she said, you can look at my spot all you want. She was one of those tough-but-kind people, hard line of black eye makeup, smoker’s breath, a fondness for hair spray—and a need, too, what with the severe French twist she wore. She had a pretty spectacular figure, if everything I saw was real. She was wearing silver backless heels, those tight black stretchy pants that look like a second skin, a short-sleeved blue sweater, large silver hoop earrings. She hiked her empty pink basket up against her hip, asked if I were considering living here. I said yes I was. She told me it was a quiet place, there was a duck pond down in the middle of their little private park, a Laundromat on site, though the dryer was pretty regularly out of order. Uh-huh, I said. Grocery store just a mile and half down the road, she said, King Savings, great beef but stay away from their chicken. Oh, I said, uh-huh. And then she said, “You’re not really looking to live here, are you?” I said well, no, probably not. She said she didn’t think so, said I didn’t look like the type. I said is that right. She chuckled and then coughed a few times into her fist, bad smoker’s cough. Then she said yeah, that was damn right, laughed again. She was looking off to the side like she was sharing the joke with an invisible ally. I said what type did I look like and she said I looked like the type that went down and volunteered at some suicide prevention center in order to save my own life. Handed over my Joan and Davids to the Goodwill with a sense of regret that they would not be recognized as the great shoes they were. I stood stock-still for a minute, trying to figure this out, because it was so surprising, and because although it was pretty nasty, it was said in such a friendly way. I thought, where did this woman come from? How did she end up here?
    She lit a cigarette and offered me one, and though I don’t smoke, I took one. Salem. An awful mix of foul and mint. I had a sudden urge to get my hair dyed platinum .
    We sat at her little picnic table and she said, Not much of a smoker either, are you, Nan? I said no, but that I’d always wanted to be, that it always looked pretty good to me, sexy, too. She said it was sexy, watch this, and she French-inhaled while she stared me straight in eye .
    Then all of a sudden I asked her, I said, what did you want to do? Oh hell, she said, and stared off into the distance. Then, looking back at me, “Everything.” I asked her name and she said Susan Littletree and I said is that your married name and she said yes; and no, her husband was not Native American. What he was, was gone. I said well. She said you’d like to see inside the trailer, wouldn’t you? I said yes, I would. She said