The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg Page A

come ahead but don’t get freaked out at the statues of Mary, it’s just a joke. Then, looking over her shoulder as she climbed the steps up, No offense if you’re a Mary fan. A believer, one of them. More power to you if you are, she said. You got something .
    It was amazing how when you got in that trailer, it seemed like a house. It was clean in there, which surprised me—I’d expected dirty dishes all over, newspapers on the floor. She gave me a tour, showed me her blue bedroom—flowered wallpaper, pink sweetheart roses in a vase at the bedside, along with six or seven Mary statues. The bathroom had gold fixtures, and a magazine rack discreetly off to the side, I saw Bon Appetit in there. She had burnt-orange kitchen counters, dark wooden cabinets, a little window over the sink with white ruffled curtains. There was a booth to eat in, striped brown and white fabric. She looked at her watch, asked me would I like a tuna sandwich, it was close enough to dinnertime. I said I would, but to let me help make it, and I stood at her tiny counter chopping celery and sweet pickles and hard-boiled eggs while she mixed the tuna with the mayonnaise. I was so glad it was Hellmann’s, the real thing, none of that mincing fake stuff that you always try so hard to pretend is fine, even though your taste alarm is going berserk .
    I said it was awfully nice of her, me just showing up and her offering me a meal. Oh well, she said, she’d always thought that was the way it should be, some people wandering around and other people taking care of them, think of Jesus. I said pardon me? and she said think of Jesus, how he wandered around and people fed him. Washed his feet, too, I said. Come to bad end, though, didn’t he, she said, and I’m afraid we started laughing, which made me feel badly and also a little superstitious because if there is all that heaven and hell and accounting stuff, God was shaking his head .
    We sat at her table for a while after we ate and she told me her husband had left her three years ago, took off with her best friend. Susan sold their house and bought this trailer, thinking she’d live here a little while, then move on. Only she hadn’t left yet. She worked as a receptionist at a car dealership, got hit on by the salesmen, brought one home occasionally, kicked him out the next morning or even that same night, depending on his level of skill and/or his marital status. She’d heard that Trudy, the woman her husband ran off with, had gotten ovarian cancer. I said that must feel very odd, that probably she felt a weird kind of pity, a reluctant, confused kind; and she said no, she felt a full-blown pity, nothing confused about it, she felt a terrible sadness about the whole damn thing. “I’d go down there and take care of her if she asked me to,” she said. “It’s for sure he ain’t gonna do it right. She’ll see that, if she hasn’t already. ‘Where’s my dinner?’ he’ll be saying. ‘What, you can’t even make dinner?’”
    We went shopping, drove over to a huge mall. I told her I wanted to buy her something. She said all right. We looked at all kinds of things, and she settled on a turquoise nightgown and matching robe, on sale, and a new potato peeler. That was all she’d let me get her. I got a few books, a new pair of shoes—she’d got me going with that talk about Joan and Davids. I liked her so much, everything about her, and at one point I asked if she’d like to come along for a while , that I’d pay her way back home from any place we got to. She said well where was I going? I said nowhere. Anywhere. I was just going around, seeing. She thought about it, then said, hell, she couldn’t leave, she’d lose her damn job. I said oh, you can get another one, jobs like that are easy to get. And she cooled then, looked me in the eye, said, you don’t know a thing about it, Nan .
    I took her home, then drove another fifty miles in the dark, thinking oh well, it probably wouldn’t