Free The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg Page B

business card: THOMPSON MORTUARY , it said, in apologetic script. Then he asked if I would like to screw him, for a hundred dollars. He showed me the hundred-dollar bill, folded into quarters and stuffed into a corner of his wallet. I said, But don’t you want to be in love, have sex with someone you really care about? I really said that. I think I thought I was Mobile Therapist. He said no. I said, Well then why don’t you just get a prostitute? He said, “I don’t want a prostitute, I want a nice girl, like you.” His voice was so oily and dark and it came to me that he could take me anywhere and do anything. When he came to a stop sign I said, This is fine, thank you, have a nice day, thank you, and I got out and went home and called my boyfriend Bob Sandler and he came over and got me to stop shaking. I wonder where Bob is now. I wonder if he still has his hair, he had beautiful hair .
    Another time I got picked up by a mother who was bringing her little son home from school, and she talked to him with great interest and respect about what he had done that day. I remember thinking, If I become a mother, let me be this kind. I was fascinated by the very notion of showing a child respect, it was outside my experience, my parents viewed children rather like puppies. The boy was about six, sitting with his book bag on his lap, idly fingering the clasp and having a conversation with his mommy and his insides felt right, I knew it. I thought, yes, let me be just like her .
    I tried, but I don’t think I succeeded. There is so much I’d do differently, if I could. Sometimes in the quiet of the afternoon, I sit in Ruthie’s room thinking, an ache of regret lying like a stone in the bottom of my stomach. Not long ago I remembered how Ruthie always said, “Thank you , Mommy,” whenever I bought her school clothes, and I burst into tears because she should not have felt she needed to thank me for what was her due. I shouldn’t have said, “You’re welcome.” I should have said, “Oh, Ruthie, you don’t have to thank me.” Then I thought about how she also used to ask if it was all right to roll down the window of the car and I said out loud to her bedside lamp, “My God, I was so controlling. I’m so sorry.” After I cried for awhile (and you know I’d been crying so often that week) I got up in the middle of this particular torrent of tears and made myself a bologna sandwich—anyway, after I finished crying, I called Ruthie and asked her if she thought I had done anything terrible when I was raising her. I said we were both old enough to talk about this now, and I was truly interested in knowing her real feelings. At first, she was kind of flustered, embarrassed—and she probably wondered if I were nuts—but then she said, “Well, mostly, you just taught me to trust myself.” And I said did I really do that? and she said yes. And I thought, how could I have taught you something I never learned for myself?
    But maybe there was evidence for Ruthie’s strength of spirit, all along. When she was in junior high school, that most dangerous of places for girls, she went through a very rough time with her friends. What happened is that she got pushed out of her group. I saw it coming, but I couldn’t tell her. I had no idea how to say, Honey, I don’t think they want you anymore. I thought they were crazy. I wanted to hurt them. I saw one of their group, Lindsay, in the drugstore one day when all this had started happening—the chicken calls, the way Ruthie’s Saturdays were suddenly blank—and I thought about telling the clerk I’d seen that girl shoplifting—many, many times. I thought about grabbing her by her pert blonde ponytail and holding the spiral-bound notebook I was buying up to her neck. But I didn’t. I smiled at her. I said how’s your mother. I said tell her I said hello. And when, after a period of isolation, Ruthie determinedly brought home a new friend, I made cookies. The effort of