The Pull of the Moon (2 page)

I think the last time I had a diary I was eleven years old. At the top of every page, I would say what we had for dinner. That was the most interesting part. I thought
filthy
was
thilthy.
“Todd Lundgren is
thil
thy!” I wrote. Because I saw him at a party putting his hands up Maria Gonzales’s skirt. She was wearing nylons and her garters were sticking out because her skirt was pushed up so high
.

Well, this is probably not what I should say
.

But why not
.

I know a woman who tapes pictures in her diary, presses flowers in it, she has the clipping from when John Lennon was shot. Well, she says, it’s mine, for me, for whatever I want
.

I bought this black pen for you. I feel shy saying this, as
though we are friends too new to exchange anything without it being too important
.

I have a picture to give you, too. Here is a forties photograph of a woman that I found in last Sunday’s paper. She is seated on the grass, wearing a suit and a hat, her purse centered in her lap. She is smiling, but her eyes ache, and behind her, I know this, her hands are clenched. She can’t relax. She has forgotten the grass. I kept staring at her, thinking, this is me. Checking my purse three times for keys before I leave the house. Stacking mail in order of the size of the envelopes. Answering the phone every single time it rings, writing “paper towels” on the grocery list the second after I use the last one. I too have forgotten the grass. But I used to do one-handed cartwheels and then collapse into it for the fine sight of the blades close up. And there was no sense of any kind of time. And I was not holding in my stomach or thinking what does my opinion mean to others. I was not regretting any part of myself. There was only sun-rich color, and smell, and the slight give of the soft earth beneath me. My mind was in my heart, anchored like a bright kite in a safe place
.

I think I will not use a map. And I think I would like to stop at a house now and then and ask any woman I find there, how are you doing? No, but really. How are
you
doing?

Dear Martin,

Well, here it is. The first morning. I had such a scary dream last night. Some men had broken into the house and they had tied another man down onto the dining-room table—no one I knew—and they wanted me to help them torture him. It was worse than being tortured myself. The man on the table reached toward me with his fingers, that’s all he could move. And I stood stock-still, unable to do anything, and I was filled with a terrible fear because I knew that if I didn’t cooperate I’d be killed. I woke up, but I didn’t open my eyes, I lay there breathing fast and shallow—I thought I was home, having another bad time.

I thought, I’ll say very quietly, “Martin, I had a bad dream,” and I was hoping you would take me in your arms and the feel of your undisturbed flesh would be enough to ground me, you wouldn’t have to speak. But then I thought, no, it doesn’t make sense to wake him, it’s only a dream, he wouldn’t want me to wake him. And then I remembered where I was and I opened my eyes and turned on the light and saw this ordinary square of motel room, this bland and functional place where sleep is business. I thought oh my God, what am I doing here. And I felt so ashamed, Martin, and I got dressed and packed my suitcase and put my purse over my shoulder—I cried, remembering you had given it to me last Christmas, and had asked me in a way that was nearly shy was that the right one—and I was going to come home, but then I thought, well, it’s four in the morning. I’ll wait. And I went back to sleep in my clothes, my car keys in my hand, and then when I woke up I didn’t want to come home anymore. I wanted to get some breakfast and go on. It has always been true of me that the mornings are my strong time. I wonder if you know that.

I will write to you again tomorrow.

Love,
Nan

P.S. If I’m not back in a week, you should water all the plants. Please don’t ignore them out of anger toward me. You needn’t do the little cactus on the kitchen windowsill. That one can wait a long time. I have so often wondered how it does it. The leaves are not so thick, you know. On rare occasions, it even blooms. You might want to pay attention, so that if it happens, you don’t miss it.

I am preoccupied with my body. Overly watchful of change. It’s like being a teenager again, without the cuteness. Without the promise. Without the immense naïveté. Imagine, I used to stare at photos in magazines that highlighted throats and thighs and think, what? What about it? It’s just a neck. It’s just a leg. Last night I stood in the bathroom on the edge of the tub so that I could see my whole self in the mirror over the sink. I can’t remember the last time I had the courage to do that. I remember Elizabeth Taylor saying she once stood naked in front of a full-length mirror—kind of by accident—and that’s how she realized how fat she was and she went on one of her famous diets. No chocolates. Only diamonds. When I looked in the mirror in that awful fluorescent light, I saw the age in my body all at once. I saw
that the tops of my legs are sagging, like kneesocks falling down, that my belly is lower than it was, and my breasts. Of course, my breasts. I held them up in my hands, making a hand bra, pushing them high up, but they didn’t look sexy because the skin on my throat, on my chest, is beginning to get crepey and does not want breasts in its way. It wants flannel nightgowns against it. It wants a woman who is on an archaeological dig and has no time for caring about how it looks. I saw that there is more gray in my pubic hair. The first time I saw a gray pubic hair, I was horrified. I plucked it out, which hurt. And then there were three and four and five and six. And one day I got the laundry marker and colored them in. I’d thought it was time for sex, that we’d probably have sex that night, and I hated the thought of Martin against gray pubic hair. After I did that, colored my hairs like that, I thought, this is not the way to do it. Dyed hair. Moisturizers and exfoliants and wrinkle removers and toners all lined up in my bathroom drawer. My thinking has been misdirected. Somewhere, something is holding the sides of its head and screaming. Still, I went out that afternoon and bought more. Things made with hormones and placentas and who knows what all. The woman behind the counter said “Well, my dear, the effects of aging are not entirely inevitable
.
It’s just a matter of taking care of yourself. It can be done. Look at Sophia Loren, doesn’t she look great? You can bet she uses everything. Why shouldn’t you? I always say, ‘You don’t have to be a star to look like one.’”

I bought everything that insane woman told me to buy. I spent two hundred and thirteen dollars and forty-seven cents, I remember. And then I went to the bookstore, to the poetry section, to find something about the beauty of older women and I found nothing. I drove home, and when I got in, I threw the bag of stuff away. With the receipt. Shameful. That is shameful. I should confess it. I should kneel down right now and say I am sorry, I regret this awful waste of things and I regret this awful way of thinking
.

There, I just did it. I got on my knees and I said that. I closed my eyes like I was praying but I let my hands hang loose and open at my sides. Because it is only me talking to myself. And it felt good. Though the carpet is awfully dirty, I must say they don’t knock themselves out cleaning here. There were rings on the night table, and I had a vision of some businessman sitting at the edge of the bed in his underwear, smoking, drinking his beer, flicking the TV through all it offered. There is a sex channel here. Martin watches those channels when he goes on business trips, but he won’t
pay. He watches for a minute or two until it starts blinking and then he switches channels. From blow jobs to the home shopping club. Some similarities, actually. I asked him, Don’t you get nervous, waiting for it to start charging you? I imagined the checkout clerk’s lips pressed tightly together the next morning. But he said no, he pretty much knew by now when the blinking would start. I said, “But you … so fast?” “After,” he said. “You do it after.”

My friend Janet once told me how when she was on a trip she watched one of those movies for a while, masturbated to it. But what turned her on was the women. She is not interested in women sexually, but she said the men’s penises were all throbbing and purple and veiny and who wants to watch them
come
?
Apparently they do. But anyway, the next morning all it showed on her bill was “movie” and she was so relieved. Imagine a motel at night, its walls suddenly removed. How many guests would be watching movies whose dialogue is “Oh baby, that’s good, that’s good, oh yes.” Is there a director on these films? Does he slam his clipboard against his thigh and say, “Cut!
Cut!
” Did he go to film school? If you stood behind him at the grocery store, would you suspect anything?

Martin and I have tried those movies. It works, which is a sad thing. Of course, we never watch the whole movie. We
laugh at the music, make many nervous snide remarks about the dialogue, then get a little quieter, watch a bit more and then we’re at it. I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder if he’s making me the woman in the movie. For myself, I am thinking, well if
she
can do
that, I
can do this! I don’t know when sex changed for us. For me, anyway. It used to be a natural completion to a natural attraction. Now I am so ashamed of my body, I don’t want any lights on, I don’t want to call attention to anything. I need a jump-start to have sex, the excuse of a movie or a martini. Sometimes, even when I’m loosened up, I’ll suddenly think of how we look, two middle-aged people, going at it. I’ll feel like I’m floating above us looking at our thickening middles and thinning hair and flabby asses and any desire I had will feel like it’s draining out the soles of my feet. I’ll think, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? Martin will be moving against me, moaning a little, and I’ll be thinking, I need to clean that oven
.

When we’re through, we’ll go down to the kitchen for a snack, and I’ll think, this is how we are most affectionate, when we stand hip to hip spreading mustard on bread, feeding each other bites of Swiss cheese and smoked ham. Why not skip the other part?

Well, it’s time to go to wherever I’m going. But I have to do something first—a favor. This morning, I went for breakfast in the motel dining room and the waiter began rather suddenly talking about angels. I had mentioned the moon because it had still been out, that wispy kind of disappearing moon, a blue-white color—and he said, oh are you a moon person? I had no idea what that meant, really, and yet I answered, yes I was. And he said he was too, and that also he was an angel person. I said is that right, and I was waiting for him to ask what I wanted, which was French toast, but he didn’t. He kept talking about how angels were such a strong feminine presence in his life and that the moon was feminine too, of course. I began looking around a bit to see if anyone else thought he was a little crazy, but then I thought, well, I’m not in a hurry. It’s not a bad thing to talk about angels
.

I remembered when Martin and I went to Paris and we were in a very small restaurant, maybe four tables, and the waiter there began to tell us about his wife learning to ride a bicycle at age thirty-eight—he spoke wonderful English—but Martin made the tiniest movement with his wrist and the waiter saw, and knew, and stopped talking about his wife and told us about the specials. I was sad about that, I’d been interested in him, a French person telling a French
story. I’d thought, I’ll bet if I were here alone, he’d have told me a lot about his family, about himself. As it was, I felt that Martin was in charge, that the city belonged to him and he was letting me hold on to one edge of it like I held onto his hand. Like the young children I saw out on a field trip one day holding on to a rope
.

But anyway, my waiter told me how he saw angels in dreams and they never spoke but it seemed to him they were getting ready to, and then he all of a sudden remembered what he was supposed to be doing and he asked me what would I like. And I said, French toast, which seemed so mundane, considering, and he said, oh that was a good choice, that was his favorite. And I said, well why didn’t he join me, apparently I was the only one in his station. He got this look, and he played around nervously with his collar and then he said well he’d love to. And he came out with two platters of thick-cut French toast—extra-large servings, he said, winking—and he sat down with me and tucked his napkin into the neck of his shirt and then—why not?—I did the same and we began eating with some relish. And then the manager came over and said, “Lawrence, what do you think you’re doing?” And there was this awful stillness, the couple across the room holding their forks midair. I started to say something
and the manager—so young, actually impressed with himself—said, no no, I’m asking Lawrence. And Lawrence said, why, he was eating breakfast. And after a moment the manager said he was fired. Right now. I said, wait a minute, I asked him to join me, he didn’t have any other customers. I was getting kind of excited like when a good fight starts. Lawrence said no, it was his fault, he’s always had trouble with boundaries. He asked would I mind giving him a ride home, though, he didn’t have a car, he’d never had one because he didn’t understand how they worked. I said, well you don’t have to understand how they work to drive one. He said, how can you just assume such amazing things, get behind the wheel trusting your life to this car not knowing anything about it. I said, well, you fly don’t you? and he said yes but that he understood perfectly well how airplanes worked. And anyway, he wasn’t driving the plane. (The manager was still standing there, and you know he suddenly seemed like the silly one, just standing there with his winter-white arms crossed, his cheap watch ticking on his wrist, while Lawrence and I talked about … well, I don’t know, the philosophy of technology or something.)

Anyway, the point is, I think this is sort of wondrous, this event. I do. And there is no one to check it out with, no one
to pass or fail me for my observation and this is a vast relief I feel such a lifting inside. Hope, I think. I’ll bet Lawrence has angels everywhere in his house, moons hanging from his ceiling. I intend to see. Suddenly time is time. I’m leaving a twenty-dollar tip for the maid. I have always wanted to do that. It makes sense to me. And anyway, Martin and I have too much money. We have for some time. At first it was just that we didn’t have to worry about whether we could go out to dinner at some fancy place. Then we got way ahead on tuition, on the mortgage, on everything. We made bigger donations to more organizations. Then he started investing. I never wanted to know about it, I found it sort of frightening
.

We buy things over and over again. New cars, before the new-car smell has gone from the old one. New furniture, new silverware, the latest fashions that are sometimes out of style before we’ve taken the price tags off, more, more, always more, full boxes coming in, empty boxes going out, for what? So that we can sit out on our (new) deck in the summer and drink vodka and tonics out of our vodka-and-tonic glasses with limes that have been cut with the (new) lime cutter? It’s always bothered me, what we lost when we stopped being able to fit our things into the trunk of our car. Martin doesn’t believe me. He says it’s a luxury of being rich to wish you were
poor. I don’t want to be poor. I just want to be appreciative
.

Twenty-five years ago, when I met Martin, he was a hippie. He had a ponytail, tied neatly in the back with a piece of rawhide that smelled like incense. We did drugs once in a while, we used to hurry to clean the kitchen before we came on to the acid, we didn’t like coming down to dirty dishes. In those days, Martin talked about angels too. About parallel universes. About the industry of ants, the wisdom in the dance of the honeybee. I would sit on his lap, my long hair streaming down my back, my long dress on and my long earrings, too. I was braless and barefoot, and Martin and I were filled with wonder at the way the dust motes were colored, we’d never noticed
.

I do have to go now. It’s almost checkout time. I wonder where I’ll eat lunch
.