The Pull of the Moon (15 page)

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. What drives Nan to leave Boston for parts unknown? Have you ever felt a “howling so fierce” that you wanted to run away for a time? Did you act on the impulse? If so, what happened? If not, what kept you from running away?

2. This novel is called
The Pull of the Moon
. What do you think it means? What does the moon represent in mythology and folklore, and how do the cycles of the moon relate to women and their bodies?

3. Elizabeth Berg tells this story entirely through journal entries and letters. Did you enjoy this method of storytelling? What is the difference between what Nan writes to Martin and what she confides to her journal?

4. As Nan begins her journey she decides 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?”. What does she gain when she carries out this plan? Is it hard to establish an intimacy with strangers? Have you ever done it? If so, what happened?

5. How do you picture Martin reacting to his wife’s letters? Do Nan’s feelings about Martin and the messages she sends to him change over the course of the story?

6. Nan wonders, “What if Martin is keeping a journal too?”. If he did, what would Martin write about? Would he consider his wife’s behavior selfish or self-indulgent? Would you sympathize with him if he felt this way?

7. “I am preoccupied with my body. Overly watchful of change,” says Nan. How are the themes of body image and mortality explored throughout the novel?

8. Do you agree that turning fifty is a major turning point in a woman’s life, and if so, why is it so significant? What are the worst and best things about growing older? Which other birthdays feel like major milestones?

9. According to Nan, “Every woman I know has a story … some incident of paralyzed humiliation involving a man and sex”. Based on your own experiences and those of friends and family, do you think she’s right? Nan mentions a theory that twelve is the age “when things start to change for girls, the time when they start to lose their power”. Is this true? If so, can it be changed?

10. When pressed to say what kind of mother Nan was, Ruthie tells her mother, “Well, mostly, you just taught me to trust myself”. How does Nan feel about this comment? As she contemplates her multiple roles as a daughter, wife, and mother, what conclusions does she draw? How is she different from her mother and her daughter?

11. Nan spends two long nights in the woods, confronting her fear of the dark. What makes these episodes so meaningful, and why is the second night so different from the first? Have you ever challenged yourself to face a profound fear?

12. Throughout the novel, Berg explores the differences between women and men. Can you think of some examples? Do you agree with Nan’s views on traditional gender roles?

13. Nan fantasizes about the ideal home she’d like to build and furnish. Do you think that she and Martin will actually make her dream house? What would your ideal home look like?

14. In the novel, Nan cultivates a deep awareness of simple things, taking the time to appreciate a pretty yellow skirt, a big fat tomato, and people in general as they go about their daily routines. What kept her from enjoying these simple pleasures in the past and “really seeing” herself and others? Do you practice this heightened awareness in your daily life? Is it something you’d like to cultivate?

15. Berg introduces the reader to a number of characters as the story unfolds, including Lawrence, the waiter who loves angels, Robert, the new widower at the cabin/motel in Minnesota, Susan, the tough-but-kind woman at the trailer park, Eugenie, the eighty-six-year-old woman shelling peas, and the girl with a lemonade stand. What makes Berg’s minor characters so vivid and compelling? Which ones stand out the most, and which have the greatest impact on Nan? How do you think her brief relationships on the road compare to her friendships back home?

16. What does Nan discover that finally makes her ready to head back to Boston? What life-changing decisions or discoveries has she made?

17. How do you think Martin will behave when Nan returns? Will their lives be different, or will they slip back into old patterns? Do you think Nan can hold onto her new, grounded perspective and goals for the future?

Read on for an exciting preview
of Elizabeth Berg’s wonderful novel

The Last Time I Saw You

chapter one

D
OROTHY
S
HAUMAN
L
EDBETTER
S
HAUMAN IS STANDING IN
front of her bathroom mirror in her black half slip and black push-up bra, auditioning a look. Her fortieth high school reunion, the last one, is one week away, and she’s trying to decide whether or not to draw a beauty mark above her lip for the occasion. It wouldn’t be entirely false; she does have a mole there, but it’s faint, hard to see. She just wants to enhance what already exists, nothing wrong with that.

She regards herself in the mirror, tilts her head this way and that. Yes, a beauty mark would be fun, kind of playful. She pencils in the mark gingerly, then steps back to regard herself. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Sexy
. Just like she wanted. Hel
llloooo
, Marilyn. She pictures Pete Decker looking up from his table full of jocks when she walks into the hotel ballroom and saying,
“Va va va voom!”
And then,
“Dorothy?
Dorothy
Shauman?”

“Uh-huh,” she will say, lightly, musically, and walk right past him. Though she hopes she’ll walk close enough for him to smell her perfume. Also new. One hundred and ten smackeroos. She got perfume, not cologne, even though her personal belief is that there is no difference. She’d asked the counter woman about that. She’d leaned in confidentially and said, “Now, come on. Tell me,
really
. If you were my best friend, would you tell me to get the perfume over the cologne?” And the woman looked her right in the eye and said,
“Yes.”
Dorothy was a little miffed, because the woman had acted as though Dorothy had affronted her dignity or questioned her ethics or something. Like the time Dr. Niemeyer was telling Dorothy to get a certain ($275!!!) blood test and she’d said, “Would you tell your
wife
to get it?” And Dr. Niemeyer had drawn himself up and quietly said, “I would.” Dorothy had been all set to give him an affectionate little punch and say, “Oh, come on, now, don’t be so
prissy,”
but then Dr. Niemeyer had added, “If she were still alive,” and that had just ruined everything. It wasn’t
her
fault the woman had died! Dorothy had been going to refuse the test no matter what, but after he said his wife was dead, well, then she had to get it. Those dead people had more power than they thought.

Dorothy has never gone to a high school reunion. She was always married when they had them before, and who wanted to bring
that
to a reunion. Now she is divorced, plus she saw that movie about saying yes to life. She steps closer to the mirror and raises her chin so her turkey neck disappears. She’ll hold her head like this when she walks by Pete Decker. Later, when they’re making out in his car, it will be dark, and she won’t have to be so vigilant. Oh, she hopes they can make out in his car, she’s heard people always make out in cars at high school reunions. She was dying to make out with Pete in his car when they were in high school. He had a four-on-the-floor, metallic-green GTO, but she never even got to sit in it. She bets he has something like a red Lexus coupe now. And she bets that at the reunion he’ll watch her for a while, then come up to her and say, “Hey, Dots. Want to take a walk?” And she’ll say, all innocent, “Where?” And he’ll get a little flustered and say something like, “You know, just a
walk
, get some
air,”
and then she’ll hesitate just for a second, just long enough to make him think she might refuse, and then she’ll shrug prettily before she agrees. They’ll go out to the parking lot to his car and he’ll open his passenger-side door and raise his eyebrows and she’ll say,
“Pete!”
like she’s offended at the very notion. But then she’ll get in, will she ever. Oh, she likes this part of the fantasy best. She’ll get in, he’ll come around and get in on his side, and then, just before he lunges at her, he’ll look at her with smoke practically coming out of his eyes. And in her eyes, a soft
Yes
,
I know
. Or maybe a
Come and get it, big boy!
She can’t decide. Maybe both.

Dorothy does plan on being be a little mean to Pete; she has finally learned it can be a good thing to be mean to men. They actually like it; it appeals to their hunting instinct. That’s why she’s going to walk right by him after he sees how attractive she is. Considering.

Her daughter, Hilly, told her about being mean to men. She said you do it just at first, and then every now and then, like immunization shots, to keep up a level of intrigue. And it worked. When Hilly finally started doing it, wasn’t she
engaged
in what seemed like ten minutes! She’s getting married in Costa Rica next month, and Dorothy thinks it’s a wonderful idea, the destination wedding. Thank God her ex will pay for everything. Poor he was not. She supposes he’ll bring his new wife and pander to her every single second. Holding her hand, as though they were teenagers. Bringing her drinks, as though the woman is incapable of doing anything for herself. Staring into her eyes like the secret of the universe is written there. It’s nauseating the way they behave, anyone would say so. Hilly calls them The Magnet Dolls. Though she might do that only in a flimsy attempt to offer some kind of support to her mother, who now lives alone and must take out the garbage and figure out who to call to fix everything and check the locks at night and everything else. Dorothy suspects the truth is that her daughter actually likes her stepmother. She hasn’t said so directly, but she did say that she’s happy for her Dad and, oh, wasn’t that like nails on a chalkboard. But Dorothy did the noble thing and said yes, she was, too. Uh-huh, yes, he did seem happy now, Dorothy said, and she just wanted to throw up.

Hilly’s fiancé is a doctor. A proctologist, but still. Dorothy is working up to asking the question that—come on!—must occur to everyone to ask him: What exactly made you choose this line of work? When Dorothy tried to ask her daughter about it, all Hilly did was get mad. She’d said something like perhaps Dorothy would should consider the fact that preventing cancer is a pretty noble goal. But that still didn’t answer the question, did it?

Dorothy thinks it was a book her daughter read that made her start being mean to men. Who knows, if Dorothy had been mean to Pete Decker in high school, they might have gotten married. They went out once in high school—well, not on a date technically, but they did spend some time together on the class trip to Washington, and Dorothy was
awfully
nice to Pete and then of course that was that, he never called her. But if they had gotten married they probably would have gotten divorced, and she wouldn’t be looking forward so much to going to a high school reunion. Apart from her friends Linda Studemann and Judy Holt, she’s really only going to see him. And, to be honest, to show off her recent weight loss. That was the one nice thing about her divorce: During the grief part, before she realized how much better off she was without her husband, she lost twenty-three pounds. She bets she’ll look better than the cheerleaders and even that Candy Sullivan who was queen of everything. Not that Candy Sullivan is coming. According to Pam Pottsman, who is the contact person for this year’s reunion, Candy went to the five-year reunion and hasn’t gone to any since. “Is she dead?” Dorothy asked, ready to offer an impromptu eulogy praising Candy’s good points, even though Candy never gave Dorothy the time of day. But Pam said no, Candy wasn’t dead, apparently she just thought she was too good to come, and then they both started talking about what a snob Candy always was, and how she wasn’t even really all that. “Did you know she stuffed her bra?” Pam said, and Dorothy said,
“Really?”
and felt that delicious rush, and Pam said, “Yup, I sat across from her in Mr. Simon’s psychology class and I saw Kleenex coming out of the top of her blouse one day and I whispered to her that it was showing and she got all embarrassed and stuffed it back in and wouldn’t look at me.”

Pam told Dorothy how a lot more people were coming this year than ever before, probably because it was the last reunion their class was going to have, and she named several of their classmates who had signed up. Dorothy thinks it will be fun to see poor Mary Alice Mayhew, who is coming for her very first reunion, just like Dorothy. Though there the similarity ends, thank you very much. Such a little mouse Mary Alice was, walking down the hall and looking at the floor, all hunched over her school books. She wore awful plaid dresses and she never wore nylons, always thin white ankle socks, not even knee socks. And loafers that were
not
Weejuns, you could tell. From a mile away you could tell. Poor thing. And wait, didn’t she put a
penny
in them? There’s always one of them. In their school, it was Mary Alice Mayhew. Oh, and Lester Hessenpfeffer, who was screwed the moment he was born and his father reportedly yelled, “Change our name! Change our
name?
Why should we change our name? Let the rest of the world change
their
names!” Lester had told that story once when someone teased him about his name—he was always an affable guy who didn’t take things personally.

Poor Lester. Never dated. He had such a cute face, but he was too much of a brain, and too sensitive. He probably ended up in computers. Maybe he got rich, like that homely Microsoft guy. And if so, you can bet your boots that Dorothy will be saying hello to him, too.

If Mary Alice Mayhew really comes to the reunion, Dorothy will make a point of being nice to her. Yes she will. She’ll buy her a drink—oh, what a hoot to think of buying Mary Alice Mayhew a drink. So odd to think that they’re
old
enough to drink now. Mary Alice had silver cat-eye glasses with rhinestones on them and her hair always looked like she’d taken the rollers out and not brushed it. Dorothy has heard plenty of stories about how ugly ducklings come to their high school reunions as swans, but she’d bet money that Mary Alice looks much the same, only with wrinkles. She wouldn’t be the Botox type. Dorothy’s position on Botox is
Thank God
. Who cares if you can’t move your eyebrows around like caterpillars on a plate?

“Is Pete Dexter coming?” Dorothy asked.

He is.

“And his wife, too?”

“Nah, he never brings her. You know Pete. Oh, I can hardly wait to see him again. What a dreamboat he was.”

“Oh, did you think so?” Dorothy studied her nails casually, as though she and Pam were talking in person. If you wanted to sound a certain way, even on the telephone, it was good to act a certain way—the feeling crept into your voice. You were supposed to smile when you were talking on the phone if you wanted to sound friendly. Which a lot of people who do those recorded voices seem to do, though recorded voices make Dorothy want to bang the phone against the wall until the wires fall out.

“I thought Pete Decker was the most handsome boy in school!” Pam says. “Didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I guess a lot of people found him attractive.” Dorothy sniffed then and changed the subject. No need for Pam to know of Dorothy’s designs on Pete; Pam was quicker than Twitter at spreading things around.