The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

Author:Melissa Bank
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-10-16T22:49:32+00:00

I I I

I once read that no matter how long an alcoholic was sober, as soon as he went back to drinking he would be exactly where he was when he'd left off. That's how it was with Archie and me.

I filled his closet with my clothes. My shampoos and conditioners lined the ledge of his tub. He stocked his refrigerator with diet root beer and carrots.

We ate dinner together every night, out or in.

Before bed, from the upstairs bathroom he'd announce, "I'm taking my Antabuse!"

I didn't know what to say. I tried to think what the right answer might be. Then, I'd call out, "Thanks," as though I'd sneezed and he'd blessed me.

I knew he wanted to have sex if he put on aftershave before bed. I called it his forescent. The sex itself was manual labor. I was there for what happened afterward—the tenderness that didn't come any other way.

Sometimes, we slept face to face, with our arms around each other; one night I woke up and his mouth was so close to mine I was breathing his breath.

—•—

The only friend I told at first was Sophie, the anti-Archiest of them all. I was afraid to, but she didn't even seem surprised. She said, "Does he make you feel better?"

I said he did.

"He's not drinking?" she said.

I told her about Antabuse and the poker chip from AA.

She looked over at me, and thought. Finally, she said, "But don't give up your apartment, okay?"

I told her that my aunt's apartment wasn't mine to give up, and that it hadn't occurred to me to move all the way in with Archie.

She said, "Call me if it does."

—•—

Archie asked if I'd told my parents about him, and I said I hadn't. "How much longer are you going to keep me in the closet?" he said. "It's dark in here. And I keep stepping on your shoes."

—•—

I was going home to the suburbs for the weekend, and Archie gave me a copy of Loony for my father. Then he said, "Let's go."

"Let's go?" I said.

He carried my bag around the corner to Hudson Street and hailed a cab. He actually got in and rode with me to Penn Station. He acted like I was a sailor, shipping out.

While I stood in the ticket line, he went to Hudson News and got Tropical Fruits Life Savers and goofy magazines—DogWorld, True Confessions, and Puzzler—for my train ride. We held hands walking to the staircase for my track. It was hard to go. I said that I worried he'd be lonely. He kissed me and told me not to worry. He said, "I'm the last person you should be thinking about."

—•—

That weekend looked just like the ones I'd spent at home before finding out about my father. But I knew now what was underneath. We had lunch out on the patio. We talked and read. Puttered. We ate dinner by candlelight. We acted like we might go to the movies and never went.

When I woke up on Sunday, my mother had been up for hours, gardening.

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