by Melissa Bank
I didn't pick up the manuscript. I pinged the rubber band. "Did you look at it?" I asked, stalling.
She turned her head—not a no, not a yes. "Jane," she said, " I can get a freelancer. Or do it myself over the weekend. But it would be great if you could help out."
It was hard turning down an opportunity to be great. When I did, I saw her delicate eyebrows go up.
—•—
At Tortilla Flats, Jamie introduced his current girlfriend, a waitress named Petal. She had a little daisy tattoo on her ankle and seemed light and sweet and sure of herself in the particular way a very young woman can.
At our table, I asked Sophie if I was ever like that.
"Like what?" she said.
"Like Petal in any way," I said.
She said, "You used to be twenty-two."
"Jesus," I said, "Jamie must be thirty-five."
"Twisted," she said, and got up to go to the bathroom.
I looked around me. It was Thursday, a party night, and I could feel that bar-generated electricity—the buzz and spark of sex-to-be. Everyone appeared to be having a great time, flirting and drinking and half dancing to R & B, which I loved and never heard at Archie's.
When Sophie returned, I said, "I think being with Archie makes me feel older than I am."
"You do live his way," she said. "It's an older person's life."
X I X
Archie was elated that I felt better.
On our way up to the Berkshires, he asked me to think about moving in with him.
I didn't speak.
He forced a laugh and said, "I didn't mean you had to start thinking about it right this minute."
—•—
Saturday morning, I felt the way I had as a child, waking up in the summer and sensing what I could expect that day in the suburbs: the dry cleaner at the back door to drop off my father's suits; the damp smell of the changing room at the public pool; the dusty shade in the garage.
Maybe Archie could sense it. He suggested we go to the swimming hole, a muddy pond he'd called the Butt-hole and had refused to go to in our last life. We swam in old sneakers.
On the way home, we stopped at the farm stand for vegetables and fruit. He made dinner and we had a picnic underneath the apple tree in back. He read Washington Square to me by flashlight.
When he got into bed and I smelled his aftershave, I said, "Can we just fool around for a while?"
"What does that mean?"
I couldn't think how to say it without hurting him. "Not be so focused on The Problem. You know," I said, "less goal oriented."
"Goal oriented?" he said. "What kind of talk is that? That's like interact and lifestyle." He turned his back to me. "You know I hate that kind of talk."
In the morning, he wouldn't speak to me. I said, "You're mad just because I used the expression goal oriented?"
He said, "I don't like the way you talk to me."
—•—
We drove back to New York in silence.
"Harrisburg, Pennsylvania," I said finally.
He said, "What?"
I said, "I'm willing to play one of your stupid road games, if you want to."
"I don't feel much like playing one of my stupid road games," he said. "But thanks."
On the West Side Highway, he said, "What street are you on?" It didn't seem strange to him that he didn't know.
When he stopped at my building, I said, "I tried to talk to you about something important."
He leaned over me and opened my car door.
I went upstairs into my apartment. It had that unlived-in feel. Dust on my aunt's pictures. No diet root beer in the refrigerator.
I got a bottle of scotch from her liquor cabinet and one of her crystal glasses. I went out to the terrace. It was raining a little. After a few minutes, though, I heard voices coming from the terrace below mine; I saw a tall woman and a shorter man. I couldn't make out words, but they seemed to be having an argument, and I didn't want to hear it.
I went into my aunt's study and sat at the desk where she'd written her novels. I thought I might write something myself. But I wound up just writing what I'd said to Archie and he'd said back.
I got into bed and turned off the light. Lying there, I felt like Archie had sent me to my room.
Then I heard my father's voice saying his usual phrases:
Life is unfair, my love.
I can't make the decision for you.
Don't take the easy way out, Janie.
Then he was gone. The quiet sounded loud. I got dressed and walked to Seventh Avenue for a cab. I let myself into Archie's.
Upstairs, I got into bed with him. He turned away from me. I put my arms around him.
"I'm here about the apartment," I said. "You advertised for a roommate? A smoker who can't name the capitals?"
"I can't talk to you about our problem with sex," he said. "I can hardly talk to myself about it."
—•—
I asked him to tell me the truth about drinking, and he did.
He'd been drinking all along. He told me all the times he could remember. I went back over each one. Then I asked about other times when I'd sensed something was wrong, and went back over the years to the first time—when I'd gone over to his house to tell him that Jamie and I had broken up.
This was how I'd felt finding out about my father; it was like getting the subtitles after the movie.
Archie tried to reassure me. He told me that he was not drinking now, and he swore to me that he wouldn't again. He took Antabuse and kept the poker chip in his pocket. But these had failed him before—or he'd failed them. He would drink again, I knew that. It was part of who he was.
X X
I asked Mimi to have lunch with me. At the restaurant, she told me I needed protein and suggested I order the liver or steak with a good cabernet.
When the waiter came to the table, I told him that I'd have the salmon.
"I'll have the same," she said.
She said that she'd come to this restaurant for lunch alone after her own father had died. "I just sat at the bar and ordered soup." She told me that she was crying when an ex-boyfriend from years before happened to walk in. "He sat down and put his arm around me," she said. "He seemed to think I was still upset about our breakup."
I laughed, and she said, "Boys always think everything is about them."
I thought, Whereas everything is really about you, Me-me. But I understood her now as I hadn't before. I understood that she needed to be told who she was. Just as I had.
She said that her father's death had been the hardest thing in her life. "We are all children until our fathers die."
I said, "I feel sort of like an adolescent again."
She gave me a look of older-sister understanding.
"At work, I mean," I said. "I've gone backward. If I keep going this way, I'll be heading down to personnel soon to take a typing test."
She started to disagree, but I stopped her. "I've become your assistant," I said. "I used to be an associate editor."
She said, "That's still your title."
"I need to be one, though," I said. "I'm not asking for a promotion," I said. "I'm telling you that I need to be un-demoted—or else I have to quit."
Her face was even paler than usual, which I hadn't thought possible. I could see the blue of a vein just under her eye. "You haven't exactly proven yourself."
"I know," I said. "You're right."
"I have to think about this," she said.
I told her I was letting her pick up the check, on the chance that I'd soon be unemployed.
—•—
"You've got balls," Archie said.
"Could you put that some other way?" I said.
He said, "But what if she lets you quit?"
I told him I thought she would. "I don't think I belong in publishing anyway."
"Since when?" he said, strangely.
"I don't know."
He looked at me as though I'd said I w
anted to sleep with another man.
"It's all about judging," I said. "I'm not sure I'm the judge type. I might be more of the criminal type."
"Judgment is power," he said.
I said, "I thought knowledge was power."
"Why are we talking like this?" he said.
"You're right," I said. But I told him that I didn't think I wanted power. "I think I want freedom."
He said, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
I said, "You're sinking to my level."
—•—
Mimi let me resign. "I feel terrible about this," she said. "Maybe I could help you find another job."
"No," I said. "I'm quitting publishing cold turkey."
She said, "I feel the way I did when my first husband left me."
This was a story I wanted to hear.
"He thought he was gay," she said. "It wasn't enough for him to leave me, he had to leave my whole sex."
"Was he gay?" I asked.
"Of course he was."
I said, "But you said 'he thought he was gay.' "
"I think you're missing my point, Jane."
We agreed that I would leave in two weeks.
—•—
I heard Archie turn the key in the door.
He kissed me and said, "What's the matter?"
"Nada thing," I said. "I was let quit."
He said, "Oh, honey," as though I'd made a terrible mistake.
"Don't say it like that," I said. "I'm about to embark on an exciting career as a temp."
"No," he said, and he snapped his fingers. "You'll come work for me at K——. And be a real associate editor."
I said, "I could bring you up on charges for that."
"What?"
"Work harassment in the sexual place."
—•—
On my last day of work, I went by Mimi's office to say good-bye. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you," I said.
"Of course," she said.
"How do you get your eyebrows so perfect?"
"Carmen," she said, and she wrote down the number of her eyebrowist. Then she sprayed perfume on my wrists one last time, and I was out.
On the subway home, I got a little scared. I remembered the phrase career suicide. But then I thought, Goodbye, cruel job.
—•—
The following Monday, I went to the temp place. I aced my typing test. I soared through spelling and grammar. I was sent to the benefits department of a bank, where I typed numbers into a computer and answered the phone.
"Today was the first day of the rest of my life," I told Archie when I got home. "It was okay. I think the second day of the rest of my life will be better."
He tried to smile, but it was just a shape his mouth made.
While I was cooking dinner, I found Motown on the radio and danced around the kitchen.
"What is this?" he asked, as though he'd caught me reading a comic book.
I sang along to the music: "I'll take you there."
He said, "I live with a teenager."
"Why are you so upset?" I asked him in bed.
He said, "I don't know," and I realized I'd never heard him say these words before. "I wanted to help you, and now I can't even do that."
"It's better for me, honey," I said, but he didn't answer.
X X I
The next weekend we went up to the farmhouse. He did whatever I wanted to and nothing I didn't. He didn't ask me to play Scrabble or Honeymoon Bridge or Hearts. He didn't suggest we invite the professor over for dinner.
In the late afternoon, he took me to the flea market. He ate hot dogs at the concession stand and read the newspaper while I hunted for treasures. When I showed him what I'd bought—cardboard farm animals with wooden stands—he said, "How did we live without these before?"
—•—
Saturday night, we lay outside on the grass. The moon lit up the meadow and the stars were out. It must've been their brightness that made me remember a radio jingle from when I was growing up, and I sang it to Archie: "Everything's brighter at Ashbourne Mall."
He got the tune right away, and sang, "Ashbourne Mall."
After a while, he said, "Honey."
"Yes, honey," I said.
He put a little box in my hand. I looked at it. It was that robin's-egg blue from Tiffany. I opened the blue box, and there was a velvet one inside, and I opened that. I looked at the ring. It was platinum with one diamond. It was just the ring I would've wanted, if I'd wanted a ring from him.
I said, "It's beautiful."
He heard the remorse in it. "Oh," he said, "I see."
I was about to say, I can't make a big decision right now—I can barely trust myself to decide what earrings to wear. But I said, "I'm sorry, honey."
He spoke softly. "I knew you wouldn't marry me when you didn't ask me to the funeral."
My father was gone. I felt I couldn't lose anything else, but just then I realized I already had: I'd lost the hope that I would ever be loved in just that way again.
—•—
I walked through the meadow. I sat at the picnic table. I looked hard at everything, so I wouldn't forget. Then I picked an apple from the tree for the ride home.
In the car, Archie said that it was hard letting me go; I was probably the last shot he'd have to start a new life.
I started to disagree, but he got angry. "Jesus," he said. "At least pretend the idea of me with another woman is still hard for you."
"Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?" I said.
He said, "Albany, New York."
—•—
When he pulled up to my apartment, I said, "You don't want me to come over and get my stuff?"
"No," he said. "I don't."
I was a little afraid of him just then.
Then he reached over and took my hand. We sat like that, in front of my building, for what felt like a long time. Then he hugged me, and said, "My little rhesus monkey."
—•—
Archie waited a week to call me. He said I could come over and get my things anytime I wanted to.
I said, "I'll come over tomorrow morning."
"You don't want me to be here," he said.
"I think it would be easier," I said.
"It shouldn't be easy," he said. I knew he was right, and I was about to say so, when he added, "Don't take the easy way out, Janie."
"You can't do that," I said. "It's a violation of the Versailles Treaty."
"Well," he said, "according to the Geneva Convention, I get to say good-bye to you."
—•—
Instead of taking the key from the gargoyle's mouth, I rang the bell.
He opened the door. "Hello, honey," he said.
"Hi." In the foyer, I saw my clothes and books in beige plastic bags that had once delivered our Chinois. My cardboard farm animals grazed on a box of my books.
"Can you stay for a minute?" he said, and I said, "Sure."
I saw white freesia on the dining-room table. He poured a diet root beer for me.
We went to the den, and he sat in his big leather armchair. He said, "I'm afraid Mickey's in shock about us. He said he feels like his parents got divorced."
"I think the important thing is that he doesn't blame himself," I said.
Archie didn't smile. "He'd like you to call him."
"I will," I said.
"He asked me why we broke up, and I couldn't explain it to him."
I was about to say, Honey, but I said, "Archie."
"Yes, Jane," he said, hurting me exactly how I'd hurt him.
"Are you asking me to explain?" I said.
"I guess I am," he said.
As gently as I could, I told him what I'd figured out about us. He nodded, and I went on, saying what I thought was wrong and why. When I told him that we couldn't talk openly to each other, I realized that I was now. It made me wonder if we really did have to break up.
But then he interrupted: "I guess I don't need to hear a
ll this."
"Okay," I said. "Just tell Mickey we couldn't make each other happy."
He said, "Coleridge said that happiness is just a dog sunning itself on a rock. We're not put on this earth to be happy. We're here to experience great things."
I said, "I don't think you want to tell Mickey we couldn't make each other experience great things."
"Is that what this about?" he said. "Sex?"
"Why are you badgering me?" I asked.
He smiled. "I thought if we had a good fight," he said, "we could make up."
I shook my head, and he stood up, so I could.
He helped me carry the bags outside, and hailed a cab for me.
He said, "You going to be okay on the other end?" I said I would.
X X I I
I saw Archie once more. I spotted him near Sheridan Square, waiting for the light to change with a pretty young woman, pink-cheeked from the cold—a good girl in a camel-hair coat. I couldn't guess her age—I'd lost that ability from being with Archie—but I knew she was even younger than I'd been when we were together. I'd always imagined that he'd wind up with someone closer to his age, just as I would. So it threw me. And for a second, I saw them as the world-weary world did: older man seeks younger woman.
I wondered if they were married. Watching them, I decided they weren't. They were courting each other. Trying to make each other laugh. He had his arm around her, and she was looking up at him. He was a sly boots, but I could tell how badly she wanted his approval. She reminded me of myself, of course.
Crossing the street, he saw me. He smiled, I thought, sadly. It seemed like he might walk past me on the sidewalk, but he stopped, and said, "Hey kiddo," and kissed my cheek.
"This is my daughter, Elizabeth."
I acted as though I'd known who she was.
"Hi," she said. She seemed even younger than her young self, fidgeting with a white mohair glove.
Archie asked me if I was still temping, and I admitted that I was a semi-perm at an ad agency.
She was looking from Archie to me, maybe wondering who I was—or had been—to her father.
I asked how Mickey was. "Tired," Archie said; he'd just delivered his new book.
"The Mickey I met that time?" Elizabeth asked.
Archie said, "Right," and told his daughter and me that the new book, about a baker-bookie, was called Dough.
