The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank [0]
Melissa Bank has had several stories published in US magazines. An international bestseller, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing is her first book and has been published in twenty-one countries.
T H E
G I R L S ' G U I D E
T O H U N T I N G
A N D F I S H I N G
M E L I S S A B A N K
TO MY REAL-LIFE GIRL GUIDES
Adrienne Brodeur, Carole DeSanti,
Carol Fiorino, Molly Friedrich,
Judy Katz, and Anna Wingfield
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones.
And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
"One Art," from The Complete Poems 1927-1979,
by Elizabeth Bishop
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Alexandra Babanskyj, Barbara Grossman, Susan Petersen, and Paul Slovak at Viking; to Francis Coppola, Karla Eoff, Alicia Patterson, Samantha Schnee, and Joanna Yas at Zoetrope: All Story; to Kathy Minton and Isaiah Sheffer at Selected Shorts; to Lucy Childs and Paul Cirone at the Aaron Priest Literary Agency; to my trusty readers—Michael Atmore, Joan Bank, Donna Barba, Margery Bates, Scott Bryson, Arthur Chernoff, Paul Cody, Jane Dickinson, Hunter Hill, Mitch Karsh, Ken Katz, Peter Landes-man, Alex Moon, Jane Moriarty, Sylvie Rabineau, Michael Ruby, Oren Rudavsky, Julie Schumacher, Sandy Stillman, Joe Sweet, John Szalay, Jack "Wetling, Judy Wohl—and especially Garth Wingfield, who helped me with every version of every story; and, finally, thanks to my brother, Andrew Bank, for listening to all the boring details, making me laugh every day, and always coming to the rescue.
Contents
ADVANCED BEGINNERS
THE FLOATING HOUSE
MY OLD MAN
THE BEST POSSIBLE LIGHT
THE WORST THING A SUBURBAN GIRL
COULD IMAGINE
YOU COULD BE ANYONE
THE GIRLS' GUIDE TO
HUNTING AND FISHING
A D V A N C E D
B E G I N N E R S
While home is the place where you can relax and be yourself, this doesn't mean that you can take advantage of the love and affection other members of your family have for you.
—From 20th Century Typewriting by D. D. Lessenberry, T. James Crawford, and Lawrence W. Erickson
My brother's first serious girlfriend was eight years older—twenty-eight to his twenty. Her name was Julia Cathcart, and Henry introduced her to us in early June. They drove from Manhattan down to our cottage in Loveladies, on the New Jersey shore. When his little convertible, his pet, pulled into the driveway, she was behind the wheel. My mother and I were watching from the kitchen window. I said, "He lets her drive his car."
My brother and his girlfriend were dressed alike, baggy white shirts tucked into jeans, except she had a black cashmere sweater over her shoulders.
She had dark eyes, high cheekbones, and beautiful skin, pale, with high coloring in her cheeks like a child with a fever. Her hair was back in a loose ponytail, tied with a piece of lace, and she wore tiny pearl earrings.
I thought maybe she'd look older than Henry, but it was Henry who looked older than Henry. Standing there, he looked like a man. He'd grown a beard, for starters, and had on new wire-rim sunglasses that made him appear more like a bon vivant than a philosophy major between colleges. His hair was longer, and, not yet lightened by the sun, it was the reddish-brown color of an Irish setter.
He gave me a kiss on the cheek, as though he always had.
Then he roughed