The Almost Archer Sisters

by Lisa Gabriele

  “Boys!” I screamed, pushing through a clot of bovine travelers heading toward the turnstiles. “Here! Over here! Jake! Sam!”

  It was all so animal, how their ears seemed to pick up the timbre of my voice, and how their eyes scanned the crowd, eliminating everyone who wasn’t me until they landed on their target, and how I pulled past the awful people keeping me from my kids a few seconds longer, and how I got on my knees—not to pray—but I should have thanked someone for this, and how they nearly knocked me over with their wet kisses and their messy heads and their sticky hands coated with the remnants of whatever treat Lou had used to pacify them during the wait.

  “Mom, mom, mom,” Jake sang, while Sam asked, “What did you buy us?”

  I used an open palm to wipe the tears off my cheeks, the other to shove a plastic bag full of stupid souvenirs, snow globes, tea towels, erasers, an “I Love NY” mug meant for Lou, not Beau, expensive and useless things I had picked up on the LaGuardia side of the trip. But to see the boys express such gratitude for the idiot trinkets, that was when I realized this was the love affair of my life, this thing with them.

  I pressed a finger near the nick on Sam’s forehead.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No. No stitches, either,” he said.

  “Well, you got a strong head, Sam.”

  When I looked at Lou, more tears sprung from my eyes, and he hugged me to him while the boys busied themselves with the bag of goodies. After a few tight seconds I broke away to breathe.

  “Dad, thanks for coming to get me. I know what it meant.”

  “Ack. It was nothing,” he said. “Shoulda crossed the border a long time ago. I’m actually ashamed for waiting all these years.”

  “Where’s Beth?” Half of me hoped she’d be sitting alone in a plastic chair watching all of this joy.

  “We brought her here a couple hours ago for a morning flight. Then we just killed some time.”

  “How does she seem?” I asked, distracted by the boys’ hair. I assumed Beth had done the grooming because their hair was parted where it didn’t normally part.

  “She doesn’t seem anything, Peach. She is feeling awful. But, fingers crossed, she gets it. Things gotta change with her, and they will.”

  At the airport, in the parking lot, on the drive through Detroit and Windsor, then all along the county roads, I hadn’t asked about Beau. Instead, I told Lou about Beth’s doorman, and how nice he was to me, and how, when I said goodbye to him, he had chucked me under the chin the way Lou did when we were little.

  The chatter from the back seat was ceaseless and musical, the boys filling me in on how Auntie Beth had forgotten a load of laundry in the dryer, and how when she drove back to town, it had been neatly folded by a kind stranger. And how she had made a rhubarb pie from scratch.

  “Did you like it, Jake?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It was okay,” he said, shaking his snow globe with phony enthusiasm. “My mouth hurt from it though. Maybe I could go visit Auntie Beth sometime.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Because you really have to see New York for yourself.”

  “Did you ever get lost?”

  “Not once. Not even a little bit.”

  “Were you scared?” Sam asked.

  “Sometimes. Not of New York though.”

  “Of what then?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Of how much a person could miss her people.”

  Jake pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of my purse.

  “Nasty! You shouldn’t smoke, Momma.”

  “I know, baby. I’m stopping.” I made a mental note to send some flowers to Nadia, to thank her for the party and the dress.

  “And I don’t think you should go away from us ever again, either,” Sam said.

  “Yeah! Never!” Jake screamed.

  “Deal,” I said, uttering the first of many lies I’d tell them over the next few years, because now that I’d been away, I’d go away again, never too far or for too long, and never under the same kind of dramatic circumstances. But the seal around the farm had been broken. It wouldn’t take long, a few months maybe, before I’d begin to leave them on a regular basis: three nights a week to finish the degree; after that, two days and every Saturday to study for my master’s. And though I had wanted to, had fully intended to make a living helping people help themselves, I’d one night find myself chatting with Sam’s high school principal in the frozen food section of the grocery store. She had just fired the guidance counselor over a scandal involving steroids and a star athlete, and she wondered if I’d consider dropping my old plans for new ones—part-time at first, full-time later—once I passed the requisite probation. I said yes, even though Sam didn’t need much catching by high school, or much of anything else for that matter. And though Jake would eventually require the nets and grips we had long stopped using to catch Beth, as he careened from lawyers to prayers and back again, he’d get through. And though we’d owe Beth big during those fraught days and nights, it would take months after that weekend away before I’d speak to her again. She’d try and fail several times to get sober, nothing taking until she sold her company and moved to West Hollywood to work as a wardrobe consultant for feature films, and where she’d find A.A. meetings as ubiquitous as Starbucks, and where she’d surround herself with people as flaky as she’d become. But it would take more than a year after that weekend before she’d be allowed back on the farm, and it was only upon Lou’s insistence that both his daughters be at the wedding, and upon his lovely bride’s that we be wearing the same godawful dress, in which I could not avoid meeting Beth’s eyes, both of us desperate not to fall apart during the somber ceremony.

  “You actually look fat in it,” I whispered.

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a long time.”

  Lou always said things happen for a reason, and for the longest time I was loath to attribute anything good coming from that weekend—least of all anything like love. But it did. And though Lou held tight to the fact that banishing Beth from the farm was too harsh a penalty, from it sprung the oddest, most brilliant of blessings. Because to spend time with his wounded oldest, he had to go to her, a reluctant journey that quickly turned monthly after he finally caved to my pleadings to have an innocent coffee with an authentic widow named Lee from Long Island, who was kind to me in my time of need and had remained so by email. In a nondescript diner in Midtown Manhattan, my father fell in love again, later sharing long phone calls with Lee, then long road trips to Vermont, Quebec, Maine, then a flight to Paris, a city they’d both been meaning to see before they, or anyone else they loved, suddenly died. And because her country had broken her heart, Lee had no trouble leaving it for the farm, Lou reminding everyone during his toast that happy endings are really the results of sad people trying to do the next right thing.

  But those days were still ahead of us. Pulling up the driveway, I only remember noticing that the farm had lost much of its shabby menace; the grass had been cut, the laundry lines were empty, the junk stacked against the carport had been put away. Inside, the rooms sparkled with more than my customary spit and polish. Bills, flyers, and magazines weren’t merely spanked into neater piles, they were gone. Even the often-ignored toaster glowed with muscular attention.

  Lou carried my suitcase upstairs and tossed it on the bed. The boys started pulling my things out, pausing to take in the new dress that Jake named the Goodbye dress.

  It was dusk by the time Beau came home. The boys scrambled downstairs, yelling, “Mom’s back, Dad. Look what she bought us, go see her, she’s here, she’s home!” I could hear Beau asking, “What time did you guys get in? Where’s Grandpa? Are you hungry? Is your mother upstairs? I don’t want to wake her up if she’s sleeping.” But he knew I wasn’t sleeping. He knew I was already waiting for him to make the trip back upstairs, a journey that wouldn’t be completed for months and months but one that would start that evening with a slow ascent, a soft knock at the door, a muttered welcom
e back, and a choice of chicken or steak, and whether I wanted him to eat with me and the kids, or down at the trailer, to which I replied, “Chicken and the trailer, for now,” to which he replied, “Yes, okay, no, I understand, and I’m happy you’re back, I truly am,” and then he shut the door.

  I fell back on the bed listening to the boys and men banging around in the kitchen, while I thought out my inventory: I am a pretty good mother. Beau is a pretty good man. The boys are perfect. I will let Lou do the job of loving Beth. The house is sturdier than our marriage, for now, but that’s okay because when the driveway’s paved, the dormers done, we could make a mint. If we sell. Which we never will. And if a storm knocks out the power, we have a backup generator, and if the well runs dry, we have a barrel on the roof to catch the rain.

  The Almost Archer Sisters

  Reading Group Guide

  SUMMARY

  Georgia “Peachy” Archer Laliberte has almost gotten her life under control. Peachy, her husband, Beau, and their two rambunctious sons live on the family farm in a small town in Canada, just across the border from the United States. Their closest neighbor is Peachy’s draft-dodging hairdresser father, Lou, who lives in a trailer on their land. Although her son Sam has epilepsy, Peachy, Beau, and Lou have worked out a successful system to care for him and maintain as normal a family life as possible, and Peachy’s status as a superhuman caregiver has its own rewards.

  When her life on the farm isn’t quite enough, Peachy can always live vicariously through her glamorous, New York City–dwelling sister, Beth. Thin, successful, and passionate, Beth has clawed her way to the top, stepping on anyone it takes to get there—including, every so often, her younger sister. Still, Peachy and Beth are close, and they support each other through crises of all kinds.

  They support each other, that is, until Beth decides to sleep with Peachy’s husband, Beau—who just happens to be Beth’s ex-boyfriend. Furious, Peachy decides to go to New York City— alone—and leaves Beth home to care for her family. As she spends a terrified, exciting weekend alone in the middle of Beth’s life, Peachy must confront questions of love, loyalty, and family to find her way back home.

  GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  The Almost Archer Sisters is written entirely in Peachy’s first-person perspective. Do you trust Peachy’s narration of the events in the novel? Are there specific events that you question? For example, how might Beth have told the story of the abortion differently? Of the discovery of Nell’s suicide?

  On the first page of the novel, Peachy describes herself as “unremarkable,” “kind,” and, perhaps most significantly, as a “stayer.” What do you think are the benefits of being a “stayer” like Peachy, or a “leaver” like Beth? What did you think about Peachy’s perception of herself in the novel overall? Does she like herself? Do you like her? Why or why not?

  When Peachy is telling the story of Beth’s teenage years, she observes, “I had experienced adolescence largely through Beth, much the way I like to think she’d later experience adulthood through me.” (34) In fact, Peachy repeatedly emphasizes her own “adulthood” and Beth’s “adolescence” in the novel. Do you agree that Peachy is the most “adult” character in the novel? What aspects of Peachy’s character are more “adolescent” than Beth’s?

  In a particularly dramatic moment in the novel, Peachy has an argument at the U.S.-Canadian border with her father, Lou, about Beth’s adultery. Peachy, furious with her father for defending Beth, tells him, “I didn’t take my sadness out on the whole fucking planet.” Lou responds, “That’s right, Peachy. You don’t. You’re lucky. But because Beth does, we have to try to love her more.” (128) Do you agree with Lou? Do you think Lou is a good father? Does the novel offer a definitive judgment on good and bad parenting? If so, what is it?

  Peachy says, “I’ve never envied my prettier, smarter, funnier, skinnier, richer sister. Her uncertainty drained even me.” Despite this observation, several of Peachy’s thoughts and actions seem dominated by her sense of competition with her sister; perhaps the most vivid example, when Peachy considers making love with her husband: “Once he had it in his mind, he was like a snowplow in his single-minded pursuit of sex.… I had wanted Beth to overhear a variation of this later that night.… I wanted her to know that, despite my complaints, I had made all the right decisions about my life …” Do you think Peachy’s portrayal of Beth’s judgment of her choice is fair, or is it merely a projection of her own doubts? Were you sympathetic to Peachy’s insecurity about what Beth thinks, or frustrated by it? Why?

  Peachy says about her marriage to Beau: “I know now we had just begun the mysterious process of growing apart, something that used to baffle me about other couples. I used to wonder how, after seven, eight years together do you possibly ‘grow apart’? And please can you show me how to do it?” What do you think of Beau and Peachy’s marriage? Do you think Peachy bears any responsibility for Beau’s cheating with Beth? What do you think happens to the marriage after the novel ends?

  Sam’s epilepsy is a major controlling force in Peachy’s life. She declares, “Life was all Sam.… It was hard to think of anything but his ceaseless metabolism.” In what ways did dealing with Sam’s epilepsy affect Peachy’s understanding of Beth? Of herself?

  When Peachy decides not to pursue a career in social work, ostensibly to take care of Sam, she says, “Because I believed I was needed at home, Beau and Lou believed it, too. But no matter how I couched my excuse, Beth wasn’t buying any of it.” (26) Two-thirds of the way through the novel, Peachy describes Beth as “a woman who never, ever dropped her guard for anyone, except for maybe me.” (163) Are Peachy and Beth the closest characters in the novel? Do they know each other best?

  The novel often focuses on the theme of outsider and insider status—who belongs and who doesn’t belong in a certain place or time. For example, when Peachy returns home with her boys the morning after finding Beth and Beau having sex, she has a sudden vision of Beth as Beau’s wife, and re-flects: “Maybe this was all a big misunderstanding, I thought. Maybe they were the ones who had gotten married all those years ago and I was the one just stopping by.” (116) What are some other examples in the novel of Peachy feeling like an outsider in her own life? Do you think she creates that feeling for herself, or is it a result of her circumstances? Does she overcome that feeling by the end of the novel?

  When Peachy decides to go to New York without Beth, she calls her and goes into an astonishing, climactic litany of her duties as a wife and mother: “Before you leave for Detroit, make a lunch for Beau. No meat. The fridge is broken at the shop. His thermos is in the dishwasher. Washer’s still broken. There’s four loads of laundry already separated in the basement. Throw them in the trunk.” (The entire speech can be found.) In many ways, this is Peachy’s first true moment of self-assertion in the novel. Do you find it pathetic, as Peachy herself does (“Jesus, it sounds like my life sucks”) or triumphant? What did you think of the novel’s portrayal of the life of a stay-at-home mother?

  Upon her arrival in New York City, Peachy says, “I felt young and dumb, and suddenly I wanted a mother, any mother, to wrap me in a shock blanket and take me home.” Where else does the theme of the absent mother appear in the novel? (A particularly beautiful passage where Peachy describes the effect of her mother’s suicide can be found: “And they can’t shake it off.”) How does Nell’s death affect Peachy’s own motherhood? How do you think it affects Beth’s interaction with her nephews?

  While spending time with Jake and Sam at the park, Peachy observes Jake’s behavior and says, “I suddenly caught a glimpse of what a little asshole he might become at twenty or thirty, when he was grown up and hopefully some nice woman’s problem.” (113) Did you find Peachy’s periodic matter-of-fact assessment of her children jarring or realistic? Did it make you more or less sympathetic to her as a character? Why?

  Although Peachy is tempted, she ultimately decides not to invite Marcus up to the apartment after their
date. Were you disappointed or relieved by her decision? Do you think Marcus’s attraction to Peachy was feigned or genuine?

  Did you like the way the novel ended, with brief snapshots of the future, or would you have preferred to be left in the dark? Why?