Free Pack Up the Moon by Anna McPartlin Page A

you or I or anyone else can do about it. And you drinking your face off for the rest of your days
    and giving up, well, that’s fine. But know this, your friend John, he would give anything to be here sitting on this bench looking at those stupid ducks swimming in circles
    and he wouldn’t piss whatever life he had left down the
    toilet like you are doing.” It was a mouthful and Sean was startled but I wasn’t finished. “Now, you can get help or you can piss off because the rest of us need you. We need to you to be well and happy and strong like the old Sean
    because we need him back.” I was crying again. I didn’t even notice because crying in public was no longer alien.
    We sat in silence for a long time. He played with his scarf, an old college one that he dug out every winter.
    “I’m not an alcoholic,” he said.
    “Prove it,” I challenged.
    Silence. Then, “OK. I’ll see someone.”
    I took his hand in mine and it was icy. We walked out through the arched gateway and onto the busy street, still holding hands. By the time we hugged and parted at the end of the street his hand was warm.
    I walked home and lay on my bed with Leonard, the lost kitten who nobody was looking for, now my growing companion. I fell asleep to the sound of his purring, hoping against hope that, if I could never have John back, at least the old Sean would return.
    Sean did go to see someone. I can’t tell you what they talked about because that would remain forever between
    them. He stopped drinking for a while just to ensure that he could and, when he went back to it, it was only socially. He began to find the acceptance that the rest of
     
    us had managed despite ourselves and it wasn’t long
    before he returned to brighten us like he used to.
    Anne had other problems. She had tasted death and now she craved for life. She admitted she’d been upset that day in Bewleys’, when she had taken the pregnancy test. Her reaction to the white window was vastly different from
    mine. While I had cheered, she had mourned. While I had celebrated what I never had, she had grieved. Another blow so soon. Richard was blissfully unaware of the cause of his wife’s distress. He put it down to her missing her friend like he did and it would never have occurred to him
    to ask.
    Anne and I had met in English class. We found ourselves sitting together on the second week and after that it was
    Just habit. We were alike, as both of us weren’t particularly sure what we wanted from life, both of us falling into an arts degree hoping that at some point along the line we’d find
    our path. When she met Richard he became her direction, like John was mine. It was nice to have someone around that wasn’t career-or goal-oriented. As much as I loved Clo we never shared that ambition that burned so brightly in her. Anne was a homemaker. You could see that the first time you laid eyes on her. She was a Benetton-jumper-and-silkscarf-wearing-Rose-of-Tralee-homemaker. Richard was in economics, but he came across as the literary-tweed-jacketleather-patch-and-jeans-professor type. They fitted, like a well-bound book. Their only problem being that no after six years, they found themselves on different pages.
    Meanwhile, Clo found herself in a relationship with her admiring client Mark. He wasn’t married; she had wasted no time in confirming that fact. He didn’t appear
     
    weird like the guy she once dated whose all-consuming hobby was the collection of butterflies; nor was he a stalker, again an improvement on the men she had managed to attach herself to. It was comfortable and he was very sweet to her through all the grieving stuff. After four months it was possible that this one was a keeper. She didn’t boast about it; she was sensitive to the fact that I had lost my love and certainly wasn’t about to shove her new one in my face. Still, she was happy and her happiness had the pleasant effect of rubbing off on me.
    We had no secrets. We had built