How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (22 page)

“Rae, come on. Please.”

It's that that gets me, the “please,” the way she says it. I'm not breathing then and neither is she but we must be breathing because we're kissing again and her hand is making a circle of flames and my hand is reaching out too, to feel the hem of her T-shirt.

What do you think would have happened, Mum, if I'd done something different? If I'd told her that I didn't want to, if I'd made her go back to her own room? Would I be having the perfect eighteenth birthday today? Waking up to one of Aunt Ruth's special breakfasts where she cooks the Irish sausages she makes Cooper source for me through the restaurant? Would we be going to Jaxson's later? Or to the Everglades again to see the crocodiles like we did last year on my birthday? Do you think Aunt Ruth's thinking about the day we could have had today?

Or Laurie? Do they all know what's in the envelope from Columbia? Would we be celebrating that as well, if I was still at home?

This is bullshit—BULLSHIT. Home? That's not home, it never was home. Here is my home, New York is my home now, this bench by the water is my home because at least here I can be me, I can be who I want, who I really am, without having to play “let's pretend” and be someone else. Isn't that what being an adult is supposed to be about, anyway? Isn't that the whole point?

Only a kid would be sitting here, imagining some perfect birthday that's never going to happen, that never would have been perfect anyway. An adult would get that maybe this is the perfect birthday, maybe in some way I don't get yet, this is the exact eighteenth birthday I'm supposed to have, even if it feels totally fucked up right now.

It's not like Laurie was ever any good at birthdays anyway—except her own—and my best birthday was years before I met her, the year I was thirteen.

My birthday was on a Thursday that year. Thursdays meant maths first thing, but it wasn't too bad because we had art after. When Dad comes into my room that morning I'm checking everything is in my geometry set, even though everything is always in my geometry set.

He holds his arms out, for a hug. “So it's official, I have a teenage daughter. Happy Birthday!”

His cardigan and shirt are the same as he was wearing last night and I wonder if he thinks I might not remember what he was wearing before he went out.

“Aren't you going to give your old dad a hug?”

I close the gap between us. “Thanks, Dad.”

He smells like smoke, like the pub and something else that smells horrible but I hug him tighter so he won't know I've noticed. And I mean the hug, too, because I'm glad he remembered. I'd been dropping hints about runners I wanted for a couple of weeks. I wanted the runners but that wasn't the only reason for the hints—ever since he'd forgotten the year when I turned ten I've been scared that he'll forget again.

“I'm making a special birthday breakfast,” he goes. “Hurry up, because we've got to get going soon.”

I want to ask him what he means, but he's gone then and already bounding down the stairs. I check my geometry set again, zip up my bag. I haven't told him that Lisa's mum is making me a birthday dinner, that we're watching
Indecent Proposal
on video after, even though it's a school night, and I remember thinking then that I should tell him, in case he wants to do something.

The post comes just as I'm on the stairs and there's a yellow envelope on top of the bills. It has an American stamp, Aunt Ruth's scrunched-up writing. I put it in my school bag, in case Dad sees it. In the kitchen, Dad has our places set, two sausage sandwiches each. I can tell the white bread is fresh because it's taken on the shape of his fingers where he leaned down to cut it in half and the ketchup is starting to leak through.

He pours tea into the cups, sloshing some on the counter. I sit down and he plonks a mug in front of me, sits down opposite. There's no milk so he must have forgotten to pay the bill again but tea tastes the same with only water to cool it down anyway.

He takes a big bite from his sandwich. “Get that down you quick, we don't have much time.”

The clock on the wall says it is twenty past eight.

“I've loads of time. I never leave till twenty to.”

The sausage sandwich is nice, hot and greasy, ketchup sliding against butter against bread. I count my chews.

“No school today, we're going on a trip.”

He's into the second sandwich already, even though I'm not even a quarter way through my first. I wait to swallow before I ask.

“What do you mean? It's Thursday, I have to go to school!”

“Or what? You think that old bitch MacNamara will call the guards on us?”

He jerks his head around, looking over each shoulder as if the police are about to arrive in.

I laugh. “No, but—”

“You won't miss anything in one day.”

“I've got art.”

“Sure, you're always drawing something, even da Vinci took the odd break.”

Somehow he's finished his sandwiches already and he's up from his seat and brushing the crumbs into the sink. “Here!” He throws me a roll of kitchen paper that bounces off the edge of the table and onto the floor. “Wrap the rest of your breakfast up in that and take it with you so we can get on the road.”

“Where are we going?” I go, reaching down to pick up the kitchen roll.

“I thought you'd never ask,” he says, smiling before he disappears into the hall. “We're going out west.”

Driving up main street, I see Angela Clancy and Sinead Hoey on their way to school and I wish I'd had a chance to tell Lisa, so she'd know why I wasn't calling. I hope she's not going to be late, waiting for me, that she's not worried. I want to ask Dad what time we'll be back, if I'll be back in time for her mum's dinner and
Indecent Proposal
, but asking him that would make it seem like I'd rather spend my birthday with Lisa instead of him.

His driving makes me scared, the way he keeps fiddling with the tape deck instead of looking at the road, but after a bit we hit traffic and he manages to get it working. “Beautiful Boy” fills the car and I like when he puts Lennon on but it's when he's singing the chorus that I remember about the shop.

“Is someone else opening up for you today, Dad?”

He lights his cigarette with the car lighter, so it makes a hiss. A little bit of ash flicks out and joins the rest of the ash that's like dust over everything, only thicker.

“What?”

“The shop—is someone else looking after it?”

He winds down the window to flick ash out, but it blows back inside. He laughs, looks at me. “Are you codding me? Do you think I'd let anyone else take charge? Place would probably be burned down when I got back.”

“So, what? Is it closed, then?”

The car in front of us moves and he clamps his cigarette between his lips.

“Sure is. All the old biddies will have to wait till tomorrow for their housekeepers' cut and their chops and their feckin' sausages.”

“Did you tell them?” I go. “Did you tell anyone?”

“Isn't that what the closed sign is for?” Dad goes. “Feck the lot of them! It's not every day your daughter turns thirteen.”

Mrs. Lawrence always has a big order on a Thursday and Mrs. Gaffney does too. I imagine all his customers coming to the shop, one by one, and pushing their faces up against the glass, knocking for a while, before they go away again shaking their heads. I worry about that the whole way through town stuck in traffic and even the rest of the sausage sandwich doesn't make it go away. But after a while, we're on the motorway and Dad's changed the Lennon tape for his Hendrix one and he's doing his “Stone Free” dance as we're driving along really fast past bushes and fields and trees and cottages and pubs and I imagine Mrs. Lawrence and Lisa and maths class all being left behind, one by one on the road, and everything feels much better.

When we get to Athlone, Dad stops for petrol. I open Aunt Ruth's birthday card while he's inside paying. The card is yellow and pink and outside it says “Now you're a teenager” and the inside has a rhyme about being young and bright and on the cusp of life. Usually there's fifty dollars but this time there's a hundred, five twenties that all look brand new. I fold them up and put them in my sock.

“Lunch?” Dad says as he jumps back into the car.

“Is it not too early?”

“It's never too early for lunch, Rhea. Now that you're growing up you'll learn that adults lie to children all the time.” He spins the steering wheel as we pull back onto the main road. “Truth is, it's never too early or late for anything—especially chips.”

He drives into town and pulls over in front of a café, even though there's double yellow lines. It's nearly empty except for two old women having cups of tea and a man eating a burger. “Looks like what the doctor ordered,” Dad says. “Cheeseburger and chips?”

“Maybe just chips.”

He looks disappointed. “But it's your birthday! And you love cheeseburgers!”

I hesitate, smile. “Okay.”

The woman behind the counter is friendlier than if it was a café in Dublin. She laughs when Dad searches his pockets for his wallet before he realises he's left it in the car and she doesn't seem to mind me taking the tray with drinks to the table while he runs out to get his money.

They give us a basket of white bread and I make a chip sandwich. Dad's finished before I even start eating it, his leg jerking up and down under the table.

“You can bring the burger in the car if you want,” he goes. “I'll ask for something to wrap it up in.”

“Are we late for something?”

“I just want to get on the road—make good time.”

“It's not even a quarter past eleven. How much further?”

“All the way west, you'll see.”

“But where?”

“It's a surprise. A birthday surprise.”

In the car, I fall asleep, which I suppose makes sense because it's around the time I always fall asleep in school. Lisa gives out to me for that, says I shouldn't stay up so late watching telly, but it's not the telly that keeps me up, not really. I learned to fall asleep on my own, learned not to be freaked out by the weird noises the house makes, but since the time I found Dad at the bottom of the stairs one morning with the front door wide open, I try to wait up until he gets in. I don't tell Lisa that, and usually she prods me awake when any of the teachers are looking—except for the time she was doing sums at the board and Bean Uí Cheallaigh shouted, “Rhea Farrell!” really loud and when I woke up there was drool on my face and my copy.

This time when I wake up, we are off the main road and on a windy one with hedges close on both sides. The car is full of smoke and Dad's voice, singing along with Hendrix to “Foxy Lady.” In the side panel on the door the cheeseburger is still there, squashed and cold. I take it out and begin to eat it.

“Are you going to tell me now where we're going?”

The window is open, blowing Dad's hair to the side so you can see the bald bits. He turns to me and smiles. The road goes uphill and around a bend at the same time. A white van lurches, really close, but it doesn't seem to faze him.

“Guess,” he goes.

Outside the car, the fields are smaller than before, behind walls made of rocks. The colours are different from Dublin, from Rush. The green is greener, deeper, and there's loads of different blues in the sky.

“Connemara?”

I've never been to Connemara but I read somewhere that the landscape looks alive there and that's how it looks out the window with all the colours and everything moving—the hedges and the leaves and the grass all being blown by a wind coming off a sea we can't see yet.

“Close,” he goes. “Guess again.”

“Donegal?”

“No,” he laughs. “Jesus, who's your geography teacher? You don't go through Athlone to get to Donegal!”

“Mrs. Dillon,” I go. “We've been doing Europe, not Ireland.”

He takes the last drag of his cigarette, lets the butt fly from his fingers and somehow the wind catches it so it bounces in front of the windscreen. And that's when I guess again.

“Are we going to the Cliffs of Moher?”

He doesn't answer straightaway but the look on his face tells me I'm right. He's calmer than he has been the whole way, even the car seems calmer, less jerky, the tyres more sure on the road. And I don't know why I guessed that, or how I knew, but I know then that this journey has something to do with you.

There's only one sign, hidden behind an overgrown hedge, but he doesn't seem to need signs, he knows exactly when to slow the car down, when to turn through the gap in the fence where there's a man in a wooden hut collecting the money. Dad pays him in coins and we drive across a bumpy field towards a low, white building and beyond that building is a strip of grass and then the sea, navy blue like my uniform, and a million white caps of wave.

A sudden gust of wind yanks the door back when Dad opens it.

“Jesus, it's freezing!” Dad shouts at me across the roof. “Did you bring a coat?”

The wind is whipping up my skirt and I wish he'd told me we were coming so I wasn't wearing my stupid school uniform, so I could have taken the hoody that Aunt Ruth sent over at Christmas.

“No.”

“Shit! Here, let's have a look in the boot—see what's there.”

I know there won't be anything of mine in the boot, and there isn't. All there is is Dad's old brown quilted jacket that he used to wear when we went for walks.

“Here, put this on.”

“It's miles too big!”

“Put it on—I don't want you getting pneumonia, not on your birthday.”

He holds it out and I put my arm in first, then my stump. Even on my arm the sleeve hangs seven miles long. The jacket itself is nearly as long as my skirt.