How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (24 page)

If Lisa's mum had said I could stay, would I have? Would I have stayed with them, lived in their house instead of going to Florida? At school, the nuns were always saying “Tell the truth and shame the devil,” and I'm trying, just sometimes I don't know. Part of me wanted to go and part of me wanted to stay, that's the truth, and Lisa's mum and dad weren't able to take me in anyway, even if I'd wanted them to. At least her mum told me out straight, didn't pretend, she looked me in the eyes and told me she thought the world of me and she'd love to be able to, but they just couldn't. She never lied, Lisa's mum, she always told the truth. Not like Aunt Ruth. Not like Laurie.

The night I found out what a liar Laurie is, I didn't even want her to come into my room, that's the truth. It was getting risky. Aunt Ruth knew something was going on. She was looking at us in a way she hadn't done before and she'd started asking me about boys all the time, boys in my class and in art club and some loser at Cooper's restaurant who apparently wanted to go on a date.

I keep telling Laurie to be careful but she doesn't want to hear it and that night she especially doesn't want to hear it because she's upset, crying when she comes into my room. She's talking too loud, all about my Columbia application, how she can't believe I'm going to leave her and go to New York.

I tell her to keep her voice down, that I mightn't get in anyway, but she says if I loved her I'd go to a community college in Florida and I wouldn't apply to Columbia at all. I try and explain to her, about Columbia, but she doesn't understand. I tell her she can apply too, that in a year we can be together in New York, but that only makes her cry harder.

“I can't be on my own, Rae. I'm not as strong as you.”

I remember all our kisses, it feels like I do, but I especially remember those ones—the last ones. I kiss her cheeks and the side of her face that her tears have made wet. I kiss the line where her hair meets her forehead and I smooth it down under my hand. I kiss her mouth then, a soft kiss, and she pulls me kind of on top of her the way she always does and we are like that, kissing, when the door slams open, a crash against the wall.

I feel Cooper before I see him, his hand on my stump, grabbing it so hard I think he's going to rip it off. In one motion, he yanks me out of bed and onto the floor. My head hits the corner of the bedside locker on the way down.

Aunt Ruth is behind Cooper, screaming at him to stop. His face is closer, his anger, her face is over his shoulder, her hand at her mouth. When he hits me the pain in my jaw is an explosion. She pulls him off me, I don't know how she does, but she does and I roll away. Laurie is crying and Aunt Ruth is yelling at Cooper to calm down and he picks up my prosthetic from where it is on the desk and throws it at me, but he misses.

It happens really fast, Mum, all of that, in a nano-second. Aunt Ruth is pushing Cooper out of the room, towards the kitchen, and shouting back at me and Laurie to get dressed. Laurie runs into her room and I'm lying there on the floor and I'm not moving but it feels like the room is. When I get up, I think I'm going to be sick, but there's no time to be sick because in the kitchen Cooper's shouting at Laurie. My white T-shirt has blood on it and I want to find my Hendrix one but I don't know where it is. I want to wear my Docs, but there's a crash from the kitchen so I shove on tracksuit bottoms and run down the hall.

When I get to the kitchen, Laurie's already lied, Mum. She's already told them that I forced her, that she was scared of me, that's why she went along with it. The crash was the electric juicer. It's lying on the floor tiles, Cooper must have smashed it. He's pacing, listening to Laurie, and Aunt Ruth is begging him to calm down and he roars that he is calm.

I sit down in the chair nearest Laurie, but she doesn't look at me. Her knees are pulled up against her and she's sucking her hair and crying and saying she's sorry, that once we'd done it once, I made her do it over and over, and that I'd threatened to tell if she wouldn't. Her body is shaking and despite all the lies she's telling, part of me doesn't blame her for lying, part of me wants to get up and put my arms around her and tell her it's going to be okay.

Cooper walks around the table, towards me, face red. His hair isn't slicked back for once, but hanging down on either side of his face. When he shouts, his voice fills the whole room. “We take you into our home—we feed you, put clothes on your back, pay for school—”

Aunt Ruth is right behind him, trying to get between us.

“Cooper,” she says, “take a breath, calm down.”

He smashes his hand down on the table, right in front of where I'm sitting. “How am I expected to be calm when there's some pervert under our roof taking advantage of my daughter?”

“Cooper, please!” Aunt Ruth tries to grab his arm. “Don't use language like that—”

He swings around to her, jerks his arm out of her grip. “The hell I won't—I knew there was something wrong with her, I told you.”

“Cooper, stop it. Please. Let her speak. We've only heard Laurie's side.”

“What side? Laurie was fine before she came along. You heard what Laurie said, she was pressured into doing it by her!” He jabs a finger at me. “If it's not true, why isn't she denying it?” Aunt Ruth has somehow managed to get in front of Cooper. She's down on her hunkers, close to me, leaning against the table. Without makeup she looks way older.

“Rhea,” she says. “Rhea, tell the truth, tell us what happened. Don't be afraid. It's important.”

Her eyes are brown, like yours—mine are blue, like Dad's, because I have his DNA as well. My stump is throbbing, my face, my head. Cooper slams both hands down on the table.

“Say something, dammit!” he yells. “Fucking say something!”

Laurie cries harder.

“Coop, honey, please try and be calm.” Aunt Ruth turns to him. “We can get through this, families get through things like this.”

“Oh, really?” He stands straight and buries his hands in his armpits. “This isn't the fucking
Jerry Springer Show
, Ruth! This is my daughter we're talking about.”

Behind both of them, Laurie's head is in her arms, her shoulders trembling. I can hear the words she's not saying, the words she said earlier.
I'm not as strong as you.
I can leave, I'm going to leave, go to Columbia, but Laurie has to stay. And that's what makes me say it.

“What Laurie said was the truth,” I go. “It was all me.”

I don't look at Aunt Ruth. I focus on the broken juicer lid under the chair, a spring from the mechanism is rolling across the tiles.

Cooper throws his arms in the air, like a victory. “Yes! Now, we're getting somewhere—now, Ruth, do you see? I mean it's hardly a surprise she has problems, with that drunk of a father and your fuck-up of a sister for a mother.”

“Cooper!” Aunt Ruth's shout is louder than his right then. “I know you're upset but don't—”

“Don't what, Ruth?” He stands with his hands on his hips, almost as if he's enjoying himself now. “Don't tell the truth? Don't talk about what happened?”

“Cooper, stop.” Aunt Ruth is back on her feet, her voice sounds like it's begging. “Please, just stop.”

“We're supposed to pretend it didn't happen?”

“Cooper—” Aunt Ruth is grabbing his arm and he shakes her off again.

“We're supposed to pretend your sister didn't kill herself?”

There's silence then, as if what Cooper said has taken up all the oxygen, that there's no air for any more sound. Even Laurie's stopped crying. My chair scrapes when I push it back against the tiles and when I stand up, I stand up slowly. They're all looking at me, but Cooper's the one I look at when I say what I say next. He's the one I want to hear it.

“My mother didn't kill herself. You're full of shit.”

I think he might start shouting again, but he doesn't say anything. I leave them there, the three of them and the broken juicer. When I go to my room and shut the door, I see the dent the handle made in the plaster when Cooper smashed it open. I get under the covers and the pillow still smells of Laurie and I let myself smell her but I don't cry.

And I'm not crying now, Mum, those blotches on the page are from the rain that's just started. It's coming down heavier and it looks like tears all over the page, but it's not my tears.

If they were my tears, they'd have my DNA in them, and they don't. They're only water. Only rain.

Rhea

Dear Mum,

I don't want to write anymore, I don't want to write this shit down. I thought when I moved inside here, to the cathedral, that it would break it, all this stuff in my head, but it's still there, going round and around and so I'm back to writing it all down because maybe if I write it in a letter, it will stop.

I wish I'd found this place before now. There's a desk at the front where they ask for money but you don't have to pay anything and there's loads of little side chapels off the main cathedral part and I have one all to myself. And there's a long bench with a blue velvet cushion and I've lined everything up along there—all the evidence, all the clues—the two photos of you from Dad and the ones from Nana Davis and the newspaper clippings of your dad and his boss and his boss's obituary and the Carver book. And that's everything—apart from the subway map on my wall in Coral Springs—that's all there is.

And looking at all the photos lined up, even though I love the ones of us together, the one of you in Columbia is still my favourite because looking at this photo I know, I can be fully and completely sure, that what Aunt Ruth said was a lie.

I know she's going to come into my room that night, that she's not just going to leave me alone. I've been listening to all the sounds in the house, Cooper slamming the front door, his car starting, the squeak Laurie's bed makes when she gets into it, the sound of her crying until she stops. Aunt Ruth's been in the kitchen the whole time and I bet she's cleaning up the juicer, throwing it away. I bet by tomorrow, there'll be a brand new one on the granite counter in its place.

I hear her footsteps in the hall, my door opening.

“Rae?” she whispers from the doorway, “Rae, are you awake?”

I'm not asleep but I pretend I am.

“Rae?” Closer now. “I know you're awake. I brought an ice pack, for your face.”

She turns on my bedside lamp and she sees my eyes are open. “Can I sit here?”

She gestures at the bed but I don't scoot over to make room so she almost sits on my leg. Her eyes look tiny in her face and I'd forgotten that's how she looks when she's been crying, because I don't think I've seen her crying since the night of the Viscount biscuits back in Rush.

She reaches out to my face with the ice pack and it stings. I push my head back into the pillow.

“Sorry, I know it hurts, but this will bring the swelling down.”

I let her hold the ice pack there, and, after a second, everything feels numb. She's wearing a hoody, one of Cooper's, it's much too big for her. I've never seen her in a hoody before.

“I'm so sorry Cooper acted the way he did. He was very upset—but that's no excuse. I want you to know that this isn't the end of it.”

Now that my face is numb, I'm feeling the other pains, a throbbing in my stump, a deep ache in my back.

“It's been a long night, and I know we need to figure out this situation with you and Laurie. I don't believe it was all your fault, honey. We can talk more about it tomorrow.”

I look at her. I'm too tired to argue. “Okay.”

“And we need to talk about what Cooper said, about your mom.”

The pain is back in my jaw, through the ice, pulsing with my heartbeat. I clench my toes, all ten together, hold them.

“She didn't kill herself.”

“Rae—”

“She didn't.”

Her hand stops moving. Nothing moves. Only that's not true because breath must have been moving in and out of us both, blood carrying oxygen around our bodies. But it feels like even that's stopped too.

“Honey,” she goes, “please—”

“It was an accident. Dad told me all about it one Friday night, when we were eating raspberry ripple ice cream. He said that the sea was very dangerous, even if you were a good swimmer, and that's why he'd never let me learn to swim.”

She's sucking in her lips, like she's holding her words back. I want to keep talking, because if I keep talking, she won't be able to say anything.

“He explained about currents and I got confused because I thought they were the same as currants in scones, but he told me these currents were different. And I even asked Lisa's mum about it, and she said currents could be dangerous, even for a good swimmer. She said Mum was in Heaven, with God. Looking down on me, keeping me safe.”

My voice isn't my voice, it's some kid's voice. Aunt Ruth's lips have nearly disappeared and she's starting to cry.

I push her hand with the ice pack away. “Stop crying, there's no point in crying.”

But she doesn't stop crying. Her tears make shiny tracks on her cheeks and drip off her chin and onto the duvet and make circles of dark green on lighter green. There are four dark circles, five, seven.

“Aunt Ruth, there's no need to cry.”

She shakes her head, wipes her cheek with her hand. “This is hard, honey, very hard—but I have to be honest with you, you have to know the truth. Your mom, she was a strong swimmer, she went swimming every day.”

I sit up in bed, as far away from her as I can. “I know, I know that—but you're not listening, there were currents. And Dad said she was tired, she hadn't slept.”

She folds her arms across her chest, pulls the extra sweatshirt material around her. “Did your dad tell you about the sleeping pills?”