How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (32 page)

“No. It doesn't hurt when you touch it.”

Slowly, she cups her hand around it, the way I was holding it. Her hand is much smaller than mine, so her palm just covers the end. It feels warm and kind of ticklish. I start to giggle and she does too and that's what we're doing when I hear footsteps.

“Rhea? Rhea? Are you down here?”

It's Winnie.

“Over here,” I go, “in the corner.”

I can tell already, by the way she doesn't answer me, that she's annoyed. I can see it in the way her feet move in her sandals as she walks across the room towards us, in the way she crouches down on her hunkers.

“They're sending a search party out for you, Robin,” she says. “We were all worried.”

Robin stops laughing. She lets go of my stump as if she's been caught—as if we both have—doing something bad.

“It's okay,” I go. “You're not going to get in trouble. Sure she's not, Winnie?”

“No,” Winnie says, “I just wanted to make sure you were up in time to get some franks and beans before they're all gone.”

Robin shakes her head. “I'm not hungry.”

“That's a shame,” Winnie says, “because after that there's ice cream.”

Robin starts to crawl out from under the table, leaving the drawing and the crayons on the floor. When Winnie puts her hand out to her, she doesn't take it and, instead, she looks back at me.

“You coming?” she goes.

“Rhea's going to tidy up your drawing stuff here,” Winnie says. “We'll see her outside.”

I don't know why Winnie's going to get to be the one to walk upstairs with Robin, to hold her little hand, when I was the one who'd found her, but I pretend it doesn't matter. And for the rest of the night I pretend I don't know she's annoyed with me, pretend everything's fine. But it's horrible, all that pretending and knowing we have to share a room together later.

She's in the bedroom already when I come up.

“Do you want the door open or closed?” I go.

It's not a stupid question because we've had the door both ways, but the way Winnie yanks her cardigan off and throws it on the bed you'd think it was. “Do what you want, Rhea.”

I leave it open, sit down on the bed, and start to loosen the laces on my Converse.

“I mean, it's not as if you ever listen to anyone anyway.”

I could ignore the first comment, pretend I thought she'd meant something else, but I can't ignore that one. I push my right Converse off with my left foot.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means. If you're going to do what you want all the time—never listen to anyone—what's the point in asking?”

Winnie takes off her glasses, steps out of her flip-flops. She has all her bottles of nail polish lined up on the window sill and she opens the green one.

“Winnie, that stinks, do you have to do that now?”

I think she's going to put it on anyway, ignore me, but she twists the polish closed, really fast, slams it back on the window ledge. “What would you have done tonight, if Jean had found you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Twenty minutes, Rhea. That's all we had before she was supposed to call 911. You were down there more than half an hour.”

I rip the laces from my left Converse, kick it off. “It wasn't half an hour—”

“Jean was about to dial—she had the phone in her hand, and something told me just to double check, to take a look down there.”

“I was on my way up.”

She has her back to me, is halfway through unzipping her dress. “Did you even think how worried we might be? How worried I was? I thought she'd drowned or something—”

“I'd only just found her, Winnie, I swear—”

She spins back to look at me and her dress is half down, so I can see her slip. “Don't lie to me!”

“I'm not lying!”

“I saw your drawings—that one of your mother. You don't draw something like that in a few minutes.”

“Winnie—”

“You're so self-centred, Rhea. You probably got lost in that drawing, didn't even think about me or anyone else.”

I've never seen her like this, her face so red, her eyes. I stand up.

“Winnie, come on, that's not true.”

“Oh yes, it is. The only person you ever consider, ever think about, is yourself.” She's nodding. “Except for your mother, of course, but it might do you good to spend more time thinking about people who are living, instead of the ones who are already dead.”

I hate her then, Mum, her face all red and mean looking, her bony shoulders and her stupid lacy slip and her smelly feet, and I wish I'd never shown her your photo, that she didn't know the picture was of you.

“Fuck you, Winnie!” I thrash my hand around and it knocks my bedside lamp off my locker and onto the floor. “Don't blame me just because you feel guilty! Don't blame me for Robin going missing! Don't blame me because you were probably so obsessed about getting to call Melissa that you forgot to count!”

I'm yelling and I want her to yell back, Mum, that's the whole point. Ever since we got here, ever since we left Hell's Kitchen, it's been weird and tense and horrible, and I want to just shout and shout until it goes away.

But she doesn't yell, she just pulls her dress back up and walks past me really slowly, out of the room and down the stairs, even though she's got no shoes on.

And she's still not back, Mum. And I don't know where she is and I keep listening, so I can turn out the light and pretend to be asleep, but the house is quiet and the only sound is the sea outside.

It's not fair. I didn't do anything. Since we came here, I can't do anything right—it's like she hates me. And I bet she wishes she hadn't asked Jean if I could come here.

I bet she wishes I never came at all.

Rhea

Dear Mum,

It came today, the letter. Actually, it came yesterday but David forgot to give it to me then so he gave it to me this morning, when I was sweeping the floor after breakfast, and I kept it in the side pocket of my shorts all day until tonight.

There's two envelopes, the outside one with Chrissie's writ
ing in red sharpie and the inside with Aunt Ruth's. When I open the second envelope, money falls out, five $100 bills, so flat and crisp they're stuck together, so, at first, I think there are only three of them. Picking the money up off the floor, my brain remembers another time, one time or loads of times—American money falling out of birthday cards onto the hall carpet in Rush, picking up the notes from the hall carpet with the wine and pink swirls.

And it's really weird then, especially when I read it, to think those cards and this letter all came from Aunt Ruth, because reading this letter, she sounds like a different Aunt Ruth and not the same person at all.

R

June 21, 1999

Dear Rhea,

Thank you for writing to me and letting me know that you are safe. That's the most important thing. I've been very worried about you, I know you know that. Even before the sighting at the bus station, I knew that you would have gone to New York. I just knew.

It was terrible being there, seeing for myself how many kids there are on the streets. It's such a big city, I thought I'd never find you and I started to wonder if I was wrong, if you'd gone somewhere else. So when I got your letter, I was so happy just to know that you are safe and that you have friends and somewhere to live.

I'd love to see you or talk with you on the phone but you set a boundary in your letter and I want to respect that. If you change your mind and you want to reach out, please call me anytime—you can call collect, even in the middle of the night. It's okay if you don't know what to say or if you only have a few minutes to talk—it would mean a lot to me to hear your voice.

You asked about Columbia and I have good news! You were accepted—isn't that wonderful? I knew you would be, with your grades and all the effort you put into the application. Your mom and dad would both be so proud. I know I am. I've enclosed all the information they sent—I hope you don't mind that I opened it, but I knew we would need to respond and I did, I accepted on your behalf. You might be mad to hear that, you might not even want to go anymore, but I wanted you to be able to. I know how much you wanted it. You might think it's too late now, Rhea, but it's not. I spoke to the school, and with your GPA you only need to do a couple of extra credits to graduate. Of course school is out now, but I spoke to the principal and we came to an arrangement and they are happy to facilitate everything so you can graduate and go to Columbia in August. It would need to happen fast, but if you still want to, we can make it work.

I know we need to talk about what happened but it's hard in a letter. I want you to know that I know what happened with Laurie wasn't only your fault and that it wasn't fair that she blamed it all on you. I spoke to my therapist about it and she says it's quite common for friendships with girls to get out of hand, that a lot of teenagers go through phases like that.

I'm sorry Cooper lashed out and hurt you. He was very angry and upset, and we both know what his temper can be like. I'm not making excuses about his behavior, but he was in real shock that night and I think his temper shocked him too. I've talked to him about family therapy, with Laurie and with you, if you come back. Laurie is seeing a therapist too and I think it's a good thing. I think it's helping.

I'm sorry too for the way things came out about your mom. I should have talked to you about her a long time ago, but I didn't know what your dad had said and I guess I was just scared to bring it up. You don't know how many times I went over the conversation in my head—I even practiced with my therapist. I know it probably doesn't matter now, but I can't help wonder what it would have been like if I hadn't been so scared, if I'd told you before.

What happened to your mom has been hard to cope with. I'm not going to lie to you, it's been the hardest thing I've had to make peace with in my life. Some days, I still don't think I have or that I ever will. Other days, with God's help, I feel differently. I know you're searching for answers right now and that's natural, part of growing up. I'm sorry I didn't talk about her more when you were here. I don't know why I didn't—in some ways you remind me so much of her and I think maybe that scared me. It never seemed like the right time to bring it up—I always thought we'd have more time—the perfect moment to talk about it and start to heal together.

My therapist says there are no perfect moments, and I know she's right. She says there are only moments of vulnerability and courage and honesty and in each and every moment we need to choose, over and over, what kind of person we want to be.

I want to be a good aunt to you, Rhea. I want to be someone you can confide in and feel supported by. I want to be someone you can count on.

Please let me come and see you, please tell me where you are. I don't care where it is, I'll come anywhere.

I miss you so much since you've gone. I miss you as much as I missed your mom. You've lost a lot of people in your life, and so have I. We don't have to lose each other too.

Love always,
Aunt Ruth xoxo

Dear Mum,

I'm so tired all the time. Every hour here, every minute, is packed
with something, from the second the kids get up until they go to bed. And when I go to bed, even though I'm so tired, it's fifty kinds of crazy that I can't sleep.

It's this shit with Winnie. We're talking again, but we're not talking properly and I hate that and I want it to stop but I don't know what to do about it.

This morning, it's five when I wake up and I lie there for a few minutes and then I get out of bed because with the heat and Winnie's snoring I know I'm not going to sleep again. And at least I get to shower before anyone else and go down to the beach without worrying about breaking more of Jean's stupid rules because it's already bright.

I walk past the part of the beach where we always play with the kids, keep walking. The sea is calm this morning, it's kind of pink, like the sky. I let the water wash around my feet and I'm glad then that I hadn't bothered with my Docs or my Converse. It's nice being able to feel each footstep, my heel and then my toes, heel again and toes again. The sand feels different from Rush, softer, kind of, but harder packed too. It's nice not to have to watch out for the wormy bits.

After ages of walking, I turn back and the sky is even nicer this way—stripes of orange and yellow and light blue as well as pink. And that's when I see Amanda, jogging towards me.

She waves a hand, starts to slow down. “Hey!”

“Hi. You don't need to stop—I mean, keep going if you want.”

She stops anyway, wipes a curl from her face. “It's a nice excuse to take a break—it's so hot this morning.”

She hits something on her watch so it beeps, and she leans forward to hold her knees. When she stands up, her curls have fallen in front of her face again and she fixes them back behind her ears. “Out for a morning walk?”

“Yeah.”

“Best part of the day down here, before anyone else is up.” When she smiles, it goes all the way to her eyes. Her eyes are blue but not piercing blue, like Laurie's, they're a lighter blue, kind of washed-out looking.

“Yeah.”

We start walking then, slowly, in the same direction. I want to tell her that she can go on, but I've said that already. A line of seagulls are flying low over the water. I'm thinking about what she said to Jean about Marco and I'm trying to figure out how to bring it up without sounding like I cared about what he said. I want her to know that it hadn't any effect on me at all.

“I love being able to run barefoot,” she goes. “It's totally the best thing about being here.”