How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (37 page)

Amanda tilts her head to one side. “You think I'm coming onto you?”

I put my hand in the pocket of my shorts, to feel Aunt Ruth's letters, to make sure they are there. “I don't know—”

“You do think that, don't you?” Amanda's standing up. “Get over yourself, Rhea.”

I tuck my Docs tighter under the bar. She's bending down, gathering up her notepad, her sweatshirt. When she turns around, her face is totally out of the light, but I don't need to see her anger to know it's there.

“I thought of all people, you were someone I could talk to about this. I thought you were someone who would understand!”

She's convincing, I'll give her that, but Laurie was convincing too.

“Come on, there's no need for all the dramatics, I'm only saying—”

“Only saying what? That after less than a month you know me better than I know myself? That you know everything there is to know about being gay? Fuck you, Rhea!”

I hadn't pegged her for that type, Mum, the type to curse and storm off, but that's exactly what she does. When she's with anyone else, she's always laughing, smiling, even Winnie said she was easygoing, but she's not tonight. Tonight, she stomps off around the corner and I listen to her footsteps, heavy on the deck, the horrible squeak the screen door makes as it opens and then slams shut.

Jean's been on at David to put WD40 on that door but he hasn't. He said he asked Matt to do it but Matt said he must have asked Zac but either way no one has done it. And I think about doing it then, Mum, getting the WD40 from the shed in the back and putting it on so I can surprise David in the morning when he comes in early to bake, but then I remember it was Jean who wanted it in the beginning, that she'll be happy too, so I decide to leave it.

And instead I take the chair where Amanda was sitting, the one I'd planned to sit in, and I take out my paper and write this letter to you, the thing I'd wanted to do all along.

Rhea

Dear Mum,

I didn't hear anything in the night. I don't know how I didn't, but I only woke up when Winnie was zipping her bag. She's dressed. The room is still dark and it's hot. Always, this room is hot.

I sit up in bed. “What's going on? What's wrong?”

“Sorry I woke you,” Winnie says. “I was trying to be quiet. I thought you were going to wake up earlier, when Jean came in with the phone, but you were out cold.”

I am awake now, properly awake. The clock says 4:23 a.m. Winnie's bag is packed, I see that now. Jean was here with a phone. Phone calls in the night don't mean good things, nothing in the night ever means good things.

“What's wrong?” I go.

Winnie sits down on my bed, she's smiling. “Melissa had a baby! A boy!”

That's not what I was expecting her to say.

“She had a boy?”

“They're going to call him Darryl. She wants me to come and see him.”

With each sentence her smile gets wider.

“Darryl?”

There was a film with a boy who was a robot called Darryl, but I don't say this to Winnie. She grabs my hand, holds it. “Isn't it the cutest name?”

She has her makeup on and her perfume.

“So, you're going? Leaving? Now?”

She squeezes my hand tighter, too hard, so my fingers are squashed too tightly together. “I can't believe it, that she wants me there. It's what I'd hoped for, prayed for, but I knew it had to be her decision.”

“How are you going to get there in the middle of the night?”

She stands up, lets go of my hand and in the hot room it somehow feels cold.

“I hope I have everything,” she goes. “I hope I remembered everything.”

“What time is the train?”

She's going through the drawer of her bedside locker, pulling out tissues, a book.

“I'm not getting the train. There's a boat from Montauk to Block Island and from there I can get another boat to Connecticut. David's driving me and Dan's picking me up at the other end. Melissa's husband. I've never met him, Rhea. Can you believe that?”

She turns around and her eyes look different behind her glasses, bigger or something, or brighter, her whole face looks brighter, her skin. This must be what happiness looks like.

“But what about
…
here?” I nearly say “What about me?” but I stop myself just in time and she doesn't notice because she has her back to me again, unzipping her bag to stuff something inside, zipping it up again.

“Jean said not to worry about anything. She knows how big a deal this is for me.”

“But what about Arts and Crafts?”

My voice sounds panicky and Winnie hears it too. She sits down on my bed again, puts her hand on my shoulder.

“Don't worry, you're not going to be thrown in the deep end to do it on your own. Jean's been talking to some lady in East Hampton, an art teacher. I think she wanted to line her up, just in case.”

“Just in case?” So everyone knew this was coming, everyone except me. Winnie's hand kneads my shoulder.

“And I know it might be strange with me gone for a bit, but I'll be back soon. I know you have other friends here now—Amanda and Erin, not to mention all the time you're spending with Jean.”

I flinch away from her, because she doesn't have a clue and I don't know how I ever thought she did. But just as I do, David is there, knocking on the door, and I don't think she notices because she kisses me on the cheek, holds my other one with her hand.

“Don't worry about a thing, Rhea. You'll be fine, you're doing fine. And I'll see you real soon.”

And then she lets go of me and picks up her bag and when the door closes, it's only me in the hot room.

The clock says 4:47 a.m. now, twenty-four minutes after I woke up, and I wonder if I hadn't woken, would she have left without saying goodbye? And twenty-four minutes wasn't enough time to tell her about Columbia or what Aunt Ruth had said about your letters or what had happened with Amanda. It wasn't even enough time to ask what “real soon” meant.

And it seems like I'm making the same mistake, over and over, always thinking there'll be another time, a better time, enough time. But there's not, Mum, is there? No matter how long you have, it seems like you always want more, that there's never going to be enough.

R

Dear Mum,

I don't know why, but I don't feel like writing to you tonight. It doesn't make sense, because now I have the room to myself I can leave the light on as long as I want and write to you whenever I want, but it's like all I want is for Winnie to be in the other bed, even with her snoring, even with her smelly feet. She could have taken me with her, I was thinking that, I wouldn't have minded going. I'd never even have come here if I'd known she was going to leave a few weeks in. I wish she'd never asked me here or that I'd never gone to that AA meeting because if I hadn't gone there, I'd never have met her and I wouldn't give a shit about where she is tonight.

I pissed Jean off today by not showing up in her office. Part of me is doing it to piss her off, but the other part is doing it to help Hannah out, the new art teacher, even though Jean's already told me she doesn't need help. When I see Jean coming down the stairs, I know she's mad, but she pretends not to be in front of Hannah and the kids. And it's 4:19 by the time we're sitting down in her office and, even though she spent the whole walk up the stairs giving me a lecture on responsibility, it's worth it, to have only forty-one minutes to fill instead of sixty.

I'm on the couch, like always, even though it's uncomfortable. Maybe that's why I sit there because it's dangerous to get comfortable with someone like her.

“You never choose to sit in the swing chair,” she goes.

“No.”

She pours us water, spills a bit on her T-shirt, the neon pink one that she wore yesterday too. She sits down, crosses her legs under her. “We haven't talked about Winnie leaving.”

The photo of the black woman has moved again. Now it's on the stereo on the bottom shelf. “Do you have any feelings about that?” She keeps her tone casual, as if we're talking about the weather.

“Not really.”

“No feelings at all?”

I cross my legs, so my right Doc is on my left knee. I feel the holes with my fingers, twelve, always twelve.

“I don't know. I mean, yeah—I'm happy for her.”

The house seems quiet today, no kids outside, only the sound of the fan. “Sometimes, when it's hard to identify a feeling, it's good to keep it simple. Do you remember the five we talked about?” Her shell bracelet slides down her wrist as she counts out each feeling on her fingers, “Glad, sad, mad, lonely, and scared.”

I shake my head. “There are way more than five feelings. Everyone knows that.”

Her face doesn't change, neither does her voice. “That's true. But most feelings can be traced back to one of those five. Disappointment, for example, is a version of sad. Irritation or resentment is a type of anger—feeling mad.”

“So why is there only one good feeling and four shitty ones?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Why do you think, Rhea?”

“I don't know, Jean, I'm not the one who's a psychologist.” My shoulders are sore from sitting up too straight and I lean back, stretch my feet out onto the glass coffee table. She looks at my Docs, but she doesn't say anything. “Is it supposed to mean that we feel good 20 percent of the time and the rest we feel like shit?”

“Is that how you feel?”

“Jesus.” I tip my head back, so I can see the top of the blinds.

“How are you feeling now?”

The fan is whirling really fast, four blades that look like one blade, it's going so fast it looks like it might whirl right off the ceiling and decapitate us both.

“Mad.” I don't need to look at her to know she's smiling that I've said one of the five.

“Who are you mad at?”

“You. With all these dumbass questions.”

When I look up she's nodding, watching me. She's always watching me. “Are you mad with anyone besides me?”

The clock says 4:29, almost the exact same time Winnie left, forty-eight hours, no, sixty hours ago. I wonder if she'll be going to an AA meeting tonight in Connecticut or staying in with Melissa.

“Nope.”

The bottom of her water drips on the arm of the chair, but she doesn't notice. “You've no feelings of anger towards Winnie because she left?”

She's doing it again, that mind-reading thing, and I sit up, put my Docs on the floor. I cover my face with my hand, not because I'm going to cry or anything, but because I want to make her stop. There's too much in my head—not her five stupid feelings, but thoughts, questions, so many questions. And they're whirling around, faster than the fan—when Winnie's coming back and whether I did the right thing writing to Aunt Ruth, telling her to send me your letters, if it was a dumbass move to tell her I didn't want to go to Columbia.

Even Amanda's there, whirling around too: whether I should say sorry or just leave it. Every single one of those questions is in my head every second now, spinning like a roulette wheel, a roundabout, like something that swirls in circles that won't stop, something that goes faster and faster and faster until it breaks or implodes or …

“Rhea? Are you okay.”

“I'm fine.” I say it through my hand. I say it again. “I'm fine.” I'm not lying, I am fine. I was fine before I came in here and I'll be fine when I leave. I just don't know how to sit in front of her for another half an hour with all of that whirling around and not let her see any of it.

“What's going on for you right now, Rhea?”

I clench my toes, sit up, take a drink of water. “Why do we always talk such crap? Why don't we ever talk about the things I want to talk about?”

She's pulling on her hair, the grey bit of curl right above her ear. She's excited but she's pretending not to be. “What do you want to talk about?”

And that's when it comes into my head, just like that. Something I can talk about, something I can fill up the rest of the hour with and not leave any more room for her at all. “I want to talk about the New York subway.” Before she can say anything, I launch right into it, everything I'd learned from the school encyclopaedia in Coral Springs, about how the subway started off as an elevated train line and the first underground one wasn't until 1904. I tell her about the three separate systems and how they all had their own maps and that even though they merged in the 1940s, it wasn't until 1958 that the first map came out that had all the lines on it. And it's easy then, once I'm into it, and part of me is enjoying telling her, and I don't stop so she can ask a question, I hardly stop at all and I talk and talk and talk and I wait until the clock gets to 5:02, and then I stop.

Jean doesn't say anything for a minute, just watches me. When she does talk, she smiles. “You know a lot about the transit system.”

“Thanks.”

“It's fascinating, all that history.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

I'm waiting for more, the trip wire, the grenade, but there's nothing, only Jean pushing herself into a stand, picking up the water cups.

“Can I go now? I need to help Hannah clean up.”

“Sure. By all means.”

She walks past me to throw out the cups, picks up her mini watering can to do the fern on the windowsill, plucks off the bits of brown leaf, just like I know she's going to.

“Okay then, see you at dinner.”

I'm lingering by the door and I never linger by the door, especially now that I'm late, that Hannah will be waiting for me.

When Jean turns around her smile is a real one, I think it is, nothing hidden behind it.

“See you at dinner,” she goes. “David's making mac and cheese.”

“Great,” I go, “that's my favourite.”

And walking down the stairs, I'm thinking about her face when I said that, the way she nodded, as if she already knew. And I didn't tell her that before, about mac and cheese being my favourite, I don't think I did, but maybe I'm imagining it, maybe she didn't know at all.

These are the things that drive me fifty kinds of crazy about Jean, Mum, because I can't tell what she'll think is important and what's not, and if any of it matters anyway. But no matter what I say to her, even if it's just about the subway, or about the mac and cheese, it feels better not to say anything. Safer, to say nothing at all.

Rhea

Dear Mum,

We had thunderstorms today so we couldn't take the kids down to the beach or the pool or anything. Some of them were scared and crying and everyone's saying that they hope the sun shines again tomorrow, but I hope we have another storm.

Here's a list of things I loved about the thunderstorm:

1. When I looked at the sea from my window this morning, I counted seven different shades of blue in it, not including the white waves and the grey of the sky.
   
2. David made brownies for everyone as well as extra banana walnut muffins.
   
3. We all got to take turns reading stories to the kids.
   
4. They played two movies today instead of one.
   
5. Hannah couldn't come because of the driveway being flooded, so I got to do Arts and Crafts by myself AND I didn't have to sit with Jean in her office. (That should really be two things.)
   
6. When Robin got scared of the thunder and lightning, she climbed onto my knee and she wouldn't let anyone else
   take her.
   

The rain stops during the second movie which is
Toy Story
and I'm enjoying it so I don't like when I see Jean in the doorway with Amanda, looking over at me. I pretend I don't notice them, but Jean starts waving at me and I know that if I don't she'll only come over and make a fuss in front of everyone. By then, Robin's sitting on the floor with Maleika and Angel and she doesn't even notice when I get up.

Jean reaches out to grab my shoulder as soon as I reach her, as if we're best buddies. “Rhea, can you help Amanda clean up the pool area? Some stuff blew in with the wind earlier and it needs to be swept as well.”

Anyone listening would think it's a question, but it's not a question. Amanda's looking at her feet in white and pink runners and I think it's the first time I've ever seen her in shoes. “What if Robin gets upset again?” I go.

“Something tells me she'll be okay.” Jean nods into the rec room and I see what she sees, Robin laughing at a funny part, along with all the other kids. Even Marco's laughing. “It won't take long, you'll be back before the end.”

Amanda walks on ahead of me and when she goes through the screen door, she doesn't hold it open for me. Outside, it's getting dark and the lights on the steps to the pool are already on.

“I hope Jean's right that this won't take long,” I go. “I was enjoying that film.”

Amanda's plait swishes. She doesn't turn around.

“Half the kids seemed to have seen it, but I never saw it before, did you?”

It's a direct question and I know she'll answer and she does. “Yeah, I saw it.”

From behind, her legs look a funny shape, the way her calves run straight down into her runners, like she's no ankles at all.

“I liked that story you read today, by the way,” I go. “What was it called again?”

I know what it was called, but, right then, it was like I wanted her to say something to me, anything. For things to be like they were the “schmozzle” day on the beach, before that stupid conversation on the deck.

“I only read a bit of it. The book is called
The Trumpet of the Swan
.”

“Was that your favourite book as a kid?”

She glances around and I know I've guessed right. “Yeah, it was. My grandma gave it to me.”

We're at the gate into the pool, she holds it open for me.

“The one in South Carolina?”

She fixes a curl behind her ear. “Yeah, that one.”

In front of us, the whole pool area is a mess, with loungers blown over or turned on their sides, leaves stuck to the tiles and at the edges of the water. All the things that had blown in are clustered at one end, a plastic racquet, two of the noodles she uses to teach the kids swimming, a cone from the beach.

“Where do you want to start?” I go.

“Let's get these straightened first.”

She walks over to the nearest lounger and I grab the other side and we lift it, walk it back in line with the others.

“What was your favourite book as a kid?”

I'm not expecting her to ask me that, to carry on the conversation. We put the lounger down.

“I don't know. I wasn't much of a reader.”

Another strand of curl falls in front of her face when she leans down and she jerks it away. “That wasn't an option in our house. My dad dragged me and my brother to the library every week—we had to get at least two books out.”

She's walking towards the next lounger when she says that, and I'm not expecting the memory to hit me then, of the library books on the hall table, the ones I took out with Lisa's mum, that I needed Dad to bring back. Every day he was meant to bring them back, but he kept on forgetting and saying we'd do it the next day, but he was always too busy the next day as well and then the books were later than the date stamped inside. I was afraid I was going to get in big trouble, maybe even get put in jail, so I hid them under my bed, pushed in as far as they'd go against the radiator. The next time Lisa's mum asked me to go to the library with them, I said I couldn't go.

I come up behind Amanda, grab the seat part of the lounger, start to drag it on my own. “My mum died, when I was three. And my dad wasn't much of a reader.”

Amanda catches up, pushing, while I pull, so the lounger slides across the leaves. “Oh God, I'm sorry.”

“That's okay.” I pull harder. “My aunt used to send me books over—but she lived here and I didn't see her much, so they were always a bit too babyish, like she forgot what age I was.”

The lounger is lined up, next to the first one. Amanda stands there with her hands on her hips, looking at what needs to be done. “You think you could do the loungers on your own and sweep up, while I do the pool?”