How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (48 page)

I think she's going to look away only she doesn't look away, she doesn't even blink, and it's me who looks away first at my letters lined up in my holder. I don't know how I didn't notice the word they make before.

I reach over and put them down in a line on the board, even though I'm not sure if we're still playing. I work backwards, putting down the
S
first, make “HURL” into “HURLS,” and then I make the new word.

Amanda looks down at the word sitting between us. She smiles and spells it out.

“K-I-S-S. Nice. And you're on a double word score so that's sixteen, plus eight for HURLS. Twenty-four points.”

I could say something to make it into a joke, to move her onto her next word, but I don't. I don't say anything, only look at her, and we sit looking at each other for seconds or minutes or an hour before I stand up and step over the jacket that's fallen off the back of my chair so it's in a pool on the floor, and she gets up too, and we meet at the end of the table.

And then we stand there for another fifty years, it feels like, and when I reach out and touch her cheek it's so smooth, smooth like Scrabble tiles. And when she smiles, her cheek moves under my hand and her eyes skim back to the board, to the word that's still there. K-I-S-S. And then she raises her eyebrow, just a little bit.

And then we do.

Rhea

Dear Mum,

I see them from the window of my room, which is weird, because I never look out that tiny window, but something makes me pay attention to the noise of the car driving in, something makes me watch it reverse into the only space left. There's a shine on the windscreen, reflecting the trees, so I can't see who's inside.

The driver door opens and the person who gets out is Aunt Ruth. She closes the door, looks up at the house, making a visor with her hands. In her white trousers and white top, she shimmers in the sun.

I am surprised and I am not surprised that she's here.

I'm not expecting the other door to open, the passenger one, and I don't notice it has until it closes. My eyes see her but my mind needs time to catch up. I hold on to the window ledge, keep looking to make sure it's her. And it is her. It's Laurie.

They stand still by the car, looking at the house just like I'm looking down. Aunt Ruth starts to walk first and she holds her arm out as if to put it around Laurie, but she walks past her and on ahead and then they're both out of sight.

My T-shirt has a stain on it, from breakfast, and I pull it off. I grab my Hendrix one from the drawer, sniff the armpits. It's not clean, but it doesn't matter. In the mirror, my hair is too long. It needs to be shaved again, Amanda was going to do it on Saturday, after the kids go—is going to do it on Saturday.

But it's not Saturday, it's only Wednesday and Laurie's here. Laurie is here.

“Rhea?”

The voice and the knock come at the same time. Matt's voice.

“Coming!”

I open the door and he's leaning against the wall, skinny and tall.

“You've got company,” he goes. “Some lady and her daughter.”

I run my hand down the front of my Hendrix T-shirt to smooth it.

“She's not her daughter.”

I have Amanda's flip-flops on but I need my Docs, I need to be wearing my Docs. The room is a mess—I'm in the middle of tidying it for Winnie. I find one, circle the room with it in my hand looking for the other one.

“It's over there,” he goes, pointing to the end of the bed.

I grab it from under a pile of clothes. “Thanks.”

I shove my foot in, no time for socks, and the laces are undone. I pull at them, but they only come out more. “Fuck!”

When I look up Matt is watching me, and that makes it worse. “You don't need to wait, just tell them I'll be down in a minute.”

“Okay.” He's about to leave and then he stops. “Do you want some help?”

“No, I'm fine.”

It's automatic, my response, but after he's left I know I don't have time, that my hand wouldn't be able to do them quickly enough, not with Laurie downstairs. He's still on the landing and I call him back.

“Matt? Yes, please, I could use your help, if you have a minute.”

He's back then, smiling, and it's actually kind of nice, having him hold my foot as he does up the laces.

“Did you meet them when they came in?” I go. “What did they say when they asked for me? Did they say anything?”

He looks up, his forehead is peeling from sunburn. “I don't know, I wasn't talking to them.”

He moves on to my right foot.

“How did you know they were here, then? How come you came to get me?”

I'm not sure if I'm imagining it or not, or if his face looks redder than a minute ago.

“Amanda asked me to. I guess she's the one who met them.”

Amanda met Laurie. Amanda met Laurie and she didn't come up to tell me she was here. I'm not sure what that means, or if it even means anything, but there's no time to figure it out because Matt has finished my laces.

“Thanks a million, Matt.” I jump off the bed and run past him, out the door and onto the landing. I'm at the top of the stairs when I see Jean running up, her Oakleys in her hand.

She's out of breath. “You heard?” she says. “Someone told you they're here?”

“Matt came to find me. Where are they?” We start to walk downstairs together.

“They're in my office. But you don't have to see them, you know, if you don't want to.”

I didn't know that. “I know,” I go.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

My heart kicks and I realise then that I just assumed she'd come in with me, that I can't imagine being in that room without her, seeing them without her. “If you want to.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You know that's not how it works. Do you want me to?”

We're on the second-floor landing by then, right outside her office. The door is closed.

Laurie is behind the door. Aunt Ruth is. Jean is the only one who knows everything, everything about them and about me, but even after everything I'd told her, she doesn't know anything at all. She doesn't know how Aunt Ruth's voice will sound or the look I know she's going to give me, and she doesn't know what it's like to look into Laurie's blue eyes, to feel the curve of her hips in my hands. “Yes,” I go.

Sometimes things happen and you don't have time to prepare for them. You can be in a moment and then realise something big is happening, but this moment wasn't like that. This moment I have time to take it in.

I open the door slowly and Aunt Ruth is standing with her back to me, looking out the window at the beach. As the door opens, she turns around, almost in time with the swing of the door, it feels like. She's the same. I know these white linen trousers, the white shirt, the beads she wears over them. But her hair is different, longer, making wings where the layers are growing out. And her face, there's something different about her face. Like she's the same, but not the same.

“Rhea,” she goes. “Rae.”

In films people always run into each other's arms, but she doesn't run and I don't either. I stand there right where I am, and she walks over, really slowly around the coffee table. And when she holds out her arms to hug me, there's something else in the hug, a pause, like she's asking for my permission.

I nod.

Usually her hugs are quick, over as soon as they start, but this hug is different—tighter, longer. She feels bony under her white shirt. “Rae.” She rubs my back in circles. “Rae.”

That's when she starts to cry and I'm standing there, hugging, being hugged, and it's only then that I remember Laurie. I don't know where she is, or why she's not there, and then I see her climbing out of the swing chair, my chair. She walks into my line of vision, in front of the window where Aunt Ruth was standing a minute ago. Her vest top has red and blue stripes on it and it must be new, because I haven't seen it before and I wonder if she bought it with her staff discount at Gap. Her hair is down but she scoops it up with her hands, as if to make it into a ponytail, before she lets it fall again.

Aunt Ruth is crying harder, holding me too tight now, and all I can feel are her hands, her breath, her feelings. And in the silence, I can almost feel Jean behind me, her presence, and if she asked me now, right this second, how I'm feeling, I'd have to tell her that I don't feel anything at all.

Over Aunt Ruth's shoulder, I let my eyes see Laurie, take her in, even prettier than I remember, her legs tanned in her cut-off denim shorts, her eyes as blue as the sea outside the window. She looks just like that first time I saw her, only more grown up, not sucking her hair anymore. Her arms are folded and she unfolds one of them and waves, a soft, slow wave, one finger at a time like a ripple. And then she smiles.

Jean is watching, I know she's watching, that she sees the wave and the smile and the words that Laurie mouths at me: “I'm sorry.”

There's no sound, only the shape of the words. And I don't know if she expects me to say them back—or if I even want to—so I don't do anything, only stand there and let Aunt Ruth cry and hold me, and I hold her back, with Laurie watching and Jean watching. And I try to remember to breathe.

R

Dear Mum,

I wanted to try one of Jean's suggestions, to start this letter with “I feel,” only if I did that, the start of the letter would be “I feel weird”—and even I know that “weird” isn't a feeling.

Aunt Ruth wanted to go to a restaurant in East Hampton so we could talk, but I didn't want to go there with her so we decided to walk on the beach instead. And just as we're on the deck saying goodbye to Jean and Laurie, Jean calls after me and asks if I want her to come along too.

Aunt Ruth turns back to her, grips the banister. “Please, please give me this time with her alone.”

Jean acts like Aunt Ruth hasn't said anything, keeps her eyes on me.

I nod. “It's okay. It'll be okay.” I lead the way, down the steps and along the beach path, and when I look back to check Aunt Ruth is behind me, Jean is still on the deck, watching us, but Laurie must have gone inside. It's play time and the kids are on the beach, calling out to each other and laughing. When Robin sees me she shouts my name, starts to run over, and it's hard to have to wave and walk the opposite way. I hear Amanda calling her, telling her to come back to the others, that I can't play today. I can tell by the sound of Amanda's voice that she's looking over, and part of me wants to turn, to catch her eye and let her know everything's all right, but I don't know yet if everything is.

Aunt Ruth catches up with me and when I slow down, she slows down too so we're walking side by side.

“You look good,” she goes. “I was so worried, I didn't know what to expect.”

I've put on weight here with all those banana walnut muffins, but not as much as I lost. The words are in my mouth—about how homelessness is the best diet ever—but I don't say them, I don't say anything.

“It's so beautiful here, by the ocean. The children must love it.”

I'm walking close to the water, daring the waves to lap up around the soles of my Docs, but they stop a few centimetres short every time.

“Jean was saying that a lot of them are from shelters. That's so sad but at least they can have a real childhood here, a real summer.”

We're not here to talk about the kids, we both know that. I bury my hand in the pocket of my shorts.

“What did you want to talk about, Aunt Ruth? I don't have too much time. I'm supposed to be working.”

I sound formal, wooden, and she changes her tone to match mine.

“Of course, I don't want to keep you from your job, Rae.”

I crunch my toes inside my Docs. “Rhea, just call me Rhea.”

“I thought maybe you'd changed it back, because of your letters, but I didn't want to assume. I always preferred Rhea.”

Behind us, the sounds of the kids are further away, their shouts, laughing, fading away under the wash of the waves.

“I've something I need to ask you, Rhea.”

I start to count my breath, time it to each step—heel, toe, heel, toe, inhale for four steps, hold for four
…

“Did anything happen to you on the streets?”

I thought she was going to ask about you, I was sure. I exhale, four, five, six, seven, eight. “Lots of things happen on the streets, Aunt Ruth.”

“But nothing really bad happened though, did it? Nothing that would
…
you know
…
leave lasting damage?”

She doesn't want to hear what happened on the streets, not really. I can tell by the way she asks the question that she doesn't really want to know. Up ahead, a man is fishing and we walk around him. When Dad was a boy, he got a fishhook caught in his cheek and years and years later he still had the scar, a tiny line of silver at the top of his stubble. Jean talks about emotional scars being like real ones, that you can clean them out, make them better, treat them until they heal.

“No,” I go, “nothing like that.”

“Thank God.” The words come out in a sigh. “Oh, thank God.”

We keep walking and I know I'm going too fast for her, that it's easier for me in my Docs, but I don't slow down. We're walking towards the kite surfers and I want to stop and watch them, follow their movement, to just look and not have to speak at all.

“Rhea, I'm finding this hard—to know what to say. I don't know where to start with everything but I know I want to apologise for what Cooper did, what he said. I know it wasn't okay. It wasn't okay at all.”

She's slowed down behind me, stopped. When I turn around to look at her, her hair is blowing into her face, her white shirt flapping around her. She's thinner, she's definitely thinner.