How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (2 page)

These are the things I like about going on the subway:

1. For $1.50 you can ride it all day and go anywhere in New York.
   
2. You can sleep and no one cares. The E train is the best for sleeping and if you get one of the corner seats, like I did today, you can sleep for a couple of hours sometimes with no one bothering you.
   
3. One of my favourite things is when you see another train in the tunnel, a whole carriage of other people next to you, or sometimes the front of the train with the letter lit up—a big yellow Q floating out of the dark, like
   Sesame Street.
   
4. I like watching the people in the carriage—the books they're reading and what they wear. I imagine them getting up in their apartments all over New York, taking those clothes from hangers and drawers and putting them on, not knowing they would end up here with all these other people, just for a few minutes, a group that will never be the same again.
   
5. Most of all, the thing I like best about the subway is that I get to play my game in real life. I made up the game when I was ten, using your map. It's easy, you just have to choose two stops with your eyes closed, and when you roll the dice that's the most transfers you can make to get from the first stop to the second one. Lisa never liked playing, she said it was boring, and then when I changed it so you got more points for using more lines, she said that wasn't fair because you couldn't see half the stations anymore and I had an advantage because I remembered them all. After that we didn't play much but I played on my own sometimes, at night when Dad was out, and sometimes I played it in bed, even when the lights were off, even when I could only see the map in my head. I bet if Lisa was here now, she'd get it, I bet she wouldn't think it was boring anymore.
   

Do you like making lists? I do. Lists are like the subway—you can't get lost in a list.

Today, I got out at 116th Street, on the 1 Line. You know where that goes. That's where I'm writing from—Columbia University. It's not my first time here—I came on Wednesday, but I couldn't come inside the gate. I don't know why—I got off the train, like normal, go up the steps with everyone else, just like normal, but when I get to the top, right outside the gate, I stop. I just stand there on the sidewalk, watching people go in and out the gate, down the main path or along the red-brick ones on either side, up the steps into buildings that I've read about in their brochure. I stand there and I try and move but it's like my body won't let me move any closer, so after twenty-five minutes I get back on the train to go and meet Sergei.

Today, I walked through the gate. I made a kind of run at it and walked really fast looking straight ahead so I wouldn't have to think about it. I walked past J-School and Hamilton Hall like they're any old buildings. And now I'm sitting on a bench outside the Butler Library where your book
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
is now twenty years, five months, and fifteen days overdue. Right now, it's in my backpack next to me, along with two pairs of jeans, my navy Champion hoody, three T-shirts, five pairs of knickers, four pairs of socks, one bra, and my sketchpad, which I haven't looked at since I left Florida. Fifty thousand times a day I kick myself for taking that and forgetting my Discman and my CDs.

The book is one of the only clues I have, along with the subway map and the two photos of you that Dad gave me. Not that it's much of a clue. There are no notes inside, no turned-down pages. Did you even read it? And if you did, which of the twenty-one stories was your favourite? Did you mean to steal it or did it come to Ireland with you by accident, hidden in your luggage? I've read them over and over, those stories, and I want to love them but I don't love them. If you want to know the truth, I don't even like them really. I don't get most of them—nothing happens, no beginning, no middle, no end. They're kind of like life, not like stories at all.

Do you want to know about the two photos I have?

1. The first one is of you taken here. I know it was taken here because it says “Columbia, 1978” on the back in loopy writing in blue pen that Dad says was your writing. The ink is faded now and I keep it in a Ziploc bag, inside the Raymond Carver book, so I won't wear away any more of it.
   

If it wasn't for the writing, I wouldn't know where it was taken—it's just a close-up of your face, you can't see the background. You're very pretty, smiling and young-looking. I wish I knew when in 1978 it was taken. It looks like the autumn or winter. You were born on 23rd November 1959, so if it was before that you are eighteen and if it was after that you are nineteen. I think you are eighteen. I'm nearly eighteen but you look nothing like I look. Our hair is the same colour, but yours is straight and brown and clips your chin and mine is only stubble since Sergei shaved the rest of it off except for the long part at the front. And your eyes are brown, like Aunt Ruth's eyes, and mine are blue, like Dad's. You have this amazing smile, it's a really real smile, almost a laugh. Your mouth is a bit open. It's not a fake camera smile. You are wearing a polo neck in the photo and something with a cream collar. I decided that it's a trench coat, am I right? Did it have those funny things on the shoulders? Did it have a belt? Who took the photo? Who made you laugh?

1. I can never decide which photo I prefer. I love the Columbia one because you're happy in it. I like the second one because we're both in it, like it's proof that we were on the same planet together for a while, even though it wasn't all that long. But I wish it was taken somewhere else instead of on the beach in Rush. Dad probably took it and he must have had shaky hands because it's a bit blurry, but you can make us out, just about. You're wearing a black bikini and your skin looks really white. Your hair is longer than in the Columbia photo—down to the top of your bikini straps—and your sunglasses are huge, blocking most of your face. I've got a bucket in one hand, a spade in the other, and I'm wearing a huge red sunhat so you can't see my face properly either.
   

Did you have other photos that Dad got rid of afterwards? I think you must have had some of your family or friends or something, but the only other photo I have is part of a newspaper clipping of your dad and his business partner at that awards ceremony. Your dad doesn't look like you, at least not in this photo—he's not properly smiling, only a half-smile, and he looks very serious, standing there holding the plaque they won. At first, I thought it was weird that the other man was sitting down while your dad was standing up, until I noticed he was in a wheelchair. You'd only know it was a wheelchair because your dad's hand that's not holding the plaque is resting on the handle at the back. The wheelchair man has a bigger smile than your dad—it's a kind smile and he looks happy to have won the award. He must have been looking right into the camera because it's like his eyes can look out and see me, right from the photo. The caption says: “Commercial property partners Cal Owens and Jerry Davis are recognised for their role in redeveloping Upper Manhattan.” Underneath, it talks all about these new buildings that are zoned and planned and it has a quotation from Mr. Owens but not from your dad. You must have been proud of your dad, for you to have kept that.

I thought there were more photos. I was sure I remembered a blue packet of them—square ones with white borders. I was sure I'd find them when I cleared out the top part of Dad's wardrobe, which is why I insisted on doing it, even though Aunt Ruth offered a million times. But I didn't find anything at all. Apart from his winter jumpers, there was only a Hendrix tape with a broken case, three plastic combs, and an out-of-date driving licence. I was throwing them all in a black plastic bag, along with his trousers and shoes and the Homer Simpson tie I got him one Christmas, when Aunt Ruth came in and asked me again if she could take over. When I said no, she sat on the bed and said she knew it was an upsetting thing to do, which just shows that she didn't know me at all, because I wasn't upset. I was fine.

It's funny how it seems like forever ago—clearing out the house in Rush, putting it up for sale—when it's not even two years yet. Would you think I was fifty kinds of crazy if I told you that sometimes I forget that Dad is dead? That sometimes I think he's still back there, in Rush, which I suppose he is, except he's in Whitestown Cemetery next to Nana and Granddad Farrell who I never met, and his little brother who died when he was only four.

Did you get the train to Rush that Tuesday or did you take the bus? I think you took the train. Sometimes I imagine you, Mum, walking down that road from the station, all the way into the town. It's a long walk. What kind of shoes had you on? Did your feet hurt? Were you nervous?

You would have walked past Whitestown and I wonder if you'd have stopped and looked at the gravestones and made up stories about the dead people's lives—but maybe it's only me who does things like that. If you'd been buried there too, if you had a dash in between 23rd November 1959 and some date in June 1984, I might have gone there to make up a story about your life too. It might have been nice, something to do after we stopped writing to you, but you didn't have a dash because you weren't buried there. You're not buried anywhere—because they never found your body.

This bench is cold, I can feel it through my jeans. And the lights just flicked on, which means it won't be long before the rats are out. This is the part I hate, when it's dark enough for them to come out and bright enough to see them. It was around this time last week in Central Park when this huge one ran out from under a bench, right in front of me, its long tail slinking across nearly the whole path.

I'm not going to call Aunt Ruth, I'm never going to call her, but seeing a rat like that would make you think about it, just for a second.

If I called now, Laurie might answer. She'd be home from soccer practice by now. That's if she's back at soccer, but why wouldn't she be? Cooper's hardly going to make her stay home from school and everything. He'll want life to get back to normal as soon as it can, like it was before I came.

I'm meeting Sergei at the pizza place at Port Authority. Slices are $1.50 everywhere but this is the best place because the slices are bigger and they give us pepperoni for the same price as plain. One time, this guy, some tourist, bought me and Sergei an extra slice each, and Sergei ate his in four seconds but I wanted to save mine. Sergei laughed at me smushing the pizza up into my pocket in a napkin, just like he laughed at me the time I suggested saving our money and going to a soup kitchen instead. But later, on my own in Penn Station, I was glad I had that pizza, smushed up or not.

I'll write more later. Or tomorrow. Maybe I will. The problem about writing is that I start to remember things I want to tell you. And sometimes the things I remember are the same as the things I want to forget.

Your daughter,
Rhea

King Street, New York
24th April 1999
11:52 p.m.

Dear Mum,

We have an apartment! Me and Sergei! Well, it's not really our apartment, it belongs to Michael—this Wall Street guy Sergei was with two nights ago. Last night, he asked Sergei to stay, and Sergei said he'd only stay if I could stay, so we did. Michael lives somewhere else on the weekends, and we were meant to leave this morning when he was, only it's raining and Sergei starts bitching about having nowhere to go, so, eventually, Michael takes a key off his key ring and tosses it at him and says that everything had better be just like he left it when he gets back.

We don't leave all day and it's brilliant—both of us on the black leather couch, clicking through the channels, eating fried rice and pork dumplings that Sergei ordered and blueberry Pop-Tarts we found in the freezer as a kind of dessert. A
Law & Order
marathon is on and Sergei loves it too, even though he's never seen it before. Everything is perfect, until we hear the key in the door and then Michael's standing there, with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, saying he's decided to stay in the city after all.

This couch is okay for a couch but shit for a bed and I don't have a blanket or anything.
Law & Order
is still on, I've turned it up so I won't hear Michael and Sergei in the bedroom, but it's one I've seen before and I can't get into it. Olivia's comforting this woman whose daughter was murdered and she's been crying in every scene in the episode.

Aunt Ruth was always on about crying, after Dad died. It seemed like those first few weeks in Rush, she was always manipulating it into the conversation—all this stuff about crying and grieving. She tries to be subtle, as if it's general chitchat, as if I'm stupid and don't know she's talking about me. I don't really say anything back and it's a couple of days before we're due to leave when she finally comes out straight and says it. I'm on the floor in my room, sketching one of the stones I've picked up from the beach, when she comes up to my door and knocks on it, even though it's already open.

“Hey there,” she goes. “What are you doing?”

It's pretty obvious what I'm doing, so I don't answer her, I don't look up even, just keep adding in shading on the underside of the stone.

“You want anything to eat?” she goes.

“No thanks.”

“Cookies and milk? Some toast maybe?”

My eyes flick between the stone and my drawing. “I'm grand.”

I hear her move and I think she's going to leave but when I glance up she's only rearranged herself against the door frame, her arms folded.

“How are you doing, Rhea? You know
…
about your dad? You've hardly said a word about what happened. I haven't seen you cry once.”

There's a pause, no sound. My pencil moving on the paper, a dog barking outside.