How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (3 page)

“You know you can always talk to me about him
…
if you want to.”

That's when I look up properly. One hand is still across her middle, the other is pulling down her fringe.

“Why would I want to talk to you about him? You two hated each other.”

Her eyes go big. “Why would you say that? I didn't hate your father, honey. You know that's not true.”

“Honey.” It sounds so fake, just like those cards she used to send with the fakest messages inside. The messages that sounded hilarious when Dad put on his ridiculous American accent and read them out.

“Maybe you didn't hate him—but he hated you.”

She makes that face then, you know the one with the twist in her mouth when she's trying not to cry? I feel guilty for a second, until she makes her face hard again and rolls her eyes.

“I don't know why I bother, Rhea, I really don't,” she says, and shakes her head. I go back to my drawing and when I look up again, the doorway is empty and I can hear the sitting-room door slam.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't said that, things like that, but I couldn't help it. Lisa said I was mean to her, but it was okay for Lisa.
Her
biggest problems were liver for dinner on a Monday night and how to sneak her sister's jeans into the wash without her noticing she'd worn them. She annoyed me then, Lisa, she was supposed to be my best friend but those few weeks she was always sucking up to Aunt Ruth—bringing her over a lemon for her tea and asking her to show her how the breakables should be wrapped for the shipping company. Not that much got shipped, most of it was sold or thrown away. It was funny how quickly the house changed. You think a house is permanent, a home, but it's not. It only takes a couple of weeks to clear it all out so there's only carpet and bare walls left and it's ready for someone else's life.

The couple next door are fighting now. Screaming.

She screams first: “You never loved me the way you loved her!”

Then him: “Fuck you!” Louder. “Fuck you!”

Something smashes.

Fighting or fucking, that's all people seem to do in New York. You hear them, all over the place, having rows on the subway and in the street and in McDonald's. They'll cry anywhere too, they don't care who sees. At least in Ireland we only have rows at home.

I didn't want to fight with Lisa on that last night. I'm not even sure why we were fighting, except that she kept going on about how her mum could drive me and Aunt Ruth to the airport instead of us getting a taxi. She went on about it for the whole walk down to the harbour and back around by the beach. She didn't get that I didn't want any more time to say goodbye, that I wanted to skip to the part where I was already gone.

On the plane, I'm really quiet. Aunt Ruth doesn't know I've never been on one before and I don't tell her. It's not as if I'm scared or anything, I always used to want to fly back to America with her when she visited, until I didn't anymore. As soon as we sit down, I put my headphones on and pretend to sleep and when I open my eyes she's sleeping too. She sleeps through the meal so I eat hers as well as my own and fall asleep properly then, so it's not until we get to Orlando and take the second flight to Fort Lauderdale that we have to talk at all. In the taxi to Coral Springs, she fills up the space by chatting a mile a minute about Cooper and Laurie and how they're dying to meet me, and how we're all going to go for lunch tomorrow to one of Cooper's restaurants. She talks so fast there is no room for me to say anything, so I just sit there as the taxi driver leaps from one lane to another, his driving as jerky as all her talking.

When we pull in through the gate, the house is just like I pictured
—low and white with a semicircle driveway. The front door is open already and there's Laurie, standing on the porch steps in bare feet, one on top of the other. Cooper is behind her, both hands on her shoulders. The first thing I notice about him is his slicked-back hair. He's smiling, Laurie's not. Her blonde hair covers one of her eyes and she's sucking a strand of it in a way that makes her look really babyish, and I wonder then if I got her age wrong and she's not fifteen at all.

“Here we are, honey. Home sweet home,” Ruth goes, her voice shrill. She brushes her fringe down before she opens the car door. I feel a blast of heat. “Coop! Laur! Look who's here!”

I reach over to open my door, get out. The sun reflects off everything, making me squint. It feels like it is seeping into my black Hendrix T-shirt, my Docs, like they have no place here. Like they will be the only black items in their white home.

Aunt Ruth is paying the taxi driver. Before I can get my backpack from the boot, Cooper is already there, still smiling.

“I got that,” he says, lifting it from me easily with big hands. He gives me a quick half hug with the arm not holding the backpack. A strand of his slicked-back hair comes loose.

“Laurie!” he calls. “Laurie, come and meet your new sister!” He says that, actually says that, I swear I'm not making it up. At first I think it's a joke, that he's being ironic, but his smile hasn't changed, it's still the same, fixed. You can't smile for that long and have it be real. Laurie comes over slowly, her feet in flip-flops now that she slides across the grass. She's still chewing her hair, holding it with one hand, the other making a visor on her forehead. Even through the shadow on her face, I see her eyes are a piercing blue.

“Hi,” she says in a flat tone, so I know she's bored with me already. She drops the hand holding her hair and reaches it out formally for me to shake. Too late, she realises her mistake and her expression changes—the two blue eyes widen, two white teeth press down on her lips.

I know what to do—I've been doing it all my life. I take it with my left and shake it, even though we're not really shaking, more like holding hands. Right before she lets go, I notice how cold her fingers are.

“I'm Rhea.”

She nods.

“I guess you knew that,” I say. “I suppose not too many Irish strangers show up at your house on a Saturday morning. And the ones that do probably have two arms.”

As soon as I say it, I hate myself. She doesn't crack a smile and then I hate her more. I hate the way she looks at me for a second before she turns away. I hate her shoulders, bony through her white T-shirt. I hate the slap her feet make against her flip-flops as she slouches back towards the porch.

Cooper and Aunt Ruth are watching us from the doorway, the rest of the luggage stacked up on the porch next to them. The taxi drives towards the gate, indicates, slows. The back door is inches away from me. I could reach out, open it, throw myself in and lock it. But there is nowhere I can ask him to take me.

“Come on in out of the heat,” Aunt Ruth calls, “Cooper's made brunch!”

If you'd asked me then, Mum, what I thought of Laurie, I'd have been definite. I'd have said I hated her. Maybe I was right to hate her. Maybe the first time you see a person is how they really are, and maybe everything afterwards is all just pretend.

That's the kind of thing I'd ask you about, if you were really here.

Rhea

King Street, New York
25th April 1999
5:02 p.m.

Dear Mum,

Michael left this morning, early. He said his sister was having a christening party and he had to go. Sergei thought he was joking, that he was going to come back and surprise us with breakfast, but I didn't care when he didn't.

I'm just happy to have the bed for a while, even if I have to share it with Sergei.

Sergei's asleep again. It's funny how someone's face looks different when they're sleeping. His looks younger, like he could be seventeen or even sixteen, and he looks like a girl with his long eyelashes and the shape of his lips. There's no way he's twenty-one. I don't believe that any more than I believe his parents are going to come over and visit once he's settled in a place of his own.

We had our first fight earlier—nearly a fight—but I think it's okay now. I didn't want to snoop through Michael's drawers in the first place. Everything was so tidy—his shirts and T-shirts and boxer shorts—and Sergei wasn't putting things back properly, even though he thought he was.

We find the money in the middle drawer—a clip of it, folded tight, inside the hood of a grey sweatshirt that says “Florida State” on the front. I find it and Sergei snatches it from my hand.

He whistles, like someone in a film. “How much do you think is here?” he goes.

“I don't know.”

“Come on, Irish bullhead—guess!”

He's been calling me that for a few days, since I wouldn't let him help me lace up my Docs.

“I've no idea. Five hundred dollars?”

He lays it out on the bed, like Monopoly, only real. There are eight hundreds, four fifties, nine twenties and one five. One thousand, one hundred and eighty-five dollars. Sergei whistles again. “What would you spend all that on?” he goes.

I've only ever seen that much money in Cooper's restaurant at night, when he's cashing out the till.

“I don't know.”

“Come on, Rhea—a thousand dollars, you must have some idea? An airplane ticket to Ireland?”

“No!” I blurt that out and I sound really definite, more definite than I knew I was.

“Why not?”

There are loads of reasons why not. Fifty reasons, more than fifty. There is nothing here, but there is less there. Less than nothing. I shrug.

Sergei's not waiting for an answer anyway. He's lying back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “I'd buy a skateboard—a Birdhouse. And a surfboard, I'd learn to surf. And a jet ski! I've always wanted to jet ski!”

That would all come to way more than one thousand one hundred and eighty-five dollars but he is rolling over now, on the bed on top of the money, and he looks so excited I don't want to be the one to stop him.

“I know,” I go. “I'd get a new Discman. And CDs. All my Hendrix ones again, and Eminem. I'm going crazy without music.”

“Come on, Rhea.” He keeps rolling till he gets to the edge of the bed. One of the hundreds falls on the floor. “A thousand dollars' worth of CDs? You can do better than that! There's got to be something awesome—something you've always wanted.”

Sergei sounds funny when he says American words like “awesome.” My brain is thinking that but my mouth says something different.

“I'd pay for a private detective to find where my mother lived.”

He stops mid-roll and pushes himself up on his elbows. I've never talked to him about you before. He claps his hands. “I knew it! I knew you had something. A secret!”

“Come on, let's put the money away.”

I bend down to pick up the hundred, it's halfway under the bed but I can reach it.

“You never tell me anything about yourself, Irish bullhead. I didn't even know your mother was from New York.”

I pick up the rest of the money, crumpled now from where he's rolled over it. My thumb and index finger hold the clip open, but then I mess up and the notes flutter to the floor. “Fuck!”

“I got it,” he says, sliding off the bed and onto the floor. “I got it.”

I hate that I can't manage the stupid clip, so I leave it on top of the dresser and I open the next drawer without really thinking about it. And that's when I see the photo frame, on top of a pink-and-white striped shirt, face down.

I'm going to shut the drawer, but Sergei has already seen it, and he puts the money next to the clip and reaches past me to pick up the frame. He turns it over so we can both see the perfect smiles. I notice Michael first, in the middle, next to a blonde woman holding a little girl, who she is making wave at the camera. There are two blond boys on either side of him, both wearing red T-shirts and blue shorts. He has his hand on the shoulder of the smaller one who comes up to his waist. The older boy is holding a skateboard. Sergei shoves the photo back so it catches the edge of the shirt and crumples it up. He doesn't fix it, only closes the drawer harder than he needs to. When he looks at me, that shine is in his eyes.

“We're taking the money,” he says.

“Stop messing,” I say, even though I don't think he's messing.

“That money's ours.” He picks up the pile of money and starts to count it again. “Why not?”

“Because
…
” I want to say different words than the ones on their way but I can't find any. “Because it's not right.”

He's shoving the notes in his jeans pockets too fast and one of them tears. “So, sleeping with these men to get us money is fine, but taking it—that's not right?”

“No, I didn't mean that—”

“That's exactly what you meant.”

I've never seen his face sneering before. He looks different. Ugly.

“No, Serg, I—”

“You're a coward, Rhea. It's okay for me to do these things, but not you. You're afraid, a coward.”

That's the word that does it. I hit his arm, hard, so his hand jerks and some of the notes fall to the floor. My fist hurts but I bet he hurts worse.

“Fuck you, calling me a coward, Sergei. Remember how we met? Remember? I saved you from that guy at the Y. Who was the coward then?”

“Fuck of
f
!” He rubs his arm and gets down on his knees again to scramble for the notes.

My heart is going a hundred thousand beats a minute, that's what it feels like. And then I'm back on the beach in Rush, it's scorching and Susan Mulligan and her crowd are laughing at me because I can't get in and swim, because I don't even have togs.
Diarrhoea Farrell's a coward! Diarrhoea's too scared to learn to swim.

“I'm not a fucking coward, Sergei. Don't say that again.”