How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (33 page)

I look down and she wiggles her toes.

“Do you always run barefoot?”

“I'd never wear shoes if I could help it. I used to spend the summers with my grandma, down in South Carolina, when I was a kid. I'd kick my sandals off the first day I got there, wouldn't put them back on again until Daddy came to take me home.”

That's the sound I've heard in her voice, a bit of a Southern accent that didn't make sense because I heard her telling David she was from Connecticut.

“Do you go running every morning?”

She pulls her curl back out of her face again. “I have been. I love it—the only thing that drives me crazy is the showers being such a clusterfuck by the time I get back, with all the kids.”

I laugh, I can't help it. “Clusterfuck” is a Laurie word—it always made me laugh.

“What?”

I hear the smile in her voice and when I turn I see it, a smile and a tiny line of frown at the same time.

“That word—it's just
…
it sounds funny.”

“Clusterfuck?”

She's fiddling with her necklace, the one with her name that she always wears.

“Yeah, we don't have that word in Ireland.”

“What would you say, then?”

A seagull is in front of us on the beach, stone still. It doesn't move when we pass it, just stares at the sea. I try to remember what we would say in Ireland, I try to remember anything about Ireland, but it's like there's a big gap where all the memories should be.

“I don't know—probably that it's a mess or that it's crowded or something.”

“Oh.”

She sounds disappointed, and so am I—that I couldn't come up with something better, and suddenly, I think of a word. A Dad word. “Actually—some people might call it a schmozzle. We might say that.”

“Schrm-uzzle? Is that Jewish?”

I glance over at her. “No! There's no Jewish people in Ireland.”

“Really?” Her face is scrunched up, like she doesn't believe me.

“It's a Dublin word. We say it about the traffic or hurling, maybe. You know:
There's a schmozzle on the pitch
.”

“Hurling?” She dips her head and there's no sound, only a tiny squeak, and I realise that she's laughing, just like that day at the table with Jean. She catches her breath. “People hurl enough to have a word for it?”

It takes me a second to get it. “Not hurling, like hurl! Hurling, the sport.”

I swing my arm to show her, but she's laughing again, doing that head dip thing and then I'm laughing too. I'm laughing at her laugh.

“Say it again,” she goes.

“Schmozzle.”

She repeats it but she says it wrong, like there's an “r” in it. Every time she says it, I repeat it the right way, and by the time we get to the bend in the beach where we can see the house she has it right, and it's kind of awkward then because there's nothing to laugh at anymore.

“You should run on,” I go. “You don't want to be late for breakfast.”

She checks her watch. “I guess, plus there's the schmozzle to contend with.”

I smile. “That's right. The clusterfuck.”

She makes the beeping sound with her watch again. “Okay, I'll see you at breakfast. Enjoy your walk.”

She starts running then and even though it doesn't look like she's going that fast, in only a few seconds she has put a lot of distance between us. She stays close to the edge of the water where the sand is packed hard, and I can see when bits of it are flicked back into the air behind her, the splash when she lands too close to the water.

Watching her jog away like that, something weird happens, because for a second I feel really sad, like I miss her, even though we're not even friends, even though I'll see her in half an hour. And then I feel annoyed with her and annoyed at myself, for not saying anything about the Marco thing, but the truth is I didn't think about it once the whole time we were talking.

It's this Winnie shit that has me like this, Mum—feeling sad, missing people. Tonight, after dinner, I thought about saying something to her—not apologising or anything—but just talking to her totally normally, maybe even asking her if she wanted to see part of Aunt Ruth's letter, so I could tell her about Columbia. But when I came upstairs she was getting ready to go out again, to go to another stupid AA meeting and even though she was asking about my day and everything I knew she didn't really care, that she probably had to go and ring Melissa or something, so I just said my day had been fine and picked up my pad to write to you. And now she's gone, Mum, and I feel like I felt on the beach, like I might cry or something, like maybe I'm lonely or something. And that's fifty kinds of crazy because I never get lonely; I wasn't lonely on the street, when I was on my own, and if I was going to get lonely, I'd have got lonely then.

You can't feel lonely in a house full of people where you hardly get five minutes to yourself. It's impossible to get lonely somewhere like this.

I know that, Mum. Everyone knows that.

Rhea

Dear Mum,

I hate Jean, you know that? I fucking hate her. She has it in for me—she's had it in for me since I got here. It's not my fault. Aunt Ruth would say I'm being paranoid, but ever since that first day, that first meeting, she hasn't liked me.

It's typical that she'd be the one who found us. I didn't see her in the dark, almost walked right into her coming up the beach path. Robin's really sleepy by then and she wants me to carry her again, but she's heavy and my arm is sore from carrying her earlier. She's only just started crying when we run into Jean, she's only just told me that she's scared of the dark.

It doesn't help that I scream; it's not that I'm scared, I get a shock, that's all—the way she's suddenly there, out of nowhere. It takes me a second to see who it is and once I know it's her, I feel sick, like I might throw up right there on the sand. I think she's going to interrogate me, start shouting, give me a lecture, but she doesn't do any of those things, just scoops Robin into her arms and hurries up the path with her. I follow them, into the house, up the stairs. On Robin's floor, Jean turns and tells me to go to bed and that we'll talk later.

That's all she says, but her eyes say more than that. All day, it's hanging over me, this talk, and I don't eat anything at breakfast or at lunch either. The first time in the whole day I've forgotten about it for a split second is when I'm on the deck with Zac and Amanda, and Zac is kidding around, imitating the way Erin looks at David and saying she totally has the hots for him.

Jean comes up from behind me and I see Zac's face change before I hear her voice. “Zac, the wind is coming up, can you go and tidy up the cones on the beach and wrap up the volleyball net?”

He jumps down from where he's sitting on the railing. “Sure, yeah. I'll do it now.”

Amanda stands up too. “I'll go help. Unless you have something else for me to do, Jean?”

It's Amanda's break time, so she totally just wants to hang out with Zac. Jean ignores her and turns to me. She has her Oakleys on so I can't see her eyes and that makes it worse.

“Rhea, come upstairs with me, please.”

I'm supposed to be doing Arts and Crafts with Winnie in a few minutes, but I don't say anything because I know she knows that too. And I bet she knows it's my favourite part of the day, that's what I'm thinking as I follow her up the stairs for the second time in twelve hours.

She stands by the door of her office, closes it after me. Even though there is no air conditioner it's fresh in the room because of the cross wind from the open windows and the fan. There's a desk with books and papers all over it, and the papers are flicking in the breeze.

“Sit down,” she says.

There's three places to sit—a basket swing chair that hangs from its own frame in the corner, a long, low, battered black leather couch, and a brown corduroy chair opposite it. I'd love to sit in the basket chair, but instead I pick the couch. It's one of those weird ones, with the back too far back to be properly comfortable so I have to lean forward. I'm dying to pee.

She takes the corduroy armchair, puts her Oakleys on the glass coffee table between us. Her eyes look bigger than ever and I look down at my Docs.

“So, you know what this is about.”

Behind her, there are shelves, packed tight with books but messy. They're not in the right order, tall skinny ones towering over short thick ones. There's even some lying flat on top of other books.

“What do you think you were doing, taking Robin down to the beach in the middle of the night?”

On top of the shelves, there's a photo, a black and white one of a black woman. She's wearing glasses and looking to the side, towards the edge of the photo frame. From her mouth, she's blowing a line of smoke, only I can't see a cigarette.

“Rhea—look at me. What the hell were you thinking? You know the rules. What would make you take Robin out of bed, in the middle of the night, and bring her to the beach?”

Jean leans forward in her chair, puts her elbows on her knees. Sitting like this, you can see she's chubby, nearly fat. “This is a fireable offence, Rhea. If you don't want that to happen, you'd better start telling me what's going on.”

She has scars on her cheeks, faint but you can still see them, acne scars like David Flood back in Rush. They make her look young. I can't tell what age she is but I can tell she's getting madder by the way her jaw clenches. “Okay, have it your way. There's a train at five. David can drive you to the station—it gets into Penn just after eight.” Her eyes hold my eyes. She said that on purpose, Penn Station, to make me picture it, those corridors, that night with Jay. She nods to herself, even though neither of us has said anything. “Okay then. I'll go tell David.”

She stands up, heads towards the door. It's only when she has her back to me that I say anything.

“I couldn't sleep, that's all. I hadn't planned on getting Robin, but I heard her crying from the landing.”

She turns around but she doesn't sit down, stands behind her chair. “First of all, you're not allowed on the beach by yourself after it gets dark. Second, you never, ever, take the kids anywhere on your own—anywhere—for any reason. Especially not at night, especially not the beach.”

She counts her points on her fingers and she's on her third finger even though she's only made two points.

“Did you read the handbook? It says clearly that no counsellor is to remove a child from the house without authorisation. Do you remember how much I talked about that?”

She waves her arm in the direction of the desk, where there must be a copy of the handbook, under all her mess. Every question makes the white part of her eyes even bigger. She's firing me, she's decided already, it doesn't matter what I say.

“Do you know how many people drown on these beaches every summer, Rhea? Do you know how quickly it can happen?”

I don't know if she's expecting me to answer all her questions, but I don't say anything. In my head, I'm planning what to take, packing my backpack. I'll leave Winnie's Converse behind, to show I don't care, but I'm going to take the Walkman.

“Robin could have drowned, Rhea. Did you think about that? If you'd fallen asleep and she'd wandered into the sea. You can't swim. You wouldn't have been able to save her.”

She walks around the chair, sits down again. Over her shoulder, there's a piece of bare wall, just the right size for your subway map, and I look at that instead of at her. I can picture the lines, don't need the paper they are printed on, can remember all the stops, the layout. I start with the A, at Inwood, 207th Street, and I'm at 59th Street, Columbus Circle, when Jean stops talking. I see her looking at my fingers, and that's when I notice they're moving against my thigh, drawing a line along the ridge of my shorts. I stop. She sits back in her chair, pulls her feet up underneath her. When she talks next, her voice is softer. “Rhea, where did you go just then?”

I put my arm across my chest, my hand under my stump. “What do you mean?”

“What's going on? Why were you up in the middle of the night?”

She's looking at me, like her eyes can see everything inside my head.

“If you're going to fire me, just get on with it. Just fucking fire me.”

She looks at me but she doesn't say anything and I clench my toes inside my Docs. “Rhea, what are you scared of?”

It's a stupid dumbass question and I laugh, sit back on the stupid low-backed couch and cross my leg, so my Doc is on my knee.

“You think it's funny?”

“I'm not scared of you, if that's what you think. I'm not scared of you firing me and being back on the streets. I'll be okay, I was okay before.”

An image comes into my mind, before I can push it away. The night I was peeing opposite Michael's apartment and that rat was there, the horrible rat that shuffled out from behind the bin and made me pee down my leg.

She keeps looking at me, like she can see the rat in my head too, like she can see Aunt Ruth's letter in my back pocket, the paper getting hot and damp in between the denim. It's like she knows, but she couldn't know, she's only pretending.

She threads her fingers through her toes. The soles of her feet are light underneath, like Robin's feet. Last night, we measured our feet up against each other, heel to heel on the beach.

“I don't want to fire you, Rhea, but the safety of every child depends on us all following the rules.” Her voice has changed again, into her preachy one from the meeting. “Robin was in danger last night.”

I slam my foot back down on the floor. “She was fine. I'd never let anything happen to her.”