How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (6 page)

What if they never come back?

You know what I'm craving? Crisps. Hunky Dory's, the salt and vinegar ones in the blue packet. Over here the next best ones are Ruffles, but they're not as nice, even though they come in a bigger packet. I'm losing weight, I think I am—my belt is on the next buckle down. Aunt Ruth would be delighted, she was always going on about my weight. The first time she says it is when she walks into the kitchen and I'm making a crisp sandwich and she looks at the clock and says it's only an hour till dinner. Next thing you know, she's sitting down, talking about healthy eating and exercise, and how hard it can be to get rid of “puppy fat.” My face burns when she says that. Mrs. McManus used those stupid words too, “puppy fat,” when she kept me back after school in fifth class to say I should ask my dad to give me an apple or a banana for my lunch to go with the Skittles and crisps and Coke.

So the night Aunt Ruth brings up the prosthetic, I think it's going to be more of the same. We're in the kitchen again, clearing up after dinner this time, when she says she wants to talk to me, and Cooper goes, “Hey kiddo, let's watch TV” to Laurie and leaves me there with her. She leans against the counter and pulls down her fringe.

“I signed up for soccer trials,” I say. “I'm going to practice on Thursday.” The only time I've played before is with the boys on the road, but the other sports were swimming and tennis so I had no choice.

She looks confused for a second and then smiles. “Great. That's great. It'll be a great way to make new friends.”

She's said “great” three times in one sentence, and I know then that's not what she wants to talk about, that there must be something else.

“Listen, Rhea, what I wanted to talk to you about—”

“Rae.”

“Sorry, Rae. What I wanted to talk about, I mean what Cooper and I wanted to talk to you about, is the possibility of
…
of
…
getting a prosthetic.” She is looking at the electric juicer, not at me. “You know, for your arm.”

She gestures at her own arm, in case I don't know what a prosthetic is. More words gallop out. Now she's talking to the stainless steel spotlights over my head. “One of Cooper's friends is a surgeon and he was saying how much better they are these days, how much progress they've made in the past few years.” She glances at me, catches my eye but I don't say anything. “They're expensive, of course, but Cooper and I, we don't mind
…
I mean, we can afford it.”

“Save your money—I don't want one.”

“But it would help you—you could do so much more—”

I look down at my stump. “I can do everything I want now.”

“They have a brochure. In it, there's a boy riding a bike, tying his laces.”

“I lace up my twelve-hole Docs. I rode my bike in Ireland.”

“But that was Ireland, honey. Here, there's so much traffic.”

“Exactly, no one rides bikes here. You'd probably die of heat stroke riding a bike here.”

She brushes her fringe down again, trying not to frown. “This isn't just about riding a bike, let's not get hung up on riding a bike—”

“You're the one who brought up riding bikes. I don't want to ride a bike.”

“The bike is just an example, Rhea. It would help you with other things you can't do.”

I clench my toes inside my Docs. “I can do anything I want the way I am.”

She shakes her head. “We both know that's not true, Rhea.”

“Name one thing! Name one thing I can't do now!”

It comes out like a shout, when I say that. The kitchen door opens and Cooper comes in, fast, like he's been listening outside all along.

“Is everything okay?” he asks Aunt Ruth, even though he's looking at me.

“Fine.” She smiles, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Just fine. Give us a few minutes, Coop.”

He stays by the door, his big hand around its edge. “Okay. I'm just in here, if you need me.”

He watches me as he closes the door, as if he's leaving her with a rabid Alsatian. I look back to Aunt Ruth. Her anger is in her face now, she's not trying to hide it like before. When she talks, her voice is nearly a whisper.

“Don't you ever shout at me like that again, Rhea. We don't talk to each other like that in this house.”

“My name is Rae. How many times do I have to tell you? Do you use each other's names in this house?”

Her lips go white where she clamps them together. I can nearly see the anger ready to jump out, and I wish it would but instead she takes a deep breath.

“Cooper's doing a lot for you and I don't want him to think you're ungrateful.”

I don't know how what I do with my arm relates to Cooper and her, but somehow it does, just like somehow what I eat does too.

“I won't be grateful or ungrateful, because I'm not getting one.”

My stump is starting to hurt, the way it always used to, the way it hasn't for years.

“Well, you're a minor, Rae, so, for now, that's my decision.”

A line comes into my head, a line that's been there all along waiting for an opportunity to be spoken.

“You're not my mother.”

She blinks twice, folds her arms. “No, I'm not. And I don't want to be.” The kitchen is silent. Outside there is the sound of the sprinkler on the grass. It sounds like this: pppptttt pppptttt. I count, it makes that noise every thirty seconds. She flicks her hair behind her ear.

“Rhea, I mean Rae, I'm sorry—”

“Don't be. It's the most honest thing you've said to me since I got here.”

She starts to walk towards me but I walk around the breakfast bar so it's between us. “I didn't mean it. I just got angry. I can't understand why you don't want a prosthetic, that's all. I know you have trouble fitting in
…
”

I shake my head.

“I mean, this isn't just about you. There are other things to consider—how it looks to people, how it makes them feel. I'm sure you don't always want to be known as “the girl with one arm.”

She says that, Mum, actually says that. I nearly laugh, but I don't. “Why not, Aunt Ruth? It's who I am.” We stand there, looking at each other for a few seconds and I think she's going to say something else, but she doesn't. She just turns around and goes out the door into the hall, leaving me on my own in their fancy clean kitchen with the sound of insects hitting the glass patio doors and the pppptttt pppptttt of the sprinkler, on and off and on again.

Every thirty seconds.

Rhea

Grand Central Station, New York
27th April 1999
7:14 p.m.

Dear Mum,

It was 4:23 a.m. when Sergei and Michael got home. I knew because I was looking at my G-Shock when the taxi turned the corner. It was good they came then because after that man walking the dog stopped to talk to me a second time, I'd decided I'd only give it until 4:30 before I headed to the diner.

They took ages to get out of the taxi and the funny thing was, after all the waiting, I nearly didn't want them to see me at all. And then the taxi drove away and I could see that Michael had Sergei's arm around his shoulder, that he was practically carrying him.

I don't know if Michael would have let me in if it wasn't for the fact that he couldn't hold Sergei up and open the door at the same time. When he sees me, he hands me the key and I get the outer door and open it for them. Sergei's head is kind of rolling back and there's sick all down his jeans. The smell is gross.

I lead the way up the stairs and, behind me, Michael is talking to Sergei in a whisper, telling him to lift his feet, that he has to learn when to stop. It sounds like he might be going to cry but I don't look around. I don't ask if he's okay with me staying, I just unlock the apartment door and help him get Sergei on the couch.

“He'll be okay,” I go. “Get me a basin.”

Michael looks at me for a second and then goes into the kitchen. I roll Sergei onto his side, pull the neck of his T-shirt looser. I take his runners off and his jeans. I leave his socks on. He's listing backwards, towards the back of the couch, and I tip him forward again, take the basin Michael's brought back and put it by his head.

Michael is standing with his hands on his hips, watching.

“You seem to know what you're doing,” he says.

“You figure it out.”

“You've seen him like this a lot?”

I shrug. I have, but that's not how I know how to do this. I feel like I've always known how to do this.

“I don't know what happened,” Michael says, running his hands over his head. “We're having dinner and he says he's going to the bathroom and he never comes back. Just leaves me there, with both of our meals. I looked all over for him, for hours. All the bars. I found him in the park opposite Stonewall, like this.”

Sergei rolls backwards on the couch and I make a line of cushions to keep him propped forward.

“We need to keep an eye on him,” I go, “make sure he doesn't roll over onto his back.”

“I'll do it, I don't care. I have to be out of here in less than three hours anyway.” Michael sits down on the armchair, puts his head in his hands. “You have the bed.”

“You sure?”

He looks up, nods. “Yeah.”

I pick up my backpack, hold it in front of me. He's looking at me like he's not finished talking, like he still has something to say. He's a man in a suit, but his eyes are someone else's eyes—his eyes are a little kid's eyes.

“Anything could have happened to him,” he says. “He has to get this under control. Talk to him, will you? He listens to you.”

My backpack is heavy and my head feels heavy too. Michael wants an answer, thinks there is one. I don't think it's that easy, but I'm too tired to tell him and, anyway, sometimes I think you need to find out for yourself, so I say what he wants to hear. “I'll talk to him.” That was last night. This morning, when I woke up, the radio alarm clock said it was 10:07 and I thought that Sergei would still be sleeping but when I go into the living room he's in his boxers with a blanket half over his knees, a glass of water on the coffee table in front of him. When he sees me, he half smiles.

“Hey,” he says. “Irish bullhead.”

We don't talk about the row, the diner, none of it. We don't talk about why he left Michael in the restaurant or what happened after or how he got home. Instead, we watch Ricki Lake and when it's over, we watch Montel Williams. I make us Pop-Tarts and when Sergei makes a gagging face, I eat his too. It's when Sally Jesse Raphael is on that Sergei gets up and starts to pace.

“I can't do this!” he goes.

“Do what?”

“I can't watch this. I can't watch any more of this shit. Doesn't it make you want to just kill yourself? Watching these shows?”

He's pacing around the tiny room, holding his head. I'd thought we were having fun, I thought everything was okay again, but it's not.

“What do you want to do?”

“Anything. Everything. We're in New York City, Rhea, we're in New York fucking City and we're watching shit TV that we could be watching anywhere in the world.”

He stops in front of me. His eyes are excited, red rimmed. I know about eyes like that.

“Come on, Rhea, let's have an adventure. We need an adventure.”

He grabs my hand and pulls me up off the floor. All of a sudden, the apartment seems tiny, claustrophobic, like the whole city outside is waiting. And that's when I come up with the idea.

“We could go look for my mother.”

I want to make the letter pause there, Mum. If this was a film, there'd be a pause button I could push and then we'd cut to the next scene when we were on our way to Columbia and I'd leave out the boring parts about us getting ready and the row we nearly had about tidying up the apartment for Michael (I wanted to, he didn't) and how Sergei ate two Big Macs and I pretended I wasn't hungry, even though I'm always hungry, because I didn't want any more of his money and I didn't want to spend mine because pizza slices are cheaper than Big Macs and keep you full for longer. No, I'd leave out all that. We'd just be rattling along on the 1 train, trying not to laugh at the guy sitting opposite us with the big Afro and the red socks and black knee pads saying “testing, testing” into what looks like a radio alarm clock and then in the next scene we'd be walking through the gates of Columbia together.

In the admissions office, there's two people ahead of us waiting. It's really quiet and Sergei is driving me crazy, the way he keeps pumping his legs up and down.

“Stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Jiggling your legs like that, you're making me nervous.”

“Sorry.” He stops for 0.2 of a second and starts again. He sees my look. “Sorry.”

I'm nervous too. I think I am, I think that's why my heart is galloping as fast as Sergei's legs. It's all the questions he asked me on the way here—what you'd been studying, what year you'd started, if you'd ever graduated. Simple questions, but questions I don't know the answers to. How come I don't know the answers to simple questions like that? How come no one told me?

“Next.”

The woman behind the counter doesn't look like how I thought people at Columbia would look when I was filling out the forms and writing my personal essay. If I'd had to guess how a woman at a desk in the admissions office would look, I'd have guessed she'd be Aunt Ruth's age, or older, with short black shiny hair and glasses, those horn-rimmed ones. But this woman is younger, this girl—she can't be much older than me—with her short spiky hair, and purple and green beads over a purple top. She's not even wearing glasses.

“How can I help you?”

She's not rude, but not friendly either. Sergei is next to me, leaning on the counter, and she looks from him to me.