How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (7 page)

“Hi,” he says, and gives her his flirty smile. “We wanted to find out about someone who attended the university.”

“This is the undergraduate admissions office, Columbia College. If you need information on the graduate school you need to—”

“No,” I go. “That's right, Columbia College, she was an undergrad here.”

She nods. “Okay, I'll look her up. But I might not be able to give you any information unless it's in the public domain already. Name?”

“Rhea Farrell,” I go. She starts to type something into a computer, and I realise she didn't mean my name, she meant your name, and suddenly I'm terrified that she's going to see my own record, my own application and tell me if I'd got in. Or not. And I don't want to know that. More than anything, I don't want to know that.

“Sorry!” My hand shoots out, across the counter, towards her computer. “Sorry, that's my name. Not the person I'm looking for. The person I'm looking for is Allison Davis. With two
L
's.”

“Oh.” She backs up on the delete key, starts typing again. She hadn't hit enter, she hadn't seen. My heart slows a bit. Sergei is looking at me. I don't know why I didn't want her to see so bad, why I don't want him to know I've applied here too.

“What year did she graduate?”

I knew that question was coming, and I answer another one. “She was here in 1978—I think she started in the autumn term of 1978.”

“And the year of graduation?”

“I'm not sure.”

I know you didn't graduate, I'm 99 percent sure you didn't, but there's something about this girl that makes me not want to tell her that, which is fifty kinds of crazy because it's the only way I know to find you. And all her questions make me think of my Columbia application form, the part where I'd had to fill in about you and Dad being deceased. There was a box that said “Date of death”—I'd never seen that written down before. I wrote Dad's date straightaway, like it was any old date, let the pen do its job. I didn't have a date for you, I didn't even know the date you went missing, not the exact one. Why couldn't you have had a date? A stone somewhere with two dates and a dash in between? Why couldn't something be definite with you? Something. Anything.

Couldn't you at least have given me that?

The girl is looking at me, kind of smiling, but she's getting impatient too, you can tell. Sergei is leaning across the counter, as if he might be trying to see the screen.

“You're not sure if she graduated or you're not sure of the year she graduated?”

I feel myself go red. “I don't think she graduated.”

If you started in 1978, you'd have graduated in 1982, had a degree. But you didn't have a degree, did you? You had me instead. Me and Dad.

“I'm sorry,” the girl goes, “there's no definitive record coming up. Even if I found her, I'm not able to release information to third parties.”

“We're not a third party.” Sergei smiles wider, tipping his head closer to her computer. “She was Rhea's mom—she passed away, she died. You can give information to family, no? To next of kin?”

I hadn't told him, yet, that you were dead. How did he know? The girl looks from Sergei to me.

“I'd need some proof of your relationship with her and that she's dead. But anyway, I can't find her.”

“What if we give you her date of birth? Rhea, what was her date of birth?”

“23rd November 1959.”

I must have said that, because I heard it, my voice. But somehow I don't remember saying it, making the decision to say it.

The girl is hesitating. Sergei is still smiling. “It would mean so much to us, any information at all.”

She types the numbers in. Slowly. Each key sounds like a bullet. We wait. Sergei blows his curls out of his eyes. My Columbia application is in that computer too. That white plastic box has the power to ruin my life, change my life, make my life. Something happens on the screen. She shakes her head.

“What is it?” Sergei says.

“I'm sorry. There's nothing here that would help you.”

“Anything at all would help us,” Sergei says. “Rhea's mom is dead. She's come all the way to New York from Ireland to find out more about her.”

The girl looks up.

“You're from Ireland?”

I nod. She's waiting for more. “I'm from Dublin.” I make sure to speak with my normal voice, to keep the American sounds out of my words.

“My mom was from Ireland,” she goes. “Meath.” She says “Meath” so it rhymes with “teeth.”

“Meath's nice.” I say it the proper way. This is
a lie. I don't know anything about Meath.

“It sounds like your mom told you about your heritage,” Sergei goes, “but Rhea's mom never got the chance. Please, if you have anything there on your screen, anything at all, please tell us.”

She glances over her shoulder, as if there might be someone there, but there is no one there. When she talks her voice is low, nearly a whisper. “All it says here is that she enrolled in 1977 and went on a student exchange programme in her sophomore year. It looks like she didn't come back. She never graduated, that's it. That's all there is.”

She's talking about you. It's definitely you. 1977 you enrolled. I'd always thought it was 1978 but I was wrong. It was 1977.

“That's her!” Sergei goes. “She went to Ireland on her exchange. Do you have contact information? An address? Phone number?”

The girl clicks something else. “There's an address, but it's twenty years out of date. I'm sure whoever was there has moved by now.”

“Can you tell us what it is, so we can check it against the one we have?”

Sergei has a pen and paper out—I don't know where he got it from. The girl hesitates before quickly reading out an address on Park Avenue. You lived on Park Avenue.

“Thank you,” Sergei says as he shoves the note in his back pocket. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He drums his fingers on the counter, turns around to leave.

“When do you go back to Ireland?”

The question catches me, pulls me back. It's like a trick question.

“I don't know,” I go. “I don't know if I'm going back.”

“Oh.”

She looks disappointed, like she wanted me to say something else, but it's the truth. Sergei is already holding the door open for me, so I pick up my backpack and thank her again. When we're outside, he puts his arm around me, spins me to face him.

“That was awesome, Rhea,” he goes. “Awesome! What a team! With your sad Irish charm and my quick wit, we don't need a private eye.”

He is too close, his face inches away from my face. I can smell the drink from last night. The light is bright, reflecting off the glass of one of the buildings, and I don't know if that's making me dizzy or if it was the way he spun me around or both. I take his hand off my shoulder, make a space between us. “Come on, let's not talk right outside, she's probably watching us.”

He pulls the piece of paper from his pocket. “830 Park Avenue, Apartment 78A. That's the Upper East Side, Rhea! Park Avenue! You're rich, Irish bullhead!”

I need to breathe, find my voice. “Serg—”

“Let's walk over there now, check it out.”

“Serg, it's all the way on the other side of the park. It's going to take us an hour to get there, more.”

“Okay, so come on, let's go!” He's walking backwards, facing me, his arms outstretched. “The longer we hang around here, the longer it'll take.”

My feet won't move. I want to get away from this building, from the girl and her computer, but it's like the day they wouldn't move to take me inside the gate—now they won't move to let me out.

“We don't have time,” I go. “You've to meet Michael at six? Remember?”

Sergei frowns. “So, I'll be late. He'll wait.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Serg, you told me he had somewhere specific he wanted to take you. He's already pissed off after last night.”

He makes a face, blows his curls from his forehead. “So what?”

“So, Michael's is the only security we have right now. Don't blow it, Serg, please.”

He kicks his runner out to swipe the edge of the grass border, his face a frown. I'm pretending this conversation is about Michael, but it's not, it's about something else. I just don't know what yet.

“Okay, then.” Sergei sighs, folds his arms. “I'll be a good little boy and be on time for Michael. So we can sleep at the apartment tonight and go there tomorrow. Early, though, okay? I don't want to hang out for hours watching dumb American TV.”

“Okay.”

I smile, relief floods in. He gives me a high five and I high five him back. We'd started doing it the week we met, taking the piss out of some people we saw at the Y doing it for real, but now I think we both like it.

We take the subway back together. It's too crowded to talk, and I'm glad we don't have to. My stop is before his, 42nd Street.

“You going for pizza to the usual spot?” Serg goes.

I shake my head. “I'm going to change it up tonight. I'm going to Grand Central.”

“See you back at Michael's, come over early. We won't be late tonight.”

That's the last thing he says before the doors close and I wave at him through the glass even though he's already turned away. I let myself be carried by the flood of people over to the S line. I like the S, because it only has two stops and because there's always a train there and because it only takes a minute.

When I get to Grand Central, there are signs to the 4, 5, and 6 trains, the green ones that go up the east side of the park. I could take one of those trains—I'm in the station already, I wouldn't need another token. I'd get out at 68th or maybe 77th and I could walk over to Park Avenue and walk right up to number 830, the building where you used to live.

And after all this time, after all this waiting, I don't know why I don't. Except I want to stay here in the station and sit down, and eat a black and white cookie, one of the big ones, even though the prices are a rip-off, even though it won't fill me up like the pizza would. And after all this waiting, what does waiting another day matter anyway? I don't think it matters at all.

Rhea

Grand Central Station, New York
27th April 1999
10:12 p.m.

Dear Mum,

These are the things I like about being in Grand Central Station:

1. You never have to queue too long for the toilet because there are loads of them.
   
2. It doesn't feel weird to have a backpack with me because everyone has backpacks and bags with them.
   
3. You can sleep and no one will bother you.
   
4. The ceiling.
   
5. The tables with the pretend tickets and maps on them.
   

The thing I don't like about Grand Central is that the only real place to sit—the place where the cool tables with the pretend tickets and maps are—is in the food court, so you have to deal with all the smells of Chinese food and chips and walk past loads of glass counters with cookies and shiny cakes and giant sandwiches, and they're all too expensive to buy.

I'm starving tonight. I'm craving everything, all of it, only it's my own fault for spending my dinner money on the stupid black and white cookie that didn't fill me up, just like I knew it wouldn't. I'm not spending any more money tonight. The guy and girl next to me are eating this giant piece of cheesecake and I'm watching them, each time they dig their forks in. I'm watching them chew and swallow, even though I don't even like cheesecake.

These are the names on the fake tickets on the table I'm sitting at:

1. South Norwalk
   
2. Harrison
   
3. Chappaqua
   
4. Hartsdale
   
5. Mount Vernon
   

The maps are of the Hudson Line and the Harlem Line. I want to go on both. I want to buy a ticket and get on a train and sit in a seat by the window and watch everything passing by outside until we leave the lights of New York behind and all I'll be able to see in the glass is the reflection of my face in the dark.

They didn't finish the cheesecake. They left a lot of it behind on the paper plate and if they hadn't thrown it in the bin, I might have finished it. I might have cut the parts off that their forks had touched and eaten the rest. I hope you don't think that's gross, Mum. I mean, they looked clean, and it's not any different really from eating from the plate of someone you know, is it? I don't think it is.

Laurie caught me one time, eating off one of the plates I'd just bussed at Cooper's restaurant and she was grossed out. You'd swear I'd been eating off the floor or something. It was only a mozzarella stick. It wasn't like they'd taken a bite out of it or anything.

I'm thinking a lot about Laurie tonight. I'm trying not to, but I can't help it. I'm wearing my baseball cap, the one that used to be hers, the Boston Red Sox one. The one I used to wear was a navy one with a white NY, a New York Yankees one, but Cooper took that away the night I sat down to dinner with it on. I'd got my head shaved that day, only the underneath part, so at school it looked like I had long hair but when I put my hair up under the cap, it looked like my head was shaved. Aunt Ruth didn't like it either, but she was ignoring it, pretending she hadn't noticed. When Cooper made me give him my cap, I thought she'd say something, but she didn't, she just kept on eating her salad. He said it was because it wasn't right to wear a hat at the dinner table but we all knew that wasn't the reason. Later when Laurie knocked on my bedroom door and handed me her Boston Red Sox one, she said she thought that Cooper was a control freak and that he'd had no right to tell me how to look or dress or anything else.

If I'm going to write to you about Laurie, then I need to write about the times she was nasty, the times she was horrible, not when she was nice. And I need to keep it in order. That was probably six months or so after I got there, the cap thing, but loads had already happened by then. Like the soccer tryouts. I haven't told you about the soccer tryouts.