“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 off!” 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.”
He’s still on his knees, he has the money in his hands. When he looks up at me there are red spots on his cheeks.
“So, if it’s not that you’re afraid, why not? Why not just take it?”
“Because it’ll be gone by the end of the week. We’ll blow it all on some hotel room half the size of this apartment. A thousand dollars doesn’t last long in New York City, dumbass.”
Dumbass. Laurie used to call me that. I’ve never called anyone else it before. He stands up slowly, blows his fringe from his eyes. He’s still angry but he’s listening to me as well.
“If we play our cards right, we can stay here in this apartment every weekend, maybe even during the week too. That’s worth way more than the money. You know that.”
What I’m saying is true and Sergei hears it. I don’t say anything about the photograph, I can’t let him know I saw the shine in his eyes. He takes out two fifties from his back pocket, lines them up properly against each other.
“Maybe you’re right, Irish bullhead,” he says. “Maybe you have a point.”
He puts all the notes back, one by one. Smoothes them, lines them up, and folds them inside the clip and puts the clip back inside the hood of the Florida State sweatshirt.
“You’re the smart one, Irish bullhead. You’re the brains, I’m only the pretty face.”
He sticks his tongue out and I stick my tongue out and that means things are back to normal, nearly normal. We get into bed again, leave the last drawer unchecked. He rolls over so I can’t see his face but I can hear what he says.
“You know I was only joking about you being a coward. You know I didn’t mean it.”
“I know. I’m sorry if I hurt your arm.”
He fell asleep straightaway. Sergei can sleep anywhere, we joke that he can sleep standing up. But I lie here and I can’t sleep. I’m back on the beach in Rush, the sand squishy cold under my toes at the edge of the water. It doesn’t get deep for ages and I walk out really far before I have to stop because the bottom of my shorts gets wet. The others are way out. Susan Mulligan and Paula O’Brien are the furthest, specs above the sparkle on the waves. Lisa is closer in, with Aisling Begley and her sister, and their voices carry over the water, their laughter does.
I want to be with them, but I don’t want to be with them. I know I can’t. I don’t know why except Dad always says it’s the most important rule. And I know that the rule has something to do with you.
Rhea
Central Park, New York
26th April 1999
2:25 p.m.
Dear Mum,
When I was a little kid and New York came on the telly, I’d sit up extra close to the screen so I wouldn’t miss anything. I wanted to see everything, to hear all the sounds. I wanted to climb inside the TV so I could smell it. Today, New York smells like sugar and grease and some kind of car-fumy smell all mixed up together. Sometimes Florida smelled like car fumes too, and parts of it smelled like the sea, but different from the sea in Rush.
Did you like it, living in Rush? If there was a scale and New York was at one end, Rush would be at the opposite one. You couldn’t find places more different. I don’t just mean because it’s quiet and a village, it’s the flatness too. Rush is as flat as New York is tall. Rush is the flattest place in the world compared to New York.
I bet you wouldn’t have stayed if you hadn’t got pregnant with me. I did the maths, Mum, you got married in November and I was born in May. Would you still have married Dad if it wasn’t because of me?
Since I’ve been here, I can’t stop thinking of all these questions I want to ask you—it feels like a million questions every hour, but that can’t be true because I read somewhere that humans only have 70,000 thoughts a day and something like half of them are the same thought, over and over. But it feels like a million, all questions, questions I want to ask you.
What is it like to drown?
Shit.
The first Sunday in Coral Springs, me and Laurie are sitting watching Baywatch, waiting to go for lunch and I’m thinking that I’ve never once seen an episode where someone actually drowned. I’m about to say this to Laurie, but she speaks first.
“How do you say your name again?” She’s on the cream couch, her bare feet pulled up under her. I’m on the brown leather chair, my feet are on the floor in my Docs. Aunt Ruth has already been going on about sandals. Laurie doesn’t look at me, her blue eyes are still on the screen even though the ads are on now. If there’d been anyone else in the room, I’d think she must be talking to them, but there’s only me.
“Rhea,” I go. I say it again. “Rhea. When I was a kid I used to get slagged about it.”
“Slagged?” Her eyes flick over.
“Take the piss—you know, make jokes.” I pause. “They used to call me Diarrhoea.”
She makes a face. “Gross.”
I don’t know why I tell her that, except that I wanted to say something, maybe I think she might even laugh, but she doesn’t laugh. Maybe I want to say it first, before she can. I look down and I’m kneading my stump. I let go. Her eyes are back on the telly, I don’t think she noticed.
“No one seems to know why my mum called me Rhea. It wasn’t a name in the family or anything. She must have liked it, but I always wished she’d called me something else.”
She pulls a strand of her hair, starts to chew it.
“So change it.”
The show is back on. David Hasselhoff is grabbing that orange plastic thing and running towards the sea. I’m watching him but remembering being little, saying my prayers at night, praying I’d wake up with a new name like Sinead or Emma or Amy. But in the morning, I was always Rhea.
“What? Just change my name? Just like that?”
She shrugs. “A girl in my grade changed her name from Victoria to Tori.”
“That’s shortening a name—not changing it.” I laugh a bit, so it doesn’t sound like I’m disagreeing with her.
“Shortening it would be Vic or Vicki. Tori sounds different, it just uses some of the same letters.”
“But I only have four letters in my name. There’s not enough to shorten it, never mind make up a new name.”
She doesn’t answer and I think that’s the end of the conversation. She adjusts her legs so she’s sitting cross-legged, her feet turned upwards on the back of each thigh.
On TV, another lifeguard has joined David in the sea. A girl is screaming for help, going under the waves. As I watch her, I am scanning through possible variants of my name but none of them make any sense.
At the ad break, Laurie stands up. “I’ve seen this one before.”
She throws the remote control at me without any warning so it bounces off my thigh and hits the cabinet next to me, making a crash before it falls on the floor.
“What about Rae?”
I’ve bent down to pick up the remote so I can’t see her face as she says it. When I turn to look at her, she’s already on her way out the door.
“Ray? That’s a boy’s name. Anyway, I don’t have a ‘y’ in my name.”
“R-a-e, dumbass. The girl’s version.”
She doesn’t look back, so I can’t see her face, but writing this now, I bet she was rolling her eyes.
I think about it all day, the new name, say it over and over in my head. Rae Farrell. Rae. It sounds kind of cool, different. Rae doesn’t rhyme with diarrhoea. I like the short, crisp sound of one syllable. Rae. As we sit having lunch, I tune out of Cooper’s story about the famous actor who came into the restaurant because I am imagining what Rae Farrell would order, what she would say. I never get to that part though because when I look up they’re all looking at me, and I realise I forgot to laugh at Cooper’s punchline.
Later, I want to ask Aunt Ruth what she th
inks while she’s emptying the dishwasher. I offer to help but she says no, even though I offer twice. I stand by the patio door looking at the garden, the darkness of the grass, the pool an oblong of blue light.
“Did you ever think about changing your name?”
Her back bends and straightens as she unloads, piling white plates on the black marble counter.
“No,” she says, without skipping a beat. I wait for her to ask why I am asking, but she doesn’t, she just carries on stacking plates into the open cupboard and then bends over again.
“A lot of people do.”
“I wouldn’t.”
She wipes the inside of the casserole dish with a tea towel and bends down again for the knives and forks, looks up at me through her fringe. “Why?”
“Nothing,” I go. “No reason.”
The next day is the first day at school and I know what to do, have thought about little else all night. The school bus stops at the end of the road and two other girls get on ahead of me and Laurie. I let her go first and I keep my eyes on her ponytail swinging down her back, so I don’t have to see everyone looking at me. Halfway down the bus, one guy says something to his friend and they both laugh. I’ve already passed them but I walk back to their seat, stare at them. The one who made the comment has fifty thousand freckles that leak into each other like a big tea stain. The other one is smaller, afraid looking. They snigger for a second, then stop. I want to get my stump and shove it in their faces. I want to ask them what their fucking problem is and if they’ve never seen someone with only one arm before—only they probably never have seen someone with only one arm before.
I assume that Laurie and me will sit together, but there is a girl with dark shiny hair under a white baseball cap who waves and slides her bag from the seat and Laurie sits down without a backward glance.
I walk on. I don’t care. This shouldn’t hurt more than the sniggers, but it does. What did I expect? It’s not like she’s my sister, and even if she was, we wouldn’t sit together. Most sisters hated each other, didn’t they? Lisa always said her sister was a moody cow. It wasn’t a good time to start thinking about Lisa. Four rows behind Laurie, there is an empty seat next to a girl with long red curls. I sit down. She turns around and I wait for her to tell me it is taken, but instead she smiles to show a mouthful of braces.
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 3