But I come in anyway. And they do have rooms. And the girl behind the desk smiles at me and, for a second, I think it’s because she’s seen the posters, but it’s because someone just called and cancelled so they have one room available, just for tonight, and she says it must be my lucky day.
Sergei would say that I’m taking the easy way out, giving in, that it’s stupid to spend nearly every last dollar I have on some room at the Y when there’s rooms for free all over New York if you only know where to look. He’d say it was bullshit thinking that God had provided, that it was just a coincidence. But Sergei’s not here and I’ve a good feeling, Mum, the first I’ve had in a long time and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.
I don’t have to check out till eleven a.m. tomorrow and that gives me eighteen hours here. Time to sleep and shower and get properly clean, so I can look for a job and leave my backpack here so no one will know I’m homeless. And I’ve time to look at Nana Davis’ photos, to lay them all out on the floor so I can see each one properly, and I might do that first, before I do anything else.
Mum, I’m scared. I’m sick. I feel … I don’t know how I feel. Angry. I feel fucking angry. Dumbass, Rhea.
Shut up, I’m not a dumbass.
Dumbass.
Shut up. Shut the fuck up. I’m so tired. I shouldn’t be tired, I slept for almost twelve hours. What time is it? 4:35 a.m. What time was it when I started looking at the photos?
I can see them from here, sixteen photos, four rows of four. There’s loads of us, just you and me, Dad isn’t in any of them. Some of them are blurry but there’s a really good one with me on your knee with your hands around my waist, and one where we’re both making faces, sticking our tongues out. And there’s some of Aunt Ruth, the two of us with her, on the beach in Rush, the wind blowing our hair, and then the same photo with you replaced by another woman, who looks a bit like you without your smile. Your handwriting on the back says the woman is Nana Davis. At first I think it’s a mistake because there’s no way the woman in the photo and the woman in the bed in Clover Hills can be the same person, but your handwriting on the back says she can.
I need Ziploc bags to put them in, the photos, to protect your writing. I don’t have any Ziploc bags.
There’s one photo of you on your own, standing in the kitchen, holding the red Nescafé mug and you’re wearing a long denim skirt, a brown and white jumper, red sandals.
I threw that mug away, I’m sure I did, when we cleaned out the house. I didn’t know. I would have kept it. How was I supposed to know? But I knew about your clothes. I remembered your clothes. I knew I remembered, that I didn’t make it up.
How did I know?
I just knew.
It’s 5:55 a.m. Have I been awake or asleep? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s a memory and what’s a dream. Laurie, kissing Laurie, her voice whispering that there’s only ever been me, that’s a memory, but Laurie turning into Nicole Gleeson is a dream. And then I’m driving. In real life I can’t drive, but in the dream I can. There’s no other cars on the road, only me, and when you walk out in front of me, I know I’m going to hit you, that I don’t know how to stop, that I can’t drive after all.
I never dream about you; I’ve always wanted to, but I never do. After that dream, there’s a continuation dream. I’m still in the car and the doors are locked and I can’t get out. I’m banging on the glass calling “Mum, Mum!” but even though you turn around and see me, you can’t hear what I’m saying and you don’t know who I am. You turn, really slowly, away from me, around a corner, out of sight.
There was a newspaper clipping in the photos. Your family like to do that. It’s an obituary and I think it’s going to be of your father, but it’s not, it’s of that man again, Cal Owens. I didn’t read it all, only the beginning. He died the year after you did. Why did Nana Davis keep his obituary? Why would she have that and not her own husband’s one? Was she having an affair with him? Is that why Aunt Ruth got all weird when I mentioned him? I bet that’s why. I bet that’s what the big lie is.
I dreamed about rats crawling under the bed, teeming rats. I fucking hate rats. It was only a dream, only a dream, only a dream. The rat in the front garden wasn’t a dream the time Dad cleared out everything from the attic and the back bedroom and the presses in the dining room where Nana Farrell’s stuff was and left it all in the corner of the garden—paint cans and a mattress and bike tires and old-fashioned ladies’ shoes that he could have given to the charity shop. I’m at the beach with Lisa when he’s doing it. When I come back, the speakers from the record player are up on the window sill, blaring “Voodoo Child,” and the front door is open. When Dad comes out, his face is red and he’s dragging a roll of carpet and he makes me take the other end, even though it’s really heavy and filthy from being in the attic.
That night it rains and the next day I say he should get a skip like the Walshes up the road got but he says he has a friend in the Drop Inn with a van who’s going to help him take it to the dump.
I don’t know why I’m remembering that now, the pile of filthy stuff that smelled and got wet and never properly dried. Some mornings it would have other people’s things in it, like a sewing machine, a broken deck chair. I hate it, every time I see it, from my window in the morning, having to pass it on the way to school, but if I say anything to Dad he only gets annoyed and says his friend is coming—but I know his friend isn’t coming. And then, after forty-two days of it being there, I’m walking up the drive on my way home from school when I see the rat, pushing its way into the middle of the pile, under the mattress. And I run to Lisa’s house and I hate that I’m crying, but I can’t help it because I know there’s a whole nest of rats in there, underneath everything, and I don’t want to go home.
It’s a Monday night, and they’re supposed to be having liver, but that Monday Lisa’s mum makes fish fingers and that’s a nice coincidence because I love fish fingers. I stay overnight, even though I don’t usually during the week. And someone calls the council to report the pile in the garden and they take it away the next day. When I come home everything is gone, except for one paint can lid that’s mushed into the yellow grass. I’m glad it’s gone, but I’m still scared about the rats. I know the council didn’t take them too, that they must be living somewhere.
A different dream. I never remember my dreams but now I can’t stop. I am teeming with dreams. There are missing posters all over Manhattan, blocking up every window of every building. “Missing!” written in red with a photo underneath. Except it’s not my photo, Mum. It’s yours.
9:42 a.m.
There are seventy-eight minutes to go until checkout and I haven’t even showered yet. I haven’t showered and I didn’t look for jobs and now I only have $12.64 left. $12.64 between me and what? Starvation? Death? Famines don’t happen in New York, they happen in Africa where babies lie there in their mothers’ arms with flies at the corner of their eyes, waiting to die, but maybe there’s a famine here as well, a secret one at night that no one sees and maybe it’s possible to starve here too, to die here too, right when other people are stuffing their fat faces all around you.
Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. I can’t believe I spent so much on this room. For what I paid for this room I could have had:
45 pizza slices
45 subway rides
15 trips to the laundromat
54 breakfasts of an egg and cheese on a roll and a coffee
9 trips to the cinema—you can sleep in the cinema you know, I never even thought about that, why didn’t I think about sleeping in the cinema?
Dumbass.
And now the money’s all gone and even if I live on the $1 breakfast special and two pizza slices a day, that’s only enough for three more days, only until Saturday. Then that’s it.
10:36 a.m.
Twenty-four minutes until checkout. I have to get up,
have a shower, I’m not letting myself leave without a shower. Why am I so tired? I’ve had so much sleep and it’s worse than if I’d never slept at all.
I want to leave the photos here, part of me does, but I’m not thinking straight. It would be fifty kinds of crazy to throw the photos away when I risked so much to get them, when more photos of you, of us together, is the only thing I’ve ever wanted.
If I still don’t want them by the time it’s my birthday, I’ll get rid of them in Central Park. I’ll dig a hole where I can bury them, or set them on fire or throw them into the lake, one by one. I’ll stand on Bow Bridge and watch the water blur the colours of each photo together, watch the corners and the edges curl up, until they sink, down to the bottom, down to where the mud and the reeds are.
10:43 a.m.
Seventeen minutes. I’m getting up, I’m going. I need to say a prayer, like that man said, a morning prayer.
I don’t know how to pray.
Write it down:
God. Help.
Mum, if for any reason God can’t, will you?
Battery Park, New York
7th May 1999
6:25 p.m.
Dear Mum,
It’s been two days since I last wrote. But one day, two days … who cares really? I mean what’s the point? I don’t just mean the letters. What’s the point of anything? Writing to you, looking for you?
You’re dead.
Dead.
DEAD.
I know you’re not reading these letters, that no one will. Yesterday, I decided not to write anymore, and now I’m writing again. I don’t know why, except that I have paper and a pen and if there’s no letter, then there’s nothing. Really, nothing.
You know what I hate most out of everything that’s happened in the past two days? That I found out the hour changed and I didn’t know. On 4th April, the hour went forward—thirty-three days ago. Last night, this guy Jay told me about the hour, and I hate that for over a month, I’ve been totally out of sync with everyone else.
It was my own fault. I know it was stupid being in that part of Penn Station. I hate those back corridors, down near the tracks, but it was fucking raining and I didn’t want to get soaked and if I stayed in the main part, someone might have seen me. Someone who wanted Aunt Ruth’s reward.
So, that’s the first stupid thing I did, heading down to that deserted corridor on my own. The second stupid thing was that I fell asleep. I wasn’t planning to, I know it’s dangerous. I was just so tired and I didn’t even know I was asleep, until he’s waking me up.
He’s sitting right in front of me, too close, and his hand is tight on my elbow. He is a young black guy with a green and gold baseball cap with the letter “A” on it. He has a black tracksuit top on over a dirty white T-shirt. He’s smiling, as if we are friends, and even though he’s missing loads of teeth, he has a nice smile.
“Wakey wakey,” he says.
His voice is friendly, like we know each other, and for a split second I wonder if we do.
“You’ve been sleeping a long time. Couple of hours. You don’t usually sleep so long.”
His fingers are gripping me, really hard, it’s sore. His face is so close I can see white stuff at the corner of his mouth. But he’s still smiling, so I make myself smile too.
“I don’t normally come here, I missed my train. You must be thinking of someone else.”
His eyes crinkle when he smiles wider. “I’m thinking of you.”
My legs hurt from where they are scrunched up under me and I try and shift to one side so I can slide them out straight, but he’s too close and he won’t move.
“Thing is, I’ve seen you around. Been meaning to say hi.”
His voice is deep, nearly like music. Every word, every pause, like it’s timed. It’s the kind of voice that slows you down, makes you feel sleepy, but I can’t afford to feel sleepy, not now. I sit up straighter, push my bum into the tiles.
“Hey,” he goes, “what’s your favourite newspaper?”
“Newspaper?”
He loosens his grip on my elbow a little bit.
“Yeah, what do you like to read? You know, to keep up with things in the world?”
I say the first newspaper that comes to mind. “The New York Times.”
He shakes his head and his hand tightens again, higher up this time, around my biceps. “New York fuckin’ Times ! No one reads The New York Times outside New York.”
In Florida, Aunt Ruth got The New York Times delivered every Sunday and it was so thick there were always sections of the previous week’s still around when the next Sunday came.
He’s talking again, to himself as much as to me. “The Wall Street Journal, now that’s a paper. The Wall Street Journal is read and respected all over the world.”
The corridor is empty, not one other person in it. He could do anything to me here, no one would hear, no one would ever find me. His eyes are on mine, waiting for me to say something, to answer him.
“I’m not really into business stuff, finance and that.”
He nods, keeps nodding. “I get you. Me, I’m a businessman.”
“Really?”
My arm is hurting a lot, not only his grip but the angle he’s holding it at. If I could get my legs out from under me, I could try and kick him in the balls, run for it. If I could get my legs out from under me, I might have a chance.
“They had this story last month, at the start of April—when the clocks changed. You know how much it costs this country every year? This daylight savings bullshit? Millions. That’s what. Millions of dollars.”
He makes his eyes bigger and that’s when I notice how bloodshot they are.
“Wow,” I go. “That’s crazy.”
“Crazy?” he goes, “it’s fucking bullshit, that’s what it is. It’s fucked up.”
He’s silent then, for thirty seconds, or a minute, and he’s looking at the wall behind my shoulder instead of at my face, and it’s like he’s forgotten I’m there. But then his eyes snap back to mine and his grip is tight again.
“How much rent you got for me?”
“What do you mean, rent?”
I know what he means. Sergei said it before, right at the beginning, that people had patches, territories we might not even be aware of. Fuck Sergei.
“Come on,” he goes. His voice is gentle now, as if he’s talking to a little kid even though he’s probably not that much older than me. “Don’t worry, show me what you got. I get some, you get some. That’s how it works.”
I have $6.83. That’s all I have. $5 of it is in my sock.
“I don’t have anything.”
He pushes and twists my arm at the same time.
“Ow!”
“Come on now, we both know that’s not true.”
It hurts like a bitch, my elbow and my shoulder socket, all of it.
“Okay, so I have a couple of dollars. You’ll have to let go of me, so I can get it.”
He lets go, slowly, and I take the dollar bill from my back pocket, and eighty-three cents from my front one, put it in his cupped palms. He’s not getting the $5 in my sock. “That’s everything, that’s all I have.”
He puts it on the floor next to him and lets go of me to count it out, real slow. His fingers are long. Piano-playing fingers. He slides each coin along the tiles before he picks it up, stacks the dimes on top of the quarter, the pennies in a tower of their own. “That’s it?”
“I told you, that’s all I have.”
He puts the dollar in his pocket, then the change. “That’s a real shame.”
“You can’t take it, please! You can’t leave me with nothing! What am I supposed to do with nothing?”
He takes off his cap, turns it in his hands. His hair is only bristles, shaved tighter than mine.
“Don’
t worry, I’ll hook you up. Good money. You want to earn, right?”
I squirm to one side, wiggle my legs out a little.
“I don’t beg, if that’s what you mean.”
He shakes his head, puts his cap back on. “No begging. Earning. Cute one like you—your accent, the he/she thing. People like that.”
He’s not holding on to me anymore, but my legs feel numb. Even if I managed to kick him, I don’t know if they’d hold my weight when I stand up, if they’d be able to move fast enough to take me down the corridor.
He keeps talking, his voice slow, mesmerising. “You might not think it, but your arm—people are into that shit. People pay for that shit.”
I cup my stump, I can’t help it. “I’m not a prostitute. I’m getting a job. I’m not even homeless, I’m just in between places.”
He laughs, tipping his head back. The laugh goes on for ages. When he stops, he wipes his mouth. “Honey, we’re all just in between places.”
There’s a sound then, voices, two guys’ voices. I can’t see them but I can hear them, talking about the Knicks game. If I screamed, they’d hear me, they’d definitely hear me. I want to scream, but somehow I can’t.
Their voices fade away and he keeps looking in the direction that they went, long after it is silent. When he turns to me again, his eyes are different, as if they are seeing me for the first time.
“What’s your name?” he goes.
My brain can’t think of another name. “Rhea.”
“Rhea.” He smiles. “That’s cute. I’m Jay.”
He holds out his hand and I take it. He lets go and reaches into his pocket, takes out the eighty-three cents. “Here,” he goes. “When that runs out, come back and see me, okay?”
“Okay.”
I take the change from him, hold it tight. I nearly thank him, but I don’t.
“And don’t be reading the Times. You pick up the Journal, remember?”
“Okay, I’ll remember.”
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 15