“Actually no, it’s cool. We’ll do these together, then the rest.”
At the next lounger, she waits for me. When I take the top, she takes the bottom and we both pull. I don’t know why I want to keep talking to her, but somehow, I can’t seem to stop, like being with her is the exact opposite of being with Jean.
“I ended up living with that aunt—the one who sent me the books,” I go. “I went to live with her after my dad died in a car accident a couple of years ago.”
We slide the lounger into position and she straightens up, pulls on her necklace, swinging it, the way she always does. And I feel bad for her then, trying to stay annoyed with me and feeling sorry for me at the same time.
“Sounds like you’ve been through a lot, Rhea,” she goes. “A whole lot.”
That’s all she says, no question for me to answer, so I just walk over to the next lounger. We get into a rhythm, like that, the two of us pulling and pushing and lining them up and it’s nice with the fresh breeze after being in the house all day, the sound of the water lapping at the edge of the pool. When the last one’s in place, we go to the shed, take out the brush for me and the net for cleaning the pool for her.
“It’s probably going to take longer to clean out the pool than sweep, so when you’re finished, just go back up.”
“It’s okay, if I’m finished first, I’ll help you.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Jean—you can catch the end of the movie.”
I don’t care about Jean and she knows that, she should know that. She’s about to turn around, to start cleaning the pool, and it’s going to be harder to call her back once she’s turned away. I grab onto the brush handle, take a breath, and just say it.
“Listen, Amanda, I just wanted to apologise about the other night.” I don’t look at her, I look at the light on the water, the cones and the noodles and the leaves bobbing. “I was a dumbass, what I said. You know, about you not being gay.”
I’d practised it in my head, figuring out what I’d have liked Aunt Ruth to say to me after her stupid letter about it probably only being a phase, and it sounded better there than it does out loud. She’s looking at me, not smiling, not swinging her necklace, not doing anything.
“I mean, I believe you—that you are.”
She puts her hand in her back pocket, makes a face. “You believe me?”
“I don’t mean it like that, I just mean if you say you are, you are.”
She looks at the pool, not at me, and I hate this bit, the part after you apologise where you don’t know if things are okay or not yet.
“And it’s none of my business anyway.”
She looks back to me. Nods. “You’re right, it’s not.”
She’s still annoyed, it hasn’t worked. I could tell her that she made it my business, ask her why she told me then. I nearly do, but then I swallow, say something else. “You just took me by surprise, that’s all. I’d never have thought that, Amanda, ever. I had this whole thing in my head that you and Zac were like some perfect Sweet Valley High couple.”
She laughs then, her real laugh. Head dip, silence, squeak.
“What’s so funny?”
She looks up, shakes her head. “I don’t know. The Sweet Valley High thing. I thought you weren’t much of a reader.”
“My friend Lisa read them. And they had pictures on the front.”
She’s smiling now, she looks so different when she smiles. “And I look like one of those lame-ass girls from the front of those books?”
I shrug. “You look more like them than I do.”
She looks over at the pool and back to me, like she’s figuring out what to say next. She sighs.
“What?”
“I guess it’s not the first time I’ve heard that—the perfect couple thing—is all. I guess it won’t be the last either.”
She doesn’t say it’s okay, or that she’s accepted my apology, but it feels okay then, different between us. And when I go over and start sweeping and she starts fishing into the pool for the leaves, it’s not like we’re ignoring each other, even though we’re not talking, it just feels like we don’t need to say anything else.
The sweeping takes way longer than I think, because the leaves are all slimy on the tiles and I want to get them all so none of the kids would slip on them, and Amanda’s finished before I am.
“Here,” she goes. “I got that.”
She leans down to hold the dustpan and I want to tell her it’s the last batch, that I can do it on my own, like all the others, but it’s easier to sweep the leaves in with her holding it instead of the way I’d had it, up against the wall.
“Good job,” she goes.
“Yeah, you too.”
“It was kind of nice being out here too, almost worth missing the movie for.”
“Yeah,” I go, “it was.”
We put everything away and she locks the gate behind us. I’m leading the way this time, up the steps. At the top, the house looks like a spaceship with all the lights on. Behind it, the clouds are still blowing fast.
“Hey,” Amanda calls from behind, “I’ve been meaning to ask if you’ve heard from Winnie. How’s her grandson?”
The path is wide enough now for us both to walk side by side and I slow down to let her catch up.
“I don’t know, I haven’t heard.”
She picks at a leaf from one of the bushes. “She must be psyched her daughter asked her to come—she told me she thought her daughter wouldn’t want her there. Sounded like she was worried about intruding.”
“She was psyched all right. It only took her a second to decide to drop everything here and run out on all of us.”
From the corner of my eye I see Amanda glance at me, but I keep looking at the house.
“You must miss her. You guys were close, weren’t you?”
“Miss what? Her snoring? Her smelly feet?” I make a face. “No, I just think it’s pretty shitty to run out on your responsibilities the way she did. She’s the one who convinced me to come out here with her—I didn’t even want to. And then, as soon as we’re not getting on as well as before, she does a bunk.”
“To be with her daughter, Rhea, who just had a baby.”
“Convenient timing though? You know, that she could get as far away from me as possible when we were starting not to get on as well.”
Amanda stops walking, but I keep going. Through the screen door I can see the swarm of kids coming up from the rec room, hear Matt calling out Marco’s name.
“Rhea, you do know that’s total bullshit, don’t you?” Amanda’s voice is loud. If anyone was out on the deck, they’d hear her, no problem. “Winnie was going to see her daughter, her grandson. You can make up whatever story you want, but you know and I know that her going had nothing to do with you.”
I turn around to look at her. She’s squinting into the light of the house.
“Whatever,” I go, “it doesn’t matter. She’s gone now, so who cares?”
She has her arms wrapped around her, one under each armpit, her thumbs sticking up. She takes the steps slowly.
“She’s coming back, though? Jean said she was only gone for a few weeks.”
I don’t want to get into this with her, with anyone. “Who knows? She said she was, but blood is thicker than water.” It’s cold then and I want to be inside, to see if there are any banana walnut muffins left or brownies or some of David’s meatballs from earlier. Amanda’s on the same step, too close now, and I stand back so she can go ahead.
“I guess it’s up to you if you believe her or not. Might make it easier for you to be happy for her, though, if you took her at her word.”
We’ve just made up and already we’re fighting again—it feels like we are, only maybe it’s not a fight, because Amanda’s voice is soft, kind. I let her
get two steps ahead of me before I start walking again too.
And watching her walk up the stairs onto the deck I’m thinking that it’s not her fault that she doesn’t get it, with her perfect family and their trips to the library and her golden granny in South Carolina. Sometimes I didn’t even get it myself, why I’m so annoyed with Winnie, why her leaving hurts so fucking much.
I haven’t told you that, Mum, but maybe you guessed. It does hurt. It’s fifty kinds of crazy, but sometimes it feels like it hurts more than Laurie or than Sergei, or maybe it’s just all of them are stuck on top of each other, hurt on top of hurt, so you can’t tell which is which. Anyway, there’s no point telling Amanda any of that—or Jean, especially not Jean. It’s not like anyone can do anything about it and they’d only start to feel sorry for me and that would be even worse—that would be the worst thing of all.
Rhea
Dear Mum,
Something’s happening. Changing. It’s getting harder to write to you. It’s getting harder to write to you and I don’t know why. I didn’t write yesterday, or the day before or the day before that either. It’s because I’m busy, way busier than when I was on the streets; I know that’s a lot of the reason, most of the reason. Being busy is like 80 percent of the reason, but it’s not the full reason.
And it’s not like there’s nothing to write about, there’s so much happening here all the time, there’s always something to tell you, about the kids and the fight that Zac and Matt had on the landing and about David telling me really casually that he used to be homeless in Philadelphia and Erin showing me and Amanda how to do a yoga pose called “tree.” But the 20 percent of the reason I’m not writing to you feels like I don’t want to tell you this stuff, that I don’t want you to know.
This is going to sound fifty kinds of crazy, but it feels like I’m angry with you or something. Which makes no sense because it’s not like you can have done anything to make me angry with you, can you?
It might have something to do with the way I’m watching David, every day now, waiting to see if he has any post for me. Aunt Ruth is such a lazy ass, she clearly hasn’t got her act together to go to the post office to send me your letters. Or else that stupid soup kitchen might have lost them. And I’m starting to wish I’d never asked her to send them, that I didn’t know about them, because that would be better than all this waiting.
Today, I got really excited when David said he had mail for me, but when I see it, it’s only a small green envelope and I knew it wasn’t it. And I know I shouldn’t have been disappointed that it was from Winnie, I know it was nice of her to send me the letter and the photo of her and the baby, but I couldn’t help being disappointed because it wasn’t what I wanted at all.
So that could be part of it and maybe the rest is because of Jean’s nasty fucking trick today—the thing with the drawing.
The thing that annoys me most is that I thought it was going to be fun, a break from the stupid questions. The paper she gives me to draw on is really nice—proper thick paper—and the crayons are a new pack, not from the kids’ supply downstairs, and she says she can get me paint, only I don’t need paint.
I roll the paper out across the glass coffee table and sit cross-legged, and she sits on the floor too, across from me and down a bit.
“Try and draw how you’re feeling this afternoon,” she says. “What colours are your feelings? What shape? Do any images come to mind?”
I’m not even listening to her. I’m not going to draw my stupid feelings, I’m just going to draw. Drawing, I forget Jean is there, there’s only me and the crayon and the paper and the colour, all there’s ever been. The drawing is automatic, I don’t have to think about it. The blue in my hand becomes waves, becomes the sea, I switch to red for the boat, purple for the two people in it. I pause for a second because I remember Jean but when I glance up she’s doing her own drawing at the other end of the table, bent over concentrating, with one arm wrapped around it so I can’t see it. I go back to my boat, let my hand choose the next colour, black.
I make the shape before I know what it is yet, something in the water, a triangle, a fin, a shark, two of them, three, next to the boat. I think I’m going to put the black down, only I don’t. There are clouds to draw and lines, and now it is raining on the people in the boat. The waves get lined with bits of light black, grey, and then I grab the blue again to make blue-black waves that are big, bigger than the ones before, coming over the boat. The waves get so big and so dark on the paper you can’t see the sharks any more but they’re still there. I know they’re still there.
I can’t remember what else I draw before I end it, in the same way I always used to end it when I was a kid, circles and loops of black, round and around and around, on top of each other, next to each other until there aren’t any circles anymore, just a big thick blotch of black crayon that comes away on the side of my hand, covering everything, hiding everything until there is nothing that anyone can make out in the picture anymore. Not even me.
When I stop, Jean is looking at me across the table. I cover my page before I know I’m going to and she looks down at the paper. And her eyes look from the drawing back to me, those big bulgy eyes, and it’s like she can see through black crayon, just like she can see through my head.
“You scribbled over it.”
I unfold my legs from under me, stretch them out underneath the table.
“What did you scribble out?”
That’s a dumbass question because if I wanted her to see it, I probably wouldn’t have scribbled over it.
“Nothing.”
I look at her drawing, she’s not covering it. There’s a forest it looks like, two people, hand in hand, one big, one small, walking into it.
“Would you like to see my picture?”
“No.”
I push myself back against the couch. She leans forward, close to my drawing but not touching it.
“You have a lot of black in yours—what does it represent?”
“Jesus!” I kick my heel off the floor. “It’s only a drawing, Jean. It’s not like it means anything.”
Even as I say it, I know that’s not true. It means something, I’ve always known that. I just don’t know what.
She sits back, uncrosses and re-crosses her legs. “If you could find a word, just one word, to put on it—a title—what would it be?”
A word comes into my head really fast. “Lost”—that’s the word. It’s not a feeling, it is not one of her five, and I replace it with another word.
“Glad.” I smile. I make myself look glad.
Her hair is getting long, the bits of grey are curling down over the top of her ears now and she pulls one down, lets it spring back up.
“Glad? Why glad?”
I look at the picture and back up at her. “There’s a boat under there. I’m glad I wasn’t on it.”
“That sounds scary, being on that boat.”
“I guess.”
I think she’s going to look at the drawing again, to see the boat, but her eyes stay on me. Dark brown eyes, different than your eyes, a different shape, too much white.
“What are you afraid of, Rhea?”
Rats. The answer is in my head and I feel my body tighten so I know it’s the right one but I don’t tell her, there’s no point in telling her. Everyone’s scared of rats.
“Here we go, I should have known it would come back to this.”
“To what?”
“Being scared. You’re always going on about being scared—right from when I first met you. You thought I was scared of the water, but I’m not.”
“You’re not scared of the water.”
It’s a statement, not a question. I think it’s a statement. “No. I’m not scared of the water. I’m not scared of being in the fucking boat. I’m not scared of you or of being fired or going back on the st
reets. I’m not scared of anything.”
“Okay. I get it. I hear you.” She’s nodding. “You don’t do fear.”
“That’s right.” I nod too, she’s finally got it. “I don’t do fear.”
And we’re out of time then, and I know she probably wants to keep the drawing so I take it with me, and after I’ve cleaned up after Arts and Crafts downstairs I rip it into tiny strips that I put in David’s big stainless steel bin in the kitchen.
That’s what happened today and I’m glad I’m writing it all down because I can see now that it’s not you I’m mad at, it’s her and her stupid tricks to try and get me to cry like some stupid baby. Just because she saw that stupid tear the first day she thinks she can do it again.
It would make no sense to be mad at you, it’s not like anything’s changed, it’s not like anything between us can change. The reason you’re gone doesn’t even matter—whether you drowned or had cancer or got hit by a train or abducted by aliens or shot yourself in the head, the end result is just the same, the outcome, the consequences. You’re dead. You weren’t there, you’re not here. The past is the past is the past is the past. It’s over. I can’t change it, no one can.
Jean would probably say it does matter. That’s one of the most annoying things about her, that she’ll hook on to anything you say and dissect it and peel it open until it becomes something else. Even that thing she said about fear—about me “not doing fear”—that’s not what I said. I said I wasn’t afraid and thinking about it now, “not doing fear” and “not being afraid”—they’re different things, they’re not the same thing at all.
Feelings, feelings, feelings, that’s all Jean wants to talk about, she doesn’t like it when I want to talk about facts, never asks me more about that. Sometimes I think being in Jean’s office is the complete opposite of being anywhere else in the whole world. At school, the facts are what you need to pass exams, get into college, get a job. On TV—quiz shows, documentaries, even on Law & Order—it’s all about facts, evidence, the facts are what gets the conviction and if there’s not enough facts, the guy gets off.
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 31