I’m not laughing anymore, not then, picturing Amanda, trailing after her mother around some department store. I want to tell her about me and Winnie buying clothes in the Salvation Army on Tenth Avenue and how it was the most fun I’d ever had shopping, but I don’t want to make her feel bad.
“What about your dad. Did you tell him?”
“Mom must have, because he did what he always does to fix things, he sent me to see a shrink.”
“Did it help?”
She tucks a curl behind her ear. “A bit, maybe. I only saw her like, six times. She said my parents hadn’t got the capacity to deal with what was going on. That I’d feel better if I stopped expecting them to.”
We’re coming into Amagansett and Amanda slows down, changes lanes. I want this road, this drive to keep going, to stay in the warm darkness of the car with Robin in the back seat and the lights outside.
“What about you?” Amanda goes. “Did you ever get a chance to come out to your dad?”
“No.” I could leave it there, I know I could, but it feels like there is more, that there can be more. “It’s funny, I haven’t thought as much about how he’d have taken it, but I’ve imagined telling my mum, what she would have said.”
“You never really knew her, did you?” she goes.
I shake my head. “I was three when she died.”
“How did she die? If you don’t mind me asking.”
The road sounds different now, under the tyres, than on the highway. I try and count the rotations, imagine the lines in the black rubber whirring along the tarmac. I want to say it out loud, I want to say it to her, to someone. “She committed suicide.”
I say it, just like that. Just like it’s nothing, maybe it is nothing. In the silence before she responds it’s like my brain is doing a million things at the same time—I’m imagining the tyres, I’m looking at the trees, I’m thinking about the food back in the kitchen, what David might have made tonight—mac and cheese or roast chicken or meatballs—and whether he might have kept us some and I hope he has because even though it’s not even an hour since we ate the McDonald’s I’m starving again. And Amanda’s looking at me, I can feel her looking but I don’t have to look back.
“Oh, Rhea,” she goes. “Fuck. I’m so sorry.”
The tyres whirr. I nearly ask her why she’s sorry, if she was the one who killed her, but I don’t say anything.
“Fuck,” she says. “I shouldn’t have been so nosy … ”
I shake my head. I want to tell her it’s okay, that I didn’t have to tell her, but I feel the pinpricks at the top of my nose that come before the tears, and I’m not going to let that happen, not here. Not in front of her.
I take a breath, hold it, let it go, the way Jean is always telling me to. There’s something else I need to say.
“Thank you,” I go, “for swimming out that day, to save me. I never said thank you.”
A car drives towards us, the lights full on. Her necklace glints, yellow in the dark.
“You’re welcome.”
“I was in trouble—if you hadn’t … ”
I don’t know how to end the sentence. I don’t want her to end it for me and she doesn’t.
“You’re welcome,” she says again.
I don’t say anything after that. And she doesn’t either. And as we drive I feel like I’m missing out on something and I’m not sure what it is, the chance to say more maybe, but I know if I say anything more, I can’t be sure what’s going to happen, I can’t be sure it won’t be like in Jean’s office the other day. I’m still deciding when I see the “Turning Tides” sign, right before the gate, and she turns her indicator on.
She drives slowly over the dips and the bumps in the driveway and, in the back, Robin is still sleeping. The lights are lighting up the trees, the gravel car park, the house, and I know I need to say it before we stop, before the drive is over, or else I’ll never say it at all.
“I never told anyone that before, about my mum.”
My voice is quiet, nearly a whisper, and for a second I think she hasn’t heard me, until she slows right down, so the car is nearly stopped, and she turns to look at me.
“Thank you,” she goes. “Thank you for telling me.”
And we look at each other for a second before she starts driving again and pulls into the car park, into the same space where we started from, and the journey ends like all journeys end and even though this one ends in the same place it started, in a way I can’t explain, it feels like we are somewhere different.
Rhea
Dear Mum,
Three big things happened yesterday and I talked to Jean about two of them but not the third one.
The first is that I’m back at work, proper work, helping with breakfast and on the beach and Arts and Crafts and everything. And at first I don’t like it, because everyone’s being so fucking nice to me, Erin with her little smiles and asking if I’m okay, and David not slagging me about dropping the butter on the floor, when he’d always slag me about something like that. It’s Marco who says it, the thing that everyone’s afraid to say.
“Where have you been for the past few weeks? I heard you were hiding in your room.”
David is coming out with a tray of bacon and Erin is behind him, with hash browns. I’m pouring orange juice from the pitcher, Jessica’s, Curt’s, Amy’s. I don’t spill any. “I was sick,” I go.
“That’s bullshit!” He has his arms folded across his Jets T-shirt. He nudges Isaac next to him. “She’s lying—she wasn’t sick. She nearly drowned and then she had a meltdown.”
Behind him I see David’s face, he’s angry and about to say something.
“You’re right,” I go. “But I’m not lying—having a meltdown is like being sick.”
I keep pouring. Terence’s glass, Robin’s. She’s looking at me with big eyes and I smile at her.
“See,” Marco goes, turning to Isaac again. “See, I told you.”
But Isaac isn’t listening, he’s already picking up some of the bacon with his fingers, even though he’s not supposed to, and Luis is behind him getting a plate. I move on to fill up Maleika’s glass and that’s it, everything’s normal again and no one says anything else.
And the rest of the day is fine, better than fine. And playing football on the beach, chasing Matt along the sand to tackle him, I forget, totally forget, about everything else.
The second big thing that happens is that I speak to Winnie. She’s called a few times, Jean’s been telling me, and I know I should call her back, so when Jean comes in with the cordless phone from the hall after dinner I take it out on the deck and sit on the step and start to talk to her. And I think it’s going to be awkward, after all this time and everything that’s happened, but she asks me about it straightaway, like Marco did, only in a nicer way, and she listens while I tell her and she doesn’t interrupt. It’s different telling her than telling Amanda or Jean, I don’t know why, but it is, maybe because she’s seen your pictures. And when I finish talking, I hold the phone tight and close my eyes and her voice in my ear sounds really close, like she’s sitting next to me.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that, Rhea,” she goes, “but at least you know the truth now. Truth is where healing begins.”
That makes sense, when she says it, and I feel better, happy even, especially when she tells me she’s coming back next week, when the second group of kids arrive. She asks if I’ll mind sharing a room with her again and that’s kind of a joke, because I have no choice, and anyway, I think she knows I miss her.
I’m excited after the phone call and that’s why I start to tidy the room up, get it nice and neat again for Winnie. And I know, when I take my backpack off her bed, that I shouldn’t take your letters out, that I shouldn’t read them again, that I don’t even need to because each fucking word is carved into my brai
n with a scalpel already, but my hands don’t listen to my head and I open them and read them anyway.
Reading your letters, it’s as if everything else goes away—chasing Matt on the beach, what Winnie said, all of it—and I know sleep won’t ever come. So even though it’s raining, even though the clock says 3:57 a.m., even though Jean would freak out and fire me on the spot, I decide to go to the beach. And that’s what makes the third thing happen. I notice the line of light under the kitchen door and I nearly don’t go in except I think it must be David making banana walnut muffins or brownies, only it’s not David who’s in there—it’s Amanda.
She’s at the cooker, stirring something, and she has her back to me. She’s wearing sweat pants cut off into shorts and her hair is down. I’ve never seen her hair down before and it’s way longer and way curlier than I’d thought it would be, almost as far as her waist. The air conditioner is on and she doesn’t hear me and I wonder if I can go, step back into the hall and close the door without her hearing, but something makes her turn around.
She jerks a little against the cooker, so she nearly knocks over the pot.
“Holy shit, Rhea!” She has her hand clasped flat to her chest.
“Hey,” I go.
“You scared the living crap out of me! How long were you standing there?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m on my way out, I’m just getting a jacket.”
I hadn’t thought of the jacket until just then, but I see them lined up on hooks by the table.
“You’re going out in that? It’s pouring.”
“I’m Irish, we’re waterproof.”
Erin’s jacket is nice but it would probably be too small for me so I grab the navy one behind it, Zac’s or Matt’s.
“I’m making hot chocolate, why don’t you have some?”
“No, thanks, I just feel like a walk.” That’s not true, not exactly. The jacket is down to my knees and slips off my shoulders. I feel my breath, different, short as if I’ve been running up the stairs. Jean’s obsessed with breath, she says it’s a clue to your feelings. If she was here she’d say that breath like this might mean I’m scared, which doesn’t make sense because even though I know it’s okay to be scared sometimes, I’m definitely not scared of Amanda.
“Have some hot chocolate before you go then, I’ve made too much.” She’s already reaching up to take the mugs out. “My dad freaks out when I do this at home—put the A/C on to cool me down enough to enjoy hot chocolate, but it always helps me sleep.”
The chocolate looks really thick and she fills up half the pink mug first, then half the green one, stirring it between each pour, then she goes back and tops each one up, so it stops about an inch below the rim.
“Perfect,” she goes, putting the pot in the sink. “Which cup?”
“Either, I don’t care.”
The jacket slopes off my right shoulder. I want to roll up the sleeve over my stump but it’s going to be too awkward with Amanda watching, so I let it hang down.
“Here.” She puts the pink one down in front of me and the green one opposite. She slides onto the bench by the wall and I shrug the jacket off, onto the back of the chair, before sitting down across from her.
“Pink to make the boys wink,” I go.
She looks out from under her curls.
“And the girls,” she says, smiling.
The chocolate burns my mouth so I need to slow down, blow on it. Underneath her hoody she’s wearing her necklace with her name on it.
“I’ve never seen you out of that necklace,” I go. “You even wear it in bed?”
It comes out meaner than I think it will. She stirs her chocolate, drinks a little more.
“My grandma gave it to me.” She fingers it. “I know it’s kind of childish, but I like it. It makes me feel close to her.”
“Oh,” I go. “That’s nice.”
I think about Nana Davis, lying in her bed. If she’d given me something like that, maybe I’d wear it too, even if it was lame.
“It was good to see you enjoying being around the kids today,” she goes.
She has a rim of brown over her top lip and I don’t tell her but maybe she sees me looking because she licks it away and I look back down at my cup.
“Yeah,” I go. “It was good.”
That weird breath thing is there again and it’s only then that I figure out what it means. That maybe it’s there because of what I’d told her in the car, because we’re both pretending that I never told her at all. And I know I have to be like Winnie, like Marco even, to just figure out a way to just say it, but it’s her who speaks next. “Hey, you want to play Scrabble?”
My brain makes a picture in less than a nano-second, the box of Scrabble on the top shelf of the wardrobe in Dad’s room, me standing on a chair to reach it, dust as thick as a carpet on the lid.
“I’ve never played,” I go.
“You’ve never played Scrabble?” Her eyes are wide, saucers, not blue tonight but not grey either, a mixture, maybe, of both.
“Nope.” I shake my head.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who never played. Dad used to make me and my brother play with him every night, before any TV.”
“You must be brilliant, then.”
She shakes her head. “No, that stopped by the time I was nine or ten, by then Dad was barely home.”
The rain is getting heavier outside. There’s still some hot chocolate left. I think of a way to say something about the other night, without having to say it. “I found this Scrabble game in my dad’s room once and I was convinced it was my mum’s. I left it out for him on the kitchen table but when I came down for my breakfast the next morning he’d thrown it in the bin.”
She makes a face. “Why did he do that?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“And you really never played, you’re not kidding?”
“No.”
“So, tonight will be your first time. Let me go find it.”
She gets up and goes into the hall, where the games closet is, and I’m thinking about the bin in the kitchen in Rush, by the back door, the lid lifted half off because the Scrabble box didn’t fit. He didn’t just put the box in, otherwise I’d have taken it out—he emptied the bag of letters and when I look in a Z is inside half an egg shell, an A and a U on top of the mush of tea bags. Listening to Amanda rummaging through the games, I’m feeling angry, as angry as I was that morning in Rush, not just because he threw it away but because of the way he messed up all the letters, and that’s when it hits me, eight or seven or nine years after that morning, that Dad throwing out the Scrabble must have had something to do with you.
“Found it,” Amanda goes. “It was all the way in the back.”
She’s all business, unfolding the board, writing our names on a score sheet and for a second I want to get up, run out into the rain, and the next second I want to stay and it’s driving me crazy, how my head is like a pinball machine and I’m hoping this isn’t part of what Jean calls feeling your feelings.
Amanda shakes the bag of letters, holds it out towards me. “We each get seven letters but before we do, we’ll each choose one letter. Closest to A starts.”
I take a letter, it feels nice in my hand. Smooth. It’s a J.
Amanda picks out an N. She smiles. “You go first—you can run your word any direction so long as it’s over this square—it means you get double points.”
I take my seven tiles and put them in the little holder. I like it already—the game—the feel of the letters, how everything has a number, the uniformity of the board. It’s different now that we have something to focus on—easier—and my breath is normal again.
I lay my first word down. H-I-T-C-H.
“Great,” she goes, “that’s twenty-six points. Good start.”
“Beginner’s luck.”
I pick five new letters from the bag. She takes ages on her first word, tucks her curls behind her ears as she concentrates and moves her tiles around. After a few seconds, a curl escapes. By the time she makes her move I’ve worked out four different words that I might be able to use, depending on what she does.
“H-U-R-L. Hurl.” She lays it down. “It’s a gross word, but didn’t you say there’s a sport called that in Ireland?”
“Yeah—the game is hurling. Well remembered!”
She smiles. “Who could forget a game called hurling? My letters suck tonight. I had three of the same vowel. Some people say you can swap them but I don’t play like that, I like to play using the official rules.”
She has two other Us, I know that, but I don’t say it. I’m glad she likes the proper rules.
I lay down my word: F-A-S-T-E-R. “Nine points.”
“Holy shit, Rhea. I haven’t even had a chance to get my new letters yet!”
She’s laughing and I am too and it’s fun, this game. She takes her new letters and I take mine, only I don’t turn them over, not yet. The clock over her head says it’s 4:35. Only two hours and twenty-five minutes until wake-up call.
“Hey,” I go. “How come you’re up so late anyway? Won’t you be going running in an hour or something?”
She looks up, her hands on either side of her hair, holding it back. “I haven’t been going the last few mornings.”
“Why not?”
She looks back at her letters. “I’ve been finding it hard to sleep, I don’t know why. I’ve been lying awake until five most nights.”
Her eyes go back to her letters. “P-R-U-N-E,” she says, putting the letters down. “And I get the points for ‘I-N’ too. And N is on a double letter score. So that’s … eleven.”
She adds up the points.
“What’s the score?”
“Thirty-five to you, twenty to me. Your beginner’s luck is holding.”
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 38