How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (14 page)

The argument spins on, about whose fault it was, how Ruth should never have brought it up, how Cheryl is nothing but trouble. I hate arguments and I feel all jangly inside but I want to finish Laurie's pasta because I know they won't notice because of the fight.

After I'm finished, I excuse myself too and head towards my room. That's when I hear her crying.

I've never heard Laurie crying before, Mum, and I probably would hear her if she cried because we're in rooms next to each other. And it might sound really bad that I don't go in straightaway to see if she's okay, but we've perfected a rhythm of never having to speak at all by then. We ignore each other at soccer practice, on the bus to school; even at home both of us will only speak to Aunt Ruth or Cooper, never to each other. So I stand there, for ages, deciding what to do and while I'm deciding, the crying gets louder.

When I knock on the door, the crying stops and I wish I could pretend I hadn't knocked but it's too late.

“Laurie? It's me, Rhea.”

I forget to say Rae, because I'm nervous. I hate that I made a mistake and I think about correcting myself, but that would be worse.

“What do you want?”

“Can I come in?”

There's a pause.

“Okay.”

I've never been in her room before, only saw it on the fleeting tour of the house on my first day. She's sitting cross-legged on her bed, shredding tissue onto the yellow and pink duvet. When she looks up at me, you can tell that she's been crying.

“Are you okay?”

She sniffs. “I'm fine.”

I stand there and when I look down I see that I'm cupping my stump, so I let it go.

“Okay,” I go. “I just wanted to check.”

I'm about to leave, have already turned around when she says my name. The new way. “Rae?”

I hear the tears in her voice and when I turn around they're spilling down her cheeks, faster than she can wipe them away with each hand. I close the door and sit down on the bed. There's a box of tissues next to a pink phone on the nightstand. I put it between us. After a minute, she takes one. “Thanks.”

While she's blowing her nose, I take in the room. It's way bigger than mine and she has a mini stereo on her shelves, way better than the CD player and tape deck I brought from home. She has a TV too and, on the shelf above it, there's a photo in a frame of a woman with blonde hair and a movie-star smile. She has blue eyes, Laurie's eyes. She looks kind of familiar, only maybe I'm imagining that.

“Is that your mum?” I go.

She follows my eyes. Nods.

“I don't think Cooper meant what he said to come out the way it sounded.”

She pulls her legs into her chest, hugs her arms around her knees. “Fuck it. It's not like I care. It's not like it's a newsflash that she's a selfish bitch. I should be used to it by now.”

I don't know whether to agree or disagree, so I don't say anything.

“Listen, don't tell anyone at school who she is, will you? Okay? No one knows.”

“No one? Not even Tanya?”

“No! Especially not Tanya. Or Becky or any of them. I'd enough of that at my last school—all the kids wanting autographs, asking me about her stupid show.” She wipes a stray tear away with her hand. “She loves that shit, giving me photos for my friends. As if that makes up for everything.”

I've never seen Laurie this angry before, never seen her care this much about anything.

“I won't tell anyone.”

“Thanks.” She stands and walks over to the window. “The last time she asked me if any of my friends wanted autographed photos, I told her that none of them have ever heard of her.”

She laughs and I smile. I want to ask more about her mum, what's it like to have someone famous as a mother, but I think I already know the answer, so I ask something else instead.

“What age were you when your mum and dad split up?”

“Four.” She twists the blinds open and closed again. “She left a week after my fourth birthday.”

She should be in the photos of little Laurie, the baby ones, but
she isn't.

“My mum died when I was three.”

She leaves the blinds closed, turns around and pulls a strand of hair into her mouth, starts to suck it.

“How did she die?”

I take a breath before I say it. “She drowned.” Laurie is still looking at me, wants me to say more, so I tell her the story the way Dad told me. “She went swimming in the sea every morning and that morning she got into trouble and there was no lifeguard on duty.”

“Do you remember her?”

No one's ever asked me that before, I don't think they have. I close my eyes to remember.

“Sort of. Not so much actual memories of stuff that happened but more like a feeling, a feeling of before and after or something.” She's looking at me, her blue eyes are, and suddenly I feel embarrassed. “That probably makes no sense.”

Her head moves a fraction. “No, it does. I used to think I didn't remember Mum ever living with us at all, that my memories only started when we moved to Florida, but I don't know if that's true anymore.”

“Where did you live before?”

“New York.”

“Wow,” I go. “You lucky thing. I'd love to live in New York.”

She comes back over and sits on the end of the bed. “I think you're lucky, you know.”

“Lucky? How come?”

She picks up the remote control, opens the back part where the battery goes in, and clicks it closed again.

“You're lucky yours is dead. At least you know she's gone, why she's not here. You don't have this crap every time she takes time out of her busy schedule to come see you.”

Her voice is level, like there's not fifty thousand reasons why what she's saying is bullshit.

“That's total crap, Laurie.”

“Why?” She looks up. “We're kind of in the same boat, right? But you get to make up the kind of mom you have, this mom who would have always been there for you and never let you down—”

“Laurie, it's totally different. You get to see your mum, get to know her. You know what I'd give to know mine?”

“That's what you think now, but what if you wouldn't? You might not even like her, you don't know what she was like—”

“I'm not listening to this crap.” I'm standing up at that point and kind of shouting, but I don't care. “I came in here to see if you were okay, because I felt sorry for you because your mum seems like she's some selfish bitch—”

When she shouts back, her face is mean, the tears all gone now.

“How do you know yours wasn't a selfish bitch too? Just because she's dead doesn't mean she was perfect!”

I turn to leave, I come back, I want to punch her, hit her, hurt her—but I don't. I kick the bed instead. It hurts my foot. “Fuck you, Laurie!” I kick it harder. “Fuck you!” I half expect Aunt Ruth to come in, I nearly want her to, but she's too busy having her own fight with Cooper. They're in the living room by then, using the TV to try and drown out their voices but you can still hear them.

After the fight I put on
Are you Experienced?
really loud, but I put on my headphones so Aunt Ruth won't tell me to turn it down. I try and do my maths homework, but I can't concentrate. My eyes won't stay on the page, instead they keep going to your subway map on the wall, in between the two windows. And I go through the lines one by one, starting with the blue one, the AA, and I wish the folds hadn't made a tear in the paper, but it doesn't really matter because I still know all the stops off by heart, can still say them without looking.

And I've moved onto the RR next, and I'm at Borough Hall, then Hoyt Street and “Stone Free” is playing when I think I hear something and I turn the music down and I hear the knock on the door again. And when I open it, Laurie is there, sucking on a strand of her hair, looking at her feet, one on top of the other.

I take my headphones off and she looks up.

“I'm sorry, Rae, I'm sorry for what I said about your mom.”

My foot still hurts from where I kicked the bed. I want to cup my stump, but I don't.

“That's bullshit, what you said about her. You'd no right.”

“I know.” She looks back down. “I know. I just felt so mad, you know, and I don't know why, but I wanted you to feel mad too.”

It sounds real, what she says, not like lies. When she looks up, she smiles a little smile, holds out her hand.

“Truce?” she goes.

It's not just a truce for the fight but a truce for everything, I think it is. I take her hand.

“Truce.”

For the second time, we stand like that, holding hands, but not. This time it's me that pulls away first.

I don't know why I wrote all that down, Mum, it's not like it matters. It's ancient history now, water under the bridge, like the water lapping here against the dock. Just because Laurie apologised and meant it once doesn't mean she ever will again. It doesn't mean Sergei will either.

It's late now and the sloshing sound of the water I liked earlier sounds different in the dark. It's cold, even with my jacket and my Champion hoody. I bet there's rats down here and I should probably move somewhere else, only I don't know where else to move to. And I like looking at the lights out there, the lights from the buildings opposite, white on the black water. But I don't know where those buildings are, whether they're in New Jersey or Brooklyn or even Staten Island, and out of everything I hate tonight, Mum, I hate that I don't know that.

I hate that there is no one I can ask.

Rhea

Battery Park, New York
1st May 1999
7:25 a.m.

Dear Mum,

I made it! I made it through the night outside, all by myself! I didn't think I was going to sleep here, I hadn't planned it, I'd planned on getting up and finding a stick in the park and making it sharp and staying awake all night just in case, but I kept nodding off before I could do any of that. All night I kept nodding off and waking up, and nodding off and waking up, and the last time I woke up, it was morning.

And even though my neck and shoulder are killing me, I feel so fucking happy, so fucking proud of myself, because it turns out I don't need Sergei to survive in this city, no matter what he thinks.

I don't need anyone.

I have a plan this morning, Mum. Once I find somewhere to pee, I'm going to go to Duane Reade and I'm going to buy soap and shampoo and deodorant, and I'm going to go and wash up. Even though there's only a tiny bit of toothpaste left in the tube, I'm not going to buy any more because it's expensive, so I'll wait until I get a job. I'm going to look for a job today, that's the rest of the plan. I don't know why I've given up, this is New York, people are given a chance in New York, everyone is. I just haven't been looking for my chance hard enough, that's all. I got distracted by Sergei and by looking for you and finding Nana Davis and finding the photos and everything. I will look at the photos, I haven't forgotten about the photos, I plan on looking at them, but I want to be able to look at them properly and lay them out somewhere they won't get wet or blown away and there's things I need to do first, that's all. I'm going to be eighteen in eleven days and I have to prioritise, that's part of being an adult, isn't it?

So, this morning, my priorities are getting clean and getting a job. After I pee. And eat. I'm starving. I know a place on Eighth Avenue that does an egg and cheese on a roll with a coffee for only one dollar—the others all charge $1.25 or even $1.50—so I can walk there, unless I find somewhere as cheap along the way. And when I buy my soap and stuff, I'm going to go to a Starbucks and wash in there, because even though the bathrooms in Grand Central are good, you can't wash yourself properly and in Starbucks it's a private cubicle so I can stick my whole head in the sink and everything and even change my T-shirt.

It feels so much better to have a plan, you know? A game plan, I mean, to be in control of what I'm doing and not to have to rely on Sergei. I think it's best, what happened, you know? I think it's better. I'm better off on my own.

Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.

It's such bullshit, you know? I can't believe these people. They're so fucking obvious when they say no, the way they all look at where my arm should be, instead of my face. Even that kip of a diner with the “Help Wanted” sign in the window for a dishwasher said no. And every time someone else says no I can hear Aunt Ruth's voice in my head, during one of our arguments about the prosthetic, saying how the only people who go without them in this country are street people and I don't want everyone to think I'm one of them.

And now I am one of them and everyone knows it, and that's the real reason none of these people will even give me a chance when I say I'll work twice as hard as anyone else, work for free even, so they can see how quick I am at bussing tables and setting them up again or doing dishes or mopping floors or cleaning toilets or anything that will mean I'll be able to eat.

The absolute worst is that guy in the Irish pub, the one from Galway, who keeps me talking for twenty minutes, but when I ask about a job he just shakes his head and goes, “Ah no, love, we're grand at the moment.”

Fuck him. Fuck them. Fuck this. Fuck you.

I'm sorry for all the cursing. I am. It's just, I don't know, this stuff is hard and the rain makes it so much harder. Earlier, I was thinking it must be miserable to be homeless in Ireland, with all the rain, but I never really saw too many homeless people at home, none in Rush anyway, maybe the odd person on O'Connell Street. New York rain is worse than Irish rain anyway, it's so heavy, you end up sloshing through water up to your shins when you cross the street. My Champion hoody is drenched, even through my jacket, and it feels like it'll never dry. I wish I had a raincoat with me, an umbrella. You see loads of people using black plastic bags to cover themselves and their trolleys, I even saw a guy with Duane Reade shopping bags tied around his feet. My Docs don't let in the rain much but even if they did, there's no way I'd do that, just like I wouldn't put a black plastic bag over myself because if you do that, everyone knows you're homeless.

I keep obsessing about how much money I have left, how many pizza slices it is, if I can afford to do laundry. The soap and stuff cost more than I thought—with tax it came to $7.11 for a bar of Irish Spring soap, a plastic soap container, and a roll-on deodorant. The cheapest shampoo was $2.99 and I decided that the soap was better because it can do both because I only have fuzz anyway. I took ages deciding between the bar soap and the liquid soap. Liquid soap was $1.99, which was cheaper than the bar soap and plastic container put together, and it'd be nicer for my head. But it was only fourteen fluid ounces and I think the most it would last is two weeks, whereas the bar soap will last longer and the plastic container is an investment because next time I'll only have to buy the bar soap which is 79 cents. Working it all out in my head makes me think about Cooper, because he was always going on about investments and financial planning—it was the only time he was really happy, I think, when he talked about money.

Apart from the time when he was planning our trip to Montana.

He drove Laurie mad then, going around the house all the time in his Stetson. She always walked out of the room when he came in wearing it, but I thought it was kind of funny. Other than Cooper, I was the only one who was excited that we were going to Montana—Aunt Ruth wanted to go to Paris and Laurie wanted to go to Hawaii. I wanted to go to New York but I didn't mind Montana either and, anyway, apart from the time I went to Sligo with Lisa's family when her brother got sick in the car, I'd never been on holiday. Dad always said with the shop it was impossible to get away.

For weeks, every night over dinner, Cooper talks about Montana and our forefathers on the frontiers and how it'll be great to get away from urban sprawl and back to nature. Aunt Ruth asks about the bears and whether there's a phone that works. Laurie mostly ignores him, but when she does say anything it's about learning to surf properly and that she can't do that in Montana.

By then, we don't hate each other anymore, Laurie and me. It's the middle part, in between not hating each other but not being friends yet either. At home, we talk sometimes, even laugh sometimes, but in school and at soccer, we ignore each other unless we're forced to talk. She's mad at me because I don't take her side about the Hawaii thing. She's convinced that Cooper's bringing us to some bumfuck town in the middle of nowhere to keep her away from boys, and I think maybe she's right.

To get to Montana we fly from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta, Atlanta to Salt Lake City, and Salt Lake City to a town called Billings. Laurie says we could have flown to Hawaii in half the time and Aunt Ruth is scared on the last plane because it is so small. After all that flying, we're still not there and a man comes to collect us in a van to take us on a three-hour drive to the ranch. We stop at a Walmart in case we need anything because the closest store is ninety minutes away.

“Back to nature!” Cooper says, and heads towards the wine section.

Looking back, it's obvious that Laurie and me would be sharing a room, but I don't think either of us had thought about that, I know I hadn't. It's only when we're at the lodge and the lady opens the door to one room and hands the key to me and goes “that's for you girls” and heads to the end of the balcony to show Aunt Ruth and Cooper their room, that I realise. Inside the room, everything is made of logs—the wardrobe and the desk and even the two single beds—and when I turn to Laurie she's standing in the doorway sucking on a strand of her hair.

“There's no TV?” she goes. “Is he fucking kidding? What do people do around here without a TV?”

We find out that night over dinner that what people do is go horse riding, and there's this whole argument then about me not being covered by the ranch's insurance and that they should have known in advance that there was someone with a disability in our group. They say that word seven times—“disability”—Cooper says it three times and the ranch owner says it four. I try and tell them about the horses I rode before on the beach in Rush but no one listens. Dinner is homemade lasagne and salad and mashed garlic potatoes and you can go up for more and I go up three times while the conversation about insurance is going on. The lady tells me to save some room for their desserts, but she says it nicely, not in a mean way. Outside the window, you can see the tops of pine trees, all the way into the valley, and I listen to the ranch owner's wife at the next table telling an old couple about the bear cubs she saw earlier in the year.

The next morning, I get up at six a.m. when it's still really cold and there's pink in the sky over the mountain. There's only one horse in the paddock, a light brown one with a white stripe along her nose. She's friendly, she lets me pet her and stays near the fence so I can use it to climb up onto her back. I walk around the paddock on her a few times and that's what I'm doing when Bill, the wrangler, comes out of the stables and sees me. At first he looks mad, but then he smiles and calls the rest of the wranglers out to see. I've left my prosthetic in the room—I don't know how to do it with that, only the way I learned at home, slightly tilting over to one side, holding onto the mane with my hand—and they've probably never seen someone with only one arm riding a horse before because they all start to clap.

My horse's name is Heather and they say it's okay if I ride her, so long as Cooper signs a waiver and I use a saddle, stirrups, and reins. Laurie's horse is a girl too, called Snowdrop, and Cooper is on a big black horse called Jackson. Aunt Ruth had made this whole big deal about keeping me company and I don't think she's pleased that they'll let me ride after all, because even as Bill and Jamie are helping her onto a piebald called Apache she's still asking questions about insurance. She looks scared in the beginning, every time Apache moves, but they keep her up front, in between Bill and me, and she's getting the hang of it by the time we turn around to come home, so it's a pity that she drops out the next day to look after Cooper, who hurt his back.

I'm not going to go through every little detail about the holiday, Mum, even though I want to tell you about the bear-claw marks we find on the bark of the tree, and the picnic at the very top of the mountain the day we go hiking, and about the water of the Boulder River that's cold as liquid ice the morning I dip myself into it.

What I want to tell you about is the last night.

They always have a camp fire on the last night. You can probably picture it. You know in the country how it gets so dark that everything is just shades of black and lighter black? Well, it's like that—the lighter black is the sky and the darker black is the mountain and the trunks of the trees. You can only see parts of people's faces, lit up by the fire, the other parts are in shadow. Every time someone throws on wood and the flames jump up, you can see more people and the trees behind and sometimes there's sparks of fire in the air that float until they burn out. After the food, Bill takes out a harmonica and the singing starts and that's when Jamie comes over and hands a flask of something to Laurie.

Jamie's the youngest wrangler and he's kind of cute in his cowboy outfit, like a kid dressing up, except he's not dressing up because he's from Idaho and that's how they dress there. I knew from the beginning that he liked Laurie. She passes me the flask and I drink some and it's not as bad as I think it's going to be. It burns a bit but there's something sweet in there too—an orange taste. It's easy to drink in the dark and we pass it back and forth, smiling a bit at our secret, and every now and then Cooper tips his Stetson at us.

I don't know what time it is when the singing is over and we all walk back through the woods with only a few beams of torch lighting the way, but I remember me and Laurie bursting out laughing every time Aunt Ruth gets jumpy when she hears a noise in case it's a bear or a mountain lion. And back in the room, we're still laughing, but it's more awkward then, with the bright light and only the two of us, so we don't talk properly until it's dark again with me in my log bed next to the window and Laurie in hers next to the door.

“Oh my God, I can't wait for Dad to get rid of that hat,” she goes. “He'll have to tomorrow, when we leave.”

“I wouldn't bet on it.”

“He's super embarrassing. I swear I wanted this mountain to open up and swallow me up when he started singing tonight.”

“ ‘Home, home on the range
…
' ” I sing, making myself sound like Cooper.

“Stop it! Please! I'm sure Bill and Jamie think he's such an asshole.”

“I doubt it.”

“I'm sure they do. It's okay, by the way, I know you think he's an asshole too.”

I don't know how to answer that, so I roll over. The curtains are open, like we agreed to leave them on the first night because the only thing out there is mountain and trees and stars. But tonight the stars are hiding behind the clouds.

From the bed across the room, Laurie starts to giggle.

“What's so funny?” I go. She tries to answer me but she's laughing too hard, really cracking up. Finally, she gets some words out. “I was just thinking of Dad shaking Jamie's hand, saying what an upright young man he is.” She giggles again. “Not like the young people in the city who only care about going out and partying.”