How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (34 page)

“I see that you care about her, but you can't make up your own rules. She's been through a lot, she needs consistency to feel safe.”

Robin felt safe last night on the beach with me, I know she did. If I leave now, who's she going to show her drawings to? Who's going to make sure Marco or Isaac doesn't take her muffin from her at breakfast, like they had on that first day?

“I'm sorry, Jean.” I say it low, don't look at her. She's watching me, waiting for more. She has all the power, she's always had all the power. “I know what I did was stupid. If you let me stay, I won't do it again. I swear.”

She stays really still, watching me; the only thing that moves is the paper, blowing from the fan.

“You say that, but they're only words, Rhea. How do I know I can trust you?”

It's not enough, my apology, whatever I say to her will never be enough. I can stand up now and never have to see her again, never have to try and sleep in that stuffy room that smells of Winnie's feet. I feel my legs flexing, but then I think about Robin, can feel her leaning back into me, both of us looking up, counting the stars. I take a breath.

“I know I made a bad call. I won't do it again. I find it hard to sleep sometimes and I was just getting up to have a banana muffin, I swear. And then when I heard her, I thought she might like some too. I planned to put her back in bed before I went down to the beach but she kept crying every time I tried to leave her. The only way she stopped was when I said she could come with me.”

“She was crying when I found you.”

“She'd only just started, I swear. She was fine up until then.”

There is a plant on the third shelf, with green tendrils that go down low and out of sight. It's a fern, some kind of fern, but it reminds me of the spider plants Lisa's mum used to have all over the house that would grow as far as the floor and grow little spider plants.

“So what would you do differently, if it happened again?”

She's not going to send me home, maybe she's not. If I say what she wants to hear, parrot the handbook, word for word, maybe she'll let me stay.

“I'd check in to see if I could comfort her and get her back to sleep. If I couldn't, I'd wake Erin. Or if for some reason Erin wasn't there, I'd wake Gemma or you.”

“Okay,” she goes, nodding. “Okay.” She stands up, walks around behind her seat. I stand up too. “But this is your last chance, Rhea. One more thing like this and you're out. Got it?”

“Yep. Definitely. Thank you, Jean.”

She's in between me and the door. I look at the clock on the table, like I only just saw the time. “I should go and help Winnie with the end of Arts and Crafts. She'll be wondering where I am.”

She steps out of the way and I walk past her. I think about saying sorry again, but that would be overkill. I have the door open onto the landing when she catches me. Her last sentence is like a line of tripwire. “You can tell Winnie you won't be helping her with Arts and Crafts anymore, from tomorrow.”

When I turn around, she isn't looking at me. Instead, she's picked up a little jug and she's watering the fern.

“Why not?”

She walks over to another plant I hadn't seen, on the window ledge behind where I was sitting. She plucks off a leaf tinged with brown. “You can do the set-up and the clean-up, but in between you're going to spend some time up here with me.”

Arts and Crafts is my favourite part of the whole day. She knows it is and this is how she's going to punish me.

“What about Winnie? She can't do it on her own.”

She laughs, pulls off another dead leaf. “Winnie's been doing it on her own for years. She'll be fine.”

I should have just said “okay, no problem” and walked out of there. I know I shouldn't ask her why she wants to see me, what she wants to talk about, but I do anyway. “Why?”

“Because I want to get to know you better. I want to make sure I know what's going on with you, so we can avoid anything else like this happening again.”

“I already told you—”

“Rhea, you told me before that you understood the rules, you even signed a contract saying that you'd abide by the rules here, remember? I'm going out on a limb for you here and I need to keep an eye on things. I need to know that you won't let me down.”

I should have let her fire me. I'd be packed by now, David would be driving me to the train. Maybe I could have taken Robin with me.

“Do I have a choice?”

She waits a moment before she answers. “We always have choices, Rhea. You can see me in the afternoons and stay here, or you can go home.”

She says that on purpose, the word “home.” She knows as well as I do that I don't have one. She might think she's the queen of manipulation, that she has it all figured out, but I can play at that game too.

I smile a big smile. “Okay then, I'll see you tomorrow.”

I leave then and I run down the stairs and I don't give her a chance to answer me or say anything. And over dinner and afterwards, it's like I'm there and I'm not there, because some part of me is going over it all again, wondering if I did the right thing, as if I'm two people and one of me is already back in New York, switching subway lines, going one direction and then another, playing my game.

And when we're sitting down for the movie and Amanda's next to me, she makes a joke about “schmozzle” and she has to say it twice before I get it.

“Oh yeah,” I go, and then I laugh, but any dumbass can tell it's a fake laugh.

“Is everything okay?”

When I turn around, she's frowning.

I nod, clear my throat. “Yeah, everything's fine. Why?”

She pulls her necklace back and forth. “I don't know. I guess you just seemed miles away, is all.”

And right then, right when she says that, I wish I was.

R

Dear Mum,

There are loads of things I want to write to you about, but there's hardly any time to write here. The big thing I want to tell you is that me and Winnie have made up. We didn't make up in the way they do on television, with everyone sitting down and talking and listening to each other and hugging at the end, but I'd call it making up because we're talking again. Normal talking, not fake.

It happened last night, when I came into the bedroom after putting the kids to bed and she's there already, crying. I want to walk out, pretend I didn't see her, but it's too late because she looks around and sees me. She takes her glasses off, wipes her tears with her thumbs. I sit down on my bed, opposite her.

“Is everything okay?” I go.

It's a dumbass question, I know it is, but I don't know what else to say.

She nods her head. “It's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine.”

“Okay.” I smile but she can't see me because her eyes are closed.

“It's just that
…
Melissa's due today, that's all.”

She opens her eyes and starts to cry again. There's tissues in a box on the window ledge and I hold them out for her and she takes one. I take a breath, ask her what I know I need to ask her. “Is everything okay with the baby?”

Winnie sniffs. “I don't know. When I called, there was no answer and she hasn't called back. I don't know what's going on.”

Inside my Docs, I unclench my toes, even though I don't remember clenching them. “I'm sure she's grand, Winnie. I'm sure it'll all be grand.”

I have no idea if she'll be grand or not, I don't know anything about Melissa or about childbirth and I'm not clairvoyant, but hearing me say that seems to make Winnie feel better and she smiles at me, her first proper smile in ages.

She nods again. “Thanks, Rhea, I'm sure she will be too. It's just very painful for me not to be able to be there, for her to be keeping me at arm's length. I just want to be with my daughter, that's all.”

As she's talking, I take Aunt Ruth's letter from my pocket, smooth the envelope out on the bed. I'm getting ready to show it to her, part of it. I want her to see the bit about Columbia.

“But you wouldn't be able to anyway,” I go. “Even if she wanted you to, so maybe it's just as well.”

Winnie blows her nose. “If my daughter wanted me there, Rhea, if she called me, I'd be there, no matter what.”

She keeps blowing for ages, doesn't notice me fold the letter back up, put it into my pocket again. And after that, she stops crying and she's asking me about my day and telling me she misses me in art class, but even though it sounds fine on the outside, inside it feels different and I'm all jangly, like I'm waiting for her to say something else. After we turn the lights out, I can't sleep, and all I can think about is what I'm going to do if Winnie leaves. All night, I'm lying there, thinking about that, and sometimes I feel like I'm going to cry and sometimes I feel like I'm going to jump out of bed and shake her awake and shout at her and maybe even hit her and sometimes I feel nothing at all.

I must have fallen asleep because when I wake up at 5:07 it's bright out already and I get dressed and go down onto the beach. The sea is different than the other morning—big rolls of wave instead of flat glassy water. The wind blows against the back of my head and my hair feels longer than I like it to feel and I wonder who's going to shave it for me if Winnie leaves.

I've just turned back towards the house when I see her shape, Amanda's shape, black against the sky behind, running towards me. Just because she stopped the other day doesn't mean I expect her to stop today. Just because we're both on the beach at the same time doesn't mean we have to walk together. It's not like I came down here to see her.

“Hey, Rhea!”

She beeps her watch, slows down, stops.

“You don't have to stop every time. I don't want to wreck your run.”

“Running in this wind is a bitch. It's a nice excuse.”

She is more out of breath today than she was the other day.

“Just make sure you don't hang on too long or you'll get caught in the schmozzle.”

She smiles but she doesn't laugh, and I wish I'd never made the stupid joke because everyone knows that a joke can never be the same twice. I wish she'd run off then. If she's not going to laugh properly it'd be better if she just left me alone.

“Check out the kite surfers,” she goes, tapping me on the arm. “Aren't they cool?”

I follow where she is pointing and I see the one with the purple parachute first, suspended between the sky and the wave below, before he disappears. My eyes adjust and there is another one too, a yellow one, and another one behind in black.

“Wow,” I go. “Have you ever done that?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I can't even stand up on a long board for more than five seconds, despite Zac's best teaching.” Bits of her curls are escaping in the wind and she holds them flat against her scalp. A wave comes close to my Docs and I walk around the other side of Amanda, to where the sand is dryer.

“How's that going anyway—you and Zac?”

“What?”

“You know.” I raise my eyebrows. “Like, how's it going?”

She laughs, but it's not her squeaky one. “We're not together—Zac's not my boyfriend.”

Her arm bumps into my stump by accident and I move further away, to where the sand is deeper.

“I know it's one of the rules, no couples. Don't worry, I won't say anything.”

She stops walking, puts her hands in her back pockets. Underneath her running top, I can see the tan marks from her togs.

“Rhea, we're friends, is all.” She looks down at her feet, wiggles her toes. When she looks back up, her face is redder than when she stopped running. “Zac's a nice guy, but he's not my type.”

She's lying, Mum, loads of the signs are there—the fake laugh, not looking at me, the way she blushes. I know she's lying, that she doesn't trust me to tell me about Zac, but I don't know her well enough to say that.

“Okay.” I shrug. “Whatever you say.”

We both start to walk, but it's awkward, nothing like the other day and I wish she'd just run on again. I think she's getting ready to, but then she asks me a question. “How about you? Is there anyone you like here?”

I laugh. I can't help it. “Who, me? Here? No. Definitely not.”

The sand slides under my Docs and I wish I hadn't worn them but it would take too long to take them off.

“You're
…
you're
…
a lesbian, right?”

At first I think I've heard her wrong, but when I look at her, she's looking at her feet again and I know I haven't.

“Who told you that?”

My heart is fast in my chest. I know who told her—Winnie. It had to be Winnie.

“No one. I mean, I just thought
…
” Her face is redder than red now, worse than before. “Oh, God. I'm sorry if I got it wrong.”

She covers her mouth with her hand and for a second I toy with pretending I'm all upset but instead I shake my head, smile.

“No, it's okay. You're right.”

“Thank God! I mean, I thought I'd really offended you then.”

“No, I guess it doesn't take much to figure it out. Most people wouldn't ask, that's all. And it threw me when you asked if I liked anyone.”

“Why?” She kicks at a shell, misses.

“Well, maybe because I'm the only lesbian here?”

“You don't know that for sure.”

“Who else might be? Erin's got the hots for David, we all know that, and Winnie or Gemma aren't. Jean could be, I suppose, but if she is, believe me, I don't want to know.”

She shakes her head. “I don't think Jean's gay.”

“Well, there you go then. So I'm the only one.”