How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (40 page)

“It's cold, plus it's dark now. No point in us both getting in shit with Jean if she comes out.”

“She won't say anything, we're not on the beach.”

“You know what she's like, no point in risking it. You go on, I'll be right behind you.”

She looks down at her feet, then back to me. “Okay. See you inside.”

And she's climbing the steps to the back deck when I see David coming over, walking now, not jogging. Behind him, the trees are almost fully black, and the only parts of him that I can see properly are the white of his smile and the large envelope he's holding out in front of him.

“Here you go,” he says. “Don't be up all night reading whatever's in there. You're on early breakfast tomorrow, remember?”

“I know, I haven't forgotten.”

It's lighter than it looks. It has the red sharpie writing again and $2.80 worth of postage—that's what I notice first.

Now the envelope is sitting on Winnie's bed and I don't know if I'll read it tonight or save it till tomorrow or Saturday when we're supposed to be going on the boat whale watching. I've been looking forward to whale watching, it's one of the reasons I wanted to see
Free Willy
tonight but maybe I'll fake that I'm sick, stay behind.

After all, I've been waiting ages for this package. It's nearly three weeks since I wrote to Aunt Ruth. So what's another two days, on top of three weeks? Nothing, nearly nothing. Two days is nothing at all, not when you've been waiting so long for something, not when you've been waiting your whole life.

Rhea

July 12, 1999

Dear Rhea,

Thank you so much for writing back to me. It didn't matter that it was short, just seeing your writing on the envelope made me so happy! I'm sorry I upset you with what I said about teenagers going through phases. Maybe you're right, maybe it's not a phase. I didn't mean to judge you or your feelings and I'm sorry if it felt like that. It's just been a lot for us all to take in—I'm sure you understand that. Sometimes things take time to adjust to.

You asked about Laurie and she's well. Yes, she's still in therapy
—she goes once a week on Tuesdays over by the mall where she has a summer job at the Gap. She's happy because she gets a staff discount and her friend Cindy from school works there too. Do you know her? No, we're not going to Hawaii on vacation. We're not going away at all.

It's not too late to change your mind about Columbia, you know. You're right about the fall term but I spoke to them and they can hold your place until January. You could do your extra credits after the summer—here or in New York, wherever you want, I can sort it out for you. Just tell me what you want, Rhea, and I'll do my best to make it work.

I'm not surprised you want to see your mom's letters. I'm sending you everything she ever sent to me. I've put them in chronological order, so they will make more sense, although they are disjointed anyway because they span several years. I hope I'm doing the right thing sending them to you. I've thought long and hard about it and it's driving me crazy going over and over it in my head, but you're eighteen now and I know it's not up to me to shield you from anything. I know you deserve to know the truth.

I wish I could be there with you when you open them, so that we could read them together, but since I can't be, I hope that you get support from someone else, that maybe you read them with a friend, but my therapist says I have no control over any of that, and she's right.

Now you have everything I have, Rhea, everything from the past. There were photos I thought I had from a time we went over to visit you and your mom and I wanted to include them too but I can't find them. I don't know where they are. I want you to have everything, I don't want to hide anything anymore. There have been a lot of secrets in our family, Rhea, too many secrets, too much shame.

I showed your dad these letters once, the time I went to visit when you were six or seven—the summer before your accident. I brought them with me but he refused to read them. I left them on the kitchen table one night, in case he changed his mind, but the next morning they were all still piled up neatly, the way I'd left them, so I don't think he ever read them at all.

I love you, Rhea, you know that, don't you? I know you don't owe me anything, I know I have no right to ask you for anything after how I let Cooper treat you that night, but I'm going to ask you something anyway. When you read these letters, will you call me? Please? Just to let me know you're okay, that you're safe. It would mean so much.

Love always,
Aunt Ruth xoxo

Dear Mum,

I wanted to write to you one last time before I opened the letters. There are five of them, in order like Aunt Ruth said. The last one is the thickest and it has a whole line of Irish stamps across the top, the other ones have little groups of three or four. The first one has an American stamp and it's the only envelope that I can read the postmark on. It was sent in January 1979, two years and four months before I was born.

Your writing is the same as the writing on the Columbia photo (I knew that was your writing, I always knew!)—the slant is the same and the
t
and the
h
in “Ruth” are higher than the capital
R
, just like the
l
and the
b
are higher than the capital
C
in “Columbia.”

The envelope paper is very thin, Mum, like tissue paper, and I love that I know you touched it, smoothed it, licked it. I run my hands over the envelopes, I smell them, I shake them to listen to what's inside. It sounds crazy, it is crazy, I'm just excited, Mum, that's all. It's like after all these letters, you're finally writing back.

Love,
Rhea

January 18, 1979

Dear Ruth,

I know you're mad at me, but hopefully you're not so mad that you won't open this letter. How's school? I hope you're doing well at school. It seemed like a nice place, that night I visited with Chuck. You seemed like you were getting on well there. I'd like to come and see you again sometime soon. What's the weather like there this time of year? Is it cold? I hope you're not too cold.

So, I guess I owe you an apology. I know everyone was mad that I missed Christmas and I know I made it worse by not telling anyone. I would have told you, I tried to, I called you at the dorm but you were already gone. I spoke to some girl—I don't remember her name. She said you'd already left for New York.

When I got back from California, Daddy had sent a letter to me. Can you believe that? He lives on the other side of the park and he sends me a letter. I read it, I knew I shouldn't but I did anyway. It was full of all this stuff about how he wasn't going to stand by and watch while I made a mess of my life and let things fall to pieces. He threatened me—can you believe that? He said that if I didn't get it together that was going to be that—he wasn't going to pay for school anymore and I'd be on my own! Just because I went on a road trip to San Francisco with my friends. That's making a mess of your life apparently, according to Daddy.

Part of me wants to drop out anyway. To say, fine, fuck it, I don't need your money, stop paying the damn tuition then if that's how you feel. But then, I like it here, you know? Even though it's only a fifteen-minute cab ride to their apartment, it feels like a whole other New York here, like a whole other city. Cathy, one of my friends, couldn't get campus housing and she's over on Amsterdam and there's an abandoned building on one side of her and a bunch of Hare Krishnas on the other. Daddy would have a shit fit if he knew I was walking around there and it is kind of scary, but it's an adventure too. Some girl from Israel got mugged in Morningside Park, but she was stupid because it says in the handbook to stay away from there. So don't worry, Ruth, I don't want you to get worried, I'm totally safe here. Columbia is like an island in the middle of everything, and apart from being on campus, I mostly only go as far as the diner and the West End anyway.

The West End is cool. I have to bring you there when you come. It's a bit like the bar you brought me to that night Chuck and I drove up to see you, but it's bigger. And dingier! That's where we were the night we decided to go to San Francisco—one minute we were there and the next we were in Frankie's car on a road trip!

The journey there was wild, all that driving. We hardly stopped, just kept going, taking turns driving through the day and night, stopping for gas and coffee and food at these ancient diners like some throwback from the 1950s. This one night, I was driving, and Chuck was in the front next to me, and I was chatting away about something and then I turned and saw that he was asleep and in the back, all the others were asleep too. And it was so weird then, because I was the only car on this road, stretching out for miles, there was only me and the dark and the stars, like I was the only person in the universe. And I had this feeling that the road was going to lift up—I could picture it happening, like a movie—and I was going to be able to steer us up right into the middle of all the stars. And no one would ever know where we'd gone but we'd be up there, lost in the stars but not lost at all.

I'm not sorry I missed Christmas. I couldn't have sat through it, a whole day of him being there, across the table, next to Daddy, clinking glasses of Dewar's. I think my ears would have bled to hear the sound of their goddam ice cubes rattling and the two of them talking about who bought what goddam piece of land and how much it was worth and how quickly they were going to be able to turn it over. I couldn't stand the idea of him asking me about my sociology class when all he cares about is money.

How was Mom? I called her after I got Daddy's letter when I knew he'd be at work and Jacqueline answered and said that Mom was having a nap and she wasn't able to come to the phone. She said that the next day too and the day after, so I stopped calling. I might call her again or write to her. Who knows, maybe I'll go round there one day and burst into the room where she's lying in bed and make her talk to me. Only we both know you can't make Mom talk to you if she doesn't want to, can you?

So what else is new? Are you going home for Spring Break? What about the summer?

I'm thinking about going fruit picking in Florida this summer. Tawny's grandparents live there, they have some huge farm and they always need people to pick oranges and grapefruits. I like the idea, you know? Getting up with the sun, the earth under my feet, the sky blue and clean every day, the simplicity of it, just picking fruit over and over and over. Not having to think about anything or figure anything out, just letting my hands do the work for me. Chuck says fruit picking would bore him rigid. He wants to go to the Hamptons, he can't get why I don't want to go there, especially when we could stay in the Bridgehampton house, so I've stopped explaining it to him. I mean, really—how can he not get it? I think I'm going to have to break up with him, I don't think I can be with someone who can't even get that. Did you like him that night you met him? I know he was playing pool with Paul most of the time so you didn't get to talk to him much. He has nice eyes and a great smile and he cracks me up—that's what I like about him, but it's not enough, is it? Do you think it's enough? I liked Paul, you guys seem so happy together. He's totally your type—that cute and preppy thing. He reminded me of Jason Morton—and don't pretend you didn't like him, I always knew you did!

You know what it was I wanted to ask you—do you ever think about our grandmother? Not Nana Brooks, the other one, Daddy's mom. I've been thinking about her a lot lately—what kind of person pretends that their mom is dead, especially when she lives in the same city? Do you remember how scared we were when she came to stay? How we didn't even know who she was that first night? You were terrified when she took her teeth out! I never knew that Daddy spoke another language before I heard him yelling that night, the two of them at the top of the stairs shouting at each other. I didn't even know what language it was except it sounded like the way Mr. Stepanov talked to his son when they came to tune the piano. Do you remember that night? You were standing behind me in the doorway of the playroom—I remember that, because when Daddy saw us listening he yelled at us both in English to get into bed.

It probably seems weird, wondering about her now—our grandmother—but I kind of missed her after she left. It wasn't her fault that she scared us, with her teeth and her smell of smoke and her scary language. She did speak a bit of English—remember? She spoke a little bit. She showed me how to sew one day, remember those little round embroidery things she was always sewing? She threaded the needle for me and made me my own one, so I could follow her stitches back and forth and over and under. She went slow, so I could follow her, pointing if I made a mistake and smiling and saying “good girl” when I got it right and “little, little” when I got it wrong.

I was trying to remember why I ran into her room that morning and I think it was because of that—the sewing. I think I ran in to finish sewing one of those things, or maybe start a new one, and the bed was all made up and fresh and the window was open but you could still kind of smell her a little bit, if you breathed hard enough. Daddy was gone to work already and Mom said she'd had to go to the hospital because she was sick and when I asked her when she'd be better she said she didn't know. I waited up for Daddy that night, made myself sit by the door with the light coming in from the landing so I'd hear his key and even though I fell asleep, I woke up when I heard the front door opening and I ran to the top of the stairs and I asked him when she'd be back. He looked at me as if he didn't know who I was talking about at first and then he said he didn't know. It was Sunday at breakfast when he told us she'd died and I thought maybe I'd heard him wrong, because he didn't cry or anything, just kept reading his
New York Times
and then he asked Wendy to get him a glass of water and then he drank it all back and kept reading the paper.