How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (46 page)

Amanda switches lanes, passes out a pickup truck. “What did happen?”

The road seems narrower than before, darker. The car in front has a broken brake light.

“My dad was a butcher and I was playing with his meat mincer. My arm got stuck in it.”

Amanda takes a deep breath. She holds her speed steady. “Oh God, Rhea. How old were you?”

“Seven. Old enough to know better.”

A beat of silence passes and she fixes a curl behind her ear. “Come on—seven? Robin's age. That wasn't your fault.”

“Well, it wasn't Dad's fault!” My words are sharp, loud in the car. The carpet is gritty under my feet and I wish I was wearing my Docs.

When she speaks, her voice is quiet. “Maybe it wasn't anyone's fault.”

We don't talk for ages then and I think about turning the radio on but I don't. It's properly night now, the lights reflecting on the road signs. In the dark, in the car, it's kind of comforting, close. When I talk again, it's as if we are still having the conversation, instead of it being ten minutes since either of us said anything.

“You know, I've been thinking about it a lot lately, what happened. I don't know why, just been remembering it.”

Amanda looks over at me to let me know she's heard me. I try and organise the words in my head so they'll make some kind of sense.

“Not the accident so much, but everything leading up to it. That day, just before it, and it's weird, like I knew something bad was going to happen, going near the machine.”

I can feel the spongy car seat underneath me, but I can feel something else too, the scratchy wood of the counter where Dad cut the meat. Next to me, the machine was scary-looking, metal and dark bits. Even though it was clean, it was never clean.

“This is going to sound crazy but I think, in a way, some part of me wanted to have an accident—not what happened, but you know—something. I don't know … ”

Maybe it's the glare of the lights that is making me a little dizzy. Or maybe it's remembering Lisa in her white polo neck and her black dungarees telling me to get down, not to touch it, that it's dangerous. I take a breath.

“He used to be fun, all the time, my dad. That's how I remember it. We'd go for walks on Sundays and he'd play me his records.” I think about telling her about writing to you, but I leave that bit out. “And then, I don't know, he was different. We never did anything, he hardly talked—it was like he didn't even see me. The only time I could get him to play Hendrix was when I was off sick from school with the mumps.”

“You like Jimi Hendrix,” Amanda goes. “I've noticed your T-shirt.”

I smile in the dark. “It's twelve years old, that T-shirt. He bought it for me when I was six.”

Amanda laughs. “When I was six my mother was buying me frilly dresses.”

Through the back window, the sky is black. I'm halfway to telling Amanda what I want to say. I could stop now and make a joke, something about her in a frilly dress. Or I can say it—finally say it.

“I knew I shouldn't have been messing with the machine, that it was dangerous to take the safety guard off. I don't mean I wanted to lose my arm, or anything crazy, but maybe I wanted to be sick for a while.” I pull my foot up on the seat, thread my fingers through my toes like Jean does. “So he'd be nice to me, play me music. So he'd notice me. I know that sounds crazy though, it doesn't make any sense.” We pass by the Indian statue again, the one I'd pointed out to Robin. I can barely see him waving in the dark.

“What doesn't make sense about wanting your parents to notice you?” Amanda asks the question simply, like it's the easiest thing in the world to answer, to understand. “Everyone wants that. Whether that's by getting straight A's like me, or being the quarterback like Zac, or slashing your wrists like my friend Judy.”

“You've a friend who slashed her wrists?”

The dashboard lights reflect on Amanda's face. “Yep. We'd been at the mall that day. I went home and did my math homework, she went home and slashed her wrists.”

I don't know if it's okay to ask, but she brought it up. “Did she die?”

“No, they found her in time. I still felt really guilty though, like I should have known or something. Like I should have stopped her.”

I want to tell her that it wasn't her fault, that she couldn't have stopped her, but what if she could have? So I say something else instead.

“Your way of getting noticed sounds better than mine or your friend's,” I say. “Straight
A'
s beat losing an arm or slashing your wrists.”

In my head, it sounds funny, but out loud it just sounds stupid.

“I guess, but I don't know how well it works.” Amanda's voice is different than before, harder. Her hands on the steering wheel look like they are gripping tighter. “Because everyone thinks you must be fine, because you're doing great at school; even when you try and tell them you're having a hard time about something, they don't even notice, they don't want to know.”

“You mean about your friend—Judy?” It feels like the car is moving faster but the speed dial is still on fifty-five, the same as when we left the hospital.

“All of it. Grandma getting cancer, dying. Judy trying to commit suicide. Daddy moving up into the guest bedroom on the third floor. No one ever talked about any of it, like it wasn't happening.”

“Your mum and dad never said anything about your granny dying?”

She laughs but it's not her real laugh. It's like someone else is in the car next to me now, someone else is driving. “Are you kidding me? Dad got busier ‘working'—he was never home. Like we didn't all know he was banging his secretary.”

“What about your mum?”

“Mom?” She raises an eyebrow. “Mom went shopping.”

“Shopping?”

“Shopping.” She nods. “My mother thinks the solution to any problem can be found at the mall.”

I laugh.

“You think I'm joking, but I'm serious. The night I came out to her I was so upset, all the MacKenzie stuff was going on, she hadn't returned my calls or anything. So I went into Mom's bedroom and she was reading a magazine and I told her that I was in love with this girl and do you know what she said?”

I tighten my fingers around my toes. “What?”

“She said that there was a big sale on at Macy's and we should go and get some new clothes for me.”

Amanda bows her chin to her chest and for a second I think she's going to cry, only then I hear the squeak that comes after it and I realise she's not crying, she's laughing, and that it's okay for me to laugh too.

“So did you go? Did you go shopping?”

She laughs more, catches her breath. “I'd love to say I didn't, but we did, the next day. I kept waiting for her to say something about MacKenzie, to bring it up, so I tried on all these hideous dresses and I even let her buy one for me, because I thought maybe if I wore one, maybe she'd say something, but she never said anything at all.”

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.