And after ages of her not saying anything, weeks and then a month, I think that must be what happened, that she has forgotten, even though deep down I’m afraid she hasn’t.
Deep down, I’m waiting for her to bring it up again.
Rhea
King Street, New York
2nd May 1999
2:33 a.m.
Dear Mum,
I’ve been doing this all wrong. I don’t know why I didn’t work it out before, that it’s better to sleep during the day, that it’s safer, way safer than doing it at night. The thing to do at night is keep moving, keep walking, look like you’re going somewhere. So that’s what I’ve been doing tonight, because I don’t want to spend money on the subway and I’m a dumbass for not sleeping today.
It’s not until Seventh turns into Varick that I realise I’m walking to Michael’s apartment. I don’t know why I am, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t go to Grand Central or Penn Station because I don’t want to see Sergei, but I come here, to a place that reminds me of him.
So that’s where I am now, sitting on my step across the street, like the night I waited for Sergei, only I’m not waiting for Sergei now. I’m only sitting here because I’m tired and I need a break from walking. The light in Michael’s apartment is off, so he’s probably asleep, which is a good thing because if he sees me, he could call the police because he probably thinks I stole his money. In the apartment next door, the light is still on and I wonder if that means the neighbours are fighting or fucking tonight.
Sex changes everything, doesn’t it? Did you ever think it might be easier if there was no such thing as sex? If people were just friends and that was it? Like Sergei and Michael—if they hadn’t been having sex, if they’d just been friends, I bet they’d never have fought. I bet we’d still be there.
Sex was what got me and Laurie grounded last summer, a few weeks after the Montana holiday. After we got back, Laurie started inviting me to parties with her and I’d been going. Cooper and Aunt Ruth thought we were going to the movies or to people’s houses where their parents were supervising us. They were happy we were hanging out together, you could see it in the smiles they gave each other at the dinner table when we were telling them our weekend plans. They thought the smiles were secret, that we didn’t notice, but I noticed and I bet Laurie did too.
I didn’t enjoy the parties much. They were just kids getting drunk or stoned and falling in people’s pools. They reminded me of the “Freers at Rhea’s” the winter before Dad died when girls I was never even friendly with at school started to call in on Friday nights and pretend they wanted to hang around with me, but really it was because they knew I’d have a freer. The first weekend, it was Therese Roberts and Nikki Hartnett, and then Ronan Barry and John Duffy and Dominic Kelly called in with some cans. They came the weekend after too, and so did Tracey Dorgan and Alan Roche, and the next weekend Susan Mulligan called in and smiled and said “Hi, Rhea” as if she always called for me, and I let her in too. And even though Lisa said they were all only using me—even though I knew they were—it was kind of fun all the same. It wasn’t anything to do with Nicole either—she was always at her dad’s at weekends—it was just that I liked having the house full of people, playing Dad’s Hendrix records for them and making batch toast for everyone.
It was fun, that’s all. It’s fun until the night I come in and I find Susan Mulligan and Therese Roberts in my room, and Susan Mulligan is ripping the fold in the subway map with her nail and Therese is on her hunkers, looking into the bedside locker where I keep your photos and the Carver book and saying something about you that’s really horrible and that’s not true. And that’s when I kick her in the back, hard; I didn’t know she was going to fall over, that she’d cut her face on the corner of the locker door. I didn’t know she’d freak out when she saw the blood.
That’s the last of the “Freer at Rhea’s” weekends. Susan Mulligan’s face is all mean as she walks out with her arm around Therese and she tells me I’ll be sorry. At school she calls me Diarrhoea, which she hasn’t done since about fifth class, but it sounds even more stupid now and she stops after a few days.
The parties me and Laurie go to are mostly in Shannon’s house, because her father and mother are in Europe and Shannon’s older brother is supposed to look after things but he’s never there.
They’re younger than me, most of the kids at the parties, because they’re in Laurie’s grade, and even though I recognise them from school, I don’t know most of them. I make friends with Spencer at the first party, when he asks me to play euchre with him and I do. That’s what we do all the time after that, me and Spencer, play euchre while he drinks neat vodka and I drink Coke. That night, we’re playing by the pool and I’m winning for once. Nearly all the other kids are getting off with each other by then, on the loungers around the pool or upstairs. I don’t want to get off with anyone and Spencer only wants to get off with Erica Simons, who’s getting off with Jason Tomback. I’m keeping an eye on the time, because my job is to get Laurie from where she is upstairs with Mike when it’s getting close to our curfew. I know she’s using me, Mum, just like Susan Mulligan and Therese Roberts, but I’m kind of using her too. Glenda’s away with her family for a whole month, and Cooper won’t give me all the shifts I want in the restaurant, and playing euchre with Spencer is better than sitting at home with Aunt Ruth.
I never did find out how Cooper knew we were there, at Shannon’s. It’s before our curfew when he shows up—he should have still been at the restaurant—but he’s in the kitchen, coming through the double doors onto the patio, waving my prosthetic in one hand.
He comes right over and I don’t remember what I say, or if I say anything, but he’s shouting about how much the prosthetic cost and that he didn’t pay all that money so some dipshit could use it to fondle himself. Spencer is cracking up laughing but I can’t look at him, because I’ll start laughing too and that’ll make it worse.
Cooper throws the prosthetic into my lap. “Put it on. We’re going.”
He’s looking around the pool, his eyes squinting trying to make out who’s who. I’m fiddling with the straps and they’re even more awkward than usual.
“Where’s Laurie?” he goes then, when he realises she’s none of the people by the pool. “Where the fuck is Laurie?”
Shannon is coming over and he grabs her arm, spilling her drink. She giggles and gestures inside. “She’s upstairs, Mr. Wilson. You want me to get her?”
I should have done something then, I should have acted quicker, but Cooper’s already dropped Shannon’s arm and pushed past her, through the double doors, back into the kitchen. I’m behind him and Spencer is behind me, all of us running around the kitchen counter, up the stairs. On the landing, the doors are open, all of them are, except for one at the end, and that’s the one Cooper charges towards.
Me and Spencer get there in time to see what Cooper sees, Laurie with no top on, Mike grabbing a sheet from the bed to cover himself up as he runs to the corner. Cooper doesn’t pause, if anything he speeds up as he strides into the room, his legs and his arms all one motion as he picks Mike up and holds him against the wall before punching him straight in the face, twice, three times.
Laurie’s screaming and there’s blood and then Mike’s on the ground, his hands over his head, and Spencer is trying to grab Cooper’s arms and someone on the landing is yelling about calling 911.
And then there’s blood everywhere, on the sheet and the floor, and Cooper is throwing Laurie’s shirt at her and Spencer’s bent down over Mike and when I turn around, Shannon has a cordless phone in her hand and she’s saying, “Hello, hello?” over and over, but I don’t know if there’s anyone at the other end.
Laurie cries the whole way home. Cooper doesn’t say anything, only jerks the car around corners and stops too late at the stop signs. When we get to the house, Laurie jumps out before he’s even turne
d the engine off and runs past Aunt Ruth, who’s just opened the front door.
After that, there’s no trips to the movies or the mall, no pocket money, no TV, no working in the restaurant, no leaving the house at all except when it’s with one of them. Cooper even takes Laurie’s phone from her room, as well as her TV. I don’t have a TV so he takes my CDs and my CD player and my art stuff and my books. There’s new rules in the house as well—no eating between meals for any reason and I have to wear the prosthetic all the time, except when I’m in the shower or in bed.
I didn’t think it would be that bad, being bored, but it’s really bad. The worst thing is my head, the way it keeps thinking of things I don’t want to think about all the time, about Lisa and Rush and Dad and Nicole and even you sometimes. And sometimes I get this weird feeling, kind of like a stomach ache but not a stomach ache, in this place under my ribs which doesn’t feel sore exactly, more like kind of empty, like a hole or something, and the only thing that will make it go away is sitting spinning in my desk chair and listing all the subway stops in my head, each line over and over, till I go back to the start again.
That’s what I’m doing the night Laurie comes into my room after dinner. “I’m so fucking bored!” she goes, flopping down on the bed. “People can die from boredom, you know? I saw it on the Discovery channel once. I don’t think I’m going to live long enough to go back to school.”
“ ‘Boring people get bored,’ ” I go. “My friend’s mum used to always say that.”
Laurie sighs. “So, I’m boring, then. So are you. All you ever do is spin in that stupid chair or do your PT exercises.”
“You should tell your dad that. He’d be pleased to know I was putting effort into getting used to my prosthetic.”
Laurie sits up, cross-legged, turns her feet so they are facing sole-up on her thighs. “I won’t get a chance because he’s never going to talk to me again. I swept up all the leaves on the patio tonight and he didn’t even say thank you.”
“Maybe he didn’t notice.”
“He was sitting right by the window, pretending to read the paper. He hates me. I don’t care, I hate him too after what he did to Mike. It’s driving me crazy that I can’t call him, see how he is. What if he’s really badly hurt, Rae? What if he’s brain damaged or something?”
“Laurie, we’ve had this conversation fifty times. When you managed to call Tanya that time she said she’d seen him at the beach. He wouldn’t have been at the beach if he was brain damaged.”
She pulls a stray hair from her ponytail, rolls her neck. “He must hate me so bad. As soon as I see him again, he’s going to dump me.”
“Want to play a game?” I suggest.
“A game?”
“You know—Monopoly? Or cards? Do you have Scrabble? I’ve never played Scrabble.”
“They’re kids’ games.” She makes a face, then smiles. “I know, how about Truth or Dare?”
I spin in my chair. “Now, that’s a kids’ game,” I go. “Me and Lisa used to play it when we were twelve.”
“Come on,” she says, “one round. Three goes each, I’ll go first. Truth or Dare?”
I spin so I’m facing her. “All right then, truth.”
Laurie smiles, raises her eyebrows. “When did you first know you were a lesbian?” In the silence of my room, the word is like a bomb going off.
“Laurie, keep your voice down! They’re only down the hall!”
“They’re never going to hear us over the TV.”
“I’m not a lesbian,” I whisper. “You said you wouldn’t say that again.”
“Rae, you have to tell me the truth,” Laurie goes. “It’s Truth or Dare.”
I swing a little on the chair, hold my prosthetic with my hand. I want to tell her the truth, but I’m not sure what it is. “I don’t know.”
She sucks her hair. “How can you not know?”
“Laurie, I liked one girl, once. Nothing ever happened, we never even kissed, so I don’t know if I am. That’s the truth.” She’s still sucking and I know she’s about to ask another question, but I get in first. “My turn. Truth or Dare?”
“Truth.”
I know what I’m going to ask, but I pretend to think about it. I keep my voice low so she’ll answer me. “So, what was it like? Going all the way with Mike?”
She glances at the door, as if Cooper might come in at any minute, pulls her feet higher on her thighs, looks down at the bed, shrugs. “It was okay.”
“Okay, that’s all I get?”
Her eyes flick up to me, to the door, and back to the bed. “The first time, I thought it was just because it was sore, that it didn’t work, and then after that, it was … I don’t know … okay. Tanya was right, it’s kind of overrated.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She smiles a proper smile. “Kind of like The Big Lebowski.” We both laugh then because out of all the people we know who went to see The Big Lebowski, we’re the only ones who didn’t love it.
“Sex is like The Big Lebowski?” I go. “How disappointing.”
“Maybe not all sex,” Laurie goes, “maybe just sex with Mike. Anyway, my go. Truth or dare?”
I spin a full circle in the chair. There’s nothing she can ask that’s worse than what she did already. “Truth.”
“Okay, so you say you don’t know if you’re a lesbian because you never even kissed this Nicole girl. So let me ask you, are there other girls you’ve wanted to kiss?”
There’s triumph in her voice at how she’s crafted the question. I answer too quickly. “No.”
I don’t look at her. We both hear the lie. Laurie slaps her hands on her thighs.
“Truth, Rae, come on! Who is she?”
My mind does this thing then, a thing I don’t want it to do, more than anything I don’t want it to do. It skips back to a few days before, by the pool, when she was wearing that silver bikini that Cooper hates her wearing. “There’s no one.”
“Rae, come on, I can tell when you’re lying.”
I don’t know how she can tell, but she can. But she didn’t know what I was thinking that day by the pool, because if she had she wouldn’t have taken off her bikini top and started putting sun cream on her breasts, right there, right in front of me. Not that I looked, I made myself not look and I got up, really casually, and went to get a glass of water as if it had nothing to do with her at all.
Laurie’s watching me, waiting for an answer. I need to give her something.
“Okay then,” I go. “Yes.” I look at her when I say it, hold her eyes with mine, those blue eyes I noticed that first day.
She’s clapping her hands. “I knew it, I knew it! Who is she? Tell me!”
“That’s another question.” I hold my hand up. “My turn. Truth or dare?”
“Okay.” She’s shifted positions so her legs are hanging over the edge of the bed and she bounces up and down. “Truth. Ask me anything.”
I want to ask her a million things but my mind goes blank. And then a question comes. “Why did you hate me so much when I first got here?”
She stops bouncing. “I didn’t hate you—”
“Truth!”
She pulls her legs back up under her, studies her toes. On her middle one there’s a toe ring like a mini belt and she twists it around. “I didn’t hate you,” she says again.
“Laurie … ”
“No, wait.” She looks up and I see her face is real, not pretending. “I know I was mean, but I didn’t hate you. I was mad, I guess, with Dad for his whole fake happy family act. It was bad enough this shit about me having a ‘new Mom’ without having an ‘Irish sister’ as well.”
She imitates Cooper perfectly, I can hear him saying it. “He really said that?”
“Yup,” she nods. “I was fifteen, I didn’t want a sister. I still don’t.”
/>
“Me neither.”
We smile. Laurie looks down at her toes again. “Plus there was something about you—you were so … I don’t know, sure of yourself or something. Like you knew who you were. I don’t know, maybe I was jealous or something.” She takes the toe ring on and off, on and off.
“Me?” I go. “Sure of myself?”
She looks up, her hair half covering one eye. “You do your own thing, Rae, you’re different. You don’t care what anyone thinks.”
I roll the chair a little closer to the bed so I can prop my feet up on it. The prosthetic is hurting me and I unstrap it, let it roll onto the floor. I rub my stump where it’s been.
“That looks sore,” Laurie goes.
“It is. They say you get used to it, but I don’t think I ever will.”
“What’s it like?” she asks. “Only having one arm?”
“Is that your last question?”
“No!” She hits the bed. “That’s not a real question! You know that’s not a real question! The question I want to ask you is who this girl is you want to kiss?”
I smile. I have it figured out already, my plan. Checkmate. “Well, you can’t ask me that because I don’t choose ‘truth,’ I choose ‘dare.’ ”
I lean back into the chair. I rub my stump again. There’s only three questions, so she can’t ask any more unless I agree to play again. And I’m never playing this game with her again.
She pulls her ponytail out from its scrunchie, flattening it between her hands. She’s frowning, until she smiles a slow smile.
“Come on,” I go, “you can’t take a hundred thousand years. What’s the dare?”
“I got it. I got one!”
“Okay then, what is it? Tell me, so I can get it over with.”
There’s something about the way she’s smiling that’s making my heart go fast and I’m afraid then it’s going to be something really bad, maybe even worse than if I’d said ‘truth.’ ”
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 13
