And the way she listens makes me want to tell her everything, Mum, and somehow we get onto this conversation about Dad, and I’m telling her about his music and how I’d read his mood by it, that usually Hendrix meant he was happy, unless he was listening to “Voodoo Child” because he only listened to “Voodoo Child” when he was angry about something. Lennon was his “loving music”—he always said that—and that could mean he was happy too, except for the times he was sad. She’s interested in the times he was sad, asks a lot about that and I end up telling her about the times he cried in my room when he got home from the pub, talking about you or Nana Farrell—and just then Winnie jumps up and puts on her shoes. I haven’t even gotten to the part where Dad found Nana Farrell on the floor and had to take her to the hospital but Winnie says she needs to run to the payphone because it’s after nine and she always calls Melissa at nine. And I never get to tell her about that part because when she comes back, she heats up some beef stew she’d brought home from the soup kitchen and she sends me to the Chinese on Tenth Avenue for a pint of brown rice to go with it. On the way back, I’m thinking that I’m glad I stopped there because I might have ended up telling her too much, like about what Aunt Ruth said on my last night in Coral Springs.
And I’m glad I didn’t tell her that, because I know that if I mentioned it, even if I told her it was a lie, it’d be in her head every time we talk about you, every time I showed her a photo, she’d be thinking about it, wondering. And I prefer the way it is now, like when she sees your Columbia photo and she says she sees your essence, and how alive you are, because that’s the real you, Mum.
I can see it and Winnie can see it, and just because Aunt Ruth can’t doesn’t mean we have to listen to her pack of lies.
Rhea
Dear Mum,
Dumbass. Dumbass. Dumbass, dumbass, dumbass.
That’s what Laurie would say, and she’d be right. I hate that she’s right.
You’re such a dumbass, Rae.
At first the afternoon started off nice, just like I thought it would, taking the A train under the water, getting out in Brooklyn. When we get out, it’s like being in another country—the houses and the streets and the sky, nothing like Manhattan at all. Winnie knows her way to the promenade and across the other side of the water, the whole of New York is there, a giant blocky puzzle, like Lego, like you could reach out and pick it up. And as if that’s not enough, there’s the Brooklyn Bridge too, stretching out to reach it, and the Statue of Liberty, floating out in the haze. Winnie says you have to get out of Manhattan to see it properly and that reminds me of what Dad said at the Cliffs of Moher, about having to be far away to see the waves.
While we eat our sandwiches I’m making a photo of it all in my head, the way I always do before I draw anything—the greeny black of the Statue of Liberty, the shapes the buildings cut out of the blue sky. Winnie’s talking about Brooklyn, the history and about famous people who live here, and even though I’m listening, I’m thinking about you at the same time, and I’m trying to understand how you could turn your back on all this. And I can’t figure out how you could trade it in—the statue, the city, this whole beautiful city—for a nothing village in Dublin. How you could have left it all behind for Dad, for me.
After we eat, she holds out two pieces of charcoal in her palm and I choose the long skinny bit. And then I make the mistake.
“Did you ever come here to draw with Melissa?”
Winnie is adjusting her paper against the board, holding the charcoal between two fingers like a cigarette. I’ve done mine already but I’m waiting for her before I start.
“No.”
“Did she not like drawing?”
The paper’s not totally straight so Winnie unclips it, lines it up again.
“Not really. It’s not really her thing.”
When it’s lined up perfectly, she sits next to me on the bench, starts to study the skyline.
“What is her thing?”
The wind has come up a little bit off the water and it ruffles our paper.
“To be honest, I’m not sure, Rhea. Farmers’ markets, wheatgrass drinks. I’m sure she likes other things too, but that’s as much as I know these days.”
Her hand is over the paper and I know she wants to start, that I should stop asking questions, but somehow I can’t seem to stop.
“Does she ever come to New York?”
“Not much.”
“Does she not like it here?”
“I guess not.”
“How can someone not love New York?”
Winnie hits her charcoal down against the page, hard so it leaves a mark.
“Probably because she doesn’t want to take a trip down memory lane by coming back here. She has a lot of painful memories I guess, with a drunk as a mother when she was growing up.”
I don’t know if she’s angry or sad because her voice and her face are switching between both.
“But that was years ago—isn’t she thirty or something?”
She looks at me, right into my eyes. “These scars run deep, Rhea. I only got sober when Melissa was eighteen. I took her childhood away. If I could give it back to her, I would, but I never can.”
There’s more pain in her face than it feels I should be seeing, so I look down at the paper, shiny white, waiting for my first mark. I want to make her feel better, to make the day clean again, like the paper.
“She looked happy in the picture you showed me. I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
Winnie’s hair blows across her face and she flicks it back behind her ears.
“I was an active alcoholic, Rhea. You know what that’s like, growing up in a house like that.”
It takes me a second to fully hear what she’s said.
“What do you mean?”
She glances at me. “You know, the stories you told me about your dad.”
At first I’m not angry, just shocked. I even laugh.
“What are you talking about? Dad wasn’t an alcoholic—”
She bites her lip. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought your dad into this. Come on, we should get started.”
She straightens her board, lines it up against the skyline.
“He liked a drink in the pub, but everyone’s dad did that. That was normal.”
She draws really fast, her hand skimming over the page, making quick shapes. She smudges some of the charcoal, but she doesn’t seem to care.
“Sure,” she goes. “Forget it.”
Her eyes flick from the skyline to the paper and back again. She doesn’t look at me, and I look at the skyline and try to let its shape replace the things she’d said. But it doesn’t work, because the shock turns into anger then, and I can’t stop it, thinking back on all the things I’d told her and how she wasn’t listening at all, only judging me.
I know then that I’m not going to be able to draw. Looking at the skyline, the gaps between the buildings turn into tiny streets. And I can picture the miniature yellow taxis, bumper to bumper on the miniature streets, tiny people teeming along the sidewalks. And it’s too alive to draw, with all this life, all these people—miniature versions of Sergei and Michael and even Pat with her headphones and my Red Sox cap, living their teeny lives right in the middle of it all. I wanted to pick the city up and shake it until they all fall out—Pat and Sergei and Michael and even Aunt Ruth, a miniature Aunt Ruth, scurrying along putting up microscopic pictures of me.
Winnie’s stopped drawing. She’s looking at me. “I’m sorry, Rhea, talking like that about your father … It’s none of my business.”
The charcoal feels slippy in my hand. There’s a mark on the white paper, kind of a circle, a smear, where I’ve been pushing it against the page.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she goes.
“I’m not upset.”
&nbs
p; She nods and starts drawing again, quick like before. She’ll probably want to talk about it again when we get back to her apartment. And thinking about her apartment makes me worry about the fridge, how it was nearly empty except for the cream cheese and a jar of mixed garlic and some salad dressing and I hope she has a plan to get some food on the way home, because even though it’s only half an hour since the sandwiches, I’m hungry again already.
“What do you think?”
Winnie holds up her picture to show me. It’s smudgy and a bit of a mess. The windows of the buildings are all done in dashes or L shapes but what’s strange is that even though it’s not exactly how the buildings look, it looks real.
“It’s good.”
“You don’t feel like drawing today?”
I shake my head, put my board down on the bench between us. She places hers down too, carefully, on top of mine.
“I was hoping you would. I was hoping you’d do something new so I could show my friend Jean.”
“Who’s Jean?”
She unwinds the pink and silver scarf from around her neck, holds one end in each hand. “She’s someone I know from years back, from a rehab I was in. She’s a counsellor and she runs a camp out in Long Island where we take kids from shelters for a few weeks every summer.”
“You’re going away?”
“I go every year.”
“When?”
“Next week. Thursday.”
Thursday is six days away, not even a whole week. I want to say that, but I don’t say anything. I want to ask her why she didn’t say anything before, but that’s a dumbass thing to even think because she doesn’t have to say anything, tell me anything. I’m just a dumbass for getting sucked in with all the “we’s.”
“Rhea, listen.” She’s pulling the scarf tight at each end. “I called Jean last night, told her about you, to see if I could persuade her to take on someone else to help me with the art classes. It’s a lot for me now, all the kids.”
She’s smiling, holding the edges of her scarf, like this is great news. The wind has picked up a little and it’s flapping her page. “I’m so excited, Rhea, because Jean said that we could sort something out. That if you can take on some of the other stuff—cleaning maybe, things like that—you can come out too.”
Over the city there’s grey clouds now, like smoke.
“We’ll have to share a room, there are no extra ones, but that’s fine with me.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
She looks confused. “Share a room?”
“What if I don’t want to go? What if I want to stay here?”
She shakes her head. “You’ll love it, Rhea. The money’s not great but the food is always amazing and it’s right on the beach, you can go swimming every day.”
“I can’t swim.”
Her eyes glance towards my stump and back to my face. She thinks that’s why I can’t; even after everything I told her last night, she thinks that’s why not.
“That’s okay, maybe you’ll learn. Say you’ll come.”
She moves closer to me on the bench, so her board falls onto the ground, banging off the concrete. She bends down to pick it up and she notices the daisy I’ve had in the lacehole of my Docs since the park. She points to it and smiles.
“So this woman—this Jean—she’s just going to offer me a job, just like that? Without even meeting me?”
“She wouldn’t be able to meet you anyway, she’s out there already, getting the place set up. But once the background checks are okay—”
“Background checks?”
“You know, just the usual stuff. We’re working with kids, they have to make sure—”
“No, no way. I’m not doing that.”
I stand up and my charcoal falls on the ground.
“Rhea—”
“Aunt Ruth has probably been to the police. She must have. If they run a check, she’ll probably find out. She’ll probably find me.”
Winnie’s standing up too, reaching for my hand, but I fold my arm across me, put it in my armpit.
“Rhea, you’re eighteen. She can’t make you go back.”
“No!” I stamp on the charcoal but it’s too thin to break.
“Come on, don’t mess this up. Even if it wasn’t for the background check, I’d be suggesting you contact your aunt, let her know you’re safe.”
A drop of rain falls on Winnie’s picture, then another one.
“Mess this up? I thought you got it, Winnie. I thought you understood.”
“I do understand—but you’re not listening to me, Rhea. You don’t have to go back there. No one’s going to make you go back. Just let her know you’re okay, that’s all.”
There’s more rain. The charcoal is starting to smudge. Winnie unclips her paper, rolls it up. I scrunch my toes tight inside my Docs. The daisy from earlier is turning to mush in the rain, it’s already dead.
Winnie’s got everything back in the bag, boards, paper, charcoal. She has her scarf over her head now. “Come on, we’re getting soaked.”
I hesitate, lean against the railing. As if I have another choice, as if there is somewhere else I can go.
“How do I know you’re not going to call my aunt, tell her where I am?”
She rolls her eyes. “Come on, Rhea. You know I’m not going to do that. You’re an adult. You’re the one who gets to decide what happens next. Not me.”
We don’t talk anymore after that, just hurry back to the subway station, both of us trying to stay dry walking close to the buildings. And we don’t talk on the train on the way home and I hate that things can change, from the way they were on the way here to being like this, with no warning at all.
She’s out now, at an AA meeting and she’s probably telling them all what an ungrateful bitch I am. And I thought about leaving while she’s out—about taking my clothes off the shelf she made for me and packing them in my backpack again, but it’s still raining and it’s nice in here, listening to it on the window with the violin music upstairs and Olivia scrunched in next to me.
And I’m looking at your photo, the Columbia one, and I’m wondering what you’d do, what you’d want me to do. She hasn’t said it, but I think she’ll let me stay, till Thursday, if I want to. That’s six days of food, six nights of sleep on this couch. Sometimes Dad would go on about principles, how they weren’t worth sacrificing, and I don’t know if I stay if I’m sacrificing mine because Winnie betrayed my trust by telling this Jean person about me. But I’ve nowhere else to go, no money even, not anymore. And it feels like I’m all out of options. That for six days of food and sleep, it might be worth the sacrifice, just this once.
Maybe, if I asked you, you might tell me that.
Rhea
Dear Mum,
I am copying out the letter I’m sending to Aunt Ruth because if she writes back I want to remember what I wrote. It’s way harder writing to her than writing to you. I hope I’m doing the right thing, sending the letter, going with Winnie—I hope I’m not making a mistake.
As soon as I tell Winnie what I’ve decided she hugs me and then she runs out to phone Jean to start the background check. And I nearly change my mind then, after everything, I nearly take the red Converse she’d bought me and the shorts with all the pockets and the second-hand Walkman and put them all in my backpack and run, before I can think about it. But I don’t run, I sit and stroke Olivia, and listen to her purring, and then Winnie’s back, smiling, telling me everything we need to do next.
I didn’t decide to go because she bought me that stuff, Mum, that wasn’t it. It was all from the Salvation Army and it only came to six dollars. I decided to go because she’s buying it for me anyway—the Converse and the shorts and the Walkman—whether I go with her or not. It’s not a bribe and that’s what makes me trust her.
The plac
e we’re going is called Turning Tides and I like the name and that it’s on Long Island, in between a town called Amagansett and a town called Montauk. Winnie showed me where it is, on the map, and it’s near where Aunt Ruth told me you used to spend your summers, where the ice cream place is, and that’s another reason I decided to go, if you want to know the truth.
I don’t think Aunt Ruth must have liked going there, because she was weird the time we talked about it in Jaxson’s, but maybe that’s because of Nana Davis having an affair with Granddad Davis’ boss—at least I think they were. But I bet you liked it, Mum. Winnie told me about all the beaches on Long Island, some of the best in the country, she said. I bet you went swimming every day.
I’m not going to post the letter until Thursday morning, right before we leave. I know I don’t need to worry about her finding me—the letter has the soup kitchen’s return address on it because Chrissie is going to forward on anything that comes. And even if Aunt Ruth jumped on a plane straightaway, she wouldn’t get here before we left no matter when I send it. But posting it on Thursday feels better all the same.
Making decisions is hard sometimes, isn’t it? I wish I knew how to tell in advance if it was the right decision or a mistake, but they both feel the same, I think they do.
If you’ve figured it out up there, a way to tell the difference, do me a favour and let me know, will you?
It might be a handy thing to know.
R
16th June 1999
Dear Aunt Ruth,
How are you? I am writing to you because I want to let you know that there is no need for you to worry about me. I am fine. I have a job in a summer camp so I’ll have somewhere to live and I’ll be earning money. It’s not in New York, so don’t bother looking for me there.
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 23
