I don’t know why I’m writing to you about all this, what’s making me tell you. Having this baby is making me remember all sorts of stuff and my emotions are all over the place but Dermot says that’s normal. “Sure what other way would you be?” he says, exactly like that, and he cooks me dinner and plays his Jimi Hendrix records, or John Lennon for the baby, and that always makes things better.
Come see me, Ruth, won’t you? Bring Paul, maybe after you guys graduate? When the baby is born, come and stay for a while. You’d love it here, we can go to the beach and go and see Dermot play and you can have your own room—the guest room—we’ll definitely have cleared it of Dermot’s mom’s stuff by then.
I’m going to mail this now, I’m not even going to re-read it, I’m going to run straight to the post office and put a stamp on it because I want you to have it as soon as you can! I’m so glad you’re doing so well at school, Ruthie, and that you and Paul are so happy together. I’m so happy things are working out for both of us—it was the best decision I ever made coming here. I have that feeling that things are working out exactly like they’re supposed to, you know? I always knew things would work out, I knew they would. I always knew!
I miss you, Ruthieeee!
Love from
Allieeeee xxxx
Dear Mum,
You knew I was a girl! How did you know? There’s no point in asking that—you just knew. I know what it’s like when that happens, when you just know something. At the start of the letter I was beginning to wonder if you were going to say anything about me at all but then you do, you go on about me for ages!
You were seven months pregnant then. Wow. I wish I had a photo of that—I wish someone had remembered to take a picture of you being pregnant with me.
It’s cool reading the stuff about Dad putting on John Lennon for me. I bet he was playing “Beautiful Boy,” he always played that for me. I wonder, did that mean that he thought I was going to be a boy? Did you ever tell him you knew I was a girl?
The only part I don’t like in the letter is when you talk about the beach. It’s kind of creepy, that I can see what’s going to happen to you on that beach and you can’t yet. And it’s fifty kinds of crazy that the thing you were most happy about, most excited over, is living by the sea and that’s what kills you in the end.
Shit. Forget that. I don’t want to talk like that, think like that. This is probably the reason Aunt Ruth didn’t show me these before—she was probably worried I’d get all depressed or something, but I’m not, I swear I’m not. It’s so cool to hear you, to listen to your voice, to see everything the way you see it—even the beach, even that.
I’m feeling one of Jean’s five feelings, Mum—I’m feeling glad! I’m so glad Aunt Ruth sent the letters to me. I’m so glad I asked her. Even if the beach stuff is kind of weird to read it’s only a small part and no matter what else you say about it, I know I’m not going to regret asking her to send them. I know I’m not going to regret it at all.
R xx
October 15, 1982
Dear Ruth,
I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to write back to you. I keep thinking of it, a million times a day I start a letter to you in my head, only by the time I get to sit down and have time to do it, it’s like someone has sucked all the energy from my body and I can’t remember a single thing I wanted to say.
Thank you for the baby blanket and the dress you sent for Rhea at Christmas. I know that’s almost a year ago now and ridiculously late to thank you for it but she looked so cute in it, like a baby from a commercial. I should have taken her picture—Daddy sent over one of those new Kodak cameras but I haven’t been able to find it, I don’t know where it is. Dermot has this habit of putting things away in weird places, so I never know where anything is. It drives me crazy, the way he hides things from me like that.
He’s out tonight—he’s gone back to playing music twice a week, otherwise they were going to find someone else. He has to keep his slot. Tonight is one of those nights when I wish you were here, that we could sit down over coffee and have a chat. Not that they have decent coffee here—they only drink Sanka, and the whole country runs on tea. Even if I could only hear your voice that might be enough, but we still don’t have a phone after a year on the waiting list and I’ve only just got Rhea down, so I don’t want to wake her again to take her down to the phone booth.
I think that’s what puts me off writing, how it makes me feel further away from you, not closer. I can’t help but think that when you sit down to read this in a week, or ten days, or whenever, that these feelings will all be old by then, I’ll be feeling something different completely. Sometimes, I think that as soon as words are on the paper, the moment has already changed, and when I think about that it feels like there’s no point in writing at all.
I’m sorry, Ruthie, of course there’s a point in writing, don’t listen to me. I’m tired, that’s all, so goddam tired. I’ve been tired a lot lately. I haven’t been sleeping again. It’s not the baby—she sleeps through the night now—it’s just that those dreams are back, the ones I used to get. For a while, when I first got here, the sea air helped, just like I thought it would, that and Dermot’s heaviness in the bed next to me, and I was able to sleep, really sleep. I even slept through his snoring and through Rhea’s crying in the beginning. But lately, someone’s stolen my sleep away.
Remember how I always used to have them when I was little? The dreams Wendy called “night terrors”? When I woke up crying and went into her room, she’d stroke my head and ask me to tell her about them and I couldn’t describe them then and I can’t describe them now. Sometimes I wonder if they’re even dreams at all, or just feelings, shapes in the night, clammy dark shapes of fear shifting, layers of cold, that get too hot, wetness and scratchy dryness all at the same time. I can’t describe them, all I know is that when I wake up I want to die.
The worst is when they happen when I’m awake and I’m not even sure if they’re dreams at all. Like tonight, when I saw him—I was sure I saw him—at the back door, looking through the glass. I know it wasn’t him, wasn’t anyone, but I’d have sworn for a second I saw his horrible red face smiling through the top pane. I’ve asked Dermot to put a blind on that door so many times, I’ve asked him and asked him and asked him and he says he’ll do it but he’s lying. He says he’ll do it but he doesn’t care.
I’m sorry, Ruthie, I don’t want to write to you about all this stuff. I haven’t written to you in so long and I want to write things that will make you happy, make you smile. Make you want to come see us. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. Mom sent me over a newspaper clipping from The New York Times with him and Daddy in it, winning some award, and it started everything up again. He’s in a wheelchair now, that bastard. He deserves it. The only reason he should be in the paper is because of all the things he did to me—he should be on the front fucking page.
I’m sorry, I don’t want to write about him. I want to write to you about Rhea. I checked on her before I started this letter and she’s asleep, lying on her tummy the way she’s always slept since she was old enough to roll over. We’ve just moved her into a little bed in her own room, before that she was in a crib or sometimes in our bed. I know you’re not supposed to do that with a new baby, but it’s so hard not to when all you want to do is sleep—you’ll see when you and Paul have yours. It’s so nice too, the three of us curling up together. I thought she’d be scared of being all alone in her own room after all that, but it’s only me who’s scared.
She’s so beautiful, Ruth. I can’t describe how beautiful she is. How perfect—pure—that’s the word, like nothing bad has happened to her yet. We had to get her baptized of course—those crazy Catholics wouldn’t even let her into a school here if she wasn’t baptized—so I went along with it, but really, how could anyone look at a little baby like that and believe she’d done anything wrong?
> Sometimes, like tonight, I just stare at her, the way her hair is mussed up against the pillow and her arm sticking out over the blankets, the way it always pops out no matter how many times I tuck her in, those are the times I can feel my heart—really feel it, beating in my body, sending blood around my organs the way it’s supposed to, those are the times I feel alive. I hope it wouldn’t be hurtful if I told you that sometimes I feel that she’s the only thing that connects me to this earth. I hope that doesn’t sound bad, Ruth, but sometimes I have this feeling that if it wasn’t for the weight of her in my arms, her little hand in my hand, that—I don’t know—I’d float away or disappear or something. Does that make any sense at all?
I’m sorry, Ruthie, it’s just those dreams, the dreams and the feeling in my body when I wake up—like my body’s not even mine, like I’m not even there. Do you think I’d have always felt like this or do you think it’s what he did to me? Annihilated. Is that a feeling? It feels like part of me was annihilated, that all of me was. That he crushed the germ of an essence that might have been who I was meant to be. I wish I knew what age it was when it started—if I let myself remember, really let myself remember, I think I can remember something else, something before. A little girl who could sleep and didn’t have nightmares. A little girl who didn’t know the scratchy feel of hands too big for her body.
Stop. I have to stop now. I have to breathe.
Remember all those years ago at Brown, the night I drove up with Chuck and I told you? I was so relieved when you said that he’d never touched you, I was so happy—you don’t know how happy I was. And it was only afterwards that I started thinking about the way you said that, that maybe you said it like you didn’t believe me? Maybe that’s not what you meant, maybe I’m wrong—I know I was drinking that night—but there was something about the way you were looking at me when I was talking, something about the way you were sitting back against the bench. And you kept asking me why I hadn’t said anything at the time, why I hadn’t told Daddy what was going on. And the other day, pushing Rhea in her stroller along the beach, the wheels got stuck in the sand, and it hit me that I did—I did tell Daddy.
It’s not the first thing I’ve remembered since I’ve had Rhea—it’s weird how suddenly all these memories are coming back and I don’t know if half of them are real, but that one is real, I’m sure it is. We were in his study, me and Daddy, and it must have been night-time because the curtains were closed and he was in his chair, having his drink. I don’t know how old I was, or what words I used, but I remember he got up and then back down again, onto his knees so he could hug me. And I remember the glass was still in his hand and I was afraid he was going to spill some on me and that I didn’t like the way it smelled. With his other hand, he stroked my hair, I remember that, and he kept on saying “ssshhh” over and over just like he kept on saying that I shouldn’t cry, which didn’t make sense because he was the one who was crying, not me.
I don’t know when Wendy walked in, but I remember her being there, holding my hand and saying I needed to go back to bed. And Daddy was standing by then so it must have been after he did the other thing, when he held my face real tight, so close to his face I could smell his breath, and said that whatever happened I wasn’t to say anything to Mom—that something like this would kill Mom.
You probably don’t believe me, you probably think that I couldn’t have forgotten something like that—if it had really happened I’d have remembered it earlier. But in a way I don’t think I did forget, not really. Now that I remember, it’s like what he said that night has been underneath every other thing he’s ever said since, underneath every other reason I ever felt mad at him. Even tonight, on the phone, when he was trying to convince me to come home for the holidays, going on about Radio City and Santa Claus in Macy’s and how much Rhea would enjoy it—I could hear what he was really saying underneath. He talked on and on, you know the way he does, and even if I wanted to say anything, there was no room to say it, so I just watched the sea through the phone booth glass, pounding on the harbor walls, and finally he said it, that if we came over it would make Mom happy and then he got upset because I said I couldn’t remember anything that had ever made Mom happy.
You know what the kicker is though, Ruth? You know what’s a real bitch? Despite everything, despite remembering that, I want to see Daddy—see both of them. I want to see New York decked out for the holidays—the tree at Rockefeller Center, the lights, all of it. I have this picture in my head of us going skating in Central Park—you and me and Rhea, maybe Paul too—and we’re laughing, all of us, in the picture. Daddy and Mom aren’t in it though and I just realized that Dermot’s not in it either. It’s probably because any time I bring up going back, he always has an excuse—that he can’t leave the shop, or that he doesn’t like flying or that I’d have more fun on my own. I could go on my own, I know I could, but if I went—if we went—I’m scared I might not want to come back.
I feel so terrible writing that, Ruth, and I don’t want you to think badly of Dermot or that he’s done anything wrong or that I don’t love him, because I do. It’s just sometimes, I don’t think I understand him at all, how at forty-two years old he’s never left Ireland—he’s barely even left Rush—I can’t understand how he doesn’t want to. We’re so different, it makes things hard between us sometimes. He says I’m impulsive and maybe I am, but he never wants to do anything. His shop, his music, me and Rhea—that’s all he needs, we’re enough for him, and I used to think it would be enough for me too, but now I’m scared because I don’t think it is.
You know what he loves more than anything? Pushing the baby around the village in her stroller. The other men wouldn’t be seen dead pushing a stroller, they’d never change a diaper, but he enjoys it. They’re so backward here, none of the men can cook or anything, even Dermot can only really cook bacon and sausages. It’s not that he’s a chauvinist, he just never had to learn—his mother cooked all his meals for him and then when she died I came along. But he’s not like the other men, he doesn’t care who sees him with the stroller and he practically runs home from the shop every evening to see Rhea. He won’t touch her until he’s totally clean and he bounds up the stairs, two at a time, and I can hear him singing up there and he sudses up his arms and hands and scrubs under his nails. When I first met him, he smelled of cigarettes and Guinness but now he smells of soap.
I’m so lucky. I know how lucky I am. The women here tell me that all the time, how they wish their husbands were like mine. People have been telling me I’m lucky all my life and they can’t all be wrong, can they? So, why don’t I feel lucky? Why do I feel so mad all the time?
That’s if I feel anything at all.
I had this thought lately, Ruth, a thought I can only tell you. I can barely say it in my head, never mind write it down, but I want to write it down because I want you to know—I want someone else to know. What if I was to leave, to go back to New York and leave the baby with him? I know, I know, it sounds awful, terrible, that only the worst kind of mother would even contemplate it, but just because you give birth doesn’t make you a mother, you know that, Ruth, we both know that. And you know what I think? I think that having a Mom who was there but not there, having a Mom who looked at you and didn’t see you, might be worse than not having a Mom at all.
No one would understand. No one would forgive me. Rhea never would and that would be the worst part. She wouldn’t understand that I’d done it for her, that her dad could take better care of her than I ever could. That if she had to choose a life with me or with him that there’s no question, no contest, that he’d beat me hands down.
He’d learn to cook, if I wasn’t here, I know he would and he’d take such good care of her—she’d never need anything. I love her too but he loves her in a different way than me. The love he has for her is open, big, warm—she can be held in love like that. My love is brittle, something that lives in the dark. Something sh
rivelled, something afraid.
That night at Brown, I told you I was broken inside, remember? You told me I was fine, that everyone feels like that sometimes, and I believed you, I wanted to believe you. Only now I don’t think I do, I don’t think everyone feels this shattered, like a shell you walk on on the beach and you know there’s no way it can be put back together again.
Outside, people don’t know. They see that I smile and that my hair is brushed and that I can go grocery shopping and walk on the beach with my little girl and go swimming. But this baby, my daughter—she doesn’t want my outsides, my outsides will not be enough for her. She wants what’s inside, she deserves that much, and that’s what scares me, Ruth, that maybe inside there’s nothing.
Nothing at all.
I’ve written much too much, I’ve written so much and I’ve hardly told you anything. Dermot will be home soon and I want to make some tea for him, some toast with the strawberry jelly he likes. He says I don’t have to wait up, that I should sleep, but I like to, I like to do that, to be a wife, a real one, not just pretend.
Maybe I won’t send this letter. Maybe I’ll rip it up and start another one in the morning. Maybe I’ll call Daddy and say we’ll come visit, maybe I’ll make Dermot close the store, even for a few days, maybe someone could run it for him. We could stay in a hotel—Daddy would pay for that—we wouldn’t even have to be anywhere near their apartment, we could stay in midtown, near everything. Maybe if Dermot came, if we were all there together, I’d remember I was someone’s wife, someone’s mother, and then maybe it would be OK.
I love you, Ruth, I know we don’t really say that in our family, but I do. You’re my sister and I love you. I always have. I hope you know.
Alli
Dear Mum,
This is the letter Aunt Ruth didn’t want me to read, I know it is. She didn’t want me to read what you said about going to New York and leaving me behind with Dad. She didn’t want me to know you were thinking about that, that you could write that. But you said other things as well, about how you felt holding me and being connected and everything—you said those things too.
How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Page 34
