How Many Letters Are In Goodbye?

by Yvonne Cassidy

  “As soon as I sent those letters, I knew I shouldn’t have. I wanted to come and find you right away, make that soup kitchen tell me where you were. Cooper and I had huge fights about it. Huge.”

  When she talks about Cooper her face changes and I hope she won’t cry again. “One night, Laurie heard us arguing and she barged in—said she was coming, that if we tried to stop her she’d run away too.” The water is making a pool now around the edge of my foot, pulling at the sand underneath it. “I’ve never seen her so determined about anything. Even Cooper knew there was no point fighting her.”

  I feel a lift, somewhere in my body, my chest, maybe even my heart. Cooper fought Laurie over everything, but he knew there was no point fighting over this. Laurie was determined. Determined to come. Determined to see me. On the waves, the light is dancing.

  “So much for confidentiality,” I go. “That soup kitchen wasn’t supposed to tell anyone where I was.”

  Aunt Ruth looks down at her feet and back up at me. “I wasn’t exactly straight with them. In your first letter you mentioned a summer camp and in your second you said you were by the sea. I did some research and I found this place—because of the homeless thing I thought there might be a connection. When I went in to see the woman there, I pretended that you’d told me, that I already knew.”

  She looks sheepish as she tells me this and I imagine her at the soup kitchen, trying to make her elaborate lie sound casual. I laugh, and she laughs too.

  “You’d get along well with my friend Sergei,” I go. “He talked our way into your mother’s nursing home.”

  She stops laughing mid-laugh. “You went to see Mom? Oh my God, I didn’t even think to check there—had I even told you where she was?”

  “No,” I go. “I knew she was hidden away in a nursing home but I didn’t know which one.”

  The wind catches her shirt and she smoothes it down. “She isn’t hidden away. Clover Hills is one of the top senior facilities in the city.”

  “Call it what you want. All the fancy names in the world don’t change the fact that you’d rather have her locked up there than come and live with you.”

  Her face changes; I know this face, her angry face. A couple are walking towards us from behind her, hand in hand, but she can’t see them.

  “Mom has severe dementia, she doesn’t know who I am, where she is. I can’t take care of her but I do make sure she gets the best care, that she—”

  “The best care from the hired help.”

  She looks so mad then, Mum, with her hair blowing in her face and her hands clenched. For a second she looks like she might hit me and I hope she does.

  “You can damn well stop it right there, Rhea! Don’t talk crap about things you don’t understand. I’ll tell you about hired help—me and your mom were raised by hired help, we knew those maids better than our own mother. I thought you might have a pretty clear picture of that from her letters.”

  The couple are in line with us now and they walk by without looking over, pretend they can’t hear. Aunt Ruth looks mortified and we stand there in silence until they’ve gone by. When they’re at a safe distance, I answer her. “Okay, whatever.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought your mom’s letters up, not like that.”

  I turn my back on her, start walking again. If we are going to talk about the letters, I need to be able to walk, to count my footsteps, not to have to look at her.

  “Rhea, hold on.” She’s behind me, walking next to me. “I know I shouldn’t have sent them. As soon as I did, I couldn’t get this image out of my head of you holed up somewhere, reading them all by yourself.”

  We’re almost at the bend by then. Around the bend and on a bit, there’s the dune, the one with the U-shape of grass around it. That’s where I read your letter—the last one, the one you sent to me—and it’s as if she knows, but she couldn’t know.

  “I’m glad you sent them,” I say, fast. “You said it. I wanted to know the truth, and now I do.”

  The words sound logical, in the right order. They are what an adult would say. I am an adult now, not a kid anymore.

  She sighs. “That’s why I sent them—I knew you wanted to know the truth so badly, to find out more about her. But then, I realised they’re not the only truth, not all of it anyway. You read those letters and you have a single view of your mom, you don’t have any other memories to balance them with.”

  I think of the swing, feel hands on my back. “I have memories.”

  We’re past the bend, in line with the dune, with the U-shape of grass. I look the other way, out at the sea, and it’s just like any other part of the sea. Looking at it, you wouldn’t know that someone had walked in there with all their clothes on, pushed through the small waves until they got bigger, until the big ones knocked them over, pulled them under. Looking at that part of the sea, you wouldn’t know that if it hadn’t been for a friend’s help, that she would have drowned.

  “I know you have memories, honey, but it’s kind of like it’s a scale. You need a ton of memories, a ton of good memories, to even start to balance what’s in those letters.”

  I picture Dad’s scale from the shop, electronic with meat-covered buttons and red digital numbers, but she means the other kind, the old-fashioned ones, like the Statue of Liberty. I picture it, the letters on one side, the Carver book on the other, the photos, the memory of the swing—if it even is a memory. The letters weigh more, they will always weigh more.

  “Cooper said it was selfish, sending them—that I wanted someone else to carry the burden, and I started to wonder if he was right. I tried to show them to your dad once, years ago, but he refused to read them. Said he didn’t want to invade her privacy.”

  Up ahead there are more surfers, normal ones, three guys sitting on boards, waiting for waves. I want to know if Laurie has learned to surf yet, but suddenly there is something else I need to know more.

  “When?” I go. “When did you try to show them to Dad?”

  “One summer I came to visit. You must have been six or seven.”

  “The summer before the accident?”

  She frowns, brushes her fringe. “Yeah, I guess it was that summer.”

  The summer we stopped writing to you.

  “He got mad at me, we had a fight, and he went out to the bar. I left the letters on the kitchen table for him, in case he might change his mind and read them. But in the morning they were exactly like I’d left them, so I took them back with me.”

  That’s when it comes together, as easily as the wave lifts up two of the three surfers, carries them towards the shore.

  No letters to you anymore, no Hendrix, no Sunday walks. Instead of the ocean, I’m seeing Dad sitting on my bed, tears rolling into his stubble talking about letters, saying he shouldn’t have read them. I thought he meant my letters, the ones we put in the blue airmail envelope. Only he meant your letters, not the ones we wrote at all.

  “He did,” I go.

  “What?”

  “He read them.”

  She stops. “Really? How do you know?”

  I have no proof, no evidence. I don’t know for definite, but I am absolutely sure. “I just know.”

  The sun is high in the sky, the hottest part of the day. I’ve never walked this far on the beach before, not by myself or any of the times with Amanda.

  “Want to head back?”

  “Okay.”

  We turn around and the sun is in our eyes and I wish I had my sunglasses or my cap and a bottle of water. I wish we were back at the house, that this whole conversation was over, that I already knew the answers to everything, but the only way to know, to find out, is to ask.

  “That man in the letters, the one my mum talks about. He was the one you told me about in Jaxson’s that day, wasn’t he? Your dad’s boss?”

  I know the a
nswer, I think I do. When I look at her, she’s hunched over, as if we’re still walking into the wind, even though we’re not anymore.

  “Yes, Uncle Cal. He was more than Daddy’s boss though—they had all this history. They were in the war together—he was always saying how he’d never have made it back alive if it hadn’t been for Daddy, that Daddy was the son he never had.”

  I’m listening and not listening to her. We’re in line with the dune again and I’m looking at the sand, trying to see if there’s still a dent, an imprint of the place Amanda put me lying down, the place we were when Jean and David found us. I know it’s stupid to think it’ll still be there after more than three weeks, but I’m looking anyway.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think he was the reason Daddy changed his name and everything; that’s what Uncle Jacob said when we met in Sacramento that time, that it was after the war that Daddy cut off all ties with his family.”

  I have to say it. I have to say it out loud so I know we are talking about the same thing.

  “He was a paedophile—your Uncle Cal—wasn’t he? A child molester?”

  “We didn’t have those words then,” Aunt Ruth goes, “not like now—but yes, yes he was.”

  The tide is coming in further and my feet are soaking, but I don’t move to where the sand is drier. I don’t want to ask the next question but I need to. “Did you know?”

  “No.” She shakes her head hard. “No! I had no idea. Even after she came to see me at Brown, when she first told me, I didn’t know what to think. It seemed so incredible and she was drinking a lot at the time. Paul said he thought she was on drugs, that that could make you imagine that crazy things had happened.” She glances at me. “I didn’t tell her that, I didn’t say much, but I think she knew.”

  Paul, I’d forgotten about Paul. The sun is beating down. Underneath my T-shirt I feel a line of sweat, running from my bra down my stomach and into my shorts. People always know when you don’t believe them; you knew, you wrote it in your letter. I want to remind her about that, but I think she knows.

  “What about your dad? Did you ever talk to him about it?”

  “No, I never talked to Daddy.”

  “Never? Not even when you got her letters? Not even when she died?”

  She stops walking, covers her mouth with her hand. She shakes her head, keeps shaking it. Her nails are bitten, not her usual French polish.

  “That doesn’t make sense! Why didn’t you ask him why he didn’t do anything? Why he didn’t stop it?” I’m shouting then, but I don’t care because there’s only her and the seagulls to hear. “Why didn’t you ask him why he didn’t save her?”

  She sinks down into the sand, right there, even though it’s wet, even though she’s wearing her white linen trousers.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” She’s talking through her hand, breath and sobs as well as words. “He was drinking the night she told him, maybe he was drunk, maybe he forgot—”

  “How could he forget something like that?”

  “He was a good father, Rhea. He cared about us, he loved us—”

  “How? By telling her to keep it a secret? By telling her not to tell your mother?”

  Both her hands cover her whole face now and I have to bend down to hear what she’s saying. “I don’t know, Rhea, I don’t know. Maybe he couldn’t face it, maybe none of us could. I don’t know.”

  Her shoulders are shaking. I’ve never seen Aunt Ruth cry like this before, seen anyone cry like this. And it’s different than the nights Dad cried because she hasn’t been in the pub and we’re out in the open, where anyone could walk by. I sit down next to her but a bit back, where the sand is still dry.

  “I’m sorry I shouted. I know it’s not your fault.”

  I say that to make her feel better, but she only cries harder. A wave comes in, washing around her legs, her bum, and beyond her up to where I’m sitting. I feel it sucking the sand from under me, a pool of water sagging in my shorts.

  “I should have believed her, I should have listened.” She’s crying and talking at the same time and I wish she’d stop—do one thing or another. “I should have listened to her, not Paul.”

  I’d wanted to ask about him, what happened, why they didn’t get married, but maybe I don’t need to.

  “It was only in that last letter—the thing about the drawing—I remember that night, throwing a tantrum because she wouldn’t let me go upstairs to draw with Uncle Cal.” She’s crying so much then I can barely make out the last part of what she says. “He never asked me again. He always took her.”

  She cries for ages without saying anything else, and I don’t either. Instead I make Vs in the sand with the heels of my Docs, deep ones that fill with sea water, until it swishes back out and steals some of the sand so I have to start making the Vs all over again.

  When we stand up, Aunt Ruth’s trousers are see-through, so I can see the flowery pattern of her knickers in the places sand isn’t stuck to them.

  “Look at me,” she says, “I’m a mess.” She tries to brush the sand away but it sticks to her hand. “I’ve never been such a mess.”

  “Don’t worry, we can walk around the back way. Everyone is a mess around here.”

  You can see the house in the distance and we’re walking slower than before, and I wonder if it’s because it’s hotter or because we’re both heavy from the sea water or if it’s something else. She doesn’t say anything the whole way back and I’m glad, I don’t know if I have room to listen to any more or get into some discussion about Columbia or Laurie or anything. It’s easier just to walk and watch the kite surfers. And watching them, I’m thinking of the first time I saw them with Amanda, and how that was only five weeks ago and in five weeks so much has happened, so much of my life has happened, here on this beach.

  “Where have all the children gone?” Aunt Ruth goes, when we get to the part of the beach with the volleyball nets.

  “It’s Arts and Crafts now, then dinner.”

  “What’s the food like here?”

  “It’s good,” I go. “David’s a great chef.”

  “As good as Jaxson’s?”

  There’s a smile in her voice and I look at her and smile too. “Not quite.”

  “After you left, I kept replaying that day in Jaxson’s. How what you wanted to know was so simple and I couldn’t even tell you. I’d grown used to never talking about her and that wasn’t fair. So many secrets, all that shame. I can’t go back and erase all that, but I can tell you more about your mom, Rhea. I can add more to the other side of the scale.”

  It makes sense what she’s saying, reminds me of something Jean said before, about how the letters—the feelings in the letters—are only one part of you, not the whole you. I know that if she’s going to tell me these things, I need to tell her something too and it needs to be before we are back at the house.

  “Aunt Ruth, there’s something I haven’t told you. I lied to you.”

  On the sand in front of us, a big lump of seaweed has washed up and the seagulls peck at it. As we walk around them, I glance at her. Her arms are folded around her stomach, like she’s bracing herself for the force of what I’m about to say. It’s something I’ve been meaning to say for a long time, and the only way to say it is to say it fast and say it all.

  “I lied to you about the safety guard. It was on.”

  “What?” I know from her face this wasn’t what she’d been expecting.

  “Dad put it on. He always put it on. I knew how to get it off, I’d watched him do it so many times. That night you asked me about it, I lied.”

  Her face is clearing, picking up the thread of a conversation that happened eleven years ago and thousands of miles from here.

  “You lied?” She frowns when she says it. “Why? Why did you lie?”

  My mouth is dry. “I don’t know.
I didn’t mean to.”

  One step, two, three, exhale. A half-lie is still a lie. Say it fast and say it all.

  “I was afraid. I was afraid that if I told you the truth, I’d get in trouble. That you’d leave. I wanted you to stay.”

  I can’t look at her. I look at my feet, in deeper sand now, sand like the brown sugar David uses in his muffins.

  “I think that I thought you might come and live with us. Or take me with you. That you might decide to take care of me.”

  It’s out now, all of it, my words carried away by the breeze, into the sea. My feet keep walking, my breath keeps moving, in and out, in and out. I don’t want her to touch me and she doesn’t.

  We are almost at the trail back to the house when she speaks.

  “Thank you for telling me, Rhea.”

  “I’m sorry it took so long.”

  She stops and I do too. “That’s okay. The truth is worth the wait.”

  Her face looks red and it could be from the sun or from crying, you can’t tell. The Aunt Ruth in Coral Springs wouldn’t have forgotten sunglasses or sun screen but this Aunt Ruth might, and somehow it feels like this is the version of her I know better than any other, the version that I have always known.

  She reaches out to put her hand on my shoulder. It feels soft, solid.

  “I understand,” she says. “We all do things we don’t mean when we’re scared. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you the way you wanted then. And that I wasn’t there for you that night with Cooper, that I didn’t stand up for you. But I can be there for you now, really there. If you want me to be. If you’ll let me.”

  I don’t know how long we stand like that. Her eyes are brown like your eyes, the ones in the Columbia photo, the same shape. I have Dad’s eyes, I always wanted yours. Hers. We stand there so long, I forget that maybe there was a question in what she said, maybe she’s waiting for me to answer her.

  I nod. I smile a little smile and she does too. She doesn’t hug me. I don’t tell her I love her. She squeezes my shoulder and lets go, so she can walk ahead of me on the narrow path. I follow behind this time, and I notice that her trousers are already drying in the sun.