The Good Goodbye

by Carla Buckley

  I skim the very tip of my camel-hair paintbrush to make the finest line that winds all the way to where it started, a dandelion’s fluff of nothing. One exhalation and it explodes and floats apart. I am left holding a limp stem, unaware.

  Why can’t I see you, Mom? Why can’t I move at all?

  —

  “I hate Shakespeare,” Rory complains as I steer the pontoon boat down the lake. She’s lying on her back with her head hanging over the edge, her hair trailing in the water behind her. I don’t tell her she looks like Ophelia. She’s upset about the B she got on her paper. She slaved over it, I know, but it’s a hard class.

  “At least you can try to bring it up.” Rory had talked the teacher into letting her rewrite it. No surprise there. Everyone says yes to Rory.

  “I’ll probably do worse.” She props herself up on one elbow and frowns at me, sitting hunched in the captain’s chair with my knees drawn to my chest. “Unless you write it.”

  “Ha, ha.” I switch off the motor so we can float in the middle of the dark water. I close my eyes and rest my cheek on my bent knee. The sun beats down on the side of my face.

  “I’m not kidding. What if you did?”

  “This is why you ditched Mackenzie? So you could talk me into doing your paper for you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Right.” We both know she’s lying.

  “Please.”

  “No way.”

  “But this stuff is so easy for you.”

  “It’s not easy for me. I work hard. It’s just easier for me than it is for you.”

  A pause, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far.

  “Whatever, Arden. I’m talking about one stupid paper.”

  “One stupid paper, a hundred stupid papers. It’s all the same. If my dad finds out he’d suspend me.” My dad has spies everywhere. People like him. They tell him things.

  “No, he won’t.”

  She’s just saying that. My cheek’s burning. I turn my head and expose the other cheek to the sun. I know Rory’s really upset, not just acting to get her way. I feel bad for her. B’s won’t get her into Harvard, which is all she’s ever wanted, ever since we were little kids, but getting suspended won’t get me into art school and that’s all I’ve ever wanted. Besides, I have my own homework—piles of it. “Ask Mackenzie,” I suggest, a little meanly.

  “Mackenzie’s an idiot.”

  I lift my head and look at her. “I thought she was your BFF.” Mackenzie gave Rory a BFF necklace and, swear to God, Rory’s even wearing it.

  Rory gives me a slitted look, then rolls over onto her tummy, dips her hand into the lake and lets the water sparkle through her fingers. She doesn’t say another word.

  That’s how it is at school the next day, too, only it’s not just Rory ignoring me. It’s everybody, even my lab partner, who’s supposed to be doing the experiment with me. She just sits there and doodles in her notebook, making it look as though she’s taking notes. Gym’s horrible, everyone either speeding up or slowing down so that I have to run the entire field alone. But lunch is the worst. I set my tray down at my usual spot across from Rory, and everyone—even the loser girls—shove back their chairs and leave.

  I sit there anyway and pretend not to care, moving the food around on my plate, knowing everyone’s watching and laughing at the freak.

  After that, I wait until I get home to eat in my room: cookies, crackers, peanut-butter sandwiches, and jars of pickles. “What’s the matter?” Mom asks when I yell at the twins for making too much noise. I can’t tell her. She’ll only tell Dad and then he’ll hold a special assembly about bullying.

  A couple of days later, Kent Stegnor stops me in the hall to tell me he can’t take me to the tea dance after all—something’s come up. That’s exactly what he says: Something’s come up, which isn’t how people talk. He’s been practicing his exit line. “No problem.” I hate the way my voice trembles.

  That afternoon, Rory’s at Double after school, goofing off with one of the dishwashers, when I show up. I thrust the pages at her. “I changed your topic sentence. It was totally lame.”

  Rory looks thinner, the bones of her face sharp and her eyes large. The effect of the tanning booth, I think, but later I find out I was wrong. She’s lost weight and I’ve gained it. All this in an instant. All the words we don’t have to say.

  The next day, I sit at lunch with Rory, surrounded by all her friends. “Hey, what’s going on, Arden?” Mackenzie greets me with a big smile. Anyone looking would think I’m having a blast, talking and laughing with all my besties.

  Rory

  CHELSEA LEE WEARS mirrored aviator sunglasses. When I call out, she glances toward me as I run up. “Hi,” I say, breathlessly, looking straight into tiny twin reflections of my face. “I’m Rory Falcone. I’m in your Art History 101 class. Can I talk to you about something?”

  “I have office hours tomorrow afternoon. I’d be happy to talk with you then.” She starts walking. I fall into step beside her.

  “I know. But I have econ.”

  “All right, then. Shoot.”

  “Your syllabus says there’ll be a midterm paper and a final exam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s just that the class description online never said anything about term papers.”

  “You have a problem with papers?”

  “No.” Yes. “I’m carrying a super-heavy course load paper-wise”—can she check and see it’s not true, and can she please stop walking so fast?—“and I’m wondering if you could let me take an extra test or something instead.”

  “It’s not as though I have tests lying around.”

  “It’s not fair to say a class is going to be one thing and then change.” Chelsea Lee had stood there with her hands on her hips, surveying us. She wore a long black jacket with padded shoulders over a dark blue chiffon blouse and black leggings tucked into high-heeled boots. Her long black hair was parted in the middle and she had thick eyebrows that slanted up at her temples. I couldn’t tell if they were real or if she’d drawn them in.

  “None of my other students have complained.”

  “A, I’m not complaining, and B, I don’t care what your other students do.”

  She stops then and turns to face me, pushing her sunglasses up onto her forehead. Her eyes are dark brown and serious. No eyeliner or mascara, just a hint of blush and nude lip gloss. I’m impressed, despite the fact that she’s a super-bitch. It’s a difficult look to pull off. She’s eyeing me right back and I let her. I look good today, tough in my skinny jeans. “You said your name is Rory?”

  “Rory Falcone.”

  “Let me think about it, Rory Falcone.”

  I watch her walk away.

  —

  “What do you think D.D. is short for?” I ask Arden.

  She’s crouched by her dresser drawer, pawing through her things. “I don’t know. Ask her.”

  She’s still upset about that stupid frat party. I teased her the next morning about disappearing off with one of the preppie guys and she flushed bright pink as she leaned over the sink to brush her teeth. She wiped her face on her hand towel and pushed past me without answering. I’d hit some kind of nerve.

  “I did but she wouldn’t tell me. It’s got to be something awful. Dizzy Doolittle. Daffy Dishes. Double D’s can’t be it. She’s a B cup, tops.” This is a game we used to play, Arden and me, coming up with silly names for the strangers we spotted on the street or in Double. But Arden doesn’t even look over.

  I grab my pillow and hug it to my chest, roll over to stare up at the ceiling. “Art history was supposed to be an easy pass.” I’d come into the auditorium and seen Arden all the way up front, rolled my eyes, and taken a seat near the back beside this guy with amazing blue eyes and day-old scruff. He’d grinned at me as he handed me the syllabus. I’d smiled back, taken the stapled sheaf of papers, stuffed it into my backpack—like I cared what it said—and crossed my legs. I was checking Faceb
ook on my tablet when something the professor said caught my attention. “Does she really expect us to tell those lumpy stone sculptures apart? They all look exactly the same.”

  “They go in sequence, from primitive to more advanced,” Arden says. “They show the whole development of depicting the human form. That fertility goddess…”

  “Oh, God. I don’t need to hear her lecture again. What a weirdo.”

  “I don’t think she’s weird.”

  Arden has no filter. “Well, she is. Trust me.” I push myself off my bed and go to my closet. I flick through the hangers and stop at my green-and-white-striped Madewell tank top. I pull it out and pretend to consider it. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m ever going to wear this. You want it?” I’d caught her eyeing it the day I pushed it over the counter at the store, credit card lying on top of the bundled fabric.

  Arden eyes me suspiciously. “Why?”

  “It’s adorbs. It’ll look great on you.”

  She folds her arms. “Uh-huh. What do you really want?”

  “To give you a shirt?”

  Arden looks around the room and then her gaze returns to my face, her green eyes flat. “No, thanks.” She turns back to her dresser and pushes the drawer in as far as it will go. Arden’s so messy. I hate offering her such a nice shirt, knowing it will only end up on the floor.

  “You sure?” I dangle the shirt.

  “No. No way. I told you. I’m not doing that anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t have signed up for art history if I’d known. It wasn’t on the class description. Come on. You know it’s true.”

  “So drop the class.”

  “And take what, racquetball?” Arden knows I can’t change my classes. My mom would ask questions. She’d call the school and demand to talk to someone. “Please, Arden. Just this one time.” I hate the pleading note in my voice.

  “No, Rory. I mean it. It’s not like it was at Bishop. It won’t work the way it used to. The tests are all computerized here.”

  “I’m not talking about tests. I’m talking about that stupid paper, the one that wasn’t even in the course description, the one she sprang on us during class.” Arden knows this. She’s just making me do the hard work of spelling it all out.

  Focus, Rory, my mom said. You know you can do it. You just have to try. I’d leaned over the worksheet centered on the table before me, opened my eyes as wide as they would go as if that would make the difference. But the letters pushed together to make nonsense words. I couldn’t unstring them fast enough. If only I could breathe a little, but my mother’s face was so close to mine, the concern stamped into the lines of her forehead and dragging down her mouth. You will never get into Harvard if you don’t try, cherie.

  “It’s hard enough coming up with one thesis, Rory. I can’t do two.”

  “Of course you can. You’re like a genius at this stuff.”

  “I’m not a genius. I’m just…”

  “What?” She’s not going there again, is she? It’s not that I’m stupid. I’m not.

  “Whatever.”

  “Come on. I’ll do your econ homework.”

  “I’m not taking econ.”

  “Calculus, then. Come on. Please. It’s just one paper. You can write it in your sleep.”

  She rocks back on her heels and looks at me. “Rory, don’t do this.”

  “I’m stuck, okay? I really don’t get this stuff. I’m already jammed up with all my other coursework. You’re the only one I trust.”

  “You could buy a paper online.”

  “Dude. People get caught doing that shit.”

  “You could find a really obscure one.”

  “You know that won’t work. They have software that searches for this stuff.”

  She stands, crosses her arms, and shakes her head. “I can’t. I can’t compromise my grades anymore.”

  She’s looking at me, begging me to understand, but I won’t. It means nothing to her and everything to me. “Your grades are fine. Better than mine.”

  “I killed myself to get them.”

  Impatience jolts through me, hot and red. “Here’s a plan. Help me with this one class so that I don’t screw up my chances of transferring to Harvard and I’ll leave you alone. I’ll go to Boston and you’ll go to California, and we’ll be three thousand miles apart. Just what you wanted, right?”

  “Wow. Three thousand miles. I’m surprised you know that. I didn’t think you’d been paying any attention in geography.”

  She thinks she’s so brave. “I wonder how Ignacio’s doing,” I say mildly.

  Her face goes white; her eyes spark green.

  I spread the shirt out on the rumpled covers of her bed and leave, closing the door quietly behind me. I’m meeting D.D. for dinner and she’s waiting in the dining hall, but I stop, lean against the wall, and collect my breath. I need help, I’d begged my mom, and she’d frowned. We had you tested. You do not need help. You just need to be more disciplined. She never sees how hard I work. She only sees what she wants to see. She never sees me at all.

  —

  When I get back to the dorm later that night, there’s a note taped to the door, the familiar handwriting, dark and upright, an assault on the white paper, all the vowels with their tiny curls in the middle of their foreheads. I’d practiced forming my letters the same way until my second-grade teacher cupped her hand over mine, stopping me. That’s not the way Americans write, she’d said.

  I yank the note free. My mom’s been here. I should have guessed a hundred and seventeen miles wouldn’t be enough.

  Natalie

  I WASH UP in a white-tiled bathroom with steel fixtures and signs posted everywhere, CALL DON’T FALL, quick with guilt at getting a little clean while my daughter lies defenseless. I’ve been on her Facebook account, all of it so innocent. I’d smiled at Arden’s face, splotches of orange paint on her cheeks and chin. Who knows why? It could have been face paint from some college activity, or acrylic paint from her art class. Either way, she looks so happy. I held this happiness close, then signed out. Gabrielle had been wrong. There was nothing suspicious there.

  I pull on the jeans and T-shirt Theo brought me. He’d forgotten to include a fresh bra, so I hook back on the lacy, black push-up I’d worn for our anniversary date Friday, two nights ago. It feels ridiculous beneath my cotton T-shirt, the swell of my breasts pushing out against the fabric. I comb back my damp hair with my fingers and step into the hall. The floor’s sticky, sucking at the soles of my shoes. Why doesn’t someone clean it? I hate dirty floors. I make sure we keep Double’s floors spotless. Vince used to say that if we ran out of tables, we could always seat customers on the floor.

  Tomorrow’s Monday, a new start to the week. It’s also the day they’re going to begin debriding the girls’ burns. Arden has some areas of concern along her left arm and torso, but Rory’s the one with burns along the fronts of her legs, her chest, both shoulders. Treating her burns is a more extensive process, but it won’t affect her prognosis. The nurse has told us it’s a blessing the girls will be unconscious during the process.

  Lately, whenever I asked Arden how Rory was doing, Arden would impatiently say Fine, and I’d let it go. It would have been easy enough to call Rory myself and see how college was going for her, but I’d let all the opportunities slip past. I loved my niece as much as I loved my own children, but I’d let this break with her father spill between us and push us apart. She’d taken her cue from me. She’d stopped pulling up a chair to nibble biscotti and watch me tackle a new sauce or entrée; she’d stopped texting me upbeat updates. She’d slip past at Double with just a breezy hello. I’d noticed and let it go, telling myself I need to focus on saving Double, but the truth was I’d welcomed the distance. I hadn’t figured out how to manage keeping her in my life and not Vince. I’d failed Rory just as much as I’d failed Arden.

  A man heads toward me, pushing a little girl in a stroller. They both look so happy, the little girl kicking her legs to ma
ke her skirt dance, and her father with a half-smile on his face. I was that complacent parent once. I want to grab his arm and say, This can all change in an instant.

  The room across the hall is bright with light, revealing a woman leaning forward to spoon Jell-O into a patient’s mouth. I’m seized by envy. This is what I want, suddenly and passionately—to be able to slide a quivering orange spoonful into my daughter’s mouth. Surely the nurses have a refrigerator full of Jell-O and juices somewhere for requests such as these. Surely they have a spoon and will permit me to feed just one small bite to my child. But when I reach Arden’s room and step inside, the flash of the hallway light briefly falling into the darkened room, I see her lying exactly as I left her, flat on her back with her mouth agape and filled with a thick rubbery tube. Theo glances up from where he sits in the corner. “Feel better?”

  “A little more human.” I drop the bag with my dirty clothes onto the chair inside the door.

  This dark crowded space with its rickety padded chairs and rolling nightstand. A tall cupboard stands against the wall, intended for Arden’s possessions, all of which were consumed in the fire. The clothes she wore into the hospital had been cut away and discarded, so we use these drawers to stash our things instead—tissues and notepads where we jot copious notes, Theo’s laptop when he’s not using it. He brought framed photographs from home, all the ones that stood in our den, swept up in one great armful, and placed them on top of the dresser: the boys peeking out from the tree house Theo and Vince built them the previous summer, Rory and Arden on graduation day with their arms around each other’s waists, Sugar and George on the gangplank of their first cruise, my mother lifting an Easter egg from its cup of dye, me and Vince standing in front of Double the day it opened, the four of us at a restaurant table, our wineglasses raised in a toast I’ve long forgotten. It’s too dark to make out any of our smiling faces. It’s too dark to see even the general rectangular shapes of the frames, but their presence is enough—a reminder of the love that surrounds Arden as she sleeps.