The Good Goodbye

by Carla Buckley

  “No, she’s asleep.”

  A new tube has been taped to Rory’s neck. It’s filled with dark fluid—blood. It travels across her pillow and over to the small white machine on the table against the wall. That small white machine is doing the work that Rory’s lungs can’t. “Maybe she won’t have to be on that long.”

  “Maybe.” Gabrielle’s voice is carefully neutral. She’s upset and trying not to show it. She lifts up the sheet. It floats above Rory and slowly settles.

  “I guess you’ve seen the news,” I say.

  “It’s everywhere. How could I not?”

  “It’s horrible. I don’t know how people can live with themselves.” A deadly love triangle. Gabrielle thinks it’s true. She said so herself. “You haven’t been talking to the press, have you?”

  She glances at me, frowning. “Of course not. I don’t want anything to do with them. This is private.”

  Her words have the ring of truth. Gabrielle values privacy, I know. Still, where had the television station gotten that photograph of Arden? What am I suspecting Gabrielle of, exactly—asking questions? Having doubts? I’m guilty of the same. I tell her, “Our lawyer’s going to have them take the story down.”

  “It’s good that you have a lawyer.”

  I glance to her, sharply. Is she threatening me? She’s tidying the things on the small nightstand. Then she adds, “I think we’ll get one, too.”

  —

  The glass door slides open and Theo ducks around the curtain, slings his jacket onto the chair by the door, and holds up a plastic bag. “Mama Joe’s special fish taco, extra avocado.” By unspoken consent, we’re avoiding the cafeteria. We keep our heads down in the corridor. Within hours, we have become recognizable—the parents of the burned girl in the ICU, the desperate girl facing expulsion who might have set her roommate on fire. “Thanks,” I say, though I’m not hungry. We’re both tiptoeing around each other, afraid of saying too much, afraid of unburying another truth.

  He waggles the bag. “Chips and salsa, too.”

  Arden loves salsa: the spicier, the better. She sprinkles red pepper flakes over everything; she bites into a jalapeño and winks at her brothers watching her with awe. He goes over to Arden. “Reinforcements have arrived,” he tells her. The soft wheeze of the blood-pressure cuff fitted around her forearm is the only response.

  “How did it go?”

  “I met with parents all day. Some of them just needed to talk it through. Some of them had already made up their minds.”

  I guess it’s not surprising. Many Bishop parents are more concerned with status and reputation than academics. “Let them. You have a waiting list of girls wanting to get in.”

  “It’s hard after the school year starts.” He adjusts the sheet around Arden’s shoulders. “Any news about Rory?”

  “It sounds like the procedure went okay. They took off the helmet.”

  “That’s great.”

  “You haven’t talked to Vince, then? He isn’t answering my texts.”

  “No.”

  “He hasn’t been by to check on Arden. He’s avoiding me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” Theo’s just standing there, looking down at Arden. “What is it?” I say, worried, getting up to look.

  “Is there something else going on?” he says in a low voice.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You and Vince. It’s like you’re taking his betrayal personally.”

  “I am. Of course I am.” Why are we suddenly talking about this?

  “Do you still have feelings for him? Is that why you get so angry with him?”

  He can’t know. I’ve never breathed a word to anyone about that night. It’s dark in here, but he’s standing so close. Can he see the guilt plain on my face? Can he see the story unravel in my eyes? A snowstorm had blown through, trapping Vince and me at Double. The power had gone out and we were huddled in the dark, laughing over the customers we’d had that evening, intrepid tourists who didn’t speak English, and Vince had gone out to pantomime the dishes. Do the chicken one again, I’d said, laughing so hard I was crying, and he obligingly got up and did the chicken dance. I looked at him, with his bent elbows and knees, jerking his head back and forth, and thought to myself, Did I make a mistake?

  When he collapsed on the floor beside me, I put my hand on his thigh. I only meant to clasp it, but he shifted and I turned and his mouth found mine. He moved to unbutton my shirt and I put my hand on his, stopping him. No, I said. We can’t.

  Eventually, snowplows had come through and I’d slowly, carefully driven home. The light had been on in Arden’s bedroom, shining around the door, and I’d almost knocked before deciding not to waken her in case she’d fallen asleep. I’d climbed into bed beside Theo, who’d sleepily turned toward me to sling his arm around me. I’m glad you’re home, he’d murmured and I’d lain stiffly until dawn, staring up at the ceiling.

  “I get angry with you, too,” I say, now. “Whenever you leave your dirty socks on the floor of the closet. You know it drives me crazy.” I lean against him, slide my hand beneath the collar of his shirt and feel the warmth of his skin. I close my eyes and smell the lingering trace of cologne he’d dashed on hours before. “I love you, Theo. With all my heart.”

  It had just been the one time.

  Arden

  I’M VENUS, pastel and pure, rising from the sea. Silvery bubbles dance past me on their way up to the surface. I’ve been down here too long and it’s time to leave. I try to suck in a deep breath, but something stops me. Something’s covering my nose and lips. A hand? It presses against the thing in my mouth, drives it deeper into my throat. I see fire-engine red and black and twinkling stars.

  “Natalie! What are you doing creeping up on me like that?” Aunt Gabrielle’s using her angry voice. Put that down, Arden. Could you girls be a little quieter?

  “I’m sorry. I thought you heard me coming in….”

  My mom’s smooth voice twines around Aunt Gabrielle’s prickly one. They make a thick and thorny vine. Your mothers are oil and vinegar, Grandma Sugar told Rory and me once. They are as unalike as two people can be. Rory and I know who is the floating oil and who is the bitter vinegar.

  I love my mom, but she doesn’t get it. She thinks Rory’s perfect. She won’t listen when I try to tell her. You girls are too close, she’ll say. You need to give her some room. She doesn’t know about Rory’s drinking, or sleeping with half the guys in high school, or that she’s the one who sneaked a fish into our guidance counselor’s car where it sat in the bright sun all afternoon. She doesn’t know I wrote all of Rory’s college essays and most of her school papers. No way does she know I took the SATs for her.

  The one time I did tell my mom a secret about Rory was back in eighth grade, when I told her Rory had been making herself throw up. My mom freaked and told Aunt Gabrielle and Uncle Vince, which ended up being a nightmare. Rory had to meet with a therapist and keep a food diary and weigh herself in front of her parents every night. She wasn’t allowed to be on the swim team or do any sports at all until her weight went up. Worst of all was the fighting between Aunt Gabrielle, who said that everyone was overreacting and that Rory looked fine, and Uncle Vince, who said Aunt Gabrielle had a skewed idea of what fine was. Rory still hasn’t forgiven me. So of course I’m not going to tell my mom what I think’s going on with Rory. I’m not sure myself.

  You were in a fire. Do you remember?

  I remember holding the heavy can against my chest, liquid sloshing around inside. I remember twisting off the metal cap. It smells terrible, but I don’t stop.

  —

  “Stop hanging out with my boyfriend,” Rory says, and I look over at her with alarm. She can’t know. She sits cross-legged on her bed, hunched over and painting her toenails silver. She’s not even looking at me.

  “We’re just studying together. You should try it sometime.” Maybe that’s all we are, study partners. I came back from the art studio last night to hear
Hunter’s low murmur on the other side of the door and Rory’s answering giggle. I backed away, confused and horrified. I’ve been so stupid. When have I ever won over Rory?

  She looks at me with her green, green eyes. “You do know that Hunter’s not interested in you.”

  “You can be such a bitch.”

  “Just trying to keep you from humiliating yourself.”

  “Why? Because you think Hunter and I might actually have something in common?”

  “Oh, Arden.” She gives me that pitying look I know so well, the one that smacks me down. It’s the only time ever that she looks just like her mom. “You can’t possibly understand. You’ve never even had sex.”

  —

  Hunter and I kiss forever, his hands sliding up beneath my shirt and pushing up my bra. I am going to melt right into the tree he’s pressing me against. My legs are shaking. I want to run; I want to lie down. I can’t get enough of him, his mouth, his hands, his warm skin. I work my hands around his waist, under the waistband of his jeans. I want to pull his whole body inside me and melt us into one person. A long, searing wolf whistle from a group of kids walking past makes us stop, panting.

  “We can’t,” Hunter says. His mouth is at my temple.

  “No, we can’t,” I murmur against his throat. But we do.

  —

  “Remember,” Chelsea Lee calls from the front of the classroom. “You need to get me your essays by next Thursday.”

  The bell’s rung and we’re gathering up our iPads and tablets. I’ve got an idea I want to explore with her, and I take the steps down to where she’s standing, talking to a bunch of kids. When it’s my turn, I say, “Professor Lee?”

  She’s busy pushing a folder into her briefcase and she stops and looks at me. She’s so pretty, even prettier up close. She’s wearing black today, a long-sleeved dress cut short. Her legs are long and tanned. “Arden, right?”

  I nod, smiling. Somehow she knows me. I haven’t even spoken up in class. Maybe my quizzes haven’t sucked that bad. “I wanted to talk to you about our term paper. I was thinking about doing Giotto.”

  She tilts her head. “Far be it from me to discourage you, but are you sure? There won’t be much source material on him. How do you plan to get around that?” Her gaze moves to a point behind me, and I turn to see Rory slipping out through the classroom door.

  —

  What is that blinding light? Pressure on my eyelid, then it’s gone.

  “…going to try her back on the ventilator,” Dr. Morris says, close to my ear.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” Uncle Vince asks. They’re talking about me and I’m afraid. Where is Aunt Gabrielle? I feel her nearby. I hear the rustle of her silk clothing.

  “We can put her right back on if we need to.”

  A snake slides across my throat, tightening. I panic, try to scrabble at it with my fingers.

  “Is she awake?” Uncle Vince says. “Rory? Honey?”

  I’m not Rory!

  “She may be in some discomfort,” Dr. Morris says. “Some patients can’t tolerate being on the ventilator. We can’t have her agitated.”

  She’s going to give me more drugs. I can’t fall back asleep. I can’t. I think about swirling the tip of my paintbrush into azure blue. Sky, sea. But…everything’s already getting woozy in my head.

  “Is it working?” Aunt Gabrielle’s voice is whip-hard against my skin. When she tells you to do something, you do it. You don’t ever want to piss her off.

  Rory’s always been afraid of her mom. She was drunk when she told me why.

  Rory

  I GET A NEW key card at Student Services. The old lady behind the desk glares at me, like it’s going to kill her to stand up and walk over to the little machine on the table behind her. “Are you sure it’s not somewhere in your room?” she says in her pissed-off old-lady voice.

  I don’t waste my smile on her. I know who it will work on and who it won’t. “Look. My roommate’s a pig. I’m lucky I can even find my own bed in that mess.”

  The only thing Arden is really careful with is her stash of Adderall, which she keeps in her bathrobe pocket, in the small leather change purse our grandma gave each of us for Christmas one year. I check it every so often, to see how she’s doing. Arden doesn’t think I know, but I know everything about her. Even the stuff not worth knowing, like how she scoops back the right side of her hair first and then the left when she’s making a ponytail, or how she taps her teeth with her pen when she’s thinking hard. How she eats Sour Patch Kids in this order—red, yellow, orange—and how she never eats the green ones. How she pretends to get along with D.D. when everyone can tell she can’t stand her.

  I’m in D.D. and Whitney’s room, watching a show on Whitney’s laptop, when Arden stops in the doorway. “Your mom’s car is in the parking lot.”

  I sit straight up—I’d forgotten to check in earlier. I’ve knocked over Whitney’s can of soda. “Shit.” She swipes her hand across her pillow.

  “Sorry.” I slide off her bed and grab my bag. “Gotta go.”

  “Where?” D.D. says with interest. Which is how all four of us end up running down the stairs and out the side door. We’re laughing as we’re going, thinking about how we left everything just lying out in D.D.’s room, like a crime scene. Arden’s in her pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and carrying her toothbrush, and Whitney’s barefoot. Ouch, she keeps saying, as we run across The Bowl. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Which only makes us crack up harder.

  We end up roaming through neighborhoods, creeping through alleys and across people’s backyards. We have the vague idea of heading to Fraternity Row, which Arden’s trying to get us not to do. “I look like crap,” she protests, and D.D. hooks her arm through hers. “No way. You look cute.” I’d told her Arden had gotten her stuff from her old connection and now D.D.’s trying to suck up—which is totally hilarious.

  We turn a corner and I realize I’ve been on this street before, the way the trees on both sides of the street arch their long branches to touch in the middle like the ceiling of a church. This is Chelsea’s street, and there, four houses down on the corner, is her place, with its narrow porch and heavy oak door. “This way.” I try to lead everyone in the opposite direction, but Whitney grabs my elbow, stopping me. “Hold on.” She bends and lifts her foot. We stand in a clump on the sidewalk. “I think I’m bleeding.”

  “Want us to call nine-one-one?” D.D. jokes.

  “Seriously. I think there’s glass in it. Someone, turn on your cell-phone flashlight so I can see.” My cell phone’s in my room, plugged into the charger. Good thing, too, because I know it’s hopping all over the place with the thousand texts and phone calls my mom’s probably sending me right this second. Arden had been on her way to the bathroom to wash up, so it’s D.D. who shines her cell phone across the bottom of Whitney’s foot. Sure enough, there’s a bright red smear of blood.

  “Oh, yuck,” D.D. says.

  “I’m going to be sick,”Arden says.

  “Will you hold that steady?” Whitney says.

  “Yes, ma’am,” D.D. says.

  The porch light’s on at Chelsea’s house and there’s a car parked in the driveway, some sort of sedan. The rest of the house is dark, except for one glowing window upstairs.

  “Just pull it out,” D.D. is saying to Whitney, who snaps back, “I’m trying.”

  Arden’s standing beside me. She’s looking up at the bright window, too.

  —

  I thought I was in the mood. I mean, texting Hunter at three a.m. and getting him to let me in and kick out his roommate is about one thing and one thing only. But I keep seeing that glowing oblong of light that I know came from Chelsea’s bedroom. I keep seeing the unfamiliar car in her driveway. I hadn’t been close enough to see the plates. There was nothing at all about it I would recognize in broad daylight, not even if it came roaring down the street toward me, its license plate getting bigger and bigger until it was the last thing I saw. Hunter finally le
ans back to look at me. “You there?”

  I reach up to brush his hair from his forehead. “Sorry. I’ve just got a thing going on with my mom.”

  “Oh. Your mom. Right.”

  “What does that mean—‘Oh. Your mom’?”

  “Nothing. But you got to know how she is.”

  “Tell me. How is my mom?” I sit up and swing my feet to the floor, reaching for my dress lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed.

  “Oh, come on, Rory. Don’t be like that.” He grabs my arm. I shake him off. “So what if she’s a little protective?” I demand.

  He doesn’t even answer me. Doesn’t that say it all?

  It’s still dark when I let myself into my room. Arden’s there, asleep in the mound of clothes she calls her bed. I can see her hair shining in the moonlight from the bare window. “Arden?” I whisper, but she doesn’t answer. I curl up in my bed, slide my hand beneath my pillow to finger the soft square of pink blanket—all that’s left of Arden’s baby blanket she gave me when we were little—and listen to her breathe.

  —

  “How are classes going?” my dad asks the next morning. I press my cell phone to my ear as I search through Arden’s bathrobe pocket for the change purse. I click it open and pour the tablets onto my palm. “Fine.” I know he’s asking only because my mom told him to call me and Make Sure I’m All Right. Only thirty-eight Adderall left. Which means Arden’s upping her dose.

  I’d borrowed D.D.’s cell phone to call my mom last night, pretending I was at some study group. Sorry, I’d told her. I forgot to call earlier. A pause. She was trying to decide how far to push it. At last she’d said, I worry when you don’t check in. Nothing about how she’d gotten in the car and driven all the way to campus to hunt me down; nothing about how she was probably standing outside my dorm room right that second.

  “How’s Double?” I know this will derail Dad. He hasn’t wanted to talk about work in months. He’s shrunken up like popcorn you’ve spilled soda on. It’s still recognizable, but shriveled and sad-looking. The stuff you throw away.