How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (36 page)

“Thanks, Erin, you can tell her we're almost done.”

I want Erin to wait, but she's already disappearing out the door, down the stairs. She's left it open though, so Jean can't plan on saying much more, not when any of the kids could pass by any moment, not when I can hear Zac and Matt talking to each other on the landing.

I stand up from the couch. “Can I go?”

Jean nods, picks up both of our glasses, and wipes the ring marks with her hand so it makes it messier than before. I walk past her, don't wait for an answer.

“It sounds idyllic,” she says to my back. “Growing up in a seaside village in Ireland.”

“I didn't say it was idyllic, I said it was normal.”

“Normal,” she says, throwing the empty cups in the bin. “I get it. Dads out working, stay-at-home moms, 2.5 children?”

“Yeah,” I nod, “something like that.”

She nods too. “How many kids in your class at school?”

Behind me, I can hear Zac and Matt's voices getting louder as they come near the top of the stairs.

“I don't know—twenty-five? Thirty?”

“Thirty?”

“About that.”

Zac and Matt are right outside the door. Zac's saying something about David and I want to hear what it is, but they're already going down the stairs.

“So, out of the thirty kids, how many had lost their mom?”

I should have been prepared for that, Mum, I should have known where she was going. Linda Dunne's father died in fourth class, he fell off a roof, but everyone had a mum.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

“It was years ago. I can't remember.”

“Was it a special school, for kids with disabilities?”

“No! I told you, it was just a normal school—no one had any disabilities.”

She puts her hands in her shorts pockets. “Except for you?”

I cup my stump, I can't help it. “I could do everything anyone else in my class could do.”

She nods, so her earring bounces. “Were any of them gay?”

Her questions are coming too fast. She's a bitch, tricking me like this, right when it's supposed to be over.

“I thought we were finished.”

“Did you know anyone in your town who was gay?”

Billy Tyrell. The name comes into my mind first and then I remember his face—smooth skin, like a little boy's face. His hair, wispy, soft looking, like a baby's. Dad's voice is in my head—
I wish that faggot would buy his meat from Byrne's instead of always coming in here
.

“No,” I go. “Maybe. I don't know.”

Jean walks over to the fan, shuts it off. You can hear the kids' voices downstairs clearer now, the sound of the house being filled up, plates being laid on the wooden table. She picks up the photo of the black woman from the shelf and starts to clean the dirt from the frame with the fingernail of her little finger.

“In a town that was so normal, it must have been hard for you, Rhea, being different.”

I don't answer her, Mum, I don't have to. She already said it was over, so I walk out, onto the landing, take the stairs two at a time, all the way down to the rec room where Winnie's cleaning up the brushes and paint trays. She's chatting a mile a minute about the paintings they all did that are drying on the table and how it's so amazing to see them having fun and I'm listening
…
I'm trying to listen, but the whole time it's like Jean's voice is still there, underneath everything and I can't make it go away.

And it still won't go away, all those stupid things she said about being a little girl and being different and all that shit about food—all night they've been in my head. And that's why I'm sitting up now, Mum, writing it down, telling you. And I know it's fifty kinds of crazy but part of me thinks that if I tell you, then you'll remember the things she said and I won't have to.

I can just forget.

Rhea

June 26, 1999

Dear Rhea,

I hope you are doing well. I know I only sent my letter a few days ago, for all I know you may not have received it yet. I'm like a teenager on Valentine's Day, checking the mailbox as soon as I get in from work. I know you're probably busy but if you get a chance, drop me a line, or call me. I think I said in the last letter that you can call collect, but I wanted to make sure you had my cell phone number too, in case you were worried Cooper or Laurie might answer. It's 407-555-0183 and you know you can call anytime—anytime at all.

I keep thinking about all the times you asked me about your mom and I feel so guilty I didn't talk to you about her more. I don't know why I didn't—I guess I was trying to avoid my own pain and that wasn't fair to you. I see that now. Now that you're not here, I keep thinking of all these things I want to tell you, stories about us growing up. Some of the stories would make you laugh, Rhea, I know they would.

You're very like her, you know that? She was smart too, your mom. She was my big sister and she knew everything—there was nothing I could learn that she didn't already know. I was two grades behind her at Brearley and all the teachers expected me to be a straight A student like her. I tried really hard but I always got Bs, sometimes a B+. It didn't seem fair at all because she spent hardly any time on schoolwork. I don't know how, but she seemed to just know things. The only thing I was ever better at was piano, and I think she could have been better at that too if she'd had the patience for it. That was your mom all over—if she wasn't good at something straightaway, she'd give it up and move on to the next thing, something she could do better, that came easier.

At home, she was the one who always explained to me what was going on, she comforted me when our parents were fighting. I must have been about six and she must have been eight or so when she told me that Mommy was seeing an analyst. She said it just like that, “Mommy's seeing an analyst”—so matter of fact! She told me that was the real reason Wendy, our maid, was picking us up from school and so forth. I don't know how she knew that—maybe she overheard our parents talking—but I remember asking what an analyst was and she called me a baby for not knowing. Looking back, I bet she didn't know either—that was the hardest thing for Allison, to admit there could be something that she didn't know.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this now, or if you'll even read this letter, but it seems like it's important. I know what it's like to be kept in the dark about things, for people to keep secrets. At Daddy's funeral, I found out a big secret about his life, that he had a brother he'd never told us about. There were so many people there—his colleagues and clients and lots of people my mom and I didn't know. So when one of the men came up and started talking to me, I assumed he was one of those people. When he told me he was my Uncle Jacob, from California, I didn't believe him. Daddy always told us he was an only child, and, anyway, this man had an accent and Daddy never had an accent. He told me all this stuff that sounded crazy, that they grew up on Stanton Street on the Lower East Side and that their real name was David, not Davis, and that Daddy changed it after the war, when he changed Jeremiah to Jerry.

It wasn't until ages later, months after the funeral, that I started to remember things—like the time Daddy freaked out when me and my boyfriend got an apartment in the Lower East Side after we graduated college, when he said he'd pay for me to live anywhere else in the city. And then I remembered the lady who came to stay when I was very little, who wore black and had an accent and I was scared of her. It was your mom who figured it out—that she was our other grandmother and that there was no need to be scared at all.

I looked him up—Uncle Jacob—when I was in Sacramento at a conference, and he drove up from San Francisco so we could meet for lunch. He had a photograph of him and Daddy and their mother. It was black and white, could have been anyone I suppose, but by then he'd told me enough that I believed him. He told me more about their family than Daddy ever did, about their father who'd died in Russia before they came to New York and their baby sister who died a few months after they got here. He teared up when he told me that story, about their mother sending Daddy out to get the doctor, but the doctor wouldn't come because they didn't have enough money, and how Daddy went up and down every street looking for someone to help him, someone to come, but no one would. He dabbed his eyes with his napkin and said a lot of children died back then, so many children, and people didn't talk about it the way they do now. He told me her name was Ruth, the baby who died.

I'm telling you all this so you know more about your history, to show you that I understand what it's like to find out things like that, to find out people you love have lied to you.

Have you thought about what I said about school? I'm not sure how late they keep the places open for the fall, but if you still want to go, call me and we can start doing whatever needs to be done. Maybe there's even a private school in New York where you can make up the credits? Whatever it takes, I'll help you do what needs to be done.

I wanted you to know I've been thinking about that conversation we had on your last night. It's all I can think about at the moment and I'm working through it all in therapy too. It's really hard to try and figure it all out—what's fair, what you need to know, when I'm being overprotective. I have these letters that your mom sent me over the years, and I've been thinking about sending them to you because they might help you understand a bit more, get to know her in a way. But it seems like such a lot to lay on you, on top of everything else. My therapist said that you're an adult and that I need to be honest with you and let you make decisions for yourself. I know she's right. I know it's your life and that I can't live it for you, that I can't always protect you from the truth.

So if you'd like me to send you the letters from your mom, call me or write to me and I'll send them to you. I'll send you everything I have from her. I'll do whatever you want, whatever will help. Just let me know what it is.

I love you.

Aunt Ruth xox

Dear Mum,

I had my night planned out tonight, instead of waiting to see if Winnie would be around, because I'm getting the picture—she'd rather go to one of her AA meetings than be with me. I'd picked out my spot on the deck—the chair with the nice cushion, near the outside lamp—where I want to sit down and write to you, but when I come around the corner, Amanda's already there and she's writing too. I want to walk away, back quietly around the corner, but the deck creaks and she looks up.

“Hey,” she goes.

“Hey. You look like you're busy.”

She looks down at the notebook in her lap, closes it over. “Not really.”

“You're a writer?”

She wrinkles her nose. “No. It's just a diary, that's all.”

It's not too late to turn around, to find somewhere else. “I'll leave you to it.”

“I haven't seen you on the beach all week.”

“I've been sleeping better, getting up too late.”

“I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a few minutes now?”

I could still go, say no, that I have to do something, I know I could but I hear myself saying “okay” instead. She clears her sweatshirt from the chair next to her, but I don't sit there, instead I pull myself up on the railing, tuck my feet under the middle bar for balance. There's two moths flying close to the lamp, bouncing off the glass.

“What did you want to talk about?”

I know she's going to tell me the truth about her and Zac.

“Sorry if I acted weird, you know, on the beach the other day?” The lamp lights up half her face, glints off her necklace. “Remember, when you brought up me and Zac?”

I nod.

“And remember I told you that he wasn't my type?”

“I remember.”

She swings her necklace back and forth. “So when I said he wasn't my type, I meant something else.”

I knew it. I raise my eyebrows. “That he actually is your type?”

“No.” She shakes her head. From the road somewhere behind the trees, a trail of car light catches the edges of her hair, the frizz of curls that have escaped and frame her face. “I can see why you'd think that, but, no, he's really not.”

Something about her voice makes me believe her. “What then?”

She looks over her shoulder, as if someone might appear from around the corner, then down at her feet. “He's not my type because guys aren't my type.”

I shift on the railing. “What?”

When she looks at me, she looks like she might cry. “I don't like guys, Rhea. I think I'm a lesbian.”

That's when I laugh, Mum. I laugh so hard I dislodge my foot and have to grab the railing to stop myself from falling off.

“What's so funny? What are you laughing at?”

I steady myself, take a breath, start to say something, but I laugh again. I don't know if I can explain to her what Tierney had said, how funny it is, how clichéd.

I shake my head. “You're not a lesbian, Amanda.”

“What?”

I smile as I explain. “I know you probably think you are or you're curious about it or something. Maybe you're bored or you want some experience to tell your friends about back at school after the summer, I don't know
…
”

Amanda's looking at me, I can't read her expression. I wish I had Tierney's phone number and I'm thinking that Winnie might. I want to tell her about tonight, I want to tell her so she'll be proud of me for spotting it early this time.

“ … and I'm flattered but I'm not interested, Amanda. Been there, done that, got the tattoo.”

There's silence then for a second, the music from the movie downstairs, the beat of the sea.