How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (45 page)

And I try and scrunch smaller, up against the wall, and Jean gets down on the floor too and I think she's going to try and hug me or touch me or something but she just sits cross-legged in front of me and leaves a box of tissues on the floor, between us. And every time I open my eyes, she's looking at me, not looking away, just looking at me and whispering that it's okay, I just need to let it out, let it out, let it out.

When I stop, the clock says 5:37 but it couldn't have gone on that long. I think it's going to be over then because it's dinner time and Jean never misses dinner time, but instead she calls downstairs and Gemma comes up with two glasses of milk and a plate with banana walnut muffins and David's brownies.

And when we're eating, Jean spills milk on her black T-shirt and then she makes a mess of muffin crumbs and she starts to laugh and I laugh too, proper ones, and it's weird how I can go from all that crying to laughing like that, at something that's not even really funny.

Jean says that if you don't let feelings out, they get stuck inside, frozen like glaciers. That what we're doing is melting the feelings so they can come out.

I tell her I hope that's all there is, that I hope there's not any more in there. She doesn't answer me but she puts her hand on my shoulder and when she smiles, it's a nice smile.

I listened to Amanda's mix tape tonight. You know what's fifty kinds of crazy? The first song on it is that song by 4 Non Blondes, “What's Up?”—the one I listened to seventeen times in a row in Coral Springs. And I don't get on to the next song, I don't care that I'm using up the batteries, I just rewind it and play it, again and again and again.

Jean would freak out about me going down to the beach at night, especially after everything, but I don't care, I really don't and I run down the steps of the house and onto the beach trail and the wind is hot in my face but the sand is cool and I'm singing the words out loud, shouting the words. And I turn the music up, so I can't hear myself anymore, but I know I must be screaming because my throat is sore—it's fucking sore—but I don't care, I stop, rewind, and play again.

After ages, I turn it down a bit and then a bit more and then more and the last time I play it I can hardly hear it.

I click “stop,” pull my headphones off, and there it is, the sound of the sea. And I think about that line in your letter, the one that makes me laugh—that I'd only ever have to hear Dad's snoring and the sound of the sea.

Did you ever stop to think what I might think about when I hear the sound of the sea?

Today, Jean says this really dumbass thing about blame and things being people's fault. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table and colouring in and she says that some things aren't anyone's fault, that some things just happen.

Maybe some things do just happen but what you did, it didn't just happen. It was your fault, your fault, your fault, not Dad's, not anyone else's, only yours.

Even as I'm writing that I want to give you an excuse and I'm thinking about the dreams and what you said about that horrible bastard and his hands and his face at the window and I get to thinking that it's his fault. It's his fault, definitely, him and your dad's. Maybe your dad is worse, even, because he knew and he did nothing, fucking nothing at all. If he'd listened, believed you, he might have got you help, someone to talk to, and maybe you would have been okay.

But maybe if that had happened, then you wouldn't have come to Ireland and you wouldn't have met Dad and had me.

Sometimes I wish life was like maths, like algebra, where there's always a proper answer, a right one.

But what if there isn't an answer? What if someone did something to that man to make him do what he did to you? Or to your dad? How far back does the blame go? And what if it's a lot of people's fault, not just one person's? Does that mean it's no one's fault? Does it mean that these things just happen? Because if no one is to blame, then you can't control them, can you?

And if you can't control anything, isn't that the scariest thing of all?

Dear Mum,

That's force of habit, that's what that is, starting this letter like that. I'm not crossing it out, I hate crossing stuff out. Anyway, people write “dear” to strangers all the time—“Dear Sir” or “Dear Madam”—it's not like it means anything. It's not like it has to mean
anything.

Jean's been on at me about it, why I don't address the letters to you the way I used to, it's another of her suggestions, just like she suggests that I start the letter with “I feel.” But I don't know how I feel, and even if I did, that's not why I started this letter. I started this letter to tell you what happened today.

Robin hurt herself, that's what happened. I could tell you that, just that, but I want to tell you the proper story, how I'm on Winnie's bed listening to the mix tape and next thing Zac's hammering on the door and when I turn the music off I hear him saying that Robin fell by the pool, that she's hurt herself bad.

I run downstairs after him and it's only when I jump down the back steps that I realise I'm not wearing my Docs or even my Converse. The car park stones cut my feet, but I don't care, I run after Zac over to the car.

The back door is open and Jean is down on her hunkers, leaning in. There's a cluster of other kids around her and some of them are crying. Erin lifts up Maleika because she's crying louder than the others.

“Rhea's here,” Zac goes, loud so they all turn around. “Rhea's here.”

For a split second, it's really weird because I haven't seen them since what happened, but then Jean stands up so I can see Robin in the back seat and I forget about that. Her left hand is holding the top of her right arm. She's not crying.

“Rhea, you go round, get in the other side,” Jean goes. “Robin, how are you feeling now, honey? Do you think you're going to be sick?”

The stones are sore but there's no time to get shoes. I slide in the back next to Robin.

“If you need to be sick, honey, you tell Rhea, okay? She'll tell Amanda to pull over.”

I haven't even noticed Amanda in the front seat until Jean says that, even though she's looking back through the gap in the headrests. Her hair is wet and it's making little drips on her white shirt.

“Here's the insurance information,” Jean says, handing her papers, “and the credit card in case there's a co-pay.”

Amanda takes everything, puts it in the glove compartment.

Gemma appears behind Jean and gives her something that she hands across Robin to me. A plastic bag. “I hope you don't need it, but just in case she needs to be sick on the way.”

Before I can respond, Jean closes the door and the car starts to reverse and it's only then it sinks in that she's not coming, that it's only me and Amanda. And that I don't have any shoes.

Beside me, Robin feels very small. We are close, our legs touching. Someone has draped a dry towel over her bathing suit and her pink hoody top around her shoulders.

“You okay?”

She nods but she doesn't look at me again, she doesn't smile.

“Would you like to hold on to me?”

She shakes her head. Amanda is driving carefully up the drive and even though she goes slow over the bumps I see Robin wince.

“Sorry,” Amanda goes, after a bigger bump than the others. “This driveway—”

“What happened?” I go.

“She was running by the pool and she slipped. She fell down right on her arm. It was horrible, you could hear it when she smacked the tiles.”

Robin doesn't say anything, just sits silently through this. When Amanda pulls onto the highway from the gate, I release my breath.

“How come Jean didn't come?” I call over the engine, which is louder now. “Or Erin?”

“Some big donor is coming to visit this afternoon so Jean and Gemma have to be there. Erin's car is too small and she can't drive stick shift.”

“She still could've come with you, though.”

In the rear-view mirror, Amanda catches my eye. “Robin asked for you.”

We don't talk much after that because it's too loud with the wind through the open windows, and even though I'm scared for Robin I'm enjoying being out of my room, out of the house. And it seems like the first time in ages I'm not thinking about your letters, not thinking about you, until we're going through Bridgehampton and we pass right by the Candy Kitchen. It looks cute, with its blue and white stripy awning, really old fashioned, and it's weird because one second I'm thinking I'd love to ask Amanda to stop on the way back, and the next I feel raging, so fucking mad at you, because after wanting to go so bad now I never want to go there at all.

There's traffic for a bit and then we pick up speed again, past shops and restaurants and houses and flat fields four times as big as fields in Ireland. And one of the shops has a statue of an Indian standing outside, waving his hand, and when I turn to point him out to Robin, I notice she's shivering, despite the heat. I roll up my window, reach over to touch her leg.

“We're nearly there,” I go, for the hundredth time. “You're being such a brave girl. Hold on and the doctors are going to make you all better.”

“Look,” Amanda says from the front. “There's a sign, we're only five miles away.” When we pull into the car park, Amanda drives right up to the entrance to let us out before she finds parking. At first, Robin won't move and when she finally slides across the seat, the hoody and towel fall off. I pick them up and try and put the hoody on her shoulders but it's hard without her help and it keeps slipping off. I wish I could pick her up and carry her, but instead I throw the towel over my shoulder and keep her hoody on with my hand.

At the reception desk, the woman gives me forms to fill out and it's only then I remember Amanda has all the insurance stuff, so we have to wait until she arrives, all out of breath and pushing her hair out of her face, before the woman will put anything about Robin in her computer.

There's only a couple of people ahead of us, but we're waiting forever and it's only when an old lady on a walker asks what's taking so long that we find out there's been a big car crash on Route 27. Hearing that makes me think about Dad, the ambulance rushing him into Beaumont that night, through the same glass doors where he'd carried me all those years before. But the policeman said he was dead when they got there, so maybe they hadn't brought him through those doors, maybe they'd taken him to some other part of the hospital. And suddenly, sitting with Amanda and Robin watching
Family Feud
, I need to know where they brought him, but there's no one to ask, and I get annoyed all over again with Lisa's mum for not letting me go and identify his body and insisting that Lisa's dad go instead.

At five o'clock, Amanda says she thinks we should call Jean, to give her an update, and when I come back from doing that, she and Robin are gone. It's worse, then, waiting on my own—freezing, with the air conditioning being so high. I want my Champion hoody and my Docs and I hate being there with no shoes on. I'm starving too, really hungry, but I don't have a single cent for the vending machine and I wish there wasn't one because it's harder to be hungry and see the chocolate and crisps behind the glass and not be able to have any. And it's fifty kinds of crazy but I start to get kind of panicky, as if Amanda and Robin might have left without me, as if we could somehow have missed each other, even though I know we can't have missed each other. Ten minutes pass and then fifteen and I'm just about to go and look for the car when they come out.

Robin runs straight over to me to show me her sling and the watermelon lollipop the doctor gave her, and after all her silence in the car, she won't stop talking now about the x-ray machine and the nurse. And when Amanda comes back from the phone and says that Jean said we should go to McDonald's on the way home, I think Robin is going to explode from excitement, dancing between me and Amanda the whole way back to the car. It's only when she's eating that it hits her, the tiredness, and halfway through her burger she puts her head down on the table and me and Amanda almost have to carry her back to the car.

“She was really brave,” Amanda goes, when we're back on the highway. “I was shocked when they said her arm was fractured in two places. With her being so quiet I thought it must only have been a sprain.”

I glance at Robin, conked out in the back seat under the towel. I knew that because she wasn't crying it meant it would be worse than if she was bawling her head off. I don't know how I knew, but I did.

Trees are whizzing by the side of the highway, thin skinny trees close together, their trunks black in the orange light behind. Amanda squints into the sun, pulls down her visor. “When we were in with the doctor, she said this thing that shocked me. She asked him if he'd have to cut her arm off.”

She laughs a bit as she says it, looks at me quickly. The highway turns and the sun is somehow behind us now, reflecting in the mirrors. Robin is still asleep, her little chest rising and falling under the towel.

“What did he say?”

“He said that of course he wouldn't have to do that. He asked her if that was something she'd seen on TV.”

I hold my stump, I don't care if Amanda sees.

“She didn't answer him, but she must have said it because of you. Did she ever ask you about how you lost your arm?”

Amanda says it like that, comes straight out and asks, and I'm glad she doesn't leave the question hanging there, in both our heads but not said out loud.

“She asked me one time and I told her. She must have remembered.”