The Good Goodbye (40 page)

“I don’t care.” But I do.

“Oh, Arden.” She sighs, her mouth crimping. “You keep hoping that someone, someday, will love you. I blame your mother. She made you believe you could be loved. But what does she know about love? That
whore.
”

I flinch, shocked. But she doesn’t stop. She pushes her face close to mine. “Always throwing herself at my husband. She doesn’t think I know, but I do. All those late nights, just the two of them. I was glad the restaurant folded. Something had to come between them.”

This is all a lie. I know it is. But I remember the way Uncle Vince had held my mom the day the grill caught on fire. I clutch the paint thinner to my chest. I try to swallow.

“Your father didn’t like it, either. But what could he do?”

“Stop.”

“I won’t stop. It’s time you know the truth.”

“I already know the truth.” I’ve known since I was sixteen. Rory and I had leaned forward, staring at the words of the news story marching across the screen of her laptop. Rory has family in France, but she’s afraid to visit them. “You were mean to your little brother. You hurt him.” I would never hit Henry or Oliver. Never.

She draws back. If she’s surprised, she doesn’t show it. She is so strong. She is so powerful. She’s thinking, hard. “He wouldn’t do his chores. He wouldn’t listen.”

I don’t believe her. I don’t believe her at all. “Just like Rory wouldn’t listen?”

Time stretches out, a rubber band. She stands utterly still. It makes my skin prickle, but I have gotten to her. At last, I’ve said something that digs into her and twists.

“What are you talking about?” she finally says, a warning clear in her voice, but I push on. She thinks she can talk like that about my mom?

“Rory remembers, you know. She remembers everything.” I’d cried when Rory told me. She’d gotten up and walked away from the swings. “It wasn’t an accident. You told everyone it was, but that was a lie.
You
pushed her arm over that gas stove.
You
held it there. You did it on purpose.” I have nowhere to look but right at her. She stands so close, her sleeve touching my arm. The ivory column of her throat, the gold necklace with its tiny cross. I have never known her to go to church.

“Of course you only heard her side of it. Did she tell you she kept playing with the dials, even after I told her to stop? I was trying to teach her a lesson.”

“She was
four.
” I hold the heavy tin against my chest, armor. My heart is thumping, hard. “I’m going to tell. I’m going to tell
everyone.
”

“No one will believe you.”

“My parents will. And so will Uncle
Vince.
” Rory will be angry, but Rory is already angry.

Aunt Gabrielle’s face slides into stillness, and I know I’ve won. But I’m scared. Her face is a mask. She doesn’t even look like herself. She glances around and stops at the painting propped on the easel. “What is
that
supposed to be?
You?
” She goes up close. “My goodness.”

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know anything about art.

She puts her finger on my painted eyebrow and presses hard. The canvas bends beneath her fingertip. “You should have given yourself better eyebrows. You could have at least pretended they were even.” She scrapes her fingernail down my painted nose and halts. I put my hand to my nose, to the small bump there. “Honestly, I don’t think this can be fixed. You can just say it gives you character when people comment. I’m sure they already have.”

My face is hot.

She jabs her finger at my painted mouth. The paint crackles. “Those braces never really did the trick, did they? Such a pity. I know how much your parents spent.”

The orthodontist had tried to fix my overbite. She had spent hours leaning over me in the chair, an intent expression on her face.

“And your chin. I know you’ve lost some weight recently, but…” She shakes her head and crosses her arms. “You’ll always have a fat little face.”

Rage bubbles up, hot and spreading.
Calm down,
my mom warns me. But I see it, the lost look in my eyes, the hopeless droop of my lips. Aunt Gabrielle is right. It’s pathetic.
I’m
pathetic. I swing my arm and hurl a great looping stream of paint thinner at the canvas.

Aunt Gabrielle gasps and jumps back, brushing at herself. “What the devil are you doing? Stop that!”

I heave another dripping, stinking stream of liquid. Colors smear. My painted eyes run, my painted mouth turns down. It feels good. It feels excellent.

“Arden! For God’s sake!”

I whirl around, faster and faster, holding out the heavy tin, paint thinner spraying everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, all over us. The room is alive with ghosts, all the times Aunt Gabrielle mocked me, Kent Stegnor dumped me, Hunter looked at me with empty eyes. I’m a butterfly. I don’t even see Aunt Gabrielle leave.

—

Why can’t I feel my lungs swelling and shrinking with air? Does this mean I’m dead? The machine against the wall beeps faster and faster. I want people to hurry into the room. I want someone to save me. Then I think,
Why?

—

“What the hell happened in here?”

It’s Rory and she’s talking to me. I drop the empty tin and look at her. I’m panting hard. Fumes rise up. I need to open the window. “Your mother happened.” Her face is puffy. Her eyes are red. She’s not high. I peer at her. “Have you been
crying
?”

“I just came to get my things.”

“Get them. I don’t care.”

“You sure you don’t want them? You take everything else of mine.”

I don’t want anything of yours.
The words are right there, ready to spill out, but they suddenly dissolve. “What’s going on? What happened?”

She shakes her head. She sinks onto her bed and cradles her face in her hands. Slowly, I sink down beside her. She’s actually crying, her shoulders shaking. I put my arm around her. “Let’s not fight anymore, okay?”

“We’re fine. We’ve always been fine. It’s everything else. I’m a total fuckup.”

“No, you’re not. You’re the most wonderful person. I wish I were like you.” I squeeze her close and press my cheek to her shoulder.

“You’ve got to stop that. You don’t want to be like me, trust me.” Her voice is muffled, her face pressed against her palms. “I thought she loved me. What am I going to do?”

I’m not sure who she’s talking about. “Let’s go to the pep rally. That’ll cheer you up.”

She raises her face to mine. Mascara’s smeared beneath her eyes and her cheeks are blotchy. She looks like a little girl. “Don’t you get it? All of this is over.” She swings out an arm. “All of it. I’m leaving. I’m quitting.”

At first my heart lurches with fear. I bite it back. “Where will you go?”

“I told you. Where I should have gone to begin with. France. I’ll go to France.”

It comes to me all of a sudden, in a great burst. “I’ll go with you.”

“Be serious, Arden.”

“I am. I’ll go with you.” We’ll find her French relatives together. We’ll work it all out.

“What will we do for money?”

“We’ll open a restaurant.” I’m being crazy. I’m trying to make her laugh, and it works.

A smile tilts a corner of her mouth. “Yeah. Let’s do that.” She pushes herself to her feet. “We’ll open our own restaurant. What will we call it? The Big Fuck-You?”

“Perfect.” She picks up the bong from her dresser and pulls something from her pocket. I see the silver gleam of my mother’s lighter and Hunter standing in the doorway. “Rory?” he says.

“Wait!” I yell, lurching to my feet.

But Rory’s already turning. A flicker of flame in her cupped hand and then it flares. A hot whoosh. The door’s on fire, the posters curling on the walls. Hunter’s gone, just parts of him visible through the plumes of yellow and orange. His mouth’s wide open. He’s screaming, a terrible sound. I yank my comforter from the bed and try to throw it over him. He’s stumbling around. I can save him. I can. But the comforter’s soaked and it goes up, too. The floor’s leaping with flames.

“Help!” I gabble. “Help us!”

I grab Rory’s arm. Other things are catching on fire now. Gray smoke writhes up. I’m screaming at her. “Hurry!” She turns a dazed face to mine. I pull her onto my bed. I struggle with the window. The metal handles are scorching. The window won’t slide up.

“Move!” Rory yells at me, and I jump back as she swings my desk chair at the glass. It cracks. She swings again and this time, it shatters. We kick out the broken pieces with our heels.

I’m gasping, every breath sharp. My lungs are filled with pointed gouging things. We climb onto the window ledge. It’s cooler here. The ground yawns below us, a million miles away. Rory and I look at each other. I see panic carved in shadows on her face.

—

My mom says, “I love you, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay.”

But I am not a little girl anymore and I know better.

Natalie

THE LAST I SEE
of Rory, she is being wheeled down the hall toward the operating room where my daughter waits. The bag of clear IV fluid sways from its pole, the ventilator rides along with her, on the stretcher between her legs covered by the sheet. Vince holds Rory’s left hand, and I hold her right. Theo walks beside me. Gabrielle has left the hospital. She won’t answer Vince’s calls. In the end, it was Theo who sat down across from Vince, their knees touching. Vince’s head was bowed as Theo softly talked to him, and when I saw Vince nod, I knew.

The orderly presses the square metal button on the wall and the automatic doors swish open. Vince bends to kiss Rory’s cheek. The bandages have been removed from her face so we can see her to say goodbye. Theo kisses her, and I do, weeping. This girl, the precious child we have loved. We straighten and the orderly pushes the stretcher away from us. The doors close and we turn to the waiting room. We will wait together, for Arden.

Arden

WHEN I WAKE UP,
the room is bright.
Heaven?
Then I open my eyes and see Oliver leaning close. He’s gotten a haircut, his blond hair standing up a little in the front and short along the sides. His cheeks are red and he stares very seriously at me. My dad’s holding him, and I see his face behind my brother’s. My mom’s on the other side, holding Henry. “No kisses,” Oliver instructs. “Because they’re gross.”

I smile and go back to sleep.

—

The next time I wake up, my mom’s there, reading in a chair beside me. As I turn my head, she sets down her book. “Arden?” Her face is filled with worry. It’s been so long. I’ve missed her so much. I’ve felt so lost and here I am, found. Tears drip down my cheeks. “You’re all right,” Mom murmurs. “You’re going to be all right.”

This time I believe her.

—

It’s spring break and Oliver and Henry are racing around the pool with Percy trotting along behind them, barking at nothing. It’s too cool to open the pool, so the pavement’s not wet, but still. “Be careful,” I tell them as I set up my easel under the shade of my favorite dogwood.

My mom and Uncle Vince sold Double and the first time we all drove by, just to take a quick look, it was a hurt as painful as a burn. But I’ve been by it several times since and it no longer hurts the same way. My mom’s in the kitchen now, cooking. She’ll take a photograph of whatever she’s making after it’s done and give it to me. It’s for the cookbook she’s writing. I’m painting the illustrations. We hope to have it done by the time I start school in the fall. I won’t go back to EMU. I’m starting school here, in northern Virginia, where I can be close to my family. I’m not ready to leave them yet, but I know that time will come. There’s no rush.

My mom’s got the windows open and delicious smells are drifting out. Every so often, Percy stops and lifts his head to take a sniff. I have to do that, too—take sniffs on a regular basis.

The self-portrait I was working on was destroyed in the fire, of course, along with everything else. It’s just as well. It wasn’t right, and no matter how many times I went over the eyes and cheeks and mouth, I would never get there. I’m working in pastel now. I’m seeing myself emerge, the way I really am and not who I thought I wanted to be.

The back gate bangs open. “Uncle Vince!” Henry yells, and the twins scramble up the stone steps. “Hey,” Uncle Vince says, laughing. “Take this in to your mom, okay?” He hands a plastic cake carrier to Oliver, who takes it in his arms and very carefully turns toward the house, Henry pelting ahead to slide open the glass door. Percy’s given up on them both and is nosing around the bushes leading down to the dock.

Uncle Vince’s writing the pastry section of the cookbook, and though he and Mom are working together again, they don’t talk much to each other. Not in the easy way they used to. We’re all being very careful.

“Hey, Arden.” Uncle Vince heads down the steps toward me. “How are you feeling today?”

“I’m okay.”

I was in the hospital for weeks. I had to learn how to breathe again, blowing hard into this plastic tube called a spirometer, which measures how much air my lungs can hold and how much air I can breathe out. I have to cough regularly and take a bunch of pills every day. I have to be careful to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and I’ll have to see a doctor for the rest of my life. But he says I might be able to start swimming again, so that’s okay.

When Uncle Vince came to see me in the hospital, he just sat beside me and held my hand. The third time he came, he asked me what had happened. I’d told my parents. I’d told the police. But what he wanted to know was if Rory had been okay, in the end. I tell him she was brave. I don’t tell him she’d been brave her whole life. I haven’t seen Aunt Gabrielle once, but Dad told me she and Uncle Vince are getting a divorce. I haven’t figured out how I feel about that yet. I decided not to tell anyone the truth about Rory’s scar, the one she got when she was little. That’s the way Rory would have wanted it.

I have scars. Small round ones where the catheters were placed, long red ones scissoring my chest. They’ll fade with time, the doctor tells me, but it’s okay. They remind me that I’m not alone. I never will be again. Rory’s with me, always.