How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (51 page)

“I get scared, Laurie.”

She's shaking her head, sniffling. “Not like me. You don't go around worrying all the time about what everyone thinks of you—trying to be perfect for them all—the kids at school, Dad, even Mom. Not that she'd care.”

She starts to cry properly and I grip my stump hard. It's not my job to comfort her, not anymore.

She reaches into her shorts pocket for a tissue, blows her nose. “The night of her show was horrible, Rhea. I wanted you there so bad, you were the one who was supposed to be with me. Backstage, she practically ignored us, like we were two fans or something.”

I'd forgotten all about the show, hadn't even registered the date as it slipped by. After all the times I'd wanted to meet Laurie's mum, it seems weird that I hadn't thought about it at all.

“Did you go with Cooper?”

She brushes her tears away and her eyes close, just a little. I ask her again.

“Who'd you go with, Laurie?”

It's going to be Becky or Tanya. It's got to be them.

“I went with Ryan.”

I breathe in slow and out even slower.

“I would rather have gone with you, Rae. I wanted to go with you.”

Something has landed on the water of the pool, an insect, a mosquito maybe. There are little folds in the water where it is trying to get out.

“You're dating Ryan again?”

She reaches out again to touch my collarbone, traces her fingers up the soft skin of my neck.

“We're not dating, dating. I needed to keep Dad off my case. It's just a cover—”

“Does Ryan know it's a cover?”

Her fingers are up higher, on my cheek, her little finger grazes my lip.

“It doesn't mean anything, Rhea, none of them do compared to you. Compared to us.”

She turns my face so it's closer to hers, half lit up from the pool light, half in shadow. It's a beautiful face, the slope of her nose, the shape of her cheek, her mouth, her chin. “I was so stupid, Rae. It's just like all those movies and songs
…
it wasn't until you were gone and I missed you so much that I figured out what it meant.”

I almost correct her, tell her again to call me Rhea, but I don't, because I want to hear what she's going to say next.

“I love you, that's what I wanted to tell you. I'm in love with you.”

Her fingers are still stroking my cheek and I feel my throat tighten. She loves me, Laurie loves me, Laurie's in love with me. So many times I've wanted her to say that, imagined her saying it, hoped she'd say it, dreamed she'd say it.

And now she's saying it, I want to talk about something else.

“Aunt Ruth said they're splitting up—her and Cooper.”

If she's surprised that I'm asking this now, after what she just said, she doesn't let on. “They are.”

“I'll believe it when I see it.”

“No, seriously. He's looking at places closer to the restaurant. He even looked at one on Las Olas.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. And she's talking about moving up here, taking some transfer to her company's office in New York for a few months or something.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “I'm sure it's got something to do with you. She's been into the admissions office at Columbia so much, trying to figure out how to keep your place.”

Laurie's too close and I push back a bit, feel the plastic edge of the seat bite into the backs of my knees.

“She never said anything to me. She hasn't even mentioned Columbia to me since she got here.”

Laurie blows her hair out of her eyes. “I don't know. But I bet if you told her you'd come back to Florida, then she wouldn't leave. She'd stay in Coral Springs, I know she would.”

“Why would I go back to Coral Springs?”

She leans in closer. “So we can be together, why else?”

That's when she kisses me, at the end of that sentence, before I know she's going to, before I've taken in what she's saying, what she's not saying. Her mouth is so familiar, I know her feel, her shape, my hand knows just where to touch her hair at the nape of her neck. My body likes this, loves this, and my legs turn towards her so our knees are touching. But my head is still whirring, there is something wrong—I'm just not sure what.

I pull away.

Laurie doesn't get it at first, comes in to kiss again.

“Laurie, stop.”

“What?”

The same look is there, the one from earlier, only it's so fast this time I might have imagined it. “What is it, Rhea? What's going on?”

I take her hand off my shoulder, gently place it on her leg. I can't think with her touching me, I can't think and I need to think.

“This—it's not going to work. Cooper's not going to let you see me, let us be together.”

She pulls her hair into a ponytail, holds it there for a second, lets it go.

“We won't be under the same roof anymore. What's he going to do—keep me under surveillance twenty-four hours a day?”

“So, you wouldn't tell him? You wouldn't tell him about us?”

She rolls her eyes. “'Course I'm not going to tell him, don't be a dumbass!”

“But he'll know, he'll find out—you know what he's like.”

“I'll be eighteen in April, then I can do what I want. Plus, if we're both at school in New York, he won't be able to do anything about it.”

She puts her hand on my knee, and I let her leave it there but I don't hold it. Inside my Docs I scrunch my toes.

“I don't know, Laurie. It feels like we can't just pick up where we left off.”

“Why not? I said I'm sorry.”

“Things have changed, though—”

Her fingers caress my knee. “What's changed? Did something happen on the streets?”

It irritates me, the way she asks that, the same way Aunt Ruth asked, as if that's the only thing that can happen. I pull my knee away.

“Yeah, a lot of fucking things happened. I was scared, hungry. People threatened me. I peed outside, in alleyways with rats, I lost my friend—”

She juts her chin out, the way she always does when she's angry.

“Don't blame me, Rhea. Don't blame me because you ran away—”

“What was I supposed to do?”

She shakes her head. “I don't even think you ran away because of what happened with us. I think it was because of what Dad said about your mom.”

I'm about to deny it, but there's no point in denying it, not when it's true. I stand up, turn my back on her, walk away. Behind me, I hear her stand up too.

“I know about what happened to your mom. Ruth told me and I know you know.”

I'm walking close to the edge of the pool, where the tile is dark blue. I put my heel down slowly, right in front of the toe of my other foot, pretend the line of tile is a tightrope.

“It was shitty the way you found out, what Dad said, but at least you know. At least you can deal with it.”

She sounds so rational, as if it all makes sense, but nothing makes sense. I spin around fast, my Docs making a squeaking noise on the tiles. “You don't get it, Laurie. You don't just ‘deal with it.' It changes everything, don't you see?”

She holds her hands out. “How? How does it change things between us?”

“You don't understand.”

“So, try me. Explain.”

I shouldn't have to explain, that's what I'm thinking, but maybe if I talked to Jean about it, maybe she'd say something different, maybe she'd say I should give her a chance. I take a deep breath.

“I don't know, it's just
…
” I run out of words, start again. “I mean, she drowned, I always knew that, but it's different knowing, you know, knowing that maybe she did it on purpose.”

It's crept in, the “maybe.” I don't know where it came from, but I let it stay.

Laurie's frowning again, the shadows and light on her face.

“But you were the one who always said it didn't matter how someone died? You said it didn't make any difference if someone was hit by a car or abducted by aliens or whatever, that the only thing that mattered was that they were gone. You were the one who said that, not me.”

I did say that, I can hear my own voice saying it, meaning it.

“Just because I said it, Laurie, doesn't make it right—it doesn't make it true.” My voice cracks then and I know I am going to cry and I've never cried in front of Laurie.

She takes a step closer to me, then another. Her eyes are as blue as the pool. “You're still mad at me, aren't you? You're still mad about what happened.”

It's a declaration, it's a question. I can't answer her. I forgive her, I'm still mad at her—I'm mad at everyone. A tear comes.

“Having a mom doesn't make everything perfect, Rhea. Look at me—I'm a fuck-up.”

“No, you're not.”

“That night of her show, watching her on stage, it was horrible because I felt like I was so proud of her and mad with her and jealous of her all at the same time, like everything was like a ball of elastic bands in my stomach and I couldn't separate them all.”

Jean and I have talked about this, how I don't know how to feel more than one feeling at the same time, so I know exactly what Laurie means.

“And all I wanted was for you to be there, sitting next to me, so we could hold hands in the dark.”

Her hand slips into my hand, smooth, familiar. Our fingers interlace. Her fingers are longer than Amanda's fingers. I don't know what makes me say what I say next.

“Were there other times you thought about holding my hand?”

The question catches her in a way she didn't expect. “What?”

“You know, did you miss me at other times? Times when you were happy, I mean.”

I love her frown, the way her face puckers into it, the little lines between her eyes.

“I told you—I missed you all the time. You don't believe me?”

“I'm not saying that. Just that some fun stuff must have happened too—Aunt Ruth told me you were working at the mall with Cindy. Maybe you guys cracked up over some joke, or maybe you saw a movie you wanted to tell me about or something.”

Her frown is deeper, she doesn't get where I'm going with this at all and I'm not sure I do either.

“What the fuck, Rhea? You think because I went to see
The Matrix
and laughed with my friends that it means I don't care about you? Like I wasn't allowed to have any fun?”

I'd forgotten, until she says that, that I saw
The Matrix
too, or at least parts of it, before I fell asleep, which is why me and Sergei went in the first place. He liked it, I remember, but I didn't really. Somehow it made me think about Laurie, watching it, but everything made me think about her then.

“You've no idea what the last few months have been like for me. Dad ignoring me, him and Ruth fighting all the time. It took him weeks to even talk to me, to let me out of the house—”

I pull my hand away from hers. “Is that why you needed your cover story?”

“I knew it!” She points a finger at me. “You're mad about Ryan. You've always been so jealous, Rhea. I knew this is what this was about.”

She's smiling a big smile, she's figured it out. She's on familiar territory, my jealousy about the guys she dates. We've been here, had this argument before, ten times, a hundred times. Except I'm not jealous tonight, not anymore.

She takes my hand again, in both of hers this time.

“Ryan doesn't mean anything, none of them do. You're the one I want to be with.”

She moves closer, like she wants to kiss me again, and with the light of the pool I bet our silhouettes can be seen from the house, if someone was looking. I tip my head back, and above, the stars are so close and so bright I feel like I can reach out and run my hand through them. And I remember what you wrote in your letter, about the drive to San Francisco and driving up into the universe, and I think about saying this to Laurie, but that's when I know—she's not the one I want to say it to.

I shake my head. “I'm sorry, Laurie.”

The pucker frown is back, she doesn't get it yet. I pull my hand out from hers, take a breath. “I don't think this is what I want.”

She tilts her head to one side. The pool light is beautiful on her face.

“But I love you. I told you that, Rhea. I'm not making it up.”

“I'm sorry.”

She says something else then, about me needing time after everything that's happened, how she can give me more time, but I've stopped listening. It's not that I'm not there, I'm more there than maybe I've been all night. I'm fully aware of my feet in my Docs, hot even at this time of night, the place where they tighten around my calf. Of the warm air around my body, coming into my mouth, my nose, and out again. Of my left hand, hanging down by my side, my stump, my missing arm, part of me, not part of me.

She's still talking when I interrupt her. “I'm sorry, Laurie, but I'm not in love with you.”

She plucks a strand of hair, brings it to her face, sucks it. I love her hair, the feel of it in my hand. I'll never feel it again. Her face crumples.

“There's someone else, isn't there? I know there is.”

The image that comes to my mind isn't a clear one, not the way I like things to be clear. It's not even all an image—there's sounds and texture in there too, warmth and coolness, a dark car, a Scrabble board, the sound of the waves, a kiss. I don't answer her, but she knows, I think she knows.

And standing there, by the pool, two feet and twenty thousand miles apart, there's more I want to say to her—that I don't know if what we had was love or something else, that I'll never forget her, that maybe she doesn't love me either. But I don't get a chance to say any of that, because she pushes through the gate and starts to run up the steps. And there's a moment then, with the gate swinging and her shadow, black against the darker shadow of the house, that I nearly call her back. And if Jean asked me the feeling right then, it's sadness, a wave of it, an ocean of it, and I don't know if it's my sadness or Laurie's or if that even matters, but it's nearly enough to make me call her name, call her back, to hold her and comfort her and let her kiss me again.