How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? (9 page)

I know she's lying about the ice cream, Mum, just like she was lying before. I know that she can't remember or she never knew or that maybe you never had a favourite flavour, but it's easier to say “strawberry” or “chocolate” than tell me any of those things because it's not like I'll ever know, will I? She probably thinks it's only a small thing, that it's only a white lie, that it doesn't matter.

She might think that, but it does matter.

It fucking well matters to me.

Writing all that down about Aunt Ruth makes me think about Sergei. He lied to me too, about how he'd be there last night, how he'd come with me this morning. He's just like Aunt Ruth with her lies. Why do people keep lying to me, Mum? Why do they think they can do that?

And what is wrong with me, that I keep on believing them?

Rhea

830 Park Avenue, New York
28th April 1999
6:36 p.m.

Dear Mum,

The truth is I lie too. The truth is I lied first. I should have told you that. I should have told you before but, fuck it, I'm telling you now. Does that change things? If you lie to someone is it okay for them to lie back? Does everything become lies then? If I hadn't started it by telling that lie, would things have been different? Would Aunt Ruth have told the truth all along?

I've been on this corner all day. All fucking day. I had to go all the way into Central Park to find a loo because there's nowhere around here and I'm starving because there's no pizza places or McDonald's or anything either. Where the fuck is Sergei? Fuck him. I know I could have missed him when I went to pee, but I was really quick, I didn't hang around to look for the bench with your name on it or anything, the one Dad said was there, unless he was lying too. I didn't tell Sergei about the bench. I haven't told him because I haven't been able to find it yet—but it's fun looking—and maybe because that's something I want to do on my own.

The lie I tell Aunt Ruth is the time she visits right after the accident. It's only a few months since her summer visit—usually I'm a different age every time she comes, but this time I'm still seven. No one tells me she's coming, or maybe they do and I forget because I'm in hospital and sleeping all the time. In the middle of one sleep, I open my eyes and she's there. I think it's a dream and I fall back asleep, but then I'm awake again and she's still there, next to the bed. I don't know how many times I fall asleep and wake up again until I'm awake enough to stay awake. I know it's her but because of all the drugs and everything, I make a mistake and I say, “Mum?”

I don't know if that's what makes her cry, or if she was crying already, but she sniffs to make herself stop and picks up a paper bag off the floor. There are furry ears sticking out, grey and white, and I know it's a bunny rabbit even before she lifts it out so I can see its face and its body and its white fluffy tail. I reach out to feel its fur before the machines and tubes yank me back and she turns away to look out the window, but really I know she's crying again.

Time is funny in the hospital. Sometimes when I wake up, Dad is there instead of Aunt Ruth, but it's mostly her and they're never there together. I don't know how long anyone stays or what day it is. After a few days, I'm allowed up and I walk down the corridor to the TV room. Two days after that, I'm allowed to go home. At first, I think it must be Sunday, because it's the afternoon and Dad is off work, but it turns out it's Wednesday, and that I've been in hospital for over two weeks and that the shop has been closed since the day of the accident.

Aunt Ruth stays with us, in Nana Farrell's old room, instead of a hotel the way I always wanted her to, only it's not like the time she came in the summer. In front of me, her and Dad smile at each other and say nice things, but whenever they think I'm asleep they're always fighting.

I know the shop is still closed because they argue about it, and I don't know where Dad goes during the day, but she's the one who's there. She's the one who cuts a line down my pyjama sleeve so it folds in two flaps and I can get it on over the bandage. She's the one reading me stories, holding my bandage outside the bath so it doesn't get wet. She's the one who practises cleaning her teeth with me, both of us using our left hands, turning it into a game. I don't remember my stump hurting but it must have been hurting because I remember her in my room at night with a facecloth, wiping my head.

It's not like Dad wasn't there at all, he's nearly always there at dinner time, but he hardly says anything. At the end, he stands up and brings his plate to the counter before kissing my hair and saying “I'll leave you two to it” and going out the back door. One night, he comes home from the Drop Inn early and he sees me drawing with my left hand, holding the page with my stump the way Aunt Ruth showed me, and he puts his head into the inside of his elbow and leaves again. That's the night she follows him out and they argue in the garden, but low, because they think I won't hear.

I want her to stay, that's what makes me tell the lie. I want her to stay and even though she stays for ages and ages, even after I go back to school, I know she won't be able to stay forever. She's on the phone more, nearly every night, whispering in the hall, waiting until she thinks I'm sleeping or watching telly and not listening, but I'm always listening.

That night, I'm going to the loo when I hear her.

“I know,” she says. “It's been a month and a half. I've used up all my time. Steve put it to me straight—either get back or I'll have no job to get back to.”

I make myself breathe the way a feather would breathe.

“She seems much better. They're so resilient, it's amazing. She's back in school already.”

I peek over the banister. I can see the top of her hair. There's a row of silver in the brown I don't remember from before.

“He's not great.” She pauses and looks out through the porch glass, as if she's checking to see if Dad is coming home, even though it's dark so you can only see black. “I've persuaded him to open the shop again, but he won't talk about what happened. I've tried, but he gets so defensive, runs out to the pub. The only thing he'll say is that he's sure the safety guard was on, that he always leaves it on.”

I close my eyes.

“I know, that's what I keep asking myself too: how does a seven-year-old get a safety guard off a meat grinder?”

I make my steps tiny, squinchy little baby steps that take me back to my room. In bed, I remember I still need the toilet but I'm afraid to go out again. I can hear her voice but not the words anymore. The phone gives a little ring when she hangs up.

When I start to cry, I'm crying for real, not faking, only maybe making it a bit louder so I know she'll definitely hear. The floorboard on the landing squeaks and the door opens and she's there.

“Rhea, honey, what's the matter?”

She sits on the bed and I move my legs over.

“Was it another nightmare?”

I nod. Her fingers are cool on my forehead.

“It's okay, honey, those dreams aren't real. They're scary but they're not real.”

She pulls a tissue from her sleeve and holds it for me. I blow my nose into it.

“Are you hungry?” she goes. “Would you like a treat?”

I'm not, but I say I am, because she buys fancy biscuits to make me feel better and she wants to give me a treat. When she comes back, she has a tray with a glass of lemonade and a plate with Viscounts and Jaffa Cakes. I take a Viscount but before I can unwrap the foil, I start to cry again.

“Honey,” she goes, “what's wrong?”

The crying is worse than before—breath and snotty tears all caught up together. She puts her arms around me and I smell her perfume, and that makes me cry harder.

“Ssssh, it's okay. It's okay, baby.” Her hands rub ovals on my back. I don't think she's ever done this before but it's like I remember her doing it, I remember someone doing it.

“What is it?” she goes. “You can tell me.”

I cry. I hiccup. I cry more. She thinks I can tell her, but I can't. Not because I don't want to, but because it's all tangled up in my head and I don't know where the beginning is to start to unravel it. It might have been Dad not letting us write the letters or it might have been when he stopped listening to Hendrix or going on our Sunday walks. It might have been after her visit last summer. It's all knotted together, along with the safety guard on the meat mincer and the way I go to sleep every night pretending that I'm sleeping in her apartment in New York and not in my bed in Rush. I want to ask her to take me to America with her, or to stay in Nana Farrell's room forever, only I can't ask her because she might say no, and that'd be worse than never asking at all.

“Sorry,” I go, when I stop crying enough to speak.

“Honey.” She brushes my hair back from my face. “You've nothing to be sorry for. What are you sorry for?”

I can barely hear my own voice. “I didn't mean to make you and Daddy sad.”

“Baby, Rhea.” She holds me a little away from her so I can see her properly. “You didn't do anything wrong. What happened—it wasn't your fault. You know that? You shouldn't have been there on your own.”

I shake my head. “Lisa was with me.”

“But your Dad, Rhea, an adult—”

“Daddy was in the big fridge. The delivery came, it was only a few minutes—”

“Even for one minute, honey, you shouldn't have been alone.” She looks close into my face. Her eyes are brown like yours in the pictures. “Can I ask you something, honey? The machine—can you remember if the safety guard was on? Had your daddy put it on the machine?”

There are webs of red across the white bits of her eyes. I don't want her to be annoyed with me, to hate me. I want her to stay. And that's when I think of the lie.

“No.”

She's too quiet and I know I need to say something else to make her believe me.

“Before the delivery, Daddy was making Mrs. Sinnott's order. I wanted to help him and show Lisa that I knew how to do it.”

That part is true, but I don't tell her the rest—how Dad put the safety guard on and I tell Lisa I know how to take it off, and that if I do the order right he's going to let me work in the shop every Saturday.

“You're sure, Rhea? You're sure the safety guard wasn't on?”

Aunt Ruth is holding my shoulders then, her fingers gripping me hard.

I nod. The lie comes out like normal words. “I'm sure.”

We eat the biscuits between us and even though I don't want them, I keep eating anyway. There are crumbs on the blanket, six little balls of rolled-up tinfoil on the tray. Aunt Ruth looks like she's far away and, in my head, I can hear Lisa's voice over and over, so loud I think she might be able to hear it too.
Rhea, don't. Rhea, leave it. Rhea, stop.

Later, I hear them fighting, Aunt Ruth and Dad. They're shouting in the hall until someone remembers me and they go into the sitting room. I can still hear bits of the fight through the door but I don't get up and listen. Instead I go to sleep, because I think the lie is working and that they're fighting because she wants to take me with her. And I think she's going to win.

The lie doesn't work, Mum. Maybe lies never work. She goes anyway. She goes the next weekend and, by then, it's way too late to take the lie back. And she never asks me again—ever—and Dad never does either. And now he's dead and I'll probably never see her again, so I wanted to tell you the truth. I wanted to tell someone.

Aunt Ruth cries at the airport when she's going, but I don't. It doesn't make sense, her saying it breaks her heart to leave me, because she's the one who's going, she's the one who won't stay. None of it makes sense and even as she kisses me and hugs me hard and says she'll phone all the time and come and visit, I'm deciding that I don't care and that she's never going to see me cry again.

She doesn't come that summer, because of work, and then at Christmas she has to cancel her flight because Nana Davis is sick and she sends me a letter with American money to pay for tickets for us to come to see her, but Dad says we can't go because Christmas is too busy in the shop. He says we'll go another time, but we never do and I don't know what happens to the money. The next time I see her is when she comes for my birthday, when I'm nine, and she brings me three books that are way too babyish and a Barbie, but I've never liked Barbies.

After that, she comes over three more times, between the birthday when I'm nine and when Dad dies. Three times in seven years and one of them is when she's on her way to London for work and she only stays for the weekend. The phone calls go from every week, to every month, to Christmas and birthdays to check her presents have arrived. By then, her presents are American money, and even though I like the green twenty-dollar bills, like something from the telly, it's a pain to get Dad to go to the bank to change them, and half the time he forgets.

I wish I had those twenty-dollar bills now.

I don't know what the connection is between my lie about the machine and the lies she told after that. Maybe there's no connection, maybe it's just a coincidence, maybe everyone lies. Maybe growing up isn't learning to spot the lies, maybe growing up is not expecting people to tell the truth.

I always knew Cooper was a liar, you could tell by his smarmy smile and his hair, but it turned out Laurie was a bigger liar than him—a better liar than him—because she'd hide the lie in part of the truth so it made it harder to spot.

But even though they were bad, Aunt Ruth was still the worst. I never heard a bigger lie than the one she told me the night I left. That was horrible, what she said about you that night. That was the absolute worst lie of all.