The Good Goodbye

  “So how did he end up here, at this school? Was this his only choice?”

  “I don’t know, Aunt Gabrielle.” I’m uncomfortable. I’m stirring my iced tea, my spoon clattering around and around. She puts her hand on my hand, stopping me, and fixes me with her beautiful eyes. “Do you think Rory is serious?” she asks. What she means is Are they having sex?

  Rory’s been having sex since she was fourteen.

  I’m six years old, maybe seven. I’m going to visit Mrs. Fitz next door because she has had her baby, a little girl named Morgan. My mom and I have picked out a cute pink dress at Macy’s, and while she wraps it up and ties the bow I make the card. It takes me forever to write CONGRATULATIONS. It is the longest word I have ever written. My mom spells it out for me, letter by letter. Mrs. Fitz comes to the door carrying the baby wrapped in a blanket, just the round bald top of her head peeping out, her tiny face. Mrs. Fitz isn’t walking funny anymore and her stomach is a lot smaller. I look at her and then at baby Morgan. I can’t figure it out. I wait until we get home and then I ask my mom: How does a baby get inside a mommy’s tummy? She’s sitting with a cookbook opened in her lap and she looks at me. Well, when a mommy and a daddy love each other…I know where this is going. I have heard this silly stuff before. I shake my head, stopping her. No. I want to know how the baby actually gets in a mommy’s tummy.

  Rory had sex before me, but I knew about sex first. I hold this in my hand, a prize.

  —

  We lie on the pontoon boat, staring up at the sky. Clouds drift past in listless stretched-out shapes that don’t resemble anything. I hold up my hands to try to frame them into interesting shapes. I will do a series of cloud paintings, see if I can make them look both hard and soft, white and filled with color. We could have been sisters, Rory says. This is because my mom knew Uncle Vince before she met my dad. It’s not a secret, but no one talks about it. Did they date? Did they have sex? It’s gross to think about, but Rory is obsessed. Your mom could have been mine.

  Which means Uncle Vince could have been my dad. I point this out and Rory squints at the sky. You’re right, she says. This is a stupid game.

  Who said it was a game? I was there when the back grill caught on fire. I saw Uncle Vince pull my mom back. I saw the way he held her.

  —

  What’s that weird shushing sound? It’s all around me. I try to open my eyes. I try to swallow.

  Uncle Vince says, “Let’s just wait for the tox results.”

  “Why?” Aunt Gabrielle says.

  “It could explain why the girls didn’t get out.”

  “Every time I think about it…”

  “I know, Gabby.”

  He’s the only one who calls her that. His voice is serious, serious as a heart attack. He’s a good listener and he keeps secrets, even when you don’t actually tell him, when he just figures it out on his own. Not that he ever says that he knows. You can just tell. He’d sent me a birthday cake that Rory ate while I was gone—eight thin layers, each a different flavor and color, all frosted white so that when you sliced into it, it looked like a rainbow. I love Uncle Vince, but not like a dad.

  Uncle Vince finds us crouched in the basement storage room, hiding from Aunt Gabrielle. Rory and I have been playing with her mom’s makeup, turning up all her lipsticks into soft shimmering tubes of pinks and reds that we touched with tentative fingertips, squealing at the stickiness. We opened the creamy bottles of foundation and sprayed perfume in waves across the room, and, sneezing, dropped one on the floor to shatter. He looked down at us with a smile I knew he was trying to hide. You should see yourselves. Crouching, he holds his arms wide.

  I miss him. I was so angry at him, but now I get it. He just made a mistake. Don’t we all do that? I want to tell him this. I want to let him put his arms around me and hold me, rocking me from side to side the way he always does.

  “Hunter was crazy about Rory,” Aunt Gabrielle says. “Who knows how far it went.”

  My eyes burn with tears. Hunter loves her so much. There is only one small space for me and I squeeze into it and try to stretch it to fit.

  “You had no warning signs?” Uncle Vince says.

  “Not really. He seemed so nice, but he posted so many pictures of her on Facebook. There was almost nothing about this baseball team he’s on. Don’t you think that’s odd? There were only two of Arden, and Rory was in one of them. It was all Rory.”

  It was. It was.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Gabby.”

  “I just can’t believe…Arden?”

  Arden, what? They’re both looking at me. I want to run and hide. Something is holding me down. Something is in my throat, gagging me with a huge fist.

  “What’s that?” Uncle Vince says.

  “What’s what?”

  “That. Did you hear that?” Uncle Vince’s right beside me. If I could open my eyes I would see him. He would understand. Why can’t I open my eyes? “Sweetheart?”

  “What is it? Is she awake?” Aunt Gabrielle says.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I want my mom. I want this thing out of me. My words crowd uselessly inside my brain. I have a terrible headache. It’s slicing my head into pieces.

  “Get the nurse, Gabrielle.”

  No. I don’t need the nurse. I need my mom. I want my mom. I clutch the sheet, but it stays smooth beneath my fingers. It won’t bunch up. It won’t fight back.

  The pressure around me changes. Someone else is bending over me. “Are you in pain, honey?”

  Everything’s on fire. It blazes through me, eats me up. This thing in my throat. I try to claw at it, but my hand won’t move. I want to cry. I imagine the big paintbrush, dip and swirl. Dip and swirl.

  “She was like this when we first brought her in. I just need to adjust the drip.”

  Make her stop talking. Listen to me.

  “…a good sign?”

  “We need to keep her calm.”

  I try to thump my heels against the mattress, but my legs are too heavy. My heartbeat booms slower and slower. The last thing I hear is Uncle Vince’s quiet voice in my ear, his breath a warm puff against my cheek. “Hang in there, Rory.”

  Wait. He can’t be talking to me. He can’t. Because I’m not Rory.

  Rory

  BACK WHEN I was ten years old and trapped at Arden’s house for the day—admittedly better than being trapped in my own house—I decided how we were going to celebrate our eighteenth birthdays. It was a rainy day and Grandpa George was supposed to be watching us, which meant he was in the living room watching a ball game and we were in the den watching the kind of crap TV my mom would never let me watch, not in a million years. The show we were watching had a bunch of people living together who were constantly fighting and then cuddling under blankets. One of them, a girl named Marcie, was my favorite. She had long black hair poufed on top, which I was obsessed with for some reason, and thick eyeliner that made her eyes look catlike. She wore a lot of tight clothes that zipped down the front, and her arms and neck were covered with colorful vines and flowers that looked like someone had been drawing on her with permanent markers because they never rubbed off. It was on this particular afternoon that it suddenly dawned on me that they were tattoos. Dumb, I know, but in my defense I was only ten. Plus, up until then, I’d never met anyone with a tattoo.

  So it was in the spirit of discovery and daring that I rolled over and said to Arden, Let’s get matching tattoos when we’re eighteen.

  She frowned a little and didn’t take her gaze off the screen. What?

  I could tell she was reluctant. Arden could be a real wimp. I wheedled, It’ll be like we’re sisters. That’s how I used to think. Arden stared at me, and inspired, I added the clincher: you draw it. Because even back then Arden knew she was going to be an artist. So she pushed herself up and went to get her colored pencils. When my mom came in and found the TV playing, she switched it right off, but we didn’t mind. What are you girls doing? she a
sked. I smiled right up at her, big and bright. Nothing, I told her. Even then I knew this was something she could never find out.

  My birthday comes four months before Arden’s, so her eighteenth birthday’s the one that mattered, but mine was when the real countdown began. It was a quiet enough day. I raked in presents, which, if you ask me, is the only reason to celebrate birthdays. But we didn’t go out to dinner and we definitely didn’t have cake with candles. Are you sure? my dad asked, looking disappointed. Very, I told him, and meant it. It’s not that I hated the thought of getting older. Frankly, getting older was the one thing I was looking forward to. That night, I texted Arden. 113 days to go!

  But I could tell Arden was starting to have second thoughts. She kept dropping hints. I hear it’s really painful, she’d say. Or, What if it gets infected? I tried not to be impatient. Don’t worry, I’d say. It’s going to be amazing. And she’d give me a nervous smile.

  I begin researching tattoo parlors Monday afternoon. It’s not as easy as you might think. The one with a good Yelp rating looks totally sketchy in the photographs. The one that looks like a day spa was called StInk. I try to involve Arden in the process, turning my laptop so she can see for herself. The Kitchen Ink. The Ink Empire. She frowns her Arden frown and says, “Maybe we should hold off.”

  As if. I’ve forgotten the name of the TV show we’d been watching, and Marcie probably died of some drug overdose long ago, but I want this tattoo. I want to honor that ten-year-old I’d been, that girl who really believed that just maybe life would be okay.

  Turns out D.D.’s friend has a friend and on Saturday morning, I walk down the sidewalk past a coffee shop and a used bookstore, a hardware store, a gas station, and a consignment store that Arden tried to get me to go to once, but hello? When we pass it, the door’s wide open like a big hug and I know Arden’s slowed down to take a quick look, but I just walk faster. The shuffle of steps behind me as she tries to keep up. “We could go shopping for shoes,” she says, sort of breathless. I have to give her credit; this is something that would normally work.

  I stop, and she bumps into me. She wears a blue sundress that floats on her. Has she lost weight? “I don’t want to go shopping. I want to do this.”

  “I know, but…”

  “You promised.”

  “We were ten.” Her eyes are shiny. She’s going to cry. I’m immune to her crying. She does it all the time. But today is her birthday.

  “Fine. Be a pussy. I’ll go by myself.”

  She chews her lower lip. “No. You’re right. I did promise.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I turn and push open the door. It’s a long, narrow space with pictures all over the walls and a glass display case filled with jewelry. It doesn’t look that clean in here. The linoleum floor’s crappy and some of the pictures taped to the walls look a million years old. But D.D.’s friend’s friend had said this was one of the best places in town, and I know that if we leave now, Arden will never go through with it.

  The guy behind the counter kind of stands up, staying a little hunched as though he’s not that sure he wants to be vertical. “Help you, girls?”

  He’s bald with a long straggly red beard that hangs way past his belly. Not the most reassuring look. His arms are covered with ink that runs up beneath his T-shirt and around his throat, black and red and green dragons all fighting one another with their mouths wide open, showing their fangs. I try not to stare. Gold hoops dangle from both eyebrows and solid ivory gauges the size of quarters fill his earlobes. It takes years to get them to that size.

  I reach into my jeans pocket and pull out a piece of paper folded into a square. “We want this.” I spread out the paper on the glass counter. It doesn’t lie perfectly flat: the creases are eight years old and it’s been traveling in the tight pocket of my jeans for the past twenty minutes. But the image in the corner is clear: a little purple butterfly with green stripes, our favorite colors back then. Cool, I’d told Arden, and I’d meant it.

  She leans in close. “Wow, you still have it?”

  Now I know she’s in.

  The guy says, “That’s a nice one. That’s going to turn out real good.”

  “How much?” I ask.

  “I’ll give you the student discount. Say, seventy.”

  Seventy’s good, and I’m about to nod when Arden speaks up. “Could you do sixty?”

  I settle myself into the chair and stretch out my right arm. Do I want to watch? In the end, I do, wincing and biting my lip as the butterfly spreads its wings on my forearm, angry skin, ink, and blood.

  —

  Arden’s going to surprise her parents by showing up for the weekend. I bet that’s not all she’s going to do, but it’s in my best interest not to say anything, so I don’t. When we get back to the room, she starts scooping up clothes and shoving them into her bag. She’s not even folding them. It makes me want to elbow her out of the way and do it myself. I see the tank top I’d tried to give her lying crumpled on her bed. She hasn’t even taken off the tags. I fight the urge to grab it back and hang it up properly in my closet. I mean, I’d paid full price for that thing.

  “You could come with me, you know.” She’s grinning, her eyes bright. She’s relieved it’s over. It didn’t even hurt that much and now it only itches.

  “Sounds like a blast, but no.” I undo my jeans. The waistband’s been digging into me all morning. It’s a freaking relief to yank them off.

  “Mackenzie will be there.”

  I hold up my Free People jeans and examine them. These are the ones I usually wear when I’m PMS-y and huge. “Like I want to hear all about how fabulous Princeton is and how she’s dating some movie star. No, thank you.” My jeans slide on, soft and easy. I stand up on my chair to examine myself in the mirror over the dresser. They look okay. I climb down and go to my closet.

  “You don’t even have to tell your parents. You can stay with me.”

  I slide the hangers. Nothing preppy, nothing that makes it look like I’m trying. I pull out a backless yellow blouse with long sleeves. Perfect. “What’s the deal, Arden? Are you afraid to take the bus alone?”

  “No.”

  She is. I can tell. “You’ll be fine.” I pull off my T-shirt and slide the silky yellow shirt on, flip my hair over one shoulder, and pick up my brush.

  She sits on her bag and zips it shut. “What are you going to do all weekend?”

  “It’s not even all weekend. It’s twenty-four hours. I think I can find something to do.” I’m brushing my hair with slow, even strokes. It’s getting long. I might need a trim next week. Do I trust the salon in town?

  She stands and looks around. “I hope I’m not forgetting anything.”

  “You’ve got half the room in that bag.” I shake my hair back and think about earrings. Silver hoops. They always work.

  She slings her bag over her shoulder. “Rory?” she says, and I glance over at her. “It was a good idea.”

  I surprise myself again. I close my jewelry box and go over to hug her. Her hair is soft and slippery against my cheek and smells of coconut. We use the same shampoo. “Better hurry or you’ll miss your bus.”

  —

  Why don’t you come by for dinner tonight? Chelsea had said. I’ll make my famous risotto. She doesn’t know risotto’s what my dad makes when he’s uninspired and just throwing something together. Kids had been filing out of the classroom. A few glanced over at us. I’d told Hunter I had to return Chelsea’s book to her. I’d told him not to wait for me after class. Dude, I said to Chelsea, trying not to let my surprise show. You have got to get a life. She’d laughed. Does that mean yes?

  My mother’s trained me. You never arrive at someone’s house empty-handed, she’s said, sliding a bottle of wine into a gift bag or wrapping up a box of scented soaps. I’d glanced around my dorm room, which looked even worse after Arden had thrown everything around during her packing spree, and picked up one of the two white bakery boxes perched on her nights
tand.

  There’s no doorbell, so I knock instead. Chelsea swings open the door. “Ooh,” she says, eyeing the box. “What’s this?”

  “Cake.” Birthday cake, and I hope it doesn’t have Arden’s name scrolled across the top in icing. I should have checked, but now it’s too late.

  “I can always start my diet tomorrow. What can I get you, red or white?”

  So that’s how it’s going to be. Cool. “You have any champagne?”

  She hikes a dark winged eyebrow. “On my salary? You’re lucky I’ve got both red and white.”

  “Okay. White sounds good.”

  “Be right back. Make yourself at home.”

  I wonder why she asked me over. I wonder why I said yes. I walk around the living room, looking at the art on the paneled walls, the shiny pieces of gray pottery arranged on a credenza. The furniture is white and overstuffed, the rug a faded Oriental with tangled fringe. Everything is pale and washed out. I’m disappointed, somehow. This isn’t how I’d imagined it. I run my finger along the spines of the books on the shelves and pull one out. The cover shows a bald man in an orange monk’s robe with his palms pressed together. I try to read the title. “The Dog in All of Us?” I say it out loud.

  Chelsea says behind me, “You know I’m subletting this place, right? None of this stuff is mine. It belongs to a religion professor on sabbatical in Tibet.”

  I slot the book back onto the shelf. “So you don’t collect crappy paper fans?” I turn to face her and see she’s holding glasses and a bottle of wine.

  “Hey, don’t knock it. They’re a thing of beauty when a storm takes out the electricity and it’s a hundred degrees in here.” She hands me a glass.

  The wine is chilled and delicious. It slides down easily. “At least they have good taste in wineglasses.” Riedel. Not bad.

  “Nope. They’re mine. I’m from Portland, where we take our wine very seriously.”

  Which Portland, I wonder, East Coast or West? Do I really care? “I thought you were from Chicago.” I’d visited Chicago on a college trip with my mom and the wind blew at me sideways, making my skirt fly up and my hair dance around my head. The sun shone down, turning the sidewalk to glitter, and tall buildings rose all around. Everything felt trapped, penned in. I could never live here, I’d decided, and crossed Northwestern off my list.