The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley
I DON’T CARE what they say—cutting is for losers. I get all about how the sharp pain’s supposed to be a relief, a distraction from what’s really bothering you, but seriously? It’s gross. It leaves scars. I tried it once in seventh grade. Everyone was doing it, so I locked myself in my bathroom and pressed the tip of a razor blade into my thigh. I felt nothing, not even pain. I wiped away the tiny drop of blood and tossed out the razor. My mother would have found out, eventually. You can wear long sleeves and pants for only so long.
I hate to admit it, it’s such a cliché, but in eighth grade, I did the typical anorexia shuffle. It was clean and fairly easy. Hell, my mom even approved of how skinny I was getting. I felt powerful in a way I’d never felt before. But then Mackenzie told me Brice Hanover was calling me the Titless Wonder. After I bashed in the headlights of his Beamer with a brick, I ate one of my dad’s banana cream pies with a spoon while it was still warm and decided there had to be another way.
There was. It had been there all along—at the Kangaroo gas station where they never asked for ID, Mackenzie’s parties when her parents were out of town, even now on Arden’s pontoon boat with the broken lock on the small refrigerator, the moon gleaming down as the lake bumps us gently against the dock. Three-thirty in the morning and my parents were finally asleep, having yelled at each other for hours while I sat huddled in my bedroom and waited them out. I reach inside for another cold can.
“My dad’s going to know,” Arden warns as I crack the top.
“No, he won’t.” I take a noisy sip. Uncle Theo sees what he wants to see.
“You better not drive home.”
I ignore her. She’s always saying stuff like that. I don’t even know how we’re related.
She’s sitting on the bench opposite, with her knees to her chest, wearing pajamas, her feet bare, every toenail painted a different color. No one does that anymore, I told her, but she just capped the bottle of orange polish. I do, she said, and reached for the baby blue. But I saw her hesitate.
When we were littler and could fit, Arden and I would stretch out side by side on the springy Astroturf carpet and stare up at the sky as the water moved beneath us. I don’t get planking, Arden would say. Or, I got picked last again in lacrosse. I wouldn’t mean to, but I’d say, I made myself throw up at school, and I’d feel Arden’s fingers curl around mine.
Percy’s in my lap, the soft whiskers of his muzzle tickling my chin. “No kisses,” I tell him, but still he swipes my cheek with his warm tongue. “Ick. Stop it, you dumb dog. Why’d you let him out?”
“You want him standing by the back door, barking? Just let him kiss you. I’m sure Blake won’t mind.”
“Don’t be disgusting.”
“Dogs’ mouths have fewer bacteria than human mouths do.”
“Dogs’ mouths reek.”
Above us, Arden’s house is all glass on the side facing the lake. Stone steps wind down past spiky forsythia and tightly budded azaleas, rosebushes cut to stubby knots, empty wooden boxes filled with dirt that in a month will be mounded with green. Arden calligraphed the small signs that poke up out of the dirt: marigold, baby kale, purslane, cutting celery, saltwort, hyssop, red-veined sorrel, oregano, mint, fennel, six kinds of basil, cilantro, rosemary. The only thing growing now this early in the year is the white lavender I’d given Aunt Nat years ago, a tiny sprig I’d won at Flower Mart that had taken root and taken over. Every winter she chops it down and every spring it springs up even bigger, bullying everything around it. You should dig it up, I told Aunt Nat, and she had rocked back on her heels and squinted at me in the bright sunshine, one gloved hand held up to shield her eyes. Not in a billion years, she said, and I felt her love bloom toward me.
“My dad says even if we did get reduced tuition, there’s no way we could afford the airfare and housing,” Arden says.
Airfare’s only a couple hundred dollars. That’s how much I spend on a shirt. I kick off my Toms and tuck my feet beneath me. Percy bounces a little in my lap, then tightens himself into a doughnut. I run my hand down his smooth head, dig my fingers into the thick fur of his neck. I’m allergic to dogs, my mother says every time I ask. You could take medicine, I say, but she ignores me.
“They’re talking about EMU,” Arden says. “Grandpa’s on the board, remember?”
“EMU? Be serious.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
“It’s so much worse than nothing. Don’t give up. Our parents will figure something out.”
“How? They’re not even talking to each other.”
“They’ll get over it.” I mime looking at my wrist, at the imaginary watch. “Say, in about seven hours, when they serve lunch.”
You had no right! Aunt Nat had stormed. The doorbell had rung and then I heard her and Uncle Theo come in and go into the living room, where their voices faded but still came up the stairs to where I stood behind my opened bedroom door. I thought it was a sure thing, my dad had argued. I was going to use the money to expand the business. It wasn’t about me. The defensiveness in his voice made my skin prickle and I’d started to come out of my room to confront everyone and tell them it was just a stupid mistake when Uncle Theo said, Who do you think you’re kidding, Vince? It’s always about you. I’d been so shocked at the rage in his voice that I’d stepped back into my room to hide behind the door. My mother’s voice had bladed through, piercing. Everyone’s talking about money, money, money. But don’t you realize? We have lost so much more than that.
Arden’s biting her thumbnail. “What if we have to sell our house? What if we have to sell the boat?”
“Don’t be such a drama queen.”
“I’m not. My parents are really freaking out.”
Which doesn’t mean we have to. “Listen. When you meet with Guidance, don’t tell her why you’re looking for a different school. Let her think you’ve decided you can’t live so far away from home or something.”
“That’s what you’re worried about, what people will think?”
“No offense, Arden, but you don’t get it. You don’t know what it’s like.”
The lake’s a mirror, not a ripple showing. Trees stand dark and tall. My parents had argued about moving out here after Arden’s family did. My dad wanted to live on the lake, too, but my mom had said she would never leave her beautiful old Tudor house and all her wonderful neighbors, who included a congressman, a grocery store magnate, the secretary of the treasury, and a former UN ambassador. We’ve lived there my whole life and my mother’s never once talked to anyone but the mailman and the lady next door when she needed her to move her car, but it’s probably the only time I’m glad my mom won. I love living in D.C., right in the heart of everything. “Remember when you first moved here and we ate all those lizard eggs?”
“You told me they were Tic Tacs.”
“I thought they were Tic Tacs.” The tiny white oblongs littered the windowsills—what else could they have been?
“I can still remember how they tasted.”
“Dry and crunchy. Yum.”
“You were always getting me to eat stupid things. Remember the snail you told me was escargot?”
A plain gray garden snail I’d convinced her was a delicacy. “I couldn’t believe you fell for that.”
“I hate you.”
“Remember when we tried to prick our thumbs?” Blood would make us closer than cousins. It would make us real sisters.
“What do you mean ‘tried’? I did prick my thumb.”
True. “No way was I going to do it after you screamed like that.”
She snorts. “Typical.”
An owl hoots, sounding close, and Percy lifts his head. “I’m sorry my dad screwed up,” I say.
Arden, her face a pale smudge, her long blond hair shining. “Not your fault.”
I’ll never tell her, never in a million years, but sometimes I love her more than anyone on this planet.
—
The cafeteria smells moist and sti
I lead the way through the tables. “Oh, my God, you should see her picture,” Mackenzie’s saying. She’s got three glasses of milk lined up on her tray, her latest diet. Three glasses of milk a day and a banana. I watched her eat a banana the day before as she cut it into tiny cubes that she placed one by one on her tongue and sucked. Next week she’ll be on to something else. Mackenzie’s diets never last more than a couple of weeks. Her long hair falls across her face as she frowns at her big-ass cell phone gripped between her hands. It cracks me up every time I see her pull it out. She inherited it from her geeky brother and was counting the days until she could get a new one. “She’s so ugly.”
“She can’t be that bad,” Abby says.
Mackenzie looks up as I pull out the chair beside her, bright blue eyeliner thick around her brown eyes, then back down again quickly. “She can seriously be that bad.”
“What are we talking about?” I say.
“Roommates,” Emilie says.
“She’s a voice major,” Mackenzie wails.
“Could be worse,” Emilie says. “She could be into taxidermy.”
“Or rugby,” Abby says.
“I Facebooked a couple kids yesterday,” Jessica says. “We’re going for a quad.”
“I got a single,” Emilie says. “I told them I sleepwalked.”
Abby laughs.
“I bet she’s a virgin.” Mackenzie sticks her phone in my face. “Doesn’t she look like a virgin?”
A narrow face, long brown hair. Forgettable. I shrug. “Maybe.”
Mackenzie groans. “Great. A virgin voice major.”
“What about you, Rory?” Abby asks. “Who are you rooming with?”
“I haven’t decided,” I start to say, then notice how everyone’s looking around the room, everyone but Abby. A tremor goes through me.
Emilie shakes her head. “Idiot.”
“What?” Abby looks at me, her eyes buggy. “What?”
They know. Somehow they all know.
Mackenzie tucks in the corner of her mouth, to make her dimple show. The fake sympathy on her face is sickening. “Sorry, Rory. We know how much you wanted to go to Harvard.” She puts her icy fingers on mine and I snatch my hand away. In seventh grade, she spread horrible rumors about me, and that’s when I knew she was the one I’d need to win over. More than win over—supplant.
“Yeah, you worked so hard,” Jessica says. She’d put on too much blush. She looks like a clown.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” Abby begs.
“Later,” Emilie hisses.
I stand and drop my half-eaten apple into the brown puddle of glop on Jessica’s plate. She gasps and lurches back from the splash.
I push my way through the rising and falling voices, the clattering dishes, the laughter, and the clanging of metal spoons against serving dishes, digging out a tunnel for just me, all the noises trailing after and then closing up solid, sealing me out as though I’m a ghost. As though I never existed.
—
I drive straight home after school, turn off Connecticut and onto the quieter streets of my neighborhood, past the house with the broad brown stripes dug into the lawn from when Blake’s Jeep accidentally jumped the curb, the fire hydrant Arden and I painted smiley faces on, the Israeli guard walking his German shepherds who doesn’t even look at me, though I’m pretty sure he’s the one who had to drag his gargantuan attack beasts off me when I had to walk home four years ago after a party my parents didn’t know about.
Where r u? Mackenzie texted, adding a row of emoji: hearts cracked in half and bleeding bright red drops. She’s at Zorba’s with everyone else, smoking on the patio, hiking up the hems of their uniform dresses to get a little sun. They’ll order pizza and leave it untouched on the table, crunch the ice in their diet sodas, and talk about boys, teachers, parties. Who’s getting high in the bathroom; who’s been pulled over for driving on the wrong side of the road. A couple of girls will rush in from tennis practice, with their short skirts and pale thighs, and drag chairs over from another table. Then the boys from Saint Anthony’s will thunder in, freshly showered, their hair wet and their cheeks red, reeking of spicy cologne that always makes me sneeze. Then everyone will be sitting on everyone’s lap, or pressed standing in small groups in the corners. At six-thirty, Mr. Zorba will shoo everyone out to make room for the Real Paying Customers, and everyone will spill onto the sidewalk, laughing and making plans.
My favorite time of day, usually.
My mom’s car is in the driveway, her purse open on the passenger seat. The bill compartment is fat with bills. I have to be careful when I slide out a twenty, time it for when she’s super-busy and might not notice. Gabby, my dad’s always saying. You have to be more careful. It makes me crazy, too: I know lots of kids whose cars have been broken into. But my mom always thinks she’s the exception. My dad would reach in to grab her bag and stow it in the trunk. She’s your mother, he’d say to me, with a wink, and I’d toss back, You married her.
I hear her now in the sunroom, heels clicking on the terrazzo tiles. She’s probably watering her orchids a drop at a time. She’ll be in there for ages, talking to one important client after another on her cell phone. Let me find you something more classic, she’ll say. Or, Not many people can wear orange. I set my book bag on the floor. If she asks why she hadn’t heard me come in, I’ll just tell her I’d called out. Sometimes that works.
I tiptoe up the stairs in my bare feet, go into my mom’s dressing room, and haul her little stepstool over to the cubbies that line the wall, filled with shoes wrapped in tissue paper. Here’s where she hides crisp hundred-dollar bills sleeved in bank envelopes, her Ativan, and chewy chocolate laxatives. I feel around behind the black silk rhinestone stilettos. Nothing. I stand high on my tiptoes to make sure. I check the one to the right. I check them all, but the robin’s-egg-blue Tiffany box holding my beautiful gold bracelet isn’t there anymore.
Natalie
THE HOSPITAL CORRIDOR’S a winding tunnel of hard white surfaces reflecting noise and light. A headache starts, pushing its way between my eyes and settling in, a solid knot. My rain-damp clothes are dry, but my shoes squeak against the linoleum. After my first few circuits, the nurse at the nurses’ station no longer glances up with a smile. She’s checked and reassured me that Arden made it through surgery without complication, but she can’t explain why Arden still hasn’t been wheeled to her room, which is prepped and waiting—the equipment rolled in and positioned against the walls. The room is as dark as Rory’s, intentionally so. The girls need to stay calm while they recuperate. I will have to get my nerves in check before Arden arrives. I will need to force down my jitters because surely she will sense it, but all I can think of is I need a cigarette.
I pat my pockets, reach into the bag hooked over my shoulder. Of course there’s nothing there. I hide my pack in my desk at Double where Theo would never find it. I’d quit when I was pregnant with Arden. He doesn’t know I’ve started up again.
Theo’s in admissions, signing papers. Vince and Gabrielle are in with Rory, and I haven’t seen any other family members. Nurses have been going in and out of the sliding glass doors leading in to patients’ rooms. They talk quietly in the hall. One of them nibbles cheese crackers from a plastic bag as she stands beside a wheeled computer, pressing buttons. The smell is nauseating. It fights with the astringent odors of cleaning solutions.
I wonder where I can buy a pack of cigarettes—surely they don’t sell them in the gift shop—when the metal doors behind me swish open to admit two nurses pushing a gur
The male nurse nods. “We’ll get her settled and then you can visit.”
I can visit? I clutch the railing of the stretcher and look down, but this girl has her head wrapped around with white gauze. Only her right eye, swollen shut, is visible, the small tip of her nose, a bump of chin. Her mouth gapes open to admit a long plastic tube fixed in place by pieces of white medical tape. It makes her look dull, vacant. Arden has never been an openmouthed sleeper. A stubborn tuft of blond hair sticks out from amid the bandages. I walk alongside and reach to pat it into place, then catch myself from correcting this small rebellious act, this defiance that says Here I am. I am here.
“Arden,” I say, despite myself. “Hello, my darling.” She doesn’t blink the one eye I can see. She doesn’t part her lips and speak. I want to cry.
The head of the bed is elevated to let gravity help drain the fluid seeping into Arden’s skull and dangerously pressing her brain against the bone. A tube protrudes through the mask of gauze above her temple and more tubes loop across her body, forming a heavy web of plastic. Both arms are bandaged. Very gingerly, I reach for her right hand and turn it fractionally toward me. A glimpse of a few inches of pale forearm stained with orange Betadine, and beneath it, a little purple-and-green butterfly, its hand-drawn imperfect outline, its not-quite-symmetrical wings looking bruised.
Then we’re in her room, the nurses guiding the bed against the wall. I step back to allow them to move around Arden, hooking things up, plugging things in with the aid of small flashlights, eerie beams of light dashing around in focused concentration. So many machines clustered around the bed, more than there are in Rory’s room. That’s okay, isn’t it? They are all different, tall, squat, rectangular, and square. Their screens vary. Yellow, pale blue striped with dark blue, a jagged trio of lines moving across a black screen. This last machine hangs from the wall in the corner, silent and foreboding, staring down. Another box hangs over the foot of her bed, and the nurse sees me looking. “She’s got on compression boots,” he explains, and lifts the sheet to allow me a quick glance, flashing the beam of his flashlight so I can see how Arden’s legs are encased knee to ankle in thick white pads with Velcro straps. As I watch, they swell to double their size and then release, shrinking back down with a sigh.