Dear Rudy,
My least favourite thing that people say about you is that you ‘know how to have a good time’. I get it. You’re the life of the party, the ‘fun’ one. You’ve never been in a hurry to be anywhere or anyone; you’re just in it for the laughs. It’s just that it’s not really an accurate summation of your character. It would be like saying I am good at school. Sure, that’s true, but it’s not the whole picture. Maybe a year ago I would have agreed, I would have said you live your life as though it isn’t that important, but as the year goes on and September is approaching, I’m starting to think maybe that is more about how others view your life than how you feel about it. It’s funny how people’s opinions of you can be so different from how you view yourself, isn’t it.
It must have been hard having all that pressure on you right from the start. It’s like Dad had something to prove with you—you never would have been able to live up to his expectations, even if you’d wanted to. So I guess not wanting to was always going to be the better option. If you automatically lost at Dad’s game, you automatically won at Mum’s, just by being born and being you. She’s had real-life love-heart eyes for you for as long as I can remember, and I get that, I do. I think Ollie and I have the Rudy love-heart eyes too, the big brother variety.
You probably think I’m completely nuts from all the things I’ve told you from the inside of my head in these letters, but some days I do get a break from it all, where I am not watching the clock or making lists or remembering nicknames. Break days come completely by accident—the more I think about them, the harder they are to find. Usually one comes when the air is fresh and someone talks to me with a soft voice and I don’t have any assignments due. I used to get break days when we’d ride to Amy’s place and go jumping off the jetty with her. I haven’t had a break day at all this year, until today; I had my first proper shift at Robins. And it was nice.
Aggie was there when I arrived, jingling and singing and smiling. She’s happy like Ollie, all shiny and joyous and bright. She was listening to Tash Sultana through the shop speakers, which is something you’d never usually hear in Robins, and hanging up jewellery on the racks. The way our conversation went, it reminded me about how differently people can look at the same things. She has a pretty good handle on love, I think.
‘I’m putting it out there, I’d like a summer love this year,’ she announced, just like that. I asked if she meant a boyfriend and she shook her head.
‘Like a handsome, interesting man who will come into my life, teach me something new about myself, and then leave with a twinkle in his eye. I’m not up for anything serious, but I’d like that.’
I assured her she would find it, because it felt like she would. She asked if I had ‘a love’ and I told her I have a boyfriend called Mitch. Maybe it’s weird that I called him a boyfriend instead of my love. She asked me to tell her about him. I couldn’t think of much to say, so I said he’s searching.
‘That’s an interesting way of looking at it. What about you, are you searching too?’ she said.
‘I’m just trying to find my bearings. So much has changed in the past year and there’s so much more to come.’
‘Change is okay.’
‘Change is really hard for me. I like to know how things are going to go.’
‘Change is a constant in life, so there’s reliability in it that way. It can be fun too,’ she said, and I told her I couldn’t remember a time when change was fun. She promised to show me how. We talked more about you, Rudy, and she said you sound like the kind of person who ‘marches to the beat of your own tambourine’, which I don’t think is the real saying but also I think she’s right. She also told me a story about her last boyfriend, Charlie. They met at a party last year, thrown by a girl from her old band. It was in an old wooden Queenslander, and they had both been filling up their drinks in the kitchen when they caught eyes. Aggie said he was hot in that undernourished grungy kind of way, which sounds like no one I know. Anyway, Charlie teased her for her colourful polka-dot dress. He said she looked like a child at a birthday party, and they both laughed. He told her his band was playing later that night, and to hang around for it. She did, and they weren’t really that good, and then she and Charlie kissed. She said he was a sloppy kisser, but acted like he was doing her a favour. They went back to his house that night and slept together but didn’t ‘sleep together’ if you know what I mean. And then when they did ‘sleep together’ the next week, he said he was working on himself right now, and that maybe they should just keep things casual because he didn’t want to hurt her. She was hurt, but she kept things casual, and then a guy from art school asked her out. Charlie said of course she was his girlfriend, and to tell the other guy to fuck off. So they were boyfriend and girlfriend for a month or so, and he would get drunk and turn up at her house if he was in the neighbourhood, and he would forget to call her back. She finally broke up with him and he called her every day for two weeks. He wrote her horrible poems and cried when she told him to leave her alone. I told her it sounded very confusing. She said it was simple.
‘He wasn’t upset about losing me, he was sad because he’d never been dumped before and it bruised his ego. He was a waster and a user and exactly what I needed at that time to wake me up. Now I don’t wait around for things to get better, I make things better myself,’ she said.
It gave me something to think about, like maybe there’s a chance I could start to make things better for myself too.
All in all, it was a really good day. There are things I don’t think I can make better, Rudy, like you not being here, but there are some things I can. It’s really got me thinking. I don’t know what it means that working at Robins gave me my first good day. I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that. Then again, lots of things are not how they are supposed to be, and that doesn’t change the fact that they are, does it.
I miss you.
Love, Erin