Dear Rudy,
Sometimes I don’t think about you at all. Like, if you were to look inside my head on a certain day, you’d think I was the eldest of two children, going about my business, caring for and thinking of only Ollie and myself. I don’t say that to hurt you. I suppose I’m just trying to paint a proper picture of how things are. Okay, maybe somewhere, deep down, I want to hurt you a little. That wouldn’t be wrong.
Did I tell you Oliver wants to get a dog? He’s really obsessed with it—he wants a little brown sausage dog, and he wants to call it Rudy. I think that’s cute but also kind of weird. The name part, that is. I think the sausage-dog part is only cute. Sometimes he talks about ‘Rudy’ and we all think he’s talking about you, but he’s actually talking about what he wants to do with his dog when he gets it, like this morning. He piped up over his bowl of Weetbix: ‘Rudy loves dressing up like Batman and Robin with me.’
Mum looked surprised—I think he caught her off guard with it. She said, ‘Yes, baby, he loves you so much.’
Then Oliver said something about needing to cut a hole in the costume for his tail, and Mum looked confused. I reminded her of the sausage-dog thing and she looked relieved.
‘A hole for his tail, of course,’ she said.
Mum says she doesn’t want the commitment of a dog. As if she isn’t already tied to this life and this house, three children, a husband and a mortgage. I think it would be nice to have a little animal here, and maybe I wouldn’t move out if we had a dog. I’d have to help look after it and take it for walks with Oliver, because he’s too little to do it on his own. Mum is probably a bit nervous ever since we had that cat Daisy before Oliver was born. She was a pretty cat, but remember how she always seemed to want to escape, like she was angry to be living with us. I don’t blame her, I guess. We were pretty intense when we’d dress her up in dolls clothes and make her put on shows. Then, when she got hit by that car I got so obsessed with dying and death. I remember playing funerals with my dolls and telling old people they were going to die soon. I told Mum’s aunt Marilyn she was going to die right before she did, remember? Or maybe you don’t. Mum was really close to Marilyn, and I felt like Mum thought I’d killed her, even though that’s ridiculous because a six-year-old can’t cause lung cancer. But there was a bad feeling there—I can still feel it if I think back hard enough, like my words had big consequences. Maybe we shouldn’t get a dog. Or maybe I’ll get a cat when I move out, and do it right this time.
I forget sometimes that some things are my choice. Or they will be soon anyway. I can choose what universities I apply for and what courses, or even if I apply at all. I’ll choose where I’m going to live and with whom, and what I’ll eat for dinner. I’ll choose the people I talk to at uni. I’ll choose what I wear every single day. It’s a lot of choosing. I like the idea of all of those choices, but I don’t feel qualified to make them.
You were making choices long before you were my age, and way before you were qualified. You made bad choices and brash choices and short-sighted choices and angry choices and silly choices. Not all the time; you made good ones too. I just wish I felt as confident as you, or as excited about making choices. Maybe I never will, or maybe it’ll happen slowly with each new choice.
After Schoolies, that’s it: choice city, population me. I’m worried Dee is going to choose something different from me and I’ll be left here in my own hesitation. School is so easy in the way there are no choices, when I think about it, and I’m only really thinking about that now, two months before finishing.
Rudy, I know you didn’t choose for this to happen, but I wonder, if you could, what would you choose for yourself now? And what would you choose for me?
Love, Erin