Dear Rudy,
Some days it feels like you’re far away, and other days like you’re a little bit closer. Today was a faraway day. I saw Dr Lim this afternoon, and it was a bit of a disaster if I’m honest. Okay, a total disaster. I was probably a little bit itchy and on edge from a crappy day at school, but she was being such a psychologist about everything and it made me want to scream. I know, I know, that is literally her job. She could at least try to act like she knows what is going on and why I’m acting like I’m acting, though. It’s your fault, really, not everything but a lot of it, and Dr Lim won’t even let me have that. She’s too busy making sure I ‘feel’ my feelings, like I would otherwise extract them from my body and put them straight in the bin. Trust me, if that was an option I’d be all over it. But it’s not, so I’m feeling everything.
She says we need to start making more rituals as a family, for healing or something like that. Can you believe it? I can only imagine what you’d say to someone suggesting that to you. I told her we already eat dinner together every night and we see movies together sometimes and we eat a special lunch at Christmas time, but she didn’t really think that was enough. After everything I’ve told her about me and Mum and Dad and you and Ollie, you’d think she would be a little more specific in her advice. Instead it just felt like she was reading from the ‘happy family’ handbook without any regard for us at all. In the end I was down to one-word replies, or nods when I could get away with it. Dr Lim says I need to come back for another talk soon. I was tired, okay? You know, probably better than I do, how much work it is to keep our family running at this very specific level of interaction and dysfunction. It might not seem like a lot from the outside, but the dinners and the movies and the Christmas lunch are Hallmark card-worthy compared to how it has been at various points and how bad it could get if we let it.
Afterwards, I went to visit Amy. Her school is right near Dr Lim’s office so it was easy, but I think I would have gone there even if it wasn’t. I should visit her more often. She misses you, and she can barely talk about you without crying. It felt weird to see her cry and not cry myself. I guess I’m a little more hopeful than she is, or I feel a little less guilty. I hung out with her while she set up equipment for tomorrow. She is trying to find new ways for her students to spend time on their stomachs and sides, so she has these harnesses and soft mats that make her classroom look like a gymnastics hall. I wanted to jump onto the big foam mat, but I have a feeling Amy wouldn’t have liked that. She takes it very seriously, and I suppose it is serious. She doesn’t smile at me the way she does at you, or when she talks about you. I think it’s because I look like Mum.
One of her students, Lucas, was still waiting to be picked up. I’ve met him before—he came into Surf Zone with his dad one time. He’s really small and freckly and cute. He talks about himself in the third person too, which is adorable. He walks with a stick and when he tells a story his face lights up like he can’t contain his excitement. Today he was all about planes. He asked if I’d ever been on a Boeing 747, which I couldn’t answer because I don’t know as much about planes as he does. I told him about our holiday to America, and he wanted to know everything about the plane. I told him everything I could remember, and he seemed fine with that. We talked about the movies on the plane, and the stewards, and what they give you to eat. The little exchange felt easier than any conversation I have with anyone outside my family, maybe because Lucas and I are both on the spectrum, our conversation goes back and forth how I like, and he didn’t think I was strange. Once he was gone I was left trying to find a way to make talking to Amy easy like that.
She asked about formal, and I told her it was fine. She asked about Schoolies, and I told her how excited I am about it. I wanted to tell her more things but I couldn’t find a way in, because she was smiling that way she smiles when she’s not really happy, but wants to look like she is. She smiles that way when Mum talks to her, or when Dad does something ‘dad-ish’ with Oliver or me. I asked her how she was feeling about it being September, and I knew straight away that was the wrong thing to ask. She just kept saying she couldn’t believe it, that she wasn’t ready for it. I nodded but couldn’t think of anything else to say.
It got me thinking about the big things, and if we are ever really ready for them. They’re not usually things you have warning about, are they. Like when we found out we had a sister who was an adult, who we’d never met or heard of before. A secret sister. You were so excited about it, this girl who showed up with Dad’s eyebrows, who was rude to Mum and didn’t even want to meet us. You looked straight past the rudeness and saw her hurt and humiliation and her humanity. You’d forgiven Dad for hiding his high-school love child from us before he even owned up to it. Dad must have been scared, and I don’t think he handled it well. I’m glad we’ve got to know her since then, even though she told Dad she felt like she was ‘the test run’ and we were the benefactors. I know Dad didn’t plan on having a practice family and a real family—it’s just one of those things that happened.
I tried not to mention you again unless Amy did, and she hardly did. She told me this one story about the week before you left, when she was supposed to hang out with you but didn’t. She had to work late or something like that. There were other little details, but that was the general idea. I kept waiting for there to be more to it, because she told it like it was the most important story in the world. She is clinging tight to that one afternoon when she had to work late. I guess it made me think about whether or not I’m holding on tight enough to little stories like that, or if I’m letting them dissipate. These letters seem like the only place I’m keeping any of this stuff, and it’s not exactly a secure storage facility, is it. I need a backup hard drive or something. I need to make sure I remember.
It’s hard to talk to Amy without you there; we’re two random puzzle pieces without the bit in the middle connecting them. Being around her makes me feel that you’re further away, because it doesn’t feel right to be around her without you there too. But I don’t want to stop being around her either, because even if she never says so, I am her sister. And families need each other when stuff like this happens, even if we are a family that doesn’t have enough rituals. That’s just one of those rules I know is true. Amy misses you, Rudy, and so do I, even if it doesn’t seem that way because only one of us cried.
Love, Erin