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Summary
She hasn’t heard anything of Rust that isn’t connected to her dad, not ever, Rust- of Rust-and-Marty, excepting that one time her mom was drunk and crying in the bathroom after the divorce. Even now. And even then. They were on the news together and why would Rust be here if not because Marty’s somewhere close behind?
/ Audrey's exhibiting in New Orleans. Rust becomes a regular.
Series
- Part 13 of hunger and haunt
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Bookmark Notes:
“My dad’s not gay.” It comes out rapid, defensive, but if she’s defensive it’s because it’s an idea that goes against her grain, that she could go home (home!) like a child never proscribed from anything, never limited or insulted or shamed, treated like something the same when he’s never understood her so why should he start now? And she’s holding her wine glass too tight and she sets it down before she fractures it into large shards that might cut her palms. This morning she took her meds like a dutiful patient, washed them down with orange juice and water. Her father has never mentioned the 72 hour hold once, though he knows about it, she can see it in his eyes.
“But you think Rust is.”
Unbidden, she remembers Rust’s parting words. Though, hell, we don’t live that far away. We. Like–
“Something like that. He was married once, had a kid. Hell, he fucked my mom, didn’t he? But–”
Maybe he just meant that they lived close by to each other, that they still lived in the vicinity of Lafayette and Lafayette isn’t far, which it isn’t, maybe that’s what he meant. The urge to call her mom is getting louder.
“So what did he want?” Marcus says, voice soft, like coaxing some wild animal. He’s too nice to her some of the time. Most of the time. Only because he used to be bitter and he’s doing better at unlearning it than she is, though he doesn’t have a mom and she does. Somehow unfair. “Coming to the gallery, what was he–”
“They’re in the city for the week. Until Sunday. I think he wants me to see my dad.”
Marcus shakes his head. “Wait, so your dad sent this guy he used to work with who might be gay who also slept with his ex wife to get you to agree to see him? Why doesn’t he just call?”
“I don’t think my dad sent him at all.”
“Are you gonna see him?”
She drains her wine. She doesn’t want to talk about that with Marcus. Marcus with the nice dad and the dead mom, Marcus who holds her hand under the table at Ted and her mom’s house. Marcus who knows frustratingly too much about her. She told him once, early on, I get itchy. I’m a slut. I uphold all the shitty bisexual stereotypes. This probably won’t last and I don’t want you to get hurt when it doesn’t.
He’d said, Maybe we’ll hurt each other. Like it was a challenge. And now they stop at two glasses of wine and pee with the bathroom door open.
“I’ll think about it,” she says.
(“Don’t you talk about Rust’s life.”
“You brought him up, Jesus. You brought him here! You said you didn’t send him and I believe you but it’s still you, he wouldn’t be doing it if not for you.”
“I know.” He looks pained. “He does this shit without my say-so, God knows the world’s hammered it over my head enough times that I don’t deserve it–”
“Yeah,” she says spitefully.
“This is why I was staying the fuck away. ‘Cause I don’t never know what to say and I try things, y’know, God, AA, never gets me anywhere. Rust, he’s an asshole but he’s got this decency to him, I never known what to do with it. Think if I tried the Rust school of thought I’d probably kill myself, ‘cause, y’know, I figure you gotta be strong, thinking like that all the time, about death and shit and time never going anywhere and somehow he made it twenty years that way, like there’s just something else to him. Guy who rode with us in the ambulance, he said to me after he can tell who’s gonna make it and who’s not. Something about fight. They were all sure Rust was gonna die and then he didn’t. Guy in the ambulance was wrong. Woke up talking to me– talking to me about the fucking light and the dark, the light winning, just like that. And I’m clinging on to anything I can get my hands on and he’s got nothing, this guy has shit all that’s good in his life and he survives twenty years anyway to wake up and believe in something, so don’t fucking talk about how my life ain’t shitty like his. I know it ain’t. And I keep screwing it up anyway.”
Audrey’s finished her cigarette. She doesn’t light another. Just stands there in the hot dark a little way from the lamplight’s pool, tastes blood in her mouth from where she bit the inside of her cheek. “You and Rust–”
Her dad looks down. “What?”
“Dad.” It comes out like a breath. He looks back up sharply. “Just– be honest with me. Please. You and Rust.”
“Me and Rust,” he repeats. She thinks she’s going to have to ask again. Gonna have to make it explicit, say it in words, and she can’t do that. She has to make him do that. But then he says, “Y’know, I ain’t never seen Brokeback. but it’s fitting, huh?”
“Really?”
“Just never caught it, I guess, wouldna been my thing–“
“I mean–
“Oh. Yeah. Really. Rust is–“ He scrubs a hand over his jaw, heavy, awkward. He was never going to tell her. “Rust is Rust, y’know. It’s complicated but it’s not, not really. Easiest thing ever happened.)
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