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What an insult to cheat death via hatchet and then be told you've got old man problems.
Marty went to the doctor's office expecting congratulatory middle age back-pats for drinking green tea, but apparently it's tantamount to spitting in a volcano given his diet and exercise. Or lack thereof.
“One of these days you're going to get a cardiac wake up call," the doctor says. "I'm serious, you can't keep doing this.”
The continuing monologue about “management” and "lifestyle change" washes over Marty like a fog, partly because he's getting a prescription but mostly because he feels fine. Sure he's got a solid ring of flab, but Rust's a thousand times less healthy and look at him. Fucker's held together by nitrates and nicotine and can't even die when he tries.
“Marty, don't zone out on me. This is what your arteries look like.” The pen end taps a circle drawn with a blob hugging its wall. “The Lipitor will only get you so far.”
“Will it kill me if I don't do anything?”
“Not tomorrow, but there's a fair chance someday it will.”
He thinks of the tentative closeness he's feeling out with the girls, and he probably shouldn't leave Rust, either. Eating different is a cakewalk compared to the shit Rust's got to crawl out from under, yet he's trying as hard as he can.
“Okay,” Marty says, and sits up a bit straighter. “I'll do whatever you tell me.”
*
Audrey's in town for the long weekend, staying at Maggie's beige palace and spending perfunctory bits of time with him. She's probably at his place right now wondering where the hell he is, but who knew it'd take a pharmacy and two grocery stores to get all the shit on the doctor's list. Flax seeds, blueberries, salmon, steel-cut oats, edamame, whatever that is. It costs a fortune and Marty suspects he'll lose weight automatically, either from too light a paycheck or lack of desire to actually eat any of it. Like what the hell is acai, even?
He pulls up at home and Audrey's outside smoking with Rust, the ubiquitous sand-filled coffee can between them. “Hey, dad.”
“Hi, sweetheart,” he says, and collects the grocery bags from the backseat. “Sorry I'm late, the doctor chewed me out and I had to get a few things. Apparently I gotta start eating right.”
“That's okay.” She flicks ashes in the can. “I don't mind hanging out with creepy uncle Rust.”
“You gonna take that from her, Rust?”
He shrugs. “Tawdry Audrey don't bother me none.”
“Peas in a pod, you two,” Marty says. “Now, given that my heart could blow any minute, would one of you please open the goddamn door?"
*
Dinner at Maggie's is the best way to get everyone together when both girls are in town since she has the space and likes putting on spreads from snooty magazines that are bigger and glossier than regular magazines. Her second husband David has the personality of a wooden shoe, so Marty usually brings Rust along to up the ratio of interesting people. Maggie invites him, of course – a genteel attempt at a fence-mend, but Rust usually looks at her hairline nowadays when they speak, rarely her face.
The meal's sixty percent over when Audrey disengages and starts sketching in the palm-size notebook she always carries around with her.
“Hey Taxman, remember when you used to do that?” Marty says. “Rust used to draw stuff all the time.”
“Like what?”
“Crime scene stuff. Ideas,” Rust says. “Back then there weren't digital cameras, so you had to take pictures and wait for the film to come back, and even then they didn't always turn out. So I drew.”
“He's got a stack of creepy ledger books a mile high back home,” Marty says. “You'd love 'em.”
“Huh. I bet I would." Audrey resumes doodling behind her curtain of hair and it's quiet again, every clink of silverware on china a bit too noticeable.
As nice as these get-togethers are on the surface, it's a weird assortment of people to corral into one room and Marty strains for conversational fodder. The dining room looks out on a half acre backyard that's crowned with a medieval fortress swingset that likely cost as much as a car.
“Quite a backyard ya'll got,” he comments. “Remind me how old your kids are, David?”
“Twenty four and twenty.”
“I bet you could subdivide and rent out that swingset as a two bedroom house.”
“Oh, that. Yeah, it's pretty big. We're keeping it around for grandkids.”
“Hear that, Audrey?” Maggie chides, but Audrey snarls.
“What? You expect me to be some kind of breeding vessel because I'm the oldest? Gross.”
“Honey, I'm only joking.”
“Good. It's not like my life's been so great that I'm dying to do it all over again with new people.”
“Honey...” Maggie says, but the chair's already out from the table.
“I'm gonna go be the loser who smokes outside. Bye.”
Macie flinches when the front door bangs shut and Marty leans toward Rust. “Please tell me she didn't get that from you,” he says sideways, but Maggie overhears.
“She's come up with it on her own, unfortunately.”
Unfortunately.
That's not Maggie's call. It's not anybody's, and Rust shifts and gets up a few minutes later. “Think I'm gonna go be a loser, too.”
While they're away Marty endures twenty minutes of the most stilted conversation of his life. Maggie's angry, Macie's too smart for him, and Husband Number Two isn't smart enough, but at last a solution comes: he volunteers to fetch the losers for dessert. Funny how they were once his two most dreaded people to deal with and now they're the opposite.
They're out sitting on the lawn, talking about jimson weed and voodoo while Rust whittles bark off a stick.
“Hey, you two. Dessert.”
“No,” Audrey whines. “I don't want any.”
“I know, honey, but we gotta be polite for your mom. What's that useful object you're workin' on, Rust?”
“Galveston gut toucher.”
“A what?”
“A Galveston gut toucher.”
“What's it do?”
The white pointed end presses into Marty's stomach and Audrey folds and laughs without a sound.
“Pretty proud of yourself, aren't you? Asshole.”
“Right back atcha, Marty.” Rust stands and holds both ends of the stick to give Audrey a little handle to pull herself up by, and the three of them return to the table in better spirits than when they left.
Dinner seems saved, and the clamor of six people saying goodbye at the end of the night feels a little bit like Christmas. Audrey ducks past Macie to say, “I'll come by tomorrow and we'll hang out," and it's all Marty talks about on the way home.
“I'm glad I almost died. Silver linings, you know? Couple years I didn't even have an address for Audrey, and now she's coming over to mine. Funny how things work out sometimes.”
“Mm hmm.” Rust toys with the cigarette he intends to light the second he exits the car. “She's a neat kid.”
*
Marty's in the tail end of his stretch routine when she comes over in the late morning.
“Nice new leaf, dad.”
“Hey, don't make fun,” he says, arms overhead. “Stretching's good for you.”
“You know you're actually doing yoga, right?”
“Am not.”
“Okay,” she says with a wry little smile. “You're not.”
Rust appears in the hallway. “Tell her about your white noise machine, Marty.”
“Aw jeez...”
“Tell her about the settings on your white noise machine, Marty.”
“Goddammit. Okay, I got ocean surf, rainforest, light wind...” Audrey almost laughs before the punchline.
“And namaste.”
“Yeah, and namaste, thank you, Rust.”
Marty gives him a firm, upright middle finger on the way out and ends up taking Audrey to the driving range to hit a bucket of balls. Her interest's lukewarm at first, but she's willing to try.
“You may think golf's stupid, but practicing your drive's good for stress,” Marty says, and shows her how. “Get your front foot in line with the ball. Right, and don't put too much energy into the first few degrees of your downswing 'cause gravity'll do that for you. You want that momentum to really build up.”
Her swing's weak and lists to the left, but he's gratified that she actually seems to enjoy it once she gets going.
Whoosh, crack. “So, what's with the white noise machine?” she asks.
“It helps me sleep. In general, and 'cause Rust stays up real late and I don't.”
“Do you like living with him?”
Whoosh, crack. “Most of the time.”
“I remember when I was in high school you hated him.”
“Naw. I never hated him it's just...we were different people then. Worse people, the both of us.” Worse to each other. Worse to Audrey, it makes Marty sick now to think how rotten he'd been. Now he's the luckiest asshole on earth because here she is, voluntarily spending time with him and emitting a bright little scream every time she gets a good hit.
She rubs her forearms when the bucket's empty. “My arms kill.”
“You'd get stronger with practice. Hey, you got plans with your mom today? I'll take you out for lunch, if you want.”
“I'm in no rush to get back. That house is like a movie set, you know?” Marty nods; can't say that being first choice for a change doesn't please him. “I want to see Rust's creepy drawings, too.”
*
“Oh," Rust says. “I thought you were just being polite.” He gets a few old notebooks from the stack in his closet, and Audrey pages through while he explains what's on them.
“That's Stacia from Atascocita. Throat cut like a maroon smile when they turned her over, all the way down to her spine.”
“Did you get the guy who did it?”
“It took a while, but yeah. We did.”
They settle on the couch and the talk turns to the odd shit Marty still hates, like Schizotypal flow and texture of light, so he showers the sun-sweat off himself in the bathroom and hopes they'll wear each other out by the time he's done.
They don't. He finds them shoulder-to-shoulder, heads tipped together and drawing on one of Rust's blank back pages.
Audrey tears it out and hands it to him. “Here, dad. Present for you.”
It's a comic of Marty, bug-eyed and in cardiac distress. The second panel is him outside a Tofu Town grocery store, and the third is him in cardiac distress again at home, flummoxed by his weird assortment of groceries. “Do you like it?” she asks.
“I love it, but you two are an unholy union and shouldn't spend time with each other,” he says, but magnets it to the refrigerator anyway. "Who besides me wants a beer?"
Three hands shoot up and he gets out decent ones for them and a goddamn Michelob Ultra for himself. Rust calls it the Virginia Slims of beer and Marty can't even argue about it because it's true.
“Yum. Thanks, dad."
"You're welcome. What you got on tap this afternoon, Rust?”
“Oh, I might watch the World Series of Poker on mute.”
Audrey's nose crinkles. “Why?”
“He tries to guess who has the best cards,” Marty says, and tosses a sheaf of takeout menus in her lap. “Tell me what y'all want for lunch and we can all play.”
“Hmm.” Rust and Audrey look through the menus and interact with the courtesy of new friends. “What do you like?”
“I don't know, what do you like?”
“I like everything.”
“Me too. You pick.”
The verdict ends up being barbecue, and when Marty brings home a big mess of it and a warm, pallid salad for himself, Rust's on his knees taping newspaper over the lower third of the TV to hide players' cards while Audrey looks through his old drawings and asks questions about the headless woman with no hands. "Was it because of teeth? And fingerprints?"
"Uh huh, but she was easy to identify 'cause she had a clubfoot that never quite got fixed right."
"Wow."
"Yep. Strange how people concentrate on the wrong things sometimes."
"Agreed," Marty cuts in. "Can we please shelve the notebooks for the afternoon?"
During the tournament, Audrey sits in the middle and keeps score. Finger-licking gives way to suspense, and later, quite a bit of yelling.
The results are an upset.
Marty's the best.
*
The weekend visits increase to about once a month and follow the same pattern – slightly awkward Friday nights at Maggie's followed by Saturday afternoons with Marty. Audrey likes the driving range but lacks patience for actual golf, so whenever Marty has a tee time in the name of investigative wheel greasin', she has midday drinks with Rust in the name of art research because she wants to capture the seediness of dive bars and he's a fine chaperone.
The second time she comes home glassy-eyed, Maggie starts asking questions and Audrey pouts in the kitchen, arms crossed tight with a cabinet knob pressing into her shoulder.
“Get off my back, mom. It's not a big deal.”
“Honey, I just have a hard time understanding why you're going to bars with a man twice your age." Maggie sorts silverware and every piece lands in the drawer with a rough, satisfying clang. "You call him Creepy Uncle Rust, for God's sake.”
“It's a term of endearment. You should hear what he calls me," Audrey says, which shocks as expected. "Anyway, you don't get to decide who I'm friends with. That's all we are, by the way.”
“I'm not implying otherwise.”
“Then there's no reason to be upset. It's not like we slow danced to Patsy Cline all afternoon. Half of it, maybe.” She pauses, measures. “Um, that's a joke? You can laugh.”
“It's not funny, Audrey, he's an alcoholic. High-functioning, maybe, but still.”
“Mom-”
“And you're young enough to be his daughter. Is that normal to you? Really?” She kicks the dishwasher door closed. “I don't want you drinking with him any more.”
Audrey stares hard and makes a crude but calculated guess. “Do you think he's lost his looks, or do you think he's still handsome?”
Maggie rolls her eyes and won't answer, and for the remainder of Audrey's visit they recede into polite conversations around things like chai and what may or may not happen with the flowerbeds in front.
*
Months later, Marty asks in-between swings on the driving range. “You doing okay, honey?”
“Yeah,” Audrey says. “Why?”
“Oh, your mom worries.”
“About my meds taper? 'Cause it's going fine.”
“Well...don't tell her I told you, but she knows you snuck out the other night. You're an adult and she can't stop you, but she's worried.”
Audrey drops her eyes. “I'm never completely comfortable in that big house. I was awake and wanted to be around other people.”
“Where'd you go?”
“A coffee shop.”
“And you're staying out of trouble.”
“Yeah,” she says, annoyed. “I'm actually doing a lot better than I have in a long time.”
“That's what I thought,” Marty says, and tees up a new ball. “Guess it's just nice to hear you say it.”
*
An Atlanta gallery picks up a few pieces of Audrey's work in the summertime and gives her a fall showing. It's a big deal and everyone's going. Dad, Rust, Macie, David, everyone, and Maggie arranges for a room for the girls adjoining hers. It'll be good for them, a chance to apologize for all the recent tension without saying she's sorry.
“It's a beautiful hotel,” she tells Audrey over the phone. “Close to the gallery and nice restaurants.”
“Cool.”
“Since we'll get there a few days early I thought we could have a spa day, you and me and Macie.”
“Okay. That could be fun.”
“Get online and look at their menu with me. Macie wants a mani-pedi, or maybe an herbal wrap or a massage if she can talk herself into being naked for it.”
“Huh,” Audrey says, and clicks around. “There's a lot on here. Can I think about it and book something later?”
“Sure. Make an appointment for anything you want Wednesday afternoon and I'll pay.”
“Okay. Thanks, mom.”
“I can't wait to see you, honey.”
“Yeah,” Audrey says, with lightness that sounds genuine. “It'll be fun.”
*
It's not all that fun, at least not at first. She leans against a lobby pillar and waits.
It's been a rough couple of days. The canvases arrived intact and she's mostly happy with their placement, but there's way too much estrogen between her and mom and Macie and their adjoining rooms. Dad and Rust can't get there soon enough, and her heart bounces a bit at the sight of them exiting a cab out front. Every stranger that comes through the door looks up at the chandelier first, but dad and Rust look straight at her.
“Hey, honey.” Marty drops his suitcase and takes her in his arms. “Missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” She squeezes him and smiles over his shoulder at Rust. “Hey ashtray.”
“Hey T'audrey.”
“Things going okay?”
“Yeah. I'm looking forward to it being over, though.” Marty lets her go and she steps up to Rust. “I can show you the ostracized smokers area, if you like.”
“What happened to your quitting contest?” Marty asks. He doesn't remember all the details of it, only that he's its biggest proponent.
“Cutting back, dad. Nobody's quitting yet.”
“Marty, you mind?”
“Nope. I'll check us in,” he says, and Audrey links her arm in Rust's and takes him outside.
A bench just east of the entrance is shaded by a young white Higan cherry tree in flower, and its heavy, sweet perfume has been her favorite escape the last few days. “It's pretty, right? Mom said they planted it there to cancel out the stink.”
“There might be some truth in that,” Rust says, and lights up. “Old neighborhoods up north you can always tell where the outhouse was 'cause of the lilacs in the backyard.”
Audrey holds his wrist and tips forward to catch the flame. “Half the shit you say sounds made up. Speaking of, are you really trying to cut back or are you just saying that for my dad?”
“I'm serious. I'm down to about ten a day.”
“Shut up!”
“True story. You?”
“Pfft.” She scrunches her nose and blows smoke overhead. “I did okay for a while, then this goddamn weekend...I mean, it'll be great, but it's stressful. Mom adds this whole other layer, too, like we had this whole spa day thing and...it was weird.”
“Huh.”
They smoke in silence, on the same frequency where quiet is fine. It's the most relaxed Audrey's felt in weeks; Rust's eyes are at contented half-mast, and she suspects he feels the same. “Hey." She bumps her knee against his and warms the moment his old blue eyes light on her. “I'm glad you're here.”
*
At ten thirty, Maggie tests a hypothesis and taps on the girls' door. Macie's on one of the beds, the glow from her phone illuminating her soft, serious face. “Hey, honey. Where's your sister?”
“Downstairs with dad. I think they're getting a drink or something.”
A likely story.
She takes the elevator down and finds Marty at the bar, alone with an amber-filled highball glass. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I thought Audrey was with you.”
“Nope. She's in there.” He nods towards a billiards room, and through beveled glass and open French doors she sees Audrey and Rust. Clicking balls, clinking bottles, Audrey laughing...Rust's hair is down and hers is up. She must've won his elastic.
“Can I ask you something?” She settles on the barstool next to him. “Do you think their relationship's a little strange?”
“Who? Those two?”
“Yeah.”
“Naw,” he says. “They're good for each other.”
Clueless as ever. “I know it's hard to think about. God knows I don't want to, but it's the way he looks at her. And the way she acts around him. Marty, there's an intimacy between them that's not right.”
Marty reddens. “No. I don't think so.”
“You know how I had spa day with the girls? All she wanted was a bikini wax.”
“Dammit, Mags, I don't need to know this...”
“Think about it. How does she go from a revolving door of boyfriends to zero boyfriends now that Rust's always hanging around?”
His jaw clenches. “I don't think it's like that. Just leave 'em be.”
“Marty-”
“If anything's a little strange it's your incessant interest in that man's love life. I mean...how boring is your life that you're thinking about this kinda stuff? Come on, now, it's Audrey's weekend. Let it go already.”
*
The paintings are a lot bigger than Rust imagined.
Audrey had emailed pictures of a few so he knew what they looked like, but he didn't expect them to stretch so far overhead. The gritty dive bars are familiar, but he likes her gaunt cowboys and broken saguaros best, wide strokes that look like simple black on white at first, but close up there are a million bright colors trapped in the thick eddies and rolls of paint. “These are somethin'. You must be proud,” he says to Marty, who's quietly wandering around a few steps behind.
“Sure am,” he says. “You assume it won't work out for kids who wanna be artists or astronauts, but I guess once in a while, it does. She looks like a model tonight, doesn't she?" She's all smoky-eyed, dressed austere as a nun from the waist up but with a short black skirt and heels that give her the carriage of a forties pinup. Macie, while lovely on her own, looks like stiff blue chess piece next to her.
Maggie's husband interrupts. “Hey, Marty. Can I bother you to come smile for a picture?”
Rust would rather eat fire ants than get roped into pictures and slides outside to smoke. Audrey makes faces until he turns his back to deny her the satisfaction of amusing him, and once every permutation of parent and child's been captured she walks over to the window and bangs on the glass. When he turns around, all he sees is a middle finger brandished alongside her red lacquer smile.
It's the gallery district's First Friday, and human traffic flows and gains momentum after six. It's fueled in part by the champagne magnums that appear in the corner of the gallery like magic, and an hour in, three of the paintings have red dot stickers beside them on the wall. “That's five months rent or a billion cigarettes,” Audrey tells Maggie, and is pleasantly surprised to get a congratulatory pat instead of a lecture.
She glides away and Maggie falls into conversation with the woman who just bought a canvas of the ratty interior of the Goosegrass Tavern. “She's very talented,” the woman says. “With an eye and an approach more mature than her age suggests.”
Maggie nods proudly and watches Audrey perch on one of the black tuffets in the corner. “She's always been ahead of her age,” she says, noticing with gutting panic that an electric green triangle of Audrey's panties is visible.
“Well it's served her well. Imagine what she'll be doing ten years from now!”
“Oh, dear. I can't even guess!”
The woman talks on and Maggie aches to break away and tell Audrey to sit like a lady. Maybe no one else has noticed. Maybe...
Suddenly Rust's whispering in Audrey's ear and she scrunches up like his voice tickles. His fingers brush her bare knee and she blows him a saucy little air-kiss and closes her legs to hide the triangle. But something else isn't so hidden anymore.
“Excuse me.” Maggie drops it mid-sentence. “I'm so sorry for being rude, but there's something I absolutely have to take care of. It was so nice talking to you, I hope we can catch up again later.”
He's admiring one of the cowboys when she approaches him. “Rust? Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Guess so.” He swings around with his hallmark polite but not-interested-in-dealing-with-you expression. All these years and it's never softened.
“I know,” she says, and Rust stares back without blinking.
“Know what?”
“About you and Audrey.”
He shows slight interest but not alarm. “I got no idea what you're talking about.”
“Please,” Maggie spits. “It's disgusting. You're twenty five years older than her and Marty'll fucking kill you if he finds out.”
“Finds out what, exactly?”
“Don't play dumb with me.” She stands a little taller and checks the volume of her voice. “I suspect my daughter might be a little less enchanted with you if she knew about us.”
He still hasn't blinked. “Tell her, then. I don't give a shit.” He leans in close and drags his voice out long and slow. “I wanna be there when you do, though. To make sure you tell it right.” He pulls back, stone-eyed, and taps out a cigarette to take outside. “It's none of my business, but maybe you oughtta look at your own happiness before you start messin' with anybody else's.”
He leaves her in front of the towering cowboy, alone and weak with fury.
It looks too much like Rust.
They all do.
The pulsing knot in her temple is no act and she searches the crowd for her husband. “David. Hey, I suddenly have the worst headache. I think I need to go back to the room.”
“Oh, I'm sorry. Should I come with you?”
Audrey's eyes follow Rust everywhere he goes.
“Maggie?”
“If you want to, I don't care. It doesn't matter.”
"Let's go tell Audrey."
"No. Tell Macie," she says, and the back of her throat burns like vinegar. "Audrey won't care."
Rust's coming back in just as they're headed out and David stops. “Hey, Rust. I just realized you aren't in any of the pictures I took tonight.”
“S'okay. No reason I should be.”
“Oh, come on. You're practically part of the family. In fact, I-”
Maggie pulls on his sleeve. “We have to go. Goodnight.”
Rust looks five degrees over her head like usual, then straight at her with such force her stomach turns. “'Night.”
Maggie doesn't open the door to the adjoining room that night because Audrey's already told the world she wants to go out dancing, and there's no point asking Marty if Rust's where he's supposed to be because there's no way in hell he is.
*
The smokers' bench is too wet to sit on in the morning. “Huh. It must've rained last night,” Audrey says. “I didn't notice. Did you?”
Rust lights them both up. “Hadn't a clue.”
She's clean-faced, though weak shadows of last night's kohl still rim her eyes. “The only thing that wasn't perfect about last night was those shoes ate up my feet a little.”
“Worth it, though.”
“Hell yes.”
A puff of wind blows confetti off the cherry tree and Rust clamps his cigarette between his teeth. “Hold still,” he says, and uses both hands to tease the little white petals out of Audrey's hair, but they're damp and and don't want to let go.
She smiles and closes her eyes, then puts a hand on him for balance.
“Watch it, now. Your mom's probably looking out the window thinkin' I'm molesting you.”
“Please.” She sways, hazel eyes open. The thousand-color stare.
“You still a little bit drunk?”
“Hardly. But yeah.”
“We should get you some grits an' Tabasco. That'd fix you right up.”
“Mmm.” Another flash of her eyes, another long, delicious drag. Yesterday when she'd been insecure about the exhibition, Rust said that the colors in her eyes were the strongest things in the world – old oak, minerals, and tobacco, and that all those things live inside her, too.
“Keep doing that.” She cups her cigarette stub by her thigh and the sedative effect of hair tugs makes her lean closer. “I'm serious. Keep doing that,” she says, and he does.
Even after the petals are gone.