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Macie’s not sure how she can turn up late to a Christmas party in her own house — not her own house, the house she’s staying in, Ted’s house has never felt like her own house — and not a party, either, since it’s only them and Ted and Audrey’s boyfriend and Marty and Rust, dinner around the big mahogany table, that’s not a party, that’s just a drawn-out uncomfortable Friday night — and she’s not a late person, generally, she’s organised at work and she’s organised at home and she’s single for the right reasons, always does the right things, she’s not Audrey. Audrey who somehow wound up with the hottest guy in existence who’s nice, too, where’d she find a guy who’s nice? When historically (Freudian psychoanalytically speaking) they don’t have good role models. And men can just read that in them, even from far away.
But she’s single for the right reasons and she’s the only person not bringing someone to this party, dinner, day after Christmas because to do it on Christmas would be–
Well, Macie doesn’t know what it would be, but it would be bad in some indefinable way, almost as bad as it is right now, rocking up late with a store bought pecan pie and foundation a shade too dark because it’s winter in Chicago and she left her own stuff behind so she’s stuck using what she used to use, in the state without snow, place the sun invariably shines behind a gray polluted sweep and the UV is always at least moderate. Knocking on the door and noting the cars in the driveway, Ted’s, her mom’s, Audrey’s, her dad’s. What she presumes to be her dad’s. No car for Rust; maybe he isn’t here. She wouldn’t fucking blame him.
It’s warm out and her hands are sweating into the cardboard of the pecan pie. Lived here all her life, forgot how hot it is, even now. Maybe she’s just nervous. How the fuck did Audrey manage to turn up on time?
Nice boyfriend, right, she forgets. When the door opens it’s Ted, who says, broad smile, “You know you don’t have to knock.”
Mi casa es tu casa; except no one really means that. She returns his smile — he’s wearing a Santa hat — and says, “Sorry, I was just picking up a dessert. You guys have been doing so much of the cooking, I just figured–“
He takes in the pie in its box, she sees him take this in. Flash of disappointment and the whole oh, I was hoping you’d make that doberge cake your mom says you’re so famous for, only he doesn’t say this part out loud, he’s too polite. “That looks great, Macie, thank you. Come in, please, everybody’s–“
Everybody’s. Sure. She follows him in, big open hallway, hardwood floors. Hard to imagine that people lived like this, for a long time, not like they were ever poor or even far from well-off — her mom from a good family, always the sense that she was slumming it with their dad, their dad of the rodeo and the stern-faced Korea vet father Macie barely remembers ever meeting — but it was hard to imagine, still, that these weren’t just mansions in Hallmark movies but mansions in real life too.
A pool, out back. Audrey and Marcus spent the first day in it, sunning themselves, acting like they’re the ones who came from a cold climate to find 68 degrees pretty sweltering for December, actually. Audrey in a tiny red bikini. They invited Macie to come join them and Macie said no, thank you, maybe later. It feels cruel and unlike herself to envy Audrey her skinny arms, narrow hips. They’ve grown out of the phase of teenage cruelty in which Audrey would say something, if Macie got in the pool in her one-piece that doesn’t hide the soft fold of stomach, the love handles, tits not even something to write home about, which is usually where they win, girls who are bigger than girls like Audrey, the way Macie is — not by much, just enough. Maybe they grew out of that phase when Audrey locked herself in the bathroom with Everclear and something everyone decided was a plan (was it a plan? Macie doesn’t think it was a plan): when Macie recognised that of the two sides in one family she would have to be one, while Audrey was the other. Stability, polarity, how long is a line between two points?
It’s not like Audrey would say something. And neither would Ted, too polite, though she doesn’t want him to notice it at all, and her mom, well. Her mom wouldn’t say anything or would even say the opposite, how nice she looks in her new suit, how good it must feel to be somewhere a little warmer than Chicago. Not having forgiven Macie for going back, but she doesn’t say that either. Nice, sometimes nice is the worst fucking part.
Through the big hallway and into the big living room. Her mom absent, kitchen. Standing by the mantelpiece, Marcus and her dad, both holding beers but politely, just sipping them. Her dad looks the same as he did the last time, thinner on the top, thicker around the middle, she’s got that, at least, another cruel thought she’s trying to get rid of. Talking in a way that has him gesturing with his hands, maybe baseball. There was a point in time at which she could read whatever sport he wanted to see or talk about just by looking in his eyes, reading the slant of his shoulders. That time has passed but still she makes nice.
Beyond him, Audrey and Rust. So Rust is here. He’s on the couch, one long leg crossed over the other, elbow balanced on knee as he leans in to hear whatever Audrey’s saying, also making shapes with her hands. He’s still got long hair, pulled back at the nape of his neck, still wearing a mustache like some kind of disguise. Last time she saw him he was leaning bruised in her dad’s doorway, accepting with wariness her offer of a casserole, a get-well gift. Intended for her dad but Rust was just there.
And now, Rust is just here, and Audrey’s engaging him in a voice that lacks a lot of the sharp cynicism she wears with, hell, pretty much anyone else, even Macie, sometimes. Macie looks at them for a moment and isn’t seen, and then Ted steers her towards Marcus and her dad, like she wants that all that much more, but her dad’s eyes light up (like, literally light up, for a long time she’d thought that was just a myth) to see her and he pulls her into a hug, he’s softer about it these days, uncertain.
He says, “Merry Christmas, darling.”
“Merry Christmas,” she returns. “Sorry I’m–”
“Nah, we only got here, what–” he does a weird thing, then, he looks at Rust “–fifteen minutes ago? Twenty minutes ago?”
Rust glances up at him and then back at Audrey, aware enough of Marty’s presence and way of being in the room to know when he’s looked to, even when he’s not explicitly asked for, but maybe that’s just Rust. The way that was always Rust, in Macie’s shabby memory of being seven, nine, eleven. Slightly alarmed and above all incalcitrantly curious about him, she and Audrey used to follow him around, pester him to show them things, to be shown things. One time their mom lost her temper about it, Macie does remember that. Snapped, You need to leave him alone. It’s not polite, what you’re doing, and you can’t even begin to imagine how he might feel about– and then stopped, like she couldn’t say it, though Audrey, who had been older, that first dinner, comprehended and remembered and told Macie afterwards, that’s what they’re all sneaking around about, you know, that Mr. Cohle’s kid died.
Rust, in their house, was always on high alert. But maybe Macie was looking for that because of what she knew. And she always tried to be kind to him, as kind as a kid could be. She imagined being the one to soften it, that great hard lump of grief. That she’d give him some gift or drawing she’d done — never so good as Audrey’s, of course, and that was another sticking point, accused of plagiarism or else sheer mediocrity — and he’d melt, and so would that thick edge of tension always hanging around the house above their heads when he was there, and occasionally when he wasn’t, and then everything would be all right. She thought this much of herself, and then she was a fourteen year old cheerleader and there was no more Rust, and no more dad either.
“Twenty minutes,” her dad decides. “You okay? You doing okay? How’s Chicago?”
“Cold.”
Marcus laughs. “No shit. I’d say I envy you but that would be a lie.”
“Yeah, well, I sometimes do,” her dad says. “Feels like you’re living in something’s armpit out here some of the time. I’m sure Rust wouldn’t agree with me, hates the cold, but, yeah, might be nice to get out away for a while.”
For a while; nobody thinks the move is permanent, maybe herself included. She didn’t think she bore much of an accent until she got up to Illinois and the high-edged blandness surprised her, and the way some of them looked at her, too, assumed things, some of them right and some of them wrong. Came back down when her term of service ended, thought about doing good, continuing to do good, in her own community, woke up with a sour taste in her mouth. And so–
“Macie was telling us yesterday about her master’s program,” Ted supplies. “It sounds all so great.”
Her dad nods. “Yeah, it is great. It’s–”
“Social work,” she says, before he can stumble over it, but his face closes down, hurt she assumed he wouldn’t remember, embarrassed because he did not? “It’s a masters in social work. I, uh, yeah, I thought about staying in teaching, maybe doing the Urban Teacher program, but I sort of reasoned that I wanted to help people in general more than I wanted just to teach, and I didn’t know if I was ready to–”
She stops. They’re all still looking at her, her dad included, waiting for her to finish.
She pushes a hand through her hair. “I didn’t know if I was ready to specialise like that,” she concludes, lamely, the same speech she gave Ted just the day before but delivered to her dad it feels rehearsed, stale. What does any of it actually mean? And helping people, her dad helps people, that’s the whole reason he’s standing right here even after what she assumes he did to her mom, to their marriage, their whole family, the reason her dad’s here right now is because last year he and Rust were all over the headlines ‘cause they caught a serial killer, nearly died in the process, and what is Macie doing but watering seeds in the ground that will probably never grow?
She reads all of this in her father’s eyes, but maybe she’s the one putting it there. Ted offers her a beer and her dad puts his hand on her shoulder, friendly, a sort of masculine squeeze. “I’m proud of you,” he says. She glances at Audrey and catches her eye; Audrey makes a face, the oh, God, it’s dad kind of face, but it’s cursory, and she turns back to Rust soon enough.
Like now Macie’s the ill-fitting piece. Still. She lets Ted put a beer in her hand and lead them into a conversation about the dubious quality of Christmas music these days, to which Marcus contributes enthusiasm for Frank Sinatra to compete with her dad’s age-old penchant for Elvis, and there’s no sign of her mom just yet, and on the couch Audrey is still talking to Rust.
In the kitchen, when Macie escapes into the kitchen, her mom’s parboiling potatoes, roasting carrots. She looks up as Macie comes in, smiles, says distractedly, “Ted was determined to give me a rest of some description, which I think he intended to mean a potluck, but there was no way I was doing a potluck. Can you imagine what your father would bring? God forbid, Rust?” She shakes her head. “It’s better this way.”
“Okay, mom. Not gonna argue with that.”
“Thank you for the dessert, though, honey. You really didn’t need to go out and–”
“No, but I could have actually made something, y’know, baked, and I didn’t, so. You remember–” she says, shooting herself in the foot “–you remember when I used to make doberge cake?”
Her mom’s on white wine. She smiles around her glass as she says, “Sure I do. You brought it to the Stevens’ dinner that time, remember? God, if I wasn’t the envy of every other mother for that, and the best part was I could tell them all it was just your idea, no prompting from me at all. Damn, that was a good cake.”
“Yeah. I did– I wanted to maybe make one this year. I guess I just ran out of time. Didn’t want to overrun your kitchen.”
“You’re welcome to cook anything you like here, sweetheart, you know that, right? Whenever you’re here, all of this, it’s–” She waves a hand. “Ted’s taking great pains to assure you guys that all this is for you, not just me and him. I understand that that can feel weird. I feel–” She looks back down at the pot of potatoes. Stirs them around.
Macie waits, but she doesn’t say anything else. Her pecan pie’s sitting on the side, still in its box. The sight of it makes her feel ill and so, too, do the carrots, the onions, the gravy. But she says, “Can I do anything?”
Her mom gets her making a salad, leaves in a bowl, croutons, dressing. Right, because it’s warm outside. There’s seven of them and so much food. Her dad always ate like a starving man — yesterday Marcus ate with gusto, Audrey too, which surprised Macie and then made her feel bad for it in the same breath, being surprised, why is that surprising? — and she doesn’t remember how much Rust eats, she doesn’t really remember him eating at all, though she has to be mistaken about that, men eat — and there’s seven of them and it still has to be too much food.
She lays the table up for seven, odd number. An imbalance to the places, three on one side, two on the other. Ted and her mom’s places at either end. She’s waiting for it: so, are you seeing anyone, Macie? Are you gonna be bringing anybody home? Or not even directly. Faces angled towards Audrey, are we gonna be hearing wedding bells anytime soon, huh? You gotta hold onto this one, honey, he’s a keeper. Looking forward to grandkids.
After one beer, she switches to wine.
At the dinner table: Audrey’s art art market in general Ai Weiwei (only her mom and Audrey and Rust have heard of) Marina Abramović (only Audrey and Rust) Francis Bacon (only Rust), her dad’s aside towards football, Rust’s eyeroll in tune with her mom’s so then college sports — Ted making the peace, aka concession — NCAA NFL New Orleans Saints Houston Texans how violent all that gets. Sports is violent, pointedly, her dad says oh sure, let’s talk about rodeo. So they talk about rodeo.
Which gets more eyerolls, from across all the table, her mom’s cheeks hot and Audrey burying her face in her hands and Rust, Rust who’s been nursing just the one singular beer all day, it seems, sitting in between Audrey and her dad like her mom didn’t know where to put him, Rust says, “Seems to me the point of the rodeo’s violence against nature, mastery, man and beast. Mutual illusions that any of it matters, when really all it reveals is how fragile we are, how close to the bone. While football’s just reaching out for each other some way.”
“Rodeo guys are reaching out for plenty,” her dad returns. “No, if there’s a sport worth something–”
And then they’re off again, rodeo and baseball and basketball and tennis, swimming, golf. Golf and its impact on the environment, that’s Marcus, a gentle challenge, less gentle from Rust, who takes it up and prods her dad with it like a well-rehearsed scene. Lawns, and everybody goes quiet for a moment. Ted again stepping into the breach: always amazed by the lawns they can produce out in the desert, y’know, suburbs in Nevada, Utah.
Out of nowhere, like clearing her throat, Audrey says, “Y’know, in Utah, they just ruled it’s unconstitutional not to allow gay marriage.”
Macie looks at their dad, then back at Audrey. Draws her eyebrows together, a silent question, like what are you doing? When nobody knows. When Macie only knows because she caught Audrey with a girl at a party when she came to visit Macie at college and Macie at first was upset because it always had to be about Audrey, didn’t it, that was always what it was. But Audrey hasn’t told anybody and this — their dad and Ted and Rust, really, Rust? — this surely isn’t the time.
“That don’t mean they’re gonna do nothing about it,” Rust says. “Get a stay from the Supreme Court, probably.”
“Hell do you know about the Supreme Court?” her dad mutters.
Rust shrugs; Audrey barrels on. “People are getting married already.”
“I don’t think the government of Utah got any right to mess with people marrying each other,” her dad says. “I mean, Utah?”
“It’s not only Mormons, you know,” Macie feels pressed to say, but nicely, just quietly firm. A show of support, maybe, only Audrey’s looking at her strange.
“That ain’t what I– well, yeah, I was talking about the Mormons, I’m only saying it ain’t right. And I’m glad they’re trying to change it.”
“You’re glad they’re– okay. Well, good.” She looks at her plate, shakes her head. Risks a glance up to her mom, head of the table, who looks steadily unworried. Other end, Ted, oblivious.
Marcus says, “They’re sure taking their sweet time here with that.”
The ban’s falling like dominoes, true, everywhere but here: in Illinois, only last month. Ted says, “Well, it’s the south, we always been pretty set in our ways down here.”
“Yeah,” her dad says, with a strange weight to it. He glances at Rust and looks away again, passes a hand across his jaw, absent look. Macie’s feeling like she’s won the lottery; Macie’s feeling like it’s way too good to be true. This lunch was always going to be a disaster. And yet her dad’s not saying anything else and Ted’s shuffling them on again and when her mom gets up, Macie leaves too, to help with dessert.
“That could have been worse,” she says in the kitchen.
Her mom nods, scraping ham fat into the trash. “It was nice, y’know. Better– I shouldn’t say this, but better than it was with Nana, huh? I don’t even know what I– those plates, yeah, take some ice cream in too. The nice vanilla, it’s in the freezer. The toffee stuff is Ted’s, maybe bring that out too, he can always tell us not to eat it.”
Macie takes the plates out, the ice cream. Ted’s gone so the table’s cleaved into separate conversations: Audrey and Marcus, across the table, Rust and her dad, side by side. Heads bent close together.
She comes back into the kitchen and says, “Why’s Rust here?”
Her mom looks up. Passes a hand over her eyes, shakes her head. “Marty asked if he could– I don’t know. I wasn’t going to turn him away. He’s had– you know what sort of a life he’s had. It’s Christmas, right? I guess Marty feels responsible for him in some way.”
Helping people; only Macie’s spent the last six months learning about altruism and her father, he helps people in ways that get him on the news, he doesn’t usher starving coyotes in from the street for dinner. But she doesn’t say anything to contradict this. When her mom puts the pecan pie in her hands to take out, she can smell its rich corn syrup, egg and sugar taste, she regrets it intensely, it’s more Thanksgiving as an item anyway, Thanksgiving that Audrey and Marcus and Rust would also have something to say about, probably, the way Macie doesn’t think she’s ever said a thing about anything in her life, not really, always toeing the line, working in parameters, listening to what other people say.
“This looks great, sweetheart,” her dad says, when she brings the pie in and puts it in her mom’s place to serve. He’s on wine now and a little pink-cheeked with it. Audrey echoes this, looks great, and Macie looks for sarcasm and doesn’t find it and resents her a little anyway, Audrey who’s exempted from bringing anything because one time she tried to kill herself and now apparently any obligation’s a chore.
Meaning maybe Macie’s had a little too many glasses too.
Her mom serves up the pie and Ted sits back down and then they’re off again, look at them go: warm winter they’re having like usual not like Chicago have you been skating, Macie? and Macie doesn’t skate the same way she doesn’t swim so she says no, and Rust talks about skating on frozen lakes in Alaska as a kid except he wasn’t really skating, just ice fishing because otherwise they’d have no food, if they didn’t shoot an elk or something, this is the gist, Macie doesn’t get too much of it. Her head swims with sugar and more than that the way her dad’s looking at Rust, also like sugar, like caramel, like maple. Like something crystal-sharp dissolved, melted. Like Rust hung the fucking moon.
Ted: I love to fish. Then fishing in general. Then pollution in the water, DuPont and the PFOAs, oil slick seals, refineries in the Gulf. Keeping the lights on, competing with the Arabs, the Middle East, Syria, Russia, Putin. Obama, next year’s midterms. How politics is always the worst discussion point at Christmas. How politics is in fact the best discussion point at Christmas. A collaborative curated list of the worst discussion points at Christmas: abortion, religion, sex, bodily functions, money, drugs. Drugs — “Did anybody watch Breaking Bad?” asks Ted. “It was so damn good, I mean, that final season–”
Her mom says, “I imagine it’s a little bit different, watching that kind of thing when you’ve been on the other side of it.” Like a warning, nice and light.
“Ain’t no sides,” Rust says, but it’s low, head ducked, and her dad looks at him and he doesn’t say anything else.
So her dad says, “I guess on some level you’re right, huh, we don’t watch much of that kinda TV. Not ‘cause it’d be weird in some way, maybe it would, we just don’t.” He glances at Rust again, sidelong. “Reckon we saw enough of that shit to last a lifetime.”
“And yet you’re PIs now,” Audrey says, sly.
“I’m a PI. He’s a consultant.”
Rust lets out a sound through his teeth, not wholly displeased, maybe just playing at it. “Getting my licence, ain’t I?”
“Why, how magnanimous of you.”
“Ain’t doing it for charity.”
“No, that’s obvious by my expense accounts.”
“Oh, you love your goddamn expenses. You complain about this system but you love this system, love milking it dry.”
Here, her father would raise hell, go red in the face, shove his chair back, fists. But today — today being some sort of special day — he does none of these things, but smiles and says, “Sure do, and God bless America.”
“Nearly tax season,” Ted remarks, and just like that they’re back in the race.
And throughout it all, always, no matter the subject or argument or creed, her dad and Rust hold their shoulders in parallel, not touching but always only a couple inches away, aligned because though Rust is a little taller he’s got longer legs and so sitting down they’re basically the same height. He eats his pecan pie, more than he ate of the dinner, and he’s starting on his second beer when they all begin to get up with the demand for a comfier seat. Macie’s been staring at the tablecloth and it takes her a second to realise and by then they’re all up, all but Rust, who pushes his chair back and brushes heavily into her dad’s space as he passes, her dad who lays a fleeting, casual hand on Rust’s elbow, moves his face close then withdraws as he follows him through to the living room.
Macie is painfully single and made her way through childhood pretending not to see so hard she convinced herself of her own ignorance: Audrey’s snappish, declining stability, her mom’s listless dissatisfaction and then righteous anger, her dad’s paternalistic presence, then absence, removed easy as white-out over a misspelled word. The occasional awkward dinner, spaghetti and bad conversation, fewer and fewer as the years went on. Her dad became someone she kept in touch with but not really, politely, like with a distant uncle, an old teacher. Her dad became an obligation like any other and Audrey, well, Audrey had been released from obligation.
Still. For some reason it seems to be Audrey who knows, and Macie who’s catching up. Macie who’s painfully single because her last boyfriend in Lafayette wanted to marry her, she was twenty-two and he wanted to marry her, wouldn’t take no for an answer even though she was signed up for AmeriCorps State and National, leaving for Chicago in a month, couldn’t they get married when she got back?
And then it was AmeriCorps or him, and she wasn’t going to get married at twenty-two anyway because her mom got married at twenty-two and look where it got her. Married, getting married itself, it seemed like a thing intended for her but only from far away. Like, she’d get married eventually, because her mom wanted to dab at her tears in the pews and her dad — irony lost, or else purposefully sidestepped — wanted to walk her down the aisle. But she wouldn’t do it now and she wouldn’t give it up for him, what she saw as her future, what she saw as herself helping people, doing a good thing. She left him behind for a year and when her term was up she came back and felt him lurking around corners, marriage, marriage, screaming at her from her mom’s flashy ring to late Valentine’s displays still in stores, candlelit restaurants, dating apps, standing next to Audrey in the street as Audrey got asked out and Macie, more often of the time, got ignored. Not that she isn’t attractive, her mom tells her she’s attractive, sweetheart, you’re beautiful, though she has to say that — but if she is attractive, then it’s a dependable, long-term sort of attractive. She’s a solid sort. A nice sort, always kind, always polite. Bringing cakes and casseroles, doing the dishes, holding the door. The sort you goddamn fucking marry.
No, she’s painfully single, but she sees it in other people, has no choice but to see it in other people. She wants and she doesn’t want and she’s surrounded by it, love, and now she’s seeing, can’t believe that she’s seeing, but she’s seeing–
She pulls Audrey outside. It’s warm, muggy. The pool is impeccably clear. Audrey takes her shoe off and dips a speculative toe in the water, says, not looking at Macie, “What?”
“You know what.”
“I don’t know what, actually.”
“You– I’m not dumb, y’know.”
“Of course you ain’t dumb. You’re in grad school.”
“Audrey–”
Audrey turns to look at her, folding her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“But you know what I’m asking.”
“Why can nobody ever put it in fucking words? Jesus. I tried to– you know that was what I was trying to do, talking about Utah, back there. Not even just to– I’m not trying to out anybody, I just want to know where they all stand. It’s not like I’m– because I haven’t told mom and I probably won’t, not anytime soon, anyway. So it’s not like I got any right to encourage anybody to do anything. It’s just kinda nice to feel like I got allies at the table, now.”
“Allies,” Macie repeats.
She winces. “Not like you’re not–”
“I know. Just– okay, so I’m gonna put it in words. Dad and Rust. They’re together?”
“Yeah.”
“And how long have you–”
“Since the summer. They had a case in New Orleans, we had dinner together. Marcus too. It was kinda– it was kinda obvious, maybe just to me, because I’m bisexual too, but I had to drag it out of him.”
“So he’s–”
“Bisexual? I guess. I didn’t drag that much outta him. Figure the thing about him and Rust was enough. Our parents’ generation, they don’t really, y’know, label things the same way, I’ve found.”
Macie shakes her head. Turns in a circle, drops to sit on one of the sun loungers. It’s warm, she can feel that through her jeans. “Fucking hell. Our goddamn father.”
“You’re telling me.”
“And Rust? Really? I thought they– I mean, he was at our house a lot, but I always thought they kind of hated each other, too.”
“God, can you imagine how weird it would be for mom if she found out?”
“Yeah, she–” Macie catches something in Audrey’s face, then, as she looks away down the lawn. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t– nothing. Don’t mean nothing.”
“Audrey.”
“Macie.”
“Audrey–”
“Fuck, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. And you can’t tell literally anybody else.” She lights a cigarette, produced as if out of nowhere. Macie can’t remember if she’s supposed to have quit or not, if this is another thing she’s not supposed to be telling their mom. “I know you always thought it was dad, the divorce, and it was, but it was also mom. She also cheated on him.”
“She– what?”
“Yeah. And that’s not even the weirdest, most fucked-up part. It was–” Audrey hesitates, then shrugs, barrels on. “It was with Rust. She slept with Rust.”
Macie can’t help it; she looks over her shoulder, glimpses Rust through the window, next to Marty on the couch, a respectable distance away. “Fuck. Yeah. That is– that would make it weird.”
“That’s all you got to say? When I’m telling you–” Audrey shakes her head. “My fucking therapist told me I shouldn’t go around blaming other people for all my teenage breakdown bullshit, everything that’s still a little wrong with me now, but knowing about that, Rust and our parents and everything fucked-up between them, yeah, that didn’t exactly help.”
Macie finds herself laughing. A startled, slightly hollow laugh. “Shit, I am so glad I didn’t get married.”
“Once again. How are you so– normal, about this?’
“I am normal. I am the normal one. Yeah, given what you’ve just told me, I’m definitely– I have to be. Right? You didn’t know that?”
Audrey takes a long drag of her cigarette. “Yeah. Shit. I’m– I know. But you, uh, you don’t gotta be, y’know? There doesn’t have to be a normal one. Which sounds stupid. It is stupid, but Marcus, he’s all about owning the stupid things, like it’s okay, it’s just living somehow. And I know I’m a shitty older sister. To go along with our shitty dad, he ain’t any less shitty just ‘cause he’s queer like me. I just– you’re doing okay, right?”
No one asks her that; she’s always okay. She hears talk of eldest daughters, youngest child syndrome, too trusted and too coddled respectively, but her perfection isn’t arbitrary, she has to be good, she’s her parents’ second chance. She nods, scratching the back of her neck. “How did this get to being about me?”
“It’s not about any of us, just them. Except I guess they kinda made it our business when they broke up the home, so. We can feel how we like.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. I got a lot of mileage outta that and so can you.”
“I wouldn’t– I wouldn’t do that.”
“No, I know you wouldn’t.” Audrey shakes her head, smiles with her eyes closed. “My little sister. You’re too fucking sweet, huh? In a nice way. I do mean that in a nice way.”
Macie swallows this, chooses to believe it. “Do I– y’know, do I say something? To them?”
“No. I don’t– well, maybe. I don’t know. I think he’s just waiting for a push of some kind, dad. But it’s gonna be weird and it’s gonna suck a little bit, probably, so it’s not– I mean, you probably know him better than I do, huh?”
“Not really.” She knows him through measure of politeness, Christmas cards, birthday messages. His address but not because she really visits there. “Maybe doesn’t help me out here.”
“Do whatever the fuck you want, Jesus. I don’t– I’m not your gay guru, or whatever.”
She laughs. “Close enough.”
Audrey shoves her on the shoulder, light, casual. Then they both turn at another voice, Texan, Rust’s low drawl: “Miss Audrey, Miss Macie. I ain’t interrupting, am I?”
“Nope,” Audrey says. “You looking for a cigarette?”
“Might be.” She holds out the pack; he takes one and lights it so fluidly it’s like the cigarette is just an extension of his arm. “I been running low all day and Marty conned me outta stopping at a store on the way over here to get some.”
“He trying to get you to quit?”
He shrugs loosely. “Likes a losing battle, your old man.”
That much is true; Macie leans back on her hands and watches them smoke together, her sister and Rust, Rust tall and washed-out and about the same as she remembers him, except completely different. On the way over here: explains the one car, explains a lot of things she probably already knew.
Audrey says, “We were just talking about you, actually.”
“You were, huh?”
“Making bets on how Ted’s gonna feel about you at the end of today. Mutual illusions in the rodeo, all that kinda stuff. Hating golf, which, welcome to the club. See, Macie thinks he’s just not gonna like you, but me, I think Ted’s got this weird thing about sucking up to people he views as a challenge. That’s why he lets dad come over here, slowly but surely breaking him down. He wields being nice as a weapon.”
“And you think he’s gonna wield it on me.”
“That’s what I think, yeah. You’re, like, the final boss of this whole messed up family situation.”
He receives this with just a little twitch of his brow. Who knows what he understands that to mean. He says, “And I ain’t great at parties, neither.”
It’s Macie, then, who surprises herself, shrugs: “You’re not that bad.”
“Why, I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.” He murmurs this, low, tone incongruent, like it means something, it’s just something people say, it’s just something she says.
But also she means it, and she says, “You do, y’know, seem to shake it up a bit. Maybe it’s because of how messed up the thing is, but– I don’t know. I guess I was expecting today to be more cataclysmic. Mom certainly was.”
“Ain’t over just yet.”
“No, but–”
“Yeah,” Audrey says. “We’re talking but we’re not really– but I don’t know what we’d say.”
Rust looks at her steadily, a long look they share somewhere above Macie’s head. “Leaving that shit to Marty, if at all. Rather not be here just as a conversation starter. Didn’t exactly wanna come at all, but it’s been alright.”
Alright; Macie’s a little offended, on behalf of her mom, though logically she knows why, most of the reason why. “I don’t know that it’s a bad thing, not to– like, it’s been alright, like you said. It’s been nice. It doesn’t need to be cataclysmic. I think we’ve kinda had enough of that.”
Audrey smiles. “We’re kids of a broken home, don’t know what to do with ourselves if nobody’s screaming at each other.”
Rust: “You’ll figure it out.”
In the living room, things slow down. Audrey curls into Marcus’s side; her mom sits on the arm of Ted’s chair. Rust and her dad, Rust-and-her-dad, Macie can’t stop seeing it, the little ways they glance at each other, or don’t glance at each other, know each other well enough not to need to, to be assured innately that the other’s still there. Everybody talks idly, tired after so much food. Nothing cataclysmic happens. Outside the world goes blue; after a while, Rust nudges her dad in the side and her dad blinks, says, “Oh, yeah, we got, uh, I got you guys some Christmas presents.”
Her mom says, “Oh, Marty, you didn’t have to–”
“Nah,” Rust says, looking her mom in the face. “It’s Christmas.”
Her mom closes her mouth. Her dad brings out a couple little presents, wrapped with brutal efficiency such that Macie has to attack hers with scissors — this has to be Rust’s doing, when her dad gave her gifts they practically fell open in her hands — and when she gets it open, it’s dark blue, FOUCAULT, Discipline and Punish. She turns it over in her hands, knows it for a Rust gift, as well as a Rust wrapping. Her dad wouldn’t even know where to start.
And indeed, Rust says, “Might be it’s already on your reading list. But if it ain’t, well, social work, it’s worth taking a different angle, some of the time.”
She looks between them, him and her dad, says, “Thank you.”
Her dad shrugs. “Took some advice. But you’re welcome.”
Audrey gets a sketchbook, fresh creamy paper and a plain red cover. That could be either of them. For her mom, it’s a set of neutral, vaguely classy candles, scents like Pomegranate Noir and Golden Amber. She can’t imagine Rust shopping for candles. Hell, shopping in general, but somehow they’re here, all thanking each other politely, being nice about the whole thing. Her mom gives her dad a nice plate, like a centerpiece, like he’s gonna be hosting people for dinner, which seems optimistic, also somehow like a removal: your dinners are now your own. Got nothing to do with me.
Her dad thanks her. Rust says nothing, running his fingertips over the pad of his thumb. Nothing about him ever suggested he’s the kinda guy who wants a decorative plate, but now, hey, maybe he’s somebody new. Fruit, charcuterie, a pie. Maybe they’re all pie people now, joining Macie in the place she’s always been, the place she’s not sure she fits any longer.
At length, it gets to the time when her dad’s looking at his watch. Too much wine, Macie excuses herself to the kitchen for a glass of water, and when she comes back she passes her dad and Rust alone in the hallway, like waiting to be excused. They don’t see her for a moment, and she doesn’t want to spy but she can’t help it, watching her dad’s hand settle on Rust’s arm, pull him close for a moment, nudge Rust’s face into his neck.
“You doing okay?” her dad says, soft, syllables all elided together.
“I been doing worse,” Rust returns, barely audible. Macie feels her own singleness like a twist of the knife, and also the strange rightness of the scene, like it’s ordinary, it isn’t ordinary, but it is. She can’t bear it and she clears her throat, steps out, and her dad takes his time moving away, keeps Rust close by.
“Hey, Mace,” he says.
Rust: “I’m gonna go say goodbye.”
Her dad looks after him but lets him go, then it’s just Macie and her dad, her dad feeling the awkwardness now, rubbing the back of his neck. “You, uh–”
“It’s okay, dad. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No?”
“No. I– yeah. I had a nice day. It was nice to see you. Both of you.”
“Nice, yeah. It was nice.” He looks at her a little closer, then. “You okay, Mace? I mean, Chicago, it’s great, it sounds great, but– you’re okay, right? You didn’t eat much at lunch.”
“Oh, fuck you,” she says, and he blinks, says, “Macie?” like he’s checking she’s still herself, isn’t just Audrey in a mask and mousy brown wig. She shakes her head. “No, you don’t– this is why I said we didn’t have to talk.”
“I’m checking in on my daughter. I ain’t allowed to do that?”
“No. Because I’m the okay one.”
“That ain’t very nice to Audrey.”
“So it’s not true?”
He presses his lips together. “We don’t see you like that. That way, y’know, like there’s types of you. One of each, that ain’t–”
“We, there is no we. There’s you and there’s mom, not you and mom. Mom and Ted. You and– you and Rust. That’s what it is now, right? I don’t– I am okay, y’know. And if I wasn’t, I’m sorry, but I don’t see how far it would be your business, really. Worry about Rust. Worry about Audrey, maybe, if you gotta worry about someone. Not me.”
“You can’t–” He shakes his head, looks miserable. “But you got somebody you talk to, right? About things?”
“I talk to Audrey,” she says, though she could probably talk to Audrey more. And Audrey’s got her own problems; but not anymore; but Audrey has Marcus, and Macie is alone. Going back to Chicago, she’s alone. But also on some level she likes it that way.
“If you want to, I mean, I know I don’t got any right to be asking you, but if you wanna talk to me– yeah. You know where I am. Where we are.”
“I don’t know if Rust would like that, would he?”
Her dad smiles a little, looking down. “How’d you ever get to be thoughtful, huh? Didn’t get that shit from me. No, Rust’s– he’s alright.”
“Dad–”
“You don’t gotta call me. I’m just saying, you can. More than just wishing me happy birthday ‘cause you feel like you have to. Do what’s good for you, y’know. Please.”
For the first time maybe ever she feels seen and identified by her father, her father who’s looking through the lens of Rust, no doubt, Rust who was always sharp and edgy and then gone, just gone, both of them gone. The feeling’s new and strange and she looks at her feet, says, “Thanks for the book.”
“Sure,” he says. Holds his arms out; awkwardly, she accepts the hug. Into her hair: “You look nice today. Chicago must be treating you well. Not that you don’t look nice all the time. Maggie’s got them good genes, huh?”
“Now I know you don’t mean that,” she says, feeling bizarrely close to crying.
“Well, maybe a little bit. Lucky you’re a girl, don’t got my hairline.”
She huffs a laugh. Steps back, away from the circle of his arms. He’s softer now, looking at her soft, edges all blurred as if by memory but not really, he’s right here, this is just what life looks like now.
He and Rust go. Vague promises to keep in touch; Macie’s still not sure why her mom decided to do this and she looks like she doesn’t know herself, closing the door, exhaling some tension out of her body. Ted says, “Rust, he’s hard work, huh? Interesting guy though. Bet he’s got a lot of stories to tell.”
Audrey meets Macie’s eyes behind his back, smirks. They bet nothing but Macie still feels like she owes her, somehow, so she follows them out to the pool, Audrey and Marcus sliding in immediately, swimming circles around each other, laughing, making eyes. It’s dark now but the pool is lit bright, crystal blue, sweet like fondant icing. Warm air rising off it: heated for the weather, temperate 60 degrees now the sun’s set. Macie stays on a sunlounger for a while, flicking through the Foucault in dim light. Then Audrey splashes water in her direction and finally, surrendering, she gets in.