“For what? They’re yanking our chain again. The sun’s gonna blow up? We’re going back to caveman times? C’mon, Aubrey. Three-day blackout, tops.”
She closed her eyes, thinking how little she missed Rusty’s opinions about the world, his distrust of every single institution, corporation, and loose affiliation of like-minded individuals in existence, whether formally organized or happenstance. She bit her tongue. “I hope you’re right.”
“I know I am.”
“Please take your arm off of there.” She’d picked up the last of the bags and was waiting to close the trunk, but he was in the way. Rusty closed it for her, and she started up the walk. He followed. She glanced back, over her shoulder. “If you don’t think it’s happening, why did you feel the need to check on us?”
“Just wanted to make sure you guys weren’t panicking.”
“We’re not. We’re taking precautions. There’s a difference.”
She moved up onto the front step and Rusty lunged in front of her, opening the screen door. Aubrey paused, because the next logical step would be for him to follow her into the house, help unpack the groceries, and generally become part of things, which was a development she urgently wanted to prevent.
“Would you close the door, please?” She backed up and set the bags of groceries down at her feet. Rusty complied, closing the screen door. From inside, they could hear the sound of the TV as Scott turned it back on, checking for an update. Aubrey turned to Rusty. “Thank you for checking. We’re fine.”
Rusty just looked at her, saddened. His icy eyes, courtesy of his Irish mother, sloped down at the sides, and when he’d hit his forties, he’d acquired a permanent heavy-lidded look. The resulting effect was that he struck most people as a man who carried a burden of great sorrow. It wasn’t so terribly far from the truth; it just missed the mark. He had inflicted far more suffering than he’d endured.
“It’s not natural,” he said.
“What?”
“You. My kid. Living together. You’re not even related anymore.”
“That was his choice, not mine. I thought it was brave.”
“I want him to come live with me.”
“Then you probably shouldn’t have hit him.”
She regretted it immediately. Not because it was unkind or uncalled for, but because it meant this conversation was going to go on a lot longer than she’d hoped.
“I told you, I don’t remember doing that.”
“Well, Scott and I do.”
“Did I ever hit you?” She didn’t answer. “Did I ever hit you?”
Aubrey turned, looking inside. Scott was looking back at them over his shoulder, his senses hyper-attuned to the slightest change in the calibration of a conversation’s hostility level. Aubrey called to him. “Can you get all the cold stuff into the freezer in the basement? And move it in there all at once, don’t leave the freezer door open for long, OK?”
Scott nodded and headed into the kitchen. She knew the coffin-size freezer Thom had gifted her during COVID was empty, save for a single five-pound bag of ice, and she hoped to get it as full as possible while they still could. It was a plan that was doomed to failure after a few days if the power did go out, but it was all she had at the moment.
Rusty was still looking at her. “I stopped. Drinking. So that you know.”
“I’m glad. Rusty, I have a lot of work to do.”
“It was the times I blacked out. That was it, right? Because every other time, I was myself, and I was in control. You know that. But I can’t remember what I can’t remember, and I couldn’t control it either. It wasn’t me.”
Aubrey turned and looked across the street, westward, where the sun had fully set behind the row of maple trees that bordered the school behind the houses. It was cool mid-April, so it would be dark soon. Maybe really dark. She was desperate to wrap this up.
Rusty wasn’t finished. “If I got pissed off, I could tell, and I could always control it, no matter how much I’d had. I could feel it coming and I could walk it down, I could make it go back in, and I never, ever hit anybody or anything when it was like that.”
“But you did, Rusty.”
“In the blackouts, that’s what I’m saying. But I don’t remember those, because I was switched off. I couldn’t stop it because I wasn’t there. It sounds stupid, but it’s true, and that’s why this is all so unfair.”