Rufus + Syd

by Julia Watts

  But after maneuvering around the maze of crowded aisles for a while, eventually Syd and I find a small art supplies section, tucked into an alcove.

  “Aha!” I say. “It’s almost enough to make a person believe in God!” I wink at her, and then immediately start loading up our shopping cart with canvases and several paint brushes, multiple tubes of Winsor & Newton paint, and other necessary supplies. Though I want to work in oil eventually, I’ve decided to start out with acrylics. I’m also thinking that I’d ultimately like to work really big too, but these canvases are all pretty small, relatively speaking. It’s a start.

  “Here goes practically the rest of my summer allowance,” I tell Syd.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll buy us lunch.” And when I go to protest, she adds that some rich lady gave her a ten-dollar tip the other day. “She must have been from out of town,” Syd says, and then she goes on, “She’s also paying for the gas we’re using this weekend, with the ten-dollar tip she gave me the week before last.”

  “She’s a keeper,” I say, to which Syd nods. And then I gesture toward the exit with my head. “Let’s blow this joint,” and we do.

  THE ONLY place we can find to eat lunch that isn’t too far out of our way is Sonic, a fast-food chain. Syd and I peruse the menu (“They have fried pickles!” she announces), order, and pay for our food. Syd finds a shady spot to park where we can eat our lunch. It seemed impossible to eat healthily, and so Syd and I decided just to go for it with burgers, fries, and shakes.

  “We haven’t talked about Michael Foster,” I say as we set to.

  Syd gives me a look. “It’s so sad.”

  “Josephine mentioned it too,” I tell her. “And she said something about how it must be so hard for Cole McWhorter, just bringing everything back.”

  Syd nods and takes a slurp of her chocolate milkshake. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I’m slowly making my way into difficult territory; I’ve been meaning to tell Syd about Patrick for a while now.

  “There’s this guy…,” I begin. I look at her as I pick over my fries (I only like the really thin ones).

  Syd is squeezing ketchup out of those little packets now. “Uh-huh,” she says, in a way that I can tell she’s expecting something good.

  “It’s not what you think.” I look over her shoulder and out the window. “His name is Patrick McIntire—maybe you know him from school?”

  Midbite of her burger, she simply shakes her head.

  “Well,” I continue, though it’s not easy, “we used to be sort of friends. I’d go over to his house after school when his parents weren’t home and we’d, uh, we’d kind of mess around.”

  “Sex!” Syd shouts.

  “Sort of,” I say, “but not exactly.” I pause to take some sips of my shake through the straw. “Anyway, this had been going on for a while, but the last time I went over to his house, right after school ended for the year, he was really weird. He was mean to me, and he actually hit me too… more than once.”

  “I’m sorry.” Syd reaches over to rub my arm. “What happened? What changed?”

  “I don’t know!” I shrug. “The only thing I can figure is that maybe the whole Michael Foster thing really freaked him out, and he suddenly felt compelled to prove how straight he is. And the funny thing, I don’t think he even is gay. This is just something guys our age do—mess around, I mean, in case you didn’t know.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  We’re silent for what feels like a long time as we digest our food and think about what we’ve said. I’m also thinking about something else, something I’m sure Syd isn’t thinking about, but I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while now, wondering. It’s going to be hard to ask her, and yet at the same time I feel guilty holding it in. “Syd, can I ask you something?”

  “Anything at all,” she says breezily.

  “Well, it’s kind of a hard question, and hard to ask, so please don’t take offense or anything, but—”

  “Spit it out, buster,” Syd says, aping a film noir heroine.

  And then, just as I feel my face beginning to color, it comes out. “Syd, are you gay?”

  She immediately reddens too, but she doesn’t look away. “I don’t know!” She says it with consternation in her voice.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” I don’t quite understand how somebody can’t know. I’ve known for about as long as I can remember.

  She sets her shake down and turns her entire body toward me now, not just her head. “What I mean is that I honestly don’t know, Rufus. Guys don’t seem to do anything for me, I can tell you that. I don’t feel anything with them. So if that means I’m gay….”

  “Have you—”

  I don’t even get the complete question out before Syd responds. “Enough to know,” she says.

  “And girls?” I ask.

  “I’ve never done anything, if that’s what you’re asking. The girls at school… well, they wouldn’t be my type even if I knew I liked girls.”

  I’m starting to feel bad for even bringing the whole thing up. And I’m also worried that I’ve upset her. “I’m sorry, Syd.”

  She shakes her head, “No, it’s okay, Rufus—really. It’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about, but I can’t answer it because I just don’t know yet. But so far I’ve gotta say the straight thing hasn’t been working out for me. Maybe I’m too scared because of where we live and how I think my mom would react.”

  “From what you’ve told me, she seems so hip in comparison to my parents.”

  Syd laughs. “I hate to tell you this, honey, but that wouldn’t take much.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh.

  “Sandee is such a man-lover, I don’t think she’d be too pleased to learn that her daughter is a dyke.”

  I give Syd the most serious of looks. “Well, I’m a man-lover, and it would be more than okay with me if you’re a dyke.”

  Syd laughs, as I’d hoped she would, and the air between us feels better now, clear.

  WE DRIVE back home in that spirit of camaraderie, both of us happy about the fact that we’ll be spending much of tomorrow together too. I’d been hoping we’d get back late enough that we’d have to immediately go pick up Syd’s mom after she gets off work, but it’s not even quite four yet, as it turns out.

  “What are you going to do for the rest of the day?” Syd asks as she pulls up in front of my house.

  I go deadpan. “Suffer. You?”

  “Same,” she says, with a similar flat delivery.

  “But on a more positive note,” I say, getting out of the car with my bags of art supplies, “after tomorrow it’ll be like we spent the whole weekend together.” I close the door and lean into the window.

  “Yeah, just like girlfriend and boyfriend.” She flutters her eyelashes at me.

  I deepen my voice and puff out my chest to do my best impersonation of a straight man. “Good-bye, my most dearest darling one. Till we meet again.”

  Whereas Syd’s default mode is always more femme fatale. “See ya tomorrow, handsome.” And then she takes off, leaving a little trail of dust in the air behind her. All I can think of is that I hope Mama and Daddy are watching out the window.

  But, and I had hardly noticed, the car’s not in the driveway. Mama and Daddy aren’t home. I almost turn around and go chasing after Syd to tell her to come in and hang for a while, but instead I carry the art supplies to my bedroom and stash them under my bed. I’m relieved that Mama and Daddy aren’t home, so that I don’t have to explain the art supplies, though I guess they’ll find out soon enough. I didn’t tell them where Syd and I were going this morning or what we were doing. They simply thought I was spending the day with her, which isn’t untrue.

  Now my mind is free to turn to thinking about the first painting I’m going to do. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It’s going to be for Michael Foster, only I’m going to call it MF, which could stand either for Michael Foster or motherfuckers,
which is how I feel about his killers. And I think it’ll look pretty violent too—with big slashes of color. I think the predominant colors will be orange, black, yellow, red, blue, and maybe just a little bit of white. I know it probably doesn’t sound like much, put into words, but that’s the whole point of paintings, after all—they’re visual. I can see it in my mind, and I can’t wait to paint it. I think it’ll look pretty angry too, which is how I feel, along with sad, but it will also have a “terrible beauty,” a phrase I love that Ms. Moreau taught us in English.

  But my reverie is interrupted by the sound of the car pulling into the driveway, a signal that seems ancient to me, as if I’ve known it from birth.

  SUPPERS ARE always casual on the weekend—not that they’re formal during the week, but they’re even more relaxed on weekends, and I’m grateful for that since things can get pretty tense around here sometimes. Tonight’s meal consists of the odd combination of tuna fish sandwiches, sliced tomatoes, and potato chips, but Mama and Daddy both seem to be in pretty good moods. They ask about Syd and about our day, and I tell them Syd’s good and that we drove out into the country, and that we’ll be doing it again tomorrow.

  “This must be getting pretty serious if you’re spending the whole weekend together.” Mama’s looking not at me but at Daddy as she says this. “Don’t you think it’s a little fast, Rufus?”

  Without giving me time to answer, Daddy asks if we need to have “a little talk?”

  “About?”

  He looks at Mama, at the floor, at a corner of the table—anything, seemingly, to avoid looking at me.

  Mama steps in. “What your father’s trying to say—”

  As if his manhood has come into question, Daddy suddenly finds the words. “Your mother and I were just wondering if we need to have a talk about, uh, you know, about the birds and the bees?”

  Now it’s my turn to blush, but I’m also trying to think about how to respond without inciting them further, so that we can get in and out of this conversation as fast as possible. “I’m fifteen,” I begin. “I go to school with a bunch of other teenagers. I already know everything.” I wish Syd were hearing this conversation.

  “Oh,” Daddy says, obviously relieved but looking at Mama, who’s nodding her head. And apparently that is enough of that, as she now moves on to telling me about their day. When she’s finished, I ask the question that I’ve been wanting to ask. “Mama, is it true that you went to school with Cole McWhorter?”

  She looks surprised but recovers quickly. “Yes, I did,” she says quietly. “What makes you ask?”

  “Josephine Caldwell told me she thought you had.”

  “Oh, her,” Mama says. “Her poor mother,” Mama adds, as if Josephine’s mother’s death was Josephine’s fault.

  But I’m not ready to let her move on. “Why didn’t you ever tell me before?”

  She’s flustered now and looks to Daddy for help, but he’s suddenly very busy eating. “It just never came up.”

  I’m incredulous. “We’ve talked about Cole a number of times. Not too long ago, you and Daddy were—”

  “That’s enough, Rufus,” Daddy snaps, coming to Mama’s defense. “Stop grilling your mother. She answered your question and that should be enough.”

  “I’m just wondering why she never mentioned it before is all.”

  Mama’s looking sheepish now, almost as if she’s embarrassed.

  “Leave it!” Daddy says, giving me his sternest look.

  I cough as a kind of segue, then ask if I can be excused, to which Mama nods.

  And so it’s back to the prison of my bedroom once again, but it doesn’t feel quite as bad as usual, knowing that I’ll have tomorrow with Syd and that we’ll escape Vermillion again, even if only for the day.

  Syd

  “YOU ABOUT ready, Didi?” Mom yells.

  “Just let me get my shoes on.” I sit on the edge of the bed to stomp into my Chucks, which I’m wearing with a sleeveless black minidress. It takes real commitment to wear black in the Georgia heat.

  When I meet Mom in the living room, she’s wearing a pink flowered sundress, which makes her bleached hair look extra light and her fake ’n’ bake tan extra dark. Beautician Barbie in the plastic flesh. “I’m still pissed at Cheryl for blowing me off,” she says. “But it’ll be fun to have a girls’ night out that’s just the two of us.”

  “Uh-huh.” I sound as doubtful as I feel. I know the evening will basically amount to me watching Mom get drunk and waiting around to drive her home or to leave her with some dude.

  BY THE time my cheeseburger comes, Mom’s on her second beer. She reaches across the table and snatches a fry from my plate.

  “You should’ve ordered some too.”

  “Yeah, but I’d end up with ketchup all over my dress.” Mom pushes her hair behind one ear. “And guys don’t like to see girls eating like a pig.”

  “Are you saying that’s what I’m doing?”

  Mom grins. “Nah, you eat way neater than me, and you’re still young enough that every calorie don’t show up on your ass. Enjoy it while you can.” She takes a swig of beer. “Besides, you know how many calories you have to suck down just to get a buzz off this stuff? This town needs cocktails.”

  “Among many other things,” I say, taking a juicy bite of burger.

  “Aah, it’s not that bad here.” Mom finishes off her beer. “No cold winters. We’re in driving distance to the beach.”

  “Are we? We’ve never been.”

  Mom laughs. “That’s ’cause we’re always broke! What we need is a sugar daddy. A sugar daddy and some cocktails.” She flags down the waitress, holding up her empty bottle.

  “But in the meantime you’ll settle for another beer?”

  “You got that right.” She turns to the waitress. “Deb, are they setting up a stage?”

  “Yeah, we got live music tonight.”

  Mom smiles. “You’ll like that, Syd. You can’t drink, but you can dance.”

  “Not to the cowpoke honky-tonk crap they play here,” I say. “I don’t see how anybody can dance to country music. At least not sober.”

  To my surprise, the usually stone-faced Deb laughs. “I think you’re onto something there. You can only dance to country music with a belly full of beer. We got a rock band tonight, though. I hope they know some Bob Seger.”

  When Deb leaves, Mom says, “I guess you might dance after all.”

  I look around. There’s nobody here anywhere near my age. “Not all by myself.”

  “You should’ve asked your little gay boyfriend to come with you,” Mom says. “I bet he can dance.”

  Mom may be stereotyping, but I still figure if Rufus can dance as gracefully as he runs, he’s a way better dancer than I am. “I don’t think his parents would let him come here. They’re pretty stuffy.”

  “Not like me, huh?” Mom says, knocking back more beer. “Well, I don’t care what you do, but when the band starts up, I’m gonna be dancing. I’ve just gotta go find me somebody to dance with.”

  It’s always like clockwork. As soon as she hits her third beer, she goes on the prowl.

  “Can I order dessert and coffee?” I ask.

  Mom reaches over and squeezes my hand. “You order whatever you want, Buttercup. It’s the prize that comes with playing Didi.”

  When Deb comes to clear my plate, she says, “Let me guess. A hot fudge sundae and a black coffee.”

  I’m surprised how chummy she’s being. Maybe Brandy at Mr. D’s has warped my view of waitresses. “Yes, please.”

  “So is Blondie over there your mama?” She glances over at the bar, where Mom is saying something to the bartender and laughing.

  “Yep,” I say.

  “Y’all don’t seem a bit alike.”

  “We’re not.”

  I’m scraping up the last of my ice cream when the band starts setting up. There are three guys—maybe in their early twenties—all of them with long hair and tight, faded jeans. One of th
em has colorful tattoos all down his arms. Another is wearing a wifebeater and motorcycle boots. They’re working the boy rocker look pretty hard.

  During the sound check when the equipment screeches, some yahoo at the bar yells, “Get a haircut!”

  The guy with the tattoos says into the mic, “Thanks, man. We never thought of that before.”

  Vermillion, Georgia, where it might as well be 1968. I look away from the band while Deb fills my coffee. I look back when she’s gone and see that the band has a member who wasn’t there before. The lead singer stands, legs apart in faded Levi’s, one hand gripping the mic. At first I think it’s a teenage boy, but a glance at her chest proves otherwise.

  “Are y’all ready to make some noise?” she hollers into the mic, her voice low and a little raspy. She has a strong jawline, which is part of the reason I thought she was a boy at first, but her eyes are long-lashed and lined in even more black liner than I use. A silver stud sparkles in her nose. Her hair, dyed crow black, is boy-short and spiky on top.

  A few people make noise, few enough for her to holler, “I can’t heeeeear you!” after which a few more people join in.

  “That’s more like it,” she says, flashing a gap-toothed smile. “I’m Tara, and we’re Stone Mountain. And baby, we were born to run!”

  The band kicks into a not great but recognizable version of the opening chords of the Springsteen song. “Born to Run” wasn’t new even when my mom was a kid so it definitely predates all the members of the band, who don’t look much older than I am. The guitar and bass are nothing to write home about, but when Tara belts out the opening lines, it’s the biggest voice I’ve ever heard coming from a real, live, in-person girl. It’s funny, though, because it doesn’t sound like a girl’s voice or a guy’s voice, either one. It’s—I think of a word I heard Rufus use once—androgynous. If I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t hear a gender. I’d just hear pipes and passion.

  I do close my eyes, and soon I’ve tuned out the mediocre instruments, and all I hear is Tara’s voice making me hear the words to the song for the first time. And in my head I’m the girl climbing on the back of the motorcycle riding away from the crappy, dead-end town in search of a place where the sun shines on people who are different. When she sings the line about dying in an everlasting kiss, my eyes fly open, and my cheeks burn. What kind of fantasy have I let myself fall into?