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The confrontation with Jake was in the forefront of my mind for weeks. Ballentine smirked with sharp teeth, placating me with false sympathy and concern for Rex’s health, but not uttering a peep about what they’d discussed. I know Jake would’ve caved had I lined his pockets. And I also understand it would lead to me doing the same in the future.
There’s nothing to worry about anymore. Rex put my mother and I out of our suffering earlier this week.
Or so I’d thought.
My mother is sprawled on an overstuffed chair. It’s dinnertime and she has on silk pajamas and a matching peach robe. I wonder when Davina rolled out of bed, if this is as dressed as she’s gotten today, or if she followed through with the grieving widow act, went to the mortuary, and is turning in early with the funeral happening tomorrow. Darkness forces its weight on my shoulders like Atlas carrying the world. My curiosity seems like a fuck ton more consideration than she spared for me.
“You’re home.” Her voice hitches, though my coiffed socialite mother has used the same phrase every evening since I moved back in.
“I live here. Why are you surprised?”
When it became apparent the prognosis was that my dad wasn’t likely to recover after his stroke, I’d broken the lease on my apartment and packed my shit into a storage facility. A year in therapy, battling the demons I knew about before yesterday, had me afraid of what my mother might do left to her own devices. Now, my anger toward her makes me uncertain why it mattered.
Davina clicks on a lamp, flooding the formal living room’s pink walls with golden light. With a still-full squat goblet of Rex’s best Scotch in her opposite hand, my best guess is she’s about to self-medicate whereas I’d had an emergency appointment with my shrink today. She wipes under her eyelid, removing any trace of remorse from her face, and touches her upswept brown hair.
“You didn’t come to the calling hours for your father this afternoon.”
I find it interesting she did, and that she expected me to show after dropping her little H-bomb.
Fuck if I’d ever imagined I was the Cass-Stanton family’s dirty little secret.
“For who?” I fold an ear over, pretending I didn’t catch what she said.
“I deserved that.”
She does, but I won’t rub it in. One of the reasons I opted for counseling was to figure out why walking around on eggshells is normal for my mother and me. There has to be a better way to deal with our mess of a relationship. It wasn’t until my therapist brought up the man she married had conditioned us to act this way that I was willing to see her side and how Rex’s behavior affected both of us.
However, Davina hadn’t copped to the reason behind Rex Stanton’s perverted brand of viciousness until the asshole’s body finally gave out. And I’ve had less than twenty-four hours to process her betrayal.
There’s a point in every kid’s life when they look at their parents and think,“I’ve gotta be adopted.”Or moreover,“How the hell did I wind up with these two imbeciles?”I’m no exception. I’m pretty sure that fleeting feeling went away for the rest of my friends around the time we got through puberty.
It didn’t for me.
Turning into a man became a test of endurance. A challenge dear ‘ol Rexy took upon himself… to break me. He was the first to hand me a Playboy when I was fourteen. An easy grand followed a year later on our family vacation to New Orleans during Mardi gras for a topless prostitute in a back alley in the French Quarter to suck my dick. Ever after, when it came to women, I—as a minor, no less—was flush with singles and placated with booze.
These were normal occurrences in my life. So why did my intuition question it? Why was my reaction to tamp down those gnawings? Pushing them to the side.
The kids I hung out with were rich too. Their parents seemed to love one another and many were social with Rex and Davina, going places to see and be seen. Therefore, I didn’t think much of my dad’s behavior until I was eighteen.
Davina turned a blind eye, playing along with Dad’s lax rules. The only exceptions were the times I led whichever current girlfriend I was doing up to my bedroom. My mother would try to stop it. My dad spat condemnation at her. And once my door was shut and locked? I’d take my aggression out on a teenage girl’s lovely pussy, slamming the headboard against the wall and making her moan loud enough the whole house knew when she came. Never once realizing I was playing right into Dad’s hands.
Looking back at all the available, attractive, and willing women, the most remarkable thing is Rex’s intent wasn’t to prove to me our status in the community entitled me to whatever cunt I wanted. No, my father took sadistic pleasure in it for his own selfish reasons.
Because he wasn’t my father at all.
“We should talk about this before the service.” Davina swallows hard.
“Why? Are you worried I’ll make a scene?” I scrub my beard, pinching the short splinter-like hairs between my fingertips in frustration.
“Will you even be there?”
If only Davina and I know the truth, staying away is unwarranted. I’d rather hold my head high and hadn’t considered failing to show up for the sake of the business Grandad started. My mother inherited a small franchise of car dealerships from my grandfather. Rex grew it to one of the largest auto conglomerates in the country. With few exceptions, we’ve got access to near every new make and model. The market is ever changing, but I don’t foresee anyone not needing a vehicle. Over the next twenty years, I have a chance to leave a mark. If taking charge of a company my dad probably didn’t want me to have and building it bigger is the only way I can dance on Rex’s grave, then so be it.
I don’t know what Rexy waited all those months on a ventilator for other than to prove even without his faculties he was capable of sticking the knife in a little further and causing us grief. That right there is fucked up. The more I’ve mulled it over, I’m positive—not sticking around to defend his actions—Rex earned his wings masquerading as the innocent party.
At this point, publicly revealing the man for who he is to me means his number one weapon hammers the nails into Davina’s coffin. Rex is using me as a tool to ostracize her. I’m not sure where my sympathy for Davina stems from, except my shrink is sure my mother spent more years being gaslit than I have. I’m done playing victim to Rexy’s selfishness. Davina can make whatever choices she wants.
“I’m showing up to make sure they put the right man six-feet under, and I’m cutting the string on his damn bell at the cemetery.”
