Persistence of Memory

Chapter 6 - Resolve

After leaving Emmett's office Gus went straight to Sunny's. There was so much on his mind that he didn't know what to do with himself. He had to talk it through and there was no one else he'd rather confide in than Sunny. He rang the bell of the North residence and for some reason was surprised to see Mrs. North at the door, he somehow expected his girlfriend to greet him.

"Gus! Hello! Please come in. Sunny's upstairs, studying, I hope," Sshe said with a smile and opened the door wide in welcome.

Gus smiled somewhat tightly and walked in. Mrs. North looked at him in concern and placing her hand on his forearm asked, "Gus, you look upset. Is everything OK? Is there something I can do to help?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. North. I'm fine, really. It's nothing serious; I just need to talk to Sunny. Is it OK, if we go out for a bit?"

"Of course! It's not a school night, so I thought you would be going out anyway," she said, her eyebrows rising quizzically.

"I had family stuff going on, so we didn't have exact plans," Gus said by way of explanation.

"Is everything all right with your family? If you ever need someone to talk to, Ron and I are here for you. Remember that, Gus, OK?"

"Thank you, Mrs. North. That means a lot to me, really, but my family is OK...sort of. Everyone's fine, don't worry," he added. "I just got some news that I am trying to process. Talking to Sunny will help," he answered evasively, smiling again.

"Sure, I understand. Go on up, Gus." She motioned towards the stairs that led to her daughter’s room.

~*~*~*~

Gus went up to Sunny's room and saw her sitting at her desk, surfing the net on her laptop. She turned around when he opened the door, took one look at his face and without a word went up to him and enveloped him in a tight embrace. "Are you OK?" she asked quietly and lightly kissed him on the lips.

"Yeah, I am. I just needed this badly."

"What?"

"You..." he said, lightly blushed and briefly frowned. "You - your arms, your lips. Just you."

He sighed and put his forehead on hers. They stayed like that for a few minutes, with eyes closed, enjoying each other’s closeness and slightly swaying from side to side, as if dancing to music that wasn't there. A few minutes later they pulled apart. Gus sighed and smiled.

"Thanks, Sunny. I actually feel better. I wasn't exactly upset...more overwhelmed..." he fell silent and then stretched out on her bed, pulling her next to him.

"What happened at Emmett's?" she asked curiously.

"I heard more of the story...pretty much all of it actually. I don't think any other details are all that important, at this point," he said and then recounted his conversation. "Basically what I found out is that my parents are fools – all four of them! And the rest of my family are meddlesome busybodies who don't know when to shut the fuck up. Well, at least that's what they were back then. Now, it's all different..."

"You consider Justin your parent?" Sunny asked surprised.

"If they stayed together, he would have been another Dad, another parent to me. I loved him. I missed him when he left. I didn't understand what happened and no one would tell me. Now that I know, I don't know how or what to feel. I understand that Uncle Mike's comment hurt him. Who wouldn't get hurt hearing something like that? So, I feel so sorry for him and I feel that his anger was justified, but to a point. I also think that he overreacted. That was a totally shitty, horrible thing to say, but it wasn't said maliciously...it was said in a fit of anger, passion, what have you. And it just shocked everyone, stunned them into silence. No one, I mean no one believed it, no one agreed with it, they all just reacted badly...or not at all, including my Dad. If Justin just waited, maybe a few days or a couple of hours, or minutes even, they all would have apologized, explained that it was all bullshit. But he just... he just gave up. Just like that!" Gus clicked his fingers together. Then he sighed and continued.

"And Dad... God! I don't think I've ever seen him not react to something, if that makes any sense. He's such a physical person. Granted, most problems just roll of his shoulders, but he still deals with them. Something like this... I can totally see him punching Uncle Mike's face in. I can imagine him shouting, or cursing, or pacing, or...something!" Gus said frustrated, and he got off the bed to pace, unintentionally mimicking the father he was describing.

"I have never seen him stunned into immobility or lose the power of speech. That's so unlike him, it's hard for me to believe! But, OK, he was stunned, upset, couldn't say anything...fine, I guess there's a first time for everything. But, afterwards, how could he let his stupid pride get the best of him? Why didn't he defend himself, tell Justin that all the insinuations were lies, were bullshit? How could he let him go like that, Sunny?"

"I don't know, Gus. I wish I could understand it too," she said quietly.

"And my moms! I can see Mom doing something intentionally to upset Dad. They've never had a good relationship and now they don't have one at all. Her behavior, as awful as it was, is actually not all that surprising. But Mama... Oh, my God! I can't even, fathom..." he stopped; his expression was that of complete bewilderment.

"How could she do something so...mean...so malicious...so, fucking, on purpose? I don't want to believe that of her and it's really hard for me to do that, but...something in my gut says that it's true, whether I want to believe it or not!" he said dejectedly, his hands pressed into his stomach, as if to prove the point.

"You have to talk to them, Gus. You have to talk to them all," Sunny said softly, but with a quiet conviction.

"It's pointless to talk to Mom. I already know her opinion. Besides, I have no desire whatsoever to do this over the phone or even over Skype. As for the others...I'm going to talk to Mama tomorrow. I'll force her to talk to me, if I have to, but she WILL tell me the truth! Same with Dad, we are supposed to hang out on Sunday. They can't avoid this any longer."

"What about Justin? He's in London."

"Yeah, that's a definite problem. I'd take my savings and buy a plane ticket now, but with school it would be impossible to go to fucking England until Spring break at the earliest. So, I'll have to think about that."

"Don't worry, Gus. We'll come up with something, some sort of plan," she said and kissed him again.

"Thanks, Sunny. Thanks for listening to me rant and rave."

"You didn't rant or rave." She laughed lightly. "You talked and you feel better. I can see it in your eyes. So, no thanks necessary – that's what a girlfriend is for."

~*~*~*~

Sunny and Gus didn't end up going out that evening. They stayed home with Sunny's parents, even though it was Friday night. They ate pizza and watched "The Maltese Falcon", which turned out to be a favorite of Ronald North's and which both Gus and Sunny liked also.

When Gus got home that night, he went straight to his room without saying anything to his mother. Half an hour later, she came into his room to check on him and to make sure he was OK, but Gus pretended to be asleep. He was tired and although talking to Sunny helped a great deal, he was not ready to talk to his mother quite yet. He wanted to get some rest and mentally prepare himself for what he was sure would be an unpleasant confrontation.

Unfortunately, neither sleep nor rest were forthcoming, and Gus spent most of the night tossing and turning, thinking about his Dad, his mother, Justin and the rest of the family. He went over his conversations with Grams, Uncle Mike and Emmett again and again, and thought how curious it was that even though that fateful night happened so long ago, everyone seemed to remember it with amazing clarity. He realized that the memory of that night was so persistent because none of them put it behind them in any meaningful way, never got proper closure. He gathered that in their attempts to get into his father's good graces after that fiasco, they collectively swept it all under a rug and left it there unexamined and untouched for over a decade. On their own, individually, they would peek into that dark corner with regret and then bury it back up again. As a family, though, no one wanted to bring on the hurt again, so no one talked about it and no one apologized to anyone else for causing the rift not just between Brian and Justin, but between each other.

Gus thought of each member of their unconventional family and their connection to him, to his Dad, to his mother and to each other. All were on speaking terms, all were friends, and all were family. Each of them had individually mended fences with Brian and between themselves, but he realized that they'd never quite done the same as a group; not all together; not all the way.

Sunday dinners at Grams with everyone gathered together were a distant memory – Gus couldn't remember those days at all, he just heard about them mentioned in passing. Since moving back to Pittsburgh after he turned eight, Deb's Sunday dinner had one or two invitees. The Sunday after, it would be a different pair of people.

The traditional breakfast at the Liberty Diner with the entire gang together was also a thing of the past. Brian started to get his breakfast to go, unless he ate there with Gus, or made breakfast himself at home. Only uncle Ted and Blake were regular breakfast eaters at the diner to this day. Once in a while they'd be joined by Emmett and whomever he was dating at the time. Sometimes it would be Uncle Mike, sometimes Uncle Ben, sometimes Hunter, when he was in town. His mother avoided the diner like the plague and didn't go in there unless she absolutely had to. Gus couldn't remember the last time everyone was having breakfast, or any other meal, together at the Liberty Diner as a family, like in the stories he heard of the 'good old days'.

The holidays were very much the same – everyone celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas in their own little circles – Ted with Blake; Uncle Mike, Uncle Ben and Hunter with Grams, and Carl; Gus himself spent holidays either with his mother, or with his father, and occasionally in Toronto with mom and JR. None of them ever came together for a big holiday shindig – it's as if they were all afraid that the ghost of that long ago night would rear its ugly head and upset the delicate balance that they'd achieved over the last decade.

Gus couldn't understand how an argument, even a bad one, could have such far-reaching consequences.

"They are supposed to be adults, for fuck's sake! They are supposed to be smarter, more mature, stronger, braver, less... well, less stupid!" Gus thought. He realized that he was disappointed, so very disappointed in all of them. "I'm going to fix this. I have to fix this!" he vowed to himself.

For some reason that resolve finally helped quiet his mind and he fell into a restful sleep in the wee hours of the morning, dreaming of a beautiful party on the grounds of Britin, where everyone was there, all together, dressed up in all their finery, drinking champagne and laughing.

He dreamed of a crowded dance floor constructed in a meadow not far from the stables, where Deb was dancing with Carl, Uncle Mike with Uncle Ben, Hunter with Indiana Josie, an Archeologist girlfriend of his, who got that silly nickname because her name was Josie, and she was from Indiana. He saw Uncle Ted and Blake dancing a complicated tango, completely against the music that was being played. He saw Mama dancing with Amy, a co-worker of hers from the gallery, who Gus knew for a fact, was straight. He saw his Mom dancing with Kiki from the diner; which was weird, but weird things often happened in dreams.

"That's right, this IS a dream!" he realized.

He saw JR, suddenly looking very grown up, dancing with a friend of his from high school. He saw Emmett dancing with a retired football player, named Drew Boyd, which for some odd reason was not at all surprising. And then he saw them – Dad and Justin – swaying together slowly in one place, wrapped around each other, their foreheads pressed together and their eyes closed. Gus's heart squeezed painfully in his chest because it was just a dream and it wasn't real.

Then, suddenly, the scenery changed and they were no longer on the dance floor, but in a beautiful dining room set up under a wide, white party tent decorated with an abundance of flowers (all orchids), balloons and candles. Oddly enough each candle had a small hand drawn card attached that declared it to be "Hypoallergenic and fragrance free!", with an exclamation point.

"What a bizarre thing to add to a wedding decoration?" Gus thought and then realized that he was, in fact, dreaming of a wedding. "But whose?" was his very next thought.

In the next instant he realized he was standing up, while the rest of this dream wedding party was sitting down and looking expectantly at him.

"What do I do? Am I supposed to speak? What do I say?" he thought frantically and started to look around him, hoping someone would come to his aid.

He turned to his right and then...then the world disappeared as if into a mist, together with the party tent, the guests and the decorations...because the only thing he could see was her – Rowena Marie North, Rae, his Sunny – smiling brighter than the sun itself, wearing the most beautiful white dress, a ring sparkling on her finger as she brought her hand up to his face to lightly touch his cheek.

"Gus..." she whispered, "Gus..."

"Gus! Wake up! Your father's on the phone." His mother shook him awake, tearing him out of the dream.

"My wedding, it was MY fucking wedding!" he said aloud, instantly awake, abruptly sitting up in his bed.

"What?" Lindsay said in astonishment.

"Nothing, mama. Just a dream, it was just a dream. Who's on the phone?" he asked.

"Brian," she answered and handed him the cordless handset.

It turned out that his Dad had to go on a business trip unexpectedly to Chicago for a week and had to cancel their Sunday plans. Then Brian told Gus that he apparently left his cell at Sunny's.

"I guess I'll have to have 'the Justin talk' with Dad when he comes back," he thought after they hung up.

Gus got up and while taking a shower, he remembered his resolve to find a way to fix things in his family. Then he thought of his dream and realized that that's exactly what he wanted – his family all around him on his wedding day; no matter when or how far in the future that actually happened in reality, and no matter whom he married, though, he decided it would be totally awesome if it ended up being Rae.

He got out of the shower, got dressed and went down to the kitchen. His mother was sitting in the breakfast nook, drinking coffee and reading the Arts & Leisure section of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Gus walked up to the table, sat down across from her, took the newspaper out of her hands and said,

"Mama, we need to talk."

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