Tigers and Devils

by Sean Kennedy

  “I thought you said your mother was starting to come around to the idea of you eventually bringing home someone with a penis.”

  I choked back my laughter. “Okay, maybe Mum. But Dad and Tim… never. Well, Tim only for the controversy.”

  There was a big fat elephant in the room we were avoiding: the fact I did have a “squeeze”, and there was no way, given his profession, that he would ever be coming to a Murray family barbecue.

  “Maybe you can take Roger and Fran along to help save your sanity,” Declan suggested.

  “I’ve subjected them to enough Murray events,” I shuddered. “This one I’ll have to suffer on my own.”

  “SO, YOU’RE the gay one?”

  I almost choked on my beer. Tim laughed, Dad stared at his feet, and Mum hovered over the table while looking suitably confused and harried at the same time.

  “Yeah. Changed my name by deed poll and everything,” I told her.

  “Huh?” She didn’t exactly get it.

  Her name was Gabby Spencer, and I think deep down she really meant well. She knew it was politically correct to show the fag that she was really down and all with him… as long as he didn’t kiss another fag, hold his hand, or breathe in front of her. My brother, of course, was besotted with her. For now.

  “Sausages?” my mother asked breezily.

  I had to cough behind my napkin to stop from bursting into hysterical laughter. Tim wasn’t so subtle.

  “So what do you do?” Gabby asked me, leaning in as if we were the best of friends about to disclose confidences to one another.

  “Do you mean sexually?” I whispered back.

  “Oh, gross!” Tim said.

  “What’s gross?” Dad asked of Tim, not having heard me.

  “Simon’s about to—”

  “The weather report’s on, dear,” Mum told Dad, to avert a crisis.

  Dad’s eyes lit up, and he disappeared into the lounge to see the tail-end of the nightly news. Tim and I snickered together at this old habit you could set a watch by, a brief moment of camaraderie between us that would disappear soon enough.

  Tim murmured something into Gabby’s ear, and that brief exchange ended up being the only direct conversation we had the whole night.

  Once the food was devoured, Dad went in to watch the news channel, Tim and Gabby were lost in their own little world (which was verging on the inappropriate, at least for the dinner table), and of course nobody was helping Mum clear up so I had to take up the slack.

  Mum’s lips pursed unhappily as she scrubbed away at the grill. The atmosphere in the room would have made a New Age-ist run for some cleansing crystals, but I had to stick it out.

  “What’s wrong, Mum?”

  “Nothing, Simon,” she lied through taut, grimaced lips.

  She was never good at lying; it was just that Dad and Tim were too oblivious to anyone’s feelings but their own to ever pick up on it.

  “I know something’s bothering you.” I snuck a quick peek out the kitchen door to make sure Tim and Gabby were still going at it in the dining room and Dad in the lounge. The enemy camps were still in their respective positions; Tim was copping a feel under Gabby’s cardie.

  “Just leave it.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.” And counted to five in my head.

  Mum was just like Roger, although she wanted to have stuff wheedled out of her she would snap far quicker if you feigned nonchalance.

  “It’s just that you sat here, a few weeks ago—”

  “In the kitchen?”

  “Don’t start! In the dining room,” she fumed. “And you told me that you weren’t seeing anyone.”

  This again? Was she trying for some Mother of the Year award? Had she been brainwashed by an Aussie chapter of PFLAG?

  “I wasn’t,” I said feebly.

  “Are you now?” she asked.

  I couldn’t answer her. It would just lead to more questions.

  So now another woman was giving me that look, which suggested she could read far more on my face than I would ever say out loud. She and Fran could start up a support group. And then maybe they could let me in on their little secrets that they shared about me, and if only I knew them I would be able to sort out my life once and for all.

  “I would just like you to talk to me.”

  That caused a long-smouldering ember within me to suddenly light up. “Like you did to me when I first came out?”

  She turned her attention back to the grill. “I had to take time to digest it all.”

  “Six years?” I asked incredulously.

  “Well, I’m sorry I’m not perfect!”

  Here it was, the guilt trip to make me feel bad because everybody else had caused me to feel like I was less than them. And it worked, I did feel bad. But I had to continue standing up for myself; nobody else in the family was going to take up my cause.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not perfect either.”

  “Your brother talks to me.”

  I thought of Tim groping his girlfriend at the dinner table. “That must make you so happy.”

  “Yes, it does! He at least tells me who he’s seeing, what he does at work and on the weekends, and what he wants to do in the future. I have no idea what’s going on in your life!”

  “Because none of you have ever shown any interest lately. So I don’t bother.”

  It sounded harsher than I meant it, and I was horribly rewarded with the sound of a sob escaping from her. Here was one person in my family finally talking to me in a normal way, and I was tearing strips off her for it.

  “You’re so hard to talk to,” she whispered. “I wish I could.”

  “So do I,” I said truthfully.

  “Why is Mum crying?”

  Fucking Tim! I threw the tea towel at him from where he lounged in the doorway. “Get out of here!”

  “Calm down, arsehole!” he yelled. “I just came to get beer.”

  I yanked the fridge door opened and shoved two cans at him. “Here.”

  “I need one for Dad too!”

  I practically threw the third at him. “Get!”

  Thankfully he did so.

  “You should be nicer to him.” Mum sniffed.

  “I should be a lot of things,” I fumed. “Maybe he should be nicer to me.”

  “I saw Fran at the Plaza today,” Mum said suddenly, ignoring my last comment.

  Fran? What did she have to do with all this?

  “Oh,” was all I said, wondering if Fran had recently taken out life insurance.

  “I asked her if you were seeing someone, and she fudged her way around it, but I could tell she was covering up for you.”

  I sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  “Everything always is with you,” Mum said tiredly. “Even when you were a kid. Nothing was ever simple.”

  I wanted to rail against her for turning it all back to her and making it somehow why she should be pitied. Because obviously I was so hard to raise. But here was someone in my family trying to talk to me about my private life for the first time in years, and I felt a sudden rush of affection for her. Maybe it had taken her a while to come round naturally, or maybe she had finally realised that this wasn’t a phase or a choice I had made to continually make her life difficult. For the first time it felt like she was on my side.

  “He’s in the closet,” I said. “And I have to respect his privacy.”

  “Oh,” Mum said, giving up on the grill and letting it fall like a doomed ocean liner beneath the water in the sink. She turned her attentions to the kettle and switched it on. “I thought maybe you were too embarrassed to bring him over here.”

  “No,” I lied, for her sake, while trying to imagine Declan here. It would be hard enough if he wasn’t Declan Tyler, to put up with my brother’s pointed digs and my father’s silences, but his celebrity would bring a whole new unwelcome angle to it all.

  “Like I said, it’s for his privacy.”

  “That’s a hard way to live,” she sai
d, not knowing how astute her comment was.

  I said nothing, and I think for once Mum sensed that she should let the subject drop.

  “Maybe we can talk some other time,” she suggested.

  And it suddenly didn’t seem so bad to think about that happening. “Sure. Some other time.”

  “IT’S good that your mum is starting to show some interest,” Declan said. “It gives me hope that maybe my mum will be fine if I tell her outright, rather than keeping her guessing.”

  I couldn’t help but notice the if, not when, but I repressed it. I had called Dec as soon as I had gotten home. Abe and Lisa were over, but he had excused himself to take the call in his bedroom.

  “You never know,” I replied. “Do you ever think about telling her?”

  There was a long pause. “All the time,” he said sadly.

  Trying to sound as lighthearted as possible, I said, “Well, mine sounds practically ready to adopt you, and she doesn’t even know who you are yet.”

  This made him laugh. “It’s always good to have a fallback position. By the way, Abe and Lisa said hello.”

  “Say hello back.”

  “I will.”

  “I suppose you have to get back to them.”

  “I suppose so. So no chance of you flying down here for the rest of the weekend?”

  I laughed, but it was nice to hear the longing in his voice. “Not enough frequent flyer points.”

  “Just as well I’ll be up next weekend, then.”

  “It’s the only thing helping me hold on,” I said as melodramatically as possible.

  “Bastard,” he chuckled. “Oh, also, all the guys are coming over here tomorrow night, so probably best neither of us call.”

  That took the wind out of my sails a bit, although the logical side of me understood the necessity of laying it all out on the table to avoid any awkward scenarios. “Uh, okay.”

  He hesitated. “You’re not upset, are you?”

  “Fuck no,” I said hurriedly. “I’ll speak to you Monday.”

  “Okay. Have a good night’s sleep, babe.”

  “You too, Dec,” I said, unable to return the term of endearment. It was lucky Fran wasn’t around to conk me with another bread roll.

  As I tried to fall asleep I could hear my mother saying, That’s a hard way to live.

  “Shut up, Mum,” I murmured, and finally slept.

  Chapter 14

  “SATURDAY night?” Roger asked.

  “That’s the plan, if it’s okay with you guys. He’s back in town this weekend for the game.”

  “How did I get roped into cooking?” Fran demanded.

  “Your husband,” I told her.

  “Thanks, you dobber,” Roger groaned.

  “Gee, she never would have guessed it,” I pointed out. I tried to make peace with Fran. “I’ll come over and help you, of course.”

  “Thanks, Simon, that would be nice. But I’ll also make sure Roger does his fair share as well.”

  I chuckled, and Roger threw a cushion at me. We had left the porch to come in and seek sanctuary at the fire. It was a typical winter Melbourne’s day; the Antarctic winds were in full force as they tore through your skin and bone to reside in your marrow.

  “I wonder what I should make,” Fran mused.

  “Whatever’s easy and good,” I told her.

  “You do make the best pasta,” Roger agreed.

  “Pasta?” Fran wrinkled her nose. “I can’t just make bog-ordinary pasta for Declan!”

  “Sure you can.” I patted her hand gently. “He needs to be introduced to how good your pasta is.”

  “But I should be cracking out the Jamie Oliver’s or Bill Grainger’s—”

  “Who wants that, when they could have a Francesca Dayton original?”

  She sighed. “Fine. But at some other time I have to try something new.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bloody pasta!” she muttered to herself. “…maybe lasagne.”

  I grinned. It seemed this night was going to be okay after all.

  THE rain never let up that weekend. Declan flew in on Friday morning for a game that night, and once again he was told he couldn’t play at the last minute. He spoke to me briefly on the phone, but was short and snappy and very un-Declan-like. He called me again two minutes later to apologise, but had to get off the phone straightaway to attend a press conference.

  I hoped after the game he might turn up on my doorstep, but he texted me in the wake of the Devils losing another match to say that he was tired and was going to crash at his parents’ but he would see me at dinner the next night.

  So I was starting to get some nerves about dinner, but when I went around to help Fran prepare the food she managed to put me at ease by just being herself. She had decided to go with lasagne and had even made her own sheets, cranking them out by hand.

  “You didn’t have to go to so much trouble,” I told her.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” she smiled. “Make Roger go out and pick me some basil. I’d send you, but you’d come back with grass.”

  “I’m not that bad,” I protested. “I know what basil smells like, so I’d be able to find it just through that.”

  “After pulling up all my plants by the roots. On this one, I’m still going to trust Roger,” she laughed. “I’d go with you on anything else, hon.”

  I shook my head, and when Roger next ambled through the kitchen he was quickly dispatched to cut basil. Fran and I worked industriously for the next couple of hours, making garlic loaves from scratch and struggling with the blender to create chilli, cashew, and parmesan dip for munchies before dinner. Roger managed to avoid most culinary activities, but was very good at getting us drinks. By the time we had everything prepared I was pleasantly sloshed and Fran acted as surly bartender with a heart of gold, suspending my drink privileges at least until Declan arrived.

  “Drunk is not going to look good on you when he turns up,” she said wisely.

  A quick shower and a change of clothes helped sober me up, and the elation of alcohol turned back into the frayed nerves I had been feeling beforehand. I hid in Fran and Roger’s spare bedroom for a while, until Fran knocked at the door.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine, yeah.”

  She frowned. “You sure sound it. Are you that scared we’re going to fuck it up?”

  I glared at her. “Please.”

  “That sounds more like you.”

  “It’s always nerve-wracking to introduce the friends, you know that.”

  She sat next to me on the bed. “I hardly know, you always try to get out of it for as long as possible. Usually until they’re out of the picture, and there’s no point anymore.”

  “It’s not because of you guys.”

  “Is it because of them?”

  I sighed. “Partly. But mostly because of me.”

  “What about you?” Then it struck her. “Oh, that again.”

  “What again?”

  “Showing anyone your feelings about them. We’ve seen you cry at Disney films or RSPCA commercials, but if there’s an actual human involved you may as well be a robot.”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “Okay, slight exaggeration, but pretty damn close.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, and Fran suddenly nudged me. “Is it Roger?”

  I didn’t want to admit it. “He’s been acting a bit funny lately. Only a bit.”

  “He’s jealous,” Fran admitted.

  I turned to look at her properly, shock obviously evident on my face.

  “Oh, come on,” Fran said, exasperated. “He’s never really had to put up with you going loopy over someone before. He’s always been the alpha male in your life, and all of a sudden Declan Tyler has made you change your mind about everything.”

  “You make it sound like I’ve become a mindless drone.”

  “No, just that you’ve become part of a couple. Although you probably still think that’s all abou
t being a mindless drone, when all it means is that someone is now extremely important to you, someone equal to your friends, if not on a different level altogether.”

  I’ve always hated that distinction being made between how much you care for people, but you do fall victim to that mentality. “I’ve always known you two are more important to each other than I am to you, so why can’t he accept that?”

  She took my hand. “Not more important. Just different. It’s like there are two separate ranking systems. You’re number one on the other system. It’s not about Sophie’s bloody Choice.”

  I leaned over and whispered into her ear, “I’d choose you.”

  Fran laughed and pushed me away. “You are such a liar.”

  I grabbed her hand back, and kissed her knuckles. “Thank you.”

  She shook her head, smiling. “Just go easy on Roger. You can both be stubborn shits, but this is just as new for him as it is for you.”

  “Why isn’t it for you?”

  Fran looked at me as if the answer wasn’t already obvious. “Because I’m a woman. We’re smarter about these things.”

  Rather than try to defend my sex, I just accepted it as truth. She pulled me up, and we made our way back to the kitchen.

  WHEN there was a knock at the door, Fran pushed me out of the kitchen. “You answer it. It’ll give you time to make out a little before you bring him in.”

  I could hear Roger snort behind me as I made some sort of protestation. Finding myself now alone in the hallway, I covered the short distance to the front door and pulled it open.

  Declan was dressed in black jeans and a dark purple shirt that managed to cling in exactly the right places. I wondered if my tongue was hanging out like a character in a Loony Tunes cartoon.

  “Hey,” he said, moving in to kiss me. He tried to hug me at the same time, but it was awkward as his hands were full with beer and other things I couldn’t exactly make out in the dark. I tried to compensate with grabbing him by the hips and pressing him against me. The beer bottles clanged together with enough noise to alert the neighbourhood to our presence, but we ignored it.