Chapter 13
I MUST have been exhausted, because after catching the shuttle from the airport into the city and walking to the office, I promptly fell asleep in my chair while staring out the window. I hadn’t even switched the lights on.
Nyssa came in to switch on the light, emitting a small scream when she saw me sitting there, which jolted me awake.
“You scared me!” she cried. “And… you looked kind of dead.”
I felt kind of dead.
“Why are you in here so early?”
“I wanted to get here first,” I yawned.
“Then why were you asleep?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you checking up on me?”
“It’s not review time, Nyssa. I got here early, and I was tired.”
Nyssa frowned. “You’re getting weirder and weirder lately. Do you want a coffee?”
“I love you.” I smiled at her.
“Funny how you never show that when it is review time.”
“I don’t get to make the budget, you know that,” I yelled after her. “Otherwise you would be making double!”
“Triple!” she yelled back. “I’m worth it!”
I chuckled and did the old yawn-and-stretch. My phone rang, and I yelled to Nyssa that I would get it.
“You didn’t call me,” came the accusatory voice.
“I fell asleep as soon as I got in here,” I said.
Declan didn’t sound impressed. “I was flicking through all the news channels, trying to find out whether your plane had crashed.”
“Bullshit.”
He laughed. “Okay, I’m ashamed to say I just got up.”
“Well, you better get a move on. Your first appointment’s at ten.”
“Wasn’t it you who was calling me Mum this morning?”
“Call me later,” I told him.
“I will. And hey?”
“Yeah?”
“In case I didn’t say it enough, thank you for coming over here. Seriously.”
“Any time.”
“Don’t say that. I’ll hold you to it.”
I was smiling to myself as I hung up the phone. Nyssa placed a mug before me, examining my unusually happy expression with suspicion.
“Okay, who were you talking to?”
“Nobody.”
“You’re looking like it must have been somebody.”
“Wrong number.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “Screw triple. I should be getting quadruple.”
I took a sip of coffee and gave a long, contented groan. “With this coffee, yes, you should.”
IT DIDN’T take that long for Roger to call me.
“You had lunch with Abe Ford?”
I instinctively sat upright in my chair as my spine turned to icy steel. “How did you know that?”
“The net,” he replied. Could it have been anything else?
My spine was now trying to work its way out through my throat, no mean feat.
“Where exactly?”
“Did you really?” he asked again.
“Roger, where?” I repeated, ignoring the wheedling in his voice. My spine had now worked its way out of my throat and found the nearest bridge to jump off, and my heart was planning to follow.
“The Mercury online,” he sighed.
The Tasmanian newspaper. This was not good. I quickly brought up their site. I couldn’t see any lurid photos splashed on the main page of us enjoying yuppie pub fare, so I barked to Roger, “Which section?”
“Seen About Town.”
Ugh, society column. The haven of the rich and the bored. I clicked upon its link.
“What are you doing reading that?”
“Fran told me.”
“What was she doing reading it?”
“To see if you were mentioned.”
I shook my head, slightly miffed with my friends and at the loading speed of the web page. When it finally came, I could let loose a small breath of relief. There was no picture, just a two-line blurb:
Salamanca Place: Devils Declan Tyler and Abe Ford, dining with
Ford’s girlfriend Lisa Jacobs and unknown friend.
So nothing too salacious. In fact, it could even be as an assumption I was Lisa’s friend. But still, it was the first time I was mentioned in proximity to Declan in the press. I wonder how he felt about that, seeing as I was close to hyperventilating.
Still, unknown friend? Could I feel slightly miffed about that as well?
“Simon, are you there?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, tell me.”
“What?”
“What was Abe Ford like?”
And it was like we were fourteen years old again, discussing the private lives of the football gods of the time, wondering what they ate, what they drank, where they went, and what movies they might like. For once I was able to satisfy Roger’s fantasies and give him the details he had always wished to know in the past, about one of the players in the present. He took them all in hungrily, even down to whether Abe Ford had a lemon or a lime in his Corona.
Pretty soon though, it turned back to the old argument.
“So Declan introduced you to his friends, and we still haven’t met the guy?”
“You insulted him at a party and offered to fight him,” I reminded him.
“Yes,” Roger admitted shamefacedly. “But we still haven’t formally met.”
I decided to throw him a lifeline. “Well, next time he’s in town, I’ll have you and Fran over for dinner.” Declan had already suggested it when I told him Roger was desperate to make up for his less-than-stellar performance at the party. “It’s only fair,” he had said. “My friends got to judge you. Yours have to return the favour now.”
“No,” Roger replied grandly. “We’ll have you!”
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. “Okay, that’s even better. I won’t have to cook.”
“And neither will I!” Roger laughed.
I couldn’t help but join in. “Fran would kill you if she heard you say that.”
“Just don’t tell her.”
“You know she’ll know anyway, but you owe me.”
“No, you owe me. I still can’t believe you had lunch with Declan Tyler and Abe Ford on Sunday.”
“I know they’re gods on the field, Roger, but when you meet them you realise they’re just people.”
“Yeah, when you meet them. What’s the use of having a friend who’s dating a superstar of the game if you don’t get any fringe benefits?”
“You sound like you want to date him,” I pointed out.
“Very funny.”
“He doesn’t even play for your team.” I paused. “Literally and figuratively.”
“Once again, funny. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate his talent.”
“You’re sounding gayer than anybody else I know at the moment.”
“Fuck off, unknown friend.”
I hope that didn’t start to stick as a nickname.
“HELLO, my unknown friend.”
So much for that. Declan obviously sounded okay; better than me, at least.
“You saw it?” I gulped.
“No, I’m psychic,” he replied tinnily. It was a bad connection. “How did you see it?”
“The friend network.”
He understood immediately. “Ah, yes, Roger and Fran.”
“Are you okay?”
Declan sounded confused. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s not very discreet, is it?”
“It didn’t say you were my boyfriend.”
I nodded and realised he couldn’t see me.
“Are you okay with it?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound it, Simon.”
“I guess I’m being jumpy for you.”
“I thought we agreed you’d try to stop that.”
“I know. I’m fine.”
He didn’t sound so sure, but he let it drop.
“How did your appointment go?”
“I’m starting more intensive physio this arvo. They want to try and avoid surgery until the end of the season.”
“What, so you don’t miss any more games?”
A bitter note crept into Declan’s voice. “I could hardly miss any more games, could I?”
“I know. So it’s better this way, right?”
“The one good thing is I’ll have to come to Melbourne for the surgery.”
“And recover here?” I asked hopefully.
He laughed finally. “You’ll probably have to fight my mum for that honour, though.”
Like that was ever going to happen. Still, at least I might get to see him a little more. I couldn’t believe I was wishing surgery upon Declan so he’d be trapped in the same city as me. I sucked as a partner.
The sound of somebody clearing their throat came from the doorway. I looked up to see Fran, standing there with a cheeky look on her face. I wondered how long she’d been eavesdropping.
“Are you free for lunch?” she asked.
“Fran?” Declan asked from the other side of the country.
“You guessed it,” I agreed.
“Tell her I hope I’ll see her in a couple of weeks.”
I relayed the message back to her and had to laugh when she gave a totally self-conscious little giggle. Declan had no idea of the effect he had on people, even people like Fran who didn’t know one end of a football from the other.
“I think that meant ‘cool’,” I told him.
“I better get going, and so should you. I’ll speak to you soon.”
“Bye, Dec.”
Maybe a bit more formal than I would have liked after the weekend we had just spent, but we had an audience. I hung up, and Fran leaned in and punched me on the shoulder.
“Smitten bloody kitten.”
“SO, ARE you happy that I made you go?”
Fran looked particularly smug as she took her last bite of pizza and patted her mouth with her napkin. I screwed mine up and threw it at her.
“Just admit it.”
I took a sip of my Coke and made a face. “Fine. I’m happy you made me go. And Declan thanks you.”
Her face took on a slightly dreamy expression. “Really?”
Feeling slightly impish, I added, “He said he was going to give you the biggest kiss you’ve ever had in your life when he sees you.”
There was that starstruck giggle again. You would think Fran was suddenly crushing on my boyfriend, the way she was going. “Really? Well, Roger might have something to say about that.”
“The way he is at the moment, I would think he would be jealous he wasn’t getting the pash.”
“Oh, I know! He wouldn’t shut up about Abe Holden on the phone.”
“Abe Ford.”
“Holden, Ford, whatever. I knew it was some kind of car.”
I laughed, wondering what Abe would make of the casual dismissal of his name.
“What?” Fran asked, looking at me suspiciously.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve changed,” she mused.
“No way,” I scoffed.
“You have. Sure, you still look like the same cynical, wannabe hard-hearted Simon Murray—but there’s too much smiling and real laughter sneaking out every now and again. You know what?”
“What?”
That smug smile again. “You’ve become one of us.”
“Us what?”
“One of those awful, gross people in love.” She rolled her eyes to great effect.
“Oh, bleh!” I so didn’t want to be that.
“It’s true, Simon.”
“You lie.”
“No, you lie.”
“I am not in love with Dec.” Even to me, that sounded hollow.
“You so are.”
“I like him. In fact, it’s a very strong like which has the potential to go further—” A bread roll hit me square in the forehead. “Fran! Fuck!”
“That’s what you get for lying.”
I’m not sure it was technically a lie. And although I knew I could be falling in love with Dec, I wasn’t sure if I was there yet. It was all too early, and besides, if any admittance of love was to be made it should first be done to the man involved and not one of your best friends.
She looked at me smugly, as if she could read something in my face I wasn’t aware of myself. I hate that. She shrugged casually and poured herself another water. “I wonder if this came from a river in Egypt. You would know!”
I ignored her.
“I HAVE to go to this bloody barbecue this weekend.”
“Will it be that bad?” Declan asked.
As usual, we were not together physically; we were connected only by signals that bounced off towers and satellites. I lay in bed with Maggie; Dec was in his own bed, which I could now picture, seeing as I had actually been in it. If we were in a movie they would have shown us on a split screen to give the illusion of togetherness.
But in real life he couldn’t feel any further away.
“I’m considering throwing myself under a tram to get out of it.”
“Not a train?”
“No, I don’t want to kill myself. Just maim myself slightly.”
“Well, I don’t want you killed or even maimed. Just suck it up and go.”
“What, to see my brother’s latest squeeze pretending to be the last in a long line of squeezes? Hoping to be the Annette Bening to his Warren Beatty? And the rest of my family ignoring the fact I’m queer so they can keep on pretending one day I’ll bring home a pretty girl?”
“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 said, 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.