Brothers and Sisters (35 page)

‘If he wasn’t so bad, why did Leo hate him so much?’

That question was so childish—as if there were any easy answers to it. Because Leo was unforgiving. Because Leo was stubborn. Because Leo was selfish. Because Leo relied upon their mother’s support and when she died he felt betrayed. Because mothers always favoured the gay son. All of this was true, but to say any of it was to lead into an argument. He wished she hadn’t come with him. He had wanted to forget Leo for a few hours, and her presence and her questions couldn’t help but remind him of the duties he faced tomorrow. He couldn’t do it, he just wasn’t up to it. He would say so to Julian, and Julian would understand. I can’t give a eulogy. I have nothing to say. I can’t say what I want to say. I can’t say that Leo was the kind of man who couldn’t go and visit his dying father, the kind of man who didn’t have it in him to ask after his niece and nephew. The rage seemed to flood through him, threatened to drown him. The heat, the humidity, the thickness of it, like a blanket over the world, was exhausting.

‘Are you okay?’ She was concerned now, biting her bottom lip. Her incisors were long and crooked. He wanted her to shut her mouth; the exposed teeth made her look crude, ugly.

‘I have to go to the bathroom.’

It was blissful to be inside the cool anteroom of the toilets. They were part of the original hotel and the thick tiled walls were effective insulation against the heat. He was the only occupant of the male toilets and he unbuttoned his shirt to the navel and splashed water on his face, his neck, under his arms. He used his handkerchief to wipe himself dry. He examined his face critically in the mirror. He hadn’t shaved that morning and across his chin and along his upper lip there had already formed a soft shadow of alternating white and black stubby bristles. He wished he’d had time for a haircut. His smoky-grey hair was shapeless, the harsh fluorescent light in the toilets seemed to shine directly above where his hair was thinnest. You idiot, he hissed to himself. You vain, stupid fuck, you want to impress that young girl.

The soft colourless scar above his left eyebrow was almost invisible. He should point that out to Anna. This is where my brother hit me with a hammer when I was ten. The reason for the argument was long forgotten. All he could remember was trying to squeeze the life out of Leo, his hands around his brother’s neck, and how Leo would not submit, how he kicked and struck and scratched like a wild animal. The argument had started in their bedroom. They had punched and kicked each other into the kitchen and rolled into the laundry where Saverio’s hands were around his brother’s throat and Leo’s hand had landed on a hammer and it was in raising this hammer to Saverio’s face that the battle had ended. He had blood in his mouth and had fallen across the laundry door and Leo was on top of him, the hammer raised, ready to strike another blow. Don’t, Saverio had screamed. Don’t! Leo dropped the hammer, his lips were trembling. You’re bleeding, he started to whimper. It’s okay, I’m alright. His anger, his brother’s anger, had disappeared in an instant.

When he got back to the table, the woman who had been at the end of the beer garden was sitting across from Anna. They were both smoking and looked up, smiling, as his shadow fell across them.

‘Saverio, this is Melanie.’

‘Call me Mel,’ the woman said. Her voice was shockingly nasal and broad, almost a take-off of a rural Australian accent. Her grip was tight, firm. She wore sunglasses with big round lenses so he could not see her eyes but he guessed she was in her mid-forties. The skin around her mouth was wrinkled, her lips thin, and her hair was dyed a chemical yellow. She wore a black T-shirt a size too small for her full breasts and pot belly, and black jeans a size too small for her expanding arse and thick thighs. She was obviously what Matty and Adelaide would derisively call a
bogan
, and what his parents, with equal derision, would have called an
Australiana
. She was a woman who could not take root anywhere else but in this enormous infinite landscape. Unabashed, unashamed.

‘He’s better-looking than Leo.’

‘Mel knew Leo,’ Anna rushed to explain.

‘Yeah, he was a good bloke, your brother.’ Mel stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I’m really sorry for your loss.’ It was the expected phrase, it came from a stranger, but she had said it with unforced sincerity and they were the first words since hearing of Leo’s death that brought home the finality of the event. His brother was no more. From now there would only be past.

‘Thank you.’

‘When I first left Brendan and began seeing Suzanne, Leo was the only one who I could talk to about things.’ Mel was obviously continuing a conversation she had begun with Anna while he was in the toilet. ‘Small towns are fucked. Everyone knows you and Brendan’s really popular with everyone. He’s done work on most people’s pipes or plumbing so you can imagine what they thought of me when I took off with a woman.’ Mel was shaking her head. ‘I thought they were going to kill me. Kill both of us. Leo’s was always a safe house; he’d let us come and stay, sleep over. Talk to us about gay rights and shit. Suzanne loved him. She’s devastated he’s gone.’

Saverio was horrified. Mel had started to cry.

‘Fucking bitch, I hate her!’

Anna had wrapped her fingers around Mel’s hand. Saverio, confused, looked away. A line of surfers, black and grey and silver strokes, was visible against the vast blue of the ocean. Mel blew her nose into a tissue one more time then glanced down guiltily at Anna’s cigarettes.

Anna nodded.

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Today doesn’t count.’

Mel laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

She was looking at Saverio. He couldn’t smile, he didn’t know what she wanted from him. All he could think was what an unlikely lesbian she seemed. He had thought she was a bikie’s moll, an ex-stripper, a small-town mum. Of course it was possible she
was
all of those things. And a lesbian to boot. Though Dawn wouldn’t find much communion with her. Just like him, Dawn wouldn’t know what to say to Mel.

The woman was rising. ‘Thank you for the smokes.’

Anna jumped to her feet and hugged her. ‘You’ll look after yourself?’

‘Of course.’ Mel seemed embarrassed by the spontaneous affection. She slipped out of Anna’s embrace and held out her hand to Saverio, who had also risen.

‘Mate, again, I’m really sorry. Your brother was a real good man.’

He couldn’t speak. They watched in silence as Mel walked back into the pub. She was shaky on her feet.

‘She shouldn’t drive,’ he said gruffly.

‘I know, but her girlfriend’s just left her for a younger woman so of course she’s just going to do whatever she likes tonight. We’d all do that.’ Anna pointed to the empty glasses. ‘Another round?’

‘One more.’ He pointed to her empty chair. ‘But you sit. I’m buying.’

‘You bought the last round.’

‘I work. I’m a corporate cocksucker, as my brother used to so fondly put it. You’re young and a student. I’m paying.’

Anna looked as if she was about to protest again. Then, suddenly, she beamed. ‘Sure. Thank you.’

At the bar, Mel was arguing with two men, one of them in a khaki uniform with an orange and yellow National Parks and Wildlife insignia stitched on the pocket, the other in football shorts and paint-splattered work singlet and Blundstones. She winked at him as he walked past. Saverio noticed that the painter had his right hand sitting flat against her wide buttocks.

‘I hope our friend is alright in there,’ he said to Anna as he delivered the new beer.

Anna shrugged and drank greedily. ‘She looks like she can take care of herself.’

That was not his impression. She
looked
tough but Mel hadn’t struck him as
being
tough.

The dying afternoon sun was still strong, but finally a breeze was coming off the darkening water.

‘She really liked Leo.’

‘Yes.’ He would keep his answers short, non-committal, give nothing away.

‘It’s good to be reminded of what a wonderful man he could be. You could always talk to Leo about anything. He’d always listen.’

He sipped at his beer slowly.

‘One of the things I loved about him was that he would never give you the standard adult answer, he’d always take you a little by surprise. When I was ten I found a stash of Julian’s pornos in the house and wanted to read them but Leo asked me if I had started masturbating. I said no and he wouldn’t let me have them, said it might dull my imagination. That was so unlike him—usually he let us watch and read anything we liked, no censorship whatsoever. But not this time. But he was right.’ Anna sniggered. ‘’Course, once I started doing the old five-finger dance he let me have them.’ She winked at Saverio. ‘He was such a character. Was he always like that?’

‘I guess so.’

Anna was frowning. For Christ’s sake, what did she want from him?

She lit a cigarette, sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. ‘Saverio, I think you should forgive him.’

Sin, Confession, Absolution. These children of communists and feminists and true believers were just as moralistic as the old believers.

‘Anna, I’m sorry, but you’re a child—you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.’

He had humiliated her. He could see that she was holding back tears and felt immediate regret. Again, she so reminded him of Adelaide. She was young, she had yet to learn how to hide her emotions from the world. He knew he should apologise but he was enjoying the relief of being harsh and uncompromising. There was a thrill to punishment, he had learned that raising his own children; the thrill of deflating them, confronting them with their own limitations, ignorance, powerlessness, foolishness, inadequacies. What did she know about him and Leo? She should just keep her fucking mouth shut.

Don’t cry, please don’t cry.

She wasn’t crying. She was looking out to sea.

‘Four years ago, for my seventeenth birthday, I came to stay here with Rowan, who was my boyfriend. I thought Rowan was going to be the love of my life. He was two years older, he played guitar in a band, he was at university, his mother was a feminist academic and his father was an actor. I thought he was so cool and so handsome and so wonderful and that I was going to be in love with him forever. I wanted Row to meet Leo and I wanted Leo to meet Row. I thought they were both the most fabulous men in the world and I wanted them to know each other.’

Her voice was detached, she stumbled a little over her words, but she sounded confident and deliberate. He was aware that a large part of it was a pose, that there was something theatrical in her delivery. She kept her eyes out to the horizon of sea and sky, but he knew that she was fully conscious of his stare. He wasn’t sure why she was telling him all this, of how she was exacting her revenge.

‘Rowan took to Leo immediately. He loved how funny he was and he loved all the gossip. We stayed up all that first night smoking ice while Leo told him the Germaine Greer story and the Sasha Soldatow story and the Jim Sharman story and who fucked whom and who blasted heroin with whom and who really should have taken the credit for what and of course Row was like a grateful child, just lapping it all up.’

Anna took a big breath. ‘Do you want to hear all this?’

She was hesitating for effect. She would be crushed if he said no. He wanted to say no, that there was nothing that he could hear about Leo that would make his own heart feel any lighter.

‘We all fall asleep at dawn, all in the big bed and I wake a few hours later and decide to take a walk in the forest. It’s a beautiful day and I’m still feeling fantastic because of the drugs and I walk all the way to town to the bakery and pick up some croissants and rolls and I walk all the way back to Leo’s. I get there and Leo is cooking in the kitchen and Rowan is playing his guitar on the porch and when I come up the steps and I’m smiling he looks at me and bursts into tears. He just keeps saying, We had sex, Anna, we fucked, Anna, I’m so sorry. I drop the bag of croissants and rolls and look up at the door where Leo is standing, a stupid apron on, a fork in one hand, and he just says, “Rowan wanted to tell you—he’s still young and foolish. I told him you didn’t have to know.” Then he goes back into the kitchen and continues making us breakfast.’

Saverio couldn’t believe how the bowerbirds continued their whispering song in the trees above, how the drumroll of the waves echoed off the coast below. He could barely control his voice as he asked: ‘What did you do?’

‘I cried and I asked them both how they could do it to me and Row was crying as well and he kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and I ran after Leo and said, “Are you going to apologise, are you going to say you’re sorry?” and he just said, “Anna, you know I am an anarchist and a libertarian. You don’t possess Rowan and he doesn’t possess you. There is nothing I have to apologise for.”’

There was a burst of laughter. Mel and the two men had crashed through the door, into the beer garden, cigarettes in their mouths. Mel called out to them as they sat around a table but Saverio did not register the names of the men as they were introduced. He heard Mel whisper loudly to the man in the singlet, ‘That’s Leo’s brother.’

‘What did you say to him?’

Anna turned back to him, her face now unsmiling. ‘I hit him. I hit him so hard I wanted to break him.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He kicked me out. He said he couldn’t abide violence, that he had grown up in a violent house and he would not have it in a house of his own. He kicked me out and Row and I drove all the way back to Sydney, both of us crying all the way.’ Anna shrugged her shoulders. ‘Man, it was a miracle we weren’t killed.’

Saverio stumbled out of his chair, across the lawn, bashed through the door, almost ran into the toilets. He wanted to put his fist through the mirror, kick down a cubicle door. If someone said the wrong word, offered the wrong look, made a move to stop him, he would gladly bring them down. He would gladly break their necks. But once again the toilets were empty. He breathed in deeply. Thankfully the toilets were empty.