Tigerland (14 page)

“It’s usually me who has to hide from my family,” I tried joking, but it fell flat in the atmosphere of the room. “Come on, Franny. Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to be the one who brings the party down,” she said hoarsely, blowing her nose into a tissue.

“Like I said, that’s usually my job. Feel free to take it.”

“We haven’t exactly been honest with you guys,” she said.

“As intrigued as you’ve made me, if it’s something you don’t want to talk about, it can stay that way.”

“No, it’s okay. I think it’s time we did. It’s hard keeping it to ourselves. And it’s difficult to talk to Roger about it, because he gets upset. And then I get upset, and it’s all just a fucking freak show.”

Trying to swallow my rising panic, my grip on her shoulder tightened. “Fran, you’re starting to scare me.”

She rested a hand on my knee. “No, no, it’s nothing like that.”

I was relieved, but only momentarily. Fran wasn’t a drama queen like Roger and me. I knew this still had to be pretty serious. “So what is it?”

“We haven’t been talking about possibly having a kid,” she finally said. “We’ve been trying. For about a year.”

This was definitely news to me. “Wow. I mean, good for you guys for making the decision. But why keep it a secret? Everyone would be so happy for you.”

“We didn’t mean to at first. It was just funny when we started. We thought it would be a huge surprise we could spring on everybody when I got pregnant, and was past the three month period. But it just became less funny each time we tested.”

“I’m sorry, Fran.”

“See, this is exactly what I didn’t want. Apologies. Because even though people mean the best, “sorry” sounds like something has been done wrong. Like we’ve done something wrong.”

“Nobody would be thinking that.”

“We would,” she said. With an intake of breath that sounded more like a sob that she was trying to calm, she forced out the next words. “We do.”

If I had hugged her any tighter she would have suffocated.

“Fuck,” Fran whispered. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

It wasn’t often that Fran rolled out a “fuck”. But she was entitled to yell as many as she wanted to.

“Is there anything we can do?”

“Make my eggs and Roger’s sperm more compatible?”

I was talking about my friends’ and family’s private parts way too much tonight. “Is there a show like
Masterchef
for the trying-to-conceive?”

Fran laughed, and it was good to hear. “You bastard. But if there is, will you pull some strings for us?”

“Sure.”

“Just be our friends. It’s good to have it out there. And be there for Roger when he needs to talk. If he does.”

“Is he taking it badly?”

“Yeah. You know what it’s like. When a man thinks it could be something wrong with
him,
especially when it’s to do with his wang, suddenly they can’t cope.”

“Roger’s daft, but he’s not that daft,” I said. “He might worry because he thinks it could be him, but his wang would be the last thing on his mind.”

“You think?” Fran asked.

“I’ve known him since I was eleven. And it’s the way I would think.”

“No offence, Simon, but you’re not like most men.”

I could have taken that the wrong way, and a while back I would have. But this was Fran, and I knew she wasn’t meaning the usual trope of
real men vs. gay men
. Besides, this was her pain we were dealing with. “So that’s why you’ve been funny since Tim and Gabby made their announcement.”

“I just want it to be Roger and me making that announcement. It sounds so petty, but they’ve gotten to do it three times now.”

It must hurt to see it look so easy for other people. Tim and Gabby had started the incubating process before they had even started planning their wedding properly. Gabby had gone down the aisle four months pregnant, although she was barely showing at the time. She had thought if they didn’t do it then they might never get around to it. Why were some people lucky enough to reproduce at ridiculous levels, while others had to work so hard at it? Having kids came easily to my brother and his wife, and they didn’t seem to be in any danger of stopping. And although Gabby seemed to have a womb as fertile as the Queen Mother in
Aliens,
it was Tim who seemed to want more and more and more—maybe he was envisioning starting his own family band and touring in a multi-coloured converted school bus.
Come to bed, Gabby; we need a drummer next!

“Hon, it’s natural for you to feel like that. Anybody would.”

“I just hate feeling resentful about other people’s happiness. But do you know what I hate most?”

I squeezed her hand, waiting for her to continue.

“I didn’t even think I
wanted
kids. Until I was told there was a chance we mightn’t be able to have any. Now it’s all I want.”

“So you changed your mind. There’s nothing bad about that.”

She shook her head. “But is it that I really want them? Or now that I’ve been told it will be difficult, is it just because I want something that’s desirable just because it’s being denied me?”

We sat there in silence for a while, just taking in the moment of reflection between us. It’s funny how a woman feels different to a man. They feel nice and soft, but because there isn’t that spark of attraction there it’s more of a sisterly or maternal warmth that you feel from them. It’s wonderful. And it brings out this strange protective streak that seems borne from intuition if you have man parts, regardless of whether your man parts like other men’s parts. And I wanted to protect Fran. But she had Roger for that. I would have to protect them both, and Declan would help me. Together we would be a shield for our friends.

“You know what?” I asked.

“What?”

“You and Roger will be fantastic parents. Whether it’s the so-called ‘normal’ way, or whether you have to go a different way around it, or whether you end up adopting. And that’s all that matters.”

“That sounds remarkably adult of you, Simon.”

“Maybe we’re just growing up, that’s all.”

Fran laughed. “I still feel like we’re kids, but just pretending to be adults. I thought there would be this turning point where you would just wake up one day, and bam! You’re mature!”

“I know I’m still waiting for that day.”

A snort came from the semi-darkness beside me. “It’s never going to come for you.”

That sounded more like the Fran I knew and loved, and I gave her a sharp poke in the ribs. She jumped and giggled and settled back next to me.

“Do you really think it will happen?” she asked.

“What? Becoming adult?”

“No. Me and Roger being parents.” I hated hearing the sadness and yearning in her voice.

“It will.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

That was a shitload of responsibility. “Like I said, it may not happen the traditional way, but fuck that. Why the hell should any of us be traditional? We never have before.”

She leaned up and kissed me. “You’re right.”

“After all, I need to be a godfather slash uncle. I think the term is ‘guncle’.”

“Guncle?”

“Abbreviated, ‘gay uncle’.”

“They really need to think of a better term. It sounds like cheap Muppets or something.”

“Whatever. Declan and I will be the best guncles ever.”

“You already are,” she pointed out.

Oh, yeah. I had forgotten for a moment that both Dec and I already had nieces and nephews. I was so enamoured of the thought of Roger and Fran producing kids. “Well, we need to be guncles to your kids too. I will teach them to love Richmond—”

“You mean
indoctrinate
them.”

“Shut up.”

“Roger will never let that happen.”

“The power of the guncle will win out.”

“What the hell’s a guncle?”

Both Fran and I jumped at Roger snapping on the light.

“Well, well,” he teased. “What’s going on here?” But his face dropped when he saw Fran had been crying. “Honey?”

That was my cue to leave. I slipped past him and briefly rested my hand on his shoulder. He looked at me, then back at Fran, and he knew. He patted my hand and turned back to his wife. As I entered the hallway I could hear the soft murmur of their voices, but not what was being said. I waited for a moment, a brief sadness taking hold of me, but I tried to shake it off before making my way back to the kitchen.

Declan, however, knew something had gone down, but he also knew to wait until we were in the privacy of our own home before asking me about it. He even waited until we were getting ready for bed, knowing that it was in our room under the cover of darkness I was able to speak much more freely than I could anywhere else.

Before he could ask, I spilled everything. He watched me speak and didn’t say anything until I had finished.

“What can we do to help them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think they really know, honestly.”

“Are they getting into debt? How are they paying for it?”

“We didn’t get that far. Roger came in, Fran was upset, and I knew they needed time alone.”

“Do you think they’d let us give them money?”

It was weird being Dec’s partner, financially. He was the one who made the big bucks; my salary didn’t really bring in much. But Dec had always made his money my money, as a true partnership would, and had the positions been reversed I would have gladly done so as well. But I was in the position of the “parasite,” and there were times when I definitely didn’t like it. Was it a man thing, a power thing? I had no idea. Declan was a wise investor, and with the help of his accountant brother-in-law he had bought investment properties before the housing market skyrocketed, and got out before the bubble burst in a nicely mixed metaphor. He was also under a development deal with his station, starting his own production company. He had tapped me to step up, but I felt nepotism could only take you so far. It was good that we had separate work lives that only occasionally crossed over.

But the good thing about Dec was he wasn’t stingy with his money. He wanted it, sure, to be comfortable for the rest of his life, but it didn’t stop him from helping out his family and doing the usual good footy boy thing of paying off his parents’ mortgage.

The problem would be Fran and Roger—they just wouldn’t take it.

“Hey,” Dec whispered, sounding sleepy. “Come back to earth.”

“I don’t think they would.”

“We’ll just have to find a way to convince them,” Dec said, and within seconds he was snoring. I always envied how quickly he could fall asleep. He said it came from years of travelling while playing footy, as you got accustomed to getting sleep wherever and whenever you could.

I lay awake for what felt like ages, listening to him breathe. The melancholy feeling that had started in the lounge room with Fran was still weighing upon me. It seemed bloody unfair—why shouldn’t Fran and Roger want to make children together that would be a mixture of the both of them?

After all, they were two of the best people in the world. So there had to be a great kid that would come out of them.

And I believed it when I said that they would become parents somehow. My relationship with kids was strained at best in their early years, but how could I not love someone that was raised by two of the people I loved most?

It would be impossible not to.

S
ATURDAY
morning dawned innocently. The weather forecast promised cooler days, and it was starting to look like autumn was finally on its way. Melbourne would rear back with one final hot spell, and then that would be it.

I stumbled to the lift, rode it to the lobby, and grabbed our paper. I tore the plastic off, which took far more effort than you would have thought. I wish my mum had wrapped sandwiches like that when I was in school. Her cling wrap was too loose and would inevitably come apart so the air would hit the bread and turn it into a weird kind of faux toast by lunchtime.

Covering a yawn, even though there was no one in the lift to see me had I ignored social convention, I dropped the paper, and it fell into about sixty-seven sections at my feet. That was
The Age
, the only broadsheet in town, for you.

I debated leaving the real estate section where it lay—after all, I didn’t want to give Dec any more ideas—but when I scooped it up Heyward stared at me from the cover of the magazine supplement:

A NEW HERO STEPS OUT. How Greg Heyward came to terms with his sexuality, and will now change the lives of others

What, by ruining ours? I wanted to scream and rip the magazine apart with my bare hands, showering myself in its confetti as if it were Heyward’s blood. A new hero? What the fuck had he done? Let him do
something
before proclaiming him to be worthy of such a title.

But one “Motherfucker!” slipped out, just as the doors of the lift opened on my floor.

Mrs. Gupti, who owned the apartment across from us, was waiting and ready to walk in. She stared at me with silent disapproval.

“Morning, Mrs. Gupti,” I said, shamefaced.