‘Always the fucking exhibitionist!’ shrieked Tom Jords.
Dawn was coughing and chuckling again. ‘He loved getting his bloody cock out, the silly old poof.’ She took a swig of wine, finished the last puff from her cigarette, flicked it into the ashtray precariously perched on the bannister. ‘So there’s this silence and everyone is shocked and open-mouthed and I’m looking over at Nick and there’s this big pair of white Y-fronts covering his head. So Leo, starkers, turns to me and announces, “Dawn, I think we’re going to get purged.” ’ Dawn again collapsed into spasms of mirth.
They all did, except Saverio. He threw back his wine and rose to his feet. ‘Where am I sleeping?’
They were laughing so hard they couldn’t hear him.
He cleared his throat and repeated the question.
Julian, still chuckling, smiled up at him. He pointed inside. ‘You’ve got the main bedroom.’
‘Thanks.’ Saverio grabbed his bag off the verandah and walked into the house. They had all fallen back into laughter. He knew it was foolish, that it was not at all the case, but it felt like they were laughing at him.
•
‘You think that’s something to be proud of, do you? It’s not. You should be fucking ashamed.’
It was at Leo’s twenty-first birthday party and it had been Dawn who’d said it to him.
Saverio had recently completed his engineering degree and that morning had received the call to say he’d been accepted as a graduate by Shell. He was just about to turn twenty-three and was excited at the prospect of his first professional job.
Leo’s birthday had been held in rooms above a popular vegetarian North Indian restaurant in Carlton. It attracted students and it was said that if you knew the staff they would let you onto the roof to smoke joints while looking over the skyline of Melbourne. Not that there had been much of a skyline to Melbourne back then. Just the forlorn apocalyptic Bauhaus towers of the housing commission.
Saverio couldn’t wait to tell his brother about the job. Leo had already been living out of home for two years, having walked out after a final argument with their old man that had ended, as they usually did, with their father lashing out at Leo; but this time Leo had punched back.
It was the night Leo had told them all that he was homosexual.
‘Finocchio,’ their father kept repeating, confused. ‘No, non lo sei!’
‘I am!’
‘No, no, no. Finocchio no!’ Saverio remembered the finality in his father’s tone, the distaste and denial firmly set on his face. He would not accept it. He would not have it.
‘You know, Dad,’ Leo had shouted, ‘you would have benefited from a good cock up your arse. It would have made you a better man. It would have made you a better husband.’
Saverio had not believed that his brother could say such things to their father. With a roar, their father had rushed over to Leo and started pummelling him with both fists. Saverio had been ready to leap up and defend his brother when Leo had raised a fist and struck back. It had been an ineffectual, weak hit, Saverio had thought, so fucking pansy, but it was enough to stop their father cold. A son had dared to strike back.
‘Go.’ Their father had pointed at the door. ‘You don’t live here no more.’
Leo had smiled, a cruel, gloating smile that had been directly passed down to him from their father. ‘I’m already gone, you ignorant shit. I’ve been gone for years.’
That, of course, had been Leo all over: throw a bomb, walk away and let someone else clean up the mess. It had always been that way; Leo and their father seemed to be born to battle. Leo refused to learn Italian, Leo wasn’t interested in anything to do with soccer, all Leo wanted to do was get lost in books.
At first it had been their mother who intervened, protecting Leo from her husband’s violence but also pleading, remonstrating, coaxing Leo into making his apologies. Then the cancer struck and she was dead within a year. Saverio had been fourteen and Leo just about to start high school. The younger boy disappeared deeper into his world of books and imagination, and Saverio had become the go-between, even years later, after Leo had left home and immersed himself in the stimulating intellectual and political life of university, discovering the pleasures of drugs and sex.
‘Why can’t you say something to him?’ his father would roar. ‘What kind of older brother are you?’
Ashamed, Saverio would try to broker peace.
It would then be Leo’s turn to scream at him. ‘I don’t have to apologise to that patriarchal fascist shit!’
‘You think that’s something to be proud of, do you? It’s not. You should be fucking ashamed!’ Dawn’s voice had been brutal and disapproving.
Saverio had looked over to his brother, wanting Leo to save him from the ferocity of her contempt, but Leo had made no reply. It was a ghastly moment, one of those times when all other conversation had ceased and everyone seemed to be turned towards him. That could just be memory playing a trick, of course; probably no one else at the party really gave a damn. But he did not make up Leo’s silence. Leo had not defended him.
‘Dawn, I’ve been looking for work for ages, since completing my degree—’
She hadn’t let him finish. That was what he remembered most about Leo’s friends: the surety of their beliefs, the passion and the hostility. ‘Shell supports the apartheid state in South Africa. You want to be part of that?’
No, I want a job. They interviewed me, have given me a graduate position, I’ve been trying for months. But that wouldn’t do for Dawn, so he had said nothing.
She had stepped closer to him, and the vehemence in her eyes had startled him. She felt it so strongly. She wasn’t even black. ‘Don’t take the job.’
‘What?’ He had been astounded. ‘Of course I’m taking the job.’
He had thought she was going to spit on him but instead she had turned around and dismissed him with a guttural, vicious grunt of disgust.
From Leo there had been no word of congratulations, no questions about the job, what he would be doing, when he would be starting.
‘She’s right. You shouldn’t take the job.’ Then Leo had walked off to whisper and laugh and joke with his friends.
•
Saverio slammed his suitcase onto the bed. That night was over thirty years ago, but the recollection of it still rankled, still filled him with impotent fury.
He stared around the room. Every spare inch of wall was filled with canvases or photographs: Polaroids, cheap travel shots in florid colours, artistic black and white prints. Framed photos were crammed onto the bureau and bedside table. A stack of Leo’s paintings was resting against the far wall, under a framed Aboriginal Land Rights poster that Saverio remembered from the early eighties. The photographs were of Leo and his friends. Leo in Hanoi and Paris and Mexico City. Leo and Dawn in Cuba. Leo and Tom Jords wearing pink T-shirts emblazoned with a black Women’s Liberation fist at Mardi Gras.
On the small table was an old framed black and white photograph of their mother, taken when she was a young girl in Rome, her face sullen as she braved the camera. Of Saverio and their father there was nothing at all, not one snapshot.
He shouldn’t have come. Leo’s true family had been the men and women who were laughing and swapping reminiscences on the verandah.
There was a muffled ‘Can I come in?’, and Saverio swung around. Julian was holding out a glass of wine with an apologetic smile.
Saverio took it and gestured for Julian to enter. ‘You should be the one sleeping in here,’ Saverio said quietly.
Julian laughed and shook his head. ‘It’s fine. The old gang are going to sleep on mattresses and sleeping bags on the living-room floor. We’ll probably keep you awake with our drunken raves.’ Julian’s brow suddenly squashed into a frown. ‘Unless you prefer not to sleep in. .’