But Sebastian was luckier than his mother. She was expected to go with Leonard on his frequent weekend trips up and down the coast. Sebastian got to stay home. Have the house to himself.
Sebastian sighed and got out of his car. He had his own entrance at the side of the house, which led straight to his room. He unlocked the door and went inside, leaving his keys and wallet in the small bowl on the side-table. He took his sunglasses off and folded them carefully, placing them in a straight line next to the bowl.
When he walked into his room, his sense of wellbeing was restored. He’d spend the night down here. Smoke some weed, drink something soothing, watch something easy on television. Order a pizza. Kick back on his own.
He showered. Chose a clean pair of jeans, clean T-shirt. He fixed his hair the way he liked it, the left side falling long over his face. He rimmed his eyes in black and put on a splash of aftershave.
Sebastian had started taking care of his appearance when he was thirteen and now he couldn’t do without the ritual, the comfort he got from knowing he looked as good as he could. He felt vulnerable when he wasn’t dressed properly. He couldn’t even stand to catch sight of himself in the mirror.
He poured himself a large whisky and ice in the kitchenette area to one side of his room. He didn’t particularly like whisky straight like this – he’d rather add something sweet, a dash of Coke or lemonade – but he knew neat whisky was an acquired taste, and it was one he was determined to develop. And why not? Leonard could afford the very best.
He heard the intercom buzz and sighed. He went to the wall and pressed the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Darling?’
It was his mother.
‘Yep?’
‘Are you coming up for dinner?’ She paused. ‘Your father’s home. We can all eat together.’
As if that was something to look forward to.
‘I might just stay down here,’ he said. ‘Order pizza.’
She stayed silent. He could almost feel the tension reaching through the speaker, invisible threads of need clutching and grabbing at him. He sighed.
‘I’ll be up in ten,’ he said.
‘Good.’
Leonard’s parents – Sebastian’s paternal grandparents – were from Italy. They’d migrated to Australia a year before Leonard was born. Grandma and Grandpa Boo, as Seb had called them, had heavy accents and prattled on a lot about Italian culture and food and the superiority of life in Rome. Sebastian had always loved them, they were unfailingly affectionate and generous, but he’d always been confused by Leonard’s attitude towards them. Like so much about Leonard, it had puzzled Sebastian, made him sad.
Grandpa Boo had died a few years earlier from a massive and unexpected heart attack. His death had had a strange effect on Leonard. Where once he’d been dismissive and scathing, he’d become nostalgic for all things Italian. He started playing Italian operas, filling the house with sounds that Sebastian found both melodramatic and depressing. He stopped rolling his eyes when Grandma Boo talked of life in Italy. In the past his heritage had been something to run from. Suddenly it was immensely important to him.
Once, a few months after Grandpa Boo died, Sebastian went to his father’s office and found Leonard sitting back in his chair, his eyes tightly closed, his face etched with sadness. He sighed and let something drop from his hand to the floor. It was the framed photo of Leonard’s father that normally sat on top of the piano. Sebastian had been stunned, and had slipped away quietly before he was seen. He’d never known his father to show emotional vulnerability and he felt a conflicting mix of emotions. Sadness and pity for his father, grief and longing for his grandfather, anger at Leonard’s inability to be kind to those he was meant to love.
Sebastian went upstairs and found his parents seated at the table, waiting for him. The table was ridiculously large for a family of three. Sebastian had always found it intimidating as a child and had wondered why they couldn’t sit around a normal small round table, but now he was glad for the space. The distance from his father.
‘Thanks,’ he said, smiling across the table at his mother as he took his seat. She had prepared meatballs in a tomato sauce. Potatoes and beans. ‘This looks great.’
Sebastian didn’t look at Leonard, but he could sense his glaring presence, his angry stillness at the other end of the table. As Sebastian picked up his fork, Leonard sighed. ‘What is that black stuff you have around your eyes?’
Sebastian had been wearing eyeliner on and off for a while now, and he had no idea why Leonard had decided to pick a fight about it tonight. But that was life with Leonard. Unpredictable and random.
He was quiet while he considered his options. He could be apologetic. He could rush off and wash his face. Tell Leonard he’d never wear it again, that he didn’t know what he’d been thinking. He could cry. Be contrite and promise not to do it again.
Or he could stand up for himself.
He chose the second option.
‘It’s eyeliner,’ he said, attempting a smile.
‘And why’s that, Sebastian?’
‘I like it.’
‘It’s obvious that you like it. But why do you like it? Do you actually want to look like a woman?’
‘Leonard. Please,’ his mother interjected. ‘Let’s just enjoy our dinner.’
Leonard ignored her, and continued watching Sebastian. He tilted his head to the side, put a small smile on his face, as if they were just having a friendly father-and-son conversation. But his eyes were as sharp as daggers and a small vein pulsed in the side of his jaw.
‘No,’ Sebastian answered. ‘I don’t want to look like a woman.’
‘So, why wear make-up?’
‘I just like it.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
‘Try.’
Sebastian cleared his throat, lifted his chin. ‘I guess I like the way it looks. I also like it because it helps to identify me.’
‘Identify you?’
‘As gay.’
Leonard snorted. Then he tipped his head back and laughed loudly. He laughed until his face reddened and his eyes started to water. Sebastian caught his mother’s eyes and she gave the tiniest shake of her head. Don’t say anything, her expression said. Just let him wear himself out.
Eventually Leonard straightened up. He wiped his eyes and shook his head. He lifted a huge forkful of food into his mouth. He watched Sebastian as he chewed.
‘I’ve known you were gay since you were ten years old. You didn’t know that, did you? I actually knew it before you did. The way you were too scared to climb a tree. The way you couldn’t ride a bike properly. I watched you struggle and fail at all the things boys do, and I watched you get obsessed with stupid things like your hair. And I watched how normal boys like Cooper behaved . . . I knew there was something strange about you even then.’
Sebastian could think of a thousand different comebacks to his father’s ridiculous and insulting logic, but he knew from experience that debate with Leonard was impossible. Conversation was futile. He would only be prolonging the agony. Leonard wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t change.
But Leonard wasn’t the only one who could use words as a weapon.
‘You’re very perceptive,’ Sebastian said, smiling insincerely. ‘I only hope that I can be as sensitive as you one day.’
Leonard’s eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. Sebastian could almost feel the fury radiating out of him. He waited for his father to explode, prepared himself for a torrent of insults, but after a moment Leonard only shrugged, as though suddenly bored. He picked up his fork, stabbed a meatball and lifted it to his mouth. He chewed mechanically, staring vacantly out at nothing. It was a deliberate and cold move and it had the desired effect. Sebastian felt dismissed. Insignificant. As though he wasn’t worth the effort.
As soon as dinner was over, Sebastian went straight back to his room. It wasn’t until he’d locked his bedroom door behind him that he let his
emotions out. He clenched his fists by his side, kicked the wall and swore. He sat on the end of his bed, put his face in his hands and cried until his temples throbbed and his throat burned. He knew how pathetic he would look if someone was spying through the window, and he was filled with a mortifying sense of shame. He straightened up and stared around the room in a panic – but of course nobody was there. Nobody was watching. Still, he was snapped out of his self-pity. He wiped his eyes, stood up, went to the bathroom and washed his face.
He stood before the mirror and stared. He knew he was good-looking. His face was symmetrical, his jaw square, his eyes dark and deep, his nose long and straight. His face was striking. He could be a model or a movie star. Women loved him. Certain men loved him too.
But all he could see – all he could ever see – was his own weakness, the desperation in his eyes, his own snivelling, pathetic need. He hated himself. Especially when he let himself cry. And especially over Leonard.
Less than an hour later he heard a car start up and back out of the driveway, and soon after that there was a knock on his door. His mother was on the landing, holding out a large bowl of ice-cream.
‘He’s gone to the club,’ she said.
Sebastian took the bowl and thanked her, pretending to be grateful. He would wash the ice-cream down the sink with hot water when she was gone.
‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him get you down. He’s just incredibly stressed about work. But he loves you. You know that. He thinks the world of you.’
Sebastian didn’t particularly want Leonard to think the world of him. All he wanted, all he had wanted for years, was to slip under his father’s radar. He wanted Leonard to leave him alone. In almost twenty years he’d never once had his father’s approval, and he certainly didn’t need it now. He’d learned to stop craving the impossible when he was a kid. But he couldn’t explain that to his mother. In his family all the real stuff was unsayable.
Sebastian woke early on the morning of his tenth birthday. It was still dark outside and the house was quiet, but he got out of bed and hurried to the kitchen. The fire glowed warm and the lights were bright, and he could hear the reassuring tick tick tick of the big kitchen clock. It was only five a.m. – still hours until his mother would get up and give him his presents.
He was glad to be ten. Ten was the year, he was certain, that he’d become braver, even fearless. The dark would become less terrifying, this massive cold house less intimidating. Ten-year-olds weren’t scared of the dark, didn’t call for their mummies at night.
The two hours before seven, when his parents finally got up, seemed to take forever. His mother appeared in the kitchen first, wrapped her arms around him, pulled him close against her sweet-scented nightdress.
‘Happy birthday, darling.’
It was always embarrassing when she cuddled him like this in front of his father, and Sebastian never knew where to put himself; his arms, his body. He didn’t want to reject her, but his father made his disapproval of such affection obvious, so it was almost impossible not to push her away, not to make himself stiff and unyielding. And so he enjoyed this unobserved cuddle, enjoyed wrapping his arms around his mother and holding her tight.
But then his father was there, straightening his tie, sighing with irritation.
‘Coffee? Sarah? I’m running late.’
‘Of course, darling. Just a sec.’ His mother was tirelessly cheerful, always painfully eager to please. But this only annoyed his father. Sebastian had understood this for as long as he could remember, and he didn’t know how his mother could be so oblivious to what was so apparent. One day, when he was older, he’d tell her. One day, when he was big enough and brave enough, he’d tell his dad what he really thought of him. He’d tell his dad to stop being mean to his mum.
When his father had left for work, his mother told him to go and get dressed.
‘I want to show you your present,’ she said.
‘Can’t I have it now? Do I have to get dressed?’ He could argue with his mother when his father wasn’t around, they could be normal with each other, happy and relaxed.
‘Well, it’s just that we have to go for a bit of a walk outside. You’ll need some shoes, at least.’
‘Come with me then,’ he said. ‘And I’ll get my slippers.’ His mother didn’t mind that he wanted her to come with him, she didn’t mind that he hated walking through the house alone. It was such a big house, the ceilings high, the floors cold and hard. It was vast and dark and full of shadows.
His friends all had normal houses. Small and cosy and full of stuff. They had carpet on the floors, curtains on the windows, mess and clutter everywhere. When the television was on in the lounge room you could hear it from the bedroom or the kitchen. Sebastian’s house was still and silent, and when he was alone in his downstairs bedroom – which was almost as large as some of his friends’ houses – he was sometimes afraid he was the only person left alive in the world.
He put his slippers on and his mother took him down to the back of the garden, behind the swimming pool and the tennis court, towards the thick screen of conifers that hid the southernmost corner of the garden.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Close your eyes.’
‘Aw, Mum,’ he protested. ‘I’m not a baby.’
But he closed his eyes anyway, and she took his hand, led him slowly around the trees.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You can look now.’
What used to be a grassy area, overgrown with shrubs, had been cleared. There was a new dirt path, which went around in a rough oval shape, with small hills and bumps along it. Sebastian wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first, not sure how this related to him. But his mother put her hands on his shoulders and swung him around to face two new BMX bikes, both standing upright on their stands.
‘It’s a bike path, darling. We had it made while you were at school. And a new bike.’
‘A bike?’ he said. It was hard to keep the disappointment from his voice. He didn’t like bike-riding. Never had. He preferred indoor pursuits – playing video games, watching movies, listening to music. He liked new clothes. He was cautious with his body. He didn’t like bruises and scrapes, hated hurting himself, never liked getting dirty.
‘It was all your father’s idea,’ she said. ‘The track. The bikes. He thought of everything.’
‘But why two?’ Sebastian was puzzled. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with two bikes.
‘I know,’ she said, clapping her hands together, her voice deliberately bright. ‘He got one for Cooper too. So that you’d have someone to play with. Wasn’t that a good idea? And you can invite Cooper around for the afternoon.’
His mother annoyed him when she acted like this. When she pretended that everything was okay, pretended not to notice that he was disappointed or upset. She knew that he didn’t like bikes. She knew he was no good at riding. She knew that this was a present that wouldn’t make him happy.
‘We’re just going to have the best day. I’ve organised a picnic and a big chocolate cake, and you and Cooper can spend the afternoon riding and Daddy will be home early, and then we can all have a lovely dinner together.’
And so she went on – pretending, pretending, pretending.
He did end up having a good day, at least the first half of it, before his dad got home. He and his mother and Cooper had a picnic by the pool with all his favourite foods. Frankfurts and sausage rolls followed by the best chocolate mud cake he’d ever had, and as much lemonade as they could drink. After lunch they mucked around in the pool, and though Cooper was generally the sportier of the two, Sebastian discovered that he could beat him in a long-distance freestyle race. Cooper always started out ahead, but he went too hard and fast, and became fatigued early, so Sebastian eventually overtook him. Sebastian loved winning – it made him giddy with joy. And probably because it was his birthday Cooper agreed to race him again and again. Sebastian won over and over.
When his dad
arrived home he insisted that the boys get dressed and head down to the bike path. Sebastian trudged down unhappily, a few steps behind his father and Cooper, who were both oblivious to Sebastian’s change of mood. Cooper walked right next to Leonard – cheerfully answering every gruff and demanding question Sebastian’s father threw at him. He chatted freely, about his mother, about school, about how he was getting good at surfing. He was natural and relaxed with Leonard in a way that Sebastian could never be. Sebastian was always stiff and anxious, unable to be himself.
Sebastian felt ridiculous on the bike. He was embarrassed by his own timidity, his inability to fly over the humps as freely as Cooper, who rode with a reckless joy. But he worked hard to hide his shame. He fought the urge to cry and stamp his feet or throw his bike down in a baby-like tantrum. He did his best to be a good sport, a good loser. He was experienced at acting indifferent, at being cool.
And despite his own keen disappointment with the bike track, he wanted his father to think that he was pleased with the gift. He was concerned that his own hopelessness would disappoint his father, make him ashamed. But when Leonard suggested that the boys race twice around the track, and Cooper flew ahead, leaving Sebastian wobbling clumsily behind him, he was confused by the expression on Leonard’s face. Cooper had beaten him, had left him in the dust, but his father was smiling.
NOW
16
SEBASTiAN
Sebastian scores a park close to the front of the church. People are already waiting outside, dressed in their good clothes, faces serious and sad. Claire sighs and turns to stare at the crowd, but makes no move to exit the car.
‘Oh my god,’ she sighs. ‘Do we really have to? Really?’
‘Of course we do,’ he says. ‘For Cooper.’
‘I know, I know. But it’s all so fucked. I’d rather just . . .’ She stops, turns to look at him, bites her lip. ‘Did you bring anything? A bit of speed? Something to get us through this?’