loved driving the vast distances, through landscapes which ranged from red, to yellow and gun-metal grey; she loved the raw, open, unspoilt beauty of it.
Of course, there was the difficulty of her growing pregnancy. But in the end, the pregnancy wasn’t a real problem, as Kerry worked right up until the day she gave birth, and then, only took three weeks off. She found a wonderful, day-care woman, to care for James, who, surprisingly, was a placid and contented baby.
Kerry’s problems began, when she accepted a marriage proposal from a preacher man, who also worked with disaffected youth. Luther was not like anyone else she had ever met. He had a way with words, and eyes which seemed to see into her inner depths; he mesmerised her in some inexplicable way. Kerry began to think that she was not a lesbian after all, and that her son needed a father. Luther reeled her in.
At first, Luther treated Kerry like a princess. But soon, he would coldly tell her that her cooking was tasteless; that she didn’t fold his socks right; that better looking and more talented women ‘were after him’. These changes were so creeping, though, that Kerry hardly noticed that, Luther was hammering away at her confidence and identity. Bit by bit. She knew that she had become anxious in his presence, but it was when she began to quake at the first suggestion of his barely restrained, and wintry anger, that she realised, that, she had somehow fallen down a rabbit hole, and was lost in a strange world.
It was Miah, who helped her, to save herself. And it was Miah, who became the right person for Kerry, and the most loving parent to her son.
At the beginning, the relationship between Kerry and Miah shocked many of the locals. But after a while, people would catch a glimpse of the couple, when they ambled out of the front gate, with a small, smiling, straw-haired boy between them, and they would smile, without realising it. Others might catch a peek at the small family, through the front window of their home, as they ate dinner around the small, round, pine table, and they would feel a warm glow as they gazed upon the tender, yet familiar scene. And so, before long, this little family, was seeping into the bloodstream, and entering the heart of the small community.
Kerry did not return to her home town for more than ten years. By the time she returned, not long after her son’s tenth birthday, her mother had well and truly accepted Kerry’s ‘situation’. She simply adored her grandson and even accepted Miah, without a murmur. In fact, Kerry’s mother soon began to favour Miah, over her own daughter.
In 1995, Kerry and Miah bought a house together near the beach, where the rolling, sibilant sounds of the waves, soothed them to sleep every night, wrapped in each other’s arms. Kerry continued working as a youth worker and also began studying at university. On a few occasions, she ran into Richard, who appeared to be a superstar around campus. Once, they had even coffee together, but all they seemed to talk about was, Therese.
When Kerry thought about it, she wondered if either of them really knew Therese at all. Perhaps, Kerry mused, Therese was simply a symbol of those yearnings and hopeless dreams of youth, which were forever out of reach, and often, never really ours to begin with.
Marco
As soon as the pressure cooker, conformist torture of school was over, so was Marco and Kerry’s relationship. It had served its purpose.
On some level, Marco knew that Kerry was gay: as gay as he was. They never spoke about it, but they had somehow gravitated to each other, as a form of protection and camouflage: Window dressing.
Marco didn’t believe he was being conceited, that, he had formed the view, that things had been easier for Kerry, than they were for him. Kerry simply didn’t attract much male attention, with her scrubbed-clean, open face, and no frills style. He, on the other hand, had to be wary.
Back when he was in early high school (in Victoria), Marco had been invited to a party by a girl in his class. He went, and remembers being dazzled by the house in Toorak; the clipped hedges, elegant topiaries, and glittering expanse of swimming pool. But, unfortunately, he also fell in love with the girl’s brother. This experience served a painful lesson. The brother was outraged by the unwanted, same-sex attention, and threatened to end Marco’s life. The girl, told her friends’ about this apparent outrage, and Marco was soon an object of ridicule and distain.
Luckily, Marco’s father was transferred to New South Wales, for his job, and Marco was granted a new beginning.
As Marco grew older and even more handsome, the attention from girls only increased. He would find himself the object of giggling groups of girls pursing him along narrow, school corridors; he would feel the weight of feminine eyes fixed upon him, and he would even be approached by the more brazen and forthright girls, in a way that made his pulse leap, like a trapped gazelle.
When Kerry came to his high school in year eleven, fresh from Catholic school, they soon gravitated toward each other, and life became easier for Marco. He brought Kerry home for lunch one Sunday, and his father no longer watched him so closely. He even smiled at him sometimes. And his mother’s mouth and shoulder’s lost that certain tightness. At school, Marco was part of a couple, and eyes, like microscopes and telescopes, receded from him as an individual.
But Marco couldn’t wait for the day, when he could escape this small and claustrophobic school world. He just had to bide his time.
Marco had a long range plan. He had long idealised living in the diverse hive of New York City, and he wanted to move there. But he was acquainted with the situation regarding the minimum wage in the U.S. So, his first step on leaving school was to get educated.
When his exam results arrived, Marco knew that the first part of his plan would swing into action. He was offered a place at Melbourne University, to study business and accounting (he had told his parent’s that this was the best course). In reality, he had no passion for these things; he only saw their utility in the job market. His life, though, would still be constrained, as Marco would live with his Aunt Angela and grandfather, in a small, Victorian terrace, in Brunswick. One step at a time, he told himself. One step at a time.
As we know, the best laid plans often go awry.
In the first year of uni, Marco was lonesome and purely focussed on work. In the following year, he met Michael, who was tall and intense: an English major, and poet. Michael would ramble around campus in a long, velvet coat, with his luxuriant, long hair, trailing behind him like a copper, flying carpet. And yet, Michael would manage to look authentic: never staged. He also sang in a band called Exuberance, which was acquiring quite a following.
That summer, as the sun hung in the sky like a fireball, Marco fell away from his studies, and into the bohemian world, in which Michael dwelled. Marco’s grades began to falter, and so, commenced a flurry of phone calls and visits from his parents. But he was as helpless as a moth is to the draw of light.
However, Michael, who did not define himself as gay, or as anything at all, soon moved on from Marco. As was his way, as an explorer and wanderer. And Marco, released from a spell, returned to finish his degree.
Later, Michael would become rich and famous; the object of worship and adoration. A modern Byronic hero. But he would die, when the aircraft he was piloting, pitched into the Pacific Ocean, on his 40th birthday.
One Saturday night, when Marco was still bewitched by Michael and watching him sing with his band at a club, he thought he caught sight of his school friend, Jesse, moving like molasses, in the thick of the throng of bodies. Marco surged through the ocean of people, who shifted like waves, to find his friend. But Jesse, or the person who looked like him, had disappeared into the roaring current. Marco stood there alone for some time and thought about his old friend’s from school, and how, they had never really known him at all.
Through those years, Marco managed to live with his diminutive aunt, who cooked him luscious, Italian meals and deserts; especially, his favourite tiramisu. He would sit in the dark, little sitting room, with its Old Italian style furniture and listen to his grandfather mutter about 'street meetings',
‘freedom of speech’ and ‘the man in the cage’, and never feel any curiosity about the source of these hovering words. He was just waiting for his day of his escape.
There were many tears when Marco informed his parent’s that he was moving to New York in early 1990. His parents felt cheated, like the boy that they had nurtured, watched and loved all those years, did not exist. Marco tried to tell them, I have to go away, to find out who I am. But they couldn’t, or wouldn’t hear him.
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Years later, Marco would sometimes think back on his old, small, former life, when he was lounging on his expensive, leather lounge, high up, meditatively looking over the sweeping New York skyline. He would sip his wine slowly, and lay out the years in his mind. Then, he would look around with satisfaction, at his Manhattan apartment. He had come a long way. But he was still alone. Not alone, as being lonely, but, living alone: as a preference. He had many friends, and lovers. He was successful, and he had money.
It was enough.
Jesse
Jesse looked up from where he stood, on the crumbling stage, in that rotting, stinking, old pub on the highway, and saw his friend, Richard, step out into the