Invented Lives

by Andrea Goldsmith

  Winston harped on and on about AIDS, Leonard wished he would leave it alone, but with this Grim Reaper campaign there was no avoiding it. The traffic lights turned red, leaving Leonard stopped near the huge accusing sign. He hated this campaign, and he hated this poster; he turned away.

  Sylvie, in contrast, was staring at the billboard. And when the lights changed and Leonard drove through the intersection, she turned her head to hold it in view a little longer. Then she uttered words that chilled him far more than the Grim Reaper.

  ‘Leonard,’ she said, ‘I hope you’re being careful.’

  Sylvie had not planned these words. In truth, the knowledge that minted them was so buried, so untouchable, she could not say how long she had known. There are secrets in every marriage, invisible crevices you skirt around as you eat together, socialise with friends, go on holiday. You see a shadow, you know to swerve, you become sure-footed, an expert at avoidance. But once the words have been uttered and the knowledge exposed, it can’t be buried again.

  As the ghastly sign slipped out of sight, Sylvie registered a sickening distaste that might have blown into full-strength revulsion if she were someone else, or, for that matter, if Leonard were a different person. She looked at him. He was driving with determined concentration, lips pressed together and eyes not blinking. His moustache, she noticed, was silvery in the night light. This was Leonard. He was her husband. As for this knowledge? It had been incubating their entire marriage.

  She knew that in 1962, Leonard was reading Walt Whitman; in 1963, he read W.H. Auden; in 1964, Cavafy; in 1965, Lorca. Leonard was a poet, she reasoned, so of course he would read other poets. In 1966, he read Alan Ginsberg; in 1967, Siegfried Sassoon. She knew that most of these poets were homosexuals, maybe all of them were. There was an unmarried uncle of her mother’s, a grower of orchids, who was said to be ‘that way’. He’d always struck Sylvie as not much different from other men. And Leonard was her husband; they had a son. She did not think you could be homosexual and married.

  She knew that on each of their beach holidays, Leonard took long walks by himself. She knew that Leonard preferred to take his business trips without her. She knew there were days when he would shove his dirty clothes deep in the laundry basket, rather than leave them on the floor for her to pick up. She knew where his gaze was drawn when they were at the beach, at a restaurant, or walking down the street.

  She knew, perhaps she had always known, and this knowledge had infused her marriage, it may even have shaped it — the lonely bed, the lavish affection, the single child. Leonard hadn’t changed, but with the Grim Reaper threatening from suburban streets, it was the world that had changed, and what had previously been hidden had been forced into the light.

  Yet everything suddenly felt different. It was as if a sour, polluted air had been let in. She felt sick, and with each passing moment, she felt sicker. When she looked at the man driving the car, she was filled with rage; the shoulder beneath her hand had turned to slime. Everything had spoiled. She felt spoiled. It was immaterial that the taint had always been there; now that she acknowledged it, everything was different. And AIDS made it so much worse. What he did with his body, what dangers he exposed it to, was bad enough. But Andrew greeted his father with a hug and a kiss, and she sipped from Leonard’s glass, she handled his soiled clothes.

  She pulled her hand from his shoulder and rubbed it against her thigh. Her husband was attracted to men, and he might have AIDS. It was hard to know which was worse. But even with her mind raging against him, she knew which was worse. She might well be angry and disgusted, she might well detest this aspect of Leonard, but she had always known.

  AIDS, however, was quite another matter.

  She unwound her window and leaned into the rushing wind. She imagined opening the door and leaping from the car, the scrape and tear of gravel, lying alone on the side of the road. She did not move. The wind thrashed her face, it battered her hair. At this particular moment, she hated her husband. Yet she had known all along who and what he was. But AIDS was new. AIDS was different.

  She closed the window, wanting to be sure he would hear. She spoke slowly, each word a threat.

  ‘I hope you’ve been careful, Leonard.’

  It was the Monday before Christmas, the factory was winding down, and Leonard was not at work. There were chores to be done at home. Nothing particularly urgent, rather, he hoped his mere presence would show Sylvie nothing had changed, that he was still the loving husband he’d always been. He couldn’t talk to her, not about these issues, so no reference had been made to the Grim Reaper billboard, or anything remotely related to it. Dinner with the Barkers had proceeded much as usual, but yesterday Sylvie had been quiet and withdrawn. The silence between them was now deep and dangerous. He tried to ignore it, to act normally, but nothing was normal anymore.

  He was terrified she would leave him.

  Monday was the day she changed the sheets, and he could hear her in the laundry. There was the jagged clack when she twisted the dial of the machine, the clunk in the pipes as the water entered the bowl, and then a pause. And now she’s back in the hallway. He expects her to go into one of the bedrooms to make the bed with clean sheets, but instead she is continuing up the hall, she’s heading this way. He wants her to join him if she’s preparing to forgive him, and to ignore him if she’s thinking of leaving.

  She’s standing in the doorway. He stiffens for the worst.

  ‘You haven’t answered me, Leonard. Have you been careful?’

  He can’t meet her gaze.

  ‘I insist on an answer,’ she says. ‘If you’ve endangered me, or, God forbid, our son, I need to know.’

  He can feel how angry she is, and chillingly controlled.

  Still not meeting her gaze, he assures her that she and Andrew are entirely safe. ‘I give you my word.’

  ‘Your word means nothing to me now.’

  The cruel and punishing statement hits right on target.

  He speaks in a rush. ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘Then what is it, Leonard?’ Her words are cut from ice. ‘What exactly is it?’

  How to talk about something you’ve never talked about? How to say the unsayable? But he has to try. ‘I love you, Sylvie, I always have and I always will. This makes no difference to how I feel about you. It’s never made any difference. It’s irrelevant, totally separate from us and our marriage.’

  She is staring at him; her face is hard and blank. ‘I wouldn’t call it irrelevant,’ she says quietly. ‘No, definitely not irrelevant.’

  ‘But no husband and wife share everything.’

  ‘This is not a hobby, Leonard. It’s not golf, or chess, or collecting letters. This is who you have sex with.’ She stands silent and staring a moment longer, enough time for her words to take effect, then she turns and leaves the room.

  Let her be angry, he is thinking, let her get it out of her system, then maybe she’ll soften and forgive me. (But forgive him for what? For being himself?) He feels like a trespasser in his own marriage, but at least he still has a marriage. He has to bide his time, sit it out, remind her by his actions why they’ve been happily married for over thirty years. He wants another thirty; he can’t imagine life without her. And what would life be like for her without him? Has she thought about that?

  He walks into the living room. Months ago, she asked him to sort through the LPs and tape cassettes, and get rid of those they’d acquired on CD. Better he had done the job when first she asked, but now, when he’s desperate to please her — as if that might counter the far greater pain he’s caused — it can’t do any harm, and it’s the sort of all-consuming, mindless task to silence his worries and fears.

  He has a new double CD of Handel’s Messiah, bought especially for this year’s Christmas, and he decides to listen to it as he works. His own largely unmusical parents always played the Messiah on Chri
stmas morning, excerpts on a stack of 78s that later gave way to a double LP. It’s one of the few habits of his first family he has carried across to his second. Now he lifts out the first CD — he still marvels at this miniature technology — and slips it into the machine.

  He settles on the floor and turns his attention to the shelf of records. He sings along to the Messiah as he separates the LPs into ‘keep’, ‘discard’, and ‘undecided’. He is totally absorbed in the task, but at some point he must have stopped, for he finds himself hunched in front of the shelves, his hands idle, and he’s crying. The soprano aria ‘He Shall Feed His Flock’ is playing. Come unto Him all ye that labour, come unto Him, that are heavy laden, and He will give you rest. Leonard tries to smother his sobs, and then he changes his mind, twists around fully so his back is pitched to the room, and lets the tears flow. The muscles in his neck ease; he feels stress escape in the wake of tears. At the same time, he’s aware of a bleak and pervasive sadness.

  He is a man who, in a single day, can pass from loving husband to decisive businessman to sex with a stranger to helpful father. It’s as if he carries within himself an invisible machine, like a front-end loader. He’ll enter a situation, and scoop! The aspect of him required to perform in that situation will be plonked in the foreground, while the rest is left in the pit below. And then another situation, scoop! and a different aspect of him will be carried aloft and placed in the central position. Sometimes, and today is a prime example, he wishes the front-end loader would lift the whole damn lot of him, drive to a sea cliff, and dump him in with the sharks.

  Whoever he might be, however, there is one immutable fact: he’s a man who loves his wife. So pull yourself together, he tells himself, and be a husband. He finishes the records and is starting on the tapes when one of his favourite arias, ‘He Was Despised’, fills the room. The tears begin again. This time, he retreats to the bathroom.

  Sitting on the cold hard edge of the bath, sobbing quietly, the strangest sense comes over him. His younger self rises unbidden from memory, the boy he used to be, living with his family in Perth. It’s Christmas morning, summer holidays, and everything is possible. Hope and opportunity march in unison, and so many wonderful dreams just waiting for maturity to make them a reality. He feels it now, crying in the bathroom, he feels all that possibility. And he knows he’s crying for the loss of that boy for whom a thousand roads beckoned. And he’s crying, too, for the ageing man approaching the future with his face averted, threatened with a lonely dead end.

  Sylvie is at the other end of the house. She’s in a turmoil. She can find no solutions to her shattered life, she can’t even say what she wants to happen. She’s a woman without options and preferences, a woman without desires.

  It’s best, she decides, to keep busy. It’s best not to think.

  Monday is sheet-changing day. She starts in her bedroom, and, as usual, Butch with a ball in his mouth scampers in for the bed-making game. He leaps on the bed as she is removing the sheets, and she orders him down; he stands by the bed following her every movement until she has fitted the lower sheet, then jumps up again. Again she orders him down. He makes a nest in the quilt piled on the floor, and watches with an unwavering gaze while she shakes out the top sheet and tucks it in with hospital corners. Finally, she tips Butch off the quilt, fluffs it over the sheets, smooths it down, and invites the dog up on the newly made bed. And there he perches, eager for some ball-throwing. But instead of their usual game, Sylvie sinks down next to him. Butch, sensing all is not well, settles sphinx-like beside her, his head resting on his paws.

  So this is what her life has become, Sylvie is thinking, games with the dog as she makes the bed she sleeps in alone, more games with the dog as she makes the bed in which her husband sleeps alone, this same husband who at the moment she wishes would disappear for a few months — enough time for her hurt and disgust to dwindle, enough time for her to make some sense of what has happened and construct a new future. Of course she feels betrayed, all wives would. Leonard has betrayed her and lied to her for their entire marriage. But not for the first time, she reminds herself that though she might be better informed now, Leonard has not changed. He’s still the same man she met and fell in love with, and, as hard as it is to admit it, if he had been a different sort of man she might not have been attracted to him in the first place.

  Given enough time, she can deal with disgust and betrayal, but more difficult is her sense of having been short-changed — by Leonard, certainly, but more so by their marriage. Their long marriage has allowed him freedoms denied to her; their long marriage has been far more generous to him than it has been to her.

  Christmas came and went. Despite the strain between them, Sylvie and Leonard managed. Thirty years of a good marriage provided a sturdy foundation, and the rituals of the season produced a slew of safe, familiar, and time-consuming tasks. The larger than usual group for Christmas lunch, with Galina as a first-timer, also helped.

  They saw in the new year — 1988 — as they usually did, at the same beachside house they rented with Maggie. Andrew joined them for a few days, as did a parade of Maggie’s children and friends. They were rarely alone, and when they were, they treated each other with care. The days were filled with hours on the beach, long walks, and raucous picnics and barbecues; most evenings they played a new game called Trivial Pursuit, played it endlessly and uproariously. By the time they returned home, Sylvie and Leonard had an acceptable excuse for wanting peace and quiet.

  They spoke when necessary, always politely, but mostly in different keys. During the day, they went their own ways; in the evenings, they filled the silences with light and forgettable rented videos containing little romance and even less substance. Butch occupied the couch alone, while the two of them sat on opposite sides of the room in single armchairs. When Leonard decided to return to work earlier than usual — some large orders to attend to, he explained to Sylvie — she wasn’t fooled about the real reason, nor was she sorry. She felt helpless in the current situation. Helpless, tattered, and old.

  Leonard just wanted things to return to normal. He hadn’t changed, so why should their life be turned upside down? If the wife of a wealthy man were suddenly to discover that her husband’s money was ill-gotten, would it make her appreciate their lifestyle any the less? Sylvie had been happy with him; theirs had been a happy marriage; without his extramarital wanderings he would not have been the easy, congenial husband she had long loved. According to this private logic, they should simply move on from the ructions and return to how they had always been. In reality, of course, he knew this to be pure fantasy.

  Every day, he left for work at his usual time, but only spent a few hours at the office. If it was hot, he went to the gallery or the State Library, otherwise he walked. While he paced the streets and gardens his troubles were muted. He heard the birds, he felt the breeze, he saw the trees, he admired the flowers, and he recited poetry under his breath, half-remembered lines of old favourites. The Prelude returned to him, the first time in years. He recognised the joy of the poem, and the exuberance of the young man; but in an odd and painful way, the poem and its young man felt separate from him, connected as if by a thread, but not actually part of him. Was this to be his life from now on, he wondered. To be separated from all that had once nurtured him? Poetry? Work? His wife?

  His walks began to sour, and he started to spend more time at the office. At the end of January, when Winston returned from Hong Kong, Leonard was again working his usual long days.

  ‘I’m so happy you’re back.’ Leonard had to restrain himself from leaping across the desk and hugging him. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

  Winston had arrived home the previous night, too late even for a phone call. They hadn’t seen each other since Christmas.

  ‘It feels like you’ve been gone for months,’ Leonard said, moving around to the front of the desk. He could feel the pleasure stamped on his face — a sha
rp contrast to Winston’s serious expression. ‘Aren’t you happy to be back?’ And when there was no answer: ‘Winston, is there something wrong?’

  The two men were standing in reach of each other. Winston took a step backwards. He shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not staying, Leo. I’m moving back home.’

  ‘But home is here.’

  ‘I don’t feel safe here. I’m returning to Hong Kong.’ He paused before adding, ‘Permanently.’

  ‘But you can’t just leave.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll put everything in order for my replacement.’

  ‘I don’t mean the business. What about us?’ Leonard could not believe this was happening, not after ten years, not with his life already in pieces.

  ‘I don’t feel safe here,’ Winston said again. ‘AIDS is everywhere. It’s in the papers. It’s on the radio. There’s no escaping it. For all you hear about AIDS in Hong Kong, it might as well not exist. Of course it does, but not in the plague proportions it is here.’ He pulled a tissue from his pocket and swiped at his eyes. ‘I can’t manage it anymore, Leo. I can’t.’

  ‘But we’re fine, we’re safe.’

  ‘I don’t feel safe here anymore,’ said for the third time.

  Not a religious man, Leonard nevertheless found himself thinking of Judas, his betrayal uttered three times. Absolute and immutable.

  ‘I’m sorry, Leo. But I’ve made up my mind.’ Winston sounded so cold, he might have been a stranger. ‘Two weeks’ notice from today.’ He withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket and put it on the desk. Without meeting Leonard’s gaze, he turned and left the office.