The Secret Lives of Men

by Georgia Blain

  ‘Don’t waste it,’ the boyfriend scolded, and I could see Eddie was mortified.

  ‘What about me?’ I asked, sure I could do a better job than my brother.

  ‘Like this,’ and pinching the end of the joint, Camille’s boyfriend drew back, a sharp intake of breath, holding it for a moment, before letting the air out.

  Eddie watched.

  ‘I wouldn’t give him any more,’ Camille half protested, standing slowly. ‘And I definitely wouldn’t give her any.’ We all kept our eyes on her as she walked, tanned and languorous, down to the house, the sunlight cutting through the slender poplars that marked the border between us and next door.

  She was the ideal woman, Eddie told me later. He drew pictures of her, sketches on the back of school notes and in exercise books, line drawings that never quite caught the perfect symmetry of her features. He wrote her name over and over again, scribbling it out as soon as he completed it. He even took a photograph of her, keeping it crumpled under his pillow.

  Once, he and his friends had followed her and the other fourth formers to the dank marshy ground under the Gladesville Bridge, where magic mushrooms grew in the clotted dirt near the concrete pylons. Camille discovered Eddie hiding in the sticky asthma weed, and her boyfriend gave him a mushroom to try.

  ‘You didn’t,’ I said.

  Eddie just rolled his eyes, and although I didn’t want to ask him what it was like, I wanted to know.

  ‘Amazing.’ His fringe fell across his face, and he pushed it aside. ‘We took it in turns to kiss her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Camille.’

  I knew then he was lying.

  ‘Ask her.’

  I told him I would. Then he’d look like an idiot. Then he’d be embarrassed. As I went to pick up the phone, he confessed: he hadn’t kissed her after all. But he had taken the mushrooms, and he grabbed my arm in a final attempt to convince me.

  Sitting out in Juliette’s courtyard, the last piece of reheated pizza cold between us, and me now feeling well and truly drunk on my fourth beer, I asked how Camille was.

  ‘Married money,’ Juliette told me.

  ‘Eddie was in love with her.’

  ‘Everyone was in love with Camille. All my own boyfriends included.’ Juliette grinned, picking at a fleck of tobacco caught near her chipped front tooth. ‘So when did he do it?’ she asked, and I knew she was referring to Eddie.

  It was when he was seventeen. A couple of years after my father lost all his money and we moved away, to a flat on the other side of the overpass.

  ‘But it wasn’t that,’ I said. ‘When you’re a kid you don’t care about money, or your house, or any of that. It wasn’t even the fights between my parents. He was just one of those people.’ I could see her looking at me. ‘He never fitted in, and because he wanted to be liked so badly, other kids were cruel.’

  I remembered one of them taking Eddie’s school shorts and leaving him, knees together, hands trying to cover himself as he walked home. And then there was the time he was bashed, nose broken and bloody, weeping as my mother asked him who had done this to him.

  ‘Later on there were the drugs. We all took them. But they messed with him.’

  It was easy now to provide a list of possible reasons, all I should have seen at the time, and probably did see, but I always felt that somehow, in the tangle of isolated incidents, I had never grasped the larger whole, the truth of what had taken him further than he should ever have gone.

  Juliette put her cigarette out. ‘You know he lost his virginity to me. One of those times I babysat you, and he came home later.’

  ‘Well, that would have made him happy.’ I smiled at Juliette, who was standing now, beer in one hand.

  ‘Want to see my paintings?’ She nodded in the direction of the sunroom at the back of the house.

  I had noticed the canvases stacked against the wall when I came in, and I’d been curious, wanting to pull one out, unable to imagine how Juliette would paint. Something unfinished, I thought. I followed her now, into the narrow room, lit only by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. She turned the first of the paintings around and stepped back so that she, too, could assess them.

  It was difficult to see it properly, there on the ground, the light too dim to show the depths of soft darkness. There was a bridge spanning the night and a low cloud, barely visible, pressing down, heavy and sombre on the earth below.

  ‘Can you hold it up?’ I said.

  Resting her drink on the window ledge, she obliged, head cocked to one side as she watched me, observing.

  In the distance I could see a light, only small, illuminating one corner of the canvas a little more brightly than the other. I leant closer and, having drunk too much, almost knocked the painting out of her grasp. She steadied herself, never taking her eyes off me as she waited for my reaction.

  ‘God, it’s good,’ I said.

  She turned another around and then another, and I sat on the floor in the middle of her sunroom as she held them up for me one by one, each a world so dark you wanted to step right in to see if you could touch what you felt was there but was never quite discernible.

  I was about eight when Susie’s mother, Sarah, gave Eddie and me the IQ test. Sarah was studying psychology at university and she must have asked my mother if she could use us as her subjects. We went, not entirely sure what we were expected to do, just wanting a break in the monotony of a weekend that had entailed more bickering than usual.

  We let ourselves in through the tall wooden gate. The Acott house was one of the largest in the neighbourhood, surrounded by an overgrown garden, the weeds knee high and sticky, the trees pressing against the windows. Inside the dark hall, it was quiet. Everyone seemed to be out. Eddie called hello, his voice unsteady. I shouted a little louder, and Sarah appeared, her footsteps soft as she came out of the lounge. She was a thin woman, her hair streaked with grey, her skin smeared with pale freckles. She was wearing glasses, which made the occasion much more serious than I had thought it was.

  ‘Now, who first?’ she said. ‘Eddie or Lena?’

  I was surprised she knew our names, because although I had been there to play a few times and her daughters had babysat us, she’d never seemed to register who we were. This was a house in which the adults had little presence. The children did as they pleased, helping themselves to the food they wanted, leaving the mess they made, fighting without intervention, turning on the television whenever they desired; it was chaotic and busy. But on that day it was quiet.

  ‘Is Susie home?’ I asked, once it had been determined that Eddie would go first and I would be left to wait.

  Sarah wasn’t sure where she was, and she looked at me for an instant, as if uncertain as to whether she should trouble herself with finding me an amusement. There was nothing at hand, and so she left me to sit on a sofa in the lounge.

  With big windows that let in the northern light, it was the only sunny room in the house. The couch was warm, and I stretched out my legs on the cushions, surprised by all the cuts and scratches I had accumulated. Then, bored with this, I wandered around, picking up things and putting them back: a vase, a family photo in a frame, a bruised piece of fruit in a bowl on a table next to one of the armchairs. This was a grown-up room, one where there was little for me to do. I would have gone upstairs to the girls’ bedrooms or out to the family room at the back of the house, but I wasn’t sure when Sarah would be calling me.

  I went to the kitchen instead and opened the fridge. Dinners had been left in casserole dishes, the food crusty now. Cheese was unwrapped and hard at the edge. There was a glass bowl with jelly, and I ran my finger through the middle, cutting a line that wobbled through the raspberry, hastily licking it off when I heard the door to the lounge open, followed by Sarah’s voice saying my name.

 
‘There you are.’

  I looked around for Eddie, and she told me he’d headed home. ‘I won’t keep you long,’ she promised.

  The room off the lounge (which was, I suppose, a breakfast room) had bookshelves around two of the walls, dog-eared paperbacks stuffed into each shelf. The floor was covered with papers, stacked in piles that threatened to topple any second. Under the window, there was a round table, with four wooden shapes on top of it: a circle, a square, a triangle and a hexagon.

  We were going to play a game, Sarah explained as she pulled out a seat for me. ‘It’s called Find the Smartie. I want you to close your eyes when I tell you and then pick the shape that has the Smartie underneath it.’

  It seemed both easy and pointless.

  ‘You can eat any Smarties you find,’ Sarah said. ‘Or save them to take them home.’

  I shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  The game must have lasted about fifteen minutes, maybe less. I closed my eyes when I was instructed. Sometimes Sarah asked me questions while I waited for her to choose her hiding place, strange questions that I attempted to answer. When I was allowed to look, I picked shapes randomly, with mixed success. The few Smarties I won, I ate immediately. I was thirsty and didn’t want them, but didn’t know how I was going to carry them on my bike.

  At home, Eddie’s Smarties were in a bowl. I didn’t know how he’d got so many.

  ‘I won them.’ He spoke with an icy triumph that was unfamiliar. ‘It was an IQ test.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘A test to see how smart we are. How quickly we figure out the pattern and find the Smarties.’

  ‘No it wasn’t.’

  Eddie began to count his out — slowly, carefully.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  He ate one, eyeing me as he did so.

  ‘It was just a game.’

  ‘Was it?’

  His smirk made me want to punch him.

  ‘She never said it was a test.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’ He ate another Smartie. ‘Besides, it was obvious. To those of us with high IQs.’

  ‘What a load of crap.’ I tried to hit him but only succeeded in sending all the Smarties scattering to the floor.

  Eddie seized me in a headlock and I kicked him. We rolled onto the ground, crushing the Smarties beneath our body weight. When I bit him, he screamed.

  Later that day, I rode my bike along the back streets that led to Susie’s house. It was almost evening and the lights were on in the upstairs windows. The front door was open, and I could hear the TV from inside and music coming from one of the bedrooms. I had crept out of our house and ridden over there because I had thought I wanted to talk to Sarah. I hadn’t envisaged encountering the rest of the family, and now that this seemed possible, I was less certain of my mission.

  I stood at the front door, and then, feeling foolish and embarrassed, decided to go home. As I picked up my bike, Sarah peered out.

  ‘It wasn’t fair,’ I told her, when she realised it was only me standing there, hesitant, eyes still red from crying after being punished for the fight with Eddie.

  We sat together on the sandstone paving that surrounded the house, our backs against the wall as she tried to understand.

  ‘What were our marks?’ I wiped at my nose, smearing grease from my bike across my cheek.

  They were both high, she said.

  Was Eddie a genius?

  According to the test, he was certainly in the upper levels.

  And me? Was I a genius, too?

  She blinked nervously as she tried to explain that the test was just one measure of intelligence.

  It was wrong, I said.

  She waited for me to continue. At only eight years old, it wasn’t easy to explain why I felt there had been an injustice.

  The garden was in darkness now; only the camellia bushes that grew near the house were visible. At my feet a few bruised heads had fallen onto the sandstone, the petals crushed underfoot, their thick perfume sweet against the smell of mud, dirt and leaves. I picked one up and pulled it apart, the bloom silky to the touch.

  She would take me home. My mother would be worried. And she stood slowly, reaching down for me. I didn’t take her hand. Lifting my bike up again, I told her I would be fine. ‘It’s just around the corner.’

  It was too dark. She would get her keys and we could put the bike in the boot. ‘I won’t be a second,’ she said.

  But I didn’t wait. Swinging my leg over the crossbar, I rode down the garden path and out onto the street, the coolness of the night soothing as I pedalled faster, the wind in my hair and the rush of air against my skin as I turned down the steep hill that led to the river.

  At home, they didn’t hear me. My parents sat in the kitchen, discussing Eddie’s test results, while in the sunroom, Eddie watched television, holding frozen peas to the black eye I had given him.

  ‘I worry about Lena,’ my mother told my father. ‘She is so angry.’

  ‘You worry about Lena?’ He was surprised.

  I stayed perfectly quiet.

  ‘Maybe she is jealous of him?’

  I could tell my mother didn’t believe her own words.

  ‘Maybe we don’t give her enough attention?’

  With my ear pressed against the door, I clenched my fingers in the palm of my hand, white-knuckled and silent. They had got it so wrong. But I stayed where I was, listening to them searching, fumbling for an answer, while I remained unable to explain what it was that had upset me.

  As I sat on my bed, having left Juliette still drinking beer in her sunroom, I could articulate, with a concise clarity that had eluded me back then, why I felt there had been an injustice.

  You see, I would say if I could inhabit my eight-year-old self, I thought it was just a matter of random chance. I should have been told that there was a predetermined pattern for me to decipher, and rules to follow.

  But at the time, when it had mattered so much, I had been unable to find words for all I felt.

  I got into bed. Somewhere, in a suburb nearby, Jono would be lying next to his new girlfriend, one arm half draped across her body. Up and down my street, people slept in pairs, children dreamt, and dogs and cats curled up in baskets. And then there were the others, houses with people like us. At the time, I had backed away from Juliette’s casual grouping of the two of us. But perhaps she was right. Like her, I was alone. Sometimes I thought of it as freedom, but I had come to be less sure now that I was here in an empty house I called home, a place where the wind was liable to rush through the gaps under the doors, as sudden and cold as the fear of having once again missed what matters.

  Just a Wedding

  On her first morning in Madrid, Emma woke with the sun piercing through the gap in a shutter, a single bright slice across the room. She’d been dreaming of wedding cakes, elaborate creations covered in thick marzipan and decorated with birds, twisted vines, clusters of flowers and twirls of leaves. The chef who brought them to her presented each one proudly, placing it on the table and waiting for her approval.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she would tell him, and it always was — at first glance. But if she examined the cake more closely, she would see the flaws in its smooth surface: a tracing of cracks, a dove with a broken beak, petals that had been carelessly crushed. No, it wasn’t good enough, she was sorry, he would need to try again; and his disappointment was evident as he picked up the plate and took it away.

  She shook off the dream, hating its cheap obviousness, and sat up slowly. Next to her, Charles was still asleep, his eyelids waxy, his mouth slightly open, his breath stale. She could smell sangria, like rotten fruit, overripe in the room. His dark curls were damp across his forehead; a fly buzzed, and then settled on his shoulder. She shifted away from him carefully,
not wanting to wake him, because then she could no longer be alone. The tiled floor was cold, and she waited for her eyes to fully adjust as she took in the dimmer recesses, trying to remember which door led to the cubicle with the washbasin and toilet.

  They had been married a fortnight ago. It was Charles who’d suggested it, drunk and exuberant when she’d got her PhD, and a job in the medical research department at the university. He’d pulled her close in the restaurant, kissing her deeply, and then he’d proposed. Well, he hadn’t proposed as such, he’d said: ‘Let’s have a wedding.’ And when she’d laughed, he’d told her it would be fun. ‘We can have a party, get presents, go on a honeymoon, just like they do in the movies. The Continent, just the two of us. We’ll stay in hotels, have sex all day and all night, maybe go out and get drunk for a couple of hours and then come back and have sex again.’

  They’d only known each other for a month, she’d protested.

  ‘But that’s when you should get married. You don’t want to wait until you know each other. Who’d get married then? You have to do it while you still find each other irresistible.’

  There was something thrilling to it: the well-trodden road towards marriage far below them both, dusty, dry and ignored.

  ‘Besides, if it doesn’t work, we can always undo it.’ He raised his glass.

  ‘I don’t think that’s the point of a wedding.’ She’d laughed a little nervously.

  ‘Why does it have to have a point? Why can’t it just be what it is? A wedding. A moment.’ He topped up both their drinks. ‘To us. And our impending nuptials.’

  They had married that weekend.

  They hadn’t had a party — in fact, they hadn’t told anyone. They’d gone to the registry on a bus, both dressed in jeans and T-shirts, and she’d felt like a child on a dare that she no longer wanted to participate in.