Tom Houghton

by Todd Alexander

  ‘Well . . .’ I sighed. ‘I’m being a little “protective father”, I suppose. I might not have been around much for her but I still have her best interests at heart. I like you, Eddie, you’re a decent man, I can tell that. But buying the meal, finishing her stories . . . I don’t need all of that. You have my best wishes. I consent like a fat king upon a throne.’

  He stared at me for what must have been thirty seconds.

  ‘What a monumental cock-up,’ he said, still maintaining my gaze. He took a long gulp of his wine, then laughed to himself. ‘I must be the least effective suitor in the history of man.’

  ‘On the contrary, Eddie, I told you I give you my blessing.’

  ‘Tom, it’s not your blessing for your daughter I want.’

   Nineteen

  Mum let me have the day off because I complained of being tired, and hadn’t slept a wink. This tactic usually worked. She knew the school year was winding down already and we’d sat our final tests weeks ago. Not that sixth grade really mattered much, she said.

  I slept in until I heard her leave for the butcher shop. I went into the kitchen and was surprised to see Mal there, quietly making his breakfast.

  ‘Morning. I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘You were out like a light, eh?’ Heh heh heh.

  ‘Want a cuppa?’

  ‘Had one, thanks. Spoke to your mum, eh, bro?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You still tired?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Wanna come for a run up the coast? Thought we could take your boat out and give her a burl, a mate of mine’s interested in buying her.’

  I pretended I hadn’t heard them talking about it in the kitchen. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, just wants a runabout for the lake so we wouldn’t have to clean her up or nothin’, eh? He’s already got a big one for the ocean.’

  ‘When would we go? When would we be back?’

  ‘Thought we should leave this morning. I’m taking a sickie today too.’ Heh heh heh. ‘We could stay up there overnight, or two if you want?’

  ‘Overnight?’

  ‘Yeah. Boys’ weekend, like I said.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  Heh heh heh. ‘Better get yourself ready then, eh, bro?’

  • • •

  The boat trailer had a flat tyre so we changed it and then hooked the boat up to the back of Mal’s van. It was a blinding hot day, moisture rising from the ground in visible waves. Mal’s van didn’t have air conditioning and he pulled of his T-shirt and suggested I do the same.

  ‘Nah,’ I said, ashamed, ‘I don’t really feel the heat much.’

  I was envious of how comfortable Mal was with his body and the sprouts on his chest. I longed to have some of the bulk of his shoulders and arms. My weights sat untouched in the garage, crying out my name, trying to guilt me into using them, but I’d not succumbed. It just felt stupid to me to stand there lifting heavy pieces of metal, even though I knew the end result was something I wanted more than anything in the world. I was still trapped in this fat little boy’s body and I wanted nothing more than to be a man, to look and feel manly, like someone in one of those magazines.

  Mal said it was good to be getting away and he switched on the radio, low enough for us to be able to speak. We spoke infrequently, about nothing of any substance. Mal pointed out things on the way – the way the carved rock of the freeway reminded him of home, how frustrating it was when people sat on his tail even though he was in the slow lane. I snuck glances at his naked torso whenever I could, wishing I were him. I asked him about his first wife, why they’d broken up.

  They were childhood sweethearts, he said, had been going out since high school. Their families applied a certain amount of pressure on them to get hitched, but they were in no hurry, until she fell pregnant. A shotgun wedding was hastily organised, and rather than think about the rest of their lives together, they concentrated on the town whispers that would follow her if she remained alone. She had great problems with her pregnancy and she lost the baby, but they were married then anyway so they tried to make something of it. They moved into a small cabin at the back of her parents’ house, he struggling to find and hold a job, she doing her best to make the cabin a home. They continued to try to have babies but after two years and constant failure, she went to have some tests. The doctors told her it was impossible for her to conceive, the first baby had done something to her insides and they weren’t working properly any more. She was devastated, though he couldn’t help but feel some slight relief because he didn’t really want to be a father at the age of twenty.

  Then the strain started showing, they started fighting – just niggling at each other, getting under the other’s skin. She cried a lot, he went out a lot, drank a lot, passed out a lot. Then one day his cousin announced he was moving to Australia and though he’d never considered it before, Mal pounced on the opportunity and told her he was leaving.

  ‘And that was the end of that.’ Heh heh heh. ‘What about your mum? What happened to your dad?’

  I looked out the window at the native plants lining the road, caught glimpses of water in the distance.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Mum doesn’t really talk about that much.’

  ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mal said, taking the hint.

  We drove the next ten or so kilometres in silence. The radio went out of range, its harsh static grating, so Mal switched it off. The wind through our opened windows had pulled Mal’s ponytail free so that his hair blew around as though his head was in a fairy floss machine. He looked crazy, so I laughed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mum doesn’t make it easy for me to ask questions about him. I used to a lot, when I was a little kid, but I learnt to stop after a while. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive, don’t know how old he might be, or where he lives. I don’t even think . . .’

  ‘What, bro?’

  I kept staring out the window.

  ‘It’s okay, eh? None of this goes outside the van. One of the rules of the road trip. We can keep all of it just between me and you.’ Heh heh heh.

  I thought seriously about the implications of this and after a moment said: ‘Yeah, okay. I was gonna say, I don’t even know if he knows about me.’

  ‘Man. Do you want to find him?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. Maybe. But not Mum. I mean, I don’t want to upset Mum. Maybe he wasn’t very nice to her.’

  Mal nodded his head. He reached over the middle console and patted the back of my head and the sensation of his touch went deeper than he could have ever known. ‘I reckon he’d want to get to know you, mate. Crazy if he didn’t, eh?’

  I smiled because I didn’t know what else to do. Some moments I thought Mal was stupid and infantile and others I thought he was a god.

  ‘Eh, Tom?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Say it then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Crazy. Say he’d be crazy not to know a cool kid like you.’

  I wasn’t used to anyone forcefully drawing out responses from me but I felt safe with Mal so I said softly: ‘Crazy!’

  ‘No, Tom!’ Mal’s voice rose in volume. ‘I mean really say it!’

  I started laughing then. After a few failed attempts, and some more goading from Mal, we were saying aloud together: ‘My dad’s a crazy motherfucker!’ It was the first time I’d ever cursed.

  ‘Mal?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Why do you hang out with me?’

  ‘I like it. Simple, eh?’

  ‘No, really. I mean it. Why are you being so nice to me?’

  ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘So Mum will like you more?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I said with a shrug. But that was exactly what I thought, all this was his attempt to get in deeper
with Lana, secure a future with her. I was the necessary baggage.

  ‘Tom. Mate. I think your mum is amazing. She’s one of the nicest chicks I’ve ever met, eh? We get along great, we’re good mates. And you know, we’re . . . well . . . intimate . . . too. But I wouldn’t do something just to impress her. She likes me for who I am and I like her.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Which is just a roundabout way of me telling you that I like you, Tom. For you. Not coz you’re Lana’s son. We’re mates, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yeah. Mates.’ And in that moment I realised I was beginning to feel love for Mal.

  • • •

  Mal’s friend, a hulking dark-skinned man covered in tattoos, loaned us a motor for the boat. We were sitting in the middle of the large lake just drifting, having taken it in turns to drive. It was quiet and peaceful, with none of the usual speedboats or squealing skiers that Mal said made it crowded on the weekends. We’d decided not to borrow any fishing gear but had bought some sandwiches and drinks, and things to read. Mal was flicking through the sport section of the newspaper, making comments aloud at some of the more controversial things he read, or disbelief at some incredible record or achievement, while I sat reading a movie magazine. It was the time of the year Oscars buzz truly began and there was an article on the frontrunners. Streep and Nicholson were rough outside chances for Heartburn, Jane Fonda was getting solid reviews for The Morning After, undoutedly various cast members in Wood Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters would get a nod, though it appeared William Hurt and Marlee Matlin both had it in the bag for Children of a Lesser God. I was chomping at the bit, knowing I still had three months until the nominations were announced.

  Once, when I’d been bored at home and had no movie magazines to keep myself occupied, I made a list of who I considered were the fifty best actors and actresses. I created a large table on grid paper, entered in all of the films of each one I had seen, then graded every single performance to see who could be considered the greatest of all time. It took me the best part of a day to finish it and I’d bounded out to my mum when she got home from the butcher’s and announced that I now knew who was the best. She’d been bemused.

  ‘You ever get tired of reading them?’ Mal said from his end of the boat.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You really dig ’em, eh?’

  ‘Yep.’

  We stayed out in the middle of the lake until our skin was crisp and hot. Mal made the decision not to stay at his mate’s house but we left the boat on his property and drove a few kilometres to a caravan park. We paid for a powered site and went to wash the salt and sting off our bodies. The shower room was one large room, shower nozzles poking out at regular intervals. We started undressing in the change room off to the side. I slowly removed my shoes and socks, took off my shorts and folded them neatly, unbuttoned my shirt and folded that as precisely as I could. I turned around awkwardly when Mal turned on the taps and saw that he was completely naked. I could not take my eyes off the thick black bush at the top of his legs, the way his penis hung there like a fat bald slug, its head clear of any foreskin. Mal’s eyes were closed as he soaped his hair, his back to the shower, his nakedness on show to the whole room. It felt as though a poison was pumping along my veins, something hot and dangerous I needed to expel. The hairs under Mal’s arms grew slick with water, the dark hairs on his legs were swept into channels. To me he looked like utter perfection. I knew I shouldn’t be staring so, sensed at any second Mal would open his eyes and find me ogling him. This was wrong, I knew how inappropriate it was of me to be so fascinated by Mal and yet I could not look away. Mal did open his eyes then, saw me looking.

  ‘You coming in, mate?’ he asked.

  I thought about putting my clothes back on, telling Mal I didn’t need a shower after all, but I knew this would have looked stupid. With Mal’s back turned to me I reefed off my underwear, cupped a hand over my own infinitesimal appendage and walked into the shower area, choosing the outlet two away from Mal. He chatted away to me like it was the most normal thing in the world for us to be standing side by side, Mal’s body soaked and lathered, mine barely getting wet at all. Mal never really looked in my direction and this made me like him even more. I stole more glances at what made him a man and my own worm started stirring. I loathed myself for feeling this way and knew Mal would never speak to me again if he knew what was going through my mind. I stayed under the water with my back to the changing area while Mal dried off and got dressed.

  ‘I’ll head back,’ Mal shouted out to me, ‘better get out before you turn into a prune, eh?’

  Only after he’d left did I turn the shower off and walk quickly back to my towel to dry myself.

  For dinner we strolled into town and bought fish and chips. Mal grabbed some beers and we went to sit and eat by the lakeshore. Mal gave me half a beer. I didn’t like the taste but forced myself to finish it. The alcohol affected me only slightly, made me feel that I could tell Mal anything and there would be no repercussions. I wasn’t used to opening up to anyone, not even my mum knew of these thoughts inside my head. I sat listening to Mal tell me how much he missed home, that he loved Australia but it wasn’t the same, and how he wished he could one day return to start his life over, be closer to his family.

  While he spoke, I thought about what had happened to me at school, the teasing and the spitballs, the threats and whispers, and how Spencer had turned against me so effortlessly. I deserved it all, obviously, and those boys knew there was something different about me. None of them would have wanted to look at Mal so much in the showers. I wondered if Mal would be able to do anything if I told him about the bullying. He would probably tell Mum, who’d just get upset. She might insist on going to see the principal, force Simon Harlen and his mates into the office and make them apologise. But what then? The taunts would not end there, I knew that. The only solution I could see was to blow them away with my Hollywood outfit at the assembly. Maybe even Katharine Hepburn would have responded to my letter by then and I’d have that to pass around too. There was no point pretending to be like them, wanting to be one of them, that was never going to work. My only chance of emerging from this situation was to have them revere me, accept my difference and be in awe of what I would become – something much better than they could ever dream of, someone they would one day tell their children about. Like Ma and Katharine Hepburn, Tom Houghton wasn’t just another name at school, his legend was bigger than all of them and it was my duty to make it known. I would show them. I would be famous some day, had already set myself on that course, and once their awe could be grouped and harnessed, they’d all want to be my friend. Even Spencer.

  Mal finished off the beers and we walked home. He rested one heavy hand on the top of my head as we walked.

  ‘Is there anything you want to tell me, bro?’

  I knew precisely what that meant: my shower behaviour had not gone unnoticed after all. But how could I tell him now, when he was being so nice to me? Mal, as highly as I thought of him, would never understand.

  ‘No. Not that I can think of.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah. Course I’m sure.’ I decided to test him and asked: ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I just want you to know that you can tell me anything you want. Growing up can suck. I got picked on a bit at school – we all do sometimes. But you have to tough it out.’

  ‘No one picks on me,’ I said defiantly. ‘No one would be game.’

  ‘Okay, bro. That’s okay too. Not having a dad and stuff too, eh, all that shit can make a kid confused. Then again, mate, if you had my old man you might wish you didn’t.’ Heh heh heh.

  • • •

  We slept side by side in the back of the van, the regular rhythm of Mal’s snores eventually soothing me to sleep. I dreamed that I was fishing with my mother, on a warm night brightly lit by the moon. Mum had tears in her eyes and she was saying over and over:
‘He’s not out here, Tom, I know it, he’s not out here.’ Suddenly I was back in class and Mrs Nguyen was wearing too much make-up, her hair all teased out. I turned around to see all my classmates with no shirts on, making faces at Mrs Nguyen. I looked down to see that I was naked and stiff, and Simon Harlen saw it too, and started pointing at me, laughing, telling his mates to point and laugh too.

  I woke at dawn but by then it was too late, so I went down to the block to shower in my shorts, a towel covering my shame. I worked quickly to rinse and wring them before anyone else came into the shower room and I managed to get them back on before anyone came in.

   Twenty

  When we returned home late on Saturday afternoon, Mum had already left for work. I was five hundred dollars richer and had one less item of Pa’s in my possession. Mal’s mate had made just one offer on the boat and I had snapped it up immediately. Though it was a fair price, Mal said, it was a lesson for me to learn the art of negotiation, and if I’d not shown quite so much enthusiasm, I could have easily ended up with another hundred, maybe two.

  ‘But I was happy with five hundred,’ I said to Mal, confused.

  ‘Yeah, but you could have got more.’

  ‘But isn’t that dishonest? He’s a mate of yours.’

  ‘Jeez, Tom,’ heh heh heh, ‘you’ve gotta be the nicest bloke on earth.’

  Mal dropped me home and said he might see me later on, that he might bring Mum home from work. All the way home my plan solidified and I knew the time was close to emerge from the darkness surrounding me. I was too excited to wait until the next afternoon to see how far Mrs B had progressed with my costume, so I knocked on her door after six, when I knew she’d have finished her dinner. I took her some eggs.

  She led me into the sewing room, insisting she wasn’t quite finished yet, she still needed to put on some embellishments and fancy touches, that she might have to make some alterations after I tried it on. I walked into the room after her and froze.

  It took my breath away. It was my second skin, my armour. The shimmering silver fabric looked like metal. On a mannequin on the other side of the room was the cape, not shiny, but floor length grey and just as majestic. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, perfect in every way. The replica of the moth costume Hepburn wore in Christopher Strong was to become my own metamorphosis. It was the first film I’d seen of hers after watching On Golden Pond and when she emerged from behind that door in her shimmering silver costume I’d been hopelessly mesmerised. This was the precise moment Katharine Hepburn became my favourite star. Here was the most exquisitely beautiful face I’d ever seen on screen, a being of such luminosity it seemed to beam from every one of her pores. Now when I saw images of her in that shiny skin-tight material, things took on a different meaning. The lustre was still there, but I could see this was her message to the world and it resonated deafeningly. Katharine Hepburn was saying: I have emerged from a tomboy into a thing of incredible beauty but inside I am my brother and now I am also a bona fide star. I now knew Thomas was the celestial spirit that drove her radiance, was the power behind all of her success, right from this first starring role to her fourth Oscar and beyond. And now that she was nearing eighty, how much longer would she be able to keep the essence of him alive?