Tom Houghton

by Todd Alexander

  ‘The weird thing is I not only share most of the boy’s name but we also share a birthday, which Hepburn decided to claim as her own.’

  ‘Yep, that’s a story that needs to be told,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Why are you the one who should tell it?’

  ‘Ah . . .’ I released a little chuckle. ‘Might have to save that for another time. We should probably be heading to our rooms . . .’

  ‘Fuck you, Tom Houghton! Tell me.’

  How could I say this without sounding certifiable? Eddie was, after all, practically a stranger. Despite this, if I found the courage to say it aloud, he would be the first person I’d ever had this conversation with. Not Lana, nor Mal, nor Hanna, nor scores of men who’d come through my revolving doors. What the hell?

  ‘I was bullied pretty severely as a kid. In those days we called it teasing, and it was a right of passage, frankly, not something that was regulated or attracted media attention. It was a good day for me if I came home after six hours at school and had not been on its receiving end. I mean, we’re talking about a fat little poof obsessed with Hollywood! I was a sitting duck!’

  ‘Tom. Don’t do that.’

  ‘I think I might need to as my way, you know?’ My whole body started trembling. ‘I thought to myself that I needed a way to show my antagonists that I was better than them, that I was destined for greater things. And when I discovered that Thomas and I shared the same birthday, my mind took over. My overactive, out-of-touch mind. I thought I could reclaim his destiny, because I thought Katharine Hepburn had only made it big by emulating him. In his death she dressed like him, took on the theatrical role in the family, changed her birthday – I mean here was a woman who cut through because of her voice, wearing pants; Hollywood had never seen anything like that. And yet if it hadn’t been for her brother, she would never have evolved. He was the one destined for greatness, I thought, and who better to make that stance for both of us? As fucked up as that may sound to you, and even to me now, I was convinced that becoming Thomas Houghton Hepburn would be my ticket to escape, and survival.’

  ‘So you thought you were the reincarnation of a famous actress’s dead brother?’

  ‘No,’ I said emphatically. ‘No, no, you can’t label it. It wasn’t reincarnation, nothing like that.’

  ‘You didn’t want to be you, Tom Houghton, I get it. But you still wanted to be a version of Tom Houghton.’

  ‘Something like that.’ I concentrated on a spot on the floral carpet, wondering what the stain had been caused by.

  ‘Look – you were a kid. We all think fucked-up things as kids. I wanted to tie up the labourer who lived next door to my dad and kiss him all over his hairy body but hey, I stopped short of trying. Imagine that – in prison at the age of twelve!’

  ‘At least you had the presence of mind not to try . . .’

  ‘Oh no . . . you didn’t.’

  ‘And in the tradition of the best cliff-hangers I really am going to leave it there for tonight. I have to, I hope you understand?’

  He nodded.

  As the hour crept towards breakfast, we made our way to our separate rooms.

  It was refreshing to make plans with someone without the requisite game playing. On our second date, essentially, we’d committed to spending the next four weeks seeing each other, if you could call it that. We did not call each other outside of our allocated weekend time. I insisted that paying for a room was a complete waste if he was not to sleep in it and convinced him to share my room for the following four Saturday nights.

  If I thought he was charming that first night with Lexi, he’d clearly chosen to save his more effective arsenal for subsequent catch-ups. He was genuinely interested in my past and I found myself making jokes about the younger me, going into great detail about my movie card collection and my general film obsession, which, instead of finding repellent, he said he found endearing.

  ‘Poor you,’ he said without mimicry, ‘you just wanted someone to befriend you and love you for who you were.’

  When I found the courage to talk about my relationship with my mother, he wisely avoided expressing any opinion and asked more intently about how I felt. Hanna was the only other person I’d told about Lana’s little lapses and talking to Eddie about them helped me see that neither she nor I was to blame for her not infrequent drops out of society. That’s just what Eddie did, however, found a way to draw this information out of me without it sounding like a confessional, never coming remotely close to a psychologist’s couch. In return he laid his own soul bare and it was this I began to develop feelings for, the physical side of our relationship never having quite got off the ground.

  That was another first: for me to have spent so much intimate mental time with none of the physical. He shared my hotel room but never my bed. We never touched each other in public (he detested public displays, he said, something he found demeaning to all involved) and even when completely alone we did not kiss, or move towards one another. It’s not that there was no physical attraction. On the contrary, we often spoke of how intensely we felt about each other, but we both understood that this would not, could not, become physical, due to our mutual fear of becoming impossibly entwined when our lives were not structured for its success. Time was running out for me and soon I would be forced to move on. Five glasses of wine was my limit with Eddie, because I knew more would only turn me into a lascivious lech.

  ‘Why torture ourselves with the physical,’ he said, ‘and then miss having it for the rest of our lives?’

  ‘I’d prefer to regret having done it than never having done it at all,’ I offered.

  ‘Must you always be so dramatic?’ he asked and this turned me towards petulance. ‘It’s not that I don’t like you, you know that. But I don’t want this, whatever this is, to be one of those heavy-petting sessions where we’re both so pent-up every time we see each other that we never bother to just sit and talk. And then you’ll just return to Australia and we’ll both be heartbroken and make each other unattainable promises of moving to the other’s country. We’re in our forties – this isn’t a naff holiday romance.’

  I genuinely longed for his company and anticipated each of his returns. He told me many stories of his upbringing in Malaysia, about losing his virginity to his father’s (female) business partner, the murder of his sister when he was nineteen and his parents’ subsequent bitter divorce. I teased him about boy fondling in all those private school dorms and he sheepishly shrugged but never denied any of my suppositions. He knew more about the world and its affairs than I ever cared to, frankly, but his knowledge was never meant to intimidate, and he was quick to detect whenever information-sharing bordered on the mundane.

  ‘I never ever want to bore you,’ he said one night as we lay in side-by-side beds, another night when there would be no sleep. ‘I’m making that a personal mission in my life – never ever let me see Tom Houghton bored.’

  I feigned a yawn. ‘Oh, you’re doing so-so thus far.’

  ‘I doubt I will ever get used to Australian sarcasm,’ he answered.

  ‘Sarcasm?’

  ‘I rest my case.’

   Twenty-four

  I called Spencer’s house before school but there was no answer. It felt as though I’d imagined the entire visit, like my mind was playing tricks on me. I even checked the back lawn to see that it had been mowed. I mapped out the evening in my mind. We’d worked, had dinner, settled in to watch the video. When I woke Spencer it would have been about nine p.m.; would have fallen asleep myself shortly thereafter. Would Spencer really have walked home on his own that late at night? I was sure he had been fast asleep when I climbed onto the couch with him but if he’d woken before that, why didn’t he say anything? And if Spencer had seen anything, had seen me touching myself like that, who else would he tell?

  I left early for school and walked straight to Spencer’s house. I knocked on the door and listened carefully for sounds coming from inside. There was nothing. I knocked a
gain.

  ‘Fuck off!’ I heard Mr Michaels yell. ‘Whoever it is, just get the fuck away!’

  I ran back down the front steps as fast as I could, lost my footing and took a tumble. The palms of my hands grazed along the pebblecrete and immediately began to sting. I picked myself up and continued running. It wasn’t until I felt it drip that I realised my left knee had opened up: blood was snaking its way down to my sock, a bruise blossomed out at its top. I felt anxious, my head dizzy and light. I walked quickly back to our house and let myself in.

  Mum was lying in bed facing the hallway. Her eyes were open, staring at a spot on the wall.

  ‘I . . . I . . . I just fell over.’ I held my palms out to show her, all spotted with blood and dirt.

  If she heard me, she did not acknowledge my presence, merely rolled over to show me the back of her head.

  I went to the bathroom to clean myself up. I was scared. A deep-seated, indefinable fear gripped me and I was helpless against it. My legs fell out from under me, my limbs began to shake. I wanted to cry but no tears would flow. All I wanted was for my mother to calm me with quiet and soothing tones, to rub my back.

  I managed to find the strength to stand and pulled the medicine kit down from the top shelf and worked quickly to clean and dress my wounds. The antiseptic stung as it hit my grazes but the jolt of pain brought me back to the present. I moistened a cloth with warm water and rubbed it repeatedly over my forehead, tore two aspirin out of their foil packaging and made myself drink the salty-sour fizz.

  Something awful was happening at Spencer’s house. Spencer was in the midst of destroying me. I had no one to share my fears with. How could I possibly begin to tell my mother what I was feeling? How does a son tell his mother that he may have been caught masturbating in front of his friend? How does a boy admit that he has feelings for his mother’s boyfriend? There was no way I could explain to her about Tom Houghton, about the costume and my desire to be free. It hit me then like dead weight, the realisation that I was utterly alone. My mother was a lost cause, rotting away inside her darkened room like a zombie. Soon, she’d push Mal away and we’d be alone again and she would never understand, could never comprehend, what was happening. Mum was too stupid to realise the truth if it came up and smacked her in the face. She was part of the reason I was stuck here in Seven Hills when rightfully I belonged somewhere else, some place better.

  I started crying, got up from my seat on the edge of the bath and ran to my room. In that moment I thought the house would crumble down around my ears, swallow me whole. I was sure I would never be seen or heard from again.

  I sat in the centre of my room, on the floor, unable to concentrate on anything. I could feel the dead-weight presence of my mother in the room next to me, vegetating. I wanted to scream at her, slap her into the here and now.

  • • •

  When I woke, I had never felt so exhausted. It weighed me down, made moving difficult. The palms of my hands ached and I remembered my fall, but not where it had happened. Dazed, I made my way to Mrs B’s. I knocked on her door and apologised for visiting her during the day, unannounced.

  ‘No school today?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘Special day,’ I said, and forced a little smile.

  ‘I can help with something?’ she asked, casting her eyes down to my bandaged knee.

  ‘I need the costume,’ I said, ‘the outfit. I need to take it now. I need to show my mum . . .’

  ‘I finish it last night, but you need to try on first. I need proper measurements, pin it in place.’

  ‘I need to take it now,’ I said again. ‘Thank you very much for all your hard work on it, I want to pay you for it, please.’

  ‘No money, Tom! I don’t want any moneys.’

  ‘Can I . . . is it possible for me to take it now?’

  ‘I thought you not want for weeks and now you come to take it already? I don’t understand you, Tom, but yes, you take. She’s beautiful.’

  She instructed me to wait at the front door and I did as I was told. She returned five minutes later carrying the costume in a faded old suit sheath.

  ‘Any alterations, you let me know. I want photos too, Tom!’

  I promised to have photos taken and gave her a firm kiss on the cheek. She held her hand to her face and shook her head slowly from side to side.

  I took my costume straight to the garage. I was ravenous but ignored the cries of my stomach. I turned on the television and found the scene where Hepburn emerges as the moth. So beautiful, such an icon. I stripped off all of my clothes and climbed into my new skin. It stretched over my limbs tightly, hugged around any movement I made. It felt clean and perfect, covering my nakedness. Gone was the pudgy docile caterpillar and in its place was a majestic winged beauty. The metallic material shimmered in the light, projecting tiny sparkles onto the floor and the garage walls. The skullcap clung to my head, pushing down and making me feel compact, a moth in its cocoon.

  I caught my reflection in Pa’s grimy old mirror and approached it excitedly. I was transformed but looking now, closely, I could see that something was missing. Hepburn’s dark pencil-line brows, her luscious ruby lips. As I moved, there was the sensation I was flying, the large cape flapping in my wake. It was like being naked, carefree, but only I could see this, and the rest of the world would be fooled by the costume. It needed something more, I needed the finishing touches to my face. I ran about the backyard on my way to the house, spinning around to make the cape flare out, carefully brushed my body against the citrus trees to feel their limbs poking through the silvery skin.

  I walked into my mother’s room. Her eyes were closed and, whether awake or asleep, I knew that body was just a lump, no spirit. She’d barely know who I was. I opened the top drawer of her bureau. I peered at my reflection, so utterly unlike me, and set to work with the unfolded photocopy next to me for guidance. I painted thick sleek lines onto my eyebrows, arching them ever so slightly, and splashed glossy burgundy over my lips.

  I took a step back. Yes, now it was complete. Now the previously hidden luminosity of Tom Houghton could truly begin to shine. It was as though I’d been brought back from the dead, or better yet, was alive for the first time. Everything had been leading to this moment, of that I was sure. The teasing, the fights, the movie collections, every single thing made perfect sense and each facet fell into place perfectly.

   Twenty-five

  Eddie was awake earlier than usual, forced onto an earlier train by his mother’s insistence that he attend a family gathering of sorts. It was still dark outside, and he must have assumed I’d still be asleep, as he emerged from the bathroom completely naked.

  ‘You tease,’ I said and rather than having the desired effect, this made him jump back as though he’d trodden on an explosive and before I knew it he was inside the bathroom behind the closed door before emerging again wrapped in an almost full-body towel.

  ‘Sorry.’ He fumbled around. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’ And we both pretended that I had not seen him naked.

  But the sight did tease me, and continued to do so for days to come. I’d grown dismissive of my own nakedness, was in some ways relieved not to have been forced to endure exposing myself so completely to him. Seeing Eddie bare like that, however, kept creeping into my mind at odd moments. With it, memories of Mal returned, and my wayward feelings towards him during the seminal moments of realising who, or what, I was. I was fast drawing the conclusion that between Mal and Eddie there had been many (I refuse to say how many) men and yet not a single one other than those two bookends had me wanting a man more. Mal was pure fantasy, a projection of my confusion, and I thought back to that time with general distaste, astounded he continued to look after me for years with all the adolescent hell I put him through. But to think of him as anything other than father was a tad sickening. Eddie, conversely, I wanted just as much, only this time things were equal and it was not escapism I was seeking, but requitement.

  • • �
�

  Seven days later and we were ending the run on a high. That one all-important critic’s review had encouraged a flurry of visits from noteworthy movers and shakers in the British film and theatre industries. Grace had been offered her own show, one she would be asked to co-write and produce – an enormous coup. Charlie’s run as international dreamboat showed no signs of easing and even whatshername was getting asked for autographs after each show. My Sydney agent was contacted, who referred me to someone at a sister company in London and I found myself with a UK agent. I was, unfortunately, offered ludicrously paid but depressingly predictable roles of stepsister ugliness that would have undoubtedly sentenced me to a never-ending term of pantomime purgatory. After all, positive reviews in a tiny playhouse in Edinburgh didn’t exactly make me leading man material. But then a prominent indie film producer came to our final performance with her casting director and they wanted me to have lunch the following week in London. I suspected it would amount to nothing, but the fact that they came back to say hello and congratulate me after the show was certainly a career high.

  Given my ever-intensifying feelings towards Eddie, I thought it a sensible idea to invite him to the wrap party. He came reluctantly, having prepared himself for another intimate evening just like all the rest, but he could see how important a part of my work this was, like the occasional client meal was for his.

  There is an energy to a closing night and the obligatory party that follows, which gives most people in the theatre enough adrenaline to ride through until their next job. Who’s Afraid was widely regarded as extremely successful, one of the highlights of the festival’s program, and no one found the courage to point out the irony that we were, in actual fact, celebrating an audience of one hundred and fifty people per night; it was hardly Broadway. But the vibe spread quickly and I would miss Grace, even Charlie, and I suppose I simply was not ready to return to Australia and whatever lay in wait for me there. I suppose, as well, I was dreading saying goodbye to Eddie; though we certainly had London to look forward to, this was to be the end of our Edinburgh nights and it felt like my one and only teenage love (as pathetic as that sounds on paper) was coming to a premature end.