Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [95]
‘Always the fucking exhibitionist!’ shrieked Tom Jords.
Dawn was coughing and chuckling again. ‘He loved getting his bloody cock out, the silly old poof.’ She took a swig of wine, finished the last puff from her cigarette, flicked it into the ashtray precariously perched on the bannister. ‘So there’s this silence and everyone is shocked and open-mouthed and I’m looking over at Nick and there’s this big pair of white Y-fronts covering his head. So Leo, starkers, turns to me and announces, “Dawn, I think we’re going to get purged.”’ Dawn again collapsed into spasms of mirth. They all did, except Saverio. He threw back his wine and rose to his feet.
‘Where am I sleeping?’
They were laughing so hard they couldn’t hear him.
He cleared his throat and repeated the question.
Julian, still chuckling, smiled up at him. He pointed inside. ‘You’ve got the main bedroom.’
‘Thanks.’ Saverio grabbed his bag off the verandah and walked into the house. They had all fallen back into laughter. He knew it was foolish, that it was not at all the case, but it felt like they were laughing at him.
‘You think that’s something to be proud of, do you? It’s not. You should be fucking ashamed.’
It was at Leo’s twenty-first birthday party and it had been Dawn who’d said it to him. Saverio had recently completed his engineering degree and that morning had received the call to say he’d been accepted as a graduate by Shell. He was just about to turn twenty-three and was excited at the prospect of his first professional job. Leo’s birthday had been held in rooms above a popular vegetarian North Indian restaurant in Carlton. It attracted students and it was said that if you knew the staff they would let you onto the roof to smoke joints while surveying the skyline of Melbourne. Not that there had been much of a skyline to Melbourne back then. Just the forlorn apocalyptic Bauhaus towers of the housing commission.
Saverio couldn’t wait to tell his brother about the job. Leo had already lived out of home for two years, having walked out after a final argument with their old man that had ended, as it usually did, with their father lashing out at Leo—but this time Leo had punched back. It was the night Leo had told them all that he was homosexual. ‘Finocchio,’ their father kept repeating, confused. ‘No, non lo sei!
’ ‘I am!’
‘No, no, no. Finocchio no!’ Saverio remembered the finality in his father’s tone, the firm set of the distaste and denial on his face. He would not accept it. He would not have it.
‘You know, Dad, you would have benefited from a good cock up your arse. It would have made you a better man. It would have made you a better husband.’
Saverio had not believed that his brother could say such things to their father. With a roar, their father had rushed over to Leo and started pummelling him with both fists. Saverio had been ready to leap up and defend his brother when Leo had raised a fist and struck back. It had been an ineffectual, weak, pansy hit, Saverio had thought, so fucking pansy, but it was enough to stop their father cold. A son had dared strike back.
‘Go.’ Their father pointed at the door. ‘You don’t live here no more.’
Leo smiled, a cruel, gloating smile that had been directly passed down to him from their father. ‘I’m already gone, you ignorant shit. I’ve been gone for years.’
That, of course, had been Leo all over: throw a bomb, walk away and let someone else clean up the mess. It had always been that way; Leo and their father seemed to be born to battle. Leo refused to learn Italian, Leo wasn’t interested in anything to do with soccer, all Leo wanted to do was get lost in books. At first it was their mother who intervened, protecting Leo from her husband’s violence but also pleading, remonstrating, coaxing Leo