You Are the Reason (12 page)

“With me?” I had to check. Maybe he wanted me to set up three dates between him and some other guy.

“Yes. And you take me to a nice restaurant or a play. Is it a deal?”

“Deal.” And I nodded once to seal the agreement.

S
O
L
EE
did the worst-possible-job-ever-in-the-history-of-mankind, while I had to do the seventh worst-possible-job-ever-in-the-history-of-mankind.

I had to pick out something for Maxine to wear.

Fuck.

I opened the top drawer of the dresser and was confronted with a range of toiletries, but no clothes.

The second drawer down was a wall of pink. I shut it quickly before I could be infected. Didn’t this baby own anything that wasn’t pink?

“Just pick something, Davo,” Lee groaned in exasperation. He’d redressed the baby in a clean nappy, but I was still searching for clothing. I dashed to the wardrobe and yanked it open. A flash of red caught my eye, so I grabbed it out and held it up.

“This?” I asked Lee.

Lee’s brow wrinkled. “Davo, it’s nine o’clock at night. That’s a dress for a wedding or something like that.”

I frowned at the layers of netting that made up the skirt of the outfit and agreed. I shoved it back on the railing and pulled out something else that wasn’t pink. “This?”

“Dave, that’s a raincoat.”

“This?” I asked in desperation.

“Put the dress back in the wardrobe, mate. Try the drawers again. Look for something soft. It’s bedtime, and she needs to go to sleep.”

I yanked open the drawer again. “But it’s all pink.”

There was a heartbeat of hesitation before Lee asked, “Is there something wrong with pink?”

“Pink is so… girly,” I growled, pawing through the layers of material in the drawer.

“But she’s
is
a girl,” Lee pointed out. “Isn’t she allowed pink?”

I was distracted and didn’t think to curb my reply. I usually tempered my replies on this subject, so as to not appear like a total dipstick, but I’d recently been through an extremely traumatic experience involving copious amounts of shit and a near miss with a vagina.

“It might rub off on me.” In the recess of my mind, my brain was yelling at me for being such a dick, but the pink in front of me was distracting.

“Rub off? You mean like lint?”

“No. I mean that I may turn into one of
those
gays who—” I spotted something yellow and dived for it. “Ah ha. Yellow.”

I held up the jumpsuit—pale yellow embroidered with darker yellow ducks. Lee’s expression told me that something had gone wrong, and I froze while I reassessed the situation. Maxine was fine, the ducks were fine, and I’d just said….

Ah, shit.

“One of
those
gays?” Lee repeated. “You mean one of
those
gays who likes to wear pink and perhaps a little makeup? One of
those
gays who may sometimes slip into something pretty and feminine like a dress?”

I was up Shit Creek and it appeared I’d just lost my paddle.

“Lee, I didn’t mean to—”

“You did,” Lee gasped. “You’re a homophobe. A gay homophobe.” He ripped the piece of material out of my hands and turned back to the baby. “No wonder you had so much trouble with my confession last Sunday.”

“I’m not a homophobe,” I hissed angrily. “It’s fine if you want to be like that. I simply don’t want anyone to think that I….”

I trailed off as my canoe wobbled precariously. I was three words away from being dumped in the creek.

Lee was doing up the buttons and not looking at me. Finally he picked up the baby and put her on his shoulder, making eye contact briefly. “You’re on clean-up duty. I’ll be in the lounge room with the baby.”

I closed my eyes in resignation as Lee stormed from the room.
I may like dick, but I’m not a pussy.

I mentally crossed out the words and rewrote my slogan:
Davo, you’re a dick and a pussy.

It seemed appropriate that I got to finish cleaning up the shit. I left the clothing to soak in the bucket, and found some cleaning products in the laundry while I was there. I wiped down every surface in the nursery, threw the dirty nappy and wipes in the rubbish bin outside, and found a blanket for Maxine. It was winter, after all.

I discovered Lee in the lounge room having a quiet conversation with Maxine. I stopped short of the doorway and listened in.

“…and don’t let anyone tell you different, okay? You can be whatever you want when you grow up. You can be a football player, or a stevedore, or a ballerina, or a doctor. Whatever you want. And don’t let Davo warn you off pink. He’s just a big, bad bag-o-wind. Pink is a beautiful color. Cerise is my favorite shade of pink—entirely because I love saying that word. Cerise. Isn’t that lovely? But that color clashes dreadfully with my hair, so I’m stuck with the reds, like auburn, chestnut, burgundy, and maroon. But I found a new color recently. I stopped and admired this shirt, and the lady said its color was rosewood.”

I made a mental note to check out that color.

“And I have a feeling that your big Uncle Dave has other problems too. Now don’t go thinking bad things about him, because that’s what I think someone did to him once upon a time. He’s hurting, that man. I know he is. But he’s as nice as nice can be. You should’ve seen him the first night I met him. Now I was wearing a dress, so he had no sexual interest in me whatsoever, but he was polite and gentlemanly. He made sure my wine was topped up and every time one of those stupid boys turned him down, he came back to me to check I was okay. That’s when I knew it. He’s a true-core man. A bit rough around the edges, but deep down, he’s solid gold. Gave me a stiffy under my skirts, he did. Right there in that bar. Thank God for layered dresses, Maxine. You’ll learn that—well, probably you won’t, because you won’t need to be hiding any sort of erection problem, but… you know. And I shouldn’t be having this sort of conversation with a baby.”

I grinned widely in the darkness outside the lounge room door. I wasn’t sure if that sort of conversation was suitable for anyone.

“But I want you to remember, Maxine, your Uncle Dave loves you. Now you may be wondering how I know this, because the man seems completely against women. He’s not a misogynist. I know that’s a big word for you to remember, so I’ll tell you it this way—it’s not that he doesn’t like girls, it’s just that someone once made him feel like less than a man. And he’s taken that, and skewed it, and reworked it more than a ball of Play-doh. So now he’s confused as to what he wants. He likes you. Never think that he doesn’t think you’re worthy, purely because you’re a girl. The fact that he babysat you? I reckon that means that man is full in love with you, sweetheart. And over that, I’m as jealous as all hell.”

I must’ve made some sort of sound, because Lee stopped talking abruptly. There was a moment’s silence before he whispered, “And I also think that he’s listening outside that door, which means I’ve made a fool of myself.”

Sheepishly I showed myself. “No, you didn’t,” I lied. “I only caught the tail end of the conversation.”

Lee was sitting on the sofa with Maxine propped up in his hands so he could speak to her. The baby was watching him with rapt fascination and a slightly wobbly head. I knew the feeling.

“I think you’re lying, but that’s okay,” Lee said.

I nodded to the baby. “She loves you. Look at her. She finds you fascinating.”

Lee smiled down at Maxine. “She loves the hair, I think. It’s bright like a toy.” He gave a self-conscious tug at the short lock of red that flopped over his brow. “I don’t like it.”

“You shouldn’t dye it that color, then.”

One eyebrow rose skyward. “Would you believe me if I said it was natural?”

“No.” I was emphatic with my reply. Nothing that lovely could be natural.

His expression was amused. “Well, it is. And to prove it? My sister is Honey Brennan.”

I stopped and processed that information. Honey Brennan? A picture came to me of a beautiful woman, dressed in nothing more than a bikini, strolling down the beach. I was gay, but it didn’t mean I didn’t pay attention to media. And Honey Brennan was one of the great Australian “exports” the media talked about endlessly.

A wildly beautiful woman and an amazing actor. She’d had her start on Australia’s soapie
Neighbours
as a teen before switching to
Home & Away
in a role that made her a household name. Her acting made her popular, but it was her beauty and poise that made her famous, to the point that Hollywood noticed. So now she was known for playing April Sedgwick, a female form of James Bond in a series of high-action movies. She had two blockbusters to her resume, and her name was known worldwide.

I focused on Lee. Yes. He had the same shade of hair as the actress, but that could be a coincidence, couldn’t it? I knew that Honey Brennan hailed from Perth, so his story was believable, but there was one thing I needed to ask that I’d always wondered. “No one names a child ‘Honey.’ That would be cruel.”

Laughter echoed around the room. “I tell you my sister is Honey Brennan and all you can say is that no one would call a child that name?”

I stopped and gave him a fake glare. “Oh. Was that rude? Should I treat you differently now that I know your sibling is world famous?”

“No,” he chuckled. “But some do. And for the record, her birth name’s Rhonda. She couldn’t pronounce it as a baby, and called herself ‘Honda,’ which morphed into ‘Honey’ before she was three. She’s grown up with it and told everyone at school it was her preferred name. It suits her.”

“It does.”

We fell into awkward silence. Then I gathered together the non-dick and non-pussy part of my personality and said, “Lee? About the pink thing and my reference to… well… saying ‘
those
gays.’ I’m sorry. I really am.”

His smile was sad. “Someone really did a number on you, didn’t they?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Maxine gave a squawk, so Lee gently placed her on his shoulder and patted her back. He looked natural with the baby.

“I mean that someone has obviously scared you away from being one of
those
gays. Someone once made fun of you or punished you for your feminine ways. Am I right?”

I shrugged and swallowed loudly to force the lump of shame down.

Lee sighed. “Let me guess? Your father?”

“What? No.” I raced in to defend my sire. He didn’t deserve someone thinking about him like that. “Of course not. Dad has always been great about the whole gay thing. He was shocked at first, because I never did anything that might be gay, but he’s been fine.”

A considering look came over Lee’s cuteness. I had a feeling there was a brilliant brain behind that pixie face, and all of those neurons were picking me apart. “You never did anything gay, so your father never guessed. Which means that you stopped all the feminine actions in your life before that. Someone, when you were younger, said something or did something.”

I realized I was still standing in the middle of the room. Lee had come to my aid with the shit nappy of the century, and here I was being a bad host. “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked, hoping to deflect the questions away from me.

“Tell me who it was, and I’ll tell you what I want to drink.”

I tossed up my options, then gave Lee the truth. “Mr. Henley. Sports teacher. Primary school.”

That name brought an anger to the surface that I was surprised still lingered. Coming up on twenty years, and that man could still affect me.

“What did he do?” Lee whispered in the quiet.

My teeth were clenched together, and I realized my hands were fisting up, ready for fighting. Oh, fighting. I’d done a lot of that the year Mr. Henley began teaching at the school. The boys, egged on by that arsehole, had used force to show their opinions of boys weaker than them. I unglued my tongue and told him in short, sharp sentences.

“Baseball. If you couldn’t hit the ball, then you ran. Laps of the oval. Wearing a skirt to show how much of a girl you were. And I suck at baseball. Then basketball. If you couldn’t get the ball in the ring, you ran. Wearing the skirt. And you were called a faggot or a girl or a pansy. Whatever he could think of.”

I saw Lee pale. But I continued.

“And when I continued to miss? He told me that I obviously liked wearing skirts. And that he would get me a new uniform for the team. A skirt and bra top.”

Lee got to his feet and approached me. “Oh, Dave.”

I wasn’t finished. “Then Marty Keogh jumped me on the way home from school one day. Kicked the shit out of me. Mr. Henley told me it was because I acted like a girl, and Marty was helping me. Helping by toughening me up so I wasn’t a girl anymore. The sports teacher was in charge of discipline at the school, so Marty’s punishment was his responsibility. Marty got two days of lunchtime detention.” I shook my head. “Two days? I said the f-word in class once and got more days than that.”