You Gotta Have Balls

  LILY BRETT was born in Germany and came to Melbourne with her parents in 1948. Her first book, The Auschwitz Poems, won the 1987 Victorian Premier’s Award for poetry, and both her fiction and poetry have won other major prizes, including the 1995 NSW Premier’s Award for Fiction for Just Like That. Her books of essays, In Full View, New York and Between Mexico and Poland, were critical successes, and her more recent novel, Too Many Men, was a bestseller in Australia, Germany and in the US. She is married to the Australian painter David Rankin, and lives in New York.

  Also by Lily Brett

  FICTION

  Things Could Be Worse

  What God Wants

  Just Like That

  Too Many Men

  ESSAYS

  In Full View

  New York

  Between Mexico and Poland

  POETRY

  The Auschwitz Poems

  Poland and Other Poems

  After the War

  Unintended Consequences

  In Her Strapless Dresses

  Mud in My Tears

  LILY

  BRETT

  you

  gotta

  have

  balls

  First published 2005 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Picador edition published in 2006 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Reprinted 2006

  Copyright © Lily Brett 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Brett, Lily, 1946-.

  You gotta have balls.

  ISBN-13: 978 0 33042 262 8.

  ISBN-10: 0 330 42262 6.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing process conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  Set in Bembo by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria

  Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

  This book is a week of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organisations or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination.

  These electronic editions published in 2007 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  You Gotta Have Balls

  Lily Brett

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  For David, my sweetheart

  and

  for Virginia Lloyd and her beloved husband

  John Gallagher, 1956–2004

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Recipes

  Chapter One

  ‘Why are you talking about men and how smart they are?’ was one of the first things Sonia Kaufman had said to Ruth Rothwax when they met about ten years ago. ‘Why are you talking about men and how smart they are? You should be talking about menopause. It’s looming.’ It had made Ruth laugh. Ruth and Sonia were the same age. Fifty-four. Both had grown up in Australia but had met in New York. Sonia was an intellectual property lawyer for a large law firm. Her husband was a senior partner in the same firm.

  Ruth ran her own business. A letter-writing business. She had clients in New York, LA, Chicago, Boston and Washington DC. People had said, when she began Rothwax Correspondence, that it would never work. That was fifteen years ago. She now had more corporate clients than she could handle and more private clients than she wanted.

  There was something very satisfying for Ruth about putting words together. Part of her satisfaction was the control it was possible to have over words. If you put words in the right order they stayed in the right order. They didn’t make moves that took you by surprise. They didn’t suddenly turn into strangers or take up tango lessons.

  Sonia spent her working days sorting out who owned what ideas, colours, markings, thoughts and words. Ruth thought Sonia could pay a little more attention to her own thoughts and words.

  ‘Try some of my lamb and fennel sausage,’ Sonia said. ‘It’s delicious.’ Ruth and Sonia were having breakfast at Coco’s on 12th Street.

  Lamb and fennel sausage? How could Sonia eat lamb and fennel sausages for breakfast, Ruth thought.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you eat properly?’ Sonia said. ‘You’ve got five grains of cereal and half a dozen cubes of assorted fruit on your plate. Have some ham and eggs, or the steak and potato hash.’

  ‘You sound like my father,’ Ruth replied.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with your father,’ Sonia said.

  ‘There’s nothing ever wrong with anyone else’s father,’ Ruth said. ‘Anyway, I can’t eat red meat. I associate it with burning flesh.’

  ‘Grow up,’ Sonia almost shouted. ‘So, your mother and father were in Auschwitz. My mother was in Theresienstadt and I can eat fried brains, stewed kidneys, diced liver and assorted legs, heads, necks and feet. You can’t keep on being fixated about the Holocaust.’

  ‘I’m not fixated,’ Ruth said quietly.

  Ruth thought that Sonia must be one of the few women in New York who didn’t have a food disorder of sorts. The degree of the disorder could vary, but hardly any women Ruth knew had a less than complex attitude to food. Unlike men. Men went to a restaurant. Ordered what they wanted. And ate it. So did Sonia. She didn’t spend an hour scrutinising the menu in a state of anxiety and indecision. Or bemoan what she’d eaten as soon as she reached the end of the meal. Sonia just ate.

  Ruth tried to defend herself. ‘I know a lot about food and nutrition,’ she said to Sonia. ‘There’s research that suggests that eating dark chocolate can reduce your risk of blood clots and give you more relaxed blood vessels.’

  ‘You’d have to have intravenous valium to give you relaxed blood vessels,’ Sonia replied. ‘It’s not normal to know that about chocolate or to fixate on the Holocaust.’

  Ruth knew that normal wasn’t easy to quantify. Weather charts and forecasts regularly used the word normal. They tracked normality. Weather charts could tell you the average daily departure fr
om normal for the month or the year. Ruth thought she would like to be able to track the average daily departure from normal in herself.

  ‘Lots of things aren’t normal,’ Ruth said. ‘Lots of things that are normal shouldn’t be normal. If you watch the nightly news, you’d think the world was run by men. And you’d be right. That’s not normal. In news item after news item, middle-aged white men stride across streets, stand at podiums or sit behind desks. They make statements and proclamations. They pontificate. They attack. They praise. They explain. Where are the women? Not in evidence. And not in power. When a woman does get into a position of power it’s a big deal. It’s a big deal to have Condoleezza Rice. It was a big deal to have Golda Meir. And that was thirty-five years ago. And who is to blame?’ Ruth said a bit breathlessly, looking at Sonia.

  ‘Men,’ Sonia replied.

  ‘No,’ Ruth said. ‘Women. Men are so clear headed. They know what they want. And they know how to get it. Their brains aren’t fogged and clouded and clogged with purposeless pursuits. They’re not filled with self-delusions of sweetness or notions of their own niceness or twelve different diet plans. Women need to talk to each other. Honestly. They need to trust each other. Not shred each other. They need to share information, contacts, experiences and intimacies.’

  It seemed to Ruth that intimacy, in general, had been usurped by more pressing needs. Career moves, conference calls, parenting, home décor or home acquisition seemed to generate more heat than orgasms. And great moves mostly referred to office politics, real-estate transactions, divorce negotiations or exercise routines. Not foreplay. Or libido.

  Ruth worried about her libido herself. She thought libidos were easy to lose. Much easier to lose than gloves or umbrellas. You could keep an eye on your gloves or your umbrella. But you could misplace a libido and not know it was gone. For years. And even if you were worried about your libido, you couldn’t talk about it. Libidos were not an easy subject to discuss. You couldn’t chat about a missing libido in the same way you could discuss a missing dog or cat. And, on the whole, the loss would go largely unnoticed by others. Unlike weight loss. Or hair loss.

  ‘Women need to share experiences and intimacies,’ Ruth said again to Sonia.

  ‘What sort of intimacies?’ said Sonia.

  ‘All sorts,’ Ruth said.

  ‘I don’t know any woman who feels at ease talking about sex,’ Sonia replied. ‘Any married woman, anyway.’ She paused. ‘That’s probably because they’re not ecstatic about the sex they’re having,’ she said. ‘Sex between married people is just another function of their existence. Like paying your bills or taking the garbage out. It’s as utilitarian and pedestrian as washing the dishes. And as mechanical. Two minutes after you’ve started it’s all over. He’s ejaculated. You’ve groaned. You’ve both momentarily forgotten what you watched on TV or what happened in the office, or that two minutes ago you wanted to slug a kid or each other. Thirty minutes later you’re asleep or back to thinking about the kid or the office. Whatever distance you travelled to overlook the unattractive socks or underpants or peculiar eating habits is back. Whatever distance you travelled to get to each other is back. The only way to have more than that is to have a lover. That’s what I did for years. I can’t do that now. It’s too complicated to be a wife, a mother and a lover. I could barely manage the wife and lover parts as it was. There was so much organisation involved. You can’t manage that with children. And anyway, you can’t be buying Cornflakes and thinking about what your lover tastes like at the same time. It’s impossible.’

  Sonia looked distressed. Her normally orderly blunt-cut straight hair had gone awry. Bits were sticking out as though in fright.

  Ruth felt disturbed. She felt sorry for Sonia. Ruth wasn’t sure that sex, or its frequency, was a reliable measure of a marriage. There were so many components. She thought she had a good marriage. She knew she loved Garth. But love was such a nebulous thing. You could love someone for so many misguided reasons. So many delusions could, and did, go into love. So many distractions. And so many destructions. You could love someone because he or she helped you to feel bad or burdened or flattened or downtrodden, or safe or superior. You could love someone as a very effective substitute for loving yourself.

  You could love someone as a substitute for so many things. Good and bad. How did people know why they loved who they did? She’d spent half her adult life in analysis, and so many dollars, in an effort to help her try to make sense of her own life. And she had a better grasp. She didn’t have the whole picture. You’d think that for that much money you’d get the whole picture. She knew that her heart still lifted when she came home and saw Garth at the end of the day. She thought that was probably as good a criterion as any other. As good as sex. She used to think sex had to be perfect. Perfect in its frequency. Perfect in its execution. But perfection was such a fluid state. With so many variables. If it existed at all, it had to be momentary. It seemed to Ruth that there were times when sex seemed perfect. And, Ruth thought, these times were probably often enough.

  ‘You really think men are clear headed?’ Sonia said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘Very clear headed. Men know that it’s in their own interest to support other men even though they may hate the other man’s guts. Men don’t scratch and bitch and claw each other. Men handle themselves with much greater dignity.’

  The thought of men handling themselves, with dignity or not, conjured up quite the wrong image for Ruth. She tried to blink it out of her head.

  ‘Women are so aggressive, so competitive with each other,’ Ruth said. ‘And women love another woman’s misery. They can’t wait to join in and commiserate about how miserable you are. Want a lot of friends? Put on weight, get fired from your job, get cancer or maybe something less extreme like shingles or Bell’s palsy. Cancer can be very taxing on a friend.

  ‘Men have more straightforward friendships. They don’t hang up phones in a huff with each other. They don’t feud and not speak for months over insignificant issues. Men don’t weep at something another man says. Or hate them for years because of it.’

  ‘I hate to say it,’ Sonia said, ‘but I think you’re right.’

  ‘I think I’m right too,’ said Ruth. ‘Men are so smart. The average severely depressed, semi-witted, half-lobotomised man is so much smarter than most women.’

  Sonia started laughing.

  ‘I’ve been thinking of forming a women’s group,’ Ruth said. ‘A small group of smart women who’ll care about each other and collectively gain more power. For themselves. And other women.’

  ‘You’re thinking about forming a women’s group?’ said Sonia. ‘Who would be in it?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Ruth. ‘You?’

  The fact that she wanted to form a women’s group had almost taken Ruth by surprise. She was also startled at the vehemence of her hopes and the intensity of her agenda. She hadn’t yet asked any women to join but she’d planned the first meeting carefully. And decided it would be held in her loft.

  She had even written out an agenda. First, each woman would make a short introductory speech about herself, five minutes at the most. Ruth’s hope was they would all talk about their lives in a way that was as intimate and honest as possible. That they would say more than what could be said or discussed at any cocktail party or dinner party. Ruth thought it would be a good idea if the women also mentioned why they had joined the group. After the introductions there could be a question-and-discussion period in which people could respond to what had been said. Ruth planned to suggest that the group draw up a list of subjects to be discussed at future meetings. They could allocate two subjects an evening. And allow one hour per subject.

  On her agenda was a suggestion that the group put aside, say, half an hour each month for members who needed specific help. Help with contacts, advice. Help with anything. She wrote out a set of rules for the meetings and made a note to herself to call them guidelines. Ruth’s rules were simple. People
should not talk when someone else was speaking. All remarks should be addressed to the whole group not to the person beside you or a small splinter group. Ruth felt it was important for everyone to hear what everyone else was saying. And important for someone to chair each meeting. She also thought a timer would be a good idea. That way the more garrulous members wouldn’t occupy the whole meeting and everyone would get a chance to speak. She thought each meeting could begin with a three-minute response to the previous meeting by each member. ‘Am I too dictatorial?’ she wrote on the piece of paper. She had decided not to ask Sonia that question.

  ‘How are you managing without Garth?’ Sonia said.

  ‘I think I’m managing,’ said Ruth.

  ‘He’s only been gone for a week,’ Sonia said.

  ‘He’s not gone. He’s away,’ Ruth said. ‘Gone sounds very gone.’

  ‘He’s gone,’ Sonia shouted. ‘He’s not in the country.’

  Garth had left for Australia last week. Garth was a painter. He’d had exhibitions in America, Australia, England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Mexico, China, India. He was working on a large commission for a winery outside Melbourne. Three murals for the walls and an intricately patterned floor. The floor was based on one of Garth’s paintings and made with thin slices of the trunk of a dead hundred-and-ten-year-old ironbark tree that were interwoven with small river stones and set into concrete.

  Garth painted every day. Seven days a week. He painted during the day and he often worked in his studio at night. The crucial things in Garth’s life, Ruth often felt, were his paintings and her. Everything else had to share whatever space was left.