Face (5 page)

T
he far wall of the living room is alive with running detectives.

“There must be another exit, call for back-up!”

              It’s easy to turn my back to those two- they always come out alright in the end. The TV control has been drawn into the orbit of Mum’s bump and lies semi-wedged, along with a pillow. A segment of a cheese sandwich glares up at me:
guilty
. She should have at least got raspberry pasta or something. She’s breathing heavily, the edge of a snore. Then I notice that her features have changed.

Half of Mum’s fa
ce is nestled into a furry black cushion, but the visible portion of her jaw is stronger, pronounced even at rest. Her brows have lost their dramatic arch. In slumber the lips pout, a podium of defiance. I suspect cat eyes, slanting behind thick lashes clamped shut, and curled to the roof. I need to see those eyes.

Dad
wouldn’t like it; I practise my new smile. She’s had Updates around Elizabeth Taylor for years, except for my birth, for which she did a MaternalFace. Soft eyes that crinkled with ease, rounded planes, no edges. Narrow lips primed to quick-smile, swift to shape a kiss. Expressive, like a child’s drawing. Scientifically proven; newborns prefer to bond with this design. Anger didn’t suit it, but it was a practical face, coming with a built-in capacity for gentle authority. A face of behaviour-shaping with a bonus capacity for glowing pride. Mum kept it until I started school, the time of My First Enhancement- weird to think I’ve just deleted all record of that face. It was the first time we did our faces together. “I feel like me again,” Mum sighed. She wasn’t though, Mum had gone. A childhood milestone reached: You don’t own faces.

The TV detective has lost his companion.  He stands over us in a cowboy stance and aims his gun somewhere over the top of the sofa. His trigger hand
wavers, his indecision presents me with a chance to ease the remote out from under the bump.

             
“Pow!” I whisper, and win the fight.

The
TV is off and the far wall is returned to Nature Spa, our colour of the month.  (New baby’s going to think she’s raised in a forest.) Mum is oblivious to my saving her. She takes a long nasal breath, and one hand comes to life in an attempt to shift the fine woollen blanket down-sofa. The kid part of me wants her to open her fat-lashed eyes right this minute to a great big Maverick Smile from me. It’d be the Smile Blocker- I’d have little choice in the confrontation that followed. But her wrist goes limp, fingertips to belly, blanket released, and the regularity of her breathing returns, deepens. I lift the entire blanket off, replacing it as a single layer which finishes at the top of her bump. Mum gets hot mostly, but I’m not sure about the bump. Everything comes down to the bump now. It’ll have to be told eventually; maybe I’ll be the one to do it.

“Mum chose you over Dad.
Our Dad.” I speak the words out loud, directed at the bump.

Mum twitches and suddenly I’m more than ready for her to wake up. I’m in the mood for a row. But she sighs t
hrough that pout, and turns her back on me. The turning over thing takes a while. Her new face and her bump have gone. 

Did you
know he would leave? Mum? Because if you did, if you even suspected he had it in him, shouldn’t I have been consulted? You said at fifty-three your time was running out, to implant the embryo. Biology at its limits, beyond which the female body can no longer be a haven of safety for the developing baby. Baby hunger is all-consuming. (The need for a new kid? Or just the newness of a baby?) Maternal instinct an unstoppable force, rising up. One day you’ll understand. You chose the baby; I would have chosen Dad.

......................................................................................................................................................

I’m
back in bed and it is rapidly becoming clear that sleep is never going to come. I prop myself up on all of my pillows, open my phone and rest it on my tummy. The inactive grey-black screen reflects a huge expanse of chin and one wonky dimple, a dent at what is about to come.

“Dollar official site,”
I say.

Dollar’s t
actile angelic curls rise out of my phone, followed by his forehead and epic eyes, his wide sensuous mouth and that chin, which tilts up to address my hairline with intensity.

“Down here sweetie, it’s me.”
I whisper

I
put the phone on my bed and prop myself on an elbow, curl my knees around him. Adjust the level, otherwise he can give the impression that somebody special is lurking just over your shoulder. I smile my hello. (Dollar is never judgmental.) He does the intimate thing with his eyes, no escape. I’m pleased to note that he appears relaxed today, those translucent eyes displaying their honey- gold glow. Some days those eyes can be a little distracted, it makes me feel like the sort of person he might employ to clean his pool.

“
Forgive me, True honey. I’ve been up since 2am. I know I can trust you to remember why. Today we shot the big finale for ‘Rex Rayne: The Cure,’ and I’m pleased to report it was a success. It’s the best yet. You’re going to love it. What I want to know is, how come I always end up losing my shirt? Think I need to have a word with my agent...”

Dollar does his tumbling
modest laugh, his eyes slide down my face and lock onto my dimple- and that’s okay. I hold my smile for him and he pauses, tilts his head, pulls the face of a besotted lover; this is probably the most emulated face on the planet. I search out the tiny epicanthal fold in the inner corners of his eyes; those low-set soft-edged lids without a crease, that serve to navigate all observers straight into the pupil of the famously sexy Dollar gaze. (Once these were called ‘Asian eyes’; now they are ‘Dollar eyes.’)

I mean, s
ay what you like about his singing voice, but that guy can act.

“So, an accurate summary of my day would be: lots of ducking and diving from gunfire. I hope you had a better day! Seriously though, I can’t wait for you to see it. Drop me a mail afterwards, to let me know what you did to me with that green button! Which ending will belong to us, True? Find out on the release date, to be announced soon.”

Each word
emphasized by sensuous slow-moving lips. They’re not clever, his words, but he draws you in, a storyteller with his face of poise and shared secrets. I slide my elbow along the bed to return his gaze to mine, all mine. Dollar floats his voice.

“Love scenes
tomorrow,” his lips explain. “Obviously, I can’t give too much away, but Rex Rayne is going to fall hard for someone special, someone different. You choose if Rex gets the girl! Thanks so much for listening. You’re a star.”

I
pause the message; Dollar freezes with his spine-tingling eyes lowered in the act of pulling away. I think I might actually love him. I’m not stupid. I know it’s all promotional stuff for the film, but my home life being what it is right now, Dollar is the only guaranteed uplift. So what if it is a script? Everybody acts when they have to. I can tell he means every word. He’s real, more real than Mum most days.

I never play Dollar’s
message twice. Instead, I start the message up again, giving him permission to leave. Startled, he glances over his left shoulder towards a woman’s form, faceless in the top corner of the screen, but I know her voice, the hurried apology- “Oh! I thought you were done”- Dollar is so naughty! I know for a fact that she isn’t supposed to be in it, he’s not supposed to even mention her. I should hate her. Thing is, nobody hates Merlot: just look at her.

Chapter Six

              “Seven, I’m looking in the mirror and I need you. I spy dark shadows even darker than our eyes. I’m telling you, the green specks died. My skin just sits there doing nothing for me; this cold has smothered that whole candlelit glow thing we did. Nose dysfunctional, I’m only breathing through my mouth. Check out my froggy voice! Call me as soon as you wake up. I’m not smiling today, so you won’t freak. Oh, and check out Dollar’s celebsite, there’s a special guest appearance. I’ll be at the Health Centre.”

I watch my reflection
in the mirror lower her phone. She, I, was supposed to be the more approachable end of the Merlot SexyFace range. Confident eyes: chocolate Updated with edgy specks of green; a complex palette utterly failing to dance on this occasion. My eyes forgot the moves. Big hair square-edged by sleep, existing to expand the edges, more to see over here! Gets the boys, Seven says. (Or was that the packaging?) I used to have a SexyFace feature smile, meant to be infectious. Well, I am now! Hah! The one-sided dimple makes a late appearance, and the whole SexyFace thing is revealed as an illusion. Hi there Maverick, scary girl with the dent.

Mum’s still
asleep on the sofa, so I decide to walk to the Health Centre. I grab a handful of tissues and step outside and shiver and squint as my eyes adjust to the sunlight. Leaving the house is a mini assault, nature always gets it wrong. I slam the front door- a cheerful family yellow, less so if you cared to follow the faces coming in and out in recent months. Doormat says ‘Welcome’, a word for walking on. We have the standard white picket fence with roses out front; the fence that seemed to surround every other house, three or four years back. The front gate is starting to stick and gets a kick. Above it all, the sky is stretched taught like a canvas to infinity; I don’t like to think about the infinity part.
The Great Unknown is a wonderful thing
. No it isn’t, Dad. I’m not an astronaut.

Dad had argued for cosy-effect country cottage, with a twisty network of character rooms, but Mum got
a sweeping Georgian facade, in the end. High ceilings, high on practicality for an expanding family. We’re one down at the moment, back up to three soon!

They were supposed to re-jig it all this
summer, Dad sulked over “lack of involvement in the decision-making process.” Same as the baby, really. He’s weak, that’s his problem. Did she explain and emote and reason, and not stop until he just sort of caved in, wordlessly, and turned a blind eye to the embryo implantation? I don’t recall much healthy debating nine months ago, mainly accusations and loaded silence. Did he actually put his foot down on this one, say no? Then the pregnancy started to show? No, hang on- there was a consent form. Sign here. How come I didn’t get to sign up to the family dream?

Our neighbour
Belle has a work shift on Saturday morning, but I’m not surprised to see her out this early with her family. They’re off swimming perhaps, or a pre-breakfast half-marathon. Belle is tall and athletic, visibly muscular. Her husband spies me first and gives a wave, the kind you get from a podium. Belle hands apples to her children and encourages them to race to the car. The boy has red ringlets, the girl a soft black afro, but they both have matching round eyes of perfect innocence which turn towards me in unison and I get the dropping-away inside, maternal instinct triggered, I guess. In that second I’d lay down my life for them and they only moved in last month! They work, those eyes, on the little ones. My eyes are gravelly from lack of sleep.

The other h
ouses are still in slumber, curtains closed. I pass the reflective rainbow house on the corner and it feels like eyes following me- and that’s on a good day. A stranger’s face peers down at me from the tower window, I turn away. I’m not me today- not much of an advert, anyway. This is my worse day to be seen.

I turn into the High Street
, the symmetry of the solar pavements, the main road, and shop fronts, all recently recycled gloss. Sleek architectural lines; not so much as a door handle out of proportion. I skim my environment, without the need to process it, knowing that I’m safe to navigate on automatic.

Neat faces
flow pass, lone shoppers, slack expressions. A face like Mum’s- that jolts me- a glimpse of the personal looming into public view. Mum’s old face of course, the tapered chin and sculpted brows that on a passing stranger, feels like disapproval.  I wonder if Mum’s new eyes have opened yet, stretching into her single woman face.

M
y outline slips past in the window of Fuel. A distracted MarilynMonroeFace turns in my direction, raising her lipstick-imprinted coffee mug: to your health. She doesn’t truly see me- and today, that’s a bonus. Her feet in tough boots are crossed against the glass. I almost walk into a sparse tree in front of the cafe, blocking my path with its knobbly limbs all akimbo. It doesn’t belong. A tethered dog gazes up at me with baleful eyes; so my face is disturbing the animals now. This one does a good line in sympathy, all saggy jowls. Silent devastation.

Past the supermarket, a
nother Dollar clone in the corner of my vision. I don’t turn, there’s wannabes all over if I’m in the mood- and I’m not- for critical analysis. I got Dollar’s face last night, the real thing. Suddenly there’s a squeal of tyres from the direction of the road. Street faces turn to stare.

“
You didn’t even look! I almost hit you...”

The
incredulous driver is a woman in a cream suit, fishtail skirt flying out on fast silver heels towards her target. There’s a man in front of her car, its bonnet is nudging up against his hip. His eyes are lowered in guilt. Huge pale eyes like a baby, with sunbursts of something to encourage you closer- nothing she’d want to discover in close-up going under the wheels. The impact could have crushed him, pain and bodily damage right up until the ambulance arrived.