Golden Boy (33 page)

A
fter the consultation with Dr Flint, Mum says we’re going for lunch. Dad seems to not want to, but he comes anyway. They even let me have some wine with them, and then we head for Regent Street to do some Christmas shopping.

The conversation petered out over lunch, and then my parents started arguing about some case Mum’s working on. It felt like they weren’t arguing about that really, though, but about me. I zone out, thinking about operations and scars and stuff. It occurs to me that I don’t really know much about Mum’s work. It’s Dad’s stuff we all go to and know about. All I really know about Mum is that she loves Daniel and me. And now maybe not me, sometimes.

No, that’s probably not true
, I think.
You couldn’t hate your own child
.

I start to think about my child. Would I hate it because it was Hunter’s? Would I hate it if it came out dark-haired and Hunter-looking?

I chew my fingernails as we walk in a line of three towards Oxford Circus.

‘So . . .’ I say, in a pause between them talking. ‘We’re not going to do it with Dr Flint in London?’

‘Maybe,’ Mum says, just as Dad is saying, ‘No. We’ll just do it at Oxford, where everyone is sane.’

They look at each other, then at the ground. They both look really tired.

‘What do you want to do Max?’ Dad asks.

I shrug.

‘He doesn’t—’ says Mum, as Dad says, ‘Come on, Max.’

I fold my arms and I say, ‘Well, the appointments are already set up in Oxford . . .’

‘Do you want to have it there?’ Dad asks.

‘OK,’ I say, really quietly.

‘Max, don’t cry, it’s OK,’ says Dad, and pulls me under his arm.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

We walk on for a bit and Mum says, sort of to herself, ‘I wonder if all parents freak out so much when their kids grow up.’

‘You’re admitting you’re freaking out?’ Dad asks.

‘You’re admitting I’m growing up?’ I say, and Dad laughs.

Mum looks over at him, ignoring me. ‘No one gives you a rulebook to tell you how to deal with it all. Terrible twos, the first school fight, puberty, angry teenagers.’ She looks off across the street, evidently thinking of Daniel. ‘And angry ten-year-olds.’

‘We’re a handful, I guess.’

‘Mmm.’

‘It would have been better if I was normal.’

‘Oh, Max,’ Mum says. She hesitates.

‘Yes,’ I say.

She shakes her head. ‘Only for you. I wanted you to have an easy life.’ She leans in and whispers, ‘If it were just for me, I wouldn’t change a thing about you.’

Which is nice but confusing at the same time. I smile anyway.

We walk on and reach Hamleys, where a girl is dressed as Cinderella, stood on a platform, blowing bubbles at the kids. The crowd around her slows us down. It’s a sea of faces at knee-height, and suddenly I start to see them all individually.

There is a tiny Chinese girl standing shakily in shiny, buckled shoes and a purple dungaree dress, watching Cinders with uncertain eyes. She reaches out a hand to point at the princess and looks back to her parents. Her mum smiles and nods, and her dad takes a photo.

Next to her there are two black children, a boy and a girl, with little knitted jumpers and grey hats. They are all wrapped up in scarves and coats, with just their white teeth, big brown eyes and teeny little noses visible. They smile in delight at each other.

In front of Mum and I are three blond kids. One is almost Daniel’s height, one is about five and one is around three.

I look at the Swedish-looking kids, the black kids, the Chinese girl. It’s like a fucking Gap ad, I think. My face feels warm. Maybe it’s the wine.

There are loads more kids, an entire unbroken ring around Cinderella. A woman holds a baby up to watch her blow the bubbles. The baby kicks its feet and gurgles happily. It looks back at its mum questioningly, then at Cinderella, as if to say, ‘Do you see her too, Mum?’

The baby looks young, and yet its face is so intelligent. It’s like a full-grown person, trapped in a tiny body it can’t control, looking out at a new world where it hasn’t been before. The personality is all there. It frowns, follows a bubble as it grows from her wand, then laughs, and turns back to its mum, to check she’s laughing. It could be only six months old or so.

There’s a pregnant woman too, the mother of the black brother and sister, I think.

Suddenly I realise I have my hand on my stomach. I snatch it away, but then I wonder – did I feel a bump? I slide my hand under my jumper self-consciously, watching Mum and Dad to make sure they don’t see. It’s been almost three months since Hunter came into my room, but under my rib cage there is a slight rise to my stomach that wasn’t there before. My cheeks grow hot as I spread my fingers over it. I look down at my jumper. I look up at the pregnant woman. I look across at the baby.

I think about how the potential for an entire life, the dream of it, is inside me right now, and that terminating it not only gets rid of a problem, it gets rid of that potential. I think about what Dr Flint said, how if I was a girl, this would be just a teenage pregnancy, just something I had wanted, maybe, but a bit earlier than expected. I feel suddenly sick.

‘Mum,’ I murmur, so Dad can’t hear. ‘That baby might only be a year older than mine.’

She turns to me, gives me a look, and guides me away from the crowd. Dad walks behind us. I take my hand out from under my jumper and watch the tiny Chinese girl clap her hands as we pass her. We continue up Regent Street, past another young girl, in Wellingtons and a blue coat.

‘Max, it will make the termination more difficult if you think about it as a baby,’ she murmurs, takes my arm. ‘I never told you this, but we had an abortion when I was younger.’

‘Oh,’ I say softly.

‘It wasn’t a big deal, really Max,’ she says. ‘I was twenty, your dad and I were still studying. But the ultrasound technician and the doctors kept saying “baby” and I just . . . It made me uncomfortable. So . . . call it the foetus or something. Do you understand why?’

I nod. ‘Did you ever think about not having it?’

‘The abortion?’ She shakes her head, then changes her mind. ‘Well, a part of me did romanticise about it for a few minutes. But I’ve always believed that you should have children when you can make a good life for them, shouldn’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think I would ever be, like, pregnant, so I didn’t ever think about if I had to have one.’

Mum nods and we walk on. A minute later, she asks, ‘Is that girl you brought to Daniel’s birthday party your girlfriend?’

‘Um, sort of.’

‘I really liked her. She was lovely.’ She turns to me. ‘But Max, it’s a bit wrong to be hanging out with someone when you’re . . . like this.’

‘I know.’

‘Just wait until you’ve had the operation.’

‘I’ll still be intersex afterwards.’

‘Not after gender reassignment surgery.’

‘Well . . . I’ll still be intersex inside.’

She frowns. ‘But what does that matter if you look and feel like a boy?’

‘Um,’ I mumble.

‘You’ve always felt like a boy, haven’t you?’

I shrug.

‘Haven’t you?’

I look over at Mum. She looks worried. ‘Yeah, I guess,’ I say to calm her.

To be honest, though, I’ve never really thought about it. I’ve just been Max. And Max is a little different. Not quite a boy.

‘What are you talking about?’ Dad says, leaning in. ‘I can’t hear with all this noise.’

‘Nothing,’ Mum says.

He nods and straightens up again.

‘Mum,’ I hesitate, whispering. ‘Why didn’t Dad want me to have an operation when I was born?’

‘Oh . . .’ She looks away.

‘Did he want a boy and he didn’t want them to make me into a girl?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, he’d obviously like it more if I was a boy.’

‘That’s not true,’ says Mum. She sighs.

We walk into Topshop and get on the escalator to Topman.

‘Now I can hear you. What are you talking about?’ says Dad.

‘You,’ replies Mum, curtly. ‘Tell Max about what you did when he was born.’

‘What I did?’

‘About him being intersex.’

‘Well, nothing. We decided you were alright how you were.’

Mum sighs again when we get upstairs and leans against a rail of jeans. She looks at Dad regretfully, like she’s about to say something nice about him, but doesn’t want to. Instead, she turns to me.

‘I went to pieces when you were born. Dad dealt with everything: the doctors, the examinations, the hospital appointments. I couldn’t come with you to them. I found it too upsetting. I was worried you’d grow up and everything would come back to haunt us, which,’ she shrugs, ‘has happened.’

I bite my lip. ‘Probably wouldn’t have happened without . . . you know.’

‘It would have someday, though, Max.’

‘Maybe not,’ says Dad.

I shrug. ‘I was fine, though. I’ve been fine.’

‘Well . . .’ Mum purses her lips and fiddles with the label on a pair of twisted cords. ‘You know your dad painted Daniel’s room yellow because it was unisex?’

‘Did you?’ I ask Dad.

‘Yes. We wanted Danny to be whoever he was too. We shouldn’t talk about this here,’ he says, looking uncomfortable. ‘We’ll talk about it at home.’

‘Yes,’ Mum agrees, feeling a T-shirt sleeve. ‘That’s soft.’

‘Dad’s always got the campaign team round when we’re at home,’ I tell Mum, when Dad has wandered off towards the belts. ‘What else did he do?’

‘He . . .’ She walks around aimlessly. ‘Stopped them from taking pictures of you without your pants on. After the hormones you had when you were thirteen, he convinced me we shouldn’t take you back to the doctors. He said they just wanted to document you and watch you and write papers on people like you to forward their own careers. He said they were sick perverts, wanting to poke and pull and stare at you. And—’ She sort of winces. ‘He was the one who said you couldn’t have operations until you could decide for yourself. He said it was mutilation. No one was going to cut up his perfectly functioning baby.’ She throws her hands around when she says this last bit, like she is imitating him word for word.

‘Dad said that?’ I stop walking. Mum turns back to me, avoiding my eye, feeling the black denim skinny jeans next to me.

She shrugs. ‘He wanted you to be able to have children if you wanted to.’

I must look stunned, because she says, ‘Obviously he thought you might be more androgynous than you are.’

‘He knew it was a possibility I’d be more of a boy, though,’ I say.

‘Max,’ Dad says, coming back to us. ‘Come on, we can talk about all this at home.’

‘No one’s going to recognise you here!’ Mum hisses at him venomously, and struts off.

Dad walks off in the other direction.

‘Dad wanted me to be able to have kids?’ I say to myself.

I stay where I am, shocked, frowning, thinking. Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” is playing on the sound system. I put my hand to my lips and bite my nail, and feel my eyes tearing up at the corners.

Dad was OK, in principle, with me having a baby. He thought it would be OK, even when he knew I could be a total freak, even when he knew I could be a boy, a man. He thought . . . He thinks . . . Does he think that now?

‘Max,’ Mum comes rushing back, looking remorseful. ‘Don’t cry, it’s OK, I’m sorry.’ She takes my hand and leads me out of the shop. ‘I shouldn’t have told you in the store, I’m sorry.’

‘What about Dad?’ I say, looking back.

‘I’ll call him,’ Mum says, taking out her BlackBerry. I look at her and open my mouth, but I shut it again and wipe my face, feeling tears sliding between my fingers.

‘He just . . .’ She strokes my hair off my face and I struggle away from her. She looks hurt. ‘He just didn’t want to have to decide without talking to you. He said if it all worked, why not let you be . . . you.’

‘What did you think?’ I mumble.

‘Steve, we’re outside the shop. I think Max is tired.’ She hangs up. ‘To be honest, when I had thought about it for a while, I agreed with him . . . in principle. But the world doesn’t work that way. We thought we were doing well because nothing had gone wrong so far. Then something like this happens . . . Max, I’m sorry. I’ve been going crazy thinking about it, about everything, about you having sex, being pregnant. It’s just overwhelming for me too.’

I blush. ‘Shh,’ I mutter.

She continues, stroking the hair off my face. ‘We can’t change the world we live in, in our lifetime, anyway. We can’t all be idealistic like your dad. We have to live in the real world.’ She touches my chin. ‘I want you to be normal so you can have the best chance at a nice life. Do you understand why I want that?’ Mum is almost crying now. ‘Do you understand what I mean? Max? I love you, but I want things to be better for you. You understand?’

‘Yeah, Mum,’ I nod, drying my face, tired, my body aching, sore, exhausted, drained, sick and sighing. ‘I do. I really, really do.’

She puts her arms around me. ‘Oh, my love,’ she whispers, and I close my eyes to the streams of shoppers walking past, eyeing us inquisitively.

W
hen we get back from London, Daniel rushes into the kitchen to see if we’ve bought him Christmas presents, and Debbie and Lawrence greet us warmly.