Golden Boy (40 page)

There is barely any energy left in my body, but I get up and go through to Daniel’s room.

I open the door softly, and whisper, ‘Danny?’

‘Max?’

‘Hey, are you crying?’

‘No,’ Daniel says in a muffled voice.

I push the door almost shut, and he lifts up his duvet cover. I climb underneath and tuck him in.

‘I’m sorry, Max.’ Daniel sniffs.

‘It’s OK,’ I whisper.

He sobs. ‘I was so mad you didn’t tell me ’cause you don’t talk to me anymore.’

I watch him sniffle and rub his eyes for a bit and then I give him a hug and he settles down.

‘I’m sorry too, Daniel, OK?’ I say. ‘I promise I’ll talk to you more. There’s been a lot going on.’

‘But you’re my brother!’ he says. ‘You can’t lie to me anymore.’

I regard him solemnly, and I say, ‘I won’t lie to you anymore.’ I hold up my little finger. ‘Pinky promise?’

‘Pinky promise.’ He nods and takes my finger.

I settle my head on the pillow.

‘What has been going on, Max?’ Daniel asks me.

‘Just . . . a lot of real stuff.’ I turn to him. ‘You know how we always battle on those games like
World of War
?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I feel like I’ve been battling in real life. I feel exhausted and sometimes I get too tired to talk.’

‘You’ve been sleeping a lot.’

I ruffle his hair. ‘It takes a lot of energy to fight against real things.’

‘More than pretend things?’ he says.

‘Yes. Way more than pretend things. Big, scary real things,’ I say, and I close my eyes.

M
ax falls asleep for a bit, but I want to ask him a question, so I poke him and he wakes up.

‘Errr, what?’ he says.

‘What’s the scariest thing in the world, Max?’

‘Poltergeists!’ Max hisses funnily at me, and then does a big yawn. ‘Do you want me to get the torch?’

‘No, no torch.’ I put my hand on his mouth to stop him from speaking about spooky stories. ‘I mean the scariest real thing in the world.’

‘Poltergeists are real,’ he mumbles from behind my hand.

‘No they’re not.’ I frown at him. ‘And neither’s Santa.’

‘Ouch,’ he says, and half-laughs, even though this is totally inappropriate because it’s disrespectful to the memory of Santa, who was real when we believed in him.

‘Mum and Dad are so whispery these days. I want to know about grown-up stuff,’ I tell Max. ‘What is the scariest real thing, Max? And you have to tell me out of loyalty. I must know. You promised never to lie to me again and you did a pinky promise.’

Max looks at me. In the dark, his seaweed-colour eyes are black with one small, thin oval of light from I don’t know where. He breathes out and I know he’s going to tell me, so I take my hand away from his face and I wait. He looks straight in my eye for a long time then swallows and moves a little forward on the pillow.

He thinks for a bit and then he opens his mouth.

‘The scariest thing is a secret,’ he says very slowly and sort of rhythmically.

‘How can a secret be scary?’ I ask scornfully, but wanting very much to know.

Max swallows and breathes again, and looks at me. He thinks a bit and bites his lip.

‘Secrets are like invisible maggots,’ Max says slowly. ‘No. They’re like zombies, OK? They eat away at your brain . . .’ He touches my wrist. ‘You know, like the zombies in
Deadland
. And then they get out, and they eat at your guts so you’ve got none, you’ve got no guts, and you can’t be brave. And they eat . . . your vocal chords, so you’ve got no voice. You can’t speak. And they eat . . .’

‘What? What else do they eat?’

‘They get out of you and they eat the air around you. They make it all thin, so you can’t breathe. Then they eat the other people around you. They eat . . . they eat Mum and Dad.’

‘Is that what’s happening now?’

He pauses. ‘Yes. But you can’t ask them about it, OK? Because then they will know I’ve told you all this, and they’ll be mad at me.’

‘I swear I won’t tell them.’

‘What do you swear on?’

I think. ‘Both their lives.’

‘Wow. OK.’

We’re both quiet for a minute, but then I have a question. ‘All of them?’

‘Huh?’

‘Will it eat all of Mum and Dad until there’s nothing left?’

‘No . . .’ He looks around, like he’s thinking. ‘It eats bits of their souls and worries around . . . like, goes around their brains, nibbling at their brain cells. So they get mean and snappy, because that’s what happens when your soul gets eaten. And . . . and the eating keeps them up at night, because it hurts, so they get tired. It . . . it eats at love, and empathy, so the things that bind you to other people get gnawed away at, until they’re thin and easily breakable.’

‘What’s empathy?’

‘Empathy is where you understand other people, but . . . you feel the understanding, rather than think. It’s different from sympathy. It’s like where you can imagine yourself as that person. You know what I mean?’

‘Like me and you? Because I sometimes imagine I’m you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

I think. ‘Because you’re Max.’

‘And who’s Max?’ Max asks.

‘Max is . . .’ I get confused. What doesn’t he understand? Max is Max. He’s the best at
World of War
and he knows everything.

Max clears his throat. ‘Anyway. Yeah. Like me and you.’

‘Does the secret get your heart?’ I ask. ‘When it eats everything?’

‘Yes. Bits of it.’

‘Does it get what’s beneath your heart?’

‘What’s beneath your heart?’

‘The centre. Your . . .’ I think. ‘Your You. The thing that beats like a drum and says “I am Daniel, I am Daniel” or “I am Max, I am Max”. You know, how you know you’re you. Does it get that bit?’

‘I . . .’ Max’s mouth is open and he looks at me and breathes in, like a little whoosh. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Max? I want to know everything from now on. Even if it’s scary, and even if you can’t tell me right now and you take a bit of time, you
have
to tell me.’

Max stares at me for a minute like he’s going to say something, but when he opens his mouth, he just says, really quietly, ‘OK.’

‘Why are your eyes wet?’ I ask.

‘Allergies,’ he says, and turns his face away from me, and we go to sleep, and I dream of assassinating secrets with bombs and nukes and a rifle with a silencer on the end.

T
he early morning light moves across the waiting room. Max and I are silent, both watching the floor, as if waiting for it to do something.

Steve didn’t come. He wanted to. We argued about it. All we seem to have done recently is argue through gritted teeth and fake smiles because, of course, we can’t shout, we can’t even really talk. Lawrence and Debbie are in the house all the time, and sometimes I think it is perhaps on purpose; that Steve runs his campaign from home not to be close to us, but to avoid us. To avoid me.

In the end, we agreed that since the termination was scheduled in Oxford, Steve might be recognised, so he couldn’t be with us after all. In some ways, sitting here with Max, I think Steve is lucky. What would I say to even a daughter of mine in this situation, never mind a son? It’s the right thing to do, and soon the waiting and worrying will be over, but it’s never pleasant. No matter how much you know that you could not provide a home for a child, that it’s the wrong time, that it’s not right, it is never something that is easy to do. If someone saw Stephen Walker sitting in the waiting room of an abortion clinic after the blog about Max yesterday, it would only make things ten times worse. So I’m here, de facto parent, the one who has sacrificed more – more time, more love, more heartache, my physical body – to bring them into the world and take care of them, and will always be the one that they will blame, that they will resent for the sway I held over them, for making them into who they are, the one they will remember sat beside them at their worst moments. I hope that when Max remembers, he thinks of me as being on his side and not snapping at his heels. But kids live in such small worlds, really. How can they see things like this objectively? In all probability, he won’t until he’s much older. Now he just sits, glumly, obediently, as if I have dragged him here. It feels like that, in a way, to me too.

‘Do you want a drink ready for after, Max?’ I ask quietly. ‘Can of Coke?’

‘Huh?’ Max takes the headphones from his iPhone out.

‘Something to drink after? You’ll be thirsty.’

‘No,’ he says, adding, ‘Thanks.’

He fiddles with his earphones and looks out the window.

‘What are you listening to?’

He shrugs.

‘Why don’t you read another magazine, love?’ I suggest. ‘We’ve got twenty minutes before the nurse can take you in and get you ready.’

Max shakes his head. His fluffy hair swings around. There is a tuft at the back he has had since he was little. I sigh and turn back to my reading. I can’t look at him anymore without wanting to fall apart.

Max seems to have completely lost his voice.

He nods to everything, halfway between utterly terrified and utterly robotic, compliant, moving when I say, agreeing when I say, signing the forms when the doctor and I point to them.

We were up this morning at six; dressed and ready to go by six-thirty. We didn’t want to be late for the appointment, so we went early to get ahead of the rush hour traffic.

Max was downstairs, waiting for me in the kitchen. He had his rucksack, a T-shirt, jeans, boots, his jumper and coat on. He was sitting at the head of the table, just staring at the wood. The light was pale, diffusing through the room in a grey-blue glow that drained out the colours.

I don’t think he said a word until we were walking out the door. Then he muttered, ‘Hang on’, and ran back up the stairs for something.

Now he sits in the waiting room blankly, his eyes like two opaque circles of green slate.

‘I’m going to get some air,’ I whisper, afraid of disturbing him, of having to deal with more than we already do today.

M
um has stepped outside for a few minutes. I can see her through the glass door. She stands in the corridor, looking away from me.

I have been leaning forward, but I sit back, and feel in my pocket for the little bit of paper I ran upstairs to get. I leave it in there.

Why did I bring the picture from the ultrasound?

I don’t know.

Dad asked about it the other day. Mum had told him I had it. He asked if he could see it. I said I didn’t know where it was.

Liar, liar.

I don’t even know why I asked for it at the appointment. Maybe because it was the only picture there will ever be of my family, in a way. The one I could have made. The one I could have if I wasn’t intersex, if I was just a girl, or even a boy, with a girlfriend, who had made a mistake.

But I’m scheduled to talk to the surgeon when I wake up about starting the gender reassignment process next week. So, I guess that’s the beginning and the end of my little family.

I met the surgeon who will be sitting in on the abortion to look at my anatomy this morning. He said the hysterectomy is going to be on Monday, barring complications in the abortion procedure. Then they will schedule other operations in January, to ‘fix’ bits of me. Then I’ll take hormones to make me look more masculine and develop like other guys. He said he was glad I’d thought everything through. Except I haven’t. In fact, I’ve been trying not to think everything through as much as is humanly possible.