Golden Boy (47 page)

When I get home it’s almost midnight. I let myself in with my key and go straight to my bedroom, then stand in the middle of the room, wondering what to do. What’s my next move? Where can I go from here?

I find I can’t cry anymore, so I just hate myself and feel drunk and dizzy and can’t sleep. It’s the night before Christmas Eve.

I
t’s the night before Christmas Eve. My brother came into my room tonight. He came in without me knowing. I was asleep. Then I wake up because there is a noise and when I look up it is Max. My light is on and the TV stack is shaking like he has just bumped into it.

‘Sorry,’ he says in a voice like his mouth is full.

‘You’ve been even more upset lately,’ I tell him.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

‘I wasn’t asking, I was saying,’ I say.

He stands there and sways a bit.

‘Do you want to play Top Trumps Dinosaurs?’

Max frowns and seems dizzy. ‘Not right now.’

‘I mean when I get them for Christmas, silly.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Why oh no? Don’t you want to play?’

‘No, I mean. I mean, yeah, I’ll play. Sorry Daniel.’

‘OK.’

‘Listen, Daniel,’ Max says, and he comes up close to me and puts his arms around me.

‘You smell funny,’ I say.

‘Listen,’ he says very quietly and hugs me very tightly. ‘I love you and I’m sorry for being a bad brother. I wish you just had a brother. A good brother. A normal brother. I wish it was simple.’

‘Don’t be sad, Max.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘I know, Max,’ I say and I look at his face. ‘I think you’re just tired. Why don’t you go to sleep here?’

He hesitates. ‘No. I’ll go in my own bed. I’m cold. I’m probably just tired. You’re right.’

I
used to feel like I wanted to be somebody special. Now I just wish I could go back, and aim to be boring, uninteresting, normal.

It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you. I had that strength. I had the solid foundation of a happy home, a good upbringing, a family that loved each other. We knew, collectively, where we were going. We were on the same page about who we were and how we dealt with things.

But we weren’t as strong as we thought. We thought we’d been tested, and we hadn’t.

Now I’m too tired and scared to say anything positive, to be proud of who I am, to be a good big brother to Daniel, to be anything but indifferent. I don’t believe in anything I used to believe in anymore. Growing up, you believe the friends you have are good people, you believe your parents are always right, you believe that when the hard times come, you’ll know what to do, you’ll get through it, you’ll be the hero.

But then the bad things happen and everybody lets everybody else down. And you realise that old friends can be bad people. Your mum and dad can’t fix everything. You’re not the hero you thought you were. It was just that you hadn’t had anything that difficult to deal with yet, so you didn’t know that you were really the coward. That you were really weak. No. I don’t believe in the things I used to believe anymore.

I already have apathy about everything surface-deep, and everything deeper is changing for the worse and it’s my fault: Mum, Dad, Sylvie, Daniel, all of it. I used to think I wasn’t trying at all to be the best brother, the best son, the best footballer, the best friend. Now I realise I was trying really hard. I’m starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in this pretty, inoffensive little town. What was so bad about that goal, after all? Only that I couldn’t do it. That I let everybody down. I’ve been so down about it, so depressed thinking about all the balls I was trying to juggle that I’ve dropped, and now the cogs are turning towards total apathy about it all, everything, and all I can think is that I am a shell of a human being. I’m a pushover. I’m to blame.

It’s not Hunter’s fault that I didn’t push him off me, and it’s not Mum’s fault that I didn’t stop the abortion before that last second. I guess I wouldn’t have kept it, but I can’t help thinking that I might have, if things were a little different, because I’ve spent so much time recently thinking about it and feeling sorry for it, and crying over it. Because it wasn’t the poor baby’s fault how it was conceived, no more than it’s my fault that I’m intersex.

But it is my fault, how I’ve reacted to my diagnosis, how I’ve dealt with it. Who I’ve become.

It was my turn to make the hard decisions. I had to count on me and me alone to hold my life and my family together. But I let all the voices get too loud and I didn’t listen to my own voice, that central thing at the heart of me that was beating like a drum, insistent, like falling rain on a window, saying that I should stop, give myself time, that I shouldn’t just do what everyone else said, that I should fight back and be who I am rather than who everybody else wanted me to be. I’m not the hero boyfriend Sylvie deserves. I’m not the hero big brother Daniel needs. I’m not the perfect son my parents wanted. I’m not the champion, or the parent the baby needed.

I’m weak and I’m scared and I’m tired. I’m a coward. I left things unsaid for too long and now it’s too late. I left a huge decision on Mum and then blamed her for it, when it wasn’t her responsibility. I should have said something earlier. I should have done something.

It doesn’t matter if I think like a boy or a girl. It doesn’t matter anymore if I’m either or both or neither. All that shit seems so petty and immaterial now. There’s so little difference between one human being and the next, it’s just hypotheses, human ideas about life and the world and words, that mean nothing; about definitions that mean nothing to the earth, to nature, to the universe. Boys and girls and intersex people and me – we’re just ideas, and when we’re dead, the ideas will go with us. It all means nothing. But I was so self-absorbed with it all, so absorbed with being this object that Hunter made me, this thing, so absorbed with me, me, me, intent on closing my eyes to everything and not thinking for a second, just doing, just getting rid of the problem of me, acting like a victim, playing my role. I got rid of the wrong thing. I got rid of my dignity. I got rid of my autonomy. I deserve to be alone. I deserve for everybody to know what I am. Who I am. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Now I can’t stop thinking. I can’t stop thinking that I let everybody down. I let Dad down. I let Mum down. I let Sylvie down. I let Daniel down. I let me down. I let the baby down. And for that I’ll always be alone. I’ll always be ashamed. I’ll always be a coward.

I
’d like to say it’s a sixth sense that makes me knock gently on Max’s door at two in the morning, but it isn’t. I’m not like Karen in that way. I just worry about him all the time now. So I’m still worrying about Max when I knock on his door. I heard him walk up the stairs but he didn’t say hi, so I didn’t bother him. Maybe he didn’t notice me. Debbie and Lawrence have been here for a meeting all evening, but since they left I’ve been in the living room, getting the house ready for Christmas, putting out some of the decorations, finally getting round to putting lights over the bannisters on the stairs. I did everything Karen used to do. The cards on bunting around the room, the evergreen plants on the mantelpiece, the berries everywhere. I wrapped some of the presents and put them under the tree. I’ll put the big ones down there on Christmas morning. I’m terrible at anything to do with a stove, so I tried to buy mince pies off Nancy down the road but she insisted on giving them to me.

Everybody knows Karen is not living with us anymore, of course, even though we tried to keep it a secret. I don’t know how they know. I’ve not told anyone. Since people found out, a number of women have come up to me. I was chopping wood in the front drive yesterday and Emily Forner pulled over to offer her condolences. It’s . . . uncomfortable. They don’t understand that I’m not not taken. I’m in love with Karen. I couldn’t love anyone else. But this isn’t about love. It’s about principles.

I scratch my hair and yawn. Lots of late nights recently. Lawrence and Debbie have been coming for an hour or two after Max goes to sleep, just to talk everything through. Lawrence knows I’m withdrawing my candidacy. I’m having Debbie sort out everything we’ve worked on before we tell her. Don’t want to make her feel terrible or take away her pay right before Christmas. I’ll keep her on as an assistant until she finds a new placement. After they leave every evening, I have the strangest feeling: like I’m shaking with energy and sadness. I sit up late into the night, sipping on a malt.

Tonight I put the stockings on the mantel and got all the church candles out of storage. I lit everything downstairs, to see how it looked. I fixed the fairy lights, put them on. It was all lit up like Santa’s Grotto. I thought I’d go upstairs, wake Daniel up, give him a treat. But at the top of the stairs I found I really wanted to see Max. See him having fun again. See him smiling.

So I tap on the door softly with my knuckle.

‘Max?’

I knock again, then enter. At first I think he’s wide awake, but the way he’s propped up against the wall is wrong.

‘What’s wrong with Max?’

I turn around. Daniel’s standing in the doorway in his blue pyjamas, looking at Max.

‘Daniel, go to your room.’

‘I’m worried.’

‘Go to your room.’

‘But—’

‘Go to your room,
now
!’

I hear Daniel scramble away, and I stride towards Max. He’s cuddled into the wall with his hoodie over his hair, his arms curled up, his chin resting on his hands. His skin is pale and looks moist. I take one arm and shake him urgently. The hoodie is soft and warm, but when I take his hand it’s cold.

‘Dad?’

Daniel is behind me, the phone outstretched in his hand.

‘I called nine-nine-nine.’

N
ow we’re doing our mock exams we’re granted town privileges. So the usual group wanders into town to buy strawberry laces and I trail after them, bored out of my mind, composing lines of poetry I scribble on my year planner, wishing I had a best friend who got me.