Golden Boy (30 page)

‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I was going to ring this evening. The appointment is next Friday at nine a.m., at the hospital.’

‘Good. I want it all removed.’

‘You want a hysterect—?’

‘Everything.’ He cuts me off, checking his face in the mirror above my desk. ‘Like Mum said.’

‘OK,’ I say doubtfully. ‘If that’s what you want, I can arrange for you to see a specialist to discuss a removal of all your female anatomy. Then perhaps they can schedule an operation before Christmas.’

‘What’s going to happen to me?’

I frown. ‘In the operation?’

‘No.’ He sits silently, struggling. He looks exhausted.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Am I, like, going to get more boyish? Am I going to get facial hair? I don’t know anything. Am I going to get more girlish?’

‘Honestly, Max, I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘Perhaps there are some tests—’

‘Forget it, it’s fine,’ says Max abruptly, blushing. ‘I’m sorry. I have to go.’ He wipes his face on his sleeve one last time. ‘Thanks for telling me and sorry to barge in. I just wanted to know. It was bothering me.’

He stands up. ‘Sorry for the crying,’ he murmurs again, hurrying out the door.

I leap out of the chair and grab the door before it closes after him.

‘Max! Come see me anytime!’ I call down the corridor. But it’s empty. He’s already run out.

A
fter I see Archie, I decide to bunk off school. I was gonna go back in, but I walk out of the clinic and clock the wall of the graveyard at the end of the car park and walk towards it like a zombie. I grab the top of the wall, grazing my palms, pull myself up and over the little buckling, rusted iron fence, and lie down in the cold grass. It’s freezing, but I can’t move, flat on my back in my blue parka with the hood up, and fake fur all around my face. My chest heaves but I force my eyes to stay dry. I swallow it up, all of it, choking on it as it goes down. I don’t think about anything, just concentrate on nothingness, the shapes that move across my eyelids when I close my eyes. I really want to go to school to see Sylvie and try to explain things to her, but I feel too miserable, too eclipsed, too unable to function.

Sylvie finds me anyway.

With my eyes closed, I feel a body moving close to me and I jump, thinking it could be Hunter.

‘Thanks for the welcoming reaction, Walker.’

‘Sylvie . . .’ I try to sit up.

‘Don’t,’ she says, placing a hand firmly on my chest. We share a look and I settle back down on the ground. She lies on her side, her face turned in to mine, her breath in my ear, in the same way Hunter lay with me in my bed after the thing.

I watch the sky, the clouds sliding across it. Everything seems grey and bleached out. After a minute Sylvie murmurs, ‘What’s wrong?’

I wipe water from the corners of my eyes. ‘Nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘Arse.’

‘Arse?’ I look at her.

She nods. ‘Arse.’

I wriggle around onto my side. ‘OK. There is something wrong. But I can’t tell you what it is.’

Her mouth squidges up and moves to the side. ‘Did you get someone pregnant?’

‘
No
,’ I stress, closing my eyes. ‘No, no, no.’

‘OK, Max, OK,’ she says, shaking me gently. ‘I believe you.’

‘The test was for . . .’

‘It wasn’t for a friend, was it?’

‘Um, I can’t tell you.’

‘But it wasn’t, was it? So what else is there? Did you have sex with someone else the other week?’

‘Oh,’ I realise something suddenly, taking my hands away from my mouth, noticing a fingernail is bleeding. ‘You think I’ve had sex.’

‘Errr . . .’ she says.

‘Oh my god.’ I get wide-eyed. ‘
You’ve
had sex?’

‘Well, yeah. I thought you had too.’

‘No. I thought you
hadn’t
too.’

She thinks for a minute. ‘How have you not had sex? You get off with everybody.’

‘Get off with,’ I clarify. ‘Means kissing.’

She props herself up on one elbow and leans away from me doubtfully. ‘You some cray cray Christian, now your dad’s a big politician? Is it no sex before marriage? Is that the freaky deal here?’

‘No.’ I smile slowly. ‘I’m not
cray cray
.’

‘So you didn’t knock anyone up?’

‘No, I couldn’t have,’ I reply truthfully.

‘So who was the test for?’

I hesitate. ‘I can’t tell you. But . . . I hope that’s OK because . . .’ I bury my head in my coat. I shouldn’t be saying it. I should be telling her she shouldn’t hang around with me, that it’s disgusting. I mean, I’m
with child
. Urgh.

I get tearful, but I look up into her eyes, because I don’t want to be cowardly. I wet my lips and kiss her once quickly.

‘Because I really like you,’ I say, with a little sigh of tension coming out and making the air steamy. ‘I like you more than I’ve liked anyone, ever. You’re pretty amazing, and I think about you a lot – a
lot
, a lot. And . . . I really, really don’t want you to hate me or think badly of me.’

‘I couldn’t think badly of you,’ Sylvie says. ‘Annoyingly.’

‘Why annoyingly?’

‘I don’t like depending on people. I don’t like it when they can affect my emotions.’

‘Wow,’ I tease. ‘You’re so sophisticated. You have commitment issues already.’

‘Well, I am an older woman.’

‘By, like, a week!’

‘I’m cleeeearly way more experienced.’

I knock her knee with mine, laughing. ‘Shud urrrp. You’re so weird! Someone tells you they like you and you tell them it’s annoying and you’ve had more sex than them.’

Sylvie shrugs. ‘I’m bad. A badass.’

‘You are.’

‘It’s sexy.’

‘Yes, but I think I’m supposed to say that.’

‘Go on then.’

I pause, shyly. ‘You’re sexy.’

‘You’re sexy, Max.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Let’s get off.’

‘OK.’

M
ax walks in from school through the main door. It’s still a surprise when anyone walks through it, as we’ve used the back door for so long. I’m in the large living room, having a coffee, reading a brief. I see Debbie walk past him spryly.

‘Hi, Max, how are you?’ she says, all bounce and joy and idealism-fired energy, which I find very exhausting to watch at the moment.

‘Good, thanks, Debbie,’ I hear Max say politely. ‘How’s everything going?’

‘Oh,
so
well,’ she replies. ‘Everybody loves your dad. He’s pretty much a cinch for MP, but he wants to get out there and shake everybody’s hand anyway. It’s like, Stephen, you can’t shake
everyone’s
hands!’

I sometimes wonder if Debbie has a crush on Steve. I sometimes wonder if Steve notices. He’s not like that, really, but . . . I don’t know. Power corrupts, so they say.

We haven’t talked about Max having the abortion or a hysterectomy since the appointment with Archie, because Steve has suddenly become even more busy. I think it’s on purpose. I have too, I suppose.

‘Are you excited about the debate at the Lloyd George Centre?’ she is asking Max.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he replies, not sure at all.

‘So many people are coming. Two candidates, battling it out in front of such a big audience, all livestreamed to the web. It’s so exciting, how new technology has transformed politics. It’s really about creating drama for the debate. If Stephen comes across as the most exciting prospect for MP, you’ve got people. That’s really our tactic. You’re going to be there to support Stephen, right?’

‘Steve,’ Max corrects her, absent-mindedly. ‘But yeah. Great.’

I see him go past the open door of the living room and up the stairs.

Five minutes later, he comes back down, in different clothes: a purple zip-up hoodie from Topman that I bought him for his birthday, a blue T-shirt, and grey cords from All Saints. I expect him to walk straight past but he stops and dips his head into the living room.

‘Mum?’ he says calmly. ‘Can we talk?’

I put my brief down shakily, smile at him and nod. A week ago, I felt I knew everything there was to know about him. Now I feel like I know nothing. He’s been having sex with boys, or maybe just a boy. He’s been lying to us, to me.

Debbie walks past the door again, and Max and I eye her suspiciously.

‘My room?’ he suggests.

I follow him up the stairs, smoothing out the lines on my face, calming myself, even as my heart beats so fast. He will apologise, I think. I will forgive him, but I will set new boundaries, a curfew, I will make him admit when and where and who he has been with.

He opens the door to his room and gestures to the bed. I sit on the end and he sits at the head of it, on his pillow.

‘So,’ he says.

‘So,’ I say, my smile fading. His expression is icy. Max has never been cold a day in his life, but today he looks at me as if I’m not Mum and not on his side – as if I’m an enemy.

‘Why did you call me Max?’

I hesitate. ‘What?’

‘Why did you call me Max when I could have grown up as either a girl or a boy?’

‘I—’

‘Do I just feel like a boy because you treat me like one?’

‘I . . . It was a compromise. We—’

‘I just went to see Archie.’

‘Who’s . . . You went to see Dr Verma?’

‘Yes. I did,’ Max says, quietly.

I wet my lips. ‘We’ve never kept it a secret from you that you were both, Max.’

‘Yes,’ he says, and leans forward, imploring me with his hands. ‘But you never told me what
type
I was. I didn’t know that I was so rare, that I was one of the only ones that were truly intersex. I didn’t know that really I don’t have a choice, that I’m both and neither, and could never be one or the other. I never knew exactly what I was, that I could never have kids as a boy, that my gender is just constructed by how you treated me.’

‘Max, I don’t know . . .’ I look towards the door, thinking of Steve. ‘Maybe your dad . . .’

‘
Why
didn’t I get surgery?’ he says, his voice cracking.

I panic. ‘I wanted you to have surgery so you’d be like everyone else! It was your dad—’

‘You wanted me to have surgery?’

‘Yes! I told him, but then . . . we agreed that we would wait.’

‘For what?’ Max explodes. ‘For me to decide what I was? I wasn’t anything! You should have made the decision and not left it up to me!’

‘Your dad was worried that we would make the wrong decision. I thought the worst when we decided you wouldn’t have surgery until you were older. I thought that you’d be so confused, but until now, you’ve been fine—’

‘Well, I’m not fine now, am I, Mum?’

‘Max!’ I shriek, the veneer of calm breaking. ‘You can’t blame me for that! You’ve been having unprotected sex!’

Max looks shocked, as if it’s a surprise, as if I’m not supposed to say. He opens his mouth to say something, but I interrupt him.

‘Don’t you remember we had a conversation when you were about to turn fourteen and you said you didn’t want an operation?’

‘No!’ Max says, but he looks uncertain.

‘Well, you did. You’d had the course of hormones, and we were all in agreement that because there hadn’t been a problem before, and because they were making you feel sick and aggressive and unruly, you were going to stop taking them.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘You hated taking them. And in fact . . . even though your dad talked me round to not having surgery earlier, by that time I agreed with him, because you were always so happy, and then the hormones . . . I was worried the hormones would make you feel like we didn’t love you the way you are . . .’ My voice breaks. ‘I’m sorry, Max. Maybe I was wrong.’

‘Why the hormones when I was thirteen?’ Max is frowning.

‘Huh?’

‘Why did the doctor say I should have them?’

‘He wanted you to have an operation, but we all said no. They told us you might grow breasts if you didn’t have the hormones. We thought it would be distressing.’ I let out a sob.

‘For who, Mum? Me or you?’

‘Oh, Max.’ I shake my head, wiping my eyes. ‘Don’t be like that. I tried so hard for you. We were under so much stress. This was your
life
we had to make decisions about. We didn’t want everyone talking about you, staring, saying things. Do you think we should have carried on with the hormones?’