Golden Boy (43 page)

D
ad drives me home from the hospital on Friday night. When we open the kitchen door, Mum is there, in her coat. Her hair is wet. It’s raining outside.

I tense up immediately, wanting to throw something at her. But tensing hurts my stomach, and I wince painfully.

‘Go up to your room, Max,’ says Dad.

I look at him, register what he’s just said, and run upstairs. I change my clothes from the hospital, and I sit on the bed.

It’s quiet. Daniel is staying with Hunter’s parents. I hope they don’t come round to drop him off. I feel shaky and weak thinking about it.

I hang my head over my knees.

After a few minutes, I hear Mum and Dad’s voices murmuring downstairs. I open my bedroom door, creep down the stairs and up to the kitchen door, and sit just beneath the keyhole. Everything is too quiet, and I look through the hole, just to check that they are there.

They are stood at either end of the table, not saying anything, not looking at each other.

After a while, Dad says, ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

Mum looks out the window at the black night. She doesn’t look at Dad.

‘Karen,’ Dad starts again. ‘All he wanted was some more time to decide. He just needed time.’

‘We might have assigned him the wrong gender,’ Mum says finally.

Dad shakes his head. ‘No. We didn’t assign him a gender; he decided who he wanted to be. He always has, up until this point.’

‘If he’d said it to you, what would you have done?’ Mum says quietly.

‘I don’t know! Given him some—’

‘More time! More time, like he wanted? For
what
? For him to show? For it to be an even more invasive operation? For him to panic and end up keeping it and ruining his fucking life?’

‘He wouldn’t have kept it! He just wanted to talk about it more, think it through.’

They wait, watching each other warily.

‘He never talks to you about it,’ Mum murmurs darkly. ‘It’s always me who has to make the hard decisions.’

Dad lowers his head, like he’s stopping himself from saying something.

‘All I know is that we’ve always told him he could be who he wanted,’ he says finally. ‘And every time that we’ve tried to impose something upon him because those bloody doctors have told us it’s realistic and it’s for the best, I have deeply regretted it.’

‘Steve, I did what I thought was right,’ Mum says.

‘You weren’t there, Karen!’ Dad suddenly shouts. ‘You weren’t bloody there in the beginning. You didn’t have any
right
to make these decisions without
me
!’

I frown, surprised and annoyed. What’s he talking about? Him? How is this about
his
right to make decisions for me?

‘It’s been sixteen years,’ I hear Mum say, in this bitter, strained voice. ‘When are you going to forgive me?’

There’s a silence and then she starts to talk again. ‘One year, one year of his life when I couldn’t take care of him, when I was overwhelmed and couldn’t cope thinking about how fucking difficult his life was going to be. I’d just been pregnant for nine months and then to be asked to deal with the intersex issue . . . To think the hard slog is over and then suddenly—’

‘It wasn’t just one bloody year, Karen. Every time there was a problem, you refused to deal with it and Max saw that, even when he was little. And he learnt never to complain, never to ask for help. That time you up and left, when he was five and we found out you were pregnant with Daniel, and I had no idea where you were for
two months
.’

Mum kind of gasps. Her face looks horrible, through the keyhole. I look away, thinking about what Dad’s just said. I remember that time. I remember being frightened until Daniel was born, because I thought she would leave again. But then he came and it felt like we had been a rickety table of three legs and he was the fourth, and then I knew Mum couldn’t leave, because the baby would keep her with us. I felt safer.

‘
Two months, Karen!
’ Dad shouts. ‘I thought you were never coming back. I was worried you were dead! I had police out looking for you!’

‘I was exhausted—’

‘Well, so was I! I had a full-time job, I had a five-year-old that wanted to know where his mum was . . .’ Dad’s voice breaks, and tears immediately come to my eyes. My dad’s voice never breaks. He’s as sure and steady as anything. ‘Since then, you’ve been much better, Karen. You’ve found a way to cope, but it’s to be so objective as to cast aside Max’s feelings, his choice today, to make a choice you thought logically was for the best. Every time you have to deal with something, Karen, you move away, you create distance. It’s almost instinctual. And Max has barely had a bad mood since you left for those two months, because he didn’t want to rock the boat and make you leave again. Do you know what that’s like to see in the eyes of a five-year-old?’

‘I—’

‘No, you bloody don’t, because you weren’t there. Since then he’s just gone along with everyone else, done whatever he felt he had to to please you, to make you not leave again, and you don’t know how hard that is for me to watch. You’ve made our son a pushover. He doesn’t stand up for himself.’

‘He’s not a pushover, he’s amicable!’

Dad sighs and I glare at him through the keyhole.
I’m not a pushover
. But then I think, and I turn around with my back to the door, and I wonder,
Am I?

Dad speaks again, and sounds at the end of his tether. ‘I’m so tired of it, Karen. Maybe I shouldn’t have run for MP. Maybe I need to find a better balance. Maybe I stepped away from our home and our family, and that’s my fault, but I was so . . . I just wanted to have it all. To be able to show the boys that you don’t have to sacrifice to have a family.’

‘Well, maybe you do,’ Mum snaps sharply.

Silence.

They seem to both be exhausted from yelling. I look through the keyhole.

Mum suddenly smacks the table with her hand. ‘We’ve always had this family story, Steve: “Karen’s the bad guy, Karen’s the fuck up”. Well I’ve been trying to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, I’ve dedicated my bloody life to trying to make up for being so useless when we were young and when we had Max, and I’m done. I’m
done
.’

She walks around the kitchen, picking up random things, looking like she’s about to do something with them, then banging them down again on the counter like a mental person.

‘I stand by my decision. It was a difficult one, but I think I did what was right. Don’t tell me, Steve, don’t
tell
me it would have been a good thing to let Max decide that he couldn’t go through with it, to let him ruin his life.’

‘I understand it was a hard decision, Karen.’ Dad’s voice is muffled. He’s rubbing his face with one hand. ‘I’m glad he felt he could talk to you. I’m sad he didn’t feel he could turn to me.’ Dad sniffs, and I realise he’s wiping away tears. He says more quietly, ‘I thought if we just showed Max that we accepted him, that we . . . But I can’t believe you did that to him, Karen. And I cannot believe . . .’ he breathes in and out rapidly, ‘. . . that you didn’t tell me immediately about what he said, or tell me even when I’d got to the hospital. Because you knew what I’d say. You knew, didn’t you?’

‘Why did you come to the hospital?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘Answer the fucking question!’ Dad shouts. ‘Tell me you knew!’

There is a silence, and then Mum speaks, and her voice is hard and quiet. ‘Yes, I knew. I still think in the end it will be for the best. He’s only sixteen. He has so much going for him. There is no right in this situation,’ she whimpers. ‘I realise, Steve, that maybe Max won’t forgive me for a long time, but he will forgive me. And I knew you’d probably never forgive me. And of course I didn’t want that, because I love you, Steve, but . . .’

She trails off and there is silence for maybe half a minute. I peer through the keyhole. Mum stands with her hands leaning on the kitchen table on one side of it and Dad is opposite her, around the other side, sat down, arms folded, both of their faces dark and still.

‘I’m just going to say what all parents know and never say. I love you, Steve, but I love Max more. And I did this for him. And I’m not sorry I did it.’

Then there is an even longer silence. Mum’s face is ashen, tired and eerily dead. But she looks strong. Strong and used to bearing something.

My secrets
, I think. My secrets are pulling this family apart. I slump down onto the floor by the door and thumb my lip.

‘Well,’ Dad’s voice murmurs. ‘Then there’s nothing left to say, is there?’

‘I’m going to go,’ says Mum.

‘To Leah’s?’ Dad asks.

‘No. Leah and Edward have their hands full with Hunter. He’s getting detention after detention at moment, cutting classes. I meant . . . maybe I should go somewhere . . . for a while.’

Then Mum whispers something that catches in her throat. I comprehend, ‘I should stay at my sister’s’, at the end of her sentence.

I look back up through the keyhole. After her last word, she moves quickly, her head down, slipping carefully past Dad, scooping her keys off the counter into her handbag. She stands with her body facing him, not looking up from behind her hair. She’s wearing her jeans, a green jumper and a tan leather jacket. Her lips look really pink and wet, and so do her cheeks. Her hair is all messy and looks dark blonde from the rain. She actually looks really pretty.

‘I agree,’ says Dad.

Mum raises her head, and her eyes are cold. ‘Daniel’s still at Leah’s,’ she says. ‘I’ll pick him up.’

‘No,’ says Dad. ‘I’ll do it.’

Mum looks as if she’s about to say something. Then she shakes her head wearily and lets herself out. The back door shuts gently.

There is silence for a bit, then Dad puts his two massive hands over his face and lets out a big sob, carefully, trying to hold back, hold it in. He gets up slowly and stands very still. His hands go to his hips and he takes a few deep breaths. His stomach and big chest move in and out as he gasps. I’ve never, ever seen my dad cry.

I remember once, on Mum’s birthday years ago, before Daniel was born, he got her this beautiful necklace. It was a heart, a gold heart, and she’s worn it ever since. And she cried when she took it out the box and he said, ‘For the love of my life.’ I remember all the occasions when Dad seemed at all soft and they are all images of him and Mum. Him hugging her, him dancing clumsily with her, their wedding photos where he was looking at her like she was the most amazing thing in the world. Now he’s thrown her out because of me. He picks up a tea towel and wipes his cheeks. Then he moves towards the door and I sit back from the keyhole and freeze.

I
open the door to see where Max is. It’s at times like these you need your kids most, to hold them in your arms.

I open the door, planning on heading for the stairs, but on the floor right in front of me is Max.

One look at him sets me off again. The same mop of yellow hair he’s had since he was a baby. Little green eyes poking out from under it, wondering if I’m going to yell at him or whether he’s going to get away with snooping. Little bugger.

He’s not broad and bulky like me, but he’s not thin either. I notice for the first time how much he’s grown. I was right. It all goes by so fast. You always think of your kids as ‘the kids’. I still imagine him small and wet from the bath and listening to a bedtime story in his pyjamas, even though he’s sixteen and nearing a good five-foot-ten now. It doesn’t matter to me.

I look at his little body, the one that Karen and I created, and I hunch over him, put my arms under his shoulders, kneel down in front of him and pull him up into a hug. I feel his hands on my back, and remember when they were little paws.

I
basically sleep for the entire weekend, go back to school on Monday, and throw up at school on Tuesday. I know I’m going to do it about five minutes before I do. It’s a build-up of thoughts inside me that somehow creeps from my brain into my stomach. It’s in a break between classes, and I’m walking towards the Geography block. Then I make a sudden right out of the main corridor and down the dead end where the loos are. I walk in and no one is there, so I go into a cubicle, put my bag down, lift the seat up and heave into the bowl. I puke up my breakfast and then I dry heave twice, but nothing else comes out. The remnants of a bagel float half-digested in the loo water. I wait a minute until I’m sure it has all gone and then I flush, walk to the sinks, wash my face, then go to Geography.