Golden Boy: A Novel

by Abigail Tarttelin

  ‘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.

  PART THREE

  Karen

  The 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.

  Max

  Mum 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.

  He said that I am being very brave. I couldn’t think of a bigger lie.

  The picture had been in the drawer beside my bed but then this morning I just thought I should have it. Why did I think that?

  It’s burning over my heart, in my chest pocket. It’s burning but I have to keep thinking why I’m here. I run a movie trailer of terrible reactions in my head: Sylvie’s face, Mum’s anger, Dad not knowing what to say, me feeling like I want to die of embarrassment and shame for the last few months.

  I’m sweating and shaking but maybe you can’t tell on the outside.

  I feel like I’ve lost my life over the past few weeks. I’ve just reverted to how blank I was the night Hunter came into my room, the night all this started, and got worse and worse. I felt incapable of interrupting, of asking questions of any of the nurses or doctors as they talked to us, as they told me to sign the forms. I feel that my intersexuality is the main part of me, which is exactly what I never wanted growing up. I never wanted to be seen and judged on my inbetweenness alone. But that’s just what I am now. A product of my body, what it does, what it was made for. That’s why we’re here.

  But I don’t want that to be why we’re here. That shouldn’t be the reason. I mean, there are other reasons why I shouldn’t have a baby right now, but I’ve been so caught up thinking about being intersex, I haven’t had time to think about them, or come to terms with where I am, what I’m doing today. I’m starting to understand, sat here in this room, that being here because of this reason, because I’m intersex, feels wrong.
I wish I had more time to think.

  I fiddle with my breast pocket and feel terrified, horrible, nervous.

  I wanted to talk to someone earlier, when they did the pre-op pelvic exam, but I felt like asking more questions of the doctors would be impolite, like they’re all looking at me like how dumb and young and stupid is this kid? I’ve interrupted all our lives – Mum’s, Dad’s, Daniel’s, the doctors’, Sylvie’s – and now I’ve just got to nod apologetically and get through the next few hours without passing out in shock, or breaking down.

  If only someone knew how the baby came about. Maybe they would give me more time if they just knew. But it’s just me here that knows the truth. And I’m an inconvenience, even to myself, that I don’t want to be. I shut my mouth tightly, feeling dizzy and faint. I shake my foot violently under my seat and press my lips together until they hurt.

  The operation is called a surgical termination. Archie told us about it. It’s going to be done under general anaesthetic, so I’ll be asleep. That’s supposed to be in forty-five minutes.

  ‘Just get rid of it,’ I heard my mum whisper to my dad the other day. ‘We’ll just get rid of it and everything will go back to normal.’

  Man, I’ve heard that said so many times in my life.

  The tiny black and white picture seems to burn my skin through the fabric of my T-shirt. I look down at my body and hate myself.

  When you think about it, all nouns are also definitions. The word ‘it’ and the word ‘normal’ spin around in my mind, like opposite fates.

  Karen

  The nurse who comes to collect Max is a different nurse to the one we signed the papers with, and the one who took us to the pelvic exam an hour ago. This one is young, slim, with dark brown hair, and she reminds me of the nurse who took care of me through my labour with Max. I see her walking towards us through the glass, then she slips her head into the waiting room.

  ‘Max?’ She smiles.

  He visibly jumps, but does not move off the chair. She frowns and I stand up and catch her attention.

  ‘Yes, that’s us,’ I say, as if it could be anyone else.

  ‘Oh, good,’ she says, looking over to Max again. ‘Are you alright, Max?’

  Max bites his bottom lip, before nodding and standing up. He wraps the headphones around his iPhone, looking guilty and nervous. His face is white and clammy.

  ‘Give me that, Max,’ I murmur, and he hands it over, then follows the nurse, both fists clenched, his fingers digging into his palms.

  ‘You’ve signed everything, you’re happy with everything?’ she asks quietly.

  Max looks at me. I nod and he nods at the nurse.

  ‘Yes?’ she nods.

  Max emits a tiny murmur of agreement from between tight lips. ‘Yup.’

  The nurse glances questioningly at me and I make a ‘what can you do, he’s nervous’ face. She nods sympathetically and leads us down the corridor to a small room. We fill it uncomfortably and she gestures to the bed and pats a sealed plastic bag with a hospital gown in it.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re not staying in here. If you just want to pop this on, I’ll be back in about ten minutes and then we can get off to theatre, OK? Is Mum coming in?’

  Max looks at me.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming in.’

  ‘We don’t allow family in the operating room after the patient has gone under, but you can be there until Max falls asleep,’ the nurse explains.

  Again, Max looks at me. I nod, and he turns to the nurse and nods.

  ‘Alright then, these are some scrubs for mum.’ She opens a wardrobe and pulls out some blue overalls, laying them on the bed. ‘Put the shoe covers on too, please.’ With this she smiles and leaves the room.

  Max sits on the bed and puts his head in his arms.

  ‘Come on, now,’ I say as sunnily as is appropriate. ‘You have to get changed, OK?’

  He nods, but doesn’t move.

  ‘One step at a time, Max.’

  Max

  I’m on the bed. I’m on the bed in the operating theatre and all I can hear is myself breathing. The cannula – the plastic tube the anaesthetic is supposed to go down – feels weird in my arm. The anaesthetist is going to put the drugs in me through the tube in a few minutes. He’ll tell me when. Then I’ll have a minute before I fall asleep.

  How did we get here? How did this become my life? How did we get to this terrible place that’s tearing apart my family?

  ‘Max, don’t,’ Mum mutters, pulling my hand away from my tiny bump. I didn’t even notice I was touching it.

  I think about this potential for life inside me, the fact that my body can make life. I feel like I’m burning up. I feel so scared. It’s not my fault that I’m intersex and it’s not the baby’s fault how it came to be. It’s just different. Just like me. It just came to be in a different way and now it’s here, and I just . . . I feel like all choices have been taken away from me. I feel like I’m being stripped of all the things I am. I don’t want to be a parent but I don’t want to be here today either, and I feel so frustrated and weird and angry that Hunter made that choice for me, that I was robbed of it, that because of the way my body works, I no longer have a say in something so important. I feel like I’m crazy, or even if I’m not, I feel like this decision is about to do something so against what I want that it’s paralysing me. I never thought I would have to make a choice like this. How can I know I’m making the right choice? In the end, how am I, or Daniel, or kook Sylvie, or this ill-conceived baby, or anyone any different from a ‘normal’ person? If you love someone, you love them. It doesn’t matter where they came from or if they’re a boy or a girl, or if you fight, or if they’re weird, or if they find it difficult to communicate with you, you just fucking love them.

  Oh shit. Oh my god. I can’t do this. I need more time to think.

  Oh fuck.

  I have to say something. I have to say something.

  Karen

  The blue scrubs are uncomfortable, but the facemask is worse. My breath is hot and I’m overwhelmed by the heat of the room. I stand on Max’s left side. There is the doctor, the anaesthetist, the surgeon observing for the corrective surgery next week, and two nurses in the room, all readying themselves for the op.

  I look everywhere but at Max. There are a number of frightening-looking metal implements on the doctor’s tray and I’m thankful Max is lying down and can’t look at them.

  Before we went in, and while Max was changing in the bathroom, I thought about calling Steve. I checked my phone. Two missed calls, both from Steve, and a text message: ‘I feel like I should be there.’

  Frankly, I didn’t know what to say. Yes? Perhaps.

  Max came out, carrying his clothes. He looked at the phone as I typed a reply.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Just Dad.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He looked at me, then looked away again. Max seems so much smaller than I was at that age. Small and soft-skinned and blond, like only toddlers and chicks should be. He looks like some of the girls I saw waiting in the other waiting room we passed; much too young to be dealing with this.

  I pressed ‘send’ on my message. I had written, ‘None of us should.’

  Max sat next to me on the bed and I stroked his hair and neck.

  The nurse called us in to a side room next to theatre and they put the cannula in Max’s arm.

  Now we’re here, and soon it’ll be done, and we can go back. We can go back to our lives.

  They will remove the uterus in a second operation next week. Max has signed the consent form, even though Steve frowned and argued with me about it. I would have liked Max to have children. He’s such a kind, sweet, happy little person. It would have been nice, in the future, to have had grandchildren, but not like this. Now it’s happening, I realise this is the only way Max could have had children. I had tried not to think about it before. But we should have had these operations a long time ago. It wasn’t right to wait this long. It
’s upsetting us, everyone, Max.

  ‘My poor babe,’ I murmur, stroking his hair, as he lies on the operating table. ‘It’ll be over soon.’

  ‘OK,’ says the anaesthetist. ‘I’m sending you off now. You’ll feel drowsy and in just under a minute I expect you to be asleep.’ He smiles at Max, and Max looks panicked.

  ‘He’s just nervous,’ I say quietly.

  Max

  Sixty seconds. That’s all I have. Sixty seconds to say what I have to say. About not doing this. Not right now. I just need some more time to think about it. To be ready.

  My eyes dart around the room. My mouth opens. I swallow.

  Who do I tell? How do I say it? What can I say to make this stop?

  There’s the doctor, but he’s not looking at me, not at my head, at least. There’s the nurses, but they are looking at the doctor.

  Mum’s not looking at me. I panic. She’s not looking at me!

  I look over to my right. One nurse is above me, leaning against the wall. She is watching me carefully. When I look at her, she comes over to me.

  ‘Alright, Max?’ she asks.

  I open my mouth. I have to say it. I have to tell someone. Fuck. I find it so hard to talk to strangers about this. I never have before. Shit.

  Then, suddenly, there is a flash of blue to my left, and Mum is there. Thank fuck.

  I give the nurse a small nod and a weak smile. She squeezes my hand, and turns slowly away from me, and I wait until she has walked away, down the other end of the room, watching the doctor.

  I turn to my left. ‘Mum,’ I whisper.

  She frowns at me questioningly.

  I gesture. A minute movement with my head and mouth that signals ‘come here’.

  She comes over and dips her head down to me. ‘What, Max?’

  She touches my hair. She looks non-human in the mask. My eyes look down.