by Matthew Crow
“You were KO,” Amber said, coming to sit beside my bed.
“What time did Chris leave?”
“Couple of hours ago. I liked Fiona,” she said. “As do you, if the rumors are true?”
“Sorry,” I said, and shrugged.
“I’m sure it was just a phase.”
I nodded and didn’t dare tell her the extent of my love, which I feared might still be there, deep down. I became quite conflicted until it was time for my favorite soap, EastEnders, after which all my problems seemed to disappear.
“Shall we put a film on?” Amber asked. “Mum brought some of my old school faves in.”
“Is The Breakfast Club there?” I asked, keen for a launch pad to relay my theory about the unit to Amber—a theory now reinforced by her undeniable likeness to Ally Sheedy. Amber said not, and picked up a stack of boxed DVDs from the table beside the sofa.
“Here, put this on,” she said, handing me a copy of The Apartment, which looked to be older than both of our parents put together.
“Is it any good?”
“You’ll like it.”
“It looks old. What’s it about?”
“A nervous geek who falls in love with a loudmouth harlot. You won’t have any trouble identifying.”
“You think I’m a geek?” I asked.
Amber rolled her eyes and perched her legs across me on the sofa.
“She loves him back in the end,” she said. “Just put it on.”
I had nothing to worry about. The film was excellent, and one to add to my list of all-time favorites. At the end, when you think all is lost, the woman cuts short her date with the wrong man and runs back to the geek’s apartment, where he’s alone on New Year’s Eve. “I love you . . .” he says. “Did you hear what I said? I absolutely adore you.” The woman just looks at him and hands him a pack of playing cards. “Shut up and deal,” she says, before The End appears on screen and everything goes black.
“Have you ever read the Romantic poets?” I asked Amber once it had finished.
“No. Have you seen Some Like It Hot? We should watch that next.”
“In a minute. There’s this one poem, ‘Bright Star,’ which I don’t think is about stars. I Googled it on Chris’s laptop and it’s about a bloke watching someone he loves sleeping. . . .”
“If I ever catch you watching me sleep, I’ll blind you,” Amber said.
“Fair enough. Anyway, he loves her and watches her sleep and thinks she’s like a star . . . not because stars are shiny and stuff, but because they’re always there, always looking back down and that sort of thing. It’s dead good.”
I’d be the first to admit some of its beauty might just have got lost in translation, but the point I was trying to make was valid nonetheless.
“Sounds a blast,” she said. “Put the film on. We’re missing out on some major cross-dressing LOLZ.”
As the film began to play she said, “Do you know the best things about stars?”
“What?”
“They’re all dead, but we can still see them. When we look up it’s like we’re looking up at a million different memories, a million different versions of something that used to be. That’s not romantic, either; it’s just science.”
“It is a bit romantic,” I tried to argue.
“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s real, and that’s what’s important.”
Then she kissed me on the cheek.
The next morning I sent Chris an urgent text message asking for immediate emergency chats. When they say you’ll lose your hair you can just about contemplate the thought of going bald. You picture Vin Diesel, and think that with the right military uniform or camouflage gear you too could carry off the look, if absolutely necessary.
What you don’t realize is that they mean you will go bald everywhere.
Everywhere.
I spent most of the morning with the sheets pulled up over my head, looking mournfully beneath the covers and remembering what used to be, like the bleak first morning when the snow starts to melt.
“You got something exciting under there?” Marc asked as he did the rounds. I didn’t answer. I just sniveled and pulled the blankets farther above my head as I tried to get a better look.
Chris laughed at first when I called him, then tried to be sympathetic. He made a joke about me being more aerodynamic, and I made him promise me that it would all grow back. To put my mind at ease he Googled it for me while I was still on the phone. He even held the mouthpiece to the keyboard so that I could hear him typing.
“Yes, Frankie, the Internet says you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“What exactly does it say?”
“That within the month it’ll look like you’re growing an Afro down there.”
I think he might have been embellishing this point.
“Do you promise? Because I’d rather know if I’m going to have to get used to this.”
“Frankie, relax. It’s going to grow back. You’ve got nothing to worry about. You’ll be back to your virile old self in no time.”
This was a joke. And a bad one at that. What Chris singularly failed to realize was that, given the circumstances, I might very well soon be displaying myself proudly, like a lion attempting to mate with the best female in the pack. The thought of having to do so while bald as a baby made me want to sob.
“Well, if it doesn’t, I’ll blame you,” I said.
“I take full responsibility for all your bodily hair, Francis,” my brother said. “But I am starting to get looks, so I’ve got to go. I’ll be in tomorrow to see you. Just relax, and say hi to Amber for me.”
Mum spent most of her visit moaning about Grandma.
“It’s like she deliberately tries to annoy me, Francis. Thank God you’ve got me, eh?”
I didn’t say anything. Sometimes I didn’t know if Mum was joking or not. This was one of those times.
“You’ve got a delivery,” Jackie said, popping her head around the curtain.
“Who from?” Mum said, and blanched. She hadn’t said anything about it to me but the whole time I’d been in the unit I’d known she was nervous about Dad making an uninvited appearance. The last time he’d visited she’d ended up throwing my birthday cake at him before I’d even had a chance to blow out the candles. He’d brought me a card with the wrong age on it, and that had sent her into a frenzied rage. Dad left covered in frosting, and Mum ended up sticking a tea light on top of a muffin as a replacement cake.
“The brother left it,” Jackie said, and Mum relaxed.
“Said he’d be in to see you tomorrow, Francis, but until then this was in case of emergencies.”
The box had been wrapped but bore no tag.
“Open it then,” Mum said.
I did so quickly, holding my hands close to my chest so that she couldn’t see the contents.
I was pleased I had done.
It was a long pack from the joke shop behind the bus station in town. Inside was a perfect triangle of crinkly hair. “Instant Pubes” it said on the box. “Suitable for Age 12 Up.”
“Let’s have a look,” Mum said, going to take the packet from me.
“NO!” I yelled, trying to hold it to my chest. I wrestled her for a while but Mum quickly had the upper hand. I think she would probably beat me in a fight if it ever came to it.
“Oh my God, is that a merkin?” she asked.
“Let’s see!” Amber said from her bed, trying to lean over to get a better look.
“It’s absolutely disgusting. . . .”
“It’s just a joke,” I said, trying to pull the sheets back over my head.
“Here,” Mum said, passing the packet to Amber.
“I honestly don’t understand you two sometimes,” she continued saying to me. I don’t know whether she meant
Chris or Amber because I couldn’t see her. The sheets had mercifully come loose, and though my feet and ankles were sticking out I had managed to shroud my head, cocooning myself from further embarrassment.
I heard a packet being torn open and Amber laughing to herself.
“What are you up to?” I heard Mum ask. I was suddenly becoming claustrophobic in my place of safety, and tried to make a peephole with my finger so that I could steal occasional breaths of fresh air, and also spy on those around me.
“Just a bit of decorating,” Amber said.
“Oh, nice,” Mum said, trying to pull the blanket off my head.
I relented, eventually, and slowly peeled it down so that I could see the whole room again.
“Here, Kelly,” Amber shouted across the room, “get your laughing gear around that, love!”
Amber had pulled the sheets around her as tightly as they would go so that only her head was sticking out at the top. In pride of place, right where it anatomically belonged, the merkin perched like a dead animal.
“Gross!” Kelly said.
Mum tutted but I knew she wanted to laugh.
“What do you think of my new do, Marc? Chic, non?” Amber asked as he came by to sort out her tablets.
“Ignore them,” Mum said to him. “They’ll tire themselves out eventually.”
“It’ll keep you warm if nothing else, flower,” he said, filling Amber’s pill cup.
“Practical and fancy,” she said, sitting up to take her tablets.
“He’s bloody backward, that lad. Do you want me to take it home and bin it?” Mum suggested.
“NO!” Amber said, cradling it in her hand like a wounded kitten.
“I really don’t think . . .” Mum tried, but Amber interrupted her.
“OH, IT GETS BETTER!” she said, peeling a triangle of plastic from the back of the fanny wig.
“It even sticks!” She turned around in bed and slapped the patch of wiry hair onto the wall behind her headrest, between a photograph of Einstein and a playing card with a phone number written on it.
“We’ll love it like our very own,” she said, staring up proudly at her handiwork like it was a priceless work of art.
CHAPTER NINE
One morning I woke up and Amber was quieter than usual. I tried as always to impress her with my knowledge. I asked her if she knew how many answers the Magic 8 ball beside her bed held. She didn’t take the bait but I told her anyway. (It’s twenty-one: ten positive, six negative, and five medium.) When this didn’t work I decided that maybe it was her surroundings that were getting her down, so I attempted to broaden her horizons by demonstrating my knowledge of the wider world. I told her about the baby sharks that eat one another while they’re still in the womb, so that only the strongest is still alive when it comes to the actual birthing. I told her that I always thought of her as the shark that would be born. Like Fiona had said, Amber sure as hell had balls. But she seemed wholly unmoved by this. Then I told her about Kelly, who’d spent the whole morning trying to do a crossword puzzle in one of the magazines Olivia had left behind. Again there was no response.
“Is it about your face?” I asked when she turned away from me, toward the wall beside her bed. Almost overnight Amber’s mouth had become red and blotched, with sores that looked angry and blistered.
“Just leave it, Francis,” she said, without turning to look at me.
“I don’t see what the problem is. . . .”
“Then there isn’t one! Just go back to checking beneath the covers. You might have started sprouting by now.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Life’s hard.”
“I just didn’t think you cared about that sort of thing.”
“It hardly seems fair, that’s all,” she said, lying flat on her back and staring up at the ceiling. As she did a single tear welled in the corner of one eye and rolled down her cheek, though she was quick to rub it away like a spelling mistake.
“I still think you’re pretty. I still wouldn’t say no.”
“What’s your problem anyway?” Amber said, turning her head and staring at me so coldly I felt myself shiver. “I’m sure if you try really hard someone else will be willing to overlook you being such a total creep. Do you really think I’d have given you the time of day if I wasn’t bald and rotten to the core?”
I did not quite know what to say to this. I knew I wanted to cry. No one had ever before said anything so awful to me. . . . Actually that wasn’t true. People had said plenty of bad things to me in the past. I went through a ballet phase in middle school that most of my classmates were keen to remind me of at every given opportunity. But in the past name-calling had always seemed like a waste of energy; the sting would have faded away by the time I got home, and then I’d spend the rest of the night wondering why I’d gotten so bothered by it in the first place. With Amber, though, it felt like I’d been winded and would never be able to stand upright again. I felt like I wanted to die.
“I hate you sometimes,” I said. Amber just shrugged as another tear rolled down her face.
Unfortunately that day visitors arrived en masse, and even though I made a point of looking dead dour and depressed, no one seemed to pick up on just what a difficult morning I’d had. I suppose it was my fault for being naturally so resilient.
Grandma sat in the corner and ordered a cup of tea like she was in a café. Her behavior was exactly the reason the National Health Service was buckling beneath its workload. While she was in the toilet I asked Chris to make her bring in a thermos during any future visits, for the sake of the nation.
“Thank you, love, you’re doing a smashing job,” Grandma said to Amy when she brought her the tea and biscuits. Grandma spoke to the nurse like she had just found out she was deaf. She needn’t have bothered. Amy had a degree in nursing whereas Grandma left school at thirteen. Amy also spoke better English than Grandma, who was never averse to a double negative.
“I was thinking the white handles, don’t you agree, love?” Mum said, waving a decorating magazine in front of my nose. On it there was a picture of a smiling couple in a kitchen so clean it hurt to look at it. I felt myself tearing up, mostly at the thought of how Amber and I would never now be able to pose happily for photographs in kitchen magazines, but also at the realization of how stupid this couple would feel once they’d realized just how cruel and torturous love really was.
“It looks stupid,” I said. “I like the old kitchen. I don’t want it to change.”
“Oh, good, we’re in this mood,” Mum said, flicking rapidly toward the back of the magazine.
To our left Colette was trying in vain to get a response from her daughter. She was halfway through a story about a protest march outside the battered women’s shelter when Amber’s eyes started watering again.
“Goodness me, what’s this?” Colette said, going to wipe away the tears. “Are you feeling okay? Is it the medication?”
Amber stared up at her and seemed to be saying a million things through two tear-stained eyes.
“Well, this is exactly the sort of thing we’ve talked about. We must not become defined by our physical selves,” her mother said, lightly stroking the painful rash around Amber’s mouth. “All that really matters is health and happiness.”
“They’re two big asks,” Amber said quietly.
Colette looked flummoxed for a moment and started to pull some colored stones out of a bag.
“Here, let’s lay some crystals, see if we can’t embrace a bit of positivity. Now, to form an energy grid . . .” she said slowly, reading a small instruction booklet that was attached to the drawstring of the bag. “Arms out, darling. We should have you back to your old self in no time.”
She took Amber’s arms out from under the covers and spread them flat on the sheet. It was odd, seeing her so pliable. She didn’t flinch
or scowl or pull in the opposite direction like she usually did. She just did as she was told. I didn’t care. I was pleased she was upset, and bald, and ugly. I only wished Chris had visited me on his own, so that I could have told him about my change of circumstances and he could have informed Fiona I was once again single.
Just as Colette was placing the first stone on Amber’s arm Mum breathed out loudly, which always meant she was about to go off on one.
“For God’s sake!” she said, going over to stand beside Amber’s bed.
“Julie!” Grandma said, half laughing the way she always does when Mum makes her nervous. “Sit yourself down.”
Mum took something out of her handbag.
“She doesn’t need crystals. And she doesn’t need her bloody energies aligning either!”
Mum turned her seat around and sat down close to the bed, placing Amber’s hands on the decorating magazine that she spread out over the top sheet.
“Here . . .” Mum carefully loaded a brush with purple nail polish and dragged it over the nail of Amber’s thumb. “It’s been my favorite color since I was your age. A lot harder to shoplift, too, since they started tagging everything over a tenner in the drugstore. . . .” She was moving on to Amber’s index finger now.
“You never used to shoplift,” Grandma said with another nervous laugh. “She never used to shoplift,” she said to me, tapping my leg for emphasis.
“. . . And whenever I was feeling grim, I’d paint it on and look down, and think that if all else failed, at least I had the nicest nails in town,” Mum said, almost in a whisper, as she dragged the brush neatly across every one of Amber’s nails.
“I really don’t agree with the use of cosmetics,” Colette started to say. “For one thing there’s the animal testing.”
“Shut . . . up . . . Colette,” Mum said slowly, concentrating hard on the task in hand.
“And the misogyny of it all! What’s on the outside doesn’t matter.”
“Hmmmmm,” Mum said, teasing the brush across Amber’s little finger. “There,” she said, standing back up. “At least now you know you’ve got the second-best nails on the ward. You’ll have the best once I leave.”
