Self-Portraits - 10. The Black Eye

In the morning, I go downstairs to a quiet but messy house. There are empty wine bottles and lipstick-rimmed wine glasses. There are sticky patches of spilled cocktail everywhere. But I know Vicky is to share in some of the blame; her ball shoes have been kicked off in the kitchen, biscuit packets have been torn open and tossed aside, crumbs cover the floor, and there’s a melted bowl of ice-cream, half-eaten and abandoned on the counter.

At least I know she got home safely, hopefully without much more kissing of Darren Park.

I put the bottles in the recycling bin, stack the dishwasher, and wipe down all the cocktailed surfaces.

Mum makes a sheepish appearance at nine. She closes her eyes against the sunlight. I’ve never seen her with a hangover before.

“You two need to get ready for your breakfast,” she mumbles. “Your dad’s on his way over to pick you up. I’m, ah, not feeling … um, you’d better go and wake up … um …”

“Vicky?”

“Um … yes … wake up Vicky … I’m just, ah … yes …”

My hungover mother shuffles back to her dark sanctuary.

I tentatively knock on Vicky’s door. There’s no response.

I open the door. She’s sprawled across her bed in the shape of a chalk-outline crime scene, still wearing her ball dress. She groans at the sound of my voice.

“I feel so fucking shit,” she informs me.

“Are you hungover? Who did you get alcohol from?” I ask, even though I know the answer.

“None of your business.”

“Well, you need to get up. We’re going to Dad and Maggie’s.”

“Oh, fuck off and die.”

I open her curtains. She groans louder and repeats the f-word.

I go to her closet. “What do you want to wear?”

“I’m not getting changed for that home-wrecking bitch.”

“Well, you can’t go to breakfast in your ball dress.”

She opens one eye. “Why the fuck not?”

*

Dad comes over to fetch us. Vicky lies down across the back seat, still in her dress.

“Do you have a headache?” Dad asks.

“She has a hangover,” I tell him.

Vicky puts her hands over her ears. “Can you both shut your mouths?”

That’s when I notice that the knuckles on her right hand are slightly grazed.

“What’s that on your hand?” I ask her. “Did you fall over?”

She looks at her knuckles blankly. Then she seems to have a flash of memory, and quickly hides her right hand behind her left. “No, it’s nothing.”

When we get to Maggie’s house, Vicky follows Dad and me into the house, barefoot in her ball dress. As we make our way through the overgrown garden path, she swats the wind-chimes and dream-catchers out of her way.

Maggie’s waiting for us in the kitchen, her stomach bigger than ever beneath a bright red apron. “Good morning, Richard – and, ah …” She clocks the dress. “What do we have here?”

Vicky attempts a glare at Maggie but she can’t muster it. Her bravado starts to wilt.

“I was too hungover to get changed,” she admits, “so it was either this or nothing.”

“Well, it’s beautiful – and it’s lovely to meet you in the flesh, even if you are a little under the weather. Coffee should be a good start.”

“Oh fuck yes.”

“Language,” Dad warns, but Maggie just laughs.

Maggie’s put on a lovely spread for us – coffee, tea, juice, chocolate croissants, and an enormous bacon and egg pie – and we sit down around the kitchen table.

I’m grateful that Vicky is too unwell to be as cruel to Maggie as she had planned. But it also helps that Maggie’s so easy-going.

Vicky tells Dad and Maggie about her successful protest. Maggie’s in awe of what Vicky and Stu managed to pull together. Dad doesn’t seem particularly interested until Vicky mentions Molly from the newspaper.

Dad doesn’t like that. “Will the newspaper mention you by name? By surname?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

Dad reddens. “I don’t think they need to put your surname in the paper. It could go on the internet.”

“It can’t do any harm,” Maggie says. She changes the subject to how to prevent hangovers. “Now, the best thing I’ve learnt,” she tells Vicky, “is to alternate each drink with water. You never feel like water, but just throw it back as quickly as you can, then get back to your real drink. That’s the best way to prevent it, but of course, you always skip one water, then two, and before you know it, your plan’s gone down the toilet and you’ve got a hangover. So if that happens, one really helpful thing to do before you go to bed is just be sick—”

“Oh, don’t tell them that,” Dad says.

“It’s true!” Maggie insists. “Sometimes you just have to sick it up.”

“Really?” Vicky’s interested, in spite of herself. “Do you sick it up?”

“Oh, all the time,” Maggie says. “Once I was at a dinner party and I’d had about two hundred glasses of red wine and I went into the garden and sicked up not only the wine but the entire meal.”

Vicky loves this. “Okay! The next time I drink, I’m going to sick it all up before bed.”

“You should just drink more water,” Dad says.

“I’m going to sick it up, Dad, and there’ll be nothing you can do to stop me!”

Dad goes red and argues; Vicky keeps saying things she knows will annoy him. She also complains non-stop about how shitty she feels. Maggie asks Vicky about her dress and the ball. I sit there eating bacon-and-egg pie and accepting coffee refills from Maggie.

The whole morning seems a bit too, well, normal.

*

Back home, Mum’s managed to make herself a cup of tea before retiring back to her bedroom, with all the curtains closed. Vicky gets into my bed, still wearing her dress. She seems to be over the worst of her hangover so I decide to bring up what I’ve spared her all morning.

“So, last night,” I say.

“What about it?”

“Darren Park.”

Vicky closes her eyes and groans. “Don’t mention his name.”

“You kissed him.”

“Says who?”

“Me. I saw you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“He’s the one who got you drunk.”

“I’ll puke on your pillow if you don’t shut up.”

I cross my arms. “What happened to your hand?”

She pulls the duvet over her face. “I don’t want to talk about last night.”

I sit down on the bed. “Well, what about this morning, then?”

“What about it?” Her voice is muffled under my duvet.

“What did you think of Maggie?”

Vicky groans. “Why are you asking me six billion questions? What have I done to deserve this?”

So I grant her temporary mercy and let her go to sleep. I go back downstairs to the quiet house.

I dial Harriet’s number.

Barry picks up the phone. “Richard the Twenty-Seventh!” he booms. “The lady is not home! She is at another music practice! But tell me, when will you dine with us again, good sir?”

“Oh, anytime, really.”

“I’ll hold you to that! Be careful! I’ll hold you to your promises, good sir!”

I don’t call Nicholas, but I think about him until I go to bed.

*

Vicky’s on the front page of Monday morning’s newspaper but, lucky for Dad, her surname isn’t mentioned. There’s photos of the couples holding hands, filing into the hall, and a great close-up of Mr Jane looking like he’s bitten into a lemon. The headline is “Brave Students Protest Gay Dance Ban”. Mum’s just happy that the whole protest thing all went off without Vicky getting expelled.

The article concludes with a statement from the school that the ticket policy is currently “under review”.

At school, I know everyone will be talking about the ball. Sure enough, as I walk through the gate, I overhear two girls talking.

“I heard those two actually are together – like they said they went as part of the protest, but they’re total lezzes!”

“Oh my god, can you imagine? Tragic.”

As I’m hurrying to class, I pass Darren Park, going in the opposite direction. He doesn’t have his usual swagger. He’s walking with a hunch, face down, but I still see it.

Darren has a black eye.

It all clicks into place, like an algebraic equation. Kissing multiplied by alcohol equals grazed knuckles plus black eye. Find the common denominator.

Vicky punched Darren.

What hasn’t my sister done in the last few days?

*

All morning, I overhear whispers and giggles about Saturday night. Who kissed who, who drank what, who went to Darren’s after-party.

I don’t see Nicholas anywhere, but I overhear people talking about him and Carrie, who were apparently kissing all night long. A few people are talking about Vicky and Darren kissing, too.

In English, someone asks Darren how he got “the shiner”.

“I dunno,” he says. “I was way too drunk. Probably walked into something.”

I can tell he’s lying, by how loud his voice gets, and how phoney his laugh is.

Lunchtime can’t come fast enough and, this time, even Harriet shows no intention of doing homework. She wants to know every tiny detail – the pre-ball, the protest, Nicholas, Carrie, Darren’s black eye.

Harriet approves of the black eye. “I’m impressed someone finally punched him,” she says.

Then I tell her about Nicholas going from kissing me behind the stage, to kissing Carrie in front of everyone. Harriet shakes her head.

“Tacky,” she says. “Very, very tacky.”

“Well, yeah, he was drinking …” I say.

Harriet rolls her eyes. “Of course he was. Alcohol makes him less afraid of who he is. But are you feeling okay about it all? Like, are you upset?”

Yes, I’m upset that Nicholas kissed Carrie … but what Nicholas said to me, behind the stage …

All day, I’ve been thinking about seeing you …

You’re the best guy I’ve ever met … I don’t want to lose you …

Harriet and I mull this over together.

“You two!” The librarian pokes her stern head around the corner. “I warned you already. Out!”

Once again, Harriet and I are banished from the library. We sit on a bench outside.

“I still want to get Nicholas back,” I tell her.

Harriet nods. “Alright, then. If that’s what you want, let’s do our best.”

*

In Art class, Mrs Hansen announces our next module.

“Self-portraits,” she declares.

Everyone grumbles. I’m not thrilled about it, either. Right now I feel like a frumpy scarecrow.

“Art can teach us a lot about ourselves,” Mrs Hansen continues. She holds up Vincent Van Gogh’s self-portrait. “You see, self-portraits aren’t about how we see ourselves with our external eyesight. It’s an opportunity to think about how we see ourselves with our internal eyesight.”

Lisa Meadows rolls her own eyes.

For the next hour, I try to sketch my own face. The ears are too big and the nose looks like a monolith. I’m not learning anything about myself by doing this, except that I’m not a very attractive person.

*

On the way home, a car slows down as it goes past me. From the passenger seat, a young guy leans out.

“Hey!” he shouts.

I look up. I’ve never seen him before in my life.

“Yeah, you!” he shouts.

I stare at him as the car rolls past.

“FAGGOT!” he shouts.

There’s peals of laughter from inside the car, and they speed off.

*

Back at home, I chop some veggies for dinner and defrost some steaks.

Vicky comes home. She’s wearing fingerless gloves to hide her scraped knuckles. I march into the hallway and confront her.

“You punched Darren Park in the face,” I say. I feel a bit melodramatic. “That’s why your knuckles are grazed.”

Vicky rolls her eyes. “You’re such a drama queen.”

“Just tell me if you punched Darren.”

“I don’t remember.” I can tell she’s lying too; she’s avoiding eye contact.

“He’s got a black eye.”

“I wish him a speedy recovery.” She pushes past me. “What’s for dinner?”

“You can’t keep getting in trouble.” I follow after her. “You’re on thin ice with Mr Jane, and Mum and Dad had kittens over the whole protest thing.”

In the kitchen, Vicky opens and closes pantry doors, looking for a snack.

“Dinner’s only twenty minutes away,” I say. “Tell me what happened on Saturday night.”

Vicky finds a half-eaten packet of biscuits, leftover from her Saturday night binge.

“I’m not going to talk about it,” she says. “So either change the subject or shut up.”

I choose shutting up. I resume chopping veggies, while Vicky sits on the counter chomping biscuits and texting. I think about the guy in the car who shouted the f-word at me an hour ago. I wonder what made it so obvious.

“Can I ask you a question?” I say to Vicky.

“This better not be about the ball,” she crumb-spits at me.

“It’s not.” I tell her about the guy in the car who shouted FAGGOT to me. “What do you think gave me away?” I ask. “It wasn’t my voice, because I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Vicky says. “There’s nothing obviously gay about you. Although,” she adds, “there’s also nothing obviously straight about you.”

“He must’ve noticed something about me as he drove past,” I insist. “Could he tell from my walk? Or is it my posture?”

“I seriously doubt it,” Vicky says.

“Well, what could it be then?” I ask. “Could it be my haircut? Do I get it cut too short?”

“It’s probably your stupid face.”

“My face?”

“Yes.” She chews. “You have a homosexual face.”

“A what?”

“Stop asking stupid questions,” she said, “or you’ll keep getting stupid answers.”