Face (20 page)

             
“In the future nobody will know, either way.” Mum concludes, more to Daimon.

Mum
has checked out into World of Newborn and barely registers when Seven shifts to sit beside her.

             
“You’re handling it really well.” Seven says to Mum.

I wil
l Daimon to stay asleep with everything I’ve got. I don’t want him to see Seven’s face filling his air with a tragedy that is all her own.

             
“Cliff must have an opinion.” Seven says, without looking up.

             
“Cliff’s not EMS.” I say quickly.

             
“I prefer Daimon to Chester,” Cliff says slowly. “Or did you want my reaction to your latest face?” Seven widens her eyes at me, freak alert. “More Merlot face parts, this time
a little bit sad
?” Cliff continues, “...Yes. You really have found your face.”

I take an intensive
look at the carpet, a tiny wildflower pattern: reds, yellows and violet. After an eternity, someone gets the hint and stands. It’s Cliff.

              “Nice to meet you Adelaide. Daimon. Congratulations again.”

“
Oh, yes... congrat- I mean, see you Cliff.” Mum says

“There’s a C.O.F protest tomorrow. Come with me?” Cliff is looking steadily at me, no mistaking the challenge.

“What? Oh, um, I’ll text
you later.”

Mum raises her head to watch me follow Cliff to the front door. Cliff steps outside, but turns back to hand me a gift-wrapped package.

             
“Here- I nearly forgot- for the baby.”

Seven
joins me in the hall, moving in closer as Cliff leaves. We listen to his running shoes smack the pavement as he jogs away.

             
“What did he want you to do?” she says.

             
“There’s some kind of protest. For people like my brother.”

We both look down
at the package that crackles in my fist. The rainbow-striped paper is meticulously sealed, each end rolled under and taped down. I pick at it with a fingernail until a flap comes free. Tilt it, a silky feather-light scarf tumbles out, teddy bear faces all in a line. Each teddy has a different expression: grinning, scowling, laughing, howling, snoozing, and repeat to the edge. It tickles my fingers but there is a hidden weight to it, a functionality. Newborn size. Seven lifts the scarf and with no face beneath, it flutters in the breeze from the wide open door. Her brown eyes well up with tears and she positions them in front of mine.

“
Oh True. Nobody will know how lovely he is.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Not a bad turn-out.” Cliff says.

I
count seventeen. The headquarters of Ultiface sit over the road; I’ve passed it a thousand times. The road itself is restricted access, only self-drive vehicles allowed. Cliff tells me that this is because human drivers get distracted by the eyes of the massive, mobile faces on the front of the building- and car pile-ups fall short of their intended corporate message. The building itself is six storeys of beige, a nod to their Update masks, and cubed, with its vast frontage to act as an advert. Merlot’s save-me smile dominates the building. Her face fades to give way to the happy, blond Ultiface family. The identical three: the cause of the protest.

             
              “So what’s wrong with the Family Resemblance Package?” I say

             
“Oh nothing, Dad loves it. Evidence for his theory that we’re all coming back to Natural.”

Sure enough a banner
on a post is hoisted into the air: ‘Naturals for Natural Family Resemblance,’ curly words mounted in a fat red heart shape.

             
              “So...nobody needs to buy anything?” I say

             
              “That’s the one.”

Cliff sounds pleased.
We’re seated opposite each other in the window of the Van Gogh Cafe, directly opposite Ultiface Headquarters. There’s a pleasant buzz of human voices, and a smell of burnt toast, which disperses a little more every time the sunflower yellow door swings open. Cliff is assessing my ongoing reaction to the scene outside. But I’m used to his surveillance. The girl behind the counter keeps shooting glances at us and I return them whenever I catch her. She pretends to be interested in the protest outside, but her opal eyes give her away.

Forest is easy to spot, he’s
the only unmasked one, but I’d know him anywhere. He’s in a state of high excitement, stampeding around and directing the small crowd like it’s the rehearsal of a play. He steers them into groups of three, arms around shoulders. The real people are dwarfed by the advert running on the beige facade behind: the cute blond girl runs to her Daddy and is lifted into his waiting arms, Mummy appears to his other side; the girl is lifted so that their faces line up and you’ve never seen so many straight whites crammed in together. (It’s a while since I’ve been able to fake it like that.) Daughter looks like Daddy and Daddy looks like Mummy. The pack comes with two masks; somebody gets to be the starting template, the other two Update. Below them, the masked protesters mimic their pose. It’s a perfect parody of the packaging family, right down to the final thumbs up.

My phone beeps a text:

I’m worried about you. I miss your proper face- get it back! Cliff will leave you alone. Seven xXx

“Anything juicy?
Cliff says

“
Nothing important.”

I pu
t my phone away.  It’s weird to think Seven doesn’t yet know that I have no stored Face History. I haven’t told anyone. I could tell Cliff.

             
“Actually, it was Seven kindly reminding me to Reverse my face.”

             
“Back to what? Don’t tell me. More like Seven.”

             
“We did do the same Merlot Update last year, but Seven never stops talking, whereas me, my face just sits like this. I’m always going to be me.”

             
“Not many people could get mistaken for Seven.”

I turn away from the sneer in his voice. Look back to the protesters.

             
“Should we go over there?” I say

“Nah.
I’m not in the mood today.”

I che
ck his mood. He’s leaning back in the hard plastic chair, long legs out and crossed at the ankle. He’s forced to pull them in each time somebody tries to leave, or enter the cafe.

             
              “I don’t see any families.” I say

             
              “The kids are in the pictures on the t-shirts.”

Each C.O.F member wears a t-shirt with a face of an Original paren
t beside an Original child. Their degree of resemblance is hard to assess from this far back, even though I press my face right up against the glass- searching for Cliff.

             
              “Who’s your dad wearing?”

             
“Hah, not me. He’s modelling the pair that resemble each other the most, a mother and daughter. I’ve met them.”

“I coul
d wear Daimon one day- if he ever starts to look like me. Mum says he looks like I did as a newborn, but less irritated. I was born frowning. I can’t see it at all, the genetics thing. He’s all scrunched, there’s no real feature shape yet... Mum says he’s chilled out.”

“
Objection! That is not a chilled kid.”

C
liff tips his slab of strawberry sponge cake over and stabs it with his fork. He loosens his scarf, I glimpse dark circles under his eyes. What if my Smile Blocker turns out to be worse than what’s underneath? Stupid. He’d take it off.

“I’ve got a confession to make,” I say, helping myself to some of his cake. “I have the Ultiface: Family Resemblance Package waiting for me in the bathroom at home.” 

Cliff does not look up from his cake.

              “Planning to use it?”

             
“Uh-uh. Seven gave it to me at my house that day, after you’d gone.”

I couldn’t exact
ly give it to you when he was here, could I?

             
“Not the most tactful present.”

             
“She didn’t know about Daimon. Seven always gets the latest stuff. The packaging is a bit creepy.”

I do my bes
t impression of the blond Ultiface family, by scraping my chair around to Cliff’s side and hooking an arm around him. My real smile comes, too dented to be Ultiface. I scrape my chair back around to my side. The eyes of a stranger across the cafe linger but when I try to take on his stare, they’ve gone. The stranger’s small child is hissed at:
stop staring
. Cliff has a black scarf on today, same colour as the protesters. The little girl was entertained by my dent.

“
So, do you reckon Seven chose it for you as a celebration of your Dad moving back in?” Cliff says, “O’Reillys reunited?”

“Why would I want to look like him when I can’t even look him in the eye?”

“So it’s gotta be your Mum.”

“Actually, Mum would go for it with Daimon, the way she is with him at the moment: look everybody, it’s a piece of me! Like nobody knows. They’re virtually attached.”

“Dad always
says: start with the profit. Consider it as financial planning. Sowing the seeds of a new trend in fifteen years time; Ultiface: My Face: The Opposite of Yours. Upload your parents’ templates, we deconstruct from there.”

I flick my Smile Blocker at Cl
iff, but not in the way you think. It’s this thing I’ve discovered and it only works on Cliff. I win his gaze back from the cake. Help myself to another bit, my prize.

“So now you know what
my dad gets up to. How about your lot?” Cliff says

“Mum goes
for all the government-sponsored personal-growth stuff. Transcendental meditation, pottery, last thing before Daimon was beginners’ Mandarin. It’s like the whole programme was designed for her. Dad, plotting his escape I guess. Moving his belongings out, and back in again. Principled, time-consuming stuff-  just like yours.”

A
figure looms into our light and a muscled forearm extends, making the rap of knuckles on the front window. I lean away from Cliff, I know this man.

             
              “It’s Otis- he’s our neighbour.” I say

Ot
is is Belle’s husband, but there is no family in tow today. Otis’ expression is distant and I hope he’s just reading the menu. Does he know about Daimon yet? He waves and I realise he is going to come in. A polite smile will catch, so I orient my whole self towards the door. Cliff flies out of his chair and barges past Otis in the doorway. Otis’ mild, masculine face startles, replaced by annoyance, but Cliff is in the road and he’s dodging between the cars.

Forest has a new face,
it’s flatter and covered with blood. He grasps his nose to staunch the flow, and the blood runs through his fingers and pools on the pavement. Red over the faces on his t-shirt, over the mother and daughter.

Otis and I venture
out onto the pavement in front of the cafe and it’s like we’re watching the violent climax to a play. Over the road, four angry, unmasked faces have penetrated the protest, which is no more. Black scarves turn towards the twisting faces, arms are pulled, stragglers back away, the banner clatters to the ground. A group of passers-by, young males, stand alert but do not intervene. Who are the trouble-makers here? Some are hiding their faces. Otis is fast and strong and stands well back from the pavement edge, as the scene unfolds.

O
nly Cliff arrives on stage in time to get his dad under the arms, and haul him to his feet. Forest stumbles, Cliff manoeuvres to take his weight and that’s when it happens: one cruel symmetrical face comes up behind Cliff, goes for the knot at the back of his head, snatches and pulls. The black scarf crumples to the ground under foot and the fedora flies through the air as Cliff’s hands close over his naked face.

I whip my gaze
above and beyond the scene, conjuring an urgent need to check on Merlot, sad-smiling down on us all. The Ultiface main entrance is half-open. It sweeps open wide, here come Security in full riot gear and the criminals move fast, lashing out as they run. A protester falls to his knees, clutching at kicked ribs. Cliff is still on his feet, but exposed. I make a point of studying the gridlines of solar pavement and restricted-access road converging against a forgettable sky. Is it over? My eyes continue to skit about; Forest’s head is bowed, he’s bleeding into the palms of his hands. All of the cars on the road between us have gone. Cliff squares up to me on his edge of the pavement, so I turn my back to him in an obvious way, giving plenty of time for the knot to be re- tied, the scarf hoisted. Finally Cliff is replacing the fedora with a downwards tug. He is safe. It’s a relief when counter girl comes outside and my gaze can settle at last, on her opal eyes of tiny rainbows and disgust.