Touchy Subjects (13 page)

One evening he was waiting up for Róisín and couldn't find the remote, so he flicked through a magazine she'd left on the coffee table,
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, a headline ordered. His eyes scuttled over the diagrams. The follicles looked like blueprints of mining shafts.

When he heard Róisín's key in the lock, Joseph stuffed the magazine down the side of the sofa.

She was still peeling off her coat in the hall when he rushed out and hugged her. Under cover of a kiss, he stroked her chin. But he couldn't feel a thing.

The next morning the demented chirp of the alarm clock woke Joseph first. Róisín's face was half immersed in the pillow. He bent over, very carefully, to see if the hair had grown at all. Was there really only one? How many could sprout below the line of her jaw before she'd notice?

Her eyes were very blue. He jerked back. She grinned up at him confusedly.

It wasn't a turnoff; it wasn't as simple as that. It was more that Joseph would be sitting beside Róisín on a park bench as she played clap-handies with Liam, say, and suddenly she'd turn her head a fraction and he'd see it. It interrupted the smooth curve of her chin. And a little frisson would go through him, like lust but not quite.

It had become a sort of dc, this habit of peering at his girlfriend's chin. The little hair there wasn't sharp like the ones that pushed out of his own skin overnight. It was so soft he could barely feel it when he found a pretext to stroke her face. It was just a wisp, really. There was no harm in it. So why did he long to take it between his nails and yank it out?

It was like an itch in his fingers, too deep to scratch. It disgusted him.

Another man might have simply asked her to pluck it.

But Joseph couldn't imagine saying those words. Not to Róisín. This sort of thing was a delicate matter; you didn't just tell a woman she was growing a beard. They were sensitive about these things. It would be best if it came up naturally in the course of conversation, but if he tried to lead their dinnertime conversation gradually round to female facial hair he knew he'd make a hash of it. She might be cross that he thought it was any of his business to tell her which bits of her body were acceptable. Or worse, she might be hurt; she might think he didn't fancy her anymore, now she wasn't twenty-one, now she had stretch marks and other proofs of a body that had been lived in.

Not that he was God's Gift to Womanhood himself. He never had been. Joseph stood at the bathroom mirror, these mornings, and stared at the hair matted on his brush. Had he always shed that much? His hairline seemed to be in the same place it had always been, but maybe the change was so infinitesimal he wouldn't notice until the day he woke up bald. He tried to laugh at that thought, but only managed the half grin of a stroke victim. He ran his fingers across his head, and another hair came away, wrapped round his thumb.

Maybe there were only a given number of hairs in the world, and they had to be shared out.

Surely Róisín would laugh if she knew what was scurrying through his mind, these days. It could become one of her running gags. "Be careful of Bearded Ladies, Jo-Jo," she might say. "They have a habit of running away with the circus."

The real question wasn't whether she would be hurt if he asked her to pluck it, Joseph realized. The real question was, What if she said no?

In the library he left Liam slamming Barbie and Ken's heads together and ducked round the corner. He thought it might take some research, but the first encyclopaedia told him all he needed, and more than he wanted to know.

It turned out that a hair was a filament or filamentous outgrowth that grew from the integument of an animal or insect. Joseph had never known he had an integument. He also learned that although in many cultures beards were a symbol of the dignity of manhood, there was nothing intrinsically masculine about facial hair at all. Native American and Chinese men didn't tend to develop much hair on their faces; Mediterranean women did. Even in the British Isles, the incidence of facial hair among women was much higher than was commonly supposed.

Joseph felt slightly breathless, at this point. He had been tricked. To think of all those hairy-chinned women out there on the streets, plucked and waxed and powdered down, going about their business with nobody knowing a thing...

He read on distractedly. Both men and women of high birth in ancient Egypt wore metal ceremonial hairpieces on their chins. Then there was Saint Uncumber, who prayed to God to deliver her from men and was delighted when he gave her a beard.

Joseph let the encyclopaedia sag shut. He edged round the corner to Self-Help, where he found a book called
Women Are Cats, Men Are Dogs: Making Your Relationship Work.
He had to skim through Sexual Positions, Money Worries and In-law Trouble before he found the right section.

Instead of commenting negatively on her appearance, say
"
Honey, I'd like to treat you to a top-to-toe makeover. You
deserve the best.
"

Joseph tried out that line, under his breath, but it sounded like bad karaoke.

Down on his knees on the cork tiles, a few hours later, he tried to unclog the bath; the plunger made a violent gulp. He finally had to use his fingers in a tug-of-war with the long clot of soap and hair; more and more of it unreeled as if it grew down there. From the colour it looked more like his than hers. Queasy, he flicked it into the bin.

He was tidying up the living room after lunch when he noticed that Róisín's magazine was on the coffee table again. She must have found it stuffed down the side of the sofa cushion. She must have wondered. Joseph stared at the crumpled cover, wondering what exactly she'd have wondered,
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.

These days he was trying to ensure that sex wouldn't happen. Not that he didn't feel like it. But he knew that sex brought his guard down, and he was afraid that it would ruin some intimate moment if Róisín caught him staring fixedly at her chin.

He was just playing for time. He knew he had to tell her, whether it sounded reasonable or not. He had to say something at least, make a joke of it instead of a sore point. Otherwise he was going to lose his tiny mind.

They used to be able to tell each other anything, the two of them. That's what they'd boasted, in the early days. Everyone went round saying things like that at college.
Tell me. Honestly. I really want to know.

Later that afternoon Joseph had a better idea. He ran upstairs to the bathroom and ransacked the cupboard like a burglar. He rooted through all Róisín's paraphernalia: eyelash crimpers, toenail sponges, an old diaphragm. Finally he recognized the tweezers. He was holding it up to the light to check its grip when he sensed he was being watched. He turned. Róisín in her stocking feet, arms piled high with files, staring.

"You're home early! Sorry about the mess," he said as if it was a joke.

"What are you doing with my tweezers?" she asked.

"Got a splinter, down the playground," Joseph improvised.

Róisín took hold of his hand and tugged him towards the window. She peered at the map of lines: head, heart, fate. "I don't see anything."

"It's tiny," said Joseph, "but it's driving me mad."

That evening he was watching some stupid quiz when Róisín came in and sat on the arm of the sofa. "You're in a funny mood these days," she said, so softly that he thought at first she was commenting on the program.

"Am I?" Joseph assured her he didn't know why he seemed that way. No, he didn't miss his old job; what was there to miss? No, Liam wasn't getting on his nerves, no more than usual. It was nothing.

At which point Róisín reached for the remote and muted the TV.

Joseph stared at the flickering images. He wasn't ready to look at her yet. He was choosing his words. "It's nothing that
matters,
" he said at last, too cheerfully. "It's—"

"It's me," interrupted Róisín, "isn't it?"

And he turned to look at her then, because her voice was stripped down like a wire. Naked. The skin below her eyes was the blue of a bird's egg.

Joseph gathered her into his arms and lied with his whole heart. "Of course it's not you. Why would it be you? You're grand. You're Perfection Incarnate," he added, pressing his lips to her neck, trying to shut himself up.

She twisted her head. "But are you—"

"I'm just tired, love," he interrupted, so she couldn't finish the question. "I'm just a bit tired these days." He faked an enormous, apelike yawn.

It was two in the morning before he could be sure she was in deep sleep. He opened his eyes and sat up, feeling under the pillow for the pen torch and the tweezers.

Hovering over Róisín, he aimed the tiny light at her chin. His thumb pressed hard on the ridged plastic of the switch. Arms shaking, he caught the little hair in his narrow beam. With the other hand he reached out to close the tweezers on it. Please god he wouldn't stab her in the chin.

Just then Róisín stirred and rolled towards him, onto her face. Joseph lurched back and snapped off the torch. He shoved everything under his pillow and lay down flat. His heart was hammering like police at the door.

He lay quite still for a long time. Veils of darkness hung all round him. He was sinking.

Then Róisín spoke. "Can you not sleep?"

Joseph didn't answer.

In the morning he lay hollow-eyed, watching Róisín put on her lipstick in the bedroom mirror. She grabbed her bag and came over to give him a kiss.

She turned to open the door. He hauled himself upright and put on a casual voice. "Hey. You know that tiny wee hair under your chin?"

He waited for the world to crack apart.

"Which?" Róisín doubled back to the mirror without breaking stride. She stuck her jaw out and threw back her head. "Got it," she said in a slightly strangled voice. Her finger and thumb closed together and she made a tiny, precise movement. Like a conductor might, to finish a symphony.

She brushed her fingers together and gave Joseph a little wave on her way out.

Sam had always thought of himself as a pretty decent guy, and who was to say he wasn't? While he was doing his MBA at the University of Toronto he'd been a volunteer on the Samaritans' phone line. These days he couldn't spare the time, but he made regular tax-free contributions to schemes for eradicating river blindness in sub-Saharan Africa and improving children's sports facilities in the Yukon. He always wore a condom (well, not always, just when he was having sex), and he never pushed past old ladies to get on a streetcar.

The day it happened, he was coming down with a head cold. Funny how such a petty thing could make such a difference. Not that it felt petty at the time; it was a January cold, one of those brutes that makes you screw up your eyes all week and cough wetly for the rest of the month. So Sam—sensibly enough—had left the office before rush hour in order to get home and take care of himself. He had his Windsmoor coat buttoned up to the throat as he hurried towards the subway station. His friends seemed to live in down jackets all winter, but Sam refused to abandon his dress sense so he could look like a walking duvet. Today he did keep his cashmere scarf looped over his nose and mouth, to take the ice out of the air. With a hot whiskey and something mindless like
Nip/Tuck
and an early night, he thought he could probably head this cold off at the pass.

He walked right by the first time, like everyone else. It was a common sight, these last few winters, street persons in sleeping bags lying on the hot-air vents. The first time you saw it you thought:
My god, there's a guy lying in the middle of the sidewalk, and everyone's walking round him like he's invisible. How bizarre. What a sign of the times.
But you got used to it—and, to be fair, it was probably much warmer for the homeless, lying on the air vents, than if they had to tuck themselves away against the wall of a bank or a travel agency.

This particular guy near the intersection of Bloor and Bay seemed pretty much like all his peers: a crumpled bundle with eyes half closed and a not-entirely-unsatisfied expression.
Probably Native,
thought Sam,
but you should never assume.
It was only when Sam had got as far as the crossing, blowing his nose on his handkerchief with awkward leather-gloved hands, that his brain registered what his eyes must have seen. Just as sometimes by the time you ask someone to repeat themselves, you've realized what they've said. Anyway, that's when Sam saw it in his mind's eye, the little trickle of blood. He thought he must have imagined it.
Classic white middle-class guilt hallucinations,
he said to himself. Then he thought:
So the guy's bleeding a little from the lip, not necessarily a big deal, I sometimes chew my lips to shreds when I'm working on a big presentation.