Читать книгу Being Shelley - Qarnita Loxton - Страница 6

I forgot about my surfshop-scapade until I got home and unloaded the bodyboards from the back of the Range Rover in the double garage. I left the boards propped against the kitchen island, booties next to them so that they would be the first thing the twins saw in the morning. Harley would love it, but Stacey was my wild card, older by two minutes and infinitely harder to please. I surveyed the evidence of my thrill of the day, remembering the wax and the till slip still in my bag. It was past nine. I hadn’t meant to be so late, but there was a problem with the cashing-up system that took me an age to sort out, and I wanted to un-Valentine the store window, which I could do only after we closed at seven. It was Di’s afternoon and evening with her girls, but I’d forgotten, and Di wasn’t impressed when I was late after getting the boards. Nowadays Di was nearly as hard to please as Stacey.

‘How was it at the shop this afternoon?’ she’d messaged me exactly at seven. ‘Okay, but no coffee,’ I’d replied, meaning that it was average-to-disaster. A few women browsing, the odd husband looking for last-minute Valentine’s gifts. The main drama was that the girl who should’ve come – the one who could be barista in Di’s place – didn’t pitch. I haven’t been able to master a decent cup of coffee out of the machine, so there was no coffee for the afternoon, which is about as crap as you can get in a shop that sells only cake and coffee and gifts. I also had Jerry spamming me with the afternoon’s updates on Zuma’s rumoured presidential resignation. I never reply to any of his political stuff or have any ‘state of this country’ conversations with him, as they usually end up with him wanting to pack us up for Israel. I’m so not up for that. I’m not a Jew – would they even let me in? I did reply with a smiley-face heart-eyes emoji to his pic of the red roses standing in a glass vase on the marble top of the kitchen island. I know he wanted the special home-cooked dinner I usually did for Valentine’s. It isn’t a thing for us; it’s not special like it is for Lily and Owen, or heartsore like for Kari and Di. It’s just a day; and I think Jerry sends flowers because NetFlorist keeps reminding him. I make a special dinner because I know Jerry likes it. But this year, I didn’t have enough time at home to make the dinner.

Valentine’s WifeFail.

Another thing to add to the list of things about me that I imagine Jerry is currently unimpressed with. Based on his complaints, I think it would look like this, possibly in order of importance:

One: Not a Jew

Two: No sex

Three: Hardly home

Four: Shouts at husband and children

Five: Ageing rapidly

Six: Drinks too much

Seven: Always late

Eight: No Valentine’s dinner

There’re a few more I could add in if I wanted to.

I went upstairs and peeked in at the kids’ door on the way to our room. I was relieved to see them sleeping. Why is it that I feel the most love towards them when they are warm and soft and I can snuggle them without their knowing it? I thought it would be easier after the terrible twos, but the tantrummy threes everyone warned me about have been diabolical. Jerry says it’s because I’m dealing with my own flowering forty-fours. That caused a lively exchange followed by a loud and extended bout of screaming flower yous to each other in the passage outside our bedroom. It rattles Kari, Lily and Di the times they’ve seen it, but Jerry and I get over that kind of thing pretty quickly. Never any hard feelings. We call it our version of Marital Passage Sex. The kids don’t even blink an eye.

I imagined Jerry snoring in front of the TV in our bedroom. He is an early-to-bed and an annoyingly-happy-morning guy. I’m a night owl and extremely-grumpy-morning gal. For a while last year, I tried going to bed at the same time as him – eight-thirty, for crying in a bucket – to see if it would help us connect a bit more, but I just couldn’t do it. Middle of the day is our best time to cross paths. Before the twins, we would make the most of it and sneak home for lunch-time sex. These days, just sneaking lunch together would be a big deal.

Tonight, he surprised me, sitting straight up in bed, eyes glued to the TV. Was he waiting for me? I hoped it didn’t mean that he expected me to be chirpy tomorrow morning. Or that he was plumping for sex – sometimes he stayed awake for that. Who would’ve believed it of me? Of all my friends, I think I’m the only one who likes sex, but for the past year it’s been low on my list of must-haves.

Low, as in it’s only on Jerry’s list.

Lily says it could be my hormones affecting my libido. Jerry can’t understand it; I’ve always been a goer, he says. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Flower my life. I don’t know why, but I just don’t wanna go any more.

‘They say he is going to announce it tonight – watch with me?’ Jerry asked excitedly, without looking up at me, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate in his lap. The plate tilted up at a gentle angle on the side where it rested against his stomach. Dad bod. It annoys me. I got my Mombod fixed (mostly, and it was technically a reconstruction, if you ask me). Why the hell doesn’t he do something?

‘In a bit. I’m going to get something to eat, sort out some bits downstairs,’ I said with a kiss on the top of his head where his hairline used to start. I kicked off my sandals in the dressing room, made my escape back downstairs to the lounge. I could do without Zuma in my bedroom.

A glass of wine and half a Woolies banana bread on the couch later, I took a pic of the sex wax box and put it on our ABS WhatsApp group.

Me@ABS: Look what I got for Valentine’s? Winky face.

I didn’t expect a reply. If recent response rates were anything to go by, something would come in tomorrow morning at the earliest. Our ‘Angels and Bitches’ or ABS group with Kari, Lily, Di and me has been quiet. After Lily’s wedding and honeymoon ate everyone’s data last year, it was as if we got swallowed into totally separate lives. Kari moved back to Cape Town into her old house on the estate in December and promptly fell into a bunch of new mom friends she made at Adam’s playgroup in January. It’s the same group the twins have been going to, but I never get the mom invites. I say it’s because Theresa usually picks them up, but it’s because I’m not a mom’s mom. I’m just not into all that mom-ness. I want to be me, just with children. I don’t want to do the hand-clapping, nursery-song-singing, Calpol-discussing, baby-cooing moms’ group stuff. Tried it once and then I bailed.

That’s the real reason I’m not part of the group who hang around and chat after school, and it’s why I haven’t made it into the sippy-cup-and-snacks Playdate Squad. I never wanted it. But Kari is good at it, so she’s in and I’m out. When she came back from London, Lily and Owen had to move out of her house and they got a place in Blouberg, but Lily’s rooms are at Eden on the Bay across the road from the estate. Not that the move affected Kari and Lily. They still talk all the time, obviously; no-one else will ever properly be part of that circle of two. For the rest of ABS? We are all only a few kilometres from one another, but we’re on different schedules. I see Kari for the odd playdate and Lily when it’s time for Botox. Di and me? We’re attached at the hip since Coffee & Cream. But it’s different; it’s usually business, and business has not been that great for our friendship.

We’re all still friends. Kari, Lily, Di and me. We’re still ABS. But like my stomach muscles, we’re not packed as tightly as we used to be.

I miss them, especially this time of the night. I loved our WhatsApp chats when the house was quiet.

And, when there was still no reply after the other half of the banana bread was gone and I was down another glass of wine, I scratched out the folded till slip with the phone number.

My fingers were loose.

Me: Is this Wayde? Sorry it’s late. James gave me your number this afternoon but I only got to it now. You still up for taking my kids into the water? Don’t think they are old enough for actual lessons. It’s Shelley. I wondered what he’d named me in his head.

Him: Yes, it’s Wayde. (I saw his profile pic, bare-chested at the beach, as he added me to his contacts and started chatting.) No worries, it’s never too late for me. I can do any time, could be good conditions Friday afternoon at Small Bay. I can let you know how the swell looks in the morning? And yes it’s cool, no worries we don’t have to do a proper lesson, I can see how they go in the water. Wave emoji. Surf emoji.

Me: Okay, they’ll be free around three.

Him: Sweet. I’ll message you.

Him: What’s your full name?

Me: It’s Shelley Jacobsen.

Him: Mrs?

I died a little. The Pina Colada Coconut Vanilla man-child was going to call me Mrs Jacobsen.

I rebelled.

Me: Shelley is good enough …

Him: Shelley is totally good enough. I was checking if you are married.

He must’ve known – I was wearing wedding rings that afternoon and my wedding rings are hard to miss.

Him: Sorry, couldn’t help it, my bad. Tongue-out emoji. Devil-face emoji.

I could have let that go. Maybe things would have gone differently if I’d stopped it right then.

Me: Oh no, it’s my bad. Tongue-out emoji. Devil-face emoji.

That’s the thing with WhatsApp, how quickly it can get out of hand. We skated close to the line, sometimes just over, stopping short of What are you wearing? In a chat conversation, it’s easy to find out so much about the other person, and at the same time to forget who you are and who it is you’re talking to. I forgot that I am a forty-four-year-old married mother of two with a boob job and tummy tuck under her belt, talking to what I found out was a twenty-two-year-old hotel school dropout turned kids’ surf instructor. One who I am sure doesn’t even own a belt.

We were just words on a screen. He made me laugh. He strung emojis together like new-school hieroglyphics; he asked questions about me. Other than being Totally Good Enough, he said I was Epic – me and my rags-in-Joburg to riches-in-Cape Town. Telling a stranger my story, I managed to impress myself. Only child of a single mother. No daddy to set me up in anything, I’d grafted every shitty waitress job in Joburg when I blew off school at the age of sixteen, worked myself up to have my own shop at the age of twenty-five. My mother signed as surety and it did okay until I lost it all with a loser junkie starter husband. Came to Cape Town to start over with a broken heart after a divorce. And my mother’s death. Talk about a bad year. I’d just been pulling myself together in Cape Town when I met Jerry.

I didn’t tell Wayde everything – that’s the joy of WhatsApp.

I didn’t tell much about Jerry for a start, or how big a part of my success Jerry is. I only told how I morphed myself into an interior decorator after we married. I didn’t tell how I let everything go because I wanted kids so much, how I thought I was going to rock MomLife, but how in truth I was closer to MomFail. I told about starting Coffee & Cream. I told him a version of myself and my life I was proud of.

I think Wayde told me even less about himself because I didn’t find out nearly as much about him as he did about me. That’s not how conversations usually go for me. ABS say nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, except for when I am there – then they can count on it. I just laugh it off; it’s only because I’m interested, is what I usually say. I know more about the people I’m talking to than they do about me.

I heard shouts from our bedroom.

‘Shell! Come! Come! He’s resigned! Things are going to change now!’

Flowers, he was going to wake the kids, the bloody idiot. How was this the same guy I met working as a manager at Mortons at the Waterfront? He was there for dinner and we chaffed each other so hard we ended up having sex in the disabled toilet. Not classy, no. But sexy as flowers. I lost my job over that. Didn’t matter, I’d lost my mind over a short Jewish guy from Joburg who had chutzpah for days. The crazy thing was that he was equally mad about me. But when your heart is broken like mine was and something comes along that seems to fix it, you go with it, don’t question it at all. From that night, we became Jerry & Shelley, and I didn’t question my luck to find him. I don’t know why, other than it was a new thing having a good guy wanting to look after me. Young, dumb, broke – and motherless. That was me. Jerry made me feel loved and cared for. He said I was the most important person in the world to him, and I believed him.

I didn’t tell Wayde any of that.

Me: Okay, I need to go. Will wait to hear about Friday.

Him: Rad. You’re quite something, you know that schweet Shelley Jacobsen? Happy Valentine’s, I think I might just dream of you. Winky face emoji.