Being Shelley. Qarnita Loxton
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.