Being Shelley. Qarnita Loxton
I couldn’t leave. Since the kids, I’ve got worse; it seems that my safe distance from the beach has increased in direct proportion to the number of times we’ve been to the beach with them. Jerry doesn’t get it, though he should because he is a shite swimmer, but I panic when Harley and Stacey are in the water. It freaks me out properly. I am so not a person who panics, but on those days when I give in and bring them to the beach, I have a tiny meltdown. Jerry thinks I am putting it on, but I worry – flowering flowers, I worry about the kids. What if they go into the water too deep? What if a wave throws them off balance? Sucks them in. What if it happens so fast that I can’t get to them? What if it happens to both at the same time? What if I can’t get to either? Or to both? They’ve been going to BabySwim since they were six months old, for God’s sake, so they swim like little fish. But the sea? I’m not ready for them to swim with the fishies.
Today was different. Today was as close to relaxed as I’ve ever been at the beach with the kids. I wasn’t ankle deep in freezing water, clutching a little hand in each of mine, or sitting on the sand shouting because Jerry wasn’t holding their hands tightly enough. Today, even my black Seafolly boyleg one-piece sucked and lifted in the places I wanted it to. The whole morning felt like a miracle. I’d known that Wayde would be good – I didn’t check his references for Coffee & Cream, but I sure as hell did before I let him take Harley and Stacey into the sea. I found out that he used to be a lifesaver at Big Bay, and every mother I messaged said she and her kids loved him. The more I watched from the beach, the more I zoomed in on photos I took, the more I realised he was better than good. He was flippin’ great. He let Harley ride on his back like a sea monkey. Pulled the bodyboard by its leash in the shallows as Stacey hung on. Played with them so much until even I felt free enough for him to push them on the bodyboard for a ride on the white water all the way to the sand. Wayde had done the impossible and made it a happy morning at the beach, my personal anomaly.
‘I can carry the last things,’ Wayde called to me as I arrived back at our spot on the sand, pointing at my beach chair and bag full of snacks that neither of the kids wanted. Eventually, thirty minutes after my first ten-minute sandcastle allowance, we all made our way across the hot sand and the sharp shells to the parking lot. What a great morning, I thought as I felt my swimsuit bottom munch into my bum. I couldn’t do anything about it as I walked up to the car, holding onto Stacey with one hand and Harley with the other, Wayde behind us with the chair and the bag. To let the kids go would be to lose them back to the sand. Maybe it was sunstroke, or the thrill of our little nudge-nudge, wink-wink chat, but I might have swayed an extra sway as a thought jumped in my head, thankfully not out my mouth.
Go on, get yourself an eyeful, Wayde, my boy; you would be so lucky to see my bum on this beach. See how you like them apples.
Thank God Di couldn’t see into my head. I didn’t know what this thing with Wayde was, but it was possibly not the ‘good for business’ thing I promised her.
9
Three-thirty. In the morning. I woke up to Harley screaming for me from his bed. It was as if a car alarm had gone off right next to my head. It didn’t have any effect on Jerry, who lay on his back with his mouth slack and open, the tiny snores tipping me off that he wasn’t dead. How is it that I used to be the one who could sleep through anything? Now a child shouts my name in the dark of night and makes me go from snug asleep to wild-eyed awake in one-point-two seconds.
Jerry had been apoplectic when we arrived home later than I said we would, meaning that it was too late for us to go out for lunch before I had to go to the shop. The kids had been happy with cheese toasties, but he’d moaned in my ear about us not having enough family time, or enough couple time (code for ‘sex’). It was over by the time I left and Theresa arrived, but I felt my annoyance at him bubble up in time with his snores. If it bothered him that much, why didn’t he come to the beach, sit with me, bring some lunch there? Maybe it would even make me feel like having sex with him.
I stumbled out of bed, lumbered down the passage to Harley’s room. I was tired. After the beach, an afternoon at the shop, kids to bed at eight, and bed for me at eleven-thirty, being awake at three-thirty in the morning was a cruel joke. The carpet runner slipped a little on the passage tiles as I walked, making me jerk every few steps so that I wouldn’t fall. I needed to call Paco to get new carpet liners, but I’d forgotten, like everything else to do with the house that I should remember. By the time I got to his room, Harley was sitting up in his double bed, tears streaming down his face. The small round nightlight plugged in near the door cast a soft glow about his room. Most nights he loved that light; other times he swore it hid monsters in the shadows.
‘What’s the matter, Harley baby?’ I reached to put my arms around him. His warm body wrapped into mine. We were made to fit.
‘I made a pee,’ he cried, tears and snot mixing on his scrunched face. My heart sank. A middle-of-the-night change of bedding was not my favourite event.
‘It’s okay, baby.’ I opened the covers. Yup, there it was. Puddle of pee. Harley in red Spiderman shorty pyjamas in the middle of it. If I stripped everything off fast enough, the mattress protector would stop it from soaking all the way into the mattress. Ten minutes later, it was done, fresh sheets on, and Harley hosed off with a fast, warm shower. Bless apoplectic Jerry and his borehole water, we had a little bit of slack around the drought water restrictions. The duvet was wet, so I got the spare one out of his bedroom cupboard while he waited on the bed, his new big-boy haircut making his head look both tiny and grown-up against the white pillowcase. I lay down next to him, let him settle in the crook of my arm, snuggled him close to me. I felt his fingers reach up to my neck and wind themselves into a twist of my hair. I looked down onto his light brown hair, stroked the soft curve of his head. I’d had the same hair colour, before I decided at sixteen that red was more exciting. Also the same curls before I started doing Keratin straightening treatments last year when I’d seen Nicole Kidman’s hair in Big Little Lies. I felt Harley’s grip on my hair loosen. He would be asleep soon. He was good that way – it was usually me left wide awake by his middle-of-the-night adventures. But better a grumpy me who could drink coffee than a grumpy child whom nothing could help.
At five, I crept back to my bed. Maybe I would get half an hour before both of them came to lie in our bed. I made the mistake of looking at my phone. There it was, sent at twelve last night.
Him: Hmm, you are totally on [five fire emojis] I’ll see you at the shop on Monday afternoon, schweet Shelley Jacobsen. Looking forward. Winky face emoji. Coffee cup. Heart eyes. And a selfie he had taken with the kids in the background while I must have been off putting things in the car. There he was, smiling at me with the wet hair and the pecs and the abs and the smile. Those fuck-me lines.
What the hell. Why the flames? I scrolled up. Flowers. There was the selfie I’d taken. My sunburned boobs were squashed together, spilling up over the top of my swimsuit. My mouth in a put-on pout above them, one hand on my hip, my body angled just so for the camera. I looked curvy and sexy. I’d meant to send it to ABS.
Captioned it: Got myself a bit too hot in the sun this morning …
Flowers flowers flowers. Flowers everywhere.
10
Monday, 19 February
I’m not kidding myself. This struggle with my clothes is because Wayde is going to be at the shop for our first full shift together. Wayde. Kids’ surf coach Wayde. Coffee & Cream employee Wayde. Twenty-two-year-old hot guy with sex lines who laughs at my jokes and sends me flame emojis at twelve at night Wayde. I tried not to think about all the banter on the beach or that WhatsApp, but it was in the back of my mind all through Sunday. Nothing worked. I even did Baking Morning with the kids before our Family Sunday outing – a picnic at Kirstenbosch Gardens. The baking was moderately successful. Only half the sugar cookies were undercooked, Harley pronounced the green icing ‘nummy’ and Stacey’s tantrum about the pink icing not being pink enough didn’t last the whole day. The picnic was less successful. I’d hoped it would make Jerry feel better after his ‘no family time’ meltdown, but he’d eaten too many undercooked biscuits which gave him heartburn, and he’d