Being Shelley Page 2
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.
3
Psych.
I dreamed of him.
Hair and abs and puffy Cupid lips and Pina Colada Coconut Vanilla Dessert.
I was Totally Good Enough. And it was Epic – my funny Valentine’s had a happy ending. I wanted to cry when I woke up and realised that it wasn’t true, that instead of Wayde and his ways, it was simply an ordinary five-thirty in the morning with Jerry snoring and two kids in my bed, kicking their feet into my back and my stomach. The dream was over. In the old days, it would’ve been something to tell ABS, for us to laugh about, and everyone would tell me I was mad. But today it was a delicious secret to leave folded up in my head. Just for me.
I could pretend I was whatever I wanted to be.
Coffee & Cream, with a side of Wayde
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4
Thursday, 15 February
‘Where’ve you been?’ Di hissed, her words escaping through a fake side smile as I slid in behind the marble-topped counter that curved against the back wall of the shop. Our accountant knows, but I still haven’t told Di or Jerry exactly how much it cost – they would freak. When you stand outside the shop, the oversize rose-gold lettering of Coffee & Cream on the glass store front seems to float over the counter in a perfect arch. I think it just about calls women in. It would call me if I were out shopping. The counter shows off the Astoria espresso machine (the one I can’t work) and the three custom rose-gold-and-ceramic cake stands I commissioned from Urchin Art. Deep glass bowls of chocolate balls stand guard at each end. I wanted to display bottles of champagne on the open shop-facing shelves below the counter so that the trifecta of coffee, cake and champagne would be visible from outside the shop, but we don’t have a liquor licence, so that killed that idea. Instead, I filled the shelves with cream-coloured handmade soaps and bath goodies. I hoped the whole scene said, Relax, come in and spoil yourself. That counter is my pride, my own design. I give myself a hundred-and-ten per cent.
‘It’s only been half an hour …’ We didn’t have a clock on any of the walls of the shop; I didn’t want a shopper to be aware of the time, like in the casinos. I think I left at twelve-thirty. I swung my arm up to activate the screen on my Apple Watch. It was five past two. ‘Not that long.’
‘It’s been over an hour. You said you were only going to get a quick half-hour mini-mani at Sorbet. The courier guy’s been – again – and delivered four more boxes. I nearly sent him away – I thought you were done shopping? And you do realise that I can see you in Poetry and in The Pause Room? Just because there is a passage and escalators between us and them doesn’t make you invisible in there. I rang you, but you didn’t answer.’ Di was cross, but this has become normal in the four months since we opened Coffee & Cream. I’d started feeling like her kid. Today, her voice sounded precisely like when she was cross and talking to one of her girls – pitch too high, ready to crack like a thin slab of peanut brittle. I could understand why her girls sometimes roll their eyes at her – she is nearly always right and there is nothing else to do – but I didn’t dare. I don’t have any divorced-child guilt to trade on like they do.
‘Keep your panties on. I couldn’t answer with my nails getting done, could I? It’s not that busy,’ I said, looking around the shop. I hadn’t meant to take so long, but I haven’t had my nails done in yonks, and I ended up choosing Matador Red Gelish at the last minute, which took longer than the ordinary file and paint I was used to. Two of the four round tables in front of the counter had a single woman nursing a cappuccino, and two other women were working their way around the sides of the store, staring at the little stories I’d created with each collection of gifts. Happy days! One woman was clutching three rose-gold soy candles.
‘I only looked in Poetry for a minute while I waited for the Wellness Warehouse smoothies I ordered for us. Here, untwist yourself.’ I held out the takeaway cup as a peace offering.
‘You know we can do without advertising for other places.’ Di narrowed her eyes at me. She was never easily swayed. It had been hard work to convince her to do Coffee & Cream with me: a shop selling the kind of gifts and small décor bits that I loved to buy, with a few tables where customers could have the coffee that Di loved to make. She had been bored doing admin work with Owen, and I was bored being a mommy and not working. Coffee & Cream would make us both happy, I’d said. I’d sold her on it. Let me do the finance (I meant Jerry and Jerry’s accountant would do it) and the shopping and the decorating. You run the coffee side. We bought in cakes and pasticceri from Trecastelli in Blouberg. We didn’t serve any other food; I’d wanted to in the beginning, but the cost of staff and the space needed for a full kitchen was more than the savings I had. We weren’t making any money yet, and we’d expected that – we were both prepared for that – but Di was under more pressure to make money sooner. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but I know she used a big chunk of her divorce settlement for this, so she needed Coffee & Cream to be a success. I had Jerry as a safety net, she reasoned. Di didn’t see that it was still my own money, worked for and saved from the proceeds of my interior design business. I needed it to work as much as she did. If I lost those savings, I would be completely financially dependent on Jerry, and I’d never wanted that. I took the risk; I believed in the idea of opening Coffee & Cream with my best friend rather than running around on my own like I did as an interior decorator. Di didn’t see that. She just saw Jerry backing me.
Truthfully, I hadn’t been prepared.
Not for the changes in our friendship or for the sheer number of hours that the shop ate out of my life. It felt like every waking hour was spent either thinking about Coffee & Cream or being in it. I’m sure it didn’t seem so hard to have a business twenty years ago. Di said I’d gone soft.
‘I was doing research in Poetry and in The Pause Room. I wanted to see what gifts they have,’ I lied. ‘What’s biting you on the bum? Beauty is here?’ I looked around for our dishwasher-slash-waitress-slash-shop-assistant who was always reliable and willing to work, and whose name fortunately matched her face. Nothing ugly in the shop, was my motto.
‘Beauty’s gone to the toilet and Cynthia is two hours late – she didn’t even message this time. I suspect it’s another afternoon at Coffee & Cream with no coffee,’ said Di, her eyes angry. Staff issues and shift schedules were the bane of her existence, since she had taken on the task of that admin. ‘You need to practise some more, learn to work the machine properly.’ Her staffing frustrations were directed at me.
‘Or we could fire Cynthia’s ass and hire another barista?’ I said, deflecting. I hated the coffee-making thing. ‘You not here this afternoon?’
‘Good luck – part-time baristas who are also prepared to help in the shop are not that easy to come by. And I told you at the beginning of the week that I’d be out yesterday and today. Remember? Alan and Anna are away for two nights of mid-week Valentine’s so we swopped our days. Because you were late, I’m going to be late.’ Di zipped her lips into a thin line.
‘I’m sorry, Di. I should’ve remembered,’ I said. I felt bad. Between scheduling kids and staff, her whole life was planned on a spreadsheet of where she was supposed to be and whom she was supposed to spend time with. I don’t know how she does it. I can’t imagine being single with kids and living under the eyes of your ex and his new wife on the other side of the garden. Especially an ex and his wife still in the honeymoon phase. Kill me quick. ‘I didn’t mean to have my head so far up my own ass. I got carried away looking in the shops and didn’t realise the time. I’m sorry – you go already.’
Di nodded, but it didn’t look like my apology fixed anything. I’d let her down. That’s all bases covered today.
MomFail.
WifeFail.
FriendFail.
The trifecta of MeFail.
5
The afternoon dragged on, just me and Beauty in the shop.
‘You okay, Shelley? You are very quiet today,’ Beauty asked me more than once. Often, we talked randomness about our lives to make the time pass. She was forty-five, lived in Dunoon with her mother, and had a twenty-four-year-old daughter, just graduated from UCT with a finance degree.
‘Ja, I’m okay. Was thinking we need to plan some sales or something, get more people into the shop.’ I daren’t admit my worries about the shop to her. It seems so petty when I compare it with what she has achieved. The worries she must have had as a single mother and sole income earner, and she’d put her child through university with student loans, bursaries and sheer grit. I was pathetic with my privileged worries. I couldn’t admit it to Jerry or Di, but on the days when there’s no shopping for stock, decorating the store, or lots of customers to talk to, I want to cry. When it’s admin and general being at the shop, it is boring as hell, and Coffee & Cream is a rosy-gold cage of my own design. It’s killing me. I feel trapped. I thought this shop was going to change my life, give me that energy I’d had when I had the interiors business. Fill in that something that felt missing … But all the shop has done is make me feel the passing of the hours even more.
When Beauty arrived for work every day with a big smile and a bounce in her step, it made me feel worse. How dare I complain, even to myself?
On paper, it was all perfect. The Table Bay Mall was the ideal spot for Coffee & Cream. It opened in September last year and I love the look of it. It’s the best on the West Coast, all about fantastic natural light and wooden accents with a massive Woolworths. Our shop is in one of the best sections for foot traffic (a perk of getting in so early) but it is all new; there simply aren’t that many people at the mall every day. And most people around here don’t have pots of money to shop with – they want to squeeze value out of every ‘ront’ they spend. It’s hard to be a high-end gift store when there is a MRP Home and a Typo down the passage. It’s not like being at the Waterfront, where it seems everyone has money to blow. I know the story that it can take five years for a new mall to establish itself, and with all the new builds and schools sprouting in Sunningdale, I’m sure it will happen. Look at Canal Walk Shopping Centre. ‘It was also quiet,’ is the official version I give to people when they ask about low mall traffic at Table Bay. They don’t know that, many days, it’s so quiet that one afternoon at Coffee & Cream can feel like a year. Everywhere else I’ve worked, I remember the time disappearing because we were so busy and there were a bunch of us grafting and jostling for tips. Here, it’s more like Beauty and I have to race to get the lone customer without scaring her to death with our desperation. This afternoon was particularly bad since we had customers but they all wanted a coffee, and I had to turn them away because I couldn’t make it. Coffee is the key, we’ve seen. It makes shoppers sit down and they end up staring at the gifts and eventually they buy something. I’m trying with the bloody Astoria, but it’s not an easy thing to do, no matter what Di says. In my waitressing days, coffee was stewed in a coffee pot; everyone thought it was fancy if it came through a filter. It wasn’t like it is now. Now everyone and George Clooney are coffee experts.