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Being Lily
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Qarnita Loxton
Kwela Books
For my children;
Liam, Jesse, Sabrina, Fletcher and Annie.
I love you.
And for my mother;
Mahbubah Abader Nordien.
I miss you.
Friday, the One Before Valentine’s
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They shot me down. Bang Bang.
I crashed the car. Bang Bang.
I hit the ground. Bang Bang.
Even Pizza let me down.
In other words, not a Fri-Yay.
#silverbulletbags
1
How was I to know it would take just two silver bullet suitcases to pump holes into my dreams?
Friday, 10 February 2017 was supposed to be Fabulous Fri-Yay, the last one before Valentine’s, the last V-Day before we would be Mr and Mrs (or Mr and Dr, as Dad likes to remind me). One month to the wedding was supposed to be a #VeryPerfectDay. In a way, I’d been waiting for something bad to happen. So much happiness and excitement – how could it not? It was payback time. I’d been the one who’d laughed at Kari’s champagne and roses, snorted at Valentine’s, hated weddings. What was the point of making public promises of happy-ever-afters when they never came true? More like happy-never-afters, I’d say in my head.
I didn’t think it would happen to me – and of all the idiotic things, it would be a Valentine’s Day that would turn me around. And that the Valentine’s Day that killed it for Kari – that made it a #VeryFuckingAwfulDay – would be the one that was magical for me, that made me feel alive. One woman’s kale, another woman’s KitKat and all that. But Valentine’s three years ago was the day Owen and I first really talked, first properly saw each other, first took steps to the giant leap of being ‘us’. Like an urban legend, we were the friends who fell in love over a few hours of a Pick n Pay dinner. A fairytale, where the guy, five weeks after Valentine’s, with a helicopter flip over Cape Town and a ring he chose himself, told the girl she was The One. Both Owen and my therapists knew I hadn’t grown up dreaming of a proposal like that, but he offered it anyway. And despite myself, a white dress and a happy ending turned out to be exactly what I wanted. I said ‘Yes’, and ‘Finally’, like the CeCe Peniston song, I had a real life, properly-in-love-with-me-and-me-with-him-non-psycho partner. We would be happy-ever-after, not like my parents, or his. We would be happier than our friends.
That’s how I drank the Kool-Aid and got to be the kind of woman who made plans for Valentine’s – real plans that didn’t involve hiding in my flat; plans that Kari would’ve been proud of in her pre-Valentine’s-Apocalypse days. A limo drive to Camps Bay, a long weekend with oysters and champagne at the Twelve Apostles Hotel, massage à deux under the spa’s outdoor gazebo. Tickets to Pretty Woman at the in-house movie theatre. And a sea-facing suite, room-service dinners, and thigh-high boots to give dessert a little kick.
Only one small wrinkle in the Fabulous Fri-Yay before Valentine’s. I thought it was going to be the Honeymoon Talk. The possibility of two silver suitcases and their owners causing havoc never crossed my mind as I locked the house and hurried to my car, out the estate, and across the circle to Eden on the Bay where Owen was waiting at the café. I could’ve walked from home, got some more steps in, but I hate being late. I dialled Kari as I drove, my standard party trick when anxiety makes the sun feel too bright.
“Hi, it’s Kari, leave a message and I’ll come back to you. Thanks.”
These days her voicemail greeting was the only time I heard her speak without her or Adam crying in the background. Thank God she hasn’t grown an English accent; then I would have no way of knowing what she was saying.
“Hey, it’s Lily, just checking in to hear how you are? Hope Adam’s stomach bug is better. Fuck, I’m on my way to have the Honeymoon Talk with Owen and he’s going to freak – you know he says I’ve turned into Lily Bride-zilly. Any last-minute ideas on what to say to him? Shelley and Di say I should back off. I’m going to come right out and tell him what I want. I mean, I’m going to ask nicely … obviously. Phone me back if you think it’s the right thing to do. And if you think I’m wrong, just pretend you didn’t get my message. Okay, I’m –” and the message space beeped out.
Kari and I talk whenever we can, but it’s different since she and Dirk moved to London and had Adam; he’s two years old and she has been away for longer than that. Next weekend, she’ll be home. I know all the crying is just homesickness and tiredness and loneliness, but I can’t help it. I get scared for her. My own garden variety depression is more than enough of a hell; what level of soul-destroying would it be with a child thrown in? Thank the tiny god of anti-babies I will never have to deal with that. It’s going to be Love and Marriage, but Owen and I had long agreed to take the wheels off the Baby Carriage.
Owen was waiting at one of the outside tables at Eden Café, his dark head bent towards his phone. Hot fuckin’ dog! The man looked like an ad for something Italian Pour Homme. It’s an easy mistake; looking at Owen, you can’t tell what he is made of. Mum got excited when I first told her Owen’s dad’s name was Riccardo – she asked if Owen had an Italian passport. Shattered does not begin to describe her face when I said Owen was a Riccardo from Hanover Park on the Cape Flats mixed up with an Elaine from the Bluff in Durban. “Mixed babies can also be cute,” she’d said (I’m not sure if it was to me or herself), “like Kari’s Adam. Or Trevor Noah.” I’d snorted my drink at her, half-ready to ask if she was talking about mixed-baby Owen or the ones she thought I was going to have. I didn’t especially want her answer, so I checked her instead. “That’s flippin’ racist. And Owen is anyway far hotter than Trevor Noah.”
Owen doesn’t have the passport, but he does smell Italian. He left that signature behind this morning in the kitchen at home, like he does wherever he goes. Not nearly good enough for my parents, but stuff them. And even if it is Valentine’s mush and the engagement phase talking, like Shelley says, I feel bloody lucky to have Owen. Worth all the frogs I’ve done the dirty with over the years – and then some. Granted, we are a bit predictable these days – him, checking his phone, me, talking wedding – but I wouldn’t change him.
Fine, I’m lying. I would change the stubbornness about my paying for things.
“Hey, babe,” Owen said, looking up as I pulled out the chair across from him, “let me just send this last mail.”
I signalled to the waiter and ordered my usual late breakfast: scrambled eggs and avo, black double espresso, sparkling water. No toast. I stopped myself from taking a photo of the view; it was too postcard and everyone who comes to Eden Instagrams it, but it properly is no-filter Insta-worthy. Eden Café at the shopping mall at Big Bay in Bloubergstrand fronts right onto the promenade facing the sea. Bright blue skies today, the sea with enough swell for a decent bob of longboarders, a sprinkling of runners on the promenade speeding up as they ran past those of us stuffing our faces. Run on, bitches, I wanted to say to them, I’ve already done my ten thousand steps for the day.
“Sorry, nearly done. Steve checking some of the business sale details with me,” Owen said, eyes glued again to his phone.
Around us, the café was full, the good weather and Fri-Yay-ness bringing them all out: moms and prams, inactive housewives in their active wear, businessmen having meetings that looked just like regular breakfast. That’s when I saw them, sitting a couple of tables away with the two silver suitcases. It was impossible not to notice them. Impossible unless you were on your phone, like Owen; and impossible if you can’t ignore skinny blondes, like me.
Two too-perfect blondes. Between them two shiny silver hard-shell suitcases