He tells me about his daughter, Willow. She’s eighteen, like he told us at the reunion – the result of a university fling. But from the sound of things, she’s the joy of his life and he’s very proud of her. He kind of swells up a bit when he talks about her. He doesn’t talk about his subsequent failed marriage.
I tell him about Django. How much I love him, how quirky he is. I touch on the fact that he’s not easy, but I’m careful not to harp on about it. I don’t talk about Travis. I know that he’s curious. Joshua asks me if it was hard after Travis died, and I say that it was complicated, and then comment on the food. He tries again once, asking if Django asks about Travis, and I say, ‘Yes’, and then ask him what Willow is studying. He smiles wryly at that; I can see he’s got the point. We’re not going to be talking about Travis. I imagine he puts it down to my great heartbreak. That’s fine.
We talk about everything – politics, religion – all the things you’re told not to mention on a first date. We agree on the big things; we disagree on a few minor points. But it’s a pleasant type of disagreement; a conversation, where he makes interesting points and he is interested in my points, and we never get angry with each other. It’s like talking to Stacey. Or my dad. Only better, because when he wants to make a point, he touches my hand. And his eyes get this intense look, like he wants to eat me up with his dim sum; it’s not unpleasant to be looked at like that. It makes me lose track of what he’s saying and smile stupidly.
I don’t plan to, but I tell him about what I found out about my mom. It makes sense, because he was at the reunion when I blurted out that I wasn’t sure what had happened any more. So he’s surprised, but he said he sort of knew that it must be something like that. He’s sympathetic and seems to completely understand the strange cocktail of excitement and fear and anger that I feel.
‘Will you try to find her?’ he asks, which is indeed the question that has buzzed around my head, incessantly, since I spoke to my father. Will I try to find her? I don’t know, and I tell Joshua this.
He nods.
‘It could be upsetting,’ he says. ‘You must be tempted to let sleeping dogs lie.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘But let’s not talk about it now. It’s hardly a cheerful topic.’
Joshua seems to understand and changes the subject.
We talk so much, and keep ordering more to eat, and eventually you can tell that the waiters just want us to go home so they can close up. When the bill comes, Joshua reaches for it. I take out my card, but he says, ‘This one is definitely on me, okay.’ I like that he’s paid. Firstly, I know that even though he works for an NGO, he clearly earns a whole heap more than I do. Secondly, I actually am a bit old-fashioned about it and I think the guy should pay for the first date. Or maybe I think the person who did the asking should pay. It’s the sort of point I’d like to debate with Joshua, and I almost say something, but I bite it back. But I also like the way he hasn’t said, ‘You pay next time.’ ‘You pay next time’ would have meant that I felt obliged to see him again, and I like that he isn’t taking that for granted. And it would have meant that I absolutely would have had to pay next time, even if he asked me and chose an expensive place.
So I smile, and put my card away and say, ‘Thank you.’
Joshua smiles. ‘I like that you didn’t make that into a big drama,’ he says. ‘I hate the credit-card tussle that sometimes happens.’
‘It’s the worst,’ I say. And there’s a weird moment when our eyes meet.
‘So,’ he says once he’s paid. ‘I know you Ubered here and I know that I am very dodgy, but any chance I could give you a lift home?’
‘Well,’ I say, pretending to think about it. ‘There’s no getting around how dodgy you are.’
‘True.’
‘Are your intentions honourable?’
‘Definitely not.’
I laugh. ‘You know my dad will be waiting for me, right?’
‘I’m great with dads.’ He smiles. I’m sure he is.
‘Ah, well,’ I say. ‘I guess I’ll take my chances.’
His car is nice. It confirms what I know: that Joshua’s doing okay. But it’s not something pretentious, like a red Porsche. It would have been so bad to like him so much and then hit a deal-breaker, like a red Porsche. Travis longed for a red Porsche.
When we get back to my house, we’re laughing at something he has said as he pulls up at the kerb, and we both abruptly stop. We look at each other.
‘Here we are,’ I say. And then, because I’m suddenly nervous, ‘Home sweet home.’
‘Let me walk you in,’ says Joshua.
‘You really don’t want to meet my dad,’ I say. ‘Especially as he’s probably fast asleep on the couch.’
‘I really do want to meet him,’ says Joshua. ‘But it doesn’t have to be now. Maybe next time.’
‘Okay,’ I say. I feel warm inside. There’s going to be a next time.
We sit for a moment, unsure what to do.
‘I’ll walk you to the door. Like a boy in a movie,’ he says, and gets out before I can argue.
I open my door before he can get round and open it for me, because I would find that excruciating.
The thing about living in Johannesburg is that there’s no front door like in the movies. There’s the garden, and the garden gate. And he can’t walk me to the front door, because then I’ll just have to turn around and let him out the garden again. So actually, he can just walk me across the pavement to my gate.
‘Thanks for keeping me safe on that very long and dangerous journey,’ I say, after we stride across the small patch of grass in two steps.
‘You never know what danger lurks,’ says Joshua. I like that he is as nervous as I am.
‘So,’ he says.
‘So,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘I don’t know how to do this. They make it look so easy in the movies.’
I take a step closer, so that I’m standing right near him. ‘Does this help?’ I ask, looking up at him. I really like that I have to look up at him.
‘That helps a great deal,’ he says, slipping his arms around me, and leaning down.
Our lips meet, and his are warm and dry, and he tastes slightly of the Asian dumplings we have eaten, and slightly of red wine. I part my lips, and we kiss. ‘Properly’ as we might have said at school. It feels better than anything has felt in a very long time.
‘Can I see you again soon?’ he says as we pull apart.
‘I’d like that.’
We kiss again, and then I let myself in through the gate. I turn and wave through the iron bars. Joshua has a big smile on his face. I suspect that I do too. I suspect that this is the beginning of something. But with my history, I can’t help wondering how it will end.
Chapter 14
My life takes on a strange type of rhythm. I see April and I see Joshua, and I feel closer and closer to both of them. And underneath that, I worry about what to do about my mother.
April and I start with play dates. She brings her kids to my house first. Her son is the same age as Django, and they first do that thing that young boys do, where they circle each other like dogs, sniffing, trying to figure out who is top dog. I can tell how this will end: Django is never top dog; Zach can take the spot. But there’s an uneasy tension. This part is normally quick – boy children have an almost animal sense about it. But Zach and Django are struggling. They kick at the dirt, and don’t make eye contact, and eventually I announce that we will put on a DVD, and they both nod.
Little Doreen – ‘Reenie’ – isn’t sure where she fits in with this, and to be honest, neither am I. First she hangs on to April’s legs, and eventually I produce some paper and crayons, which delight her.
‘What a great idea, Mary,’ says April, even though it seems like Parenting 101 to me. When Django was four, we never went anywhere without a bag full of doing things. Reenie draws for a bit, and then tiger-crawls into the TV room to watch TV with the boys. April and I sit outside on my small veranda
.
‘Doreen’s not a name one hears a lot any more,’ I say. ‘I like it.’
Actually, I don’t. It makes me think of mothballs and purple perms.
‘Oh God,’ says April. ‘I hate it. It’s Leo’s gran’s name. We had to do it. That’s why we call her Reenie. Poor thing.’
‘It’s unusual,’ I say. ‘And as you may have gathered from Django’s name, I like unusual.’
April smiles. ‘True,’ she says. ‘I’d never thought of it like that.’
We talk a bit about names. Names we considered for our kids, names we like, names we don’t like. Strange names that other people have given kids. We agree a lot. We both hate it when twins have matchy-matchy names. We both like unusual names, but also the old classics. We both hate strange spelling of classic names.
‘Jason spelt with a “y”,’ says April, ‘actually makes all the hairs on my body stand up.’
We laugh a lot.
‘Did you come up with a business idea?’ I ask her during the first play date.
She shrugs. ‘Oh, you know how it is,’ she says, waving her hands towards her kids. And of course, I do know. But I also did manage to come up with a real idea for a novel, one that I think is good. I came up with it because I knew we’d talk about it, but she doesn’t ask me, so I don’t say anything. Instead, I say, ‘Well, let’s brainstorm what jobs you might like now’, and she looks so pleased, so I get some paper and we make a list. But she’s not really into it, and eventually we put it aside, because a conversation about different schools has taken over, as is so often the case with mothers.
This becomes the pattern to our visits after that. We’ll talk a bit about her job challenges, and she’ll start off excited and then kind of fizzle out. I guess I have to accept that she isn’t really that interested in finding a job, or something to do. But something about that – about her inability to bring change – makes me work on that novel idea. Just a few hundred words every day, before I go to bed. But it starts to grow. I feel a quiet sense of satisfaction, which I tell only Joshua about.
Joshua.
Joshua and I appear to be dating. Dating. Just the word makes me laugh. When I tell April about it, some weeks after it started, when I feel more like it’s real, she also laughs when I say ‘dating’. I love that we find the same odd things funny. I don’t have friends who share my quirky sense of humour. Stacey tells me to be careful, that men are the devil.
Joshua and I see each other about twice a week. And he texts me and phones me every day. But not in a needy way, which April and I agree is important. I leave Django with my dad, or Nelly occasionally, and sometimes he stays at Stacey’s. Django doesn’t love this, but he likes Joshua. Once or twice, we’ve actually taken Django with us – to a movie, or to a restaurant that he might like. Joshua is perfect with him. He doesn’t overwhelm him with overt friendship attempts, and he doesn’t touch me when Django is around. He chats to Django, bringing my taciturn son out of his shell. They even have a special handshake.
And with all this ‘dating’ going on, I obviously couldn’t avoid Joshua meeting my dad.
When I was at school, my dad wasn’t one of those ‘I will kill you if you date my daughter’ fathers. Maybe he should have been. I think he felt that he had to be nice because of me not having a mom. But the fact of the matter is I have really bad taste in men; and my dad has had to bail me out of awkward situations more than once. So I guess he feels he’s kind of earned the right to be a strict dad character, like something out of the Fifties, because that’s the treatment poor Joshua gets. That first time, my dad opens the door like he owns my house, and like Joshua is there to take me to my school dance or something. And then as Joshua reaches out a hand to greet him, my dad kind of turns and ignores him and walks into the TV room where Django is lying on the floor reading with the cat sitting in the small of his back.
‘Howzit, Django, bud,’ says Joshua.
‘So,’ says my dad. ‘You’ve met Django.’ He makes it sound like an accusation.
‘Two days ago, sir,’ says Joshua. I don’t know if that ‘sir’ was natural or if my dad scared it out of him.
‘Django’s a good kid,’ says my dad, like Django isn’t there. ‘A good boy.’
‘He certainly seems to be,’ says Joshua. ‘I only have a daughter, so I don’t know boys. Looking forward to getting to know Django.’
‘A daughter?’ says my dad, even though I have briefed him on all this.
‘Yes, sir,’ says Joshua. ‘Eighteen years old. Light of my life.’
Suddenly my dad starts to laugh. ‘Does she date, Joshua?’
‘She does. I hate it.’
‘So usually you’re the oke doing the tough-guy act at the door?’
‘Totally,’ says Joshua. ‘I’m actually mentally taking notes on how to do it. I have a feeling I’m not scary enough.’
‘Oh Lord,’ says my dad. ‘I’m not scary enough. You should see the losers I failed to chase off.’
‘Dad . . .’ I clear my throat and eye Django. The last thing we need is a rant about Travis.
‘Anyhow,’ says my dad.
‘Anyhow,’ I say.
‘Time for a beer before you leave?’ says my dad.
Joshua smiles. ‘Does that mean I’ve passed?’
Dad laughs. ‘Well, what choice do I have, really? You know how it is.’
We didn’t end up going anywhere that night. They had such a good time chatting that eventually I ordered pizzas, and we all ate them together, and at the end of the evening, Django said, ‘Best date ever’, and Joshua said, ‘I have to agree.’
But there is, of course, one glaring problem amongst all this camaraderie and babysitting and shared pizzas. And that is the small problem of sex. Our goodnight kisses have got deeper and longer, and we stand on the pavement groping each other like teenagers. But we can’t go in, and I can’t sleep over at his place and leave my dad. So we don’t know what to do.
I can’t believe how badly I want him; how much my body aches for him. It must have once been like this with someone, somewhere in my past – but I don’t know who. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I was never forced to hold back. It feels both amazing and awful at the same time.
Eventually, it’s my dad who solves the problem.
‘So,’ he says, phoning one Friday morning. ‘I’m not going to come over to babysit tonight.’
‘Dad, you promised,’ I say. Joshua is taking me to the theatre. I haven’t seen a play for years. Travis thought the theatre was for sissies. I start calculating what I can do.
‘Nope,’ says my dad. ‘Not coming over. Django is coming to my place. You and Joshua can drop him on the way. And here’s the thing: he’ll be sleeping over. And I will take him to his cricket game on Saturday morning and then bring him back to yours.’
I’m on the phone, but I’m blushing. My dad is the best.
‘Thanks, Daddy,’ I say.
‘Well,’ he says, in his flat way. ‘Have to, don’t I? The neighbours will be complaining about the pavement snogging soon, so they will.’
I want the ground to open up and suck me in. But not so much that I’m going to argue.
I text Joshua.
Django is sleeping at my dad’s tonight.
He replied: Does that mean what I hope it means?
I squirm, half with desire, half with awkwardness. God, who knew that dating in one’s late thirties would be so awkward. Surely we should have it all sorted by now?
Eventually I settle on the only answer that I can think of.
Yes.
Chapter 15
After that first night, my dad and I agree that it won’t actually matter if Joshua sleeps over when Django is home.
‘Just, you know, be careful,’ says my dad.
‘Of what?’ I tease him. ‘Pregnancy?’
He goes pale. ‘Oh Lord, I hope you’re being careful about that,’ he says. ‘I guess I mean about Django walking in or something. And also, you know, big pic
ture. Don’t let the little guy get hurt.’
April and I talk about how I should tell Django that Joshua might sleep over sometime. We debate the merit of just surprising him with a Joshua in my bed one morning, versus having a chat.
‘A chat,’ says April. ‘For sure. You need to make him feel safe and loved. So important. And that it doesn’t mean that you didn’t love his dad.’
I phone Stacey too, and ask her. ‘Listen, love,’ she says. ‘I’m the last person you should ask about this. There’ve been times my bed has been like Jo’burg station. I can’t point fingers at anyone.’
‘What did you tell Aiden?’
‘Very little.’ She laughs. ‘But Aiden’s more robust than Django. You should have a proper talk with Django, I reckon.’
I agree with her, but I’m not sure how I feel about her characterisation of Django. She could’ve been more tactful, I think.
As it turns out, Django is not that interested.
‘So, love,’ I say one evening when we are cuddled on the couch watching TV together after supper. ‘How would you feel about Joshua staying over sometimes?’
‘Like for a sleepover?’ says Django.
‘Yup,’ I say. ‘That something that would be okay with you?’
‘Like when Stacey and Aiden stay?’
‘Kinda.’
‘That’s cool,’ says Django. ‘Are you going to kiss in your room when I’m asleep?’
‘We might.’
‘Okay. Is he your boyfriend now?’
‘I think so,’ I say.
Joshua and I haven’t really said those words – boyfriend, girlfriend – and I’m so out of the loop I don’t really know how it works any more. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be exclusive, or even if that’s a word. It’s such a minefield. I’d be heartbroken if I found out he was seeing anyone else, but I don’t know if that’s acceptable. I’m too embarrassed to ask April about any of this, but Stacey is full of advice.
‘You need to talk it through,’ she says. ‘Nothing is how it used to be, so the best thing to do is just spell out what you’re expecting and then he can tell you if he’s on the same page.’
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