“No, Queenie, my dress. He bought it for me, and I want to check that it’s okay.” I inspected the item in question, a barely describable plain black pinafore.
“Cassandra, are you losing your mind?” I asked, pulling her back down by the arm. “You look great, but it shouldn’t matter anyway. Calm down. He’ll get here and he’ll love what you’re wearing. Even if it is because he bought it. Which I think is weird.” I lowered my voice before I asked my next question. “Have you even had sex yet?” Cassandra jumped up as though I’d thrown a bomb under her bottom. All of the adults stopped talking and turned to look at us.
“We’re just going to get a drink!” she announced to the room, and pulled me into the kitchen. Jacob passed us on the way out, the tray seemingly attached to his hand now filled with steaming mini sausage rolls.
“Pork!” he said, tutting. “We’re terrible Jews, I know.” He groaned.
“Can you not talk about my relationship so crudely, Queenie?” Cassandra whispered, placing her phone face upward on the marble counter. “Things are going so well for me for the first time in ages, and, it’s not about sex, it’s about me getting to know someone, the connection.”
“Yes, yes, the connection, I know,” I mimicked her. “So you and this dream boyfriend, you haven’t had sex yet?”
“Can you get your mind out of the gutter?” she said, eyes on her phone.
“No, but sex is important, isn’t it?” I pointed out. “It’s the thing that stops you from just being friends with someone. Else we’d all marry our friends.”
Cassandra’s phone beeped and she lunged for it, almost smashing a group of wineglasses nearby. Her face fell. “He’s not coming.” She slammed the phone back down on the marble counter.
“Don’t break it!” I said. “That’s all right. We’ll have a good time either way!”
Jacob peered into the kitchen. “What’s going on in here, girls? Where is he, then, your lovely guy? We’re all waiting, Cassandra.”
“He’s stuck at work, Dad. He’s been asked to do another shift and he can’t say no.”
“Well, the field he’s in, it’s no wonder at this time of year. We’ll meet him another time, eh.” Jacob went over to Cassandra and put his arm around her. She laid her head on his shoulder.
“I’ll just go back into the living room,” I whispered, walking toward the kitchen door.
“No way, come on, Queenie.” Jacob held his other arm out and pulled me into him and Cassandra.
“Jacob, I don’t really like physical con—”
“Queenie, please, look beyond yourself,” Cassandra snapped, the harshness of her voice muffled by her dad’s sweater.
Jacob let us go after what felt like a lifetime and went back into the living room to continue his flitting.
“I decided that tonight was going to be the night,” Cassandra said, smoothing her dress down again.
“For what?”
“That I was going to sleep with him, Queenie!”
“Well, you still can, just after his shift? I feel like you’re making this bigger than it is?” I suggested, surprised that she was being like this. “It’s not like this is going to be your first time.”
“And I wanted him to meet everyone, I wanted this one to work.” Cassandra was starting to sound like a spoilt child.
“He will meet your family, and it will work, Cassandra!” I told her, not actually caring if what I said was true or not. “And it can be just the two of us tonight, like it has been for the past, what, seven years?”
“I don’t want it to be the two of us, Queenie, I wanted him here,” Cassandra snapped.
“Okay, well suit yourself,” I snapped back.
“Sorry, no offense.” She softened. “Look, I know you’re having a weird time of it with the Tom stuff, and it must be bringing up all sorts of mum abandonment stuff,” Cassandra dropped in the most blasé way possible, “and I do care, and yes I am worried about you, but it’s time to put me first.” Her words were so cutting; why did she never think before casually deploying such on-the-nose psychoanalysis?
* * *
After singing “Ma’oz Tzur,” a Hanukkah song I could never quite get the rhythm of, playing with the dreidel, and doing some prayer, I put my coat on to leave. Jacob came to the front door. “Breaks, breakups, they’re nasty business, but you’ll be okay,” he promised. “You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you? Try to eat what you can, keep your strength up. This won’t work”—he put a finger to my temple—“if this isn’t taken care of”—he poked my stomach with the same finger.
“Thanks, Jacob. Really,” I said, enduring a hug good-bye because I felt so fucking lonely. “This evening means a lot to me. Every year.”
“It wouldn’t be the same without you, Queenie,” Jacob said, handing over a Tupperware box bursting with food.
“Bye, Cassandra!” I called up into the house, my voice bouncing around the stone floors and high ceilings. I waited for a second. No response. Jacob leaned closer to me. “I think she’s taken to bed. She’s a little upset. I think she’s really into this one,” he whispered. “You know, it’s ages since she really connected with someone.”
I couldn’t even get my dad to text me back, let alone talk to him about my connections. Jealousy began to rise in me. Why didn’t I matter to any of the men who had run out of my life the first chance they could get? What made Cassandra so special that her dad, unlike mine, had an actual interest in her life? Walking down Seven Sisters Road to the Tube station, in a move that wouldn’t be worth Freud’s time to dissect, I called Guy. He didn’t answer, so I sent him a text.
Queenie
Come round?
He replied five seconds after I put my phone back in my pocket.
Guy
You home now? Shave your legs before I get there
When I got back, Guy was sitting on the wall outside my house.
“All right?” he said, hopping down from the wall.
I leaned in to kiss him and he stepped back.
“Steady on, I’m not your boyfriend.”
“I know you aren’t my boyfriend, and I don’t want you to be my boyfriend, but if you can have sex with me you can kiss me hello, surely,” I said sorely.
“Let’s not overcomplicate things,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and changed the subject. “Hey, what did Adam say to Eve the day before Christmas?” I stepped into my room and Guy followed, hands on my bottom.
“What? Who are they?” he said, throwing himself into the clothes chair and pushing clean laundry onto the floor as he removed his coat.
“You know, from the Bible,” I said.
“What? I dunno,” he said, pulling his boots off.
“It’s Christmas, Eve.” I smiled proudly.
“Is that a joke?” he sneered, pulling his sweater over his head.
“Well, yeah.” I sat on the bed and pulled my tights off, wondering at what point Guy and I had started this ritual of systematic undressing.
“That doesn’t make sense. Surely he’d say, ‘It’s Christmas Eve, Eve’?” Guy mansplained, walking over to me. “I’m too practical-minded for jokes, Queenie.” He reached down and stroked my leg from calf to thigh.
“Do you want to shave your legs now?” He nodded toward the bathroom.
“Um. Is it vital?”
“I just prefer it. I don’t mind your lady garden being bushy, but I don’t like the scratching on my face when I throw your legs over my shoulders.”
I pulled the rest of my outfit off and wrapped my hair with Guy’s eyes on me the entire time.
“You know the thing I like about black women?” he said, his eyes running from my hair to my feet. “Even when you’re big girls, it sits well. Sits nice on your hips and that. And your arse. You’re lucky.”
I left him on my bed and got into the shower, dutifully running the razor up my legs. When I came out, Guy was asleep in his boxers on top of the covers, lying on his side to face me. I stared at his eyelashes, thinking about how much money I could make if I sold them as a set of fake ones.
I looked at him for a while, remembering my first Christmas with Tom.