Simone
SIMONE
T oday was Simone’s birthday.
Weeks ago, she’d made the decision to ignore it, to treat turning thirty like any other day. It was a Saturday so there was no school, and she spent the morning making pancakes with a mountain of whipped cream and an aesthetic cascade of blue and red berries.
Birthdays had always been a big occasion in the Beduah household, and Simone’s parents had taught their children early never to lament age.
At one of Jenni’s birthday dinners, she had confessed, in a voice heavy with grief, that she wasn’t ready to turn twenty-five. Their father leaned back in his seat and said, “You know, I once knew a man…”
Simone and Jenni both rolled their eyes as their father looked up at the ceiling, clasping his hands across his chest; he was famed for beginning his cautionary tales with someone he once knew.
“He was also twenty-four years of age,” their father continued, peering over his rectangular glasses at Jenni, “and the morning before he turned twenty-five, he cried to God and said, ‘Time is going too fast. I don’t want to be twenty-five yet.’ Two hours later he was hit by a bus and died.
God answered his prayer. The man did not want to turn twenty-five and so now he is twenty-four forever.
” Their father ended this tale by popping a palmful of assorted nuts into his mouth while the mouths of his daughters hung open.
Usually, their father’s parables involved a man who got a C in a maths test and had to work in McDonald’s for the rest of his life, or someone who chose not to listen to their parents on one occasion and was now addicted to heroin. Rarely did they end in sudden death.
“Dad,” Jenni gasped. “That’s grim!”
He simply shrugged in response. “It was a sad story indeed.”
Having recovered from the initial shock, Simone narrowed her eyes. “Is it a true story?”
“Of course it’s a true story,” their father said. “Everything I say is true. Otherwise I am a liar.”
“Mum,” Jenni said in the direction of their mother entering the room with the final dish of food. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” she asked.
“Dad said he knew a man who—”
“Yes,” their mother said. “It is true.”
Their parents laughed and high-fived one another.
“Listen, girls,” their father said while their mother took a seat beside him, “somewhere in the world there is a dictionary where, when you look under the word teamwork , my and your mother’s faces are there!”
Simone smiled at the memory, but she could also hear her dad’s voice reminding her that many people never made it to thirty, and a sad truth was that many more never would.
Each year was an accomplishment, each decade an even bigger one.
Their family birthday cakes rarely said happy birthday on them, but rather congratulations .
Birthday tradition was an evening consisting of dinner, drinks, games, and presents.
Her father loved a pointy party hat strapped at the chin, and her mother enjoyed a sparkler even though she always worried it would set off the fire alarm.
Jenni would spend the evening rolling her eyes at them all, but the family knew she’d told her friends her birthday was on the first instead of the second day of August, just so she’d always be available to come home.
This year, Simone had told herself not to expect anything in order to have the upper hand against disappointment, but telling yourself something and believing it won’t always coincide.
Simone still kept her phone within reaching distance and repeatedly checked that it was off vibrate with the ringer turned all the way up.
After breakfast she went for a walk that turned into a jog before descending into a downhill run. All the while, she was waiting for her phone to ping with a message, any message. Anything to quieten her mind from its loud replay of her last dinner at home.
Dominic’s words reverberated around the Beduah’s entry hall. “You fuck men for money, too?”
“Dominic,” Jenni finally said, looking up at him, “why would you say that?”
During the silence, Dominic had realized his error—that Jenni had no idea what he was talking about; that when she said she worked with her sister, she meant that she had been a teaching assistant at Simone’s school—and that his words now warranted explanation.
It was also dawning on him that his outburst had revealed him as a guilty party, too.
Eventually, he found his voice. “Nothing, no, what I meant…” Dominic garbled, his frantic eyes sweeping the room, but studiously avoiding Simone’s. “I don’t… what I said was mad. It was nothing.”
With the right line, Simone could possibly chime in and fool her parents: It was a crude joke masquerading as an icebreaker; this was all a case of mistaken identity; those words mean something else to the youth of today.
But Jenni?
Simone hadn’t fixed her face quickly enough when Jenni turned to look at her, and Jenni’s expression wasn’t one of judgment, disbelief, or anger—it was one of heartbreak. Simone knew then that she wouldn’t be able to lie; that in that moment, she didn’t have it in her to do so.
The only secret Simone had ever kept from Jenni was her job as an escort—not because she feared her sister’s reaction, but because Simone didn’t want to burden her with information she would have to withhold from their parents.
“You’ve slept together,” Jenni said quietly, watching her boyfriend’s face for the answers his tongue refused to provide. “Recently?” she asked, and Dominic’s face told her everything. Jenni snatched her arm out from his. “While we’ve been together!”
Simone had to stop her run and rest her back against a nearby tree. She didn’t mean to sink to the ground, but that is where she found herself, crying, the hour she turned thirty.
By the time Simone returned home, she felt much better.
The long, hard cry had cleansed her, giving her a borderline euphoric feeling.
She knew it would not last so she planned to make the most of it.
She took a shower, put on her favorite gray pajamas, ordered a takeaway that would last her three meals (okra tempura, sweet potato croquettes, yam coins, king prawns, and red snapper), and settled in front of her TV fire with a Scrabble board.
Back home, Simone always won at Scrabble.
Her dad was usually just a few points behind, and she sometimes wondered if he’d lose to her on purpose, but Jenni and her mother would always trail miserably, complaining that Simone was a teacher so of course she won the game.
As a housewarming gift to herself, she’d bought a Scrabble board and got used to setting up two-player games and simply alternating. Was it the same as playing against another person? No. Would it do for now? It would.
So, Simone sat on her living room floor and set the game up on her coffee table.
She drew a line down the page of a notebook dedicated to keeping score and wrote player 1 and player 2 as headers.
Simone’s first word as player 1 was SHIP and as player 2 she built on that and spelled RIGOR.
Before Simone could spell RIDE as player 1, there was a knock on her door.
She immediately questioned the supposed freshness of a meal that could be cooked and delivered in under twenty minutes.
But when she opened the door, it was Remy, holding a white bakery box.
“Oh, you’re in? Crap. Hang on, then.” Remy passed the box to a bewildered Simone, pulled candles out of one pocket and a lighter from the other, lit the candles, dug them into the cake, and took the box back.
She then proceeded to sing “Happy Birthday” off-key.
“Remy, what are you doing here?”
“It’s your birthday,” she answered. “So… I brought you a cake.” She looked down at the flickering candles. “Make a wish.”
Simone swallowed hard and closed her eyes before blowing the candles out. When she opened them again, Remy cheered.
“I assumed I would be leaving it on your doorstep with a note.” Remy took in Simone’s pajamas. “You’re not busy today?”
“No. Would you… like to come in?”
Remy stepped inside, removed her shoes, and placed the cake in Simone’s kitchen before surveying the scene. “You’re playing Scrabble in your pajamas. At one PM , on your birthday?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.” Simone braced herself for follow-up questions, but Remy had only one.
“Can I play?”
“Oh. You want to join?”
Remy slipped off her jacket. “If I’m not intruding. Maybe you want to be alone today? I know you’re into that kind of thing.”
Simone stood in the kitchen watching Remy. She wanted to say she loved being alone but that wasn’t the question Remy had asked. The truth was, she knew as soon as she’d woken up that no, she did not want to spend her thirtieth birthday alone. She simply thought she had to.
“You can stay,” Simone said. “I have food on the way.”
Remy motioned toward the cake box. “Since you’re a foodie, I didn’t want to settle for the typical vanilla or chocolate cake,” she explained. “But then I panicked and I might have gone a bit rogue.”
“I doubt there’s such a thing—cake is cake, after all,” Simone assured.
“To this day, my favorite slice has always been a peanut-butter, treacle, and date cake. I once had a cupcake with blackberry jam and lemongrass custard. It was very disappointing. I do typically enjoy lemongrass as a flavor but think it should be reserved exclusively for savory foods.” Once again, Simone had embarked upon another food-related tangent.
“What flavor did you choose in the end?” she asked, lifting the lid off the cake box.
Remy hesitated. “Spiced apple and miso caramel.”
Simone turned to face her. Almost breathless she said, “That sounds perfect.”
Remy broke out into a large smile. “Doesn’t it! I considered buying a six-inch one just for myself, but I made myself a promise never to do that again.”
Simone’s lips twitched when she asked, “Again?”