‘What, Dad?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘It’s just . . . unexpected. That’s all.’
‘Our daughter has been doing some very unexpected things lately,’ my mom said, making a beeline for Andrew. ‘I’m Wendy.’ She held her hand out for Andrew to shake, but he didn’t move. Instead, he gaped at her open-mouthed.
‘Get Wed with Wendy?’ he asked.
‘That’s me.’ She thrust her hand into Andrew’s outstretched one. Mind you, there wasn’t really that much of a hand left any more. Her big rings and long fake nails swallowed up her fingers, so she was mostly just a moisturized palm.
‘Get Wed with Wendy,’ he repeated again, as if he needed to say it twice in order to believe it.Get Wed with Wendywas a long-running reality TV show in which my mom organized weddings for couples in less than a month. It was one of those TV shows that should not have been as popular as it was, but thanks to my mother’s personality and her witty one-liners, which had become known as Wendyisms, like, ‘You can put a veil on a vulture, but that won’t make it a bride’ and ‘He’s only the best man if he sticks to the wedding plan’, it was huge. A television staple. Everyone knew it, and everyone knew her, and wherever we went people repeated her one-liners, or asked her to tell their husbands to ‘Take the cotton wool out their ears and shove it in their mouths!’ Somehow my mom had not only become a wedding planner but also a relationship-advice guru. Counselling the husband-and wife-to-be as they had inevitable fights and meltdowns in the stress leading up to their upcoming nuptials. Strangers stopped her in the street to ask marriage advice. I suppose she’s more than qualified, considering she’s been married to my dad for thirty-five years.
And then my dad stepped forward and extended his hand for Andrew to shake too. ‘Vernon Edwards,’ he said.
‘Vernon Edwards,’ Andrew repeated thoughtfully, letting the name roll off his tongue a few times. ‘Why do I know that name?’
‘My dad was the first plastic surgeon in South Africa to perform a successful full-face transplant.’
‘Oh, right!’ Andrew shook his hand and gazed at him in awe. ‘I remember that. It was all over the news. The young boy who was trapped in the burning building.’ The story had made headlines across the country for years, and everyone had followed the boy’s long recovery journey.
‘Tragic story.’ My mom stepped forward and placed a hand on my dad’s shoulder. ‘But Vern is such an incredible artist.’ With her free hand she pointed up at her nose, gave Andrew a little wink and then pursed her lips together in a ‘shhh’ sound. I scrutinized my parents; they weresonot like me. When I was younger, I’d spent hours wondering if I might have been adopted. I was not flamboyant like my mother, and I was not kind and compassionate like my father, who in all his online reviews is described as having the best bedside manner. But after confronting my parents one night about my ‘adoption’, they assured me that I was genetically theirs, and even pulled out the VHS birth tape. I declined to watch it though, even if I was curious. I suppose genetics is a role of the dice. You just never know what you’re going to get. And they got me, and I got them, and we all couldn’t be more different if we tried. Not that I was unhappy, not at all.
As we all walked into the house Andrew leaned over and whispered. ‘You didn’t tell me your mom was a TV star and your dad was a famous plastic surgeon.’
‘I didn’t think it was necessary.’
‘You didn’t think it was necessary to tell me that your family lives in a palace either?’
I stopped and looked at the house. ‘I would hardly call this a palace.’
‘I think our definitions of “palace” are very different.’
‘Well, you didn’t think it was necessary to tell me you had two moms and ten thousand brothers and sisters.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said with a smile.
The further into the house we went, the more I started seeing it through Andrew’s eyes. Itwasrather palace-like. The foyer was probably half the size of Andrews parents’ house and as shiny as the Taj Mahal. Although my parents were “old money”, they both came from wealth, my mother did not believe in being understated, like other “old money” families were. She shined like new money and wasn’t ashamed of it; as she always said, ‘Why have maple-wood panels, a dusty old library and antique Persian rugs when you can have Italian marble that shines like a mirror?’ Her heels clinked on the massive marble tiles as she walked towards the patio at the back of the house that overlooked the garden.
‘We’ll have a glass of champagne outside before dinner,’ she said, turning to us as. ‘I have a bottle of Moët chilling out there and ready for us.’
‘Fancy,’ Andrew whispered in my ear. When we reached the patio, Andrew let out a loud breath. ‘Wow, this is gorgeous,’ he said, looking out over the pool and gardens that sprawled out in front of us. It was summer, and the gardens always looked amazing at this time of year. And I’ll give my mother credit for that; she didn’t just palm it off to a garden service. Every weekend, she was on her hands and knees crawling through the dirt. She’d planted every single one of the brightly colored rose bushes that lined the flowerbeds and every one of the purple agapanthus that shot up out of the soil.
When I was younger, I used to sit next to her on the grass while she planted. I never got my hands dirty though. I hated the feel of soil on my hands, and gardening gloves were always too big for me. It was only when my mother adapted a pair of small winter gloves into gardening gloves that I was able to join in. I was the reason for the daffodils that came out every spring, and the clivias that peeped out from behind the oak tree in the corner of the garden.
‘My pride and joy,’ she said, ‘Well, apart from my Pippa, obviously.’
‘Mom.’ My cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
‘I’m so glad you could join us. I just couldn’t meet my daughter’s boyfriend for the first time at a family wedding. That wouldn’t be right,’ my mother said.
My stomach twisted when the word ‘boyfriend’ came out of her mouth. I knew this was what she’d wanted for so long, for me to have a boyfriend, and suddenly I felt bad. It hadn’t occurred to me, until this moment, how much our arrangement might impact those around us. At some point, this arrangement would run its course, it would come to an end, and that would affect my parents, and Andrew’s family too.
‘So Pippa tells me you’re a pilot,’ my dad said. ‘That must be a very stressful job. I imagine it evokes the same responsibility as being a surgeon. Having someone’s life in your hands – in your case, many lives?’
‘I suppose, like being a surgeon, it can also be equally rewarding. But I never feel too stressed, not when I have Pippa on the line to guide me to safety.’
I blushed again. Everyone was laying it on thick tonight, and I could see my mom was soaking it up, ‘oooh’ing and ‘aaah’ing at that statement.
‘So tell us how you met,’ my mom said. ‘Pippa hardly tells me anything. It’s like trying to get blood out of a stone . . .’ She turned to me to qualify. ‘I mean, it’s hard to get information out of you. You can’t get blood out of a stone.’
