Every Day, in Every Way

Cadence stood at the prow of the boat, her feet anchored to the planked deck, pink toenails framed by the strap of her sandals, and the hem of her white linen skirt plastered to her ankles, her outfit sailesque in both its brilliance and its billowing in the wind. About her head, her hair twisted and snapped in exuberant tendrils, her sunhat long since consigned to the galley where she had queasily passed platters of prepared sandwiches, cut to resemble wheaten clams, up the short laddered steps half an hour earlier. Now, with a passing attempt to remain coquettish whilst also keeping her footing, she took up her command, raising her voice to battle the wind.

“Has everybody finished their food? Darlings? Have you finished your food? Has everyone….Children! Children, listen to Cadence!”

The hubbub at table continued. Nearest to her, one young face turned and stared directly into her eyes, but five others remained steadfastly engaged in other business, which was precisely what she had been attempting to forestall. At some point, one of the little brats had discovered that you could convincingly ice one of Cadence’s hand baked mermaid biscuits with a combination of masticated prawn and the cream for the strawberries, though Christ alone knows why you wouldn’t use the strawberries instead of the prawns. It was irrelevant anyway, no one was actually eating anything, except Lucas, who had thrown his breakfast up ten minutes after boarding and seemed to have eaten everything in sight ever since.

Cadence watched as Logan dribbled a pale pink paste directly onto a mermaid’s tail and tried again. “Children!” she bellowed.

Nothing. Well, next to nothing. Tomas again appeared to be interrogating her soul, his freakishly placid face turned expectantly toward her. She could hear the demure laughter of adults engaging in a civilised level of platonic flirting coming from the back of the boat, where Layla, Tony and Caroline were behaving like this was some kind of jolly for them and not a children’s birthday party at all. Noah and Sonja at least had the decency to stay where they could, theoretically at least, SEE their offspring, though at that moment James was doing a good job of ensuring that they didn’t actually bother to help in any way. She imagined that he was probably regaling them with golf stories, though by the look of amusement on their faces, perhaps not. Maybe the golf stories were saved specially for boring the hind legs of his own wife. She attempted to catch his eye, communicate to him with one look what Tomas had evidently already divined, that she was out of her depth and in need of back up, but when he looked her way, it was to smile and raise his glass in her direction like they were acquaintances at a soiree and not the parents of the fucking birthday boy.

“Children!” She was screaming now, a shriek, hoarse and raw, cutting through the wind, through the playlist she had spent the past month concocting, through the tinkle of polite adult chatter and the shrill squealing of the six little brats currently desecrating her nautically themed party lunch. Only the gulls outsquawked her, rakishly tilting in the sky above the boat, black eyes on the vanilla prawn biscuits below.

Last year, they had hired an entertainer and a marquee and she had made a Chocolate cake with Albie’s name and a big letter 9 on the top, and though Layla had said it was charming, and Caroline had said it was traditional, the children had all seemed to enjoy themselves, no one had thrown up and Albie had gone to bed happy. But ten was special, wasn’t it? Logan's parents had thrown a cowboy themed party with an actual cowboy and pony rides and a bucking bronco, and Topher’s party had started an hour later than expected when they all wanted to go on riding in the limousine rather than get out at the ballroom. Cadence put her absolute lack of any recollection of her own tenth birthday party down to a lack of drive on her parents' part, and not a result of the relative insignificance of the day, and when James, having agreed that it would be nice to do something special, suggested they hire the golf clubroom, she recognised that it would be down to her to come up with something splendid.

Cadence stared at the side of her husband’s head and wanted to smack it. Not with her hand, she abhorred violence of any sort. With some kind of compression wave of vitriol. At the edge of her field of vision she saw Lucas extend a knife towards the artfully curled leg of the octopus cake she had spent seven hours on the previous day, and something snapped. Kicking off her sandals, she mounted the guardrail, straddling it so as to grip the metal between her knees, and with eighteen extra inches this afforded her, arrested the boat.

“STOP!”

Finally, nine faces turned her way, and at the back of the boat, three voices fell silent. Lucas dropped the knife.

“Do you have ANY idea how long that cake took me? No? No. Of course you don’t. You have no idea how long any of this took me have you. Have you? Do you know how much this boat cost, to hire for the day? Because they wouldn’t let us have it just for three hours, oh no, had to be the whole fucking day didn’t it. Sorry. The whole day. You know why? Cleaning.” Even the wind seemed to have paused now, and the gulls had retreated to a safer altitude, but Cadence had finally gained some sort of control over the party. “Do any of you even know HOW to clean? Just throwing your food around like it’s going to magically disappear as soon as it hits the floor?” She could see James still not getting it now, sense him preparing to lift the wine bottle he’d been pouring so liberally from and pretend to examine the alcohol content so everyone would know she’d been drinking. Funnily enough, she hadn’t. She wondered, briefly, if she were the only sober adult on board.

“Do you know how hard I have worked to pull off this party? Do you even care? A boat! We are on a fucking BOAT. What does it take to impress kids these days? We are on a fucking boat and your kids are spitting on biscuits!” She was addressing the parents now that they were all there, crammed onto the foredeck. Was it called a foredeck? She had always quite liked boats, found them calming. Freeing. “I have worked my ARSE off to pull off this party and no one gives a shit do they? No! Don’t come over here and try to calm me down James, if you wanted to help you could have buttered a sodding sandwich, and as for you Albie Whitman.” Albie looked aghast, his still rounded cheeks flushed crimson and his eyes as wide as the ocean behind him. “Did I hear ONE thank you? No. I want, I have to have, get me this, it has to have that.” Here she adopted a mockery of the whine of a petulant child, a minor adjustment deep in her throat. “Do you even know I exist? Do you know I am even an actual person? With feelings?” Somewhere in her brain, some observing part of her felt a sudden irritation that the soundtrack to this moment was being provided by Ricky Martin. She wondered why she had thought ‘She Bangs’ was an appropriate song for a children’s party, and then wondered how it was that even in the middle of a tirade, she was still able to wonder that.

“Cay, darling, I think perhaps….”

“James, if you were going to think at all, perhaps you could have thought ten minutes ago and realised your wife might have benefitted from a bit of back up.”

“Darling, I’m sorry, I was…..”

“Dazzling the company with your wit and charm? I saw. Well I wouldn’t bother, if these children are anything to go by, it’s not something they’re too concerned with anyway. I’ve eaten with monkeys with better table manners.” Cadence realised as she said it that she had never eaten with monkeys, but she was not in a state of mind for retraction of any sort. “You know what? I’ve had it. I am sick and tired of being the dogsbody around here. I am sick of you lot looking down on me." She shifted her attention from the general to the particular at this point, singling out first one and then the other of the men in her life. "I am sick of you leaving every damn job to me and then looking like the fun one, and I am sick of you treating me like a servant. I’m your fucking MOTHER and I deserve some respect!”

Thankfully, She Bangs finished, and in the pause between songs, all noise retreated like the sea before a tsunami. From the silence, as the sound of an ethereal choir swelled about them, so too did the sea, lifting the prow of the boat into the blue sky, where Cadence hovered for a moment, in angelic white, hair like medusa above them all. For a second, half a second, she felt power fizz through her limbs like electricity, and she saw the change, twelve stricken faces, transfixed. Well, she had broken the rules now! Then the nose of the boat plunged, her stern rising as the swell passed beneath, and with horror, those twelve faces watched as Cadence vanished from the prow, a magician in her final trick.

Cadence had time for four thoughts, as she plummeted from her perch. First she saw, with sudden horror, that Albie would grow up believing he had been responsible for his own mother’s death. Secondly, she realised that she did not want to die, but was likely to none the less. Thirdly, she wondered whether Like a Prayer was perhaps even less appropriate than She Bangs, and fourthly, she marvelled at the brain’s capacity for banality even on the brink of catastrophe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following year, James paid a caterer, and got a partial refund when Albie’s name was misspelt on the cake. Albie didn’t notice, at first, he was busy counting his presents for the fourth time, but Tomas pointed it out. Lucas was not present, and the cake was cut with all due ceremony. Candles were lit, Happy Birthday was sung, and Cadence, the generous sleeves of her Kaftan wafting dangerously close to the flames, placed the cake on the table in front of her son, standing back to let him make his wish.

Later, when the guests had gone and the caterers were packing up, she lay stretched on the chaise, one knee bent, her head on a pillow that matched her eyes, scrolling through her phone. She chose the picture she wanted, the one where Albie stood with puckered lips, about to blow, and behind him, the glow of candles lent an impression of profound maternal love to her face. She fiddled for a while, choosing between filters, and then posted. “So proud of this generous, thoughtful boy, 11 today and the kindest boy in the world.”