Three Wishes (16 page)

The sounds of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” floated up the stairs, and Kara winced painfully. “Oh no.” She clattered down the stairs, two at a time, yelling out, “Dad! Stop embarrassing yourself! Turn it off!”

Cat followed her, wondering if that mosquito bite thing happened to Lyn, or herself. Oh well. The year she turned thirty she had finally made peace with her breasts.

Gemma, Nana Kettle, and Frank were sitting around Lyn’s kitchen table shelling prawns and drinking champagne. The three of them all had tinsel bows tied around their heads, which were no doubt Gemma’s creations.

“I wish you’d all go outside on the balcony,” Lyn was saying.

“We’re helping you,” said Gemma.

“You’re not. You’re annoying me.”

Frank stood up and grabbed Cat around the waist, swinging her around.

“There you are! The mother-to-be! Happy Christmas, angel! Sit
down and put your feet up. That’s what you do when you’re pregnant. I hope Dan knows that. I hope he’s waiting on you hand and foot. I’ll have to have a word with him.” He sat her down in his chair and began to pull at her protesting feet to put them on the table.

“Not on the food!” warned Nana.

Lyn said, “I’m sure you waited on Mum hand and foot when she was pregnant, Dad.”

The doorbell rang. “That will be Charlie,” Gemma happily popped a peeled prawn into her mouth. “He’s come to let you look at him.”

Lyn said, “Could you please stop eating the prawns!”

“Oh. Isn’t that what they’re for?”

“Why don’t we ask this Charlie fellow to take a look at the air conditioning?” Nana fanned herself with a napkin.

“He’s a locksmith, Nana.”

“I expect he’s handy, though. That’s our problem. None of the men here are at all
handy.”

“Gemma!” Maxine came into the kitchen followed by a man and woman. “Your friend is here.”

“Everyone! This is
Charlie
!” Gemma waved her champagne glass rapturously and threw an arm around his shoulder.

He was a stocky man with a barrel chest, exactly the same height as Gemma. She hadn’t mentioned he was short. Sort of attractive, thought Cat, for a short man. She leaned forward as she shook his hand to check out the famous eyelashes. They looked perfectly ordinary to her.

“And this is my sister,” Charlie said to the room. “Her Vee-dub conked out this morning. So I’m the designated driver to our family lunch.”

Cat turned her attention to the sister. She had long dark hair
scraped back off her face and a red T-shirt with a scooped neckline, revealing the cupped together curves of a luscious cleavage. She was beautiful. Model beautiful. She was also familiar.

“Hi.” She smiled. There was a buzzing sensation in Cat’s ears.

“I’m Angela.”

Lyn had appeared from nowhere to rest her hand gently on Cat’s shoulder.

“Hi, Angela,” said Gemma, and as her smile slid away from her face, her champagne glass slid from her hand to shatter on the floor.

I have mosquito bites for breasts, thought Cat.

Lyn’s Christmas Day
started in the gray half-light of 5
A.M
. when she woke to see a pair of unblinking brown eyes only inches away from her own. Maddie was standing next to their bed, sucking her thumb, staring at Lyn as if she were hypnotized. It gave Lyn such a fright she banged her elbow on the bedside table.

“Shit!” She sat up straight, cradling her elbow. “How long have you been there? You’re not meant to wake up for three hours yet!”

Maddie carefully unplugged her mouth and began to wail.

Michael woke up, instantly alert and cheery. He lifted his head from his pillow to observe Maddie. “Someone looking for Santa Claus?”

“She’s too young for Santa Claus. She hates him, remember?”

“Merry Christmas to you too.”

“I hurt my elbow.”

“Ah.”

He threw back the quilt and walked around the bed to pick up Maddie. Lyn watched his long skinny brown body in the Mickey Mouse boxer shorts Kara had given him for his fortieth. He had a new haircut—it made his head look smaller, shorn and vulnerable, like a schoolboy who got teased on the bus.

“Mummy hurt her elbow,” he said to Maddie. “Did you hurt your elbow too?”

Maddie stopped crying and nodded her head tragically, pointing her finger at her own elbow.

Michael was delighted. “Did you see that?”

“She’s a little liar,” said Lyn proudly.

Michael climbed back into bed with Maddie in his arms and tucked her in the middle of them.

“She won’t sleep,” said Lyn.

“Your mummy is a pessimist.”

But within minutes the three of them were sound asleep, Lyn and Michael curled on their sides facing Maddie, who lay flat on her back, star-shaped, a thumb-sucking sunbaker.

It seemed like only seconds later when the strident demands of the telephone woke them. Lyn answered it, her mind fuzzily clutching at a dream.

“You weren’t asleep, were you?” Maxine’s voice was tinny with distress. “It’s nearly
nine o’clock.”

“It’s not. Is it?” Lyn was remembering her dream in alarming detail. She was eating mangoes, naked, in a bath with…with…with
Hank.

Sticky. Sweet. Slippery. His tongue circling her nipple.

Oh dear. She’d been sleeping with her husband and daughter on Christmas morning and having erotic dreams about an ex-boyfriend. She looked at Michael, who had woken up and was contentedly scratching his stomach, his new haircut squashed flat on one side

“It
is
Lyn!” said Maxine. “Is everything under control? Is the turkey in the oven?”

There was something a little sad about having erotic dreams when you led such an unerotic life.

And what was she trying to prove by doing the Christmas lunch this year, right down to the bloody turkey? She wasn’t depriving her mother of stress. She was giving her
more
stress, cruelly removing control from a control freak. “You like it,” Cat always said. “You’ve always liked being the martyr. So go ahead. We won’t stop you.”

She could have spent the morning eating mangoes in the bath.

“It’s only family,” Lyn told her mother. “It’s only us. Nobody’s going to care if we’re not sitting at the table right on the dot.”

“Have you got a summer cold, Lyn?” asked Maxine, meaning, “Are you delirious?”

“I’m perfectly fine, Mum. I’m just saying we don’t need to stress.”

“Of course we need to ‘stress,’ as you put it. If we eat too late everybody drinks too much, you and your sisters start fighting, your grandmother falls asleep at the table, your father becomes morose, and Maddie gets overtired and eats too many lollies.”

These were all valid points. “Besides which, I’ve got something I want to tell you all at lunch,” continued Maxine. “I’m a little tense about it.”

“You’re tense about it? What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” “I’m a little tense” was a deeply personal revelation for her mother. It must be something terrible. It would be just like Maxine to announce terminal cancer over Christmas lunch.

“It’s something good—I think. I’m happy about it.”

Happy
about it? That was even more worrying. Lyn pressed two fingers to her forehead. She could sense the beginnings of a vicious headache: a tribal thump in the distance.

Michael sat up in bed and flapped his arms like a chicken to indicate Maxine in a flap.

Lyn nodded.

“Talk!” demanded Maddie, reaching for the phone.

“Maddie wants to talk to you. I’ll see you at lunch,” said Lyn. “Don’t you dare come early.” She handed the phone to Maddie and then grabbed it back.

“Happy Christmas, Mum.”

“Yes, dear.”

A door slammed downstairs.

Michael raised his eyebrows. “That doesn’t bode well.”

Kara had spent Christmas Eve with her mother. She wasn’t due back till lunchtime.

A minute later Kara stuck her head in the doorway.

“Happy Christmas, honey,” said Michael and leaped up with arms outstretched. “You’re early!”

Kara looked revolted. “Dad, you’re not
dressed.
Anyway, I just wanted to say, I’ll be in my room. I don’t want anything to eat. I don’t have anything to say. Just…leave…me…alone. Is that too much to ask?”

Michael stuck his thumbs awkwardly into the elastic of his boxers and held them out slightly from his concave stomach. “Ah.”

“Dad, what are you
doing?”

“I don’t know,” said Michael miserably, letting his hands drop.

“I
hate
Christmas!” exploded Kara, and she walked off down the hallway to her bedroom.

Lyn said, “So do I.”

Michael looked at her.

“Not really.” Lyn headed for the shower. “I just don’t trust it.”

The first Christmas after Frank and Maxine separated was the first Christmas the Kettle girls were separated from each other.

It began with a brochure—a glossy, seductive brochure.

“What do you think of this, girls?” asked Frank.

He laid the brochure on the red laminated table at McDonald’s and flourished his hands back and forth just like the TV ladies on
Sale of the Century.

Oh, he was hilarious, their dad.

They were six years old, full of the confidence of conquering kindergarten. At St. Margaret’s Primary they were famous, just for being triplets. At Little Lunch and Big Lunch there was always a group of maternal sixth-grade girls lined up together on a long wooden bench who had come to watch the Kettle triplets play. “Oooh, they’re so cute!” “Is that one Cat or Lyn?” “It’s Lyn!” “No, it’s Cat!” “Which one are you, sweetie?” Cat exploited them terri
bly, telling them stories about how poor they were, and how they had to share just one lamb chop for dinner. She collected at least fifty-cents charity money every day.

Oh yes. School had turned out to be a snap.

And now here they were in the brand-new McDonald’s store with Dad, eating sundaes, turning their spoons upside down, and lingering their tongues over creamy cold ice cream and hot sugary caramel. Their father’s dislike of sundaes was really quite extraordinary. “Just try one teeny mouthful, Daddy,” Gemma was always encouraging. “Because I
know
you would love it. It’s like eating a
cloud. Or snow.”

Maxine didn’t let them eat McDonald’s. They didn’t tell her that Daddy let them eat all the bad-for-you food they desired. They didn’t tell her that every second weekend was like a magical mystery holiday, with surprise after surprise on the itinerary and not a rule or a vegetable in sight.

But they just bet she suspected.

“You know what this is,” said Dad, sliding the brochure over to them. “This is
the fastest water slide in the whole world.”

“Really?” breathed Cat. “Truly?”

They stared at the brochure in awe. It showed a photo of a little girl hurtling out the end of an enormous funnel, carried along by a frothy rush of water. Lyn wanted to go on that water slide so badly. For an instant, she
was
that little girl with her heart pumping and her hands flung high in a perfect, flat blue sky.

“Whoosh!” said Gemma, running her fingers down the curling funnel of the slide.

“I think you’d go faster than a car,” said Cat.

“Not faster than Daddy’s car,” said Lyn. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You
would!” said Cat, pinching her hard on the leg with her
fingernails. “Yes, you would!”

“Whoosh!” said Gemma again. She trailed her sundae spoon through the air. “You’d go
this
fast!”

“This water slide is in a special place called the Gold Coast,” said Dad. “And you know what?”

“What?”

“I’m going to take you there for the Christmas holidays!”

Well! The excitement! Gemma’s sundae spoon went flying in the air. Cat slammed both her hands triumphantly on the table. Their father smiled modestly and allowed his cheek to be kissed by each of them.

All the way home in the car they talked about it.

“I’m going to make myself go faster by pushing myself along,” said Lyn. “Like this with my hands.”

Cat said, “That won’t work. I’m going to put my hands out in front like this, like an arrow.”

Gemma said, “I’m going to do a special magic trick to make me go faster.”

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” chanted Cat and Lyn.

When they got home, Dad came inside to tell Mummy about the holiday.

Lyn was in the kitchen getting a glass of water. So she was the only one to see their mother’s reaction.

She looked surprised, like Daddy had slapped her across her cheek. “But Christmas Day?” she said. “Can’t you take them on Boxing Day?”

“It’s the only time I can get away,” said Dad. “You know the pressure I’m under with the Paddington project.”

“I’d like to be with them on Christmas Day. I don’t see how one day can make such a difference.”

“I thought their welfare was your first priority. Your words, Max.”

“I’m not saying that they shouldn’t go, Frank.”

Lyn watched as Mummy’s eyes looked up to the ceiling. She took a deep breath as if she were going to do a gigantic sneeze, but then the sneeze didn’t come.

It was odd.

Lyn stared at her mother over the rim of her glass.

It looked almost as if she were trying not to cry. As soon as the thought came into her head, Lyn knew it was true. She felt something click and slide into place. There was her mum, her normal, annoying, bad-tempered mum, and fitted neatly over the top of her was a new version—a version who got upset just like her daughters did.

“I want to be with Mum on Christmas Day,” she said, and she had no idea why she said it because she didn’t want that at all; the words had tripped straight out of her mouth without her permission.

Her parents acted as if they hadn’t even realized she was in the kitchen. “Don’t be silly, Lyn,” said Mum. “You’re going on a lovely holiday with your father.”

Lyn looked at her father. “Why can’t we go after Christmas Day?”

He reached for her and pulled her onto his lap, smoothing his hand over the top of her head. “That’s the only time Daddy’s work will let him go, darling.”

Lyn ran her finger around the edge of his shirt button. “I don’t believe you.”

She wriggled off his lap as Cat and Gemma came running into the kitchen brandishing a Barbie doll’s dismembered limbs.

“Lyn wants to stay here with Mummy for Christmas,” said Dad. “What do you two want to do?”

Cat looked at Lyn as if she’d lost her mind. “Why are you being stupid?”

“Why can’t Mummy just come with us?” beamed Gemma.

“Mum and Dad are
divorced,
spastic-head,” said Cat. “That means they’re not allowed to do things together anymore. It’s a rule. It’s the
law.”

“Oh.” Gemma’s lower lip trembled. “Oh, I see.”

“I’m going on holidays with Daddy,” said Cat.

“I’m staying here with Mum,” said Lyn. This was being
pure
and
good,
just like Sister Judith talked about in religion classes.
Lyn could visualize her own shimmering sin-free soul. It was heart-shaped and sparkly like a diamond.

Tears of panic slid rapidly down Gemma’s face. “We have to be together when Santa comes!”

They weren’t together when Santa came.

Over the next week Lyn and Cat campaigned aggressively for Gemma to join their side. Underhand tactics were used on both sides.

“Mummy will be so sad if we don’t have Christmas here with her,” said Lyn. “She’ll cry and cry and cry.”