Three Wishes (21 page)

“Oh school, schmool! Relax, Max, babe. Why can’t you just relax for a minute?”

“Yeah, relax, Mum! Relax!” chanted her daughters.

That’s why Daddy had moved out. He couldn’t stand it any longer. It was no fun living in this house. If Cat was a grown-up, she might have moved out herself.

All Mum had to do was say sorry for being such a misery-head.

Cat followed her mother as she lugged a basketful of laundry into the living room and upended it on the sofa.

“You always tell us,” Cat said shrewdly, “to say sorry when we’re fighting.” Her mother began sorting the clean clothes into neat piles across the top of the sofa, one for Lyn, Cat, Gemma, Mum—and none for Dad.

“Your father and I are not fighting.” Mum lifted up a T-shirt of Gemma’s and frowned. “How in the world does she get these marks on her clothes? What does she do?”

“Dunno,” said Cat, bored by this topic. “I just think you should say sorry. Even if you’re not really.”

“We’re not fighting, Cat.”

Cat groaned with frustration and slapped both her hands to her head. “Muu
uum! You’re driving me crazy!”

“I know just how you feel,” answered her mother and when Cat tried to change tactics and be nice by saying, “Mum, I think you should just
relax
a bit,” it was like she’d pushed a button. A button right in the middle of her mother’s forehead that turned her into wild, crazy, lunatic Mum.

“Catriona Kettle!” Her mother threw down a clump of clothing
forcefully and her face went a familiar bright red, causing Cat to immediately begin strategic escape maneuvers. “If you don’t leave the room this instant, I’m going to get my wooden spoon and smack you so hard that, that…you won’t know what’s hit you!”

Cat didn’t bother to point out what an amazingly stupid thing this was to say because she was already running. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” she muttered under her breath. “Hate, hate, hate!”

A few days later their father took them to see his new flat in the city.

It was on the twenty-third floor of a very tall building. Through his windows you could see the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and little ferries chugging frothy white trails across the flat blue water.

“So what do you think, girls?” Dad asked, spreading his arms wide and turning around and around in circles.

“It’s very, very pretty, Daddy,” said Gemma, running happily through each room and stopping to caress different things. “I like it a lot!”

“I’d like a house with a window like this.” Lyn pressed her nose thoughtfully against the glass. “That’s what I’m going to have when I grow up. How much does this cost, Dad? Quite a lot?”

They were both so
stupid.
Didn’t they see? Everything in Dad’s new house gave Cat a bad feeling in her stomach. Everything he had—his own fridge, his own TV, his own sofa—proved that he didn’t want
their
TV or fridge or sofa. And that meant he wasn’t coming back and this was what it would be like forever and ever.

“I think it’s a really dumb place to live.” Cat sat down on the very edge of her father’s new sofa and crossed her arms tight. “It’s all small and squashy and stupid.”

“Small
and
squashy
and
stupid!?”
Frank opened his eyes very wide and let his mouth drop in shock. “Now would a house be small and squashy if you had a room to swing a cat? But where could I find a cat to test it out? Hmmmm. Let me think.”

Cat kept her arms folded tight and compressed her lips, but when Dad was being funny it was like the very tip of a feather dancing ticklishly across your cheeks.

She was already laughing when her father grabbed her under the arms. “Wait a minute! Here’s a cat. A really big grumpy one!” and swung her wildly around the room.

There was no point being mad with Dad. It was all Mum’s fault. She would just stay mad with her, until Daddy came back home.

“You’re up.” Dan was at the door, car keys in his hand.

“Yes.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes.”

Cat stood in her dressing gown with her hair wet from the shower and her limbs heavy and doughy. She imagined her arms falling straight to the floor like stretched-out plasticine.

Someone should mold her into a nice, neat smooth ball and start again.

He said, “I was just going to Coles. I thought maybe a nice steak for dinner.”

Dan always thought maybe a nice steak for dinner.

“Oh. Good.”

“You want a steak too?”

“Sure.” The thought of steak made her want to gag.

“O.K. I won’t be long.” He opened the door.

“Dan?”

“Yeah?”

Do you still love me? Why were you talking in that cold, hard voice? Do you still love me? Do you still love me? Do you still love me?

“We need more tea.”

“O.K.” He closed the door.

She would ask him when he came back. She would match his cold tone. “Is something going on with that girl?” and there would be no undignified catch in her voice.

She sat down at the kitchen table and placed her hands flat in front of her and bent her head till she was close enough to examine the tiny pores and wrinkles on the joints of her fingers. Her hands looked elderly in close-up.

Thirty-three.

At the age of thirty-three, she thought she’d be a proper grown-up doing whatever she pleased, with a snazzy car that she
could drive wherever she wanted and everything—all the confusing parts of life—worked out and checked off. In fact, all she had was the not especially snazzy car. She had more worked out when she was twelve. If only bossy, know-it-all twelve-year-old Cat Kettle were still around to tell her what to do.

There was a messy pile of bills sitting on the kitchen table from today’s mail. Bills bored Dan. He threw them down in disgust when he saw one, leaving them half sticking out of their envelopes for Cat to worry about.

She pulled the sheaf of papers toward her.

The bills would keep on coming, no matter what else was happening in your life and that was good because it gave you a purpose. You worked so you could pay them. You rested on the weekends and generated more bills. Then you went back to work to pay for them. That was the reason for getting up tomorrow. That was the meaning of life.

Electricity. Credit cards. Mobile phone.

Dan’s mobile phone bill.

She picked it up almost eagerly, a sick sense of satisfaction, a refreshing injection of adrenaline. Twelve-year-old Cat Kettle always wanted to be a spy.

The paper quivered in her hand. She didn’t want to find something bad, but she almost did. For the sheer satisfaction of solving a tricky problem. For the pleasure of the “gotcha!”

Many of the phone numbers she recognized. Home. Work. Her own mobile.

Of course, there were a lot she didn’t recognize. And why should she? This was stupid. Silly. She was smiling mockingly at herself as she scanned the page and then, there it was:

25 Dec. 11:53
P.M
. 0443 461 555 25.42

Heads or Tails, Susi?

Do I have a problem with gambling? No! I’ve got a problem with winning! Ha! That’s a joke I heard once. I don’t know if I told it right, though. It’s not really that funny.

So, you want to know about the first time I gambled. Yeah, I remember. It was Anzac Day and I was sixteen. I was down at the Newport Arms. You know, it’s the one day of the year you’re allowed to play two up until midnight. It’s legislated! Only in Oz, eh?

It’s a good atmosphere in the pubs on Anzac Day. A lot of old codgers. And you’ve got this big, excited circle of people standing around a guy in the middle, who tosses the coins. He’s normally a bit of a performer. He uses a special little wooden stick and the coins go spinning up into the sky and everybody looks up and watches them come down. The way it works is everybody bets with one another. You just hold up your money in the air and call out ten on heads, or whatever.

It was the first 2-Up game I’d ever seen, so I was watching for a while, seeing how it worked. I was mostly watching these girls, ’cos they were pretty easy on the eye. They were there with their grandpa, I think, they called him Pop. He was wearing one of them old-fashioned hats. He called them all “Susi” for some reason. They were all four putting away the beer. Jeez, were they into the game! They bet on every toss and they’d be yelling out, just like the men, “Head ’em up!” or “Tail ’em up!”

When one of them won, their grandfather would do a little old-fashioned dance with them. Like a waltz. Just a couple of little steps whirling them around. And then they’d be back, holding up their cash, yelling and laughing, giving each other high fives.

So finally I got up the guts to have a go. Bet five bucks on tails and won. I was hooked. Mate, I loved it. I can still see those coins flipping and turning in the moonlight and those three girls jumping up and down and hugging their grandpa.

Oh, yeah, I was hooked. Big time.

The first time
it happened, she was driving out of the Chatswood Shopping Center parking lot.

Maddie was in the back, silently strapped into her car seat, her thumb in her mouth, one finger locked around her nose. Lyn could see her accusing eyes in the rearview mirror. They weren’t talking to each other after a particularly horrible experience in the bookstore.

Maddie had spotted a copy of her favorite bedtime book in the children’s section and grabbed it triumphantly off the shelf.

“Mine!”

“No, Maddie, it’s not yours. Yours is at home. Put it back.”

Maddie looked up at Lyn as if she were nuts. She shook the book vigorously at her, eyes blazing righteously. “No!
Mine!”

Lyn felt quietly browsing customers around her lifting their eyes and tilting their heads in an interested way.

“Shhhh!” She put a finger to her lips. “Put it
back.”

But Maddie wasn’t having any of it. She stomped her feet like a demented tap dancer and hugged the book tight to her stomach, hollering, “No, shh! Mummy, mine, mine,
mine
!”

A woman walked into the same aisle as Lyn and smiled sympathetically.

“Ah. The terrible twos, is it? I’ve got that to look forward to!” She was pushing a stroller with a cherubic blond baby, who observed Maddie with surprised round eyes.

“Actually,” said Lyn. “She’s not even two yet. She’s starting early.”

“Ah. Advanced for her age,” the woman said nicely.

“You could say that,” began Lyn.
“No, Maddie!”

She leaped forward too late. The angelic baby had reached out a hand as if to grab
Good Night, Little Bear
and Maddie had responded with swift, efficient retribution, using the book to swipe the child across the face.

The baby dissolved, as if her feelings had been hurt for the first time ever. One shocked chubby hand went up to the bright red mark on her cheek. Her blue eyes swam with fat tears.

Lyn looked at the rather satisfied expression on her own daughter’s face and died of shame.

There was nothing worse, Lyn and Michael had always agreed, than seeing a parent slap a child in anger. Maddie would not be smacked. There would be no violence in their household.

Violence begets violence.

She believed it absolutely.

And now she grabbed Maddie and smacked her hard. She smacked her very hard and very angrily, and Maddie’s startled cry reverberated around the bookstore like a child abuse victim.

“It’s O.K.,” said the nice woman, picking up her nice child. She had the same round blue eyes as her baby.

“I’m so, so sorry. She’s never done that before.”

And I’ve never done that before, either.

“It’s O.K. Really.” The woman rocked her baby to her shoulder. She had to raise her voice to be heard over Maddie’s ear-splitting wail. “Kids!”

Maddie backed herself up against the bookshelf and doubled over, crying with luxurious, hysterical abandon, only stopping to take a breath of air to help her reach a new level of volume.

People around them were now openly looking, some of them craning their heads over bookshelves to see. They stared blank-faced, their mouths slightly slack, like people in an audience.

“I’ll have to get her out of here. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” smiled the woman, jiggling her child on her hip. My God, she was
freakishly
nice.

Lyn picked up Maddie, who continued to scream relentlessly, arching her body and throwing back her head so it caught Lyn painfully on the chin. With her arms pinned tightly around her daughter’s violently wriggling body, she walked rapidly out of the shop. The mother-with-screaming-child walk of shame.

“Excuse me, madam!” A pounding of footsteps behind her.

“Yes?” Lyn looked up. Maddie’s legs continued to kick.

“Um.” It was a very tall teenager with a “How can I help you?” smiley badge pinned to his blue denim shirt. He looked apologetic about his height, as if he didn’t quite know how he’d got all the way up there. He locked big knuckles awkwardly. “Only, I think maybe you haven’t paid for those books.”

Maddie was still clutching
Good Night, Little Bear
and Lyn herself was holding a copy of
Coping with Miscarriage
as well as, humiliatingly,
Taming the Toddler: A Survival Guide for Parents.

Well, why not? The sort of woman who hit her children would also do the occasional spot of shoplifting.

She marched back to the cash register, trying to smile ironically and humorously. If she had had someone with her, Michael or one of her sisters, then it
would
be funny. If she had both her sisters it would be pure slapstick. It would make their day.

But she was on her own and so she could only imagine it being funny.

“Wasn’t that Lyn Kettle?” she heard someone say as she paid for the books, including a second copy of
Good Night, Little Bear,
and stuffed change into her purse. “You know. The Brekkie Bus woman.”

Oh, funny. What a riot.

Maddie’s sobbing had subsided into piteous little hiccups by the time they got back to the car.

“Mummy’s very sorry she got cross,” Lyn told her as she buckled her into the seat. “But you must never, never hit little babies like that.”

Maddie stuck her thumb in her mouth and blinked, as if she was well aware of the lack of logic in Lyn’s argument and it wasn’t worth a response.

Her eyelashes were still wet from crying.

Guilt came to rest directly at the center of Lyn’s forehead. She imagined the nice woman describing the incident to her undoubtedly nice friends, while all their nice children frolicked quietly and shared their toys. “I mean it’s
obvious where the child
learned to behave like that.”

She turned on the “tranquility sounds” CD she’d bought as part of achieving her New Year’s resolution:
Reduce stress in measurable, tangible ways, both professional and personal, by no later than 1 March.

The warbles and chirps of happy little birds filled her car, a waterfall gurgled, a single bell chimed.

Oh, Jesus. It was unbearable. She switched it off and reversed her car.

Where was the “exit” sign? Why did they make it so difficult to get out of shopping center parking lots? You’d done your shopping—they weren’t going to get any more money out of you. What was their objective here?

She couldn’t give Cat that miscarriage book. She’d sneer at her. Make some contemptuous remark. Make her feel like an idiot. The other day when she asked, “Who’s got Maddie?” her eyes were so hard and hate-filled, Lyn had felt herself flinch.

Dan. Something wasn’t right there. It didn’t matter what Gemma said, he was still seeing that girl. She could see it in his face. He looked right through them all. The Kettles didn’t matter to him anymore.

Around and around she went. The “exit” signs disappeared completely to be replaced by cheerful “more parking this way” arrows.

Gemma looping her hair around her finger. They all laughed at Gemma but—well, was she
normal? At school she was the
smartest of the three of them. “Gemma is extremely bright,” Sister Mary told Maxine, who had looked quite baffled. “Gemma?” And now Gemma seemed to be frittering away her entire life like a sunny Saturday morning.

NO EXIT
.
STOP
.
GO BACK
.

This had to be a joke. There was no way to get out of this shopping center. Was there a hidden camera somewhere with some manic presenter about to jump out and shove a microphone in her face? Because it wasn’t funny. “That wasn’t funny,” she’d say.

She backed up and started driving again. Around and around.

Frank and Maxine on Christmas Day. That shiny, smug expression on Dad’s face. Mum all sweetly girly and stupid, stupid, stupid.

EXIT THIS WAY
. O.K., fine. If you so say so. She swung the wheel.

Bloody, bloody hell. She’d forgotten cockroach spray. Maxine had suggested a promisingly murderous-sounding brand called “Lure & Kill.” This morning one had scuttled evilly across the pure white expanse of her fridge door.

NO ENTRY
.

Fuuuuck!

She slammed on the brake.

And that’s when it happened.

She forgot how to breathe.

One second she was breathing like a normal person, the next she was making strange choking sounds, crazily gasping for air, her hands clammy and cold against the steering wheel, her heart hammering impossibly fast.

My God, I’m having a heart attack. Maddie. Car. Have to stop.

With stupidly shaking hands she turned off the car engine.

Pop Kettle died of a heart attack. Dropped dead in the backyard giving Ken from next door a tip on the doggies.

Now Lyn was going to drop dead in Chatswood Shopping Center. It would be in the papers. Women across Australia would all secretly ask, What sort of irresponsible mother drops dead with a toddler in the backseat?

Unadulterated panic pumped through her body. Her chest heaved, and her hands fluttered uselessly in the air.

She couldn’t breathe.

Droplets of moisture slid down her back.

Why
couldn’t she breathe?

And just when she thought, O.K. this is it, this is the end, somehow, someway, she began to breathe again.

The relief was ecstasy. Of course she could breathe. Her heartbeat slowed more and more until it was almost back to its normal quiet, unobtrusive rhythm.

Limp with relief, she turned around to check Maddie. She was deeply, soundly asleep, her thumb still in her mouth, her head lolling trustfully against the side of her car seat.

Lyn turned back on the ignition and adjusted the rearview mirror to look at herself. Her face looked back at her perfectly calmly, her lipstick was still perfect.

She pushed the mirror back into position and drove straight out of the parking lot.

When Michael arrived home that night, Maddie went rocketing into his arms and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Daddy!”
She gave his head an extra happy, pleased-with-him pat.

“Hello, my precious.”

“She hasn’t exactly been precious today.” Lyn kept chopping garlic and tilted her cheek to be kissed.

“Hello, my other precious. I thought I said I’d cook tonight.”

“I’m just doing a quick stir-fry.”

“You wanted to get your accounts done today.”

“This won’t take me long.”

“I did say.”

The unspoken accusation—Lyn-the-Martyr. She’d been hearing it all her life. If she just gave people a chance, they would get around to doing things. If she would just relax, chill out, loosen up.

“Feet, Daddy!”

Michael balanced Maddie’s bare feet on top of his own black business shoes and, holding on to her hands, he began to walk around the kitchen with exaggerated lifted knees.

“So what did our Ms. Madeline get up to today?”

“There was a little baby in the bookshop who reached out for Maddie’s book. So she backhanded her with it.”

“Ah.”

“So I smacked her.”

“Ah.”

Lyn turned around from the chopping board to look at him. He was grinning down at Maddie, who was dimpling up at him, her eyes shining. With their curly black hair, they looked like a perfect Daddy and daughter in a movie. Lyn had a sudden memory of Cat standing on Frank’s shoes in exactly the same way, except Frank was whirling her around the room in a crazy, dizzy waltz and Cat was pink-faced and shrieking, “Faster, Daddy, faster!” while Maxine yelled, “Slower, Frank, slower!”

Relax, Mum, they used to tell her. Poor Mum.

“I smacked her quite hard.”

“I expect she deserved it. You know what this proves?”

“What?” Lyn had gone back to the chopping board. So much for shared parenting values.

“It’s time for us to
breed
again! She’s ready for a sister or brother.”

Lyn snorted. “Right. So she can have someone to abuse on a daily basis.”

“I mean it. She’s the sort of kid who needs brothers and sis
ters. We did say we’d start trying this year. That was the five-year plan if you recall.”

Lyn didn’t answer.

Michael’s tone turned teasing. “I’m sure you’ve got it written down somewhere.”

Of course she had it written down. She’d planned to go off the Pill after her next period.

Lyn pushed the garlic into a neat little hill and poured oil into the wok. “Yes, well, obviously that’s got to be put on hold now.”