Three Wishes (33 page)

“Someone’s coming to see us now,” explained Lyn.

Charlie looked closely at Cat. “Are you O.K.? You don’t look so good.”

Cat nodded and mumbled, “I’m fine shanks.”

“Gemma Kettle’s family?” An efficiently frowning nurse appeared. “She’s doing well. Four centimeters dilated. Who’s going to be with her for the labor?”

“Just the father,” said Lyn.

Charlie gave a little start. “I guess that would be me.”

The nurse gave Cat and Lyn a meaningful and hugely unjust “Men!” look and said, “This way, please.”

“Rightio.” Charlie handed over a sports bag to Lyn and obediently followed the nurse without looking back, his shoulders in the dirty T-shirt very square.

Lyn sat down next to Cat and shook her head. “That man is a saint. If she doesn’t hold on to him, I’ll throw a fork at her!”

At that moment Maxine marched into the hospital waiting
room to find her daughters, propped up against each other’s shoulders, laughing helplessly.

She held the strap of her handbag disapprovingly against her chest. “Well,
really!”

At eight o’clock the next morning Cat held her nephew for the first time. A tightly bound eight-pound bundle with a wrinkly red face, matted black hair, and long eyelashes resting mysteriously against caramel-colored skin.

Cat and Gemma were alone in the room.

Charlie had gone home to change. Lyn was coming back with Maddie and Michael later that afternoon. Maxine and Frank were buying coffee in the cafeteria.

“I’m sorry, Cat.” Gemma’s face against the pillow was blotchy, puffy, and suffused with joy. “I did a terrible thing to you.”

Cat shook her head and kept looking at the baby.

Some time last night, a doctor had informed her that her jaw was broken. Her back and front teeth were now wired together. If she tried to talk, her mouth started foaming with saliva.

She felt, fittingly, like a freak. It was her penance.

“I thought of the baby as yours,” said Gemma. “All the way along. I swear to you. And then all of a sudden, I started wanting—I wanted the baby and I wanted Charlie. I wanted everything.”

Cat placed her little finger in the palm of the baby’s hand and watched his tiny fingers curl in a miniature grip.

Soap Bubbles on the Corso

It was a lovely day today, wasn’t it? Did you have a lovely day? I bet you didn’t move from that step, eh? I caught the bus down to the Corso, you know how I like to do that. I’m sure the sea air does wonders for my arthritis.

I sat on my favorite bench there and ate my banana sandwich, and watched the families. There were some lovely young girls sitting in the shade with their children. One was a toddler—oh, she was a terror that one! They had their hands full. And there was also the dearest little newborn baby! The girls were all taking turns holding the baby. I couldn’t quite tell which was the mother but they were sisters, I’m sure of it. They each rocked the baby in exactly the same way, gently swaying their bodies. Tall, graceful girls. I always wanted to be tall.

Oh, and they had a clever way of distracting the little terror! They had one of those little bottles of detergent and they were blowing soap bubbles for her. She was running around with her hands outstretched, laughing, trying to catch them. Those bubbles looked so pretty floating and dancing in the breeze—like hundreds of tiny little rainbows. It made me cry a little. In a happy way.

But you know one of those young girls wasn’t so happy. She was really down in the dumps about something. She was doing her best to hide it but I could tell. Something about the way she held her shoulders. As if she’d lost. You know what I mean? Defeated. That’s the word.

I wanted to say to her, Oh, darling, don’t be sad. Whatever it is that’s worrying you will probably turn out to be nothing. Or eventually it just won’t matter anymore. And one day all you’ll remember is blowing soap bubbles on the Corso with your sisters. And how you were young and beautiful and didn’t even know it. But she would have just thought I was a mad old woman, wouldn’t she, Tabby? Yes, she would have.

Cat got to
the park a few minutes early and sat on one of the swings to wait for Dan.

It was a viciously cold Saturday morning, and the park was deserted. There was something a little spooky about all that empty play equipment, the chains of the swing rattling ghoulishly in the wind, like the laughter of ghostly children.

A wisp of a memory she felt like she was remembering for the first time floated across Cat’s consciousness. Maxine pushing Lyn on a swing. A yellow dress.

“When’s it
my turn, Mum?”

Lyn flying high in the air.

She opened and shut her mouth like a fish, enjoying the glorious freedom of a fully functioning jaw.

It was six weeks since the night of the fondue fork.

Apparently the story was doing the rounds. Michael said he was at a work function when he overheard a guy tell a story about someone throwing a fork at a pregnant woman in a Chinese restaurant. The pregnant woman had then given birth to triplets on the restaurant floor.

Michael hadn’t bothered to correct them. “I hope you’re not embarrassed to know us,” said Lyn.

“The opposite, my darling! I didn’t want to show off.”

Gemma and Charlie had called the baby Salvatore Lesley after both their grandfathers.

Little Sal was the baby from hell. He hadn’t inherited his mother’s love of sleep, or his father’s saintliness. Gemma and Charlie had been walking around in dreamlike, sleep-deprived trances.

Fortunately, on Tuesday Sal cleverly chose to smile for the first time at both his parents, causing them to melt into adoring puddles at his bootied feet.

Cat kept the door to the yellow-walled nursery firmly shut and lived her life like a robot.
I feel nothing, I feel nothing
was her new mantra. She worked so hard at Hollingdale Chocolates that Rob Spencer felt the need to give her a smarmy little lecture on the importance of having “balance” in her life.

She gave up alcohol for a record four weeks before saying, “I think that’ll do it, God,” and returning to her faith as a devout atheist.

Dan had telephoned the day before and said he wanted to talk to her.

“Could we get together for a drink?”

“Tell me over the phone,” she said, using the brittle, faintly mocking voice she seemed to have created especially for conversations these days with Dan.

“I’d rather we met, face-to-face.” He had a new voice too. It was formal and restrained, as if he were in the witness box. It broke her heart.

I know the expression on your face when you come. I know how you clip your toenails, floss your teeth, and blow your nose. I know how your dad upsets you and spiders frighten you and tofu disgusts you.

“Fine. But not the pub.” She didn’t want to be surrounded by happy people talking in normal voices. “We’ll meet in the park.”

She kicked at the wood shavings under her feet and wondered what Dan wanted.

They’d been separated for seven months now. The law said you couldn’t divorce until you’d been separated for a full year. No trial reconciliations were allowed during that time.

You had to prove to the government that it was more than just a little tiff, that your marriage vows were well and truly ripped to shreds.

And here he was.

She watched as he got out of the car and frowned up at the parking sign. He looked at his watch and then again at the sign, wrinkling his forehead. He always did have problems deciphering parking signs. You’re fine, Dan. It’s not after 3
P.M
. or before 9
A.M
.

Finally he came loping down the grassy embankment. He saw her, smiled, raised a hand in greeting, and it came to her in a matter-of-fact way that she still loved him.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Cold.”

“Very.”

He moved toward her as if he was going to kiss her on the cheek, and she ducked her head and held a hand out at the swing next to her. “Have a seat.”

He sat down, awkwardly stretching out his long legs.

He looked straight ahead. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

Presumably, through Charlie and Angela, he knew everything about what had happened at the restaurant. Her humiliation was so complete it didn’t really bother her. She had no more dignity left to lose.

He chose Angela. Gemma chose her baby.

“Cat.”

And for one wild, heart-pumping moment she thought he was going to say that he’d made a mistake, he wanted to come back home, fix things up, try again.

“I’m going to France. We’re going to France.”

I don’t feel anything.

“Did the Paris job come up again? I didn’t know.”

It was their dream. Angela was getting to live Cat’s dream.

“They told me about a week ago.”

He was doing his best to keep his voice flat, but she could hear the underlying ripple of excitement. The celebrations they must have shared!

“I didn’t want you to hear it from anybody else.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He gave her a quick, sharp look.

“I don’t know how to make you believe how sorry I am. About everything. I wish—I never meant—I’m just so sorry.”

It occurred to Cat that Angela could one day have Dan’s children. The little boy that Cat had always imagined, a miniature version of Dan, would now belong to Angela.

That woman was going to live her dreams and have her children.

And when Dan got home today, Angela would say, “How did she take it?” and Dan would say sadly, “Not good,” and Angela would look sympathetic and pretty and large-breasted.

In a sudden rush of movement Cat leaped from her swing and positioned herself behind Dan. That woman would not hear about the tears in her eyes.

“Here, let me give you a push.”

“Eh?” His shoulders stiffened.

She pushed him gently on his back and said, “Didn’t your mum used to push you on the swing?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

With her hands flat on his back, she rocked him forward. His legs dragged on the ground and he held on tight to the swing.

I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything.

“So, Paris! At last!” said Cat, like a charming girl at a cocktail party. “Have they got somewhere for you to live?”

“They put us in a furnished apartment for a month, and then we’ll find somewhere for ourselves.”

“And Angela? What will she do? Will she work?”

“She’s not sure yet.”

“Mmmm, and busy times, I guess! Are you selling your car? Putting things in storage?”

“I’m giving the car to Mel.”

“Dan.”

Because suddenly she couldn’t do it anymore or bear it any longer.

She bent her head to his ear and spoke softly and urgently, in her own real voice, as if she only had a minute to pass on this dangerous message.

“Thank you for telling me. I’m fine. Really. But could you do something for me? Could you just go now, without talking, without looking at me? Don’t say anything, don’t look back. Please.”

He sat very still. It wasn’t his style to obey such a weird and melodramatic request. But then he put one hand up to hers and held it very tightly, and for a second she breathed in the smell of his hair. He squeezed her hand, stood up, and walked away, back to the car.

It was nearly an exquisitely tragic moment except that as he got to the embankment, he tripped, one foot sliding clumsily out behind him.

Well, exquisitely tragic moments weren’t really her thing. Farce. That was more her style.

Cat applauded.
“Au revoir! You big klutz!”

Without turning around, he gave her an ironic thumbs-up signal and kept walking to the car.

At around 9
P.M.
the night before Cat met Dan in the park, while Nana Kettle was eating a little snack of grilled cheese on toast, with a nice cup of tea and watching her favorite recorded episode of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, a brick came smashing
through a glass pane on her back door and landed with a thud on the floor.

Nana heard a strange noise and naturally assumed it was Pop’s bloody dog. She enjoyed being cross with the dog and immediately put the video on pause.

“What have you done this time, you silly, no-good animal?” she called out querulously, as if for Pop’s benefit. Yelling at the dog made her feel like Les was still alive, working away on some project in the back room. She could almost hear him calling back, “I’ll see to it, love! You stay where you are.”

It used to drive her mad the way Les spoiled that damned dog.

She was on her feet, at the TV room door, muttering crossly to herself, when she heard footsteps.

“Who’s that?” she called out, annoyed rather than frightened, as she walked down the hallway. Frank and her granddaughters all had keys. But, really, it was polite to knock.

That’s when a strange person pounded toward her, somebody
she didn’t know, in her own house, and a tremendous wave of fear shot vertically through her body, from the soles of her feet and into her mouth.

He came straight for her, without hesitating, as if he’d been expecting her, and punched her in the face.

She fell. Her shoulder banged painfully against the wall.

For a few seconds, her world turned misty red. Her eyes blurred with tears. She could feel blood coming out of her nose.

In the TV room, the video came back on. “What do you want to do? Have a go or take the dough?” Eddie McGuire asked the contestant.

She could hear the boy in her bedroom, pulling out drawers, touching her things.

I bet you think I’m one of those stupid old biddies who keeps all her money under the bed, she thought to herself. Well, too bad it’s all safe and sound in the Commonwealth Bank, matey!

Later, she found that he took her purse, her best jewelry, her jar of two-dollar coins for the slots, and a crisp $10 bill she had ready on the dining room table to include in Kara’s birthday card. He also took the brand-new camera that she’d won in a late night talk-back radio competition for knowing how much the colt was worth in
The Man from Snowy River.

He spent twenty minutes walking through her house, picking and choosing what he liked, as if he were bloody shopping.

Then he walked straight out the front door, without looking at her.

The dog appeared from wherever he’d been skulking and for a full five minutes, did nothing but run around and around in distressed circles, before stopping to lick the side of her face, panting and whimpering.

She tried to get up, but her arm wouldn’t work.

She tried again and gave up. “Les,” said Nana into the carpet.

Around ten o’clock the next day, Bev told her husband, Ken, that it was a bit funny that Gwen Kettle hadn’t been out to water
her garden yet. She always watered her garden on a Saturday, and she hadn’t mentioned that she was doing anything special this Saturday. Perhaps Gwen had a visitor? Although there were no strange cars out the front. What did Ken think?

Ken didn’t think anything. So finally, with a little “tsk” sound—it was impossible to have a conversation with a man—Bev went over to investigate, pushing tentatively on her neighbor’s open front door.

When she saw Gwen lying there in the hallway, she went back out onto the front porch and screamed Ken’s name so loud that he nearly put his back out jumping over the retaining wall and running over to see what was the matter.

“For heaven’s sakes, Bev, you took your time,” said Nana.

There was a messy blot of dried blood under her nose.

Bev bent down on arthritic knees to pluck uselessly at Nana’s sleeve and for the first time in her life was entirely incapable of speaking.

Cat caught a cab to the hospital. She sat in the backseat with her hands jammed hard between her knees and imagined a parallel existence where by lucky chance she’d popped by to visit Nana Kettle just at the same time that lowlife prick broke into her house.

Oi! Fuckface! she would have yelled.

When he turned around, she would have kicked him hard in the balls.

As his head bent forward she would have grabbed him by the ears and driven her knee into his face. And then, while he was moaning pathetically on the ground she would have kicked him again and again in the kidneys.

Pick on someone your own size!

Cat saw her family before she saw Nana. They were sitting very straight and still in a little semicircle of chairs around Nana’s bed.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” said Maxine.

Frank didn’t say anything, just held up a hand in acknowledgement. He looked like a man suffering from a fever. His neck was covered in splotches of red.

Gemma, in contrast, was deadly pale. Sal was in her arms, sucking frantically on a pacifier, dark eyes darting back and forth. “Look, Nana, it’s Cat!” said Gemma.

“Hey, Cat,” said Lyn, with a weird contortion of her lips that was presumably meant to be a smile. She was arranging flowers in a vase, her eyes red and watery.

“Nana.” Cat couldn’t finish her cheery hello. Now she could see why everyone looked frozen with shock, as if their faces had just that instant been unexpectedly and painfully slapped.

Seeing Nana was like seeing the attack happen in front of their very eyes.

There was a large bluish bruise smeared across her mouth and a bloody scab on her bottom lip. One arm was in a sling. Her hair was especially distressing. Normally, Nana took a lot of time with her hair, using hot rollers to create a neat cap of snowy white curls. Today it was limp and greasy, flat against her head.

She looked like a frail, ugly old woman. Someone else. Not Cat’s annoyingly spry grandmother.

“Did you hear?” Nana said to her, clutching her hand, as Cat kissed her on the fragile, wrinkled skin of her cheek. “He took the camera I won on the radio. I waited over an hour to get on!”

“We’re going to get you another camera, Gwen,” said Maxine. “An even better one.”

Nana didn’t seem to hear her. She clutched on tight to Cat’s hand. “It was only last week, I got one of those little green cards in my letterbox. And I said to Bev, now what could this be? It says there’s a parcel at the post office for me! I’d forgotten all about winning that competition you see. So Bev said—”

Suddenly, she stopped and looked up at Cat, and her pale blue eyes filled with tears.

“I got quite a fright last night, darling.”

Her voice quavered.

“Yes. I can imagine you did, Nana,” managed Cat.

Frank scraped back his chair and stood up.

“This is bloody—I can’t bloody—this is—
Jesus!”

He slammed both his fists violently on the back of his chair.

Nana dropped Cat’s hand and became instantly peremptory. “Calm down, Frank! There’s no need to behave like that. It’s life! Bad things happen!”

They all looked silently at the bruise across her face.

“Hello, Mrs. Kettle!” A nurse broke through their silence, breezing efficiency. “Lots of lovely visitors I see! And look at all those flowers!”

“My back is killing me,” said Nana.

“Well, let’s see what we can do to make you more comfortable. Perhaps you could all come back in a few minutes?”

The nurse looked at them brightly and firmly.

“We’ll go and get some lunch downstairs,” pronounced Lyn. “We won’t be long, Nana.”

“Take your time,” said Nana. “Don’t know about lovely visitors. You’re all such misery heads.”

Gemma went to put Sal in his pram.

“Let your father carry the baby.” Maxine’s eyes were on Frank.

“You want him, Dad?”

“What? Oh yes, of course.” He took the baby into his arms. “Hello, little mate.”

Cat looked at Sal in a bright orange romper suit, a chubby fist clinging to Frank’s shirt. It had become like an old sporting injury: this familiar, reflexive twinge of pain whenever she saw Sal.

“What did Dan want?” asked Lyn as the three of them walked ahead to the elevator.

“He got the job in Paris. He and Angela are going.”

Both Lyn and Gemma turned to look at her with stricken faces.

“I didn’t know,” said Gemma immediately. “Charlie never said anything.”

“You’re not responsible for everything Angela does,” said Cat.

“I thought—” Lyn bit her lip. “Sorry.”

“Yeah. I thought it too,” said Cat as the elevator bell dinged and their parents caught up with them. The doors closed, and Frank suddenly handed Sal over to Gemma and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook. It took Cat a confused second to realize that for the first time in her life she was seeing her father cry. He lifted his face and wiped the back of his hand across his nose. His mouth twisted with violent hatred. “I want to
kill
that bloke.”

At the exact moment that Dan and Angela’s flight was due to leave Sydney, Cat was heaving a giant green garbage bag of junk out onto her grandmother’s front porch, her nose twitching and eyes streaming from the clouds of dust.

Would they hold hands? Make nervous jokes about their new lives together as Sydney rolled away beneath them?

Cat and Maxine were cleaning out Nana’s house: the house she had lived in for over fifty years. Nana was moving into a “lifestyle resort exclusively for over fifty-fives.”

“Of course, it’s a retirement village,” said Nana, showing them the glossy brochure with its pictures of white-haired couples ecstatically clinking champagne glasses on their “spacious balconies.” “I’m not stupid. Full of silly old biddies. But I’ll feel a lot safer and really what do I need this big old house for? I don’t know why none of you ever suggested it. Probably worried about me spending your inheritance, I bet!”

The family heroically refrained from mentioning that they’d been suggesting it for the last ten years. Now, it was Nana’s idea—and an extremely clever and sensible one.

She had said from her hospital bed that she was too frightened to spend another night in that house alone.

“Of course not, Mum!” said Frank. “You can live with Max and me!”

Cat saw her mother’s eyes flicker, but Nana interrupted him. “Don’t be stupid, Frank. Why would I want to live with you? I want to live in a
lifestyle resort.”

Since the attack, Nana Kettle seemed to have developed two conflicting new personality traits.

She had moments where she seemed to Cat heartbreakingly frail and frightened, like a child waking up still in the grips of a nightmare. Describing the attack, her voice would quiver with surprised tears. It was as if her feelings had been hurt. “He didn’t look at me,” she kept saying. “Did I mention that? He never once looked at me.” But at other times, she seemed sharper than ever before. She had a new way of lifting her chin, a determined new edge to her voice.

It helped perhaps that she had become something of a minor celebrity.

A story appeared in the
Daily Telegraph
with the headline
OLYMPIC VOLUNTEER ATTACKED
! Lyn had given them a photo she’d taken of Nana marching in the Volunteers’ Tickertape Parade. Nana grinned cheekily up from the page—a charming, innocent old lady who could recite all the words to
The Man from Snowy River,
whose husband was a World War II soldier!

Sydney threw up its arms in horror. Nana was inundated with letters of support, flowers, teddy bears, cards, checks, and close to a hundred brand-new cameras. People wrote letters to the paper and rang up talk-back radio stations. It was un-Australian, it was appalling, it was plain wrong.

The attacker was arrested after his girlfriend recognized the Identikit picture Nana had helped create. “When I saw that sweet little old lady in the paper, I just thought, Nah, that’s it,” said the girlfriend self-importantly to the television crews.

“Sweet little old lady, my foot,” said Maxine now, as she joined Cat out on the veranda, dragging another green bag of rubbish behind her. “She’s driving me up the wall.”

“Me too.” Cat wiped the back of her hand across her nose and looked down at her T-shirt and jeans. They were covered in dust.

Her mother, naturally, looked neat as a pin.

“The last time she threw something out,” sighed Maxine, “must have been 1950.”

Nana Kettle was bossily insisting that before any object could be assigned as “rubbish,” “Smith family,” or “new place,” she first be approached for authorization. She then wanted to chat at length about the history of each item and after finally making a decision, would more often than not change her mind, demanding that Cat and Maxine rummage through the rubbish bag and re-present the item for another lengthy discussion.