Three Wishes (9 page)

No doubt Dan and the cabdriver were chuckling and shaking their heads over the amusing, probably premenstrual hysteria of
women. Dan would make up some excuse about her nonappearance at the party, get drunk, and not even spare her a thought until he was unsteadily aiming his key at the front door.

Or of course, he could find some other woman to sleep with. It would be understandable. Not only did his wife not understand him, she was fucking boring too.

An excited babble of Christmas-drinks noise was coming from a bar directly behind her.

“Got any ID, love?” asked a bouncer who seemed to be having trouble balancing the top half of his body. Any minute he would topple forward from the weight of his muscles.

“Yeah, I need ID like you need more steroids,” she told him and walked past him into the bar.

Men. What was the
point
of them?

Expertly, her elbows vicious, she ducked and wove her way through the crowd to the counter and ordered a bottle of champagne.

“How many glasses?” asked the girl. Her roundly innocent eyes made Cat feel like a wizened old crone.

“One,” she snapped. “Just one.”

With the ice bucket and champagne cradled brazenly under one arm, she walked out of the bar and onto the street. The top-heavy bouncer didn’t try to stop her. He was distracted by some more appreciative thirty-plus patrons who were gigglingly presenting their ID.

She walked down George Street toward the Quay.

“Merry Christmas!” A group of drunken office workers in witty Santa Claus hats danced around her.

She kept walking.

Why did everyone have to be so inanely happy?

She continued on past the Opera House and finally into the Botanical Gardens. Hitching her $200 Collette Dinnigan skirt up to her thighs, she settled down cross-legged on the ground, her back up against a tree. She poured herself a glass of champagne
and let it slosh all over her hand and onto her skirt. “Cheers.”

She toasted the harbor and drank thirstily. Boats strung with colorful lights slipped across the water, throbbing with music and the shouts and cries of overexcited party people.

If she drank this whole bottle she’d have a hangover for tomorrow morning’s counseling session. Now that would really add to the whole experience.

Tomorrow they were discussing their childhoods. Their “homework”—Annie’s plump fingers formed exaggerated inverted commas in the air—was to think of a memory from their childhood when they had observed their parents dealing with conflict. “We’re going to look at the role models in your life!” cried Annie.

Cat was looking forward to submitting the famous story of Kettle Cracker Night 1976. There was no material in Dan’s boringly happy childhood that could possibly match it. She would win the battle for most psychological damaging childhood hands down.

Cat, Gemma, and Lyn, six years old, wearing identical blue hooded parkas and brown corduroy pants. Everyone in the street had come to a Cracker Night party in
their
backyard. There was a towering, noisy bonfire and its crimson glow made everyone’s faces shadowed and mysterious. The kids were waving sparklers that fizzed and crackled white-hot silver stars. Their father, a cigarette held rakishly in the corner of his mouth, kept making all the men laugh, big booming bursts of raucous laughter. Their mother, in a short green dress with big gold buttons down the middle, was handing around a big platter of prunes wrapped in bacon with little toothpicks. Her hair was still long then, a smooth auburn sheet that stopped in a neat straight line just past her bottom.

At
last,
after endless hours of lobbying the slow-moving parents, it was time for the real fireworks. Beer bottle in hand, their father strolled theatrically to the center of the yard, pulled at his trouser knees, squatted down, and did something mysterious and clever with his cigarette lighter.

“Wait till you see this one, girls!” he said to his daughters. Seconds later—
bang! The air exploded in color.

“Oooh!” exclaimed everyone at each new firework. “Aaaaah!”

It felt like their dad was creating the fireworks himself. It was wonderful. Cat was pretty sure that it was the best night of her entire life. So it was
typical
that Mum had to try and ruin it.

“Let one of the other men have a turn now, Frank,” she kept saying, and Cat hated her mother’s hard, whiny tone and the way it was getting sharper and sharper. She was probably just jealous of Dad for having the fun job, while she was stuck handing around cups of tea.

“For God’s sake,
hurry, Frank!”

He stood grinning in the center of the yard, challenging her with his chin, taking a slow, deliberate sip of his beer. “Relax, Max babe.”

And then it happened.

Frank lit a Roman candle and was still on his knees, unsteadily peering down at it. “Frank!” their mother warned. This time Gemma caught her mother’s fear. “Hurry, Daddy!” she called, and Lyn and Cat gave each other looks that said,
She’s such a baby!

Frank stood up, took a step back, and the Roman Candle exploded. The beer bottle fell to the ground as he held out his hands, palms down, as if he could stop the firework from exploding.

Cat, Gemma, and Lyn watched their father’s ring finger get blown cleanly off his hand. It went hurtling through the air illuminated in sharp detail by a flash of brilliant purples and greens.

He collapsed backward into a silly sitting position, like a clown, clutching his hand. There was a strange sweet fragrance in the air, the smell of their father’s sizzling flesh.

“You stupid,
stupid
man!” Their mother’s voice was a furious wail. She stalked across the yard toward him, her high heels sinking into the grass.

“Girls. Inside,
now!
” And they all had to go inside to the TV
room and sit with Pop and Nana Kettle. Sammy Barker got to find their father’s finger where it had fallen into the rosebush underneath their parents’ bedroom window.

Cat never forgave her mother for that.
She
should have been the one to find her dad’s finger, not snotty-nosed Sammy, who gained instant celebrity status at St. Margaret’s Primary.

It was only a few months later that their dad packed his things and moved into a flat in the city. They couldn’t save his finger. He kept it floating in a jar of formaldehyde. It was brought out from his bathroom cupboard with much ceremony for especially privileged guests.

Now
that
should keep Annie satisfied. And how pleasingly symbolic! It was their father’s
ring
finger that got blown off! A symbol of their parents’ explosive marriage.

Of course it was one of Dan’s favorite family stories too.
“Awesome!”
he said when he heard it for the first time. At dinner parties, he told the story as if he’d been there too.

If Dan had been one of the neighborhood kids, Sammy Barker would have had
no
chance at finding that finger.

Lifting the champagne bottle from the ice bucket, she held it by the neck and refilled her glass. She hiccuped as she settled herself back against the tree.

Maybe she should just forgive him. Maybe she
did forgive him.

After all, didn’t she herself have fantasies about Dan’s uni friend, Sean? Every time they went out with Sean and his irrelevant wife, Cat would feel her cheeks start to go pink after her third glass of wine, as shocking images popped unbidden into her mind.

It was alcohol. Alcohol was a terrible, terrible thing, she thought and held up the champagne bottle to look at it accusingly.

Perhaps she could just
choose
to stop being angry, as recommended by Lyn’s self-help gurus.

She felt a sense of wonderful well-being at the thought. It was
like recovering from the flu, when you suddenly realized that your body was functioning normally again.

Her mobile phone beeped. It was a text message from Dan:

Carefully, Cat got to her feet, pulled her skirt back down to her knees, and, leaving the empty bottle and ice bucket on the ground, began to walk toward the ferry.

“Well! Here we are again!” Annie had gone for a nautical theme today. She wore a blue-and-white-striped shirt and a little red scarf tied jauntily around her neck. Her eyes were clear and dewy. Cat and Dan regarded her with bleary awe. They’d been up all night, drinking and crying.

“Now, you’re a
triplet, Cat!”

“Yes!” said Cat, failing to match her enthusiasm.

“Now, a lot of triplets have unusually strong relationships with their siblings. Yes?” said Annie.

Oh, Christ. Annie had obviously been foraging through her old textbooks since their last meeting.

“Now, what I’d like to look at today is
Dan’s
relationship with your sisters!”

“What about our homework?” asked Cat.

Annie looked confused. She obviously didn’t remember the homework.

“Well, yes, but first let’s look at this. I think it’s important. Dan?”

Dan smiled.

“I get on well with her sisters,” he said. “Always have done.”

Annie nodded encouragingly.

“Actually,” said Dan. “I even dated one of them before Cat.”

An invisible fist punched the air from Cat’s lungs.

“What are you talking about?”

Dan looked at her. “You knew that!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“But of course you did!” said Dan nervously.

Cat’s heart was hammering. “Which one?” Gemma. It would be Gemma. Dan was looking at her beseechingly, Annie was quivering with professional pride at this breakthrough.

“Which one?” insisted Cat.

“Lyn,” he said. “It was Lyn.”

“But surely she
knew that!”

“I never told her.”

“Why not?”

“It was complicated.” Lyn buttered Michael a piece of raisin toast and put it on his plate. “She’s not eating anything, you know.”

“Isn’t she?”

Michael looked at Maddie, who was sitting in her high chair next to him. Maddie dimpled flirtatiously at her father with blissful unconcern for the applesauce dripping from her face. She slammed both hands in the gooey mess in front of her.

“More!” she demanded and leaned forward, opening her mouth wide.

Lyn watched as Michael held the spoon high, made “clack, clack, clack” helicopter sounds, circled it around her head, and zoomed it toward her mouth. At the very last instant Maddie snapped her mouth shut and shook with silent hilarity as Michael tried to wedge the spoon in between her pursed lips.

Maddie might have inherited her father’s black curly hair and dimples, but her sense of humor was pure, unadulterated Kettle.

“She hasn’t had one mouthful,” said Lyn.

“She’ll eat if she’s hungry.” Michael put down the spoon and
picked up his coffee mug. “Kara used to do the same thing. She never starved.”

Lyn privately suspected that Maddie was much smarter than Kara would have been at the same age. “Oh, she’s just average,” she told the other mothers at play group, without believing a word of it. She felt sorry for them, Maddie’s superiority was so embarrassingly obvious. “Maddie is perfectly capable of not eating when she’s hungry. She thinks it’s funny.”

“Ah, mothers, you’re all the same!” said Michael comfortably. “Georgina used to get herself in a state with Kara. It’s obviously innate, this desire to see your children eat.”

Lyn squeezed the bridge of her nose hard between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t want to be in any category that also included Georgina.

Michael pointed his piece of toast at her and spoke with his mouth full. “Your sisters do exactly the same thing with their noses when they’re annoyed. I noticed Cat doing it Friday night. Had a little laugh to myself.”

Lyn let go of her nose. “Did you now.” She stood up and shoved hard at his shoulder. “Swap places please. I’m going to indulge my strange desire not to see my child starve.”

Michael circled one arm around her waist and pulled her down onto his lap. Lyn picked up the spoon and the jar of baby food and sized up her daughter. “Do you want your breakfast?” she asked. Maddie opened her mouth to say “no” and Lyn shoved in a laden spoon. Maddie swallowed, licked her lips, and opened her mouth to bellow at these deceitful tactics. With unerring accuracy, Lyn jammed in another mouthful.

“Your mother has incredible reflexes,” said Michael admiringly. Maddie didn’t look impressed.

“Better than bloody Georgina, I bet,” said Lyn as she wiped Maddie’s glowering face with her bib. “Oh
much
better than Georgina!” Michael jiggled her up and down on his lap suggestively. “In
every respect.”

“What’s better than Georgina in every respect?” Kara came into the dining room, pulled out a chair so that it screeched horrendously across the floorboards, and sat down at the table in front of them. She picked up a box of cereal and looked at it with disgust. Michael and Lyn froze.

“Kara!” crowed Maddie and clapped her hands, showering her parents with applesauce.

“Lyn, I bet,” said Kara. She put on a prissy voice. “Your lovely Lynnie is so much better than Mum, isn’t she?”

Michael cleared his throat. “Good morning, sweetheart!” he said hopefully, while Lyn extricated herself from his arms. “I made scrambled eggs,” she said to Kara. “Want some?”

Kara made retching noises.

“Don’t do that please, Kara,” said Michael.

“What? Scrambled eggs make me sick. So what?”

“You’re being rude and you know it.”

Lyn said mildly, “You liked scrambled eggs yesterday.”

Kara ignored her. She was looking mutinously at her father. “Oh. And it’s really polite comparing Lyn to my mother in front of me, isn’t it? How do you think that makes me feel?”

“Sweetheart, I was not comparing Lyn to your mum. I was just being silly.”

“Yeah, what
ever, Dad. I’m not retarded.”

“No, darling, you’re not. You’re very intelligent. Speaking of which, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a good laptop for you—”

“Oh! Now you’ve made me feel sick! I can’t
stand it here!” Kara
threw down the box of cereal so that Sultana Bran went flying and stormed out of the room.

Michael raised baffled hands at Lyn.

“Eyes peeled,” she explained. “You shouldn’t have said you were keeping your eyes peeled.”

“My God,” Michael shook his head slowly back and forth.

“What do you think of that, Maddie?”

Maddie looked at him in solemn agreement.

“My Dod.” She frowned heavily and shook her head vigorously back and forth. “My Dod.”

“Cat. It’s me. Please don’t hang—”

The phone clicked and beeped ponderously in her ear.

Oh, for God’s sake, thought Lyn, as she replaced the phone. Each time Cat hung up on her, it felt like a stinging slap across her face. It was so childish! So unproductive!

She doodled an asterisk next to
Talk to C. re D.

Fine then, she would move on to another priority. She looked at her list, sighed, checked her watch, and considered her half-full coffee cup. It was still hot. She couldn’t even pretend she felt like another one.

Get a grip, she told herself. It wasn’t like her to procrastinate
like this. Come on, remember the third habit: First things first.

When Lyn was in her final year at university, she had a profound, almost religious experience: She read
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Every page brought a new epiphany. Yes! she kept thinking, as she highlighted another paragraph in fluorescent yellow and felt herself expanding with potential. It was such a relief to discover that she wasn’t at the mercy of her unfortunate Kettle genes or her overly dramatic Kettle childhood. Unlike animals, she learned, human beings could choose how they responded to stimuli. She could change her programming, with a simple paradigm shift. She didn’t have to be a Kettle girl! She could be whoever she wanted to be!

Her sisters, of course, refused to be converted. “What crap,” sneered Cat. “I hate those sort of books. I can’t believe you’re falling for it.”

“It’s weird,” said Gemma. “Every time I tried to read about the first habit, I just fell into the deepest sleep.”

So Lyn became a highly effective person on her own—and it worked. It worked like a charm.

“Oh, you’re so lucky!” people said of her success. Well, she wasn’t lucky. She was
effective.
Ever since then, she had begun each day with a strong cup of coffee and a brand-new “to do” list. She had a hardbound notebook especially for the task. At the front was her “principle-centered personal mission statement” and her long-term, medium-term, and short-term goals for each of the key areas of her life: work, family, and friends.

She loved that notebook. It gave her such a soothing sense of satisfaction as she drew a neat, sharp line through each new priority—check, check, check!

Just recently however, she’d noticed the tiniest, quickly suppressed blip of panic whenever she began a new list. She found herself thinking unproductive thoughts like, What if it was simply physically impossible to do everything? Sometimes it felt like all the people in her life were scavengers, pecking viciously away at her flesh, wanting more, more, more.

A friend from university had called recently, complaining that Lyn never kept in touch, and Lyn had wanted to scream at her, I have no time, don’t you see, I have no time! Instead, she had done a spreadsheet and listed all her friends, categorized by importance (close friend, good friend, casual friend) with columns for dinners, lunches, coffees, “just called to see how you are” phone calls and e-mails.

If her sisters ever discovered the existence of her “friend management system” they would be merciless.

She looked out her office window at the dazzling expanse of turquoise water and thought about herself through the eyes of the
She
journalist. When she’d walked into Lyn’s elegant home office with its harbor views, her lip had curled with envy. In some ways, Lyn agreed with her. She did have it all—adoring husband, gorgeous child, stimulating career—and she damn well deserved it. She worked hard, she was good at what she did—she was effective!

But some days, like when Gemma telephoned from the bathtub, water sloshing in the background, Lyn wondered what it would be like to be a little less effective, with nothing more to worry about than when to sleep with a new boyfriend.

And some days, like today, it felt like there was a band of pressure squeezing tightly around her skull.
Talk to C. re D.
Oh God.

No paradigm shift could eliminate a good strong dose of Catholic guilt.

The year Lyn turned twenty-two someone switched her life over to fast-forward and forgot to change it back again. That’s how it felt. When people said to her, “Can you believe how fast the year has gone? Christmas again!” she replied too fervently, “I know! I can’t believe it!”

Sometimes she’d be doing something perfectly ordinary, sitting at the dinner table passing Kara the pepper and without warning, she’d feel a strange, dizzy sense of disorientation. She’d look at Michael and think, Surely it was only a few months ago
that we got married! She’d look at Maddie and think, But you were a tiny baby, only a few days ago! It was as if she were being picked up and put down again in each new stage of her life like a chess piece.

She could pinpoint the moment her life switched over to fast-forward. It was the day she got the phone call in Spain. The phone call about Gemma.

“It’s bad news,” said Cat, her voice echoing hollowly down the line and Lyn said “What?” even though she heard her perfectly well, just to put it off, just to annoy Cat, because she didn’t really believe it was anything bad.

“Bad news!” Cat repeated impatiently. “It’s something really, really bad.”

Lyn had spent the last ten months working in a London hotel and hating every minute of it. Now she was making up for it with eight long weeks of carefree summer travel around Europe before returning home in time for Gemma’s wedding.

Lyn had met an American boy named Hank in Barcelona. They caught the train together down the Costa Brava and stopped at a little town called Llanca. Each day lasted a lifetime. Their balcony looked right out on sparkling sea and hazy mountains capped with snowy white buildings. She and Hank weren’t sleeping together yet, but it would take only couple more jugs of sangria. Sometimes as they walked through sunlit cobbled streets he’d grab her and push her up against a wall and they’d kiss until they were both breathless. Lyn felt like she was living in an Audrey Hepburn movie. It was laughably romantic.

“What bad news?” asked Lyn calmly. She looked down at her sandy feet on the white tiles of her hotel room and admired her tanned, pink toenails. No doubt it was the bridesmaids’ dresses. Gemma probably wanted them to look like fluffy meringues, or more likely, something strange, like Gothic witches or flower-power hippies.

“Marcus is dead.”

Lyn watched her toes curl in surprise.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I mean he’s dead. He got hit by a car on Military Road. He died in the ambulance. Gemma was with him.”

It was like being winded. Lyn grabbed at the telephone cord.

“It’s O.K. She’s fine. Well, she’s not fine. Her fiancé is dead. But she’s fine. She’s not hurt or anything.”

Lyn let out her breath. “My God. I can’t believe it.”