Three Wishes (23 page)

When they were in primary school, the two of them regularly swapped classes, just for the sheer pleasure of conning their teachers. Lyn found it strangely exhilarating being naughty Cat Kettle, talking to the bad boys up at the back of the classroom and not listening to the teacher. In fact, she found it so easy and natural being Cat that when they went back to their own classrooms, she sometimes wondered if now she was just pretending to be Lyn. (And if she was pretending to be Lyn, she wondered, was there another Lyn—the real Lyn—deep down inside?)

When they turned sixteen the Kettle girls made the pleasing discovery that boys liked them, quite a lot. One night, Cat accidentally agreed to go out with two different boys on the same night. She only realized at the very last possible minute when one
boy arrived to pick her up. The other boy was due to meet her at the movies in twenty minutes’ time.

It was a thrilling mix-up, with Cat dramatically clapping her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with the wonderful horror of it. They all fell about smothering whoops of laughter in Cat’s bedroom, while the poor boy made strained conversation with Maxine. The only solution was for Lyn to go meet the other boy, Jason, at the movies.

Lyn went off to the movies feeling pleasantly frightened, like she was on a covert mission to save the world. It was only when she saw Jason leaning against a wall outside Hoyts, chewing nervously on the tickets that he’d already bought, his face lighting up when he saw her, that she suddenly felt awful.

“Hi, Cat,” said Jason.

“Hi, Jason,” said Lyn, and remembered not to apologize for being late.

It all went well in the beginning. They saw
Terminator
and Lyn avoided giveaway girly gasps, instead grunting with satisfaction at the most violent bits. At one stage she did worry she might have overdone it—she was laughing raucously at Arnie pulling out his eyeball, when she noticed that Jason had turned his head to look at her. But when she said, “What?” he grinned and pretended a piece of popcorn was his eyeball and ate it, so that was O.K., although revolting.

It wasn’t until afterward, when they were standing outside the movies, that everything went horribly wrong.

Suddenly, without warning, he leaned forward and kissed her, slithering his tongue weirdly along her gums. It was horrible, disgusting, mortifying. It was like being at the dentist with your mouth forced agape and unexpected violations with strange instruments and excessive saliva buildup.

When he’d finally finished with her mouth and Lyn was feeling an urgent desire to gargle and spit, he stood back, narrowed his eyes, and said, “Are you Lyn? Are you Cat’s sister Lyn?”

She tried to explain, but he was squaring his shoulders and squinting his eyes with cold contempt, just like the Terminator. “You Kettle girls are bitches, prick teasers,” he said. “And
you, you
can’t kiss.” Then he delivered his final, devastating blow: “’Cos you’re frigid!”

Lyn went home on her own, disgraced, humiliated, and…frigid.

She told Cat and Gemma that they’d been caught, but she never told them about the absolute confirmation of her worst secret fears. All she said was, “I will never, ever do that again.”

She was too late.

The flashing blue lights were visible from a block away, illuminating the little group of people, policemen, cars, and tow trucks in ghastly turquoise, like a stage set for a play.

As she pulled over, her own headlights shone a spotlight on the sickening, crumpled, caved-in side of Cat’s precious car. It was a proper accident. The idiot could have killed herself.

The reality of it was shocking. Now she wished she’d let Michael come with her.

She parked her car and walked toward the circle of people. Cat was in the center, all eyes upon her as she blew into a little white tube held by a policeman who looked like a teenage boy.

As Lyn approached she heard him say in a somber tone, “I’m afraid your reading is well over the limit.”

“Oh well.” Cat kicked at the ground.

A woman said to the man standing next to her, “I told you she was drunk!”

“Good for you, Laura.” The man shoved his hands into his jeans and frowned.

Lyn fought the desire to say saying something crushing to Laura-the-bitch and walked straight up to the policeman.

“Hello, I’m Lyn Kettle,” she said, in her bright but stern working-day voice. “I’m her sister.”

The policeman looked at her and seemed to drop his own working-day tone. “Gee, you can really tell you’re sisters! People must get you mixed up all the time.”

“Yes, ha! They do sometimes.” Lyn smoothed down her hair uneasily and hoped he wasn’t trained to pick up guilty body language. “Um. What happens now?”

The policeman switched back to his somber voice of authority. “Well, your sister will have to come down to the station with us. I’m afraid she’s likely to be charged with negligent driving and driving under the influence.”

Cat looked around her vaguely, as if all this had nothing to do with her.

Lyn reached over and touched her on the arm. “Are you O.K.?”

Cat raised her hands in a sort of hopeless gesture. “Oh. Never better.”

Her hands were bare, Lyn noticed. No wedding ring.

“So she’s going
to have to go to court!”

“Yes.”

“With a judge?”

“A magistrate, I think.”

“Will we get to go and watch?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

Gemma had often observed a strange phenomenon in her conversations with Lyn. The more serious Lyn’s tone, the more lighthearted Gemma became. It was like they were on a seesaw with Gemma flying high on the childish axis “Wheeee!” while Lyn banged down heavily onto solid, grown-up ground.

If Gemma started to become more serious, would Lyn start to lighten up—or did the seesaw go in only one direction?

“Gemma. She’s going to have a criminal record.”

“Oh.” Actually Gemma thought there was something rather thrilling about having a criminal record (did Cat have a
mug shot?) but that was not the sort of thing you said out loud, espe
cially to Lyn. “How terrible.”

“Yes. But anyway. There’s more. She and Dan are separating. He’s leaving her for Angela.”

“No!” There was nothing funny about that at all. “But how can
he do this now, of all times? She only lost the baby a few days ago!”

“Apparently, he was going to wait awhile to tell her, but then Cat found something on a telephone bill. I don’t really know the full story.”

“But what if she hadn’t lost the baby?”

“He said he was going to stay and try and make it work.”

“He makes me ill.”

“Me too.”

“And how is she?”

“I think she’s suffering from depression. She just wants to sleep all the time. Listen, are you still seeing Charlie?”

“Yes. Why?”

“It’s all a bit more complicated now, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

Charlie said firmly, “It’s nothing to do with us.”

“It’s everything to do with both of us,” said Gemma.

“It’s nothing to do with us,” he repeated. “I don’t want it to have anything to do with us. I love you.”

It was the first time he’d said it, and she didn’t say it back. She said, “No, you don’t!” and then he looked surprised and hurt and tugged at his ear.

You’re getting me mixed up with someone else, she wanted to explain. Don’t look at me so seriously. Don’t look at me as if I’m having an impact on you. I don’t have real relationships. I don’t have a real job. I don’t have a real home. The only part that’s real about me is my sisters.

And if I’m not really real, then I can’t really hurt you.

Marcus told Gemma he loved her for the first time on a warm October night. It was also the first night he called her a silly bitch.

They’d been going out for about six months, and Gemma, at nineteen, was still floating, spinning, bubbling with the delight of
her first full-on proper, sophisticated, older (living on his own!), well-off, funny, smart boyfriend.

He was a
lawyer,
for heaven’s sake! He knew about wine! He’d been to Europe
twice!

She adored everything about him and he seemed (it was a miracle, really!) to adore everything about her.

This was the boyfriend she’d dreamed about when she was fifteen.

This was like,
it!

They were going on a picnic. A romantic picnic by the harbor that he had organized and she was wearing a new dress that she was swirling for him and he was laughing at her swirling and then he told her he loved her.

He meant it. She could tell that he hadn’t planned to say it. It had just come out of his mouth. It was an involuntary I love you, which meant it was the genuine article.

“I love you too!” she said and they smiled at each other foolishly and had a lingering, lovely kiss against his kitchen counter.

About twenty minutes later, they were ready to go out when they remembered the bottle opener. Marcus opened the top drawer and made a “tsk” sound. “It’s not here.”

“Oh,” said Gemma, who was still feeling woozy and wonderful. “I put it away last night. Didn’t I put it in that drawer there?”

“Clearly you didn’t.”

“Oh.” She leaned over to look in the drawer and suddenly he slammed it shut, so she had to pull her hand back fast. He yelled so loudly that it was physical, like a blow to her chest, “For fuck’s sake, Gemma, where did you put it? I’ve told you at least five fucking times where it goes!”

It was just so unexpected.

“Why,” she asked, and it was a bit difficult to breathe, “are you yelling?”

The question enraged him. “I’m not,” he yelled, “fucking yelling, you silly bitch!”

He slammed drawers open and shut with such force that she was backing out of the kitchen thinking, My God, he’s gone crazy!

Then, “Why did you put it there?” and he lifted the bottle opener out of the wrong drawer and put it in the picnic basket and said in a perfectly normal voice, “Right, let’s go!”

Her legs were shaking.

“Marcus?”

“Mmmm?” He carried the basket out of the kitchen, collecting his house keys from the table. “Yeah?” He smiled at her.

“You were just yelling at me like a complete maniac.”

“No, I wasn’t. I just got a bit irritated when I couldn’t find the bottle opener. You’ve just got to put it in the right drawer. Now are we going on this picnic or not?”

“You called me a silly bitch.”

“I did not. Come on now. You’re not going to be one of those fragile, sensitive types, are you? I don’t want to have to walk on eggshells. That used to drive me mad with Liz.”

Liz was his ex-girlfriend, and, up until now, she had represented a very pleasing element in their relationship. “Oh, she couldn’t have been that bad,” Gemma would say happily whenever Marcus brought up one of Liz’s faults. Liz had lived with Marcus for two years and was a bit of a loser. Attractive enough, but she didn’t have Gemma’s legs and she was a sulk, a prissy girl, always nagging. Not as smart as Gemma. Gemma didn’t want to lose that enjoyable feeling of gentle superiority whenever Liz’s name came up.

Plus, she knew she did have a tendency to be oversensitive. Her sisters had been telling her about this tendency all her life.

Perhaps she was overreacting. People got angry sometimes.

And so it began.

They went on the picnic and at first she was a little tense but then he made her laugh and she made him laugh and it was another wonderful night, in a string of wonderful nights. The next day when Cat said to her, “So how was your night with the big hunk?” she said, “He told me he loved me!
Involuntarily!”

There was no need to ruin the lovely picture she could see reflected in her sisters’ eyes by telling them a silly story about a bottle opener. So she pressed it down, brushed it away, crumpled it up.

And she would have forgotten all about it, if a few weeks later, it hadn’t happened again.

This time there was sand on her feet when she got in his car.

Well.

He loved his car—and he’d been under so much pressure at work and she should really have washed her feet more carefully.

Selfish. Stupid. Lazy. Did she just not care? Did she just not listen? He pushed her out of the car, and it was her own fault for being so clumsy that she dragged her foot along the gravel parking lot, ripping a chunk of skin off her big toe.

There was a family in the parking lot at the beach, two little boys with pink-zinked noses and foam surfboards under their arms and a mum with a flowery straw hat and a dad with a beach umbrella. The little boys stared, and the parents hurried them along, as Marcus roared and swore and thumped his fist against the car.

Afterward, she put her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and felt grimy with a strangely compelling sort of shame.

Marcus was singing along to a song on the radio, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Good day, hey?” he said, reaching over to pat her on the leg. “How’s that toe of yours, you poor little thing. We’ll have to get a Band-Aid on it.”

Sometimes it happened every day for a week. Sometimes a whole month would pass without incident. It was never in front of anyone they knew. With their families and friends, he was charming and adoring, holding her hand, laughing affectionately at her jokes. It was a dirty little secret that they shared, like a peverse sexual habit. Imagine if they knew, Gemma would think, imagine if they ever saw, how shocked they would be, when they think we’re normal and nice, just like them.

But it was fine. She could deal with it. All relationships had
their problems after all. There was no need for her blood to turn to ice the moment she saw him pause, become still, the muscles in his back tensing.

He never hit her, after all. He would never do that. He only hurt her accidentally when she didn’t get out of his way quickly enough.

She just had to work out an appropriate response for these little “episodes.” Yelling back Cat-style? Calm, rational reasoning Lyn-style?

But both tactics only amplified his rage.

The only thing to do was to wait it out, to fold herself up inside, to pretend she was somewhere else. It was like ducking under a big wave when the surf was especially rough. You took a deep gulp and closed your eyes and dropped as far as you could beneath that raging wall of white water. While you were under it pushed you and shoved you as if it wanted to kill you. But it always passed. And when you broke the surface, gasping for air, sometimes it was so calmly-lapping-gentle you could hardly believe the wave ever existed in the first place.

It was fine. Their relationship was fine! They loved each other so much.

And she
was
forgetful and annoying and clumsy and selfish and hopeless and boring.

And it
was
highly unlikely that anyone else would put up with all of Gemma’s faults. She was, after all, fundamentally irritating.

She started having very long, very hot showers, scrubbing hard at her skin. Other women, she noticed, were so much
cleaner than her.

“Right,” said Lyn. “Deep breaths.”

The three of them were standing outside Cat and Dan’s place, except that now, the moment they opened the door, it would only be Cat’s place.

Dan had spent the morning moving his stuff out.

“I’m fine,” said Cat. She went to put her key in the door, and Gemma caught Lyn’s eyes as they both looked away from the clumsy tremor of her hands.

They walked in and stopped. Gemma’s stomach turned as she saw the blank spots on the walls and the dusty grooves across the carpet where pieces of furniture had been pulled. She hadn’t really believed he would do it.

Dan was such an automatic, everyday part of the Kettle family. It seemed like he had always been a part of their family dinners and birthdays, Christmas and Easter celebrations, making jokes, slouching on the sofa, complaining and teasing and giving his opinions, loudly, Kettle-style. Maxine told him off without formality. Frank opened the fridge door and tossed him beer bottles without looking. Dan knew all the family stories, he even starred in some of them, like “the time Frank tossed the beer bottle over his shoulder to Dan only Dan wasn’t there” and “the day Cat bet Dan that he couldn’t make a pavlova and he made the most stupendous pavlova of all time for that barbecue and Nana Kettle trod on it and the cream went up to her ankle!”

What would happen to those stories now? Would it be like they never happened? Would they have to rewrite all their histories as if Dan weren’t there?

Gemma realized she was feeling somehow hurt by Dan, as if he’d left her too. And if she was feeling betrayed and shocked, then she couldn’t even imagine the depth of Cat’s feelings.

She had to say something.

“Oh dear,” she said.

Lyn rolled her eyes and said, “You didn’t tell me you were letting him take the fridge, Cat.” She took out her mobile from her handbag. “I’ll call Michael now and you can have that old one we’ve got in the garage.”

“Thanks,” said Cat vaguely. She was standing at the kitchen bench reading a handwritten note without picking it up. It was sitting next to a set of keys.

She pressed her fingertips gently against the piece of paper and then walked into the bedroom.

Gemma looked at Lyn, who was issuing bossy instructions to Michael. She gestured with her head for Gemma to follow Cat.

Gemma pulled faces at her. “What should I say?” she mouthed.

“Gemma’s being pathetic,” Lyn told Michael, and she pushed her firmly between the shoulder blades toward the bedroom.

Feeling slightly sick, Gemma allowed herself to be shoved.

The awful things that were happening to Cat made it seem like she was a different person—and that was wrong. She remembered Cat’s and Lyn’s scarily polite behavior when Marcus died. She must try to not to be polite to Cat. Sympathetic. But not at all polite.

Cat was standing with her hand on the mirrored door of the bedroom cupboard. “All his clothes are gone. Look.”