Three Wishes (32 page)

“Wow,” said Lyn. “We were so, so…”

“Exactly the same,” said Cat.

“Different,” said Gemma.

It wasn’t so much the things that her fourteen-year-old self
wanted. It was the fact that she so blissfully, so completely, believed she had a right to want
anything.

Ahoy there, Gemma! I’m sorry, but I seem to have stuffed things up. I forgot. I’m not sure what I forgot. But I forgot it.

She thought of her mother, the day of Cat’s court case, watching Cat and Lyn obviously locked in some sort of vicious argument. “Those two need to let go!” she’d said. “What about me, Mum?” Gemma had asked frivolously. “What do I need to do?” “You’re the opposite. You need to hold on, of course. Hold on to something. Hold on to anything!”

“So, Lyn, all you need is that little boy called Harrison and you’ve achieved everything you ever dreamed,” said Cat.

“Yes, I know. I’m so
boring.”

“You said it, not me.”

“Oh, stop it! The two of you. Just stop it.” Gemma could feel something indefinable inflating within her.

Cat and Lyn ignored her. They both took drowning gulps from their glasses.

“I note that your letter didn’t even mention children,” Lyn said to Cat.

“It wasn’t a contract.”

“It’s just interesting.”

“You know, Lyn, not everything is your business.”

“It is my business! Gemma’s baby is my niece or nephew. And I think children should be with their
parents.
That’s why—”

She stopped, took a breath and brushed at some crumbs on the tablecloth with the back of her hand.

“That’s why what?” asked Gemma.

“That’s why I called Charlie to tell him you’re pregnant.”

Gemma nearly knocked over her glass. “What did he say?”

“He wasn’t there,” admitted Lyn. “I didn’t leave a message. But I’m calling him again. I feel really strongly about this.”

Gemma watched as Cat began to tremble.

“You bitch. You absolute bitch.”

“Cat. It’s not about you.”

“It is about me. This is
my
baby!”

But it’s not, thought Gemma, with surprise. It’s my baby.

“Do you know how a lightbulb works?” she asked Cat.

“Oh, shut up, Gemma! This is serious!”

Charlie would know.

It seemed like the purest, most absolute truth of her entire life.

That Charlie would know how a lightbulb worked. And he’d pull a funny face. And he’d explain it so well that electricity would seem like something magical. And Gemma didn’t want to miss it. She wanted to be there, loving them both in the bright, white light of Woolworth’s.

“The thing is,” she began.

She knew what she was about to say was unbearably cruel, but she said it anyway:

“I’ve changed my mind.”

She changed her
mind. She just went right ahead and changed her mind.

“I’m sorry, Cat.” Gemma looked across the table at Cat with wide-eyed sincerity. “I’m really,
really sorry.”

Cat almost laughed because she’d known this could happen. Maybe she even knew all along that it
would happen.

But she’d given her every possible chance.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” she’d asked, again and again.

And again, again, Gemma had replied, “Absolutely sure! Deep down in my heart sure.”

When Gemma had first suggested the plan, Cat had agreed in an almost lighthearted, fantastical way. It hadn’t seemed possible that Gemma could really be pregnant, sitting in Cat’s kitchen, in her cut-off shorts, looking normal and skinny. It felt like a game, an abstract distraction. It was the same as when she thought about the idea of going to a sperm bank. Yes, she was sort of serious, sort of
very
serious, but did sperm banks actually exist outside of comedy films? Did they have ads in the Yellow Pages?

Imagining Gemma’s baby in her arms helped her to stop
thinking about Dan and Angela—and Angela’s hair and Angela’s breasts and Angela’s underwear.

It helped her to walk by parents pushing their strollers, without wanting to stop and scream with savage rage at those smug, carelessly happy women, What makes you so special? Look at you! You’re not that pretty or smart! How did you manage to have a baby? When I can’t? When I’ve somehow failed to achieve this basic
boring thing!

It helped her to sleep. It helped her get up in the mornings.

And that was why the violent opposition from Maxine and Lyn was so hurtful. They reacted as if it were all Cat’s idea. As usual, evil Cat was exploiting fragile, helpless Gemma.

They never once said, We understand why you want to do this.

They didn’t seem to notice that it was a miracle that Cat was still functioning, when she felt like she’d been fragmented into a million pieces. They weren’t incredulous, like Cat still was on a daily basis, that Dan had actually gone, that he woke up in some other woman’s bed.

Her hurt gave her a petulant resolve. Why not, after all? Why shouldn’t this work, if Gemma wanted it? Why not?

She worked for hours on the second bedroom, painting the walls a buttery yellow. While she was scraping and painting, her mind was peacefully blank.

The nursery was beautiful. Everyone said so.

Just yesterday, she’d bought a white cane chair with blue cushions and put it by the window, where you could see the magnolia tree. She’d sat there in a pool of morning sunshine and imagined giving the baby its bottle and considered the possibility of happiness.

It was going to be her and the baby against the world. Just the two of them.

And now Gemma changed her mind.

All that softness and sunshine had been snatched away, and Cat was back out again in that bland wasteland of memos and
office cubicles and divorce proceedings and
nobody waiting for her to come home.

Better to have stayed cold all along than had this taste of warmth.

Cat sat there in the noisy restaurant with her head pounding from champagne, a huge nauseating triangle of chocolate mud cake in front of her, and for a few seconds she felt nothing, and then it came, all at once, a tumbling toxic torrent.

It was basic, childish disappointment.

It was “Ha ha! Who looks like a fool now!” humiliation.

It was the smug lift of Lyn’s eyebrows.

It was tomorrow. And the day after that.

It was because fourteen-year-old Cat Kettle would have thought she was a loser.

Whatever it was, it sucked her down into a wailing vortex and afterward she never remembered how she came to be standing up, or what she was saying, or what she was holding in her hand until she threw it, screaming, “You have both fucking ruined my life!”

And then:

One day you’ll go too far,
Maxine always said.

She’d gone too far.

The fork protruding embarrassingly and impossibly out of Gemma’s belly.

Blood!

Her first thought was, sweet Jesus, I’ve killed her.

And then, I’m going to be sick.

A roaring in her ears.

She was on the floor, with the most tremendous pain thumping down one side of her face and into her ear and something metallic filling her mouth.

Olivia was crouched down beside her, “It’s O.K. You fainted. You all right? You hit your chin pretty hard against the table.”

All around her, Cat could see the backs of people’s legs. Their
table was surrounded by a frenzied group of arguing strangers.

“Be calm! Tell her to be calm! Sweetheart, be very,
very calm!”

“The ambulance is coming. Shhhh! Is that the siren I hear?”

“Has anybody called the police? Because I saw it! That was
assault!”

“Did you hear? They’re
sisters!
Unbelievable.”

“Have I killed her?” she wanted to ask, but her mouth was full of marbles.

“Everyone is
freaking
out!” Olivia said happily.

“Um, Lyn?” It was Gemma’s voice. She sounded perfectly alive, vaguely concerned. “I think, maybe, I just had a contraction.”

Olivia’s mouth dropped comically.

The crowd seemed to sigh and sway with the horror of it. Cat watched a pair of masculine shoes begin to shuffle discreetly away from the table. Then she heard Lyn, her voice slip-sliding into uncharacteristic panic, “Is there a doctor here?”

Cat prayed: frantically and obsequiously.
Please, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Mother of Mary, all of you, I’m begging you, don’t let the baby die!

“I’ve got my first-aid certificate,” offered somebody.

“She doesn’t need to be resuscitated,” said somebody else.

“Of course I’ve never had a contraction before,” continued Gemma thoughtfully. “So, how would I know?”

“Helsh me up,” mumbled Cat, tasting blood. Olivia pulled on her wrists and heaved her to her feet.

“Here comes the boss.” Olivia appeared to be having the time of her life. “Oooh! She’ll be going ape shit over this! Afterbirth all over her floorboards.”

It was the same elegant, all-in-black woman who had so graciously offered their table at the beginning of the night. She now gave Cat a look of appalled disgust and used the back of her hands to firmly flap the crowd back to their seats. “Could I ask everyone to move? The ambulance is on its way.”

The grown-ups were coming. People hurried back to their
tables, looking slightly embarrassed, murmuring seriously to one another.

Ten minutes later, the paramedics walked through the restaurant radiating waves of drama and relaxed authority, like movie stars casually strolling into a press conference.

Lyn began to speak to them, but Gemma interrupted her, her tone succinct and urgent, even bossy.

“I’m due in three weeks. I saw my obstetrician just yesterday and she said I could expect to start feeling those pretend contractions. I don’t know if that’s what I just felt, or not. There’s a lot of tissue around the uterus right? The fork couldn’t have hurt my baby?

“It’s unlikely,” agreed the paramedic. “It would have to penetrate a very long way. It looks like it’s just broken the skin. Let’s take a look at your blood pressure.”

“I think you should listen to the baby’s heartbeat,” snapped Gemma. “That’s what I think you should do.”

She sounded, Cat thought, exactly like Lyn.

Or maybe it was Maxine.

She sounded like somebody’s mother.

Cat silently cradled her jaw and looked out the car window at the lights of the city. The guy who had been sitting at the table next to them, the one who had helped Gemma with her bag, was driving them to the hospital. Cat didn’t know or care what had happened to the girl who was with him.

He’d introduced himself to Cat, but she hadn’t bothered to listen. He didn’t seem quite real. Nobody did. She felt as if she were separated from the rest of the world by a blurry membrane. Nothing really mattered, except that Gemma and the baby would be O.K. The pain down the side of her face was excruciating, and she felt strangely conscious of every breath that she took.

She could hear Lyn in the front seat, talking to Maxine on her mobile.

“Yes, I know it’s our birthday. That’s why—”

“Yes, I do know how old we—”

“No, Mum, we’re not drunk—”

“O.K. Maybe a little tipsy.”

“Yes, a fork. A fondue fork.”

“A seafood fondue.”

“Well,
we liked it!”

“It was just a little argument, Mum. I’ll explain—”

“O.K., maybe not so little. But—”

“Well, yes, actually. I think the whole restaurant probably saw. But—”

“Royal Prince Alfred.”

“Fine. Bye.”

Lyn pressed a button on her mobile and shifted around to look at Cat. “Mum says take care, she loves us, and she’s coming right away.”

Cat stared at her with incomprehension, and Lyn chortled. “I’m joking!”

The guy driving the car chuckled. Cat held her napkin to her mouth and looked back out the window. Now Lyn was sounding a lot like Gemma. The world had gone topsy-turvy.

At the entrance to the hospital, Cat got out of the car without speaking, slammed the door, and blinked at the bright lights and muted roar of activity: phones ringing, a child screaming relentlessly, clumps of people walking busily in different directions.

Lyn seemed to have made best friends with the man from the restaurant. Cat watched as she leaned back in the window and chatted enthusiastically, before straightening up and waving good-bye.

She held up a little fan of business cards. “He’s a landscape gardener, a wedding photographer,
and
a personal trainer!” she said, as if this were interesting. “He was on a blind date but apparently it wasn’t going too well.”

Cat shrugged.

Lyn put the cards away in her purse. “Right, well, let’s see what’s happening with Gemma, and we’d better get someone to look at you. I wonder if you’ve bitten your tongue.”

Cat shrugged again. Perhaps she would give up talking forever. It might make life less complicated.

“Is that you, Lyn? Um, Cat?”

They turned around. It was Charlie walking toward them. He was wearing muddy tracksuit pants, a T-shirt, and a black beanie. He looked sweaty and agitated.

“I’m on my way home from touch footie and your sister calls for the first time in six months,” he said. “She asks me how a lightbulb works. So I start to explain it; I mean that’s Gemma, right? She was always asking funny questions. But then she starts crying like her heart is going to break and says she’s calling from an ambulance on the way to have a baby, and would I like to come and help her breathe, if I’m not too busy? Are you girls strange, or what?”

“No question, we’re strange,” said Lyn.

He held both palms upward in a very Italian gesture. “Man! She dumps me, she wasn’t even going to tell me she’s pregnant, and now suddenly she wants me to help her
breathe
?”

“It’s quite presumptuous of her,” agreed Lyn.

“And I don’t how to do this!” An expression of pure terror crossed his face. “There are classes for this sort of thing. Books. Videos. I like to know how things work!”

Lyn beamed at him. “Just hold her hand. Do what they do in the movies.”

“Jesus.” He pulled his beanie off, ran one hand over the top of his head, and took a deep breath. “And is she O.K.?”

“Well, there was a little accident but they’re looking at her now.”

For the first time Charlie looked at Cat and her blood-soaked napkin. Cat looked at the ground and tried to pretend she was somewhere else.

“An accident?”

“Let’s go inside and find out what’s happening,” said Lyn.

While Lyn and Charlie went off to find someone official, Cat sat down on a green plastic chair and began heavy negotiations with God.

All she wanted was for Gemma and the baby to be O.K. It didn’t seem like too unreasonable a request. She simply wanted one particular action to be without consequences.

And if God would do that, Cat would give up alcohol and every other potentially pleasurable activity. She would graciously accept that she was never going to have children herself and live a quiet, nunlike existence, thinking only of others.

She might even consider some very unpleasant form of volunteer work.

After a seemingly endless discussion, Charlie and Lyn came back over to where Cat was sitting. She looked up at them wordlessly.