Wish Club (15 page)

Her tongue explored the newly rough interior of her mouth, the cracked and chipped teeth, the metallic taste of blood. Tears started to fill her eyes. What was her mother looking at? And then, finally, she found her voice. “Mom?”

Her mother had turned to look at her, taking a moment to recognize the tangled and bloody mess as her daughter. “Jilly!”

As she’d come toward Jill, she searched in her pockets for her handkerchief, and then she bent at the waist in front of Jill. “Oh Jilly,” she said, holding out the handkerchief, “you’ve ruined your new tights.”

As
if it were yesterday, Jill remembered the sensation of peeling her forehead from the pavement, the initial relief that her skull was in one piece. She’d ended up with a pretty good-sized goose egg on her forehead, one missing and one chipped front tooth, and a couple of skinned knees. Her mother had held a constant wince on her face while she wiped the blood from Jill’s face, but the look of horror that had appeared there when Jill had opened her mouth to reveal her damaged smile was entrenched in Jill’s memory forever.

The dentist hadn’t been much help, refusing to utilize any cosmetic dentistry on baby teeth, and Jill often wondered why her mother hadn’t pursued it by going to another dentist with her checkbook in hand. Probably, at some point, her mother had become
too busy
to be caught up in her daughter’s smile, perhaps consoling herself with the fact that Jill’s missing teeth were in fact just baby teeth and that they, and therefore her smile, would grow back.

A cold breeze kicked up and the pages of Jill’s sketchbook fought against the clips that were holding them down to her board. Jill blew the charcoal off of her cold fingers and continued to draw, but the tree branches she was sketching began to move, making them look to her like the grabby, gnarled fingers of an old woman—witch’s fingers.

In spite of the apparent success of her first wish—for a perfect man, which, as she got to know him better, Marc was turning out to be—Jill couldn’t shake a growing sense of uneasiness. No matter what they called it, wishing, energy raising, whatever—it was, she felt, on some level still witchcraft, and there was a part of her inculcated by her Catholic upbringing that still thought it was wrong.

But she couldn’t quit now. Jill was waiting for her wish for creative inspiration to kick in. Her opening was in a month, and she still had the big canvas to do. She needed to get going on it, or, at the very least, on something else. But maybe she needed to be patient. If it turned out half as well as her first wish had…

And as for Marc, well. In all the years of dating and relationships, she couldn’t understand now why she’d never tried dating a younger man before. She’d never met anyone like him. He was so fun. So free. So amazing in bed, unlike the pathetic fumblers of
her
early twenties. She loved that he was so
not
into the
where is this headed
routine. He was polite and funny and charming, and gorgeous beyond belief on top of it all. The way some women stared at him when they were out together—they ought to be ashamed of themselves. But it gave her a thrill.
That’s right, ladies, he’s with me.

He left her short, meaningless messages on her voicemail.
“Grrrrr.”
How fun was that? She couldn’t imagine uptight Michael ever leaving a message like that.

Marc had finally asked her to sit for some portraits and she’d agreed, pretending to be reluctant, but secretly thrilled. This was the way he preferred to connect with his girlfriends, and she thought it was great.

He’d certainly connected with his black-haired model. They’d both shared a laugh about Jill’s interruption, later, when they could talk about it, although Jill’s laughter had felt forced and hollow.

She and Marc hadn’t had any exclusivity conversations about their relationship. Jill wasn’t seeing anyone else, and she sort of assumed that he wasn’t either, but for the first time she could remember, Jill felt like
she
wanted to ask
him
not to. It was as though she couldn’t get enough of him—and she didn’t want to share.

One night the previous week, she’d been on her way out of 4400 North when she’d seen the lights on in his studio. Jill had knocked, but he hadn’t answered. She’d waited a long time before deciding he must have just forgotten the lights and left them on. She couldn’t bring herself to think of any alternatives.

The cold breeze in the park was more constant now and it was clear to Jill and everyone else that their “spring break” was over. Jill put her charcoals in her art bin and snapped the lid down. After securing a cover sheet over her drawings, she stood up and folded her portable canvas stool, collected her things, and headed back through the park to the pedestrian tunnel that would take her under Lake Shore Drive and up across the street to her building. She passed the mothers and nannies hurrying their children along, all of them wearing coats too thin for the changing weather.

Winter had returned to Chicago like it always did—without fair warning.

Chapter Fifteen

In
my next life,” Gail thought, “I’m going to have kids who sleep in the car.”

The whole way back from Dominick’s Emily had sung the
Caillou
song over and over. Of all the PBS cartoon soundtracks, the one from
Caillou
was the most insidiously evil, in that you really only needed to hear it once to have it stuck in your head all day. The way Emily was carrying on, Gail was fairly certain she wouldn’t be able to get the
Caillou
song out of her head until sometime around the middle of next week.

Gail glanced in the rearview mirror. Emily was singing to the side window of the car. She had a thoughtful look on her face, an expression you might see on a ballad singer’s face as he crooned “Dust in the Wind,” which was made all the more humorous by the fact that she could only pronounce half of the words she was singing. “I’m just a kid who’s four, each day I grow some more, I like exploring, I’m Caillou.”

I need to learn to treasure these moments,
she thought. I need to take Excedrin
before
I go to the grocery store.

“Fuu—uck.”

Gail’s eyes jumped to the rearview mirror. Emily had stopped her singing and her finger was pointing out the window. “Fuu—uck.”

“Emily Anne—”

The sound of a fire truck’s siren reached her ears.
Oh jeez-o-pete.

“Say Figh-errrr truck, Emmy. Figh-errrrr.”

Another fire truck came barreling down Foster, hurtling up behind Gail, and she pulled over to the side, her heart pounding. She’d been so caught up in Emily’s suspected profanity she hadn’t noticed its approach. Sad the way the Universe worked, she thought. At the time in your life when you wanted to be the safest driver possible, you were so distracted by your kids you turned into a menace. Every time she saw one of those crashed broomstick witches at Halloween, she’d tell her kids, “You know what happened here, don’t you? That witch got distracted by the kids on the back of her broom.”

Speaking of witches, Gail remembered she still needed to call Claudia back. Claudia had left another of her incomprehensible messages this morning, telling Gail to call her back right away,
It’s urgent.
She’d sounded extremely upset.

Man, there sure were a lot of fire trucks. There must be a huge fire somewhere. A third truck sped by. This time Gail had pulled over to the side in a timelier manner.

“Where are all the fire trucks going, Emmy? There must be a big fire.”

When she went through the intersection at Ashland, past the tall buildings on the corner, she could see black smoke rising from the west, a few blocks south. “Look at all that smoke…”

The smoke was near the boys’ school.

No. It couldn’t be. Worrywart. Worrywart. Stop it—just stop.

In spite of what her brain was trying to tell her was just paranoia, Gail turned south down a side street to pick up Burns Street westbound, forgoing her trip home to drop off the groceries. The air was foggy with smoke and people were standing on their front porches or in the street looking west. As Gail got closer and closer to the school, the smoke got thicker and thicker.

When she turned down Harcourt, she could see the flashing strobes of a squad car blocking the intersection farther down, at the northeast corner of the school. Her heart dropped in her chest. No. No!

The smoke was thickest here, and it smelled acrid, but also, oddly enough, it had the pleasant wintry smell of crackling hardwood. Cars jammed Harcourt and Gail couldn’t drive any closer. She double-parked and got out, yanking Emily from the back seat, leaving her hat where it had dropped on the floor mat. The ding ding ding of the van’s warning system,
You’ve left your lights on, The keys are still in the ignition,
faded behind her as she broke into a run down the sidewalk toward the school. Smoke billowed from the second floor and roof. Flames were still coming out of some windows on the east side of the building, despite the stream of water the firefighters had trained on it.

“You can’t go down there, lady.” A cop was shouting but Gail didn’t turn around. In the noise and commotion she elected to pretend she hadn’t heard him. Let him
try
to keep me from my kids, she thought.

It would take a bullet.

Kids milled around the edge of the parking lot in the smoke-fog, some of them crying, huddling close to teachers. One group was still wearing gym clothes, and stood shivering. Gail scanned for Will and Andrew. For Andrew’s blue sweater, Will’s maroon one. She looked for the junior kindergartners, the third-grade class. Their teachers, Mrs. Dwyer or Mrs. Mitchell. She circled the teachers’ parking lot, heading toward the playground on the northwest corner, closer to where the kindergarten classrooms were. There were parents and kids and firefighters everywhere, cops running.

Two firemen ran by, heading toward the corner ahead of her. “They said about twenty still on the second floor,” one was yelling into a radio. “Northwest stairway’s blocked—they’re going up the main stairway on the east—”

There are kids still inside?
A short wail, an “ahh” escaped Gail’s mouth, and Emily started chewing on the knuckle of the thumb she’d been sucking on.

Gail hurried to the edge of the playground, to a group of what appeared to be first-or second-graders standing together with their teacher.

“Where’s the third grade?” Gail asked the teacher. “Mrs. Mitchell’s class?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them.”

“Mrs. Dwyer—the junior kindergartners?”

The teacher shook her head and shrugged sympathetically.

“Mrs. Stone? Kayla fell over”—a boy started tugging on the teacher’s arm—“and her eyes are all—” he rolled his eyes back into his head, apparently a simulation of Kayla, and Mrs. Stone hurried away from Gail.

A fireman yelled over a megaphone. “You have to stand back—get back, people. We need to get everyone back and out of the way so no one gets hurt.” Gail left the playground and hurried out to the sidewalk, which was crowded with spectators. She jogged down toward the kindergarten entry.

Smoke poured from the second floor here, but no flames. On this side, the west side of the school, the sidewalk was deserted—no teachers or children—just emergency workers. Gail sensed that panic was close, waiting to take hold of her, like a bird of prey circling overhead.

Emily started sobbing and Gail pulled her tighter, closer, glad for something solid to hang on to.

“Everything’s going to be okay, baby.” Gail patted the back of Emily’s coat while she held her. “Don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”

The
headquarters for the Chicago Women’s Foundation were in a large Victorian house in Lincoln Park West. The house, in its heyday, must have really been something—inlaid wooden floors, mahogany woodwork, crystal chandeliers—and while it hadn’t fallen into disrepair, it had taken on a more worn appearance. The Women’s Foundation was, after all, a foundation based on charitable works and therefore, they couldn’t be seen squandering too much money on something as unnecessary as appearances.

Lindsay hung up the phone in the first-floor office and consulted her notes. A member of the planning committee for the spring fashion show, Lindsay was working with the Metron Hotel, this week’s trendiest, see-and-be-seen-at hotel. The fashion show was going to be held there three weeks from now, during the second week in March, and she’d just finished talking with the Metron’s events coordinator when Evelyn Cantwell stuck her head inside the door.

“Lindsay. Hello, love.”

Evelyn had a way of calling all the Foundation women “love.” It was always good to get one of Evelyn’s “loves,” because it usually meant you were in her favor, and since Evelyn was the president of the Chicago chapter of the Women’s Foundation, and therefore the gatekeeper of Chicago society, it was good to be in her favor. The irony was, as often as Evelyn handed out the “loves,” she was one of the least loving people Lindsay knew.

“Evelyn. Hi.” Lindsay smiled.

“My goodness, Lindsay, you’ve been looking fabulous lately. What’s your secret—have you lost weight?”

“Oh, well thank you.” Lindsay’s smile brightened naturally, warming to her favorite subject of late. “I’ve lost a little weight, yes. Thanks for noticing.”

Evelyn stood in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest officiously. “Well, everyone’s talking about how great you look—and I have to agree, you’re simply radiating.” She continued to stare at Lindsay, her eyebrows pulled together ever so slightly.

Lindsay just smiled, speechless. After a brief moment, she got the feeling she shouldn’t just be sitting there smiling, or
radiating,
so Lindsay got down to business. “I just got off the phone with the Metron. George wants to know if we want them to take care of the flowers using their house florist, or if we’re going to be supplying them. He seemed rather intent on having us go with their in-house florist, but I don’t think we should—”

“That is
so
George, now isn’t it, love? I was at a Chamber Music board meeting last fall and I’m pretty sure his precious in-house florists had done the arrangements because they had carnations in them.” Evelyn made a face as if to say,
can you believe it?
“Your instincts are correct. We should supply our own. Can we get Keiko’s? On this late notice?”

“I’ll call over there right now.” Lindsay put her hand on the phone.

“Something orchidy, I think.”

Lindsay nodded in agreement, smiling.
How perfect. I share your vision.

“But not just Phalaenopsis, something more exotic. Keiko will know.” Evelyn dropped her arms down onto her hips. “I’ll let you get to it, then. Keep up the good work, love.” She gave Lindsay another smile before turning to leave the room.

Lindsay picked up the phone and tried to dial, but it was difficult. She couldn’t stop bouncing in her seat.

Emily
kept squirming in Gail’s arms as Gail ran along the west side of the school. The building was closer to the street here and it was quieter on this side, too, only a few firemen hurrying around. One stopped to yell at her, “You can’t be over here. Get across the street.” He waved her over to the other side.

Unable to pretend she hadn’t heard him, Gail obeyed, crossing over and cutting in between two cars. The snow on the parkway near the curb was in a high mound and she climbed over, her right foot breaking through the frozen crust on top, sinking her down about a foot. She put her other foot down on the icy snow and it skidded out from under her. Gail fell. Emily slid from her arms and simultaneously Gail heard a snap, feeling a sharp pain in her right knee.

“Emmy!”

Gail climbed out of the snow bank and crawled over to where Emily was crying, lying on her side, a little pink bundle. “Are you okay, honey?” Gail’s eyes widened at the splotches of blood on the front of Emily’s coat. “Where does it hurt honey? Where—?”

Emmy’s right thumb was bloody. Gail calmed slightly. It didn’t look too bad.

Gail’s eyes filled with tears; she had her daughter out here in the cold, running around in the snow, with no hat and no gloves, her coat unzipped. Gail hugged Emily close, wishing she could be holding her sons close as well. Her fingers shook as she zipped the front of Emily’s pink parka.

God, let the boys be okay, Please let them be fine.
Gail looked over Emily’s shoulder. She could see people moving through the smoke, on the sidewalk farther down.
I want Will and Andrew to run up to me now. God, I’ll do anything, anything if you just let them be okay.

Gail lifted herself and Emily up out of the dirty snow, wincing as she put weight on her right leg. She made her way carefully over to the sidewalk, looking down, watching where she placed her boots on the ice. The sidewalk was dry, and she hurried down to the group of people, her right knee throbbing. There were older kids here, fifth-and sixth-graders. A few teachers.

“Has anyone seen the kindergartners? Or the third grade?” Gail shouted. Her eyes burned with tears and smoke.

People shook their heads.

Gail worked her way down the sidewalk, bumping into people, asking her question over and over.

“Mom!” It came from pretty far away.

Gail spun around. “Will?” but she didn’t see him in the crowd, through the smoke. Had she mistaken another child’s voice for her son’s? It had happened to her before, in other places at other times, always driving a guilt-stake through her heart.

“Will? Will! Where are you?” Gail circled back down the sidewalk the way she’d just come, squinting her eyes against the smoke. Then she saw his back, his sandy brown hair, the maroon sweater he’d worn to school that morning. He was standing still, his head tilted up, watching the faces of people as they passed him by.

“Will!”

He turned around and, seeing her, ran, crashing into them with a thud rendered silent by the commotion around them. Gail teetered back with the impact, but didn’t fall. She dropped to her knees and, with Emily still tight in her arms, hugged her son.