Wish Club (17 page)

“I don’t know, Claude. It just seems so far-fetched. Besides, what do you think the chances are that they would actually let
us
get in the middle of all of it—try to adopt it? There are all sorts of conflict-of-interest issues here. They could accuse you of having the mother plant it in the bathroom—”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

Dan leaned forward in his chair. “This thing is going to get really ugly, I’ll bet. Do you know how many hearings and interviews you’re going to have to go through just because you found that baby and now you want to cloud the situation up by trying to adopt it?”

“Him. By trying to adopt
him.
”

“Him, then. You’re too trusting, Claude. There’s nothing wrong with that. I love that about you—your ability to believe the best in people—but it’s just not realistic.” He pointed his chopsticks out toward her and waved them back and forth, showing her a fake smile as he said, “There isn’t always a happy ending.”

“I know that. Don’t condescend to me like that—like…like I’m a child.” She lowered her voice, but there was gravel in it now. “I see plenty of ugliness every day. Every single day. Sometimes I swear this world is just one giant ugly pile of shit and that just about everyone in it sucks.”

The waitress had started over to their table, but she passed them by discreetly, in the “save face” way of the Japanese, when she heard their heated discussion, apparently not wanting to get caught up in the middle of an argument about whether or not the world is one giant ugly pile of shit.

The outburst, the cloud of negativity surrounding his usually idealistic wife, took Dan aback. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed their argument and, still unable to look at Claudia, his eyes ended up resting on the wall of the booth, trying to take comfort in the familiarity of the photographs of peaceful fountains and pagodas.

They came here a lot. Although the staff gave no indication of it. They were treated pleasantly enough every time, but without any hint of recognition or preference for their status as regular customers. It always sat poorly with Dan, who thought they should employ more Western sales techniques in attracting and keeping their regular customers happy. Now he wondered if maybe there wasn’t something to their sales technique after all, something that appealed to self-flagellating Midwesterners.

He looked at his wife, still flagellating her pickled ginger. Silently. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips made that subtle curve downward at the corners that indicated her displeasure, usually a precursor to her pout—when she wasn’t so angry.

“How do you know there isn’t something wrong? What if there’s something wrong with it?” Dan asked.

“Him.”

“Him. Did you ever consider that? Maybe there’s a
reason
the mother threw him away. She might be on drugs or have HIV or who knows what.”

“That baby is fine. I know it. I knew it the minute I held him. He’s perfect.”

Their eyes locked in impasse. Claudia was the first to look away, back down at her mutilated pile of ginger. They sat in silence for several long moments.

“To be honest, I don’t really understand it myself,” Claudia started, without looking up, her chopsticks back to worrying the ginger. “I just feel like I need to do something. I know we don’t have much of a chance of actually getting this baby, all the red tape and that’s not even considering the fact it could turn out to be April’s. Peterson’s grandnephew. But even if he isn’t, and they do put him into foster care or up for adoption, there are people who have been on waiting lists for years.

“But I don’t know…I just can’t shake the thought that somehow I was the one that was meant to find him and that
I
was meant to try to help him, somehow, for some reason.”

“Maybe it’s April you were supposed to help.”

Claudia eyes wrinkled, like,
Eeuw.
“Maybe,” she said. She pushed her glasses up her nose and looked seriously at Dan, though, as if she were actually considering it. “Sure, maybe April needs my help. I think that baby does. I don’t know—whatever it is I’m supposed to do, do you think you could just humor me for a while? Just go along until we see where this leads? Please?”

Dan sat back and crossed his arms with a sigh. He stared at his dish of soy sauce, green whorls of wasabi floating on top. Humoring her about buying a condo or a stack of books on witchcraft was one thing. Humoring her about a life-changing, a lifestyle-
threatening
event was quite another.

He’d never even held a baby before. He was still having some doubts about wanting one of his
own,
much less someone else’s castoff. He thought about what he considered to be their already precarious financial situation and how much he wanted to get out on his own. He thought about smelly diapers and tripping over toys and never being able to go out, on the spur of the moment, to even a dismal place like this for sushi. Is that where all this would lead?

He thought of living with Claudia for any length of time when she was in one of her drowning moods—moods that could suck him right down with her into a dark, swirling cesspool of doom and gloom. He thought back to her silence just now after their fight, to her silence last fall during their twenty-minute walk from where her purse had spilled on the sewer, and it was just that kind of quiet he knew he’d have to live with, for what? A week? A month? Longer?

What
were
the chances this would lead to anything after all? Probably next to nothing. Surely they wouldn’t let her have this baby, just because she’d found it. Maybe it was just best to humor his wife and avoid a painful coexistence that could last for some indeterminate amount of time.

Claudia was picking up a new piece of ginger and dropping it, over and over.

Dan reached out his hand and put it over hers. He squeezed, gently at first, then harder, until she set the chopsticks down onto the wood-block tray. One rolled down off the block and onto the table.

When he was holding nothing but her empty hand in his, he said, “Okay.”

The
crowds at Children’s Memorial Hospital were gone and, at this hour of the night, Gail and John had the waiting area to themselves.

John sat in his chair and waited. After ten years of marriage and a total of twelve years together, he knew better than to say anything to Gail while she cried. It was best to let her purge her system uninterrupted.

His arm was resting on the back of Gail’s chair and now that her sobbing had started to subside, he moved his arm down and enveloped her shoulder in his huge hand. He held some Kleenex in the other, and when she seemed ready, he handed it to her. She wiped her eyes and cheeks and blew her nose.

“You know he’s going to be okay, right?” he asked, as if maybe she hadn’t understood the doctor.

Gail shook her head. “I know. I know.” She sniffed, then started shaking her head in the negative. “It’s just that…that…” She turned her blotched face up to him. She took a deep quivery breath in through her mouth. “I…I just…I feel like I shouldn’t have…”

“Shouldn’t have what?”

Gail started sobbing again.

“Gail, what…? You’re acting like all this is your fault.”

Fear popped into her eyes and stayed there.

“Gail? What is it? How could you be responsible?” He paused. Tried a smile. “What? Have you taken up a secret life as an arsonist or something?”

Gail didn’t laugh. She exhaled a huge breath of air. “It’s Book Club. I think Book Club did this.”

“Your Book Club has taken up a secret life as arsonists?”

“No.” She shook her head, and this time she did allow a smile to pass across her face, very briefly, before she said, “John, there’s something I need to tell you.”

A woman came into the waiting room with her young son while Gail explained to John, through her tears, the recent turn of events at Book Club.

The woman and her son sat in the opposite corner of the waiting room, as if they were trying to get as far away from the crazy crying lady as they could. The boy appeared to be about two and was astonishingly awake for this hour of the night. He tugged on the fringe of a pink blanket she had in her arms, within which, presumably, a baby sister slept.

“
Agua mami. Agua.
” The boy pulled and tugged at his mother and pointed to the drinking fountain. She whispered something quickly to him in Spanish and his face contorted into tears.

“So you think it’s because you wanted more time to yourself,” John pulled his eyes from the little boy and looked back down at Gail, “and you made this, er…
wish
and that’s what caused the school to catch fire?” He shook his head, made a face as if to say,
that’s goofy.
“I don’t know anything about these types of things—psychics and fortune-tellers and—well, basically I think it’s all just a crock. And these wishes you’re talking about—the witchcraft stuff. I don’t know, but if you’re asking me, it’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think? Especially the part about wanting time to yourself causing the fire. Besides, the school burning down would have the opposite eff—”

And then he got it.
If the boys were dead…

Tears started to stream down Gail’s cheeks again. She put her face in her hands and sobbed. John rubbed circles on her back. He wanted to tell her he thought she was being crazy, that all this witchcraft and wishing stuff was just in their heads. But she was crying so uncontrollably. There were few times in their life together he’d ever seen her this upset.

John broke his own rule, leaned closer and tried talking to his wife while she cried. “Gail? Gail.” He paused, then decided to stay the course even though she hadn’t looked up. He stopped rubbing her back and took both of her shoulders in his hands. “I don’t know a better mother in the world than you. Whatever you think you did…I just don’t think anything like this could ever have come from you. I know you’d rather die than let anything happen to our kids.”

John loosened the grip he had on her shoulders but didn’t remove his hands. It took a long moment before Gail leaned into him, letting his big arms encircle her. She put her head on his chest and he held her.

Down the hall, Andrew had finally fallen asleep in his room. He’d fallen down some stairs evacuating the school and had broken his ankle. There had been a bit of a pile-up, with a few other children falling down as well, but they weren’t hurt as seriously as Andrew and had managed to escape. Andrew had succumbed to the smoke.

A firefighter had found him unconscious on the landing near the south entrance and, while he’d regained consciousness fairly quickly after they put him on oxygen, it was still going to be a while before the doctors would know the extent of the damage to his lungs. They’d done a blood test and taken X-rays, and initial reports were good, but the doctors also wanted a bronchoscopy. They’d just finished the test and Gail and John were waiting to talk to the doctor about the results. After the procedure, Andrew had dozed off, which was when the tears Gail had been fighting back had begun to fall.

“Why don’t we go back to the room,” John said. “It’s been at least twenty minutes by now.”

Gail looked at her watch and nodded her head against his shoulder.

“If you want, I could run home in a little while,” John continued, “see how Ellen’s managing with the other two. I could grab some stuff for you, get your toothbrush, or a change of clothes.” He ran his hand through her hair. Gail didn’t look up, but she seemed to be considering it. “I’d be gone less than an hour.” He stopped rubbing her hair. “Unless you want me to stay.”

Gail shook her head. “No. That’s a good idea. You should check on them. They had a rough day, too.”

“Okay then.” John gave her a squeeze before he stood up. “I’ll walk you back to his room first. Can you think of anything else you need from—”

“Angélica Pérez?” The nurse had her head down, looking at her clipboard, when she stepped into the waiting room.

“—anything else you need from home?” John finished his sentence while Gail stood up, but she wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.

The nurse looked directly at the woman in the corner, “Angélica Pérez?” she said again, more loudly.

The young mother was already trying to gather her things, but progress was slow. She stood up with the baby, the diaper bag slung over her forearm, and asked for her son to follow. They started toward the door, but all progress stopped when the little boy grabbed onto the drinking fountain as they passed it and started crying.

“
Portate bien. Vamanos a la doctor. ¡Date prisa!”
his mother said in a harsh whisper, but her son refused to let go. The woman smiled at the nurse, who gave her a wan, impatient smile back. The mother tugged at the arm of her son, but her hands were full and he wouldn’t let go of the drinking fountain, both arms around it in an embrace.

Gail and John had walked as far as the doors to the patient rooms, and John held one of them open for Gail, but she turned and, with her new limp, walked away from him and over to the little boy.

She smiled at his mother. “
¿Con su permiso?
” Gail asked, putting her hands around the little boy’s waist to lift him.

“
Sí,
” the mother said, and Gail hoisted him up for a drink, bending only her left knee, keeping her right leg out straight. She said, “
Aprieta el botón plateado,
” but he already knew what to do. After his drink he ran to grab his mother’s hand and they went through the door on the other side of the waiting room, which the nurse was holding open.

Gail was still by the drinking fountain, watching them walk away. The mother stopped in the doorway and turned back toward Gail, giving her a shy smile and a slight nod, a silent
thank you
for another mother’s understanding. No words necessary.

John stood watching his wife, marveling at her. It had been so many years since he’d heard her speak Spanish, he’d forgotten she could do it. It was like seeing her with new eyes. It reminded him of the girl he’d first met all those years ago in Buenos Aires—the mischief in her eyes, the artificially jet-black hair, the sultry way she moved.