Wish Club (22 page)

Claudia had called Gail to find comfort for herself, an ally in thinking that the whole wish-making process was going all wrong, but now…now that Gail was on her side, suddenly, Claudia didn’t want her to be. She wanted to stop Gail’s pain, stop her tears before they started. If Gail thought she’d done anything to hurt her kids, it would kill her.

Claudia had no idea how she, the woman who didn’t believe in coincidences, the woman who believed that everything happens for a reason, was going to convince Gail they hadn’t had anything to do with hurting Andrew.

But when she really thought about it, where
was
the proof that they had done it? Where was the proof that her wish had made her find Elliot, that Gail’s wish had started a fire? Seriously—this was crazy talk. If she’d been having this conversation with anyone else they’d have thought she was completely bonkers.

How’d that old saying go? Something like,
For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.
Well, where was their
proof
here, either way?

“You know, Gail—I have a hard time, you know, now that I think about it…I have a hard time really believing that a candle and some chanting and hand-holding can alter the world like this. When you step back for just a minute, it seems a little ridiculous—don’t you think?”

And so, Claudia had allowed herself to believe that maybe—in the case of
wishes gone wrong
—it was all in their heads.

Until today. Until two weeks after making her second wish and she couldn’t even write her own name. She hadn’t even
made
the writing wish. Something spooky was going on.

Claudia looked down at the undecipherable scribbles in front of her. She and her friends had tapped into something they couldn’t control anymore. She crunched the paper into a tight ball in her fist, then threw it into the garbage can in the corner.

Their wishes
were
working and they
were
going haywire and now, no matter what Lindsay said, no matter what Gail wanted to believe, no matter what she’d tried to convince herself, Claudia knew they needed to do something about fixing them. If that were even possible.

In
the attic, surrounded by dozens of dusty, opened boxes, Gail was as angry with John as she’d ever been in all the years she’d known him. Probably angrier than she’d ever been at him in any past lives, too. He’d looked for
their video
and told her he couldn’t find it. Deep down, she’d known she was going to be the one to have to search for it anyway, John being a man who couldn’t find ketchup in the refrigerator. He liked to quote Voltaire on the subject: “I hate women because they always know where things are.” Voltaire had said that in the eighteenth century. Gail thought that somehow over the past three hundred years, men’s searching skills should have evolved.

The missing video was making her start to despair. She’d searched the house, taking all the unlabeled videos to the small TV and VCR in their master bedroom for screening after the kids went to sleep. Nothing.

Today she’d started in the attic, the only place she hadn’t looked. It had to be somewhere—but where? Could it have gotten mixed in with some other stuff and somehow mistakenly given away to charity? Thrown out?

With her hands blackened with dust, Gail left the attic in disarray and went down to her second-floor office. She locked the door and, on a dark whim, googled “tall naked blondes.”

She was shocked at what she found.
My God. How many sites are there?
She had over a million hits. She clicked on a site. Gail glanced back at the door to her office to make sure it was still shut. Some of these girls looked so young.

She looked at the window behind her, checking again, even though she already knew no one could see in.
Oh, this is ridiculous.
She wasn’t going to find herself here. The video was simply missing—destroyed. Taped over maybe, with a soap opera.

These sites were unbelievable. She’d never checked out porn on the Web before. Did John know all this was here? They had stuff here for every type of perversion and fetish. Some of the pictures? Eeuw. They needed to get parental controls on their computers—stat. Page after page; she’d had no idea Internet porn was such an industry.
Amateur Site. Home videos—Hot sex from our house to yours.
Gail clicked. You had to pay to enter the site, but the home-page Web photos were enough, she thought. Dear God.

Gail clicked on another link.

What was she doing? She was not going to find evidence of an eleven-year-old videotape here. But now she was pruriently curious. Some of these pictures—even just the ones on the home pages. To think, anyone could just click and find photos of men and women having sex any time of the day or night. She and John should have a computer in their bedroom instead of a VCR. Gail clicked on “Dirty Housewives at Home.”

And there she was.

Her whole world dropped out from under her. Her heart began to race and she could feel the intense heat in her cheeks as she blushed. The panic rose up. She couldn’t swallow. She could only stare.

No. No no no! I’m a mom. I’m someone’s mom. I can’t—this isn’t happening…

Gail kept staring with disbelief and then, when she thought the nightmare playing out in her head couldn’t get any worse, she asked herself,
who else has seen this?
Anyone who clicked on this site.
Oh dear God.
All the people in her life that could have stumbled upon this. But there were so many millions of sites; the chances of someone she knew running across it were so slim, right? Gail flashed back over the last decade or so of her life, scanning for any knowing looks she might have received from former coworkers or cashiers. In the photo her face was mostly in shadow—and she had had long hair then. John was in profile; actually, he was a little more recognizable, well, if you knew him back then, before he’d put on the weight.

What a nightmare. This was terrible. A disaster. What was she going to do? She needed to call John. She needed to get these photos back, get them off the Net. But how do you do that? Call the Web-site operator? She wanted to sue. Who could they sue?

At least I had nice thighs back then.
Was it normal to have a thought like that, Gail wondered, while looking at a picture of yourself having sex on the Internet? She wanted to bury herself. She wanted to cover the monitor with her hands. But she kept clicking, checking around the site to see if she would find more pictures.

Chapter Twenty-One

Some
indeterminate substance had adhered to Gail’s couch, melted crayon or maybe a hardened crust of food. Claudia absently picked at it with her fingernail, waiting for the rest of the women to arrive.

Gail had called Claudia last night, and her voice had been so unsteady. It was rare to hear Gail so upset, and Claudia had known the news would be bad; for a moment she feared it was something about Andrew. When Gail told her about the Internet pictures, Claudia had tried her best to console her, eventually convincing Gail that even though it might be hugely embarassing for her, they needed to get everyone together. For the first-ever Emergency Meeting of Wish Club.

Gail’s great room had been an addition onto the back of her house, and it always felt a little cooler than the rest of her home during winter. Today, even though it was mid-March, it felt cold. Claudia grabbed the zippered front edges of her sweater and overlapped them on top of her chest, hugging herself as she looked out the window. The wind was strong today, and it pushed the swings hanging from Gail’s backyard swing set, making it look as if two ghosts were idly swaying there.

Gail walked in, with a slight limp, carrying two mugs. She’d insisted on making tea.

“How’s Andrew?” Claudia asked.

“Better.” Andrew was with Ellen upstairs, and Gail glanced toward the stairway. “He scoots around on those crutches amazingly fast. I thought—well, I don’t know what I thought. I guess I figured he would struggle with them.” Gail set the mugs down on the table. “I guess it’s me who’s struggling with everything, way more than he is. It’s the inhaler that bothers me the most. His ankle will heal. The crutches will go away. But it’ll be a while before we know about the inhaler. One doctor said he might need it forever.”

“Forever? Oh God—”

Gail’s mouth pulled into a thin straight line.

“Well, let’s hope he’s wrong,” Claudia added.

Gail nodded as she sat down on the couch next to Claudia. She lifted her right leg up onto a pillow that had been lying on the coffee table, apparently for that purpose.

Claudia picked up her mug of tea. “It looks like you could use some crutches, too. When are you going to get that taken care of?”

“Oh, it’s not too bad—the pain comes and goes. It’s sporadic. Today’s just a bad day.”

Claudia looked at her.

“As soon as everything settles down I’ll get the MRI. My doctor thinks it’s just a torn meniscus. Nothing serious.”

“Sounds serious to me.”

Claudia took a sip of tea, not sure where to put her eyes. She
so
did not want to believe their wishing had caused any of it. That it had made Andrew suffer, or Gail. But there seemed to be too much of a connection for everything to just be coincidence—especially now, with all the new developments, everything else that was going wrong, for all of them.

Well, for all of them except Lindsay. “I can’t believe Lindsay agreed to an emergency meeting,” Claudia said. “She’s been so adamant about how none of these bad things have had anything to do with the wishing.”

“I think that’s why she’s coming. To convince us they don’t. Have you seen her lately? She looks like a lollipop. She wasn’t even overweight before. That’s the thing that kills me. Why would anyone with her figure feel like they needed to lose so much weight?”

“I guess that’s easy for you to say, always looking like a super-model. I personally don’t know a woman alive who isn’t trying to lose five pounds, or ten—or more.”

“Yeah, well. Even I just realized my thighs aren’t what they used to be.”

Claudia offered a weak smile, because what was she supposed to say to that?
I’m sure your thighs still look great—even if you’re not a twenty-two-year-old porn star anymore.

Gail turned to look out the window. She sipped her tea, instantly lost in thought.

Claudia studied the side of her face, the tightened jaw, the way the lines were starting to splay out at the corner of her eye. Gail looked afraid. And Claudia had never known Gail to look afraid before.

There’s got to be a way to fix this,
Claudia thought.
There’s got to be a way to turn these wishes around.

The doorbell rang and Gail set down her mug.

Claudia set hers down quickly and stood up. “Don’t you even think about it. I’ve got it.”

Lindsay walked into the great room ahead of Claudia, carrying a box from Dinkel’s. “I brought some cookies. Do you want me to get a plate for these or should we just eat them right out of the box?” She set them on the table and answered her own question. “Let’s just eat them right out of the box.” She pulled the stack of napkins out from under the twine and started to open it.

Just who is she trying to fool?
Claudia thought. Lindsay and her big box of cookies. Showing off for them.
Look at me eating. See? No dieting here. Just pure magic.
Claudia watched her undo the string.
Right.

And she looked so thin—too thin. “Lindsay, how much weight have you lost?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”
Bullshit.
“Maybe ten or fifteen pounds.”
This is the same woman who has been calling me with ounce-by-ounce updates—and now she doesn’t know?

“Looks like closer to twenty if you ask me.” Gail leaned over and reached for the Dinkel’s box.

Lindsay bit into a cookie and shrugged, a few crumbs tumbling from her lower lip. She pinched them out of her lap and sprinkled them over a napkin on the coffee table. “Where are Mara and Jill?”

“Not to change the subject or anything,” Claudia said.

“Mara’s coming later.” Gail’s words were goopy with cookie. She swallowed. “She has to work until seven. And Jill finally got back to me like an hour ago. She can’t make it, said she had plans with Marc tonight.” Gail deepened her voice and did a silky imitation of Jill’s. “He’s just been so fabulous.” Gail returned to her regular voice. “She also said she was way behind at work and that she needed to get ready for the opening. She made it sound as if she needed to work all night.”

“Work all night with Marc, is my guess.” Lindsay gave them a wink. “See? This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. Jill is doing great. She’s busy painting. Hanging out with Marc. Now she’s spending so much time with him she’s starting to abandon us. Not that I blame her—have you seen him? Wow.”

“But Lindsay—”

“Let me finish.” Lindsay held up her hand, the
wait, wait
gesture. “You guys are so down on these wishes, trying to blame them for all of your troubles; but, well, look at me. My whole life I’ve been trying and now I’ve finally been able to lose weight, and now—” Lindsay stopped suddenly.

“And now what?” Claudia asked.

“And…and, now everything is great.”

“That’s not what you were going to say.”

“No…I. Yes, it was.”

“What is it, Lindsay?” Gail asked.

“Out with it.”

“Oh, all right.” Lindsay exhaled. A huge grin spread across her face when she looked at them. “I’ve been asked to be in the Foundation fashion show.”

Lindsay was two for two. No wonder she didn’t want to quit. No wonder she didn’t want anyone finding fault with the wishing process.

“I almost didn’t want to say anything. Everything’s been going so well for me—and for Jill—and it just…Well, it just seems like the results have been the opposite for you guys.”

“Aha! You admit it. You
do
think our wishes have gone bad.” Claudia was waving a finger at Lindsay. “You just didn’t want to ruin it for yourself. Everything is going great for Lindsay, so Lindsay doesn’t want to change it. Never mind that everyone else’s life is a mess. You’re going to be in the fashion show. You’re a size four. But exactly how small are you planning to get? A size two? A zero? Every time I look at you these days, I feel like I want to feed you a sandwich.” Claudia was breathing hard, her heart pounding.

Lindsay’s mouth hung open. She looked at Gail, then back at Claudia. “I don’t deserve this. Just because your wishes have backfired and mine haven’t doesn’t mean you get to lay into me about my…my weight loss.”

Lindsay was yelling now. “It’s not my fault your wishes are going wrong. You can’t blame me for everything. You don’t even know for sure the wishes are what’s really behind all your troubles in the first place. It’s just easier for you to blame me. Take potshots at Lindsay—the obvious target, the easy target.”

“What?” Claudia was incredulous. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing—you always think it’s about you. Well, it’s not always about you—it’s…it’s…” Claudia could feel one of her verbal stumbles coming on. She breathed hard in silence, glaring at Lindsay.

The anger swirled between them like a cloud, as if waiting for either of them to utter one more word, one more sentence to make their anger sublimate into something solid, a wall they couldn’t get through.

“Maybe,” Gail’s voice was gentle, “it’s not as black and white as y—as we’re trying to make it. Maybe some of our wishes have succeeded and some of them have gone wrong, and some of the bad things that seem like results are just coincidences; maybe even some of the good things, too. But I think the most important thing is that we have to stick together. Be here for one another; support each other. And then maybe somehow we can try to find a way to fix the wishes that have gone wrong.”

Lindsay took a deep breath. “Well, as I was trying to say.” She glared at Claudia as if to say,
before I was interrupted.
“I was trying to say, that I just couldn’t see how half of our wishes could be working and the other half could not. Like what Gail said. It didn’t make any sense, especially because we’d had such huge success and everything had been going so great. It made me think all the bad things were unrelated. A coincidence. Until this week. With everything that’s happened after that second set of wishes—you not being able to write at all and you and the whole, um,” Lindsay cleared her throat, “and the whole Internet thing. Well, I decided to do some research.”

“So you really do believe,” Claudia asked, “that maybe a few of our wishes have backfired?”

Lindsay gave Claudia an impatient look. “
Yes.
Now I think maybe some of them did. But here’s the good news. We can fix them. I’ve been reading in my books there are ways to reverse spells.” Lindsay started to revert back to her take-charge self again. Enthusiastic and positive. “There’s a whole section in the
Modern Witches’ Grimoire,
which I suppose if we’d read it more thoroughly, we would have known about, but there’s a whole part on how to fix bad spells—”

The phone rang, interrupting her, and Gail reached over to pick it up.

She set it back down on the end table. “Mara’s on her way. She got off work a little early. Sounded really cheerful about it, practically sang into the phone.”

Gail looked over at the box of Dinkel’s on the coffee table. “Guess we’d better hide the cookies.”

“I
just thought it would be worth a try.” Mara sat on the edge of Gail’s couch, a pained, slightly embarrassed expression on her face. “I just thought, how much more harm could I do?”

When Mara had joined them in Gail’s great room, they’d tried not to act startled by her appearance. Claudia had already tried not to act startled at the front door. Mara’s jeans strained under the pressure of (at least) an additional twenty-five pounds. Her face, always full and round, had added the beginnings of an extra chin, which was more apparent whenever she opened her mouth to talk or smile.

“It’s just so horrible.” Mara closed her eyes and shook her head. “Henry was shaving again when I left.” The pitch of each word dipped and climbed as Mara spoke.

“How come…what’s the matter with your voice?” Gail asked.

“I don’t know. It’s like I can’t help it. Every now and then, when I’m talking, my words just come out like…like singing.”

“Oh my God—your second wish.”

Mara nodded, but she didn’t speak.

“Okay,” Claudia said, “we have got to do something. Maybe trying to fix these wishes ourselves isn’t the best idea, but there has to be a way. We’ve got to…” She paused, then flashed her eyes up at them. “I know, we should get outside help. We should try to find help from a real witch.”

“Oh, sure,” Gail said. “Let’s see, would that be in the Yellow Pages under Witches for Hire?”

“Yeah.” Mara giggled. “Spell-Breakers Us—We reverse spells so you don’t have to.” She giggled again.

“I’m serious, you guys. Look, we just saw with Mara what could happen if we try to get out of this ourselves.”

“I think my mistake was doing it by myself.” Mara’s eyes were on the Dinkel’s box on the table; her voice was relatively stable now. “I should have waited, gotten together with you guys.” She reached in and pulled out a butter cookie, the kind with a candied cherry in the center.

“Do you really want to take the chance that we’ll make things even worse?” Claudia tried to look at Lindsay and Gail, but her eyes were drawn to the way Mara was eating the cookie, in about a dozen small bites, as if she were trying to tell herself she could put it down at any moment.