Wish Club (26 page)

“I think so, but I don’t know for sure. Like I said, no one’s heard from her. As far as I know she’s still seeing him. As far as anyone knows, it’s still fabulous. Lindsay’s been trying to call her for days, trying to figure out what’s up, but Jill won’t return her calls. Lindsay’s hoping it’s just because Jill’s busy, between Marc and the opening on Friday.”

“I’m telling you she’s avoiding us.” Mara paused. “Hey. We can talk to her on Friday. Why didn’t I think of that before? We’re all going to be there anyway and we can ask her about everything. The rumors. Why she blew us off.”

“At her opening? With all those other people there? Don’t you think that’ll really piss her off?”

“Not if she isn’t behind the rumors. Not if she really has just been busy.”

“It’s at five-thirty, right?”

“See you then.”

Jill’s
phone rang again. It was the doorman downstairs. Someone was trying desperately to come up and see her, or he wouldn’t have tried twice. She had only one friend with that sort of tenacity.

Jill reached her arm out and patted the other side of the bed, but Marc had already left. She lifted her head and looked at the clock. It was nearly noon. Her head ached: too much to drink again last night. Mercifully, the phone stopped ringing.

Why were they making this so hard? Everyone from Book Club kept calling her, trying to find out if she was okay. Leaving all these messages. And now Lindsay was downstairs trying to barge in on her morning—what was left of it. Couldn’t they just leave her alone? She’d made up every excuse in the book. You’d think they’d get the hint by now.

Jill got up out of bed and went to the bathroom. The phone rang again.
Ugh. Give it a rest.
The phone was still ringing when Jill went into the kitchen.

She picked it up. “A Lindsay McDermott here to see you.”

“I know.” Jill sighed. “Send her up.”

A few minutes later Lindsay was striding around her condo. “This place is a mess. I knew something was up. I knew things weren’t all fabulous with you.”

Jill stood behind the kitchen counter in her bathrobe. She lit a cigarette, defiantly blowing the smoke out through her mouth.

“And look at you. It’s twelve noon and you’ve just now gotten out of bed.”

“I would have slept later, but someone kept calling.”

“I’m worried about you. We’re all worried about you. I know you’re busy with this new Marc guy, but the least you could do is return our calls, especially in light of everything that’s going on.”

“I’ve been busy.” Jill pulled on her cigarette again.
She must have lost at least twenty pounds,
Jill thought.
She doesn’t look good.
Jill fought down an emotion: worry. She exhaled with a sigh. “Listen. I’m not trying to blow you guys off…”

Lindsay raised her eyebrows.

“Okay. Maybe a little bit. It’s just all this wishing stuff and then all the creepy things that have been happening. I…I don’t want to be a part of it anymore. We can still be friends. I just don’t want to go to Book Club anymore.”

“And you couldn’t just tell us that? You couldn’t pick up the phone and call
me
and tell me that you want out?”

Jill shrugged. “Marc said”—she could sense Lindsay’s nerves heighten at the mention of Marc’s name. “I just want out.” Jill shrugged again,
Okay? I’m telling you now.

“What did Marc say?”

Jill hesitated. “Oh, he…he just says I should focus on my work—on the show. That I didn’t have time for a big social life right now.”

“A big social life? Since when is Book Club a big social life? Did you tell him he wouldn’t be in your life now if it hadn’t been for Book Club?”

Jill tapped some ash into the ashtray in silence.

“No. Of course you didn’t tell him. Jill, I’m not so sure I like this guy; I don’t care how charming and sweet you say he is. Look what he’s doing. He’s isolating you from your friends. He’s turning you against us.”

Jill stomped her cigarette out. “He’s not turning me against anyone. In case you don’t remember, I never really cared for all the wishing in the first place. I hated it, remember? But you guys just kept pressing along and pressing along. And we made all these wishes. Well, maybe Marc did come into my life because of a wish. I don’t know. But I’m certainly not going to tell
him
that. He’ll think I’m a lunatic and I don’t want to risk losing the best thing that’s happened to me in ages.

“I know I was going along with all the witchcraft stuff, but that doesn’t mean I ever liked it. And horrible things have started to happen because of those wishes, too. Weird, horrible things have started happening to all of us.” Jill paused and ran her eyes up and down Lindsay. “Look at you. How much weight have you lost? You look terrible.”

Lindsay’s mouth hung open.
Terrible?

“And I haven’t been able to paint a thing since my last wish. Not one thing. I can’t work anymore—at all. My second wish has completely backfired: I wished for inspiration and now I’m totally blocked! My opening is tomorrow night and it’s going to be awful.”

Lindsay’s eyes flashed. “I knew it. I knew something was wrong. I knew there was a reason why you were blowing us off. This is why we’ve been so worried about you. Don’t you see? We care about you. With all the bad things that have been happening, I just couldn’t believe that you were the only one whose wishes were going fine. Maybe your Marc wish is going fine, but your creative inspiration wish has…” Lindsay’s voice faded out. She snapped her head up. “You don’t think Marc is behind your inability to paint, do you? He came into your life right about the same time. Maybe he’s like…like a psychic vampire or something.”

“Listen to you. Can you just hear yourself? Psychic vampires now?”

“Well, I don’t know what you want to call it, but if he’s behind—”

“He’s not behind anything. He’s the one person in my life right now that’s normal.”

Lindsay put her hands on her hips. “Will you at least think about coming to the next meeting? We want to help you.” Lindsay gestured at Jill’s messy apartment.

“I don’t need help.” She looked across the housekeeping disaster that was her living room. “I’ve always been a little sloppy, you should know—”

“Sloppy is one thing. But this?” Now Lindsay waved her hand up and down at Jill.

“I don’t need any help.” Jill crossed her arms over her bathrobe.

“We’re going to try to fix all the wishes that are going wrong. We’re going to get help. We’re trying to find a real witch.”

“A real witch? Good Lord. Are you guys nuts? Haven’t you learned your lesson?” Jill shook her head. “You’re just not getting it. You need to leave it alone. All of it. Just drop it.”

“Don’t you want to paint again? Don’t you want to help the rest of your friends with their wish troubles? The least you could do—”

“I don’t want Marc to know. He’ll—” Jill closed her eyes and took a breath. “The least
you
could do is respect my wishes. I told you, I don’t want anything to do with wishes and witchcraft or Wicca or whatever you want to call it. I’m done with it. All of it. And, unless you guys agree to keep me out of it, stop bothering me with all of this witchy nonsense, then maybe we shouldn’t…Maybe we can’t…”

But Jill couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The
10 duck hung in shreds from the big canvas. Jill was breathing hard, her heart pounding. The X-acto knife she’d used to shred it was still gripped in her left hand. Her chest heaved in and out with the exertion. She was covered in sweat. She stood back and looked at it.
There, take that, you fucker. I hate you. I hate you!

Her opening was tonight, and there would be no breaking out or big canvas. The more she’d thought about it, the more she was sure it was going to be a disaster. She would be lucky not to be made a laughing stock.

The anger and frustration had surged up inside her, like nothing she’d ever known before. She laid into the canvas with the knife, shocked at how good the release felt. She hadn’t had a tantrum like this since she was a kid.

The shreds hung from the stretcher bars in ragged strips, torn every which way. Gesso dust covered the floor. Jill glared at her handiwork. It was exactly how she felt. She felt torn to shreds. She looked down at the knife in her hands, the purple lines of veins in her wrists. She started to cry.

The tears hurt at first, breaking their way through ducts constricted from years of disuse. It’s not that she wanted to die. She didn’t. She wasn’t suicidal. It just felt like she didn’t know how to live.

What’s wrong with me?
The tears came streaming faster now.

I’m lost.
The thought brought on a fresh round of sobs.
Look at that canvas. Look at what I’ve done. I’m crazy. Crazy and alone.
Her show was ruined. She’d abandoned all of her friends.

Someone knocked on the door to her studio and Jill jumped. It was probably Marc. She should ignore it. She didn’t want him to see her like this. Jill looked down. The blade of the knife glistened under the fluorescent light. She dropped it on the table and ran to get the door.

“Hey, hey, hey babe. What’s the matter?” He grabbed Jill and held her, confused by so much emotion pouring out of her. His eyes took in the big canvas—or what was left of it.

“What happened here?”

“I’m falling apart. My whole life is falling apart. I—I—”

“Hey. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” He paused. “Except for maybe the big canvas.”

Jill allowed herself a brief smile through her tears. “I don’t know what got into me. I destroyed it—I was so mad. At everything. My show is ruined.” Jill sniffed and wiped her eyes.

“Your show is not ruined. It’s going to be great—just a little smaller than you wanted, that’s all. Which, in the great scheme of things, is no big deal, huh? You can’t be Picasso every time, right?”

She looked up at him, trying to gauge his expression. It was the first clichéd thing she’d ever heard him say.

He was staring over her shoulder at her studio. His eyes lit up. “Let’s go to New York.”

“What?”

“I mean now. Let’s go right now. Spend the weekend, just the two of us.”

“Leave now? My show opens tonight.”

“Forget your show, nobody goes to those anymore, it’s so…bourgeois.”

Bourgeois?

“C’mon, be crazy. Let’s have some fun. We can go check out some galleries there, watch someone else stress out at
their
opening. If we leave for the airport right now, we’ll be there by dinner. Let’s go, with just the clothes on our back, what do you say?”

It was the craziest, most careless, impetuous idea she’d ever heard.

Of course, she loved it.

“I’ve
never seen Jill looking the way she did yesterday, not in my whole life.” Lindsay spoke into her pink Razr phone as she walked down Diversey Parkway, talking to Gail. “Her hair was a mess, eyes all puffy and bloodshot. The apartment was a train wreck. I know from college she was never a neatnik, but it looked like a bomb had gone off in there.”

“And you think talking with her tonight is going to help with any of that?” Gail asked.

“It’s this Marc guy. I think he’s bad for her. When I was there I got the impression that he was the one turning her against us. As soon as he came into her life, she started to shut us all out. We just think it would be a good opportunity for all of us to talk to her about him—”

“We?”

“Claudia called me. She and Mara think it’s a good idea.”

“Well, I don’t think Jill’s going to appreciate you guys ganging up on her at her opening.”

“We’re not going to gang up on her. We just want to talk to her—get her to let us help her.”

“Help her? How? By cleaning her apartment?”

“No, not that. Did you know she can’t paint anymore? We can reverse her spell, too, when we reverse ours.”

“If we can reverse ours.”

“Yeah, well, we’re all working on that. Anyway, she needs to know we’re still her friends.”

“It sounds like she really likes this Marc guy and doesn’t want any help. I think it’s pretty normal when you first start seeing someone, to ignore all your friends for a while.”

“You should have seen her, is all I can say. Plus,” Lindsay continued, “Mara and Claudia think she might be the one who started the rumors.”

“The rumors?”

“They suspect Jill’s the one who told the Women’s Foundation.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would she do that?”

“Well, I don’t know. Mara and Claudia think maybe she did. I guess I don’t know why she would. She’d end up incriminating herself, too. But she really does want us to stop the wishing.” Lindsay paused, then said, “So, anyway, will you be there?”

“Believe me, nothing sounds better than a girls’ night out at a gallery opening; but I just can’t now. I’ve already got Ellen working all day so I can get this MRI taken care of and John’s flight doesn’t get in until like nine or something.”

“Isn’t there anyone who can watch the kids?”

“Lindsay!”

“Well, I think this is important. I want to show a united front.”

“I’m sorry, Linds, but you’ll have to show your united front without me.”

“I’ll have the Pad Thai and a Thai iced coffee,” Lindsay said.

“What?”

“I stopped into Penny’s Noodle Shop. I’m having lunch.”

“And you couldn’t wait until we were off the phone? Are you being one of those irritating restaurant cell phone people?”

“I’m starving and I’m going to eat a huge bowl of fat-and carb-laden rice noodles. Those prissy Foundation bitches didn’t want to be my friend when I was fat, so I—”

“Lindsay, you were never fat.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I wasn’t very happy either way. Now that I’m thin, I don’t want to be their friend, either. But I do want to be happy. And today, right now, that means Pad Thai.”

Claudia
stood outside of the nursery window on Friday afternoon after school, trying to find Elliot in his bassinette. Maybe it was feeding time or something. She walked to the nurses’ station to ask, but the nurse looked mortified when she saw Claudia. It was the same nurse who’d helped Claudia hold and feed Elliot the first time. She dashed out of the room before Claudia could speak, saying, “Wait here, hon. I’ll get Nurse Galt.”

Oh my God. Something terrible has happened to Elliot.
Why else would she be going to get the supervisor? Claudia felt panicked.

Elliot had been in the hospital now for a little over three weeks, but he was out of the NICU now. His weight had been building. His lungs, and the rest of him for that matter, were growing stronger. He’d been doing very well, especially lately, and Claudia had a hard time believing that all of a sudden—

“Claudia?” Nurse Galt had entered the reception area behind her. “I thought that was you. Why don’t we come sit down over here?” Her voice was warm and sympathetic. She pointed at three molded plastic chairs that lined the wall near the door.

Sit down?
Claudia eyed the chairs with fear. “
Sit down” is never good.

“I’m okay. I don’t need to sit.”

Nurse Galt’s eyes were full of compassion. She managed a gentle smile.

“What’s happened?” Claudia said. It wasn’t right that Nurse Galt was oozing warmth. “What’s the matter with Elliot?”

“I’m so sorry to be the one to have to tell you this,” she paused, “but Elliot is gone.”

It felt to Claudia as if the earth were tilting off its axis.
He’s gone?
She hadn’t even said good-bye. She didn’t even get the chance. She’d wasted all that time at a coffee shop and a bookstore and now Elliot was gone and all the time she should have been spending with him was gone, too. She could never get it back. Claudia felt weak, as if the floor were angling up toward her. Nurse Galt reached out a hand to steady her.

“I am so sorry, I know how much he meant to you, honey. But we just couldn’t keep him here any longer. DCFS came this morning and took him home, to his foster family.”

They took
—“They took him?”
He’s
gone,
not gone.
Claudia’s relief slowly turned to sorrow.
But no. Wait. I’m his foster family. Me and Dan. He’s not home. I’m his home.
Claudia looked up at the ceiling, rolled her lips under her teeth and closed her eyes, but the tears started falling anyway. All the nurses at the station had made themselves scarce and the room was unusually dead for this time of the afternoon. Claudia looked off in the direction of the nursery, where Elliot used to be.
Gone.

“Why don’t you sit for a while, give yourself a minute or two.”

Claudia shook her head, slid a finger underneath her glasses to wipe away her tears. She pressed the back of her hand to her nose. “No. It’s okay.” She sniffed. “I’m okay. I’m just going to go home, too.”

The
water was eerily calm today, not a ripple, and a light fog was settling in right at the shore. This is perfect, Claudia thought; I’m in a fog, too. She hadn’t gone home; she’d gone down to the lake instead.

There were days when she could walk along the lakefront and the fresh air and beauty of it, rain or snow or shine, would reenergize her and melt away anything that might be troubling her. Today wasn’t one of those days.

She sat on a bench facing Belmont Harbor, staring at the reflections of the floating docks like inverted photographs on the surface. No boats in the water yet—too early in the season. The fog was growing so thick now it obscured the position lights out on the peninsulas, where the harbor opened out onto the lake beyond.

Elliot is gone, I can’t write, my boss thinks I’m a witch, I can’t get pregnant, my husband is irritated with me and doesn’t want a baby anyway, all my friends are in trouble in a creepy supernatural way and I can’t help them. Oh, and did I mention I’m clumsy and far-sighted, too?

Damn, her life was a mess. She’d lost Elliot, she might lose her job—and for what? Because she’d wanted to make her wishes come true? What kind of world was this, anyway? Maybe it
was
a big steaming pile of shit, where rich assholes chase ambulances and others flip you off just because you’re not leaving your parking space. Where trying to get what you wish for makes your whole life turn into a mess, with everything upside down.

Claudia’s thoughts were as dark and black as the lake. If she closed her eyes, she could feel the blackness envelope her, taking her deeper and deeper, farther and farther down. She wanted to curl up on the bench and sleep.

She hugged herself instead. The air had turned cold with the setting sun. Claudia sat frozen to the bench, watching her breath unfurl out of her nostrils when she exhaled. She didn’t know what to do anymore. She’d always had a plan and now, nothing in her life was going according to her plans. What the hell was she supposed to do?

The lights in the park flicked on, one at a time, taking a long time to brighten. Claudia stared at the darkening lakefront before she finally stood up, her butt and legs aching with cold, and started walking back to her apartment in the gloom.

It was dark by the time she turned onto her street, and she was still lost in her miserable thoughts when a man appeared in front of her, stepping out from the alley.

Claudia cried out in alarm, thinking at first he was going to rob her, but he didn’t threaten her. He looked homeless.