Three Wishes (14 page)

“Let’s see your stomach!” Gemma reached over for Cat’s T-shirt and pulled it up. They both contemplated her stomach and Gemma poked it gently with her finger.

“Hello, little baby,” she said. “Are you in there?”

“I don’t think it shows after three weeks,” said Cat.

Gemma put one hand flat against Cat’s stomach and one hand against her own.

“Ooooh, I think you’re fatter!”

“I’ve got one of those pregnancy kits in the bathroom.” Cat tried to keep her voice casual. “From the last time I was late. That was the time my period arrived as soon I got home from the chemist.”

She watched Gemma waver at the possibility of a definite answer. She knew exactly what she was thinking:
I don’t want to be here if she finds out she’s not pregnant.

“I bet I’m not,” said Cat. “It’s probably just stress.”

“Come on.” Gemma stood up. “Let’s do it.”

They sat on the edge of the bath and read the instructions together.

“It sounds a bit complicated,” said Gemma, but Cat had just been thinking the opposite. It was too simple, too matter-of-fact. How dare this smug little plastic stick have the power to decide her future?

“Two blue lines I’m pregnant, one blue line I’m not. Can’t get much simpler than that. You can give me some privacy now thanks.”

Gemma closed the bathroom door behind her and then quickly opened it again to vigorously wave a hand with tightly crossed fingers.

Cat looked at herself in the mirror and felt strangely disoriented.
Are you a mother?
For a minute she saw Lyn’s face looking calmly back at her.

Lyn said more than once she’d had the experience of being in a shopping center and waving hello to Cat, only to feel like an idiot when she realized she was waving at her own reflection.

It had never happened to Cat. She knew her own reflection perfectly well, and she hated it. She disliked nothing more than accidentally catching sight of herself in a mirror, especially if she was smiling. There was something so naked and pathetic about that unexpected sight of her foolishly happy face.

They weren’t identical. Lyn had something indefinable, something special, something Cat had missed out on.

“Are you done yet?” called Gemma.

“Give me a minute.”

Cat looked at the little plastic stick. Let’s see what you’ve got to say for yourself.

She and Gemma sat on the cold bathroom tiles with their glasses of wine and their backs propped against the bathtub, while they waited for the stick to make up its mind.

Cat took off her watch and set the timer. “You can look for me,” she said. “I can’t look.”

“O.K.” Gemma hugged her knees to her. “This is very exciting. I feel like I’m practically part of the baby’s conception!”

“Well, I hope that doesn’t mean you’ve slept with Dan too,” said Cat.

“No. Actually, I’ve never been the slightest bit attracted to him.”

Cat felt unreasonably miffed at this. “I don’t see why not. He’s good enough for me. Good enough for Lyn. Good enough for what’s-her-face,
Angela.”

“Well, if you’re
offering
him. I mean, I’d choose him over Michael, any day.”

“Oh, God yes,” said Cat with satisfaction. “He’d be terrible in bed. All eager and skinny.”

Gemma hooted. “Yes, poor Lyn. I bet when he comes he does that little triumphant punch-in-the-air thing he does when we’re playing tennis.”

Cat snorted so hard her wine went up her nose and Gemma had to slap her on the back.

Cat picked up her watch. Only a minute to go. She was feeling a little hysterical. “Dan’s sexually
skilled,
you know,” she said. “It’s like he’s got a talent for it.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard.”

Cat looked at Gemma, who had her head tipped back and seemed to be swilling her wine at a remarkably fast pace. “I beg your pardon? Is that what Lyn said?”

Gemma put down her glass and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I always remember the first time you slept with Dan you actually snuck out of bed to call me,” she said. “You told me it was the most incredible experience of your entire life. Marcus and I had a big fight about it.”

“That’s right.”

Cat had a sudden memory of herself, the sleeves of Dan’s football shirt dangling sexily past her wrists, whispering into the phone. Tender lips from too much kissing. Sticky thighs.

“But why did you and Marcus fight about it?”

Gemma looked away. “I don’t remember. Is it time?”

Cat looked at the watch. “Yes,” she said. Now she was coldly calm. “Two lines I’m pregnant, one line I’m not. Don’t stuff it up.”

She stayed sitting while Gemma got to her feet and picked up the stick from the cabinet. Cat looked at her hands. There was silence. Gemma sat back down on the floor next to Cat.

“It doesn’t matter.” Cat felt tears blur her eyes. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”

Gemma reached over for Cat’s glass and poured the remaining wine into her own. “No more of that for you.”

“You’re kidding.”

Gemma shook her head and smiled goofily, widely, her eyes shiny. “Two lines. Two very, very pretty blue lines.”

For the first time in her life, Cat threw her arms around her sister with complete, involuntary abandon.

The Magical Caramel Sundae

It must have been nearly a year after we lost her. I’d stopped by at a McDonald’s in between appointments. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon and the place was overflowing with school kids. I had a table next to three girls—they were maybe fourteen or fifteen. Tall, gangly, and beautiful in that schoolgirl way.

The tables were so close together, I could hear every word they were saying. One of them was obviously upset about breaking up with a boy and the other two were trying to cheer her up, all to no avail. So one girl pulled out a notepad from her schoolbag and said, “Right, let’s write down a list of everything that was wrong with him, that will make you feel better!” The miserable girl, slumped over her cheeseburger, said, “No, no, it won’t, that’s the most stupid idea I’ve ever heard.”

But the girl with the notepad was relentless. She said, “Number one, he had disgusting eczema.” The miserable girl said furiously, “He did not!” But all the girl writing could think about was how to spell eczema!

Then the other one of them went off to the counter and came back with a caramel sundae. In a very dramatic voice, she said, “This sundae has magical healing properties. Just one mouthful and you will be cured!” She tried to force the spoon into the sad one’s mouth and they all three started to laugh. The girl finally took a mouthful and the other one slapped her across the forehead like a faith healer, and said, “Be gone, sadness demon!” They just had such infectious giggles, all of sudden I surprised myself by laughing out loud.

It was the first time I had laughed, properly laughed, since she died. It felt like a turning point, realizing I could still laugh.

It’s funny. I bet those girls don’t even remember that day. But for me, it really was a magical caramel sundae.

Dan couldn’t seem
to take it in at first. He stood in their living room staring at her, the ends of his hair still damp with sweat from his squash game.

He seemed bewildered. “A baby,” he kept saying slowly. “We’re going to have a baby.”

“Yes, Dan, a baby. You know—floppy head, makes a lot noise, costs a lot of money.”

And then finally he seemed to get it and let his squash racket fall to the floor and hugged her hard around the ribs, so that her feet almost lifted off the ground.

Rob Spencer caressed his tie lovingly. “Masturbation. Interesting.”

“The message is pleasure,” responded Cat. “Self-indulgent pleasure.”

“Yes, but she’s masturbating, isn’t she? I mean what we have here is a woman in a bath, mas-tur-bat-ing.”

People began to shift uneasily in their chairs. Marianne, who was taking the minutes, threw down her pen and put her hands over her ears. “Could you please stop saying that
word,
Rob!”

It was the last day before Hollingdale Chocolates closed for the Christmas break, and Cat was giving a presentation on a new
advertising campaign for the following year’s Valentine’s Day. A full-page ad was projected via her laptop onto a large screen at the end of the room. The ad showed a woman lying in a bath, smiling wickedly, her eyes closed. One languid hand was allowing an empty Hollingdale Chocolate wrapper to flutter to the floor. The other hand wasn’t visible. The headline read,
Seduce someone special this Valentine’s Day.

Cat was pleased with the campaign. She’d got the idea after Gemma told her how decadent she felt eating Hollingdale Chocolates in the Penthursts’ bath. Some guy at the agency contributed the “self-pleasure” element. (What a lovely idea! said Gemma when she heard, looking rather inspired.)

“The focus groups loved it,” said Cat.

“Oh yes, and they’re never wrong, are they? Ha!” Rob looked jovially around the meeting room. He lowered his voice. “Two little words: Hazelnut Heaven.”

“Arrggh!” People clutched their chests as if they’d been shot. Others buried their heads in their hands. Sidelong glances were shot down the end of the table where the CEO of Hollingdale Chocolates, Graham Hollingdale, chewed a pen lid and looked bored out of his mind.

Hazelnut Heaven had been last year’s new-product disaster. When it happened, the entire company ducked wildly for cover, hurling blame like hand grenades over their office cubicle walls. They passed the buck so furiously and successfully that it stopped nowhere. Twelve months later, recalling the experience created a warm glow of camaraderie.

Cat gave the obligatory rueful chuckle. “You’re right, Rob. There are no guarantees. But I do think we’ve got all the right elements for our target audience.”

“Love your work, Cat!” said Rob. He leaned forward and pressed a finger to his lips. “But to be frank, I have some real concerns about this one.”

Aha. It had been a few weeks since she’d pointed out his error
in the Operations Meeting. Rob had been biding his time, cradling his wounded ego, waiting to pounce. If this had happened yesterday, her adrenaline would have been pumping. Today, it all seemed like an amusingly childish game. It was only a job—a means of making money.
And she was having a baby.
At the thought of the baby magically curled in her womb, Cat felt an exquisite burst of joy.

“We agreed on this concept over a month ago,” she said calmly. “You loved it, Rob.”

“Hey, I hate to admit it but I can be wrong! This has got to be an open forum, Cat. No finger-pointing. No politics. Just honest opinions.”

Cat swallowed a guffaw.

“O.K. then,” she said. “Let’s look at the creative rationale again. We wanted something strong enough to break through the clutter. It does. We wanted something to appeal to single women in their thirties. It does.”

Rob held up his palms like he was testing the weight of two things. “Masturbation. Hollingdale Chocolates. Anyone else worried about what this says about our brand values, our brand
heritage? Graham?”

Rob swiveled his chair to face the CEO. Graham sighed in an exhausted fashion and chewed harder on his pen lid. He was a strange, inscrutable man, with a disconcerting habit of allowing his eyelids to droop, turtlelike, whenever any of his staff spoke. The longer they spoke, the more it seemed he was drifting into a deep, comfortable sleep.

Rob stared at him for an agonizing few seconds and then swiveled his chair back to Cat. “I’m just not convinced you’ve cracked it this time, Cat. I know you’re the creative genius. But just run with me here while I throw a few ideas around. What if she was lying in the bath dreaming of her
lover? You could have
one of those little bubbles coming out of her head, you know, to show she was dreaming.”

“Yeah, now that sounds like a good compromise, folks!” contributed Derek, who was a moron. “Give her a lover!”

“She doesn’t want a lover,” said Cat. She doodled “July 23” on her notepad. It was the date her baby was due.

“Why not?” asked Graham suddenly. “Why doesn’t she want a lover?”

Everyone turned in surprise to look at him. Cat looked at the slightly awkward jut of his chin. Perhaps, she thought, Graham Hollingdale was just shy. Perhaps his eccentricity wasn’t arrogance after all. Maybe it was just plain, old-fashioned, teenage-boy gawkiness disguised by the authoritative uniform of a balding, middle-aged business executive.

She smiled at him—a Gemma smile—open, radiant, and guileless.

“She might like a lover at some point, but the message of the ad is that you don’t need a lover to give yourself pleasure on Valentine’s Day. All you need is a bath and Hollingdale Chocolates.”

She looked at Rob. “There’s no need to feel threatened by it.”

Rob rolled his eyes. “I’m thinking about the impact on the
brand—”

“Run it as is,” said Graham. “I like it.”

“Great.” Cat slammed shut her laptop. “I’ll e-mail you all PDFs.”

“Fine.” Graham subsided sleepily back into his chair.

Rob didn’t look up. He was using a gold ballpoint to jab a straight line of vicious little blue dots across his notepaper. No revelations there. He was still the slimy prick he’d always been.

“Happy Christmas, everybody!” said Cat warmly.

She and her baby sailed from the room.

It was the night before Christmas Eve, and Annie the marriage counselor was celebrating with gigantic Christmas trees dangling from her ears. They had red and green lights that flashed disconcertingly on and off, on and off.

“Love the earrings, Annie,” said Dan. He was holding Cat’s hand as they sat thigh to thigh on the green vinyl sofa.

“Thank you, Dan.” Annie gave her head a merry little swing. “Now, if you don’t mind me saying, you two seem a lot cheerier than when I saw you last.”

“We’ve had some news.” Dan squeezed Cat’s hand.

“I’m pregnant,” said Cat.

“Oh!” Annie clasped her hands together.
“Congratulations!”

“It’s not like that means everything is suddenly O.K.,” said Cat. She didn’t want Annie thinking they were going to fork out one hundred and twenty bucks for an hour’s worth of trilling and cooing.

“Of course not!” Annie’s smile disappeared in tempo with her flashing lights. “But it is wonderful news after you’ve been trying for so long.”

“Yes.” Cat leaned forward to look at Annie seriously. “I want us to fix everything before the baby’s born. I hated having divorced parents. I
hated
the way they spoke about each other. I’m not putting my child through that.”

She sat back, embarrassed by her intensity. She hadn’t even realized she felt that way until the words came out of her mouth. In fact, up until now, she’d always told people the opposite—that she couldn’t care less about her parents’ divorce.

Now their marriage was something they needed to fix before the baby was born. It was a task that had to be ticked off the list some time over the next nine months, like transforming the study into a nursery and installing a baby capsule in the car.

Annie was the expert. That’s what they were paying her for.

“I still feel angry with Dan about what he did,” said Cat. “Sometimes I can’t even bear to look at him I feel so angry. Actually, sometimes I feel sick when I look at him.”

“Are you sure that’s not morning sickness?” asked Dan. “Because that seems a bit extreme.”

Cat and Annie ignored him. “Obviously,” said Cat, “I need to stop feeling that way before the baby is born.”

She looked at Annie expectantly. Dan cleared his throat.

Annie opened her manila folder in a businesslike manner. “Well, I think this all sounds very constructive, very positive. Let’s get started, then.”

“Yes, let’s.”

Cat held on tight to Dan’s hand and didn’t look at him.

On Christmas Eve, Cat offered to baby-sit with Maddie while Lyn and Maxine went to the Fish Markets.

She arrived to find the two of them walking around the house on exaggerated tippy-toes. “We just got her down,” explained Lyn. “It was a nightmare. The girls at play group say you only miss one or two and that’s it, afternoon naps finished for good—never to return!”

It seemed to Cat that Lyn was speaking to her about Maddie in a more relaxed, mother-to-mother tone, now she was pregnant. It made Cat feel both humiliated and grateful to think that Lyn had been consciously—or perhaps subconsciously—curtailing her conversation.

“Have you told Mum yet?” asked Lyn, while their mother disappeared into the bathroom to reapply her lipstick.

“No. I’m going to make a family announcement at lunch tomorrow.”

“Cat! Dad knows, Nana knows—you can’t make a family announcement when the only one in the family who doesn’t know is Mum!” said Lyn. “Tell her now.”

Cat sighed. Every conversation with her mother was fraught with danger. It was as if they were former players from competing teams who shared a long and violent history. Sure it all seemed a little silly now but all the old antipathies about unfair penalties were still there just beneath the surface.

Throughout the seventies, until their peace treaty in the eighties, Maxine and Frank had fought, and their three little daughters had fought loyally and bravely alongside them. Lyn
took Maxine’s side. Cat took Frank’s side. Gemma took everyone’s side. It was hard to put a decade-long battle behind you.

Maxine reappeared, smelling of
Joy
and hairspray.

“The Smith family might appreciate receiving that shirt soon,” she remarked to Cat, who was lying on Lyn’s sofa, bare feet dangling off the end.

Cat looked down at her faded T-shirt. “I think they’ve got higher standards.”

Lyn pinched her on the arm.

“I’m pregnant, Mum,” said Cat to the ceiling.

“Oh!” said Maxine. “But I thought you and Dan were having problems.”

Lyn said in an anguished tone,
“Mum!”
while Cat pulled a cushion out from under her head and held it over her face.

Maxine said, “Well, I am sorry, Lyn. I thought they were. Gemma mentioned something about
counseling.”

Cat didn’t need to see her mother’s face to know the lemony expression of distaste that would be pulling at her mouth as she said the word “counseling.” Counseling was something other people did.

Cat took the cushion off her face and sat up. “People get pregnant from having sex, Mum. Not from a perfect marriage. You ought to know that.”

Maxine’s nostrils flared, but she drew herself upright, manicured nails digging into the strap of her handbag. It always astounded Cat—this ability of her mother’s to pack away unsightly emotions, in exactly the same way she transformed unwieldy bed sheets into sharp-edged squares for the linen cupboard.

“I’m sorry, dear. It was just the shock, hearing you say it like that, just lying there on the sofa. It was odd. I’m very happy for you. And for Dan, of course. When are you due? Here, let me give you a kiss.”

Cat sat upright, hugging the cushion to her stomach like a
recalcitrant teenager while Maxine pressed cool lips against her cheek.

“Congratulations, dear,” she said. “You’ve cut back on your drinking, I hope.”

As Lyn and Maxine closed the door behind them, Cat lay back on the sofa and thought about the announcement of Lyn’s pregnancy. A special family dinner with Maxine practically gurgling with delight and pride, raising her champagne glass to Michael’s camera, a proud, maternal arm around Lyn’s shoulder.

Cat pressed her palms tenderly against her stomach.

“You and I are going to get along so much better, aren’t we?”

Christmas Day. It began with such promise.

They slept in till ten. Cat could feel the heat in the air when she woke.

Secretly, like she did every morning now, she patted her belly. Good morning, baby. Happy Christmas.