Three Wishes (20 page)

What a bore.

She rolled back over and looked at the ceiling. Her hands felt the little buttons on the mattress beneath the sheet.

She didn’t even like him that much.

Actually, she didn’t particularly like anybody.

The alarm began to beep, and Dan’s arm shot out automatically to hit the snooze button.

I’m just going to stay here, she thought. I’m just going to lie still like this, all day, every day. Maybe forever.

“So! How about I treat you to a real nice dinner in some classy restaurant? Just you and me. How would you like that? That’d be fun, eh? Put a smile on your dial?”

“No thanks, Dad. But thank you.”

“Lunch, then. That’d be better, eh? Smack-up lunch?”

“No. Maybe some other time.”

“Or with your mother? All three of us? That would be something different, eh? Ha!”

“Yes, that would be different. Ha. But no. I’m really tired, Dad. I might go now.”

“Oh. Well, O.K. Maybe another time. You call me when you’re feeling a bit better. Bye, love.”

Cat let her arm flop and the phone thud onto the carpet beside the bed.

She yawned hugely and thought about lifting her head to look at the clock, but it seemed like too much effort for too little return. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t getting up. It was her third day in bed and already it felt like she’d lived this way forever. Huge chunks of time vanishing in deep, dark, druglike sleep that dragged her down like quicksand. When she woke up, she was exhausted, her eyes gritty, her mouth bitter.

She curled up on her side and rearranged the pillows.

Her father had sounded like a used-car salesman on the phone. He always put on that fake, fiercely happy voice when things were going wrong, as if he could sort of bulldoze you into being happy again.

Dad was better in the good times.

A memory appeared so clearly in Cat’s head that she could smell it. It was the smell of cold, crisp Saturday mornings and netball. The sickly sweet Impulse deodorant all three of them used to wear, the wedges of orange that Mum brought along in a Tupperware container. They were always running late and the car was filled with tension and Maxine drove so
slowly
and then they’d pull into the netball courts—and there was Dad.

They wouldn’t have seen him all week and there he was waiting for them, lifting a casual hand in greeting. He’d be talking away to the other parents and Cat would crunch across the gravel in her sneakers and squash her head under his arm and he’d hug her to him.

He loved watching them play netball. He loved the fact that the Kettle girls were famous in the Turramurra District Netball Club. A-grade players. And lethal, all three of them. “Even the
dippy redhead turns into a hard-faced bitch as soon as the whistle blows,” people said admiringly. “It’s just their long legs. They’re just
tall,” said the jealous short girls.

Cat was goal defense, Lyn was goal attack, and Gemma was center. The three of them had the court covered, with the wings and keepers all but irrelevant. It was the one time in their lives where the roles were divided up evenly, neatly, fairly—equally distinct but equally important.

“Good play, girls!” Frank would call out from the sidelines. Not embarrassingly enthusiastic like some parents. Just cool and smooth. A little thumbs-up signal. He wore chunky woolen sweaters and jeans and looked warm and comfortable, like a dad in an aftershave commercial.

And where was Maxine? On the other side of the court, sitting very straight on a fold-out chair, her elegant shoes in neat parallel lines. Her white face pinched and set. Cold weather made her ears ache, and she was not the sort of woman to wear a warm hat: not like Kerry’s mum, Mrs. Dalmeny, who wore a bright red tea cozy of a beanie and danced joyfully up and down the sidelines, calling out, “Oh, well
done,
Turramurra, well done!”

Cat hated her mother then. Hated her so much she could hardly bear to look at her. She hated the discreet little clap, clap, clap of Maxine’s gloved hands when
either
team scored a goal. She hated the way she spoke to the other parents, so stiffly and carefully. Her manners were so good they were like a putdown.

Most of all, Cat hated the way her mother talked to her father.

“Max, how are you?” Frank would say, his eyes hidden by designer sunglasses, his tone as warm and sexy as his chunky sweater. “Looking as gorgeous as ever, I see!”

“I’m perfectly well, thank you, Frank,” Maxine would respond with an unflattering flare of her nostrils. Frank’s teeth would flash with humor and he’d say, “Hmmm, I think it might be a bit
warmer on that side of the court.”

“Why does she have to be a bitch to him?” Cat would say afterward to Lyn, and Lyn would say, “Well, why does he have to be so sleazy?” and then they’d have an enormous fight.

Twenty years later Cat lay in a sweaty tangle of sheets and thought, What if the three of them had been just plain mediocre netball players—or even bad, D-grade, fumbling-for-the-ball bad? Would Dad have still been there every week, smiling in his sunglasses?

Maybe not.

No, not maybe at all.

He wouldn’t have come.

Well, so what? Dad liked winning. So did Cat. She could understand that.

But Mum would still have been there. Shivering and sour-faced in her little fold-out chair, peeling off the lid on the Tupperware container full of carefully cut oranges.

That particular thought was somehow too irritating to deal with right now.

Once more Cat let herself submerge into deep, murky sleep.

“Cat. Babe. Maybe…Maybe you’d feel better if you got up and had a shower.”

Cat heard the sound of the blind being opened and sensed evening light filling the bedroom. She didn’t open her eyes. “I’m too tired.”

“Yeah. But I just think maybe you wouldn’t feel so tired if you got up. We could have some dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Right.”

A tiny “I give up” twist on the word “right.”

Cat opened her eyes and rolled over to look at Dan. He had turned around toward the wardrobe and was taking off his work clothes.

She looked at the perfect muscled V-shape of his back as he
shrugged himself into a T-shirt, pulling it down in that casual, don’t-care boy-way.

Once upon a time—was it that long ago?—watching Dan put on a T-shirt used to make her feel meltingly aroused.

Now, she felt…nothing.

“Do you remember when we first started going out and I thought I was pregnant that time?”

Dan turned around from the wardrobe. “Yeah.”

“I would have had an abortion.”

“Well. We were pretty young.”

“I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

Dan sat down on the bed next to her. “O.K., and so?”

“And so I’m a hypocrite.”

“We were like, I don’t know, eighteen. We had our careers to think about.”

“We were twenty-four. We wanted to go backpacking around Europe.”

“Well. Whatever. We were too young. Anyway, it’s irrelevant. You weren’t pregnant. So what does it matter?”

He reached out to touch her leg, and she moved away on the bed. “It just matters.”

“Right.”

“It didn’t suit me to have a baby then so I would have got rid of it. I was even a bit proud of how O.K. I was about it—as if having an abortion was making some sort of feminist statement. My body, my choice, and all that crap. Deep down I probably thought having an abortion made me
cool. And now
…so, I’m a hypocrite.”

“Christ, Cat, this is the most ridiculous conversation.
It never happened.”

“Anyway, I probably aborted this baby.”

Dan exhaled. “What are you talking about?”

“The night of your work Christmas party. I drank a whole bottle of champagne in the Botanical Gardens. I would have been pregnant then. God knows what damage I did.”

“Oh, Cat. I’m sure—”

“Before that I was being so careful whenever I thought there was a chance I could be pregnant. But I was a bit distracted by your little one-night stand with the slut.”

He stood up abruptly from the bed. “O.K. I get it. It’s my fault. Your miscarriage is my fault.”

Cat pulled herself up into a sitting position. It was good to be fighting. It made her feel awake.
“My miscarriage? Isn’t it ourmis-
carriage? Wasn’t it our baby?”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“I just think it’s really interesting that you said
your
miscarriage.”

“Christ. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. I hate it when you do this.”

“When I do
this
? What’s this?”

“When you fight for the sake of it. You get off on it. I can’t stand it.”

Cat was silent. There was something unfamiliar about Dan’s voice.

His anger was cold, when it was meant to be hot. Their fights weren’t biting and contemptuous. They were violent and passionate.

They looked at each other in silence. Cat found herself touching her hair and thinking about how she must look after three days in bed.

What was she doing thinking about how she
looked? This was
her husband. She wasn’t meant to think about how she looked when she was fighting with him. She was meant to be too busy yelling.

“I know this is really hard for you,” said Dan in his new cold, calm voice. “I know. I’m upset too. I really wanted a baby. I really wanted this baby.”

“Why are you talking like that?” asked Cat, really wanting to know.

His face changed, as if she’d attacked him.

“Oh, forget it. I can’t talk to you. I’m going to make dinner.”

He headed for the door and then suddenly turned back, and she felt almost relieved as his face contorted with anger.

“Oh. And one thing. She’s not a slut. Stop calling her that.” He closed the door hard behind him.

Cat found herself breathing hard.

She’s not a slut.

You used present tense, Dan.

Present tense.

And why are you
defending
her?

The thought of Dan feeling protective toward that girl gave her such a violent, unexpected thrust of pain that she almost whimpered in surprise.

“Where are you going?” Gemma had asked him the other day, as if she had a right to know. Gemma never talked liked that. Sharply. Looking straight at Dan, with a touch of accusation. Most of the time Gemma didn’t even notice people leave the room. Dan always said Gemma had the attention span of a goldfish.

And then there was Christmas Day. “Danny!” Angela had said and there was pleasure and surprise in her voice. Was that the right reaction for someone you slept with once and never heard from again? Someone who went slinking shamefaced off in the night, without even bothering to say, “I’ll call”?

She’s not a slut. Don’t call her that.

Cat lifted and dropped the sheet over her legs.

So.

So.

So.

So, she wasn’t having a baby.

So, it seemed there was a very real possibility that her husband was having an affair with a gorgeous brunette with very large breasts.

So the gorgeous brunette had a brother who just happened to be dating Cat’s sister.

And Cat’s divorced parents were having sex, instead of politely despising each other, like nice, normal divorced parents.

And sick leave didn’t last forever.

And as far as she knew Rob Spencer was still alive and breathing clichés and spite.

And there was no point in any of it. No point at all.

Cat got out of bed and walked with wobbly legs to the dressing table mirror.

Ugly. So ugly.

She bared her teeth in a mockery of a smile and spoke out loud.

“Well, Happy New Year, Cat. Happy fucking New Year.”

“Why don’t you just say
sorry
to Daddy?” For days after Frank moved out, six-year-old Cat followed her mother relentlessly around the house, questioning and nagging, her fists clenched with frustration. It was like pushing and pushing against a gigantic rock that wouldn’t budge—and you really, really needed it to budge so you could open the door to where everything was good again.

She didn’t care what Mum and Dad said when they had their little talk in the living room. All that stuff about how they still loved them and it wasn’t anybody’s fault and these things happened and everything would be just the same except that Mum and Dad would live in separate houses. Cat knew there was no question about what had really happened. It was her mother’s fault.

Dad was the one always laughing and making really funny jokes and coming up with really fun ideas. Mum was the one always cross and cranky, ruining everything. “No, Frank, they haven’t got sunscreen on yet!” “No, Frank, they can’t have ice cream five minutes before dinner!” “No, Frank, we can’t take them to a movie on a school night!”