Three Wishes (4 page)

But this boy seemed more interested in Cat. He put his hand on her knee. She removed it and put it back on the table.

“Did you just put your hand on Cat’s knee!?” shouted Lyn, whose voice tended to rise several decibels when she was drunk.
“Gemma! That boy just put his hand on Cat’s knee!”

“Do you like her?” said Gemma. “Do you want to kiss her? She’s a good kisser. She says she is anyway. After you’ve kissed her could you buy us some more champagne please?”

“I don’t want to kiss him!” said Cat. “His head is abnormally large. And he looks like a truck driver.”

She wanted to kiss him quite a lot.

“If I pick a winner in this race, will you kiss me?” said the boy.

They looked at him with interest. They were all gamblers. It was a rogue gene they’d inherited from their grandfather.

Lyn leaned forward. “WHAT IF IT LOSES?”

“Bottle of champagne,” said the boy.

“Deal!” Gemma knocked over Cat’s champagne as she reached across to shake his hand.

“What are you two, my pimps?” asked Cat.

He picked a horse called Dancing Girl.

“NO CHANCE!” cried Lyn. “She’s fifty to one for God’s sake. Why didn’t you pick a favorite?”

Gemma and Lyn were screaming on their feet for the whole race.

Cat stayed sitting next to the boy. She kept her eyes fixed on the television. Dancing Girl ran in the middle of the pack until the last few seconds when she broke free and began surging forward. The race caller’s voice rose in rapid surprise. Gemma and Lyn wailed.

Cat felt the boy’s hand at the back of her head. As Dancing Girl was thundering toward the finish line, the boy was pulling her to him and Cat’s eyelids were closing as if she were sinking into a deep, delicious sleep. He smelled of Dunhill cigarettes and Palmolive soap and tasted of Colgate toothpaste and Tooheys beer, and she had never wanted anything so bad as she wanted that boy.

The boy turned out to be Dan and Dan turned out to be her husband and her husband turned out to be a cheat.

Cat drained her beer and started on one of the other two.

Gemma and Lyn had adored Dan from the moment Dancing Girl had come in second and they turned around to claim their champagne, to find him claiming the kiss he hadn’t won. He managed to extricate his wallet from his back jeans pocket and hand it to Lyn while keeping his tongue firmly entwined with Cat’s. So cool! So sexy! So
dexterous
!

How could she admit the adorable Dan wasn’t so adorable after all?

She wasn’t going to tell them.

She slammed the beer down on the table, reached for the third, and looked up to see her sisters walking through the pub toward her.

Gemma was dressed, as always, like an oddly beautiful bag lady. She was wearing a faded flowery dress and peculiar holey cardigan that didn’t match the dress and was too big for her. Her glinty red-gold hair was all over the place, a tangled mess that fell past her shoulders. Split ends. Cat watched a guy at the door turn to look at her. A lot of men didn’t notice Gemma, but the ones who did,
really
did. They were the sort of men who wanted to brush her hair out of her eyes, roll up her cardigan sleeves, and tell her to zip up her bag before her purse got stolen.

Lyn had come from teaching aerobics at the gym. Her straight, blond hair was in a smoothly coiled knot at the back of her head. Her cheeks were pink and healthy. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt that looked suspiciously like it might have been ironed. A fair, lanky, sporty-looking girl. Her nose was too pointy, in Cat’s opinion, but she was attractive enough. (Although, maybe not?) When Cat saw Lyn she saw herself in three dimensions. Three very vigorous, Lyn-like dimensions.

Cat felt that sense of pleasure and pride that she always felt when she saw her sisters in public. “Look at them!” she wanted to
say to people. “My sisters. Aren’t they great? Aren’t they annoying?”

They saw Cat and sat down on the waiting stools without saying hello.

It was one of their rituals, never saying hello or acknowledging one another. People found it strange, which they found enjoyable.

“So I’ve been going to this new deli for my lunch,” said Gemma. “Whatever I order,
whatever,
it seems to shock the woman behind the counter. I say, I’ll have the fruit salad, and her eyes widen and she says, The
fruit salad! It’s the funniest thing.”

“I thought you hated fruit salad,” said Lyn.

“I do. That’s just an example,” said Gemma.

“Well, but why not give an example of something that you actually ordered?”

Cat looked at her sisters and felt her limbs becoming weak with relief.

She ran her finger around the rim of her empty beer glass and said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

The Cabbage-Leaf Trick

Do you know, I can never see a cabbage without thinking of breast milk.

I wonder if they still do that? The cabbage-leaf trick. I can tell you when I first saw it. It would be over thirty years ago now. My first week as a nurse’s aide. Everyone at the hospital was in a tizz because a young girl had given birth to triplets. Everyone wanted to see them. They even had reporters from the papers!

I happened to be making beds in the maternity ward when the three babies were wheeled in for their feeds. Sister Mulvaney, the cruelest woman you could ever hope to meet, was directing the whole event. My eyes popped as the nurses undid the mother’s bra and peeled off soggy green leaves! Your breasts sometimes become very hard and swollen when you start nursing, you see, and for some reason chilled cabbage leaves soothe them.

Gosh, but that poor young mother was in pain. You could tell. Her face was all set and white. Her three little babies were sound asleep but in those days they were sticklers for routine. You fed them every four hours on the dot. The first little baby did not want to be woken. They tried everything. Undressing her. Moving her around. Eventually, Sister Mulvaney sprinkled some water on her little face. That certainly woke her up. But the moment she started crying, the other two were off. All three screaming!

They got two of the babies and showed the mother how to tuck them back under her arms, one on each breast. But she couldn’t get the babies to latch on. Sister Mulvaney was barking out instructions and the mother was doing her best to follow them. By this stage, the babies had worked themselves up into a fine rage. What a racket! The whole ward was watching.

Eventually, they gave up and got a breast pump to try and get her milk started. They were dreadful, clunky old contraptions in those days. You could tell that poor mother was upset, with her babies holler
ing, Sister Mulvaney tut-tutting, and everyone pretending not to stare. All of a sudden she just burst into tears. My supervising nurse said, very know-it-all, “Ah the three-day blues, all new mothers cry on the third day.” And I remember thinking, But my goodness, who wouldn’t cry?

“Die, you little
motherfucker.” Lyn squatted down on the kitchen floor and aimed the cockroach spray like a machine gun.

“Language, young lady!” Lyn looked up to see her stepdaughter, Kara, sucking in her cheeks in a parody of a horrified parent.

“I thought you were gone,” said Lyn, feeling a bit silly to be caught doing her private Hollywood gangster act. She didn’t normally say things like “motherfucker.” In fact, she generally swore only in situations involving cockroaches or her sisters.

“It’s escaping!” said Kara helpfully.

Lyn looked back down to see the cockroach scuttling across the tiles to a microscopic tunnel under the sink. No doubt it would now live a long, happy life and give birth to many thousands of sweet little cockroach babies.

Lyn stood up and looked at her watch. It was just on nine o’clock. “Aren’t you very late?”

Kara heaved an exhausted sigh to indicate she could not be expected to cope with yet another imbecilic question.

“Well, aren’t you?” asked Lyn, because she couldn’t help herself.

“Lyn, Lyn, Lyn.” Kara shook her head sadly. “What am I going to do with you?”

Kara was six when Lyn first met her, a girly little girl, with butterfly clips in her curly black hair and skinny arms that jangled with sparkly pink bangles. Her most treasured possession was an extra-large pencil case that she called her “Crafty Case”; it had special things in it like glitter, glue, and chunky plastic scissors. Lyn was allowed Crafty Case privileges, and they spent whole Sunday afternoons together, making cardboard and Paddle Pop–stick creations. When Kara eventually began to find other interests, Lyn kept clinging on, making hopeful suggestions for new projects. She gave up only after that fateful, embarrassing day when Kara ceremonially presented her with the Crafty Case, saying, “Here, now you can play with it on your own, whenever you want.”

At fifteen, Kara kept her hair dead straight and rimmed her eyes in thick black eyeliner. Some days she slouched for endless hours on the sofa, yawning hugely, like someone suffering from terrible jet lag. Other days she was flushed and glittery-eyed, almost maniacally happy. Her most treasured possession was her mobile phone, which beeped night and day with text messages from her friends.

Lyn watched as Kara opened the fridge door and stood with one hip at an angle. She stared vaguely into the fridge, swinging the door, and suddenly said, “When did you lose your virginity?”

“None of your business,” answered Lyn. “Do you want something to eat? Have you had breakfast?”

Kara turned around with enthusiasm. “Was it really late? Like, embarrassing late? Why? Did no one want to sleep with you? Don’t feel bad. You can tell me!”

“The apples are good. Have an apple.”

Kara took an apple. She slammed the fridge door and swung herself up on to the kitchen bench, swinging her legs.

“Who did Dad lose his virginity to? Was it Mum, do you reckon?”

“I don’t know.”

Kara gave Lyn a sly, slanting look over her apple. “I’m going to lose my virginity by the end of next year.”

“Are you? Good for you.”

Lyn wasn’t especially worried about Kara and sex. She was fastidious and easily revolted. Just last night Michael had said at the dinner table, “Lyn, I want to pick your brains about something,” and Kara had exploded, covering her face, making him vow to never say anything so disgusting as “pick your brains” ever again.

Surely she wouldn’t be interested in anything as messy as a penis.

Lyn opened the dishwasher and began rinsing that morning’s breakfast dishes. Due to the distressing and frankly shocking news about Dan, last night’s drink with Cat and Gemma had gone three hours longer than scheduled. That meant today’s “to do” list was longer than usual. She’d been up since 5:30
A.M
.

Dan was a truly horrible cheating sleaze…She must remind Michael to call his mother for her birthday…Why did Dan even tell Cat? What did it achieve?…If Maddie slept for another hour or so, she could prepare for tomorrow’s meeting at the bakery…Cat could get so irrational. Would their marriage survive this?…Ten Christmas cards a night, starting from tonight…

And beneath all those thoughts was a flicker of concern, a long-buried, knotty little worry that she was refusing to bring out and dust off, just in case it looked really bad.

“It’s going to be my New Year’s resolution,” Kara was saying, her mouth full of apple. “To lose my virginity next year. Are you going to tell Dad?”

“Do you want me to tell him?”

“I don’t care.”

“Fine. Shouldn’t you be going?”

“So, but what do you think about me losing my virginity this year?”

“I think it’s a very personal decision.”

“So you think I
should.
Wait till I tell Dad you said I should lose my virginity next year. He’ll go ballistic.”

“I never said that.”

“Out of all the men you’ve slept with, where would you rate Dad? Is he like—any
good?”
Kara’s face contorted with delighted disgust. “Is he in your top ten? Have you got a top ten? Have you slept with more than ten men even?”

“Kara.”

“Oh my God, don’t answer. I just thought of you and Dad having sex. I’m going to throw up. Oh my
God
! I can’t get it out of my mind! It’s
revolting
!”

A miniature figure in pink pajamas toddled into the kitchen, sucking on an empty bottle like a cherubic wino. “Hi!”

Lyn nearly dropped the plate she was holding. “Maddie!”

“Hi!” Maddie politely acknowledged her mother and then immediately turned to Kara with worshipful eyes, offering her bottle like a gift to a goddess.

Kara graciously accepted the bottle. “Can she get out of her cot herself now?”

“So it seems,” said Lyn, trying to readjust to a new world where Maddie could no longer be safely incarcerated in her cot.

The doorbell and the office phone began to ring simultaneously.

“Could you watch her for a minute?” asked Lyn.

“Sorry.” Kara swung herself off the bench and handed the bottle back to Maddie. “I’m
really late for school.”

Carelessly, she ruffled Maddie’s dark curly head. “Seeya, sweetie!”

Maddie’s bottom lip quivered. She slammed the bottle down on the floor.

Lyn picked up Kara’s half-eaten apple from the kitchen bench and threw it in the rubbish bin. She scooped up Maddie and walked toward the front door.

“Kara, Kara,” Maddie sobbed pitifully.

“I know just what you mean, darling,” said Lyn, holding tight to her squirming little body. “Kara, Kara.”

It was past midnight that same day. Michael kissed her tenderly and said, “You did come, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” said Lyn. “Ages ago.”

She moved her hips. “Heavy.”

“Sorry.” He rolled onto his back with a sigh and reached across to the bedside table for a glass of water. “No need for me to pick up stray women in bars.”

“Michael!”

“Just letting you know you’re safe with me, sweetheart.”

“Well, thanks, you big chauvinist pig.”

He put down his glass of water and settled back down into bed, making contented purring sounds as he pulled up the quilt and curled his body around Lyn’s back.

He was always so chipper after sex.

“Cat is devastated,” said Lyn.

“Hmmm.”

“You’re not very sympathetic.”

“Your sweet sister can be a real bitch.”

“So can I.”

“No you can’t.

“We’re identical. Remember?”

“No. You’re my lovely little Lynnie.”

Efficiently, he bundled her hair to the side so it wouldn’t tickle his face, kissed her shoulder blade, and within seconds began to snore into the back of her neck.

Sex with husband. Check.

I absolutely did not think that, she thought.

She shouldn’t have let Michael call Cat a bitch. She wasn’t, for one thing, but more important, Cat never let anyone say a bad word about her sisters. Oh,
she
could say plenty of bad words about them but nobody else—not even Dan, Lyn would bet, in the privacy of their own bedroom. Cat’s loyalty was fierce and staunch.

In their school days, Cat was their own personal hit man, their hired thug. When they were seven, for example, Josh Desouza spread a vicious rumor about Gemma. The rumor was that she’d shown him her underpants. (The rumor was true. He tricked her by accusing her of not wearing any. “But I am!” cried Gemma, devastated. “Prove it,” he said.) When Cat heard about it, her face went bright red. She walked straight up to Josh in the middle of the playground and
head-butted
him. Head-butting hurt a lot, she confided to them afterward, but she didn’t cry, well, only a little bit, when she got home and saw the red mark on her forehead.

Now they were in their thirties, Cat was still ready to spring to their defense, often unnecessarily. Just the other day she and Lyn went out to lunch. “Didn’t you ask for a salad?” Cat said to Lyn. “Excuse me! My sister hasn’t got her salad!”

“I am actually capable of asking myself,” said Lyn.

“My sister.” Cat said it with such unconscious pride. Even after she’d just been telling you what a complete loser you were
for ordering a bocconcini salad, when everyone knew bocconcini was a conspiracy to make you eat rubber.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said to them in the pub, as if they didn’t already know
that
the moment they saw her face from the other side of the room.

Lyn fell suddenly, very deeply asleep.

The voice was teeth-jarringly sweet. “Lyn! Georgina! How
are you?”
Lyn’s stomach muscles tightened in anticipation. She tucked the portable phone under her ear. “Hello, Georgina. How are you?”

She was in the middle of trying to undress Maddie for an unscheduled bath. Maddie had just spent five pleasurable minutes smearing herself with sticky black Vegemite and didn’t want her handiwork removed.

There was only one person capable of leaving an open Vegemite jar sitting in the middle of the living room floor: Georgina’s daughter Kara.

“To be honest, Lyn, I’m rather annoyed.”

Maddie sensed her mother’s attention slip and squirmed free. She escaped from the bathroom, chortling with wicked glee.

“What’s wrong?”

Lyn turned off the bath taps and followed Maddie out into the hallway. Her sisters told her that she had well and truly paid her penance for breaking up Georgina’s marriage by practically bringing up her daughter, leaving her free to lead a life of leisure. They also reminded her that not only had Georgina blissfully remarried some guy who looked like Brad Pitt and seemed bizarrely quite nice, but that she was a vindictive bitch from hell who
deserved to have her husband stolen from under her nose.

But still, Lyn was always conscious of Georgina being the wronged party. And so she played her part in these terribly civilized, grown-up-about-it conversations and didn’t even attempt to apply one of the four key techniques for dealing effectively with passive-aggressive behavior.

“Kara is very upset,” said Georgina. “I’m surprised Michael allowed it, I really am. With respect, Lyn, I’m rather surprised at you!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lyn watched Maddie pick up Kara’s favorite T-shirt from the floor and hug it adoringly to her Vegemited body. There was really nothing she could do to stop her.

“I’m talking about the article in
She,”
said Georgina. “Kara says you didn’t even ask her permission to use her name! She’s a sensitive child, Lyn. We all need to be a little careful with her feelings.”

“I haven’t seen the article.” Lyn took a deep stress-management breath through her nostrils. She tried not to think of Kara’s ten-year-old face crumpling each time Georgina called to cancel a day out. A little careful of her feelings, indeed.

“I understand of course. Your public profile is important to you,” said Georgina. “Just be careful in future, won’t you? How’s that little ruffian of yours by the way? Kara seems to spend a lot of time looking after her for you. That must be a real help! Wish I had some help when Kara was little. Well, must fly!”