Three Wishes (6 page)

“Can’t talk, going to sneeze!” Gemma hung up mid-sneeze.

Lyn put down the phone and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, while she tried to remember where Gemma was living at the moment.

She thought of her meeting at the bakery. The rich fragrance that would envelop her, the respect that would greet her, the pleasure of dealing with efficient, professional, calm,
normal
people.

She called out to Maxine, “You’d better give me two more of those antihistamines.”

She’d forgotten all about her mother’s “little issue.”

“You stood
me up.”

“Did I?”

“Was it because somebody died?”

“Oh, I hope not.”

Waking up was Gemma’s least favorite thing. She resisted it daily. Even when she was woken up by a phone call, like now, she continued to fight consciousness by keeping her eyes squeezed shut, her breathing deep, and not concentrating too hard.

If she was lucky, the conversation would be short and she could slip straight back into lovely sleep.

“I was actually sort of hoping somebody did die. Somebody not that important. It would help my shattered ego.” The voice was rather appealingly masculine but she had no idea who he was, or what he was talking about, and sleep was still a possibility.

“Yes, I see,” she slurred politely.

“Did you get a better offer?”

“Umm.” She breathed deeper and burrowed farther under her quilt.

“Are you still in bed? Big night last night?”

“Shh,” said Gemma. “Stop talking. Sleep time. It’s Saturday.”

But there was something twitching urgently and irritatingly at the very outer corner of her consciousness.

“Exactly. It’s Saturday. Last night was Friday night. I waited. And waited. Everyone in the restaurant felt sorry for me. I got free garlic bread.”

“Who is this?” Like Frankenstein’s monster coming to life, Gemma suddenly sat bolt upright.

“How many of us did you stand up last night? Is this like a regular Friday night thing for you?”

“Oh my God! You’re the locksmith!”

She threw back her quilt and jumped out of bed, the phone to her ear. She bunched back her fringe with one hand. How could this have happened?

“I can’t believe I forgot! That is so
rude.
So bad-mannered. I am
so
sorry. I had a family crisis. It was exciting, my sister turned into a psychotic stalker. Still, that’s no excuse.”

“Keep going.”

“I feel terrible. Really.”

She really did feel terrible. Not just because of hurting the locksmith’s feelings but because if she could so completely forget something like that, something she was quite looking forward to, then who knows what else she’d forgotten in her life? Perhaps she’d forgotten other things and never remembered she’d forgotten them. Good things. Like lottery wins. Job offers. It was frightening.

“You should feel terrible,” said the locksmith. “How do you plan to redeem yourself?”

Gemma sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed and pulled her T-shirt over her knees. He sounded quite sexy and stern. Perhaps she should make a habit of standing up first dates.

“Oh,
redemption,”
she said. “I’m a Catholic, we’re right into it. What shall I do? Buy you breakfast?”

“No. I think you should
cook
me breakfast. Breakfast for you. Lunch for me. Brunch for the two of us. You can tell me all about your psychotic sister.”

“I would, I really would, but I don’t cook. So we’ll have to think of something else.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Gemma let her T-shirt spring back from her knees and cuddled them to her with pleasure.

“I don’t cook,” she repeated. “My sisters cook.”

“Your sisters didn’t stand me up.”

He hung up without saying good-bye.

Well! He sounded
nice
!

Of course, they always did in the beginning.

Lyn believed that Gemma was addicted to a chemical called phenylethylamine. This was the chemical that flooded divinely through your body when you fell in love. Gemma had been in exactly fourteen relationships over the last ten years (Lyn was keeping count), and according to Lyn, it was starting to get beyond a joke, in fact it was becoming scary. Gemma was obviously breaking up with these perfectly nice men whenever the relationship moved from Stage 1—attraction—to Stage 2—intimacy—because of her addiction.

The good thing was that you could also get phenylethylamine from chocolate. Lyn said Gemma should therefore eat more chocolate and settle into a long-term committed loving relationship in Stage 3.

Gemma wondered what her chances were of reaching Stage 3 with—

With…?

What the hell was his name?

Her mind was quite blank.

There was a peculiar significance to it, she knew that.

She remembered picking up her keys from the kitchen table and jangling them in a maternal “You silly things” fashion, as if it was their fault they’d got locked in the house. The locksmith smiled at her. He smiled straight into her eyes because he was exactly her height.

Gemma and her sisters had a strict “nothing under six feet” policy, but looking into this man’s eyes had been rather pleasant, slightly shocking in fact, as if they were lying in bed together. Maybe, she thought, it was time for a change of policy.

“It’s funny how people always want to show me the keys they’ve locked in their houses,” he said.

His head was so closely shaven it was almost bald. He had wide shoulders, a slightly crooked nose, and…extraordinarily long eyelashes. They would have made a handsome man look effeminate. They made the locksmith a tiny bit beautiful.

Gemma said, “You have the most amazing eyelashes.”

It was a bad habit of hers, complimenting strangers on their physical attributes. She once told a woman in an elevator that she had an especially lovely collarbone. The woman had looked panic-stricken and had begun jabbing at the elevator buttons.

“I know,” said the locksmith. “I’m surprised you took so long to mention them.” Gemma burst into surprised laughter as he leaned forward and furiously batted his eyelashes at her. Then he laughed too. He had the deep, comforting belly laugh of a much larger man. It made her laugh even more.

She was still chortling away when he told her his name and asked if he could take her out to dinner that Friday night.

His name was significant in a vaguely comical sort of way. Something made her think, well, I’ll remember
that
name, ha ha. And there was also something that was just a tiny bit sad about it. Just a faint, delicate shadow of sadness. It was very odd. What could it be? What name could be funny and sad all at once? How fascinating! She couldn’t wait to remember it.

She looked around her room for inspiration. The sun was streaming through the open window, a breeze gently lifting and dropping a faded lace curtain. It had been only a couple of weeks, but it looked like this could be one of her favorite houses. The solid, mahogany furniture seemed patient and wise and the clutter-filled drawers and shelves felt friendly and nonthreatening.

She’d just finished two months in a funky inner-city apartment. All that funkiness had started to give her a headache. Here, in the settled leafy suburbia of Hunters Hill, she would be serene and meditative. She might even learn to cook.

Gemma was a house-sitter. She had a bold, boxed ad in the Sydney House-Sitter’s Directory:

This house belonged to the Penthursts, retired doctors, who were traveling around Europe for a year. Dr. and Dr. Penthurst, Mary and Don, had taken a liking to Gemma and had already sent her a postcard. “How are my African violets?” wrote Dr. Don from Venice.

Dr. Don had a collection of six African violets with fat, velvety leaves. “You need to talk to them for at least twenty minutes a day,” he had told her. “You probably think I’m dotty, but it works. It’s documented! It’s on the Net! One theory is that it’s the carbon dioxide. Anyway. Just have a little chat with them. Doesn’t matter what you say.”

“Just water them, dear,” said Dr. Mary, out of his hearing.

“Oh no,” said Gemma. “Your house has to feel as if you’re still here.”

Now she walked up to the row of pots on the windowsill and caressed their leaves. She called them all Violet, her own private joke. “What was that locksmith’s name? Mmmm? Violet? Any ideas? What about you, Violet? Now,
Violet, I bet you remember!”

The Violets were silent, as stumped as she was.

Gemma sat back down the bed and looked at her framed fam
ily photos on the bedside table. They were the only personal items she displayed when she was house-sitting. Otherwise she lived in their houses exactly as the owners left them.

Her photo collection was an eclectic mix, skidding without logic through the generations. There was her father grinning with evil black-and-white innocence at age five, next to a furious fifteen-year-old Cat, one obscene finger stuck up at the photographer. (Really, Gemma, why would anyone even
keep
such a dreadful photo, said their mother, let alone put it on public display? I’ll give you fifty bucks for it, said Dan. Look at that chick! Nobody messes with my wife.)

Next to the photo of Cat was an old black-and-white one of their mother at around the same age. She was on a beach, her arm slung with casual abandon over her best friend’s shoulder. It looked like they’d just come out of the water and collapsed on the sand. Maxine was smiling radiantly at the camera, her hair plastered to her forehead. It was hard to imagine that girl growing up into the immaculately irritable Maxine Kettle.

Gemma looked at the photo of her mother and the locksmith’s name reappeared right where she’d left it.

Charlie. Of course it was Charlie. What a relief.

Charlie was a joke name because it was the name of Mum’s boyfriend before Dad. The one she would have married, the one she
should
have married. Charlie belonged to the life their mother would have had if her ovaries hadn’t betrayed her.

There were photos of him in the old albums from Maxine’s nineteenth birthday. He was a smiley nerd with protruding teeth. Thank God you didn’t marry him, we would have got those teeth, Gemma and her sisters told their mother. Maxine sniffed and looked at them with narrowed eyes, as if imagining the quiet, tasteful daughters she would have had (one by one, of course!) if she’d married Charlie Edwards.

So that’s why the locksmith’s name was funny. But why was it sad?

“Surely I don’t feel sorry for you, Mum,” said Gemma to her mother’s photo. Maxine smiled back at her and Gemma pressed her face right up close to the photo. “Do I? Why would I?”

Enough! It was time to think about new Charlie. Charlie with the long eyelashes and perfectly adequate teeth! Charlie who was on his way over right now with the erroneous expectation of home-cooked food.

Gemma lay back down on the Penthursts’ wonderfully comfortable king-sized bed and stretched luxuriously.

What could she possibly cook for her redemption breakfast? The answer was nothing of course. She didn’t even have a loaf of bread in the house.

Twenty minutes later she woke with a start and a voice in her ear. “You’re starting to seem a little unreliable.”

She opened her eyes. A man was squatting by her bed, large hands dangling over skinny legs in blue jeans.

“How did you get in?” she asked, sleepily. He rolled his eyes. “Oh. Of course.” Gemma lifted her arms above her head and yawned. She met his eyes and her yawn turned into a laugh of pleasure halfway through.

“Hello there, Charlie.”

“Hello there, Gemma. Where’s my lunch?”

The eyelashes were just as she remembered them.