Three Wishes (8 page)

Probably, she thought, it was always this good in the beginning.

She imagined her fourteen ex-boyfriends, all lined up one after the other in an orderly queue. The plumber who liked country music, that funny redheaded guy with the glasses, the graphic designer who talked too much in the movies, that big guy who was obsessed about losing his hair. At one end was Marcus, grinning a bit contemptuously, the farthest away, but still clearer and sharper than the rest of them. And, now right up front, chuckling
his belly laugh, was Charlie. The queue dipped suddenly in height. He was at least a head shorter than the rest of them.

Would Charlie one day be giving her that puzzled, hurt look? “But why? I thought we were going so well?”

At least, thought Gemma, Cat knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted Dan and she wanted a baby. She also wanted a Ferrari, a house by the beach, Lyn’s Italian leather jacket, and for some man at Hollingdale Chocolates to get run over by a bus.

And that was it. No doubts. No confusion. No lying awake at night trying to work out the magic formula for happiness. Even if she didn’t exactly have what she wanted at the moment, at least she knew what it was. Gemma couldn’t imagine a feeling more peaceful, or exotic.

The doorbell rang in an impatient way, as if it had already been rung once. She threw on some clothes over her unsexy underwear and went running down the stairs to stop him from breaking in again.

Perms and the Pill

It must have been in the late sixties. I remember I was wearing my mauve miniskirt, long yellow socks, and platform shoes. Paula and I were off to the hairdressers for our first ever perms.

We had to walk through that park on Henderson Road and we saw this girl about the same age as us. Tall, with gorgeous long red hair. She was running around after these three adorable little girls. All identically dressed in little yellow sundresses with their hair up in top knots. At first, we thought she was just minding them. But then we could hear them calling out, Mummy, watch me! Mummy, come here! The poor girl was running this way and that, trying to keep them all happy.

Paula said, “Triplets! Aren’t they sweet!” And at that very moment, one child grabbed another one and sank her teeth into her bare arm! The bitten child screamed blue murder! And the mother said, very firmly, something like, “I said no biting today! That’s it! We’re all going home!” Pandemonium! They scattered, like a bomb had fallen, pelting off in different directions! How that poor girl managed to get them home I don’t know.

Well, Paula and I were gob-smacked. We had no idea children bit one another, like savage little animals! You know what we did straight after our perms? We went to the new Family Planning Clinic in the city and got ourselves prescriptions for the Pill. We did! Perms and the Pill on the same day. I’ve never forgotten it.

“My wife is
a triplet, you know,” Dan said chattily. He leaned back against the squeaky vinyl sofa and crossed his arms comfortably behind his head. Cat watched him suspiciously. He was finding marriage counseling far too enjoyable for her liking.

“Really!”

The counselor wriggled with delight. Her name was Annie and she was a bubbly ball of spiritually advanced energy and positive new age vibes. Cat couldn’t stand her. She could feel her sulky teenage self reemerging in the hard line of her jaw. It was like religion classes when soft, oozy Miss Ellis made them share their
feelings
with the class. Gemma adored her, obligingly spilling her soul, while Cat and Lyn listened, appalled, at the back of the classroom. Cat would have taken a double period of calculus with psychopathic Sister Elizabeth Mary over one squirmy religion class with pink-fluffy-cardigan Miss Ellis.

“And are you close to your siblings, Cat?” beamed Annie. Her green dress was covered in a diseaselike rash of sunny yellow polka dots. No doubt there was a pink fluffy cardigan in her wardrobe. She leaned forward, presenting them both with an uninterrupted view of endless freckled cleavage.

“Not really.” Cat concentrated hard on Annie’s forehead.

“Are you
kidding
?” Dan, who had been observing Annie’s breasts with awe, took his hands out from behind his head. “She adores her sisters! They’re unhealthily close if you ask me.”

“Except no one did ask you, Dan,” said Cat. Annie sat back in her chair and tapped her pen against her teeth with gentle empathy.

“The three of them are like this exclusive little club,” said Dan. “And they’re not taking any new members.”

“I want to talk more about Dan’s
infidelity.” Cat shifted noisily
on the green vinyl.

Dan looked irritated. “I don’t think it’s constructive to keep going over and over it.” He looked at Annie for approval.

“Cat has a need to work through her feelings about this, Dan,” replied Annie. “We probably should respect that, yes?”

Ha! Annie was on her side! Cat gave Dan a triumphant look, and his eyes glinted back at her.

“Annie, you’re right of course,” he said admiringly and gently patted Cat’s thigh.

Competition was an aphrodisiac for Cat and Dan. Their relationship was all about smart verbal jabs and wild wrestling for the TV remote and flicking each other with tea towels. Whether they were skiing or playing Scrabble or avoiding each other’s cold feet in bed, they were both equally, aggressively, in it to win.

They had fun together. Sometimes, just for the pleasure of it, they went through all their friends, trying to pick a couple who had more fun than they did. No one came close. They were the winners!

Not any more though. Now they were the losers. The couple going through a “rough patch.”

To her disgust and horror, Cat heard a sad, strangled little sob come out of her mouth. With practiced soothing murmurs, Annie nudged the discreetly placed box of tissues across the coffee table.

Cat grabbed a handful, while Dan cleared his throat and ran his hands up and down his jeans. “I went to see her, you know,”
said Cat, looking at them both above her tissues, snuffling noisily. “She gave me directions back to the Pacific Highway.”

“Who?” asked Annie.

“Angela. The girl Dan slept with.”

“Goodness me,” said Annie.

“Fucking hell,” said Dan.

“You look very nice,” said Dan.

They were crossing the Harbour Bridge in the back of a cab, an hour late for Dan’s Christmas party in the city. “Thanks.” Cat
smoothed down her skirt and scraped at her lipstick with her fingernail.

It was her fault they were late. Over the last few days her body had become a leaden weight that needed to be dragged around from place to place. It was a tremendous effort to do anything at all.

Dan had sat silently on the end of their bed while she paused to rest and sigh after doing up each button on her shirt, his feet tapping a violent rhythm on the carpet. He liked parties.

Cat watched the lights of the city reflecting red and blue on the harbor’s murky depths. She liked parties, too. In fact, December was normally her favorite time of year. She loved the way Sydney become all giggly and light-headed. She loved the way nothing mattered quite so much and work deadlines lost their power. Of course we can’t even
think
about that until after Christmas, people said happily. But this December didn’t feel special at all. There was no special December smell in the air. It could just as easily have been March, or July, or any boring old month.

The car careened across two lanes as they took off from the tollgates and Cat fell against Dan’s shoulder. They both laughed polite-stranger laughs and Dan looked at his watch. “We’re making O.K. time, we won’t be that late.”

“That’s good.”

They sat in silence while the cab headed toward the Rocks. Cat spoke to the window. “Do of any of your friends know, you know, about…”

“No.”

He took her hand and put it in his lap.

“Of course not. Nobody knows.”

Cat looked out at George Street. Traffic had slowed to a jolting stop-and-start crawl. Horns tooted. Men and women in business suits spilled out of the pubs and their laughing faces seemed hard and strident. People in the distance kept seeing Cat and Dan’s cab, throwing one arm in the air and then dropping it with
aggressive disgust when they saw it was taken. Sydney wasn’t giggly and light-headed at Christmastime; Sydney was just drunk and sordid.

“I wish you’d got the Paris job,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t.”

Ever since Dan had started working for the Australian branch of a French company, they had dreamed of a transfer to Paris. The Christmas before, he had made it onto the short list for a management position and the dream got so close they could touch it. They even enrolled themselves in a Beginner’s French course at the local evening college. In France, they would be themselves, but better. They’d wear French clothes and have French sex, while still, of course, maintaining their fundamental Aussie superiority. They’d be more worldly, more stylish, and in years to come, they’d say, “Oh yes, we both speak fluent French!
Naturellement! We had
a year in Paris, you see.”

But he’d missed out, and it had taken weeks to recover from the sour disappointment. And now here they were trapped in their stale, same-old Sydney lives. The only difference was a girl with shiny black hair and fresh young skin.

Cat turned away from the window to look at Dan. “Did you kiss her good-bye?”

He let go of her hand. “Oh, Cat, please no more, not tonight.”

“Because you called a cab, didn’t you? What did you do while you waited for it? Did she stay in bed or did she get up and wait with you?”

“I don’t understand why you can’t leave it alone,” said Dan. He was looking at her as if he didn’t know her, as if he didn’t even particularly like her. “You’re actually getting pretty fucking boring, Cat.”

“What?”

The rage was a glorious relief after the apathy. It went straight to her head, like tequila.

“I can’t believe you said that.”

She had a vision of his head snapping back as her fist slammed into his chin.

In a sudden rush of movement she leaned forward, so that her seat belt pulled tight against her and tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder.

“Can you believe he said that?”

“I was not listening, sorry.” The driver cocked his head politely toward her.

“Oh, Jesus, Cat.” Dan bunched his body up into the corner of the cab, as if he were trying to disappear.

“We’ve been married for four years,” she told the taxi driver, becoming more exhilarated with fury with every word. “Everything’s going well; we’re even trying to have a
baby.
And then, what does he do? He goes out and has
sex
with some strange woman he picks up in a bar. He tells me this while we’re eating
spaghetti. So, fine. That’s fine. I’m trying to deal with it. He’s sorry.
He’s very fucking sorry. But you know what he just said to me?”

The cabdriver had pulled up at a red light. The streetlights illuminated his face as he twisted around from the steering wheel to contemplate Cat. He had a black beard and smiling white teeth.

“No, I do not know,” he said. “You tell me.”

Dan groaned quietly.

“He said I was boring because I keep asking questions about it.”

“Ah, I see,” said the driver. He glanced over at Dan and back at Cat. “This is very painful for you.”

“Yes,” said Cat gratefully.

“The lights have changed, mate,” said Dan.

The driver turned back around and accelerated. “If my wife unfaithful to me, I kill her,” he said enthusiastically.

“Really?” said Cat.

“With my bare hands, I hold them to her neck and I squeeze.”

“I see.”

“But for men, it is different,” he said. “Our biology, it is different!”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Cat put her hand on the door handle. “Stop the car. I can’t stand either of you.”

“Pardon me?”

She screamed at him, “Stop the car!” and opened the car door to reveal the ground rushing by beneath them. Dan reached over and clenched her upper arm painfully hard. He told the driver, “You’d better pull over!”

The driver swung the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes to an enraged chorus of horns.

“You’re hurting my arm.”

Dan loosened his grip. “Do what you want. I give up.”

Cat climbed out of the car, while Dan looked straight ahead, his arms folded, and the cabdriver watched with wary eyes in the rearview mirror. Gently, precisely, she closed the door behind her.

She wondered if she was going mad.

It felt like a decision she could make. One small step over an invisible line and she could choose lunacy. She could lie down right now in the middle of Sydney and scream and kick and throw her head from side to side like Maddie having a tantrum. Eventually someone would call an ambulance and stick a needle into her and she could sink into a mindless sleep.

The cab pulled away from the curb in a mature, sober fashion so Cat could see just how childishly she’d behaved.

It was like every fight she’d ever had with her sisters. A wave of rage would sweep her up and carry her high and righteous until she did something embarrassingly excessive. Then it would dump her,
splat, leaving her stupid and small.

Maxine’s voice sharp in her head:
If you don’t learn how to control that temper of yours, Catriona, you’ll pay the price. Not me! You!