Wish Club (16 page)

Mara
sat at her desk, chewing her way through a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints while she filled out the previous week’s paperwork. The elastic band on her pants kept digging into her waist, which was taking on a new, rounder shape. She had put on a few pounds. Well, quite a few pounds. In fact, she’d probably put on as much weight as Lindsay had lost.

Well so what?
she tried to tell herself,
I can afford it.
Besides, she’d had to take a couple of days off work to let her nose heal. (
Personal days and sick days—Dr. Seeley must have done a slow burn.)
And it was easy to eat too much when you were just sitting around, what with the refrigerator so close and all.

But something had changed. Previously when she’d looked in the mirror, she had been repulsed by the little pooch her belly made, but not recently.
Finally, I’ve come to accept my body. To love it for what it is.

Well, if she wanted to, this weight wasn’t anything she couldn’t exercise off. But the exercise would have to wait for a while. She touched a finger to the bandage over her nose. She wouldn’t be allowed to jostle it around any time soon. Maybe she could wish the weight away at the next Wish Club the way Lindsay had.

Her greatest fear wearing the bandage around was that people would think she’d had plastic surgery on her nose. Imagine. She already had the perfect nose. Her other fear, and Henry’s too, was that people were going to think he had hit her. She had two huge purple bruises under her eyes.

Mara had been at Tate’s Drugs two days ago, and while she’d been checking out, the cashier kept glancing up at her face after she slid each item over the scanner. When the cashier, a young, extremely thin woman with long, unkempt hair, had handed Mara the receipt, she’d said, after another quick glance around, “You know there are people that can help you.” She looked like someone who might
know,
and she’d kept her hand on the top of the receipt in Mara’s hand for an extra moment until Mara had replied, “Help me what? Recover from plastic surgery?”

At least Dr. Seeley had refrained from any verbal comment this morning.

“There’s a lot of filing backed up,” he’d said to her when she walked in. When she had turned around after taking her coat off and he could see her face, his face had expressed surprise, but he hadn’t said anything. Maybe he’d thought she’d had plastic surgery, too.

Before heading into his office he’d hesitated for a moment, in that manner of his that made it look like he was trying hard to think of something nice to say. Apparently unable to come up with anything, Dr. Seeley had pursed his giant lips again and left the room.

What a kind and considerate man I work for.

Mara bit into a Thin Mint and tore it away from her mouth, glaring at the tall stacks of files that lined the front edge of her desk. They were all uniformly two feet high, except for the pile farthest to the right, which was only about six inches tall. The most recent one—a work in progress. She leaned forward on her elbows and shoved the rest of the cookie in her mouth. With her bruised circles under her eyes, she felt like a raccoon peering out from inside a burrow.

She gave a deep sigh. The eleven-o’clock patient had canceled, and there was no time like the present to get started on these files. But maybe she should get lunch. She sure had been hungry lately. Hungry constantly, it seemed. If she hadn’t known better she would have thought she was pregnant.
It’s probably just middle age or hormones or something. Nothing extraordinary.

What was extraordinary was the way Henry’s hair had been growing. The downy hairs on his head kept spreading, filling in the bald spot. It looked as if he were using one of those hair-transplant-in-a-can products. He now had enough hair to hold down a comb-over if he wanted to have one. And then there was her discovery last night.

Mara had been reading when Henry had come to bed. He’d sunk down beside her, asking how much longer she was going to stay up.

“Just to the end of this chapter. Two more pages.”

He’d smiled at her, “all right,” and turned over.

She’d bent over and kissed his head, then started to stroke his back, when she’d noticed, after one pass, that there was more of that light brown, downy hair sprouting up. On his back. Was this another one of those middle-age things? Like hair growing out of noses and ears, or sprouting on chins? Henry had never had hair on his back before.

Mara’d run her hand over the hairs again. Henry nestled more deeply into the covers and made a little sighing noise. There were an abundance of hairs, mostly concentrated around his shoulder blades. She leaned in closer to inspect them, but not too close, lest Henry make any sudden moves.

“Henry. You’ve got hairs on your back!”

After some discussion and several minutes of watching Henry’s elbows point off in odd directions as he tried to get his hands onto the hair, Mara had placed him in front of the bathroom mirror and given him her hand mirror so he could look at them.

There they were. Two small dark patches of fur growing in between his shoulder blades. Their eyes met in the mirror.

Of course there had to be a plausible explanation for spontaneous hair growth, but neither one of them had been able to think of any. Mara thought he should see a doctor.

“It’s just hair, Mara, not open lesions. You’re making such a big deal about this.”

Of course he was happy with the hair on his head, and she wasn’t totally displeased with it either. But the hair on his back—well, that was werewolfy. It had taken a while, but she’d finally convinced him he should call his doctor. “It’s just coming in so fast—everywhere.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Bernstein tomorrow.”

Mara had raised her eyebrows at him.

“I promise. Really.”

She should call Henry now, she thought, biting into another cookie, to remind him to make that appointment, because she knew he would put it off for as long as he could get away with it, hoping she would forget. A little sprinkle of dark crumbs landed on the file in front of her. She would call Henry right now, she decided. Mara absently pressed her fingers into the black crumbs and brought them to her mouth before reaching for the phone.

“Some
kindergartners—stuck up on the second—science fair today.” Gail caught fragments of a conversation as two people rushed by her, breathless as they yelled to each other. The words came at her, taking a moment to register, like a cut from an extremely sharp knife. She broke away from her hug and stood up, but the men were lost in the crowd behind her.

“Will.” Gail put both of her hands on his small shoulders. “Have you seen Andrew? The kindergartners?”

“No.” He shook his head. His eyes looked more worried than a nine-year-old’s ever should as they turned to search the front of the school across the street.

“Was the science fair today?” she asked him. His science project wasn’t due until next week—at least that’s what he’d told her.

“Yeah, it started yesterday for six through eight. They said that’s where the fire started.”

Oh God no. No.

“Where was it? Did you go—did other classes go?”

Will wrinkled his forehead at his mom, like,
Why does she care about science projects at a time like this?
“We went yesterday.”

“You went—Where? Where was the fair?”

“In the science lab. On the second floor.”

Gail felt the dizziness rise up from her stomach, climbing inside her until it filled her head. She bent at the waist and reached out an arm, steadying herself on Will’s shoulder. She managed a couple of breaths and just as she was about to stand up straight, she lurched to one side and threw up.

Chapter Sixteen

Greta
held her hands loosely clasped behind her back as she followed the couple around her gallery, Eleventh House. She paused with them when they stopped to admire a painting and hurried past the works they elected to hurry past. Greta reached a thumb up to scratch her lower back through the purple velour shirt she was wearing, and her bracelets clattered. She knew they wouldn’t buy today. They were just browsing, bored, wasting time after their lunch at D’Alliance or Savoury or one of the many other trendy restaurants in the River North neighborhood.

Greta watched them browse, bored herself. She really had a lot of things to do—calls to make, paperwork to catch up on. Normally she enjoyed these mindless tours of the gallery, but today Greta’s mood was off; a nagging feeling was plaguing her, like the dream everyone had in college about signing up for a class and forgetting to go to that class until the night before the final exam. A feeling like she needed to be doing something—only what?

Last fall, she’d had the same sinking feeling when she’d sensed that weird dry spell, that unnatural lack of balance. It had felt as if something or someone had thrown Mother Nature out of whack. At least her rainmaking spell had worked. Well, it had made snow, anyway, since it had taken effect in December. But this time, she was sensing something dark, too. Something more like a cloud. Like trouble brewing.

Davis.
The word slid into Greta’s conscious the way quicksilver rolls down into a crack. As she trailed the couple, her first thought was,
Is Davis the trouble? It doesn’t make sense.

It occurred to her then that maybe
Davis
was unrelated to her nagging mood.
Davis
could just simply be the man’s first name, or maybe it was the couple’s last name.

Davis
slipped in again, but this time with an image of the woman in her gallery pressing against a male figure that was taller and darker and definitely not the man in front of her.
That explains Davis,
Greta thought, betraying nothing of what she now knew with her face or her posture.

“Ooh, I like this one.” The wife pointed to an abstract expressionist work in oils.

“Mmm.” The husband was noncommittal.

Greta looked at them over the rim of her reading glasses. “I’m afraid I don’t have too many abstracts on hand, but if they’re what you truly enjoy, you may prefer to return in March.”

The woman snapped her head around to look at Greta, her mouth slightly open, as if she’d forgotten Greta was there.

“I’m having an opening, the third Friday in March,” Greta continued, “for a wonderful abstract artist, Jill Trebelmeier. She’s really quite good, it might be worth checking out.” Greta smiled pleasantly, pretending her comment hadn’t been an attempt to rush them off, even though she really would have preferred to be rid of them.

The wife’s mouth still hung open, only now with surprise. “We know Jill!” She looked at her husband, then back at Greta. “Is this her gallery then?”

“Well, it’s my gallery. But I’ve been representing Jill for the past six years.”

“How fascinating. What a small world.” The woman’s smile had a slightly dreamy quality to it. “I worked with her father—well, before he passed, naturally. I practically watched little Jilly grow up. I’d love to see her work. When is the opening? March you say?”

Greta nodded. “Yes, the sixteenth.”

“Fabulous, then. I’ll check my calendar—I do hope I can make it.”

The husband already had his BlackBerry out. “Mmm. I’ll be in Tokyo. I’m afraid you’ll have to manage without me.” He winked at Greta. “Usually not a problem for the Missus. I make it and she spends it—simultaneously.” He gave his wife a congenial, just-kidding squeeze around her shoulders, and she grimaced, the dreamy look completely zapped out of her. “In this case, though,” he continued, “I wouldn’t mind having a piece of Jill’s work on hand. Pretty little thing—I’ll bet she’s grown into quite a looker.”

Greta nodded again. “Jill is indeed a lovely young woman.” She looked at the wife. “I hope you can make it on the sixteenth.”

This had turned out better than anticipated. The woman might even come back and buy something. Greta was relieved she hadn’t tried to rush them off any more forcefully.

The couple began to meander slowly toward the front of the gallery, the woman’s stiletto heels making astonishingly little sound on the hardwood floor. They were almost to the door when her husband paused to admire a glass sculpture.

It was exactly the shape made when you put index finger to index finger and thumb to thumb and stretched them as long as you could. The outside was green and from its opening unfolded many layered pink petals until at the very center there was a dark burgundy core. The woman drew down the corners of her mouth and widened her eyes when she came around to look at the front of the sculpture.

Greta had to control her face so as not to grin. The wife knew what she was looking at, and
Davis
probably would too, but the question was, did the husband?

A
muffled whoosh—then flames shot from a first-floor window, sending glass onto the pavement below. Every head on Gail’s side of the street snapped around to look. The glass sprinkled the pavement, making a tinkling sound, like wind chimes, a bright, happy noise that was horribly out of place.

“We’ve got to find Andrew, guys.” Gail stood up, wincing at her sore knee, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand the way she always told her children not to. She hoisted Emily back onto her hip and wiped the back of her hand on her jeans.

Will was staring at his mother’s vomit in the snow. “Will, c’mon.” She reached her hand out for him to hold and he hesitated only briefly—most likely because of the vomit, and not because he wanted a fight about being
too old.

Gail walked favoring her right knee; something was definitely wrong there.

Something was definitely wrong everywhere. More sirens were approaching: ambulances. Gail reached the end of the block, across from the southwest corner of the school, and they started to cross the street. Two ambulances sped by, stopping on the south side of the school, joining two or three that were already there.

Two firemen hurried from the south entrance of the school, carrying two kids apiece. Three small kids straggled behind, coughing and looking disoriented when they stepped outside, eyes squinting. A paramedic ran up to the three of them and herded them toward the circle of ambulances where a triage area had been set up.

Gail quickened her pace—those kids were about the right size for kindergartners. She weaved in and out of the standing crowds and around the ambulances, irritated with all the gawkers getting in her way. When she came around the side of an ambulance, she saw Mrs. Dwyer leaning against it, an oxygen mask to her face, breathing into it hard. One of her cheeks was smudged black and her forehead was sweaty, despite the cold. Her eyes moved nervously from child to child, scattered all around her, as if she were reflexively taking a head count.

“Mrs. Dwyer, where’s Andrew?”

Mrs. Dwyer pulled the mask down from her face, “I don’t know—I couldn’t—” Her eyes were red from smoke and tears. She coughed, brought the mask to her face and inhaled, blinked, and brought it back down to speak. “I think he’s out, honey.”

She
thinks?
Gail looked back toward the south door, the yellow coat of a fireman disappearing in smoke as he went inside. Gail kept searching the children, trying to find Andrew. Will’s eyes scanned the crowd, too, looking worried. Every now and then he’d tug on her hand and stretch her arm out as he tried to identify a boy here or there, hidden behind oxygen masks and soot.

A movement at the south entrance caught Gail’s attention and she turned to see a fireman running out the door, carrying a child in his arms. The boy’s body was limp, bouncing as the fireman ran, his head and blond hair flopping gently with each step, shoes bobbling. Blue and white Shaq shoes. Andrew’s shoes.

“Andrew!”

Gail ran to him. A paramedic met the fireman, hurrying Andrew to the ground in front of an ambulance. They looked about to shoo her away.

“That’s my son,” Gail said. “He’s
my son.
Is he okay? Is he going to be okay?” No one answered in the rush of activity, the calls for oxygen and intubation. Andrew’s beautiful straight blond hair splayed on the dirty asphalt. Gail started crying.

“Is he dead?” Will asked, his voice high, twisted.

“No.” Gail snapped at him. Then, her sweet-mommy voice kicked in, “He’s going to be okay. They’re going to get him better and he’s going to be fine.”

And it was then, Gail decided to
know it.
She would tell her friends later it was as if a latent prizefighter inside her had punched a fist through a paper wall in her chest, and she decided right then that this was how it was going to be. She just chose a different future than the one that had started to unfold in front of her.

“I’ve got breath sounds,” someone said, kneeling over Andrew.

“He’s fine.” Gail said it out loud, again—the words lending power, credence to her will. Andrew was going to be fine because that was the only way it could be, the only way she could ever imagine her future to be.
Andrew is okay now. And he will be okay and that is the only future for him and for me.
This is the way it is and always shall be. It was as if she were overcome with faith. She’d chosen her future and she decided to be certain that God would let her have it, the future that she wished for.

Andrew was fine and everything would be okay.

It was the only possible outcome.

Coincidences,
Dan thought, were just a nutty part of life. For him, running into someone he hadn’t seen in twenty years was just that: nutty. It meant nothing more than an accident of chance. But he knew that for Claudia, the opposite was true. Such things were
meant
to happen; there was always
a reason
they happened. Dan knew that for Claudia, there was no such thing as a coincidence.

“You’re reading way too much into this,” he told her.

Claudia had been playing with her chopsticks, picking up the same piece of pickled ginger over and over again. She finally popped it into her mouth.

“This is not
just a coincidence,
” she said, chewing. “There’s more to it than that and I just—I want to look into it more, that’s all. I think it might be a sign.”

Dan didn’t snort, but he wanted to. That was another thing; she was always getting signs. The last
really good
sign she’d gotten was on the side of a CTA bus, an ad that said, “Welcome Home for the Holidays.” The previous fall, when interest rates had been at an all-time low, they’d been trying to decide whether or not they should buy a condo they’d just looked at, when a bus had pulled up with the ad plastered on the side while they were waiting to cross the street.

Claudia had immediately pounced on it as the sign they were looking for. “We have to do it. It’s a sign. A really good sign. If we buy it now, we’ll close in…in mid-November and see—we’ll be home for the holidays.”

She had been all smiles as she looked at him, happy, as if the decision had been made. Just then a bike messenger had flown by between the bus and the curb and had clipped Claudia’s purse with the tube he was carrying under his arm, the same kind of tube Dan sometimes used for architectural drawings. Her huge purse had fallen to the sidewalk, where half of its contents had spilled from its gaping top, getting tossed onto the curb and sidewalk and into the street. Her wallet had ended up resting precariously on a sewer grate.

“And exactly what kind of sign was that?” he’d asked her.

They walked for about twenty minutes before she would talk to him again.

“Don’t snort,” she said after swallowing the ginger. “I hate your snort.”

He stared her down. There were any number of examples he could give her from their past, examples of good signs gone bad.

“This time it’s different,” she said. “You have to agree with that. This is on a much bigger scale.”