Wish Club (9 page)

They wished for Gail, who wanted some time for herself, to help her feel as if she still had a life of her own. Her wish called for one brown and one white candle, and some lavender—which Claudia didn’t have, so they substituted some lavender massage oil they found in the bathroom.

One wish remained in the cauldron.

“Well, I don’t think I need to close my eyes for this one.” Mara reached in and pulled it out. She unfolded it in the same melodramatic way she’d done with the others. Her face screwed up, puzzled. She flipped it over. Twice. “It’s blank.”

Everyone’s eyes went to Jill. “I just couldn’t think of anything I wanted to wish for.”

“Not one single thing?” Mara asked.

“No, not really. I guess I never realized how contented I am.”

There was a long pause.

“Well maybe,” Lindsay said, “if you can’t think of anything for yourself—you could wish for someone else. You know, like food for the hungry or peace on earth.”

“I think before we start asking our little group of novice wishers here to change the world,” Gail said, “we need to find out exactly what it is our girl Jill over here is doing to achieve such contentedness.”

“
I’ll have what she’s having,
” Mara giggled.

Jill allowed one corner of her voluptuous lips to curl up.

In all the years she’d known Jill, Claudia had always suspected that underneath her calm, poised, and beautiful exterior, something was missing, as if a smooth veneer had been glued over chipped porcelain. Jill may try to ooze an aura of calm contentedness, but a sadness was hinted at sometimes—in the way she tilted her head, the lilt of her voice. Claudia was certain it indicated a hidden cavern full of wishes unspoken.

Claudia decided to call her on it. “I’m not buying it. I think you’re afraid.”

Jill turned her ice-blue eyes to Claudia. “Afraid?”

“Yeah.” Claudia tried not to be intimidated. “I think you’re afraid to admit to us what it is you really want.”

“I’m not afraid of anything.” Jill flipped her wrist at Claudia in dismissal. “I can’t think of anything that I want right now, that’s all.”

Gail narrowed her eyes at Jill. “You know…I don’t think I’m buying this either.”

“Not one single thing?” Mara appeared to be having a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea of not wanting for anything.

“There’s got to be something,” Gail said, “that if you had it—it would make you
more
content.”

Jill gave her a look.
Et tu, Brute?

“If I can admit to everyone that I haven’t been able to conceive a baby—and Lindsay can admit she’s always wanted a size-six butt—then the least you can do is throw us a bone.”

Lindsay gave Claudia a look, which caused a flicker of a smile to pass across Jill’s face. Jill crossed her arms over her chest, then shook her head, rolling her eyes. “All right. I suppose I can come up with something.” She pushed her lips out, thinking, eyes tilted up. “I guess I wouldn’t mind dating someone normal for once.”

“Aha.”

“I knew it.”

“There had to be something.”

“Define normal,” Gail said, at the same time Claudia asked, “Was that so hard?”

Claudia meant the question to be a flip,
See, wasn’t that easy?
but somehow it had come out wrong. She and Jill exchanged a look, which silently acknowledged just how hard it was to confess what it was you really wished for.

“I keep finding these real losers.” Jill pulled her eyes from Claudia and turned them back to the group. “I would just like to meet a guy who doesn’t want to get married on the second date, doesn’t expect me to be his mother and who doesn’t have any…any weird traits—like a toe fetish or a phobia that appears suddenly in the middle of a date.”

“Oh no, no, nooo.” Lindsay waved her hands back and forth, as if she were sweeping Jill’s silly idea away. “I don’t think so. We are not going to waste the energies of this group finding a guy for you that’s just plain old
normal.
Come on. We are going to attract for you the hottest, most gorgeous, sexiest man we can find. Huh? What do you think?” Lindsay nodded her head at all of them in turn. “Ladies? Am I right?”

They all laughed and began nodding and smiling, too. Even Jill allowed herself a rare full-out grin.

A
circle of dried rose petals (Gail picked them out of an old bag of potpourri) surrounded a pink candle on the coffee table. Several strands of Jill’s long black hair were intertwined with the petals. With everything and everyone in place, they began their chant to find Jill her perfect man.

Oh Great Goddess grant our request,

Help our Jill to end her quest.

Attract to her an amazing guy—gorgeous, smart, sexy and fun

Please make sure to send “the one.”

Oh Great Goddess hear our plea,

It is our will, so mote it be.

They brought their hands down to their sides. Jill put hers on her hips. “Well, I guess we’ll see what happens.”

Five multicolored candles now burned on Claudia’s coffee table, flickering at various heights. The little black cauldron sat empty next to them.

“Shit.” Gail was looking at her watch. “How did it get to be midnight?”

“Midnight?” Lindsay asked.

“Damn, I gotta go,” Mara said.

“Me too.” Lindsay took one last sip of her wine, bending over with the glass still at her lips before she set it on the table.

With a bustle of coats and scarves and gloves and kisses they were gone, swirling out the door into the night like water draining from a tub after a bubble bath. Claudia felt like a toy forgotten in the suds as she closed the door behind them.

Her living room was a disaster: bags of potpourri and spice bottles sat on the floor; food and extra candles and holders cluttered both end tables. The coffee table was covered with candles and wineglasses, herbs, spices, and dirt.
What a mess.
Of course they’d offered to help clean up, but as much as she would have appreciated some help, she’d sent them on their way.

The mantel clock said 12:04.
Where was Dan?
He had said he was going to work late tonight—but midnight?
He’s probably been at the Tap since six.
She started to clean up, carrying as many wineglasses as she could into the kitchen. When she returned to the living room she plopped onto the couch, suddenly exhausted.

Claudia frowned at the burning candles. She had to get up for school in the morning, but she probably should wait for the candles to burn out. How long would that take?
I could just go to bed. They’ll be fine. They’ll burn out soon enough.

Claudia had seen too many Smokey Bear public-service announcements as a child to just leave them unattended.
Why not just blow them out? Who would know the difference?
Claudia leaned forward. The flames on the candles all bent in unison in response to the breeze her movement created. The green candle at the far end of the table contained a deep pool of wax. Her candle. It was almost done.

She leaned back on the couch and watched their gentle flickering. Gradually her gaze blurred, smearing the small flames into a single patch of light. She sat and listened to the clock tick, a lonely sound, like so many tiny popping bubbles.

Chapter Nine

When
Claudia woke up on the couch, Dan was bending over, inhaling a deep breath above the candles.

“No!” Claudia was immediately on her feet.

“What the—?” He tottered backward, startled. “I was just trying to—It’s not like I was gonna pee on them.”

“I know. I know. It’s just. I’m sorry. It’s okay. I was watching them. I—just leave them.”

Claudia walked around the table, checking the candles, making sure none of them had been unnaturally snuffed out. Two of them had burned out already—the gold and the green one. Three were still weakly flickering. She came up to Dan and put her arms around his neck. He smelled like the Tap: cigarettes, grease, and formaldehyde—the aftermath of plenty of beer.

He kissed her on her forehead, then grabbed her more tightly, his hands dropping down onto her butt. His mouth started groping for hers.

Claudia turned her head away, smiling. “You’re funny. You need to go straight to bed.”

“And you need to come with me.” He grabbed at her waist again.

“Dan. Knock it off.” Claudia dropped her arms from his neck and held her palms against his chest. “Are you nuts? It’s the middle of the night.”

He made his pouty little-boy face—the one she found hard to resist.

“You started it. Coming up and throwing yourself all over me—all the candlelight and the wine.” He removed a hand from her waist and gestured at the coffee table, then looked down at it, but now it seemed he was seeing it for the first time. He cocked his head back up at his wife, his face saying,
this Book Club shit keeps getting weirder and weirder.

“I didn’t
start
anything,” Claudia said. “I was just greeting my husband after a hard day at the
office.
” She folded her arms across her chest, grinning.

“Why, I ought to—” He lunged for her, laughing, grabbing her at the thighs and throwing her over his shoulder.

“Dan! Put me down! Stop it this minute—I mean it! You’re going to drop me!”

But he held her steady, ignoring her protests, and hauled her off to the bedroom, where he, albeit a little clumsily, transformed her protests into moans.

Ancient
blinds covered the window opposite Claudia’s bed. They had wide metal slats that two yellowed strips of canvas held together. Only tiny slits of light crept through in the morning because the buildings were so close together. Claudia liked to play a little game each day. She liked to guess if it was cloudy or sunny based on how much light was shining through. It wasn’t so easy. When she guessed right, she thought it was a sign it would be a good day. This morning, she was betting on sunny.

She reached for the thermometer and stuck it in her mouth. What a Book Club meeting last night. All those wishes they made. She replayed the night’s events, up to and including Dan’s arrival—both of them. He was still passed out next to her. She put the thermometer back on her nightstand, then swung her legs onto the floor, reached for the graph paper, and put a dot on February third at 98.9°.

Claudia was dressed and in the kitchen drinking coffee when she heard Dan get up and go into the bathroom. His pee hit the water forcefully and she listened until she heard the last few splashes followed by the flush. She didn’t hear the toilet seat drop down and she hoped today wouldn’t be a bickering day, a distinct possibility since they’d both been up so late the previous night.

Today she’d tried to achieve a put-together look by wearing a long-skirted suit, an attempt to counteract feeling exhausted and a little hung over. Dan, in contrast, walked into the kitchen still half asleep. His bathrobe was tied crookedly around him, with one cuff of his pajamas hanging a full foot higher up his calf than the other, stuck on a ruff of hair on his leg.

“You look nice.” He reached around her into the cabinet for a mug. “Thanks for making coffee.”

“Don’t mention it.” She loved the way he smelled in the morning, a smell that was just all him, no perfumed deodorants or shampoo or aftershave, just the androgenic smell of slept-in pajamas and unwashed hair. Although this morning, she could have done without the formaldehyde reek of yesterday’s beer.

“I’m getting pretty suspicious of your Book Club, Claude.” He grinned at her sleepily. “All these late hours and burning candles and expensive books on the occult.” He leaned his back against the sink and took a sip of his coffee.

“Oh, you know—” Claudia stopped, then started again. “Lindsay’s kind of started this thing—this wishing thing? Well, it’s not just her…I mean everyone is going along…”

Dan just looked at her.

“Where we wish for things? We say a chant and light a candle and it seems like…Well, before we were able to make some things happen.” Claudia tucked her hair behind her ear and pushed her glasses up her nose.

“You wish for things?”

“Yeah. Like once we made a wish for Tippy.”

“Tippy?”

“Mara’s cat.”

Dan took a long drink of coffee and brought the cup back down, his eyes never leaving Claudia. He waited a moment, then took another sip.

“We made one wish to stop the rain, and I think we may have done it. We made a whole bunch of wishes last night.”

“It wasn’t raining last night.”

“No, we make wishes for other things, too.” He wasn’t getting it. “It’s mostly all Lindsay’s idea. I mean, you know how she is.”

Dan nodded, slowly. “Is this like that feng shui thing?”

Lindsay had hired a feng shui specialist for their apartment when they’d first moved in, in spite of their protests. “It’s my treat,” she’d said. “My housewarming present to you.” Dan hadn’t been there for the specialist’s assessment, but the paper lantern she’d hung inside the front door had hit him in the head every day for a week, until he finally had insisted they take it down. No terrible twists of fate had befallen them after that, so when he found the goldfish they were supposed to keep on the coffee table floating dead in its bowl, he was able to persuade Claudia they could get rid of that, too.

“So what, exactly, is it? This idea of Lindsay’s?” he asked.

“It’s Wish Club.” Claudia paused. “Where we sort of pool our energy together and wish for things. It sounds really weird, I know, but it actually seems to be working.”

Dan took another sip of coffee and didn’t say anything.

“I wished for us to have a baby.”

Now Dan smiled at her, his demeanor softening. He nodded. “I see. So this is just more of Lindsay’s New Age foolishness. And now her new thing is to get everyone together to wish for cats and babies?”

“Umm, yeah, something like that.”

“Well. Okay. As long as it doesn’t involve anymore dead goldfish.”

Claudia laughed, as if to say,
Dead goldfish! Ha ha!
But she really wasn’t completely sure that it wouldn’t. She sidled up close to him to empty her coffee mug in the sink. “I think I’d better get going or I’m gonna be late.”

“I’ll make you late.” He shot her a wicked grin.

“Are you kidding?” She walked away as if she’d been at the corral breaking horses all day. “After last night?” Claudia’s mock cowboy gait slowed and her walk returned to normal as she hit the end of the hall and approached the coffee table in the living room.

Claudia groaned. “What a mess.”

Dan came up behind her with his coffee mug in his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I can clean up after your
Wish Club.
Say, maybe next time you ladies could wish for a housekeeper.”

He was smiling, laughing at his joke, as he bent over to clear a small patch of space on the table to set his mug down.

God, I love him,
she thought. The way his wavy brown hair was always a little too long. The way the dimples creased more deeply around his mouth when he was genuinely happy. When he stood back up, Claudia reached in and gave him a hug.

Dan wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tight before loosening his grip a little and rubbing a hand over the small of her back. They started a gentle sway back and forth, moving together, dancing with no music, the way they always used to.

“It’s been a while,” she said.

“Hmm?”

Claudia regretted pulling his thoughts back from wherever they’d been. “It’s been a while, since we danced like this—with no music. You know, before we realized we were doing it.”

Dan bent his head down, nuzzled his face into her hair. “Mmm. Hmm.”

They danced for another moment before Dan leaned back, one hand still on her waist, the other reaching up to stroke her hair, brushing it with his fingertips off to one side of her face. “You’re all the music I need.”

“Awww.” Claudia closed her eyes and tilted her head down. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He pulled her close again.

Claudia pulled out of the hug and gave him a teasing smile. “Well, you’ve made me late now anyway.”

She looked back down at the disaster-strewn coffee table.

“Well, get going then.” He gave her a quick kiss. “And don’t worry about this. I’ve got it covered.”

Claudia put on her coat with a final glance down at the table, at the wineglasses and candles, the little black bowl. “Thanks, hon.”

“No pro-blem-o.”

Claudia hurried down the three flights of stairs and stepped out of her building into the day. She looked up at the asphalt-gray sky and wondered if today it would rain or snow.

Claudia
rubbed her temples as she walked into the cafeteria, still feeling the bleary after-effects of the Book Club meeting. Of all the days to pull lunchroom duty. She’d groaned when she’d seen the reminder in her mailbox earlier in the morning. At least she was sharing the chore with Henry O'Connor, Mara’s husband. On the off chance they would actually get a moment to speak to each other, he could always make her laugh.

The cafeteria at the Arthur G. Strawn Academy of Arts and Sciences was unlike any school cafeteria Claudia had ever eaten in when she was a student, and it wasn’t just the menu selection—her high school cafeteria had never served pesto—but the sanitized newness of it all. The seating consisted of booths along the walls and tables and chairs in the center of the room. It looked like a restaurant. Her old cafeteria had all-in-one picnic-style benches, which were all the same, in that they’d been covered with graffiti and smelled faintly of sour milk.

In Claudia’s high school lunchroom, the popular girls had sat at the table in the corner by the window, across from the table of popular boys, and at Strawn the popular girls sat at the table by the door. On the days she had lunchroom duty, she could watch the complex inner workings of the popular girls’ clique, the way they subjectively dismissed and added to their circle of friends, allowing a “guest” the occasional honor of a seat at their table of eight. Invariably, when Claudia returned to lunchroom duty a few weeks later, that “guest” would either be back at her old table or, worse, shunned by her old friends for desertion and sitting at the table with the leftovers—the misfits who either had been cast off by old friends too, or had never fit in anywhere in the first place.

When Claudia’s family had moved during the second semester of her freshman year of high school, the only place she’d been allowed to sit that first day was at the leftover table. She remembered walking with her tray through the cafeteria looking for a seat. She’d gotten the lunch special—some sort of scary meatloaf with potatoes and gravy—not knowing that no one ever got the lunch special, but she’d felt pressured into making a quick choice by the bored woman behind the lunch counter and the kids behind her in line. She was embarrassed by her meatloaf as she walked past the tables, noticing all the pizza slices and grilled cheese sandwiches. No one invited her to sit down. She knew they couldn’t risk lowering their social standing by letting her sit at their table, because she was an unknown quantity. They couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t wearing terribly fashionable or expensive clothing, and she
had
gotten the meatloaf.

The leftover table was the only table with seats, where no one threw a hand across an empty space and said, “Sorry, that’s saved.” It was understood when the girls looked up at her from the other tables; she could see it in their eyes—some of their eyes, anyway—that they did feel sorry for her and wanted to help, but they just couldn’t take the chance. So Claudia took her seat with the leftovers. She drank her Coke and moved her mashed potatoes around her meatloaf with her fork.

Then Molly Bonner had walked over from the popular table and introduced herself. Claudia couldn’t believe her luck. She could tell from her hair and clothes and confidant demeanor that Molly was, quite possibly, the most popular girl in the freshman class; she had that certain queen-bee-like aura about her. Molly smiled and welcomed Claudia to the school and said if there was ever anything Claudia needed she should just ask her, or one of her friends, and she gestured to her table. Most of the girls at Molly’s table had turned around to watch them.

Claudia stuttered out a thank you.

“Where are you from, Claudia?” Molly asked, and Claudia told her Addison. Immediately Claudia knew it would have been better if she’d lied, made up a small town or picked someplace out of state, rather than name the working-class western suburb of Addison. Molly closed her lips, flattening her smile into a grimace.