Three Wishes

  "Mmm," began Charlie disapprovingly, when a waitress finally appeared, fumbling in her apron for a pen.

  "Before we order you have to tell us what happened to your sticky date pudding. My girlfriend is still recovering from the shock."

  The sweet, teenage pleasure of hearing herself described as Charlie's girlfriend made her forget all about defending Lyn's destiny.

  It was 3 A.M. that same night and Gemma burst gasping into consciousness, as if she'd been drowning in a deep, dark pool of sleep.

  She'd forgotten something. Something very important.

  What could it be?

  Then it hit her and she screamed, "Charlie!"

  He woke with a gasp and leapt straight out of bed, bouncing on his toes like a boxer, jabbing wildly at the air around him. "What? Where? Stay back!"

  Gemma rolled out of bed, her legs trembly with fear. "We forgot! Charlie, how could we!"

  She ran to the chest of drawers and began scrabbling wildly through her clothes, throwing them on to the floor. "We forgot we had a baby! We left it in the drawer!"

  It would be too late. The baby would be dead. Babies needed food, or milk, or something! She imagined a tiny, shriveled-up corpse with accusing eyes. How terrible. How could they have forgotten? They were murderers.

  Charlie was behind her, enfolding her in his arms. "We don't have a baby, you fruitcake," he said. "Come back to bed. It's just a dream."

  "No, no." She opened a new drawer. "We have to find our baby."

  But even as she was saying the words she was starting to doubt herself. Maybe there was no baby?

  She turned to face Charlie. "We don't have a baby?"

  "No, we don't have a baby. It's a dream. Jesus. You frightened the hell out of me."

  "Sorry." Now she felt a bit stupid. "Did I tell you that I sometimes have nightmares?"

  "No, you didn't." He put his arm around her shoulders and guided her back toward the bed. "Just as a matter of interest, how often do you have them?"

  CHAPTER 8

  "This is going to sound bad," said Dan, with the courageous expression of a bloody-lipped boxer stumbling back to his feet for another round. "But I sort of--forgot."

  "You forgot you slept with my sister."

  "I forgot."

  "You forgot."

  "Yes."

  "How is that possible?" Cat felt insulted on Lyn's behalf. "She lost her virginity to you!"

  "I hadn't even thought about it for years," confessed Dan, "until Annie asked. All I remembered was going out with her a few times. But if Lyn says we did, then we did. I wouldn't argue with Lyn. She probably records every shag on a spreadsheet."

  Cat refused to smile.

  "I was young, I got around. It feels like another world."

  "You still get around."

  He flinched and took it like a man.

  Cat believed him. He could remember rugby league grand final scores from fifteen years ago and quote whole slabs of Simpsons dialogue, but his memory of personal events was notoriously shocking. It hadn't mattered before. If this revelation had come before Angela (long black hair tumbling, black bra strap sliding, stop it, stop it, stop it) maybe she would have laughed. Yes, she probably would have laughed. She would have exaggerated her shock, milked it, but not really cared, because she took Dan's faithfulness for granted. Everything else in her life could and probably would go wrong, but she thought she and Dan were a given.

  Naive. Pathetic.

  "I would never have gone out with you if I'd known. Do you know that? Lyn's leftovers. You would have had no chance."

  "Just as well I didn't tell you then."

  "Is it?"

  She could have had a different life.

  Once, when she was waiting for a leg wax, Cat read a magazine article about a study of identical twins separated at birth. When they were reunited years later, they discovered amazing similarities in their lives. In spite of very different upbringings, they had ended up with the same jobs, hobbies, habits, pets, cars, and clothes, even the same names for their children! This proved, according to the author, that personality, just like the color of your hair, was decided at conception. Your destiny was indelibly carved in your genes.

  Bullshit, thought Cat, flipping the page irritably and wondering how much longer the bloody beautician would keep her waiting. Look at Lyn and me! Look at those what sits name twins from school. But the author was ready for her. The reason that identical twins brought up together were different, he retorted, was because they deliberately set out to be different from each other.

  "Hmmmph," muttered Cat. It seemed to her that there was a fundamental contradiction in his argument. If environment didn't matter for the separated twins, why did it matter so much for the poor twins forced to live side by side with their doppelgangers?

  But while the beautician ripped hair from her calves and tried to sell her moisturizer, Cat buried her nose in a lavender-smelling towel and wondered whether it was she or Lyn who was leading the "right" life, the one they were predestined to lead. Nana's next-door neighbor once said to her, Are you the one that's done so well for herself? Bev! cried Nana. This is Cat! She scuba dives!

  Or were they both leading hybrid versions of the right life? Perhaps Lyn should have married Dan? And what about Gemma? How did a shared fraternal twin muddle the formula?

  "There you go, my dear! All defuzzed!" The beautician patted Cat's legs with uncalled-for intimacy. "I bet you feel like a new woman!"

  And Cat had said ungraciously, "I bet I don't."

  It was still light on a Monday evening and Cat had just pulled into her driveway after work, when she saw Gemma's battered green Mini come screeching around the corner.

  The Kettle girls were all speed freaks, but Gemma combined her need for speed with a spectacular lack of ability. She regularly drove into things--other cars, walls, the occasional telegraph pole.

  Cat dropped her briefcase, pushed her sunglasses up onto her head, and leaned back against her car with folded arms to enjoy watching Gemma reverse park across the street.

  After four bizarre attempts that each ended with the car crunching straight into the curb, Cat finally pushed her glasses back down onto her nose and walked across the road.

  As she got closer to the car, the nasal whine of a scratchy cassette tape assaulted her ears. One of the multitudes of ex-boyfriends had been a country music fan and left Gemma with an unfortunate passion for Tammy Wynette. It was like, Cat thought, he'd given her herpes.

  Gemma smiled radiantly when she saw Cat. She was singing, thumping her hands on the steering wheel in time to the music. "Stand by your man!"

  "Get out and let me do it," yelled Cat above the music.

  Gemma switched off the tape. "How are you?"

  "Fine." Cat pulled on the door handle. "Come on."

  Gemma hopped out of the car holding a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag.

  This was clearly a peacemaking mission.

  "Shall I direct you?"

  "No." Cat got behind the wheel and pulled on the handbrake. "There's room enough to park a truck here, let alone this matchbox."

  She parked the car in two moves. (You drive like a guy, Dan always said. It's very sexy.)

  Cat slammed the car door shut and handed Gemma her keys. "You give women drivers a bad name."

  "Yes, I know. I'm very ashamed. How are you?"

  "You already asked me that. Was there a message in that song for me?"

  "What do you mean?" Gemma looked alarmed.

  "Stand by your man."

  "Oh. Goodness. No. I mean, stand by him if you want--it's really up to you."

  "Gemma!" Cat had glanced down to see her own black summer sandals on Gemma's feet. "I was looking for them just the other day!"

  "Oh! Sorry. Are you sure they're not mine? I seem to have a memory of cleverly bargaining for them at the Balmain Street markets."

  "I bargained for them at the Balmain markets. Help yourself to my memories, why don't you, as we
ll as my shoes. I let you wear them to Michael's fortieth, remember?"

  "Oh dear, this isn't going too well," said Gemma. "I'm meant to be fixing things. I've got a whole speech ready."

  Cat took the bottle of wine from her. "You'd better get me drunk first."

  They went inside, and Cat went to the bedroom to change out of her work clothes while Gemma opened the wine.

  "There's some good Brie in the fridge," Cat called out. "And some olives."

  She came out buttoning up her shorts to find Gemma staring reverently at the fridge door.

  "What are you doing?"

  "You've got Charlie's number here." She peeled off a colorful advertising magnet in the shape of a key and held it out to Cat. "I forgot it was thanks to you that I met him. Remember, that day when I got locked out watering the garden and I called you? How did you get this magnet? It was the hand of fate!"

  "More likely a letterbox drop. Or the hand of Dan. How is your luscious locksmith anyway?"

  "He's wonderful."

  "You say that every time."

  "This one's different."

  "You say that every time too."

  Gemma pulled the cork from the bottle. "Do I? I guess I do."

  Cat wondered if her fifty dollars was safe. As soon as Charlie had arrived on the scene, she and Lyn had followed their normal routine of putting money on how long he'd last. Cat had him off the scene by March. Lyn had him lasting till June. A closet romantic, that girl.

  "In a funny way, he reminds me of Pop Kettle," said Gemma. "There's something sweetly old-fashioned about him."

  "God. That doesn't sound very sexy."

  "Everything seems very simple and uncomplicated when I'm with him."

  "Ah. A bit thick, eh?"

  "Shut up." Cat watched as Gemma automatically poured exactly the same level of wine in each glass. She did it herself. It was the legacy of a childhood spent sharing cakes and chocolate bars and lemonade with two eagle-eyed sisters.

  "You'll meet Charlie," said Gemma. "He's going to stop by at Lyn's and say a quick hello on Christmas Day."

  "I'm not coming on Christmas Day," said Cat, wondering if she meant it.

  "Of course you are," said Gemma. "You haven't heard my persuasive speech yet. Where's Dan tonight?"

  "Out picking up another slut in a bar."

  "That's nice for him."

  "He's playing squash. I think. The worst thing about this is he's turned me into one of those suspicious wives. Noticing what time he gets home. I hate it. I'm not like that. I've never been like that. All of sudden I'm a cliche."

  "You'll be O.K." Gemma ate an olive and spat out the seed into the palm of her hand. "Dan adores you. He does, I know he does! The thing with Lyn was just nothing, and the thing with that girl was just a stupid mistake. You and Dan have always been the best couple. Everybody says that."

  Cat held the stem of her wineglass firmly. Jesus. She'd done more crying over the last few weeks than she'd ever done in her whole life.

  "I never thought this could happen to me," she said with difficulty. "It's so sordid. So tacky. You know what I mean? I thought I was too good for it."

  "Oh, Cat!" Cat felt her body become stiff and awkward as Gemma put her arm around her shoulder and she breathed in her familiar soft, soapy Gemma smell.

  Lyn had a clean, citrus fragrance. Was there a "Cat" fragrance? Probably not. She probably smelled like a cardboard box.

  Cat shrugged Gemma's arm away. "It's O.K. I'm fine. Come on, let's drink our wine on the balcony. Enjoy my marvelous view."

  "I like your view," said Gemma loyally.

  Cat and Dan lived in a renovated 1920s apartment, with high, ornate ceilings and polished floorboards. Their view was a sliver of bay, a sweeping arc of the Anzac Bridge, and a lot of gum trees. On summer mornings they ate breakfast with an audience of brilliantly colored rosellas quivering busily on their railing.

  They had bought before the last boom and had built up enough equity to buy an investment property a year ago. According to the standards of property-obsessed Sydney for a hip, professional young couple, they were doing O.K. In fact, they were right on track.

  Gemma and Cat sat down and rocked back on their canvas chairs, balancing themselves by entwining their big toes around the railings of the balcony fence.

  Cat said, in honor of their mother, "Sit like that if you want to break your neck, young lady!" Gemma responded in perfect Maxine-pitch, "You'll be laughing on the other side of your face when you're in a wheelchair, miss!"

  "I wonder if we'll say things like that to our own kids," said Gemma after a minute. "I heard Lyn ask Maddie if she wanted a smack the other day. Maddie shook her head in this patronizing way, as if to say, Really, what a stupid question!"

  Cat could visualize the exact expression on Maddie's little face. It was amazing to her, how a toddler could already be such a little person. Sometimes just looking at Maddie twisted Cat's heart. She was the one thing Lyn had that Cat couldn't even pretend not to want. Lyn had got pregnant the very moment, the fucking month, she scheduled it. Why hadn't Cat's identical womb responded to orders? The injustice of it. Month after month, you're not a mother, you're not a mother, and once again, you're not a mother.

  Her period must be due any day now, just to add a final touch to the general gloom and doom.

  Gemma rocked her chair back onto all four legs and gulped a mouthful of wine. She put the glass down at her feet. "Right," she said with a deep breath. "I'm ready to do my speech."

  Cat swirled her own glass reflectively. When was her next period due?

  Gemma stood up and opened her arms wide, like a politician behind a podium. "Cat. This has been a difficult, terrible time for you--"

  "My period is three weeks late."

  "What?" Gemma plunked herself back down and picked up her wine again. "Are you sure?"

  Cat could feel a strange shivery tremble in her lower stomach.

  "It was due the day Dan told me about his one-night stand. I remember. I had a pimple. Right here on my chin. I thought it meant my period was coming. That's what it normally means. But it didn't come. And I didn't think about it like I normally do."

  Gemma was jiggling up and down in her chair, wine sloshing all over her hand.

  "You're pregnant! You're having a baby!"

  "I might not be. I might just be late." It seemed so improbable, as if just by remembering her period was late, she could instantly make herself pregnant.

  "Let's see your stomach!" Gemma reached over for Cat's T-shirt and pulled it up. They both contemplated her stomach and Gemma poked it gently with her finger.

  "Hello, little baby," she said. "Are you in there?"

  "I don't think it shows after three weeks," said Cat.

  Gemma put one hand flat against Cat's stomach and one hand against her own.

  "Ooooh, I think you're fatter!"

  "I've got one of those pregnancy kits in the bathroom." Cat tried to keep her voice casual. "From the last time I was late. That was the time my period arrived as soon I got home from the chemist."

  She watched Gemma waver at the possibility of a definite answer. She knew exactly what she was thinking: I don't want to be here if she finds out she's not pregnant.

  "I bet I'm not," said Cat. "It's probably just stress."

  "Come on." Gemma stood up. "Let's do it."

  They sat on the edge of the bath and read the instructions together.

  "It sounds a bit complicated," said Gemma, but Cat had just been thinking the opposite. It was too simple, too matter-of-fact. How dare this smug little plastic stick have the power to decide her future?

  "Two blue lines I'm pregnant, one blue line I'm not. Can't get much simpler than that. You can give me some privacy now thanks."

  Gemma closed the bathroom door behind her and then quickly opened it again to vigorously wave a hand with tightly crossed fingers.

  Cat looked at herself in the mirror and felt strangely disoriented. Are you a mother? For a
minute she saw Lyn's face looking calmly back at her.

  Lyn said more than once she'd had the experience of being in a shopping center and waving hello to Cat, only to feel like an idiot when she realized she was waving at her own reflection.

  It had never happened to Cat. She knew her own reflection perfectly well, and she hated it. She disliked nothing more than accidentally catching sight of herself in a mirror, especially if she was smiling. There was something so naked and pathetic about that unexpected sight of her foolishly happy face.

  They weren't identical. Lyn had something indefinable, something special, something Cat had missed out on.

  "Are you done yet?" called Gemma.

  "Give me a minute."

  Cat looked at the little plastic stick. Let's see what you've got to say for yourself.

  She and Gemma sat on the cold bathroom tiles with their glasses of wine and their backs propped against the bathtub, while they waited for the stick to make up its mind.

  Cat took off her watch and set the timer. "You can look for me," she said. "I can't look."

  "O.K." Gemma hugged her knees to her. "This is very exciting. I feel like I'm practically part of the baby's conception!"

  "Well, I hope that doesn't mean you've slept with Dan too," said Cat.

  "No. Actually, I've never been the slightest bit attracted to him."

  Cat felt unreasonably miffed at this. "I don't see why not. He's good enough for me. Good enough for Lyn. Good enough for what's-her-face, Angela."

  "Well, if you're offering him. I mean, I'd choose him over Michael, any day."

  "Oh, God yes," said Cat with satisfaction. "He'd be terrible in bed. All eager and skinny."

  Gemma hooted. "Yes, poor Lyn. I bet when he comes he does that little triumphant punch-in-the-air thing he does when we're playing tennis."

  Cat snorted so hard her wine went up her nose and Gemma had to slap her on the back.

  Cat picked up her watch. Only a minute to go. She was feeling a little hysterical. "Dan's sexually skilled, you know," she said. "It's like he's got a talent for it."

  "Yes, so I've heard."

  Cat looked at Gemma, who had her head tipped back and seemed to be swilling her wine at a remarkably fast pace. "I beg your pardon? Is that what Lyn said?"

  Gemma put down her glass and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. "I always remember the first time you slept with Dan you actually snuck out of bed to call me," she said. "You told me it was the most incredible experience of your entire life. Marcus and I had a big fight about it."