Three Wishes

  CHAPTER 13

  Between the ages of two and three, the Kettle triplets began to babble to each other in their own secret, unintelligible dialect, switching effortlessly to English whenever they needed to communicate with a grown-up.

  Years later, Maxine discovered this was a relatively common phenomenon among multiples, known as "twin talk" or more impressively--idioglossia. (At the time, all she really cared about was that they weren't attempting to drown, suffocate, or bludgeon one another.)

  Gradually, they talked less and less in their secret language and eventually it was erased from their memories, vanished like the lost language of an ancient tribe.

  Psychic connections between twins and triplets are another well-documented and exciting phenomenon. In this area, however, the Kettle girls have always lagged. The idea, after all, is to feel your sibling's pain, not laugh uproariously at it. Elvis, before he went onstage, was able to feel the presence of his dead twin brother, Jesse. Yet nine-year-old Gemma, immersed in her new Enid Blyton book, couldn't even sense the stealthy presence of her very much alive sisters stealing a bag of mixed lollies from right next to her hand.

  When they were eleven, Cat became obsessed with the idea of telepathic communication. Many hours were spent on complex experiments. Unfortunately, they all failed, due to the appalling incompetence of her sisters, who could neither send nor receive a coherent message.

  No, the Kettle girls share no psychic connections. (A lot of the time they don't even understand each other in ordinary verbal, sitting-across-the-table conversation.)

  And so:

  At nineteen, Lyn's chin slams into her steering wheel in a car accident caused by a very drunk driver on the Spit Bridge. Gemma feels nothing, not the tiniest twinge, as she dances seductively in a dark, smoky club on Oxford Street, a frangipani in her ear, a cigarette between her fingers. And Cat doesn't even pause for breath in screaming at her computer, which keeps crashing while she tries to finish an overdue uni assignment.

  At twenty-two, Marcus whispers vicious threats into Gemma's ear, and Cat senses nothing as she breathlessly wrestles with Dan while just outside the door his flat mate laughs heartily at Hey, Hey It's Saturday. And Lyn is far away in another time zone and another season and doesn't look up from suspiciously reading the label on a can of deodorant in a London chemist.

  And at thirty-three, Cat rocks back and forth, back and forth, as her abdomen knots and locks and she silently screams, Stop it, stop it, stop it. Lyn feels nothing but pleasure as she watches Maddie's awestruck face illuminated by the colors of fireworks thundering across the sky. And Gemma feels nothing but Charlie's tongue and taste as she kisses him in the hallway of some friend of a friend's New Year's Eve party.

  No, neither of them feels a thing until the first day of the New Year when Dan calls to say, "Cat's lost the baby."

  CHAPTER 14

  "Tell them I don't want to see anybody," Cat told Dan. Gemma, Lyn, and Maxine all agreed that was understandable and a good idea but obviously it didn't apply to them, and so they all arrived separately within fifteen minutes, running up the flat stairs, striding inside, breathless and flushed. When they saw Cat, they stopped and crumpled as if they thought just by coming they could fix things and seeing her made them realize there was nothing to be done and nothing to be said.

  They squashed themselves shoulder to shoulder around Cat's little round kitchen table to drink cups of tea and eat fat pieces of iced walnut bun with lots of butter--Kettle family comfort food. Cat ate hers ravenously. It was what they ate when Pop Kettle died and when Marcus died a few months later.

  The difference was that everybody knew Pop and Marcus. Nobody knew Cat's baby. Her baby didn't have the dignity of a name, or even a gender.

  It was just a nothing. Cat had loved a nothing. How foolish of her.

  "We'll try again," said Dan solemnly and determinedly at the hospital, as if the baby was a goal they'd just missed kicking and if they really put their minds to it they'd get it next time. As if babies were interchangeable.

  "I wanted this baby," said Cat, and the nurse and Dan nodded their heads patiently and kindly, as if she were delirious.

  "Darling! It was Mother Nature's way of telling you that something wasn't right with the poor little mite," said Nana Kettle on the phone. "At least you weren't far along." Cat said through a clenched jaw, "I have to go now, Nana."

  Mother Nature can go fuck herself, she thought. It was my baby, not hers.

  Cat stuffed bun into her mouth and looked at Lyn standing up to pour everybody's tea.

  The heartbreakingly perfect curve of Maddie's cheek.

  The ugly little ball of bloody tissue that was Cat's baby.

  They took it away, with bland efficient medical faces, like it was something disgusting, like something from a science fiction movie that had been removed from Cat's body and now had to be quickly removed from everybody's sight, as a matter of good taste.

  Nobody cooed in wonder over Cat's baby. Cat's hands trembled at the injustice. Only she knew how beautiful her baby would have been.

  She had always suspected that deep within her, there was a secret seam of ugliness, of unseemliness, of something wrong that was the mirror of Lyn's right. And now her poor little innocent baby had been contaminated by her wrongness.

  "Where's Maddie?" she asked.

  "Michael," Lyn answered quickly, leaning over to pour Cat's tea. "You're not going back to work tomorrow. You'll have some time off?"

  "Dunno."

  Gemma gulped at her tea, her eyes anxiously on Cat.

  Cat said to her, "You're doing that slurping thing."

  "Sorry."

  Sometimes Gemma got a particular expression on her face--a quivering pathetic puppy look--that aroused in Cat a powerful urge to kick or slap or verbally crush her. Then she felt racked with guilt. Then she felt angrier still.

  I am not a nice person, she thought. I never have been. "You're an evil, nasty little girl, Catriona Kettle," Sister Elizabeth Mary informed her one day in the primary-school playground, the black band of her veil squeezed around puffy, red-veined cheeks. Cat felt an uplifting rush of wild courage, like she was about to run off the edge of the highest diving board at the swimming pool. "Well, you're an evil fat nun!" Sister Elizabeth grabbed her by the upper arm and slapped the back of her legs. Slap, slap, slap. Veil flying. Hefty shoulder heaving. Kids stopped to stare in sick fascination. Lyn and Gemma came running from opposite sides of the playground. "Oh!" moaned Gemma in sympathetic synchrony with each slap, "Oh!" until Sister couldn't stand it anymore and stomped off, after pointing a silent, quavering finger of warning at each of the three Kettle girls.

  "You should certainly not go back to work tomorrow, Cat," said Maxine. "Don't be ridiculous. You need your rest. Dan can call work for you, can't you, Dan?"

  Dan had his mouth full of bun. "Yeah," he said thickly, putting his hand over his mouth. "Course."

  He'd been so gentle and loving last night--as if she were very ill, or as if she'd experienced some painful injury. He played the role of understanding, supportive husband to perfection--so handsome, so caring! But he was playing it wrong. Cat wanted him angry and irrational. She wanted him scornful and aggressive with the doctor: Wait a minute, this is our child, how the hell did this happen? But no, he was all understanding masculine nods as the doctor talked, two logical, reasonable men discussing such a--sadly!--common occurrence.

  "I might leave you all for a bit, if that's O.K. with you, Cat?" Dan stood up and took his mug over to the sink.

  "Fine." Cat looked down at her plate. "Whatever."

  "Where are you going?" asked Gemma.

  "Just out, got a few things to do." Dan kissed Cat on top of her head. "Are you O.K., babe?"

  "I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine."

  Had there been a sharp edge to Gemma's tone? There was something uncharacteristic about her asking Dan where he was going. Cat looked at Gemma, who was sitting cross-legged on her chair, twisting a
long lock of hair around her finger. Did she know something? Had she got more sordid details from the locksmith about the one-night stand that Cat didn't know about? Did Cat even care? It all seemed irrelevant and childish now. She didn't even care if Gemma kept going out with the brother. What did it matter? When it came down to it, what did anything really matter?

  "Gemma," she said.

  "Yes?" Gemma nearly dropped her slice of bun in her eagerness to be accommodating. She picked up the milk hopefully. "Milk?"

  "Just forget what I said on Christmas Day. You know. About Charlie. I should never have said that. I was upset."

  There. Now she had redeemed herself for wanting to kick her.

  "Oh. Well. That's O.K. I mean, who knows? You know, my relationships never seem to last longer than a few months these days. So probably we will break up but it's all going well at the moment, so if you--"

  "Gemma?"

  "Yes?"

  "Shut up. You're babbling."

  "Sorry."

  Gemma's face closed down, and she picked up her teacup and slurped. "Sorry," she said again.

  Oh God. Cat breathed deeply. Now she was back to feeling evil again. She would have been a bad mother anyway. A sarcastic, harping, carping mother.

  "Did Nana Kettle call you?" asked Lyn.

  "Yes." With enormous effort Cat managed to make her voice sound like a normal person's. "She told me Mother Nature knew best."

  Maxine gave a derisive snort. "Rubbish. Did she tell you that God needed another rose in his garden, too?"

  "No."

  "That's what she said to me when I lost my baby."

  Lyn put down her teacup quickly. "I didn't know you ever had a miscarriage, Mum!"

  "Well, I did."

  "When?" Lyn obviously thought she should have been approached first for authorization.

  "You girls were only three." Maxine stood up and refilled the kettle at the sink, her back to them. Her daughters took the opportunity to exchange raised eyebrows and surprised mouths. "You all knew I was pregnant. You used to put your little faces up to my stomach and pat me and chatter away to the baby."

  She turned back around to face them, the kettle in her hand. "Actually, I remember you were the most interested, Cat. You used to sit there on the lounge whispering into my stomach for ages. It was the only time I could get a cuddle from you."

  "We could have had a little sister or brother," said Gemma in wonder.

  "It was an accident, of course," said Maxine. "At first I was horrified. I even thought about an abortion, which would have had your father at confession every week for a year. But then I got used to the idea. I guess the hormones kicked in. And I thought, imagine, just one baby. I could do everything right, with one baby. Of course, it was stupid thinking. You three were toddlers. It wasn't like I had any spare time."

  Lyn said, "I can't believe we didn't know this, Mum."

  "Yes, well, I lost the baby at thirteen weeks." Maxine flicked the switch on the kettle. "There was no reason to upset you. I just stopped talking about the baby--and you all seemed to forget. You were only babies yourselves, of course. So."

  Cat looked at her mother, in her stylish Country Road slacks and blouse. Thin, brisk, and elegant. Short red hair, cut, colored, and styled at the hairdresser every three weeks. She would have been only twenty-four when she had her miscarriage, just a girl, a kid. It occurred to Cat to wonder if she would have liked Maxine if they'd been at school together. Maxine Leonard with her long swishing red hair, her long, long legs, and short, short miniskirts. "Your mum," Nana Leonard used to say, "was a little bit wild," and they all stared, thrilled, at the old photos. Really, Nana? Mum? Our mum?

  She probably would have been friends with her. Cat's friends were always the bad girls.

  "Were you upset?" she asked. (Could this be the most personal question she'd ever asked her mother?) "Were you upset about losing the baby?"

  "Yes, of course. Very. And your father--well. It wasn't a very good time in my life. I remember I used to cry when I was hanging out the washing." Maxine smiled and looked embarrassed. "I don't know why. Maybe it was the only chance I got to think."

  "Ah." A sob of involuntary grief rose in Cat's chest. She took a deep breath and tried to stop it. If she gave in to it, she might fall to her knees and start wailing and keening like a complete lunatic.

  Maxine came up behind her and put a tentative hand against her shoulder.

  "Darling, you're perfectly entitled to grieve for your baby."

  Cat turned in her chair and for a fraction of a second pressed her face against her mother's stomach.

  She stood up. "Back in a sec."

  "Don't, Lyn," she heard Maxine say. "Let her be."

  She walked into the bathroom and turned on both taps at full blast and sat down on the edge of the bath and cried. For the baby she didn't know and for the memory she didn't have of a girl standing at the clothesline in a suburban backyard, a plastic clothes peg in her mouth and tears running down her face.

  She'd bet she didn't stop pegging those clothes for even a second.

  The sun on her face woke her. They'd forgotten to close the blinds last night. "Good morning, sweetie." Cat kept her eyes closed and reached down to touch her stomach.

  Then she remembered and misery flattened her body, pressing her against her bed.

  This was worse than Dan sleeping with Angela.

  This was worse than finding out about Lyn.

  This was worse than anything.

  She was overreacting. She was being selfish. Women had miscarriages all the time. They didn't make such a fuss. They just got on with it.

  And far worse things happened to people. Far, far worse.

  Little children died. Sweet-faced little children were raped and murdered.

  You saw parents on television whose children had died. Cat could never stand to look at their white faces and pleading bloodshot eyes. They looked like they weren't human anymore, like they had evolved into some other species. "Change the channel," she always told Dan. "Change it."

  How dare she change the channel to escape from their horror and then lie here feeling desolate over an everyday, run-of-the-mill, happens to one-in-every-three-women miscarriage?

  She turned over and squashed her face into her pillow, hard, until her nose hurt.

  It was the second day of January.

  She thought of all the hundreds of days ahead of her and felt exhausted. It was impossible to think of getting through a year. Day after day after day. Getting up to go to work. Shower, breakfast, blow-drying hair. Driving the car through rush hour. Accelerate. Brake. Accelerate. Walking through the labyrinth of cubicles at work. "Morning!" "Hi!" "Good morning!" "How are you today?" Meetings. Phone calls. Lunch. More meetings. Tap, tap, tap on the computer. E-mails. Coffee. Driving home. Gym. Dinner. TV. Bills. Housework. Nights out with friends. Ha, ha, ha, chat, chat, chat. What was the point in any of it?

  And trying again. Sex at the right time of the month. Carefully counting the days until her period came. What if she took another year to get pregnant? And what if she miscarried again? There was a woman at work who had seven miscarriages before she gave up.

  Seven.

  Cat couldn't do it. She knew she couldn't do it.

  She felt Dan's thigh against hers, and the thought of having sex with him seemed bizarre. Slightly foolish even. All that grunting and groaning and ooooh and aaaaahing and we start up here, and now we move down there, and I do this and you do that and there goes you, and there goes me.

  What a bore.

  She rolled back over and looked at the ceiling. Her hands felt the little buttons on the mattress beneath the sheet.

  She didn't even like him that much.

  Actually, she didn't particularly like anybody.

  The alarm began to beep, and Dan's arm shot out automatically to hit the snooze button.

  I'm just going to stay here, she thought. I'm just going to lie still like this, all day, every day. Maybe
forever.

  "So! How about I treat you to a real nice dinner in some classy restaurant? Just you and me. How would you like that? That'd be fun, eh? Put a smile on your dial?"

  "No thanks, Dad. But thank you."

  "Lunch, then. That'd be better, eh? Smack-up lunch?"

  "No. Maybe some other time."

  "Or with your mother? All three of us? That would be something different, eh? Ha!"

  "Yes, that would be different. Ha. But no. I'm really tired, Dad. I might go now."

  "Oh. Well, O.K. Maybe another time. You call me when you're feeling a bit better. Bye, love."

  Cat let her arm flop and the phone thud onto the carpet beside the bed.

  She yawned hugely and thought about lifting her head to look at the clock, but it seemed like too much effort for too little return. It didn't matter. She wasn't getting up. It was her third day in bed and already it felt like she'd lived this way forever. Huge chunks of time vanishing in deep, dark, druglike sleep that dragged her down like quicksand. When she woke up, she was exhausted, her eyes gritty, her mouth bitter.

  She curled up on her side and rearranged the pillows.

  Her father had sounded like a used-car salesman on the phone. He always put on that fake, fiercely happy voice when things were going wrong, as if he could sort of bulldoze you into being happy again.

  Dad was better in the good times.

  A memory appeared so clearly in Cat's head that she could smell it. It was the smell of cold, crisp Saturday mornings and netball. The sickly sweet Impulse deodorant all three of them used to wear, the wedges of orange that Mum brought along in a Tupperware container. They were always running late and the car was filled with tension and Maxine drove so slowly and then they'd pull into the netball courts--and there was Dad.

  They wouldn't have seen him all week and there he was waiting for them, lifting a casual hand in greeting. He'd be talking away to the other parents and Cat would crunch across the gravel in her sneakers and squash her head under his arm and he'd hug her to him.

  He loved watching them play netball. He loved the fact that the Kettle girls were famous in the Turramurra District Netball Club. A-grade players. And lethal, all three of them. "Even the dippy redhead turns into a hard-faced bitch as soon as the whistle blows," people said admiringly. "It's just their long legs. They're just tall," said the jealous short girls.