Three Wishes

  "Oh," said Gemma, who was still feeling woozy and wonderful. "I put it away last night. Didn't I put it in that drawer there?"

  "Clearly you didn't."

  "Oh." She leaned over to look in the drawer and suddenly he slammed it shut, so she had to pull her hand back fast. He yelled so loudly that it was physical, like a blow to her chest, "For fuck's sake, Gemma, where did you put it? I've told you at least five fucking times where it goes!"

  It was just so unexpected.

  "Why," she asked, and it was a bit difficult to breathe, "are you yelling?"

  The question enraged him. "I'm not," he yelled, "fucking yelling, you silly bitch!"

  He slammed drawers open and shut with such force that she was backing out of the kitchen thinking, My God, he's gone crazy!

  Then, "Why did you put it there?" and he lifted the bottle opener out of the wrong drawer and put it in the picnic basket and said in a perfectly normal voice, "Right, let's go!"

  Her legs were shaking.

  "Marcus?"

  "Mmmm?" He carried the basket out of the kitchen, collecting his house keys from the table. "Yeah?" He smiled at her.

  "You were just yelling at me like a complete maniac."

  "No, I wasn't. I just got a bit irritated when I couldn't find the bottle opener. You've just got to put it in the right drawer. Now are we going on this picnic or not?"

  "You called me a silly bitch."

  "I did not. Come on now. You're not going to be one of those fragile, sensitive types, are you? I don't want to have to walk on eggshells. That used to drive me mad with Liz."

  Liz was his ex-girlfriend, and, up until now, she had represented a very pleasing element in their relationship. "Oh, she couldn't have been that bad," Gemma would say happily whenever Marcus brought up one of Liz's faults. Liz had lived with Marcus for two years and was a bit of a loser. Attractive enough, but she didn't have Gemma's legs and she was a sulk, a prissy girl, always nagging. Not as smart as Gemma. Gemma didn't want to lose that enjoyable feeling of gentle superiority whenever Liz's name came up.

  Plus, she knew she did have a tendency to be oversensitive. Her sisters had been telling her about this tendency all her life.

  Perhaps she was overreacting. People got angry sometimes.

  And so it began.

  They went on the picnic and at first she was a little tense but then he made her laugh and she made him laugh and it was another wonderful night, in a string of wonderful nights. The next day when Cat said to her, "So how was your night with the big hunk?" she said, "He told me he loved me! Involuntarily!"

  There was no need to ruin the lovely picture she could see reflected in her sisters' eyes by telling them a silly story about a bottle opener. So she pressed it down, brushed it away, crumpled it up.

  And she would have forgotten all about it, if a few weeks later, it hadn't happened again.

  This time there was sand on her feet when she got in his car.

  Well.

  He loved his car--and he'd been under so much pressure at work and she should really have washed her feet more carefully.

  Selfish. Stupid. Lazy. Did she just not care? Did she just not listen? He pushed her out of the car, and it was her own fault for being so clumsy that she dragged her foot along the gravel parking lot, ripping a chunk of skin off her big toe.

  There was a family in the parking lot at the beach, two little boys with pink-zinked noses and foam surfboards under their arms and a mum with a flowery straw hat and a dad with a beach umbrella. The little boys stared, and the parents hurried them along, as Marcus roared and swore and thumped his fist against the car.

  Afterward, she put her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and felt grimy with a strangely compelling sort of shame.

  Marcus was singing along to a song on the radio, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "Good day, hey?" he said, reaching over to pat her on the leg. "How's that toe of yours, you poor little thing. We'll have to get a Band-Aid on it."

  Sometimes it happened every day for a week. Sometimes a whole month would pass without incident. It was never in front of anyone they knew. With their families and friends, he was charming and adoring, holding her hand, laughing affectionately at her jokes. It was a dirty little secret that they shared, like a peverse sexual habit. Imagine if they knew, Gemma would think, imagine if they ever saw, how shocked they would be, when they think we're normal and nice, just like them.

  But it was fine. She could deal with it. All relationships had their problems after all. There was no need for her blood to turn to ice the moment she saw him pause, become still, the muscles in his back tensing.

  He never hit her, after all. He would never do that. He only hurt her accidentally when she didn't get out of his way quickly enough.

  She just had to work out an appropriate response for these little "episodes." Yelling back Cat-style? Calm, rational reasoning Lyn-style?

  But both tactics only amplified his rage.

  The only thing to do was to wait it out, to fold herself up inside, to pretend she was somewhere else. It was like ducking under a big wave when the surf was especially rough. You took a deep gulp and closed your eyes and dropped as far as you could beneath that raging wall of white water. While you were under it pushed you and shoved you as if it wanted to kill you. But it always passed. And when you broke the surface, gasping for air, sometimes it was so calmly-lapping-gentle you could hardly believe the wave ever existed in the first place.

  It was fine. Their relationship was fine! They loved each other so much.

  And she was forgetful and annoying and clumsy and selfish and hopeless and boring.

  And it was highly unlikely that anyone else would put up with all of Gemma's faults. She was, after all, fundamentally irritating.

  She started having very long, very hot showers, scrubbing hard at her skin. Other women, she noticed, were so much cleaner than her.

  "Right," said Lyn. "Deep breaths."

  The three of them were standing outside Cat and Dan's place, except that now, the moment they opened the door, it would only be Cat's place.

  Dan had spent the morning moving his stuff out.

  "I'm fine," said Cat. She went to put her key in the door, and Gemma caught Lyn's eyes as they both looked away from the clumsy tremor of her hands.

  They walked in and stopped. Gemma's stomach turned as she saw the blank spots on the walls and the dusty grooves across the carpet where pieces of furniture had been pulled. She hadn't really believed he would do it.

  Dan was such an automatic, everyday part of the Kettle family. It seemed like he had always been a part of their family dinners and birthdays, Christmas and Easter celebrations, making jokes, slouching on the sofa, complaining and teasing and giving his opinions, loudly, Kettle-style. Maxine told him off without formality. Frank opened the fridge door and tossed him beer bottles without looking. Dan knew all the family stories, he even starred in some of them, like "the time Frank tossed the beer bottle over his shoulder to Dan only Dan wasn't there" and "the day Cat bet Dan that he couldn't make a pavlova and he made the most stupendous pavlova of all time for that barbecue and Nana Kettle trod on it and the cream went up to her ankle!"

  What would happen to those stories now? Would it be like they never happened? Would they have to rewrite all their histories as if Dan weren't there?

  Gemma realized she was feeling somehow hurt by Dan, as if he'd left her too. And if she was feeling betrayed and shocked, then she couldn't even imagine the depth of Cat's feelings.

  She had to say something.

  "Oh dear," she said.

  Lyn rolled her eyes and said, "You didn't tell me you were letting him take the fridge, Cat." She took out her mobile from her handbag. "I'll call Michael now and you can have that old one we've got in the garage."

  "Thanks," said Cat vaguely. She was standing at the kitchen bench reading a handwritten note without picking it up. It was sitting next to a set of keys.

&nbs
p; She pressed her fingertips gently against the piece of paper and then walked into the bedroom.

  Gemma looked at Lyn, who was issuing bossy instructions to Michael. She gestured with her head for Gemma to follow Cat.

  Gemma pulled faces at her. "What should I say?" she mouthed.

  "Gemma's being pathetic," Lyn told Michael, and she pushed her firmly between the shoulder blades toward the bedroom.

  Feeling slightly sick, Gemma allowed herself to be shoved.

  The awful things that were happening to Cat made it seem like she was a different person--and that was wrong. She remembered Cat's and Lyn's scarily polite behavior when Marcus died. She must try to not to be polite to Cat. Sympathetic. But not at all polite.

  Cat was standing with her hand on the mirrored door of the bedroom cupboard. "All his clothes are gone. Look."

  "More room for you!" Gemma began to spread out Cat's coat hangers so that the empty half of the wardrobe disappeared. "Hey. I haven't seen that skirt before. Hmmm. That's very sexy." She held it up against herself and swiveled her hips. Cat sat down on the bed in front of her and lifted up the hem of the skirt.

  "Good. I can wear it clubbing when I'm out on the prowl again."

  "Yep. You'd pick up in no time."

  "Give those twenty-year-olds a run for their money."

  "For sure."

  They looked at each other, and Cat smiled wryly.

  "Actually, I don't have a great track record competing with the twenty-year-olds, do I?"

  Gemma put the skirt back in the wardrobe and sat down next to her.

  She put her arm around her. "You could get a hot young twenty-year-old yourself. They've got all that stamina."

  "Yeah," Cat sighed. "The thought of some twenty-year-old pumping away at me makes me feel exhausted."

  Gemma laughed. "He wouldn't last long. You'd get breaks in between pumping."

  "You know what I found this morning?" asked Cat.

  "What?"

  "A gray pubic hair."

  "No! I didn't even know you went gray down there! Are you sure? Let's see it."

  "Get lost!" Cat elbowed her. "I'm not letting you see my pubic hair, for God's sake."

  "Well, your fridge is on the way. What's so funny?" Lyn stood at the bedroom door, half frowning and smiling.

  Gemma said, "Lyn's probably got an identical one."

  "An identical what?"

  But Cat had looked up and seen something on the top shelf of the cupboard.

  "Oh," she said. "Oh."

  She stood up and pulled down some sort of soft toy, it looked like a little furry football.

  Gemma and Lyn watched as she held it gently and her face dissolved like a child's.

  She spoke as if she were telling them some very bad news that she'd only just received. "I'm never going to have a baby now."

  "Of course you are," said Lyn firmly.

  "No question," said Gemma.

  But it took at least twenty minutes before they could get her to stop crying.

  Later that night, after Lyn had gone home and Gemma and Cat were on to their third bottle of wine, Cat said, "What did you do with Marcus's engagement ring?"

  "I gave it to a lady sitting on George Street."

  "What?"

  "She was singing 'Blowing in the Wind.' She had a beautiful voice. I took the ring off my finger and put it in her guitar case."

  "It was worth ten thousand dollars!"

  "Yes. Well, she was singing really nicely. And I've always liked that song."

  "I'm going to pretend Dan is dead. Like Marcus."

  "Oh. Good idea."

  "But I'm not going to give my ring to some busker, for God's sake. What's wrong with you?"

  "I don't concentrate. That's the problem with me."

  Gemma's twenty-first birthday present from Marcus was a pair of ski gloves. Inside one of the gloves was a business-class ticket to Canada.

  Her friends said, "Oh my God, Gemma, this guy is a catch!"

  She'd been going out with him for eighteen months.

  On their first day's skiing, Gemma felt elated. The snowy peaks of Whistler were outlined against a cloudless blue sky. There had been a huge snow dump the day before, and people everywhere were in good moods, calling out things like, "Magic! Pure magic!" as they tramped in their boots through crunchy new snow toward the lifts.

  She felt clean. She felt like they were a normal couple.

  And then she forgot to concentrate.

  It was because she hadn't been skiing for a few years and she was overexcited, not thinking properly.

  Skiing with Dad in the August school holiday was an annual event for the Kettle girls, an exuberant circle on Mum's kitchen calendar, a brightly wrapped package of seven gleaming days. Sun reflecting off your sisters' goggles. Exhilarated shouts. The rasp of skis sliding across ice on the early morning T-bars. Dad teaching you the fine art of pushing your way to the front of a lift queue without anybody noticing. Steaming hot chocolates with melting marshmallows and red, cold faces.

  Skiing occupied a special place in Gemma's heart.

  That's why she forgot she wasn't a carefree little girl anymore. She forgot to be careful, she forgot to think about the consequences, and on their first run, she just skied straight to the bottom, without even looking to see what Marcus was doing.

  It was fantastic. She stopped near the gondola, the scrape of her skis sending a shower of snow in the air, and turned around to squint into the sun, breathless and smiling, to look for Marcus.

  As soon as she picked him out from the weaving colorful figures on the mountain, she knew. She punched the ends of her ski poles deep into the snow and waited. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  He waited till he was right next to her. She smiled at him, pretending they were still normal people but she didn't bother to say "Shhhh" when he started yelling.

  She should have waited for him. She was fucking ungrateful. She was selfish and stupid. The problem with her was she didn't think.

  When he finished, he shoved his poles in the snow and skied off, banging his shoulder painfully against hers, almost knocking her off balance. She watched him go and took a shaky breath. It would be all right. In a few minutes he would calm down.

  "You O.K. there?"

  It was a woman in a bright yellow ski suit, with a long plait of blond hair. She had an American accent.

  Gemma smiled politely at her. "Yes, thank you."

  The woman pushed back her goggles, revealing the fanatical skier's raccoon face: a distinct white silhouette around her eyes.

  She said, "Sweetie. The only part that's your fault is that you stay with him."

  Gemma flushed. Stupid, nosy woman. "Oh. Well, thank you very much," she said as if she were talking to a madwoman and she skied off to catch up with Marcus.

  That same night Marcus proposed to her in the hotel restaurant. He went down on one knee and produced a diamond ring and all the other diners clapped and cheered and called out "Whoo whoo!" just like in a schmaltzy movie. Gemma followed the script perfectly.

  She put one shocked feminine hand to her throat, said, "Yes, of course, yes!" and threw her arms around him.

  Sometimes, she thought about leaving him--but she thought about it in an abstract way, the same way that you dream about living an entirely different life. Imagine if I were a princess. Imagine if I were a famous tennis player. Imagine if I weren't a triplet. Imagine if I were with someone other than Marcus.

  Sometimes, just as she was falling asleep, he would whisper to her what he'd do to her if she ever tried to leave him. He whispered so softly it felt like she wasn't really hearing it, she was thinking it. She lay so rigid that her muscles ached the next day.

  The church was packed for the funeral. His parents and brother were distraught. Person after person got up to tell poignant, funny stories about Marcus. Their voices cracked with grief. They ducked their heads, hid their faces.

  Cat and Lyn stood on either side of Gemma. They stood so clo
se she could feel the entire lengths of their bodies next to hers.

  After the funeral, she resigned from her teaching job and moved in with Maxine for a while. Her mother behaved the way she did whenever they hurt themselves when they were little--extremely crossly. "How did you sleep?" she snapped each morning. "Drink this please!" She didn't hug her. She just handed her a carrot juice.

  Gemma walked for hours and hours around the neighborhood streets. Her favorite time was twilight, when people began switching on lights, with their curtains still undrawn. You could see straight into the bright little cubes of their lives. It fascinated her. The minutiae of their existences. The potted plants on their windowsills. Their furniture. Their pictures. You could hear the sounds of their music, television sets, radios. You could smell their dinners cooking. People called out to one another. "What's this plastic bag in the fridge?" "What?" "This plastic bag!" "Oh, that." Once she stood still for five minutes, listening to the soothing sound of someone's shower running, imagining steam billowing, soap lathering.

  She wanted to go into every house, curl up on their sofas, try out their bathtubs.

  When she saw the notice asking for an experienced house-sitter it was the first time she'd felt definite about something in years.

  She became a drifter through other people's homes, other people's jobs, and other people's lives.

  A year later she dated the second of the fourteen boyfriends.

  He was a sweet-faced chartered accountant called Hamish. One day after they'd been going out for a few months, they went to the beach. "Wash the sand off your feet, will you?" asked Hamish mildly, before she got in the car.

  On the way home, Gemma yawned and said, "You know, Hamish, I don't really think this is going anywhere, do you?"

  Hamish was shocked. He hadn't seen it coming. He cried when they said good-bye, ducking his face against his shoulder to wipe away his tears on his sweetly uncool checked shirt.

  Gemma felt terrible.

  But somewhere deep inside of her she felt a tiny hard kernel of pleasure.

  CHAPTER 17

  It seemed to Cat that she'd been gathering momentum ever since the night of the spaghetti, slipping and sliding, grabbing frantically to save herself. The night of the mobile phone bill was when her fingers finally uncurled from the rockface and she went into freefall.