Three Wishes

She smiled at him—a Gemma smile—open, radiant, and guileless.

“She might like a lover at some point, but the message of the ad is that you don’t need a lover to give yourself pleasure on Valentine’s Day. All you need is a bath and Hollingdale Chocolates.”

She looked at Rob. “There’s no need to feel threatened by it.”

Rob rolled his eyes. “I’m thinking about the impact on the brand—”

“Run it as is,” said Graham. “I like it.”

“Great.” Cat slammed shut her laptop. “I’ll e-mail you all PDFs.”

“Fine.” Graham subsided sleepily back into his chair.

Rob didn’t look up. He was using a gold ballpoint to jab a straight line of vicious little blue dots across his notepaper. No revelations there. He was still the slimy prick he’d always been.

“Happy Christmas, everybody!” said Cat warmly.

She and her baby sailed from the room.

It was the night before Christmas Eve, and Annie the marriage counselor was celebrating with gigantic Christmas trees dangling from her ears. They had red and green lights that flashed disconcertingly on and off, on and off.

“Love the earrings, Annie,” said Dan. He was holding Cat’s hand as they sat thigh to thigh on the green vinyl sofa.

“Thank you, Dan.” Annie gave her head a merry little swing. “Now, if you don’t mind me saying, you two seem a lot cheerier than when I saw you last.”

“We’ve had some news.” Dan squeezed Cat’s hand.

“I’m pregnant,” said Cat.

“Oh!” Annie clasped her hands together. “Congratulations!”

“It’s not like that means everything is suddenly O.K.,” said Cat. She didn’t want Annie thinking they were going to fork out one hundred and twenty bucks for an hour’s worth of trilling and cooing.

“Of course not!” Annie’s smile disappeared in tempo with her flashing lights. “But it is wonderful news after you’ve been trying for so long.”

“Yes.” Cat leaned forward to look at Annie seriously. “I want us to fix everything before the baby’s born. I hated having divorced parents. I hated the way they spoke about each other. I’m not putting my child through that.”

She sat back, embarrassed by her intensity. She hadn’t even realized she felt that way until the words came out of her mouth. In fact, up until now, she’d always told people the opposite—that she couldn’t care less about her parents’ divorce.

Now their marriage was something they needed to fix before the baby was born. It was a task that had to be ticked off the list some time over the next nine months, like transforming the study into a nursery and installing a baby capsule in the car.

Annie was the expert. That’s what they were paying her for.

“I still feel angry with Dan about what he did,” said Cat. “Sometimes I can’t even bear to look at him I feel so angry. Actually, sometimes I feel sick when I look at him.”

“Are you sure that’s not morning sickness?” asked Dan. “Because that seems a bit extreme.”

Cat and Annie ignored him. “Obviously,” said Cat, “I need to stop feeling that way before the baby is born.”

She looked at Annie expectantly. Dan cleared his throat.

Annie opened her manila folder in a businesslike manner. “Well, I think this all sounds very constructive, very positive. Let’s get started, then.”

“Yes, let’s.”

Cat held on tight to Dan’s hand and didn’t look at him.

On Christmas Eve, Cat offered to baby-sit with Maddie while Lyn and Maxine went to the Fish Markets.

She arrived to find the two of them walking around the house on exaggerated tippy-toes. “We just got her down,” explained Lyn. “It was a nightmare. The girls at play group say you only miss one or two and that’s it, afternoon naps finished for good—never to return!”

It seemed to Cat that Lyn was speaking to her about Maddie in a more relaxed, mother-to-mother tone, now she was pregnant. It made Cat feel both humiliated and grateful to think that Lyn had been consciously—or perhaps subconsciously—curtailing her conversation.

“Have you told Mum yet?” asked Lyn, while their mother disappeared into the bathroom to reapply her lipstick.

“No. I’m going to make a family announcement at lunch tomorrow.”

“Cat! Dad knows, Nana knows—you can’t make a family announcement when the only one in the family who doesn’t know is Mum!” said Lyn. “Tell her now.”

Cat sighed. Every conversation with her mother was fraught with danger. It was as if they were former players from competing teams who shared a long and violent history. Sure it all seemed a little silly now but all the old antipathies about unfair penalties were still there just beneath the surface.

Throughout the seventies, until their peace treaty in the eighties, Maxine and Frank had fought, and their three little daughters had fought loyally and bravely alongside them. Lyn took Maxine’s side. Cat took Frank’s side. Gemma took everyone’s side. It was hard to put a decade-long battle behind you.

Maxine reappeared, smelling of Joy and hairspray.

“The Smith family might appreciate receiving that shirt soon,” she remarked to Cat, who was lying on Lyn’s sofa, bare feet dangling off the end.

Cat looked down at her faded T-shirt. “I think they’ve got higher standards.”

Lyn pinched her on the arm.

“I’m pregnant, Mum,” said Cat to the ceiling.

“Oh!” said Maxine. “But I thought you and Dan were having problems.”

Lyn said in an anguished tone, “Mum!” while Cat pulled a cushion out from under her head and held it over her face.

Maxine said, “Well, I am sorry, Lyn. I thought they were. Gemma mentioned something about counseling.”

Cat didn’t need to see her mother’s face to know the lemony expression of distaste that would be pulling at her mouth as she said the word “counseling.” Counseling was something other people did.

Cat took the cushion off her face and sat up. “People get pregnant from having sex, Mum. Not from a perfect marriage. You ought to know that.”

Maxine’s nostrils flared, but she drew herself upright, manicured nails digging into the strap of her handbag. It always astounded Cat—this ability of her mother’s to pack away unsightly emotions, in exactly the same way she transformed unwieldy bed sheets into sharp-edged squares for the linen cupboard.