Wish Club (13 page)

“You know, on the way here, I must have changed my mind about it a hundred times.” Gail said. “I kept thinking I’d like to go back to work, to Foote, Cone, pick up somewhere close to where I left off. Do the next Sunshine Orange Juice jingle. But even though I could see myself back in the office, in the power suit, doing the presentations, the brainstorming sessions, all of it—something just…It just didn’t seem
true.
” Gail paused, her face asking,
you know what I mean?

“It just got me thinking about what I’d
really
like to be doing—what was in my heart. And then it came to me: the theater. Back in college, I’d given up on the idea of a professional acting career by the time I was a junior, because I’d convinced myself that if I pursued it in any way, I would surely starve to death, and I grew up without much, so I knew I didn’t want that. But over the past few weeks I started thinking, why couldn’t I try again now? There are lots of small local theater companies I could get involved with—or maybe a talent agency, to do commercials or something. I don’t know—as long as I’m
wishing,
I might as well wish for something that would really be a dream.”

“I was so relieved,” Mara said when her wish was pulled, “to hear Gail talk about always wanting to go back to the theater. You see,” Mara’s normally gregarious demeanor was subdued, “I used to sing.” She paused. No one had had any idea. “Well, I still sing, but only to my cat.” Mara giggled, back to her old self. “I had a scholarship, a voice scholarship to Indiana University, but I didn’t go.”

All the women exchanged looks. This was news to them. “The summer after high school, I…well, I got pregnant with Alan. Henry and I did the whole shotgun wedding thing and I ended up at married student housing at Purdue instead of IU. It was hard being on campus and being a mom. There weren’t many of us, and I always felt so out of place walking around with a baby—being the same age as the students. But I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t change anything. I love Henry and the boys and, who knows, music is such a…well, it’s hard. I probably wouldn’t have been the next Barbra Streisand or Billie Holliday, but would have ended up teaching music somewhere.” Mara sighed. Her face looked wistful. “But still…”

“But still,” Gail continued for her, “teaching music to a bunch of uninterested brats, on a dwindling public-school budget, would still beat the crap out of picking tartar out of gums in Dr. Seeley’s office?”

Mara nodded back with a sad smile.

And so they made a wish to help Mara find her voice again.

“You know, guys. I’m pretty tired.” Claudia pulled her eyes from her wish in the Tupperware bowl. “If you want to just call it a night, we can always start with me the next time.”

Mara looked open-mouthed at Claudia. “Not a chance.”

“Are you kidding?” Gail picked up the bowl from the floor. “What’s this about,” she held the broken-bird wish up and out toward Claudia, “that you don’t want your girlfriends to know anymore?” She started unfolding the wish.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just…well, everyone’s wishes are all going so well,” Claudia pushed her glasses up her nose, “and, mine…” Her voice trailed off.

“—are going to go just fine, too,” Lindsay said. “You just picked a hard one for the first time around.”

“Don’t be discouraged, Claude.” Gail was using her sweet-mommy voice. “I have a feeling about you.” She opened up Claudia’s wish and looked at it, her face puzzled. “I can’t read it…you scribbled out part of the—” She handed the wish over to Claudia. “Here. You’ll have to tell us what it says.”

Claudia looked down at the scrap of paper. She’d scribbled out her wish about writing a novel.
I changed my mind,
she’d told herself.
I don’t really care about writing novels anymore.
Even though she knew that wasn’t particularly true. Instead, she’d made a wish for Dan. She wished that he would find happiness with his career—whatever that might entail. Whether it would mean he would finally start up his own firm or make more money at his current job, she didn’t know. She only knew she wanted him to be happy. On some level, she knew it wasn’t a completely selfless wish; if Dan felt more comfortable with his career, he would feel more comfortable having a child.

Claudia had scribbled out her old wish and scrunched her words together trying to make her new wish for Dan fit at the bottom of the paper. No wonder Gail couldn’t read it. It was a mess.

“I wished for Dan. That he find some happiness in his job.” Claudia looked up at them, hoping they would buy it. “I wasn’t sure how to phrase it.” She pushed her glasses up her nose again. “Whether I should ask for him to make more money—because I think that would make him happier—or whether I should wish he could start his own firm. So, I decided to make it more general and just wish that he finds more happiness in his career. That’s why it’s so scribbly.”

“Well, what was so hard about that?” Mara asked, picking up one of the spell books without waiting for Claudia to answer. “C’mon everyone, let’s make a wish for Claudia—or for Dan, rather, and his happy career.”

It occurred to Claudia then, that maybe the only thing more sad than forgetting about a dream, was being too afraid to ask for one to come true.

Chapter Thirteen

Henry
had fallen asleep again in his La-Z-Boy recliner, watching whatever sport had been showing on TV. The chair was back in the full recline position, and Henry lay supine, mouth open, his exhalations sounding like someone fogging a mirror. His left hand, flung over the left armrest, was nearly resting on the floor. His right hand still clutched the remote control to his chest, and Mara wanted it so she could shut up the post-game sports announcers who were still bantering on the screen, loudly, because Henry had the volume up too high.

Mara had just returned home from picking up her son, Alan, from wrestling practice. He’d already raided the refrigerator, forgoing the fancy snacks left over from last night’s Book Club meeting for two hastily thrown-together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one of which he still carried with him as he ran out the front door to a friend’s house. On her way back from closing the door behind him, Mara wondered how Henry could possibly sleep through all the commotion, especially with the TV volume up that loud.

She reached down over Henry and grabbed the remote, sliding it easily out of his hand. As she stood up, she got a good look at the top of Henry’s head. At six feet one inch, he was a full foot taller than she was, so this was a pretty rare view. And now hair was sprouting there. Right there in what used to be the middle of his rather large, shiny bald spot. True, sometimes it did look different—in the winter, it would get dry and a little dull and flaky. Mara would urge him to put something on it, but Henry would get indignant.
I am not rubbing lotion on my head, Mara.

But this was something else, a soft downy little patch of brown hair sprouting out of his scalp.
You’d think he would have noticed this,
she thought,
the way he runs his hand back over his scalp constantly, as if checking to see if this exact sort of thing might have happened.

She rubbed her hand over it to check, to confirm that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. They were there, sure enough, like the fine hairs on a newborn baby’s head. Henry sighed in his sleep, closed his mouth as if to swallow, and then opened it again to continue his foggy-mirror breathing. Mara put the remote down and grabbed the reading lamp, tilting it toward Henry’s head a little, leaning in close to inspect his scalp.

Suddenly Henry woke with a start, jolting his head upright, right into Mara’s nose. She reeled back, grabbing her nose with a yelp, letting the lamp drop to the floor where it first bounced, then shattered, sending broken glass scattering everywhere.

“What the…?” Henry asked.

Mara was doubled at the waist, her hand over her nose, bobbing up and down and moaning. A trickle of blood started down her fingers. “It’s bleeding. My nose is bleeding!”

Henry sat open-mouthed in his chair, his feet thrown over the side. He blinked.

“Henry, I think id’s bwoken. Oh, my nose is bwoken.” She could hear the congestion in her voice.
Not my nose!
She had the cutest little nose—it was her best feature. Blood continued to trickle between her fingers.

“Let me get you a towel.” Henry rose from his chair. “And some ice.” He put his arm around her shoulders, guiding her along with him as he started toward the kitchen, circling around the broken glass in his stocking feet. “What happened?”

She whimpered. “Ow ow ow,” was all she could manage until she was seated in a kitchen chair, and Henry reached into the drawer next to the sink.

“Don’d use the good towels.” She pointed to a bottom drawer next to the refrigerator with her free hand. Henry bent down and took two of the old dish rags out, handing her one, filling the other with ice. “What happened?” he asked her again.

“I was looking at the tob of your head when you jumbed up and your head hid me in the nose.”

“Why were y—Never mind.” He made a face at her, as if he’d caught her trying to sneak some lotion on his head while he slept. “Let me see it.” He winced when she removed her hand.

Her eyes welled up at his reaction. “It’s bad? Oh, I know it’s bad…Oh Henry, it hurds.”

He gently wiped blood off her upper lip and chin with a damp towel, giving it to her when he finished so she could clean her hands. He gave her the towel filled with ice and she gingerly put it over the bridge of her nose, peering at him over it.

Henry stood in front of her with one hand on his hip, the other holding the bloodied rag. “I think we need to get you to a doctor, hon.”

“Id’s bwoken. You think id’s bwoken?”

Henry inhaled deeply through his nose as he reached a hand up and ran it over his scalp. His eyes snapped open as if just now he’d fully awakened from his nap. He brought his hand down in front of his face and examined the palm, as if maybe the hair he’d felt had come from there. He reached up again and ran his hand over his former bald spot.

“Mara! I’ve got hair on my head!”

“Thad’s whad I’ve been trying to tell you.”

From the living room they could hear the voice of a sportscaster yelling, “It’s un-be-leev-able.”

The
class hunched over their tests, ran fingers through hair, bit lips, coughed, and occasionally sent her a dirty look. And occasionally, Claudia caught a dirty look when she glanced up from sipping her coffee and reading her
New Yorker,
as she made sure that the casual glances at the ceiling were only that and not attempts to
casually
find out what someone else had answered.

Claudia enjoyed test days; all the work being done, she could relax and catch up on her reading. The only problem she had with test day was that she couldn’t leave the room if she needed to and, after sipping so much coffee, Claudia needed to leave the room.

She thought about putting April Sibley in charge while she went to the bathroom. Claudia looked over at April. She saw her face contort as she hunched over the exam, her head down low to the page and her knuckles white as she gripped her pen. It was unusual to see April struggling with a test. Claudia looked around to see if there was anyone else she could trust to stop the slackers and wanna-bes from cheating while she was gone, and decided that it was just coffee pee anyway, which always seemed to be more urgent than it really was. Claudia turned her attention back to her magazine.

“Ms. Dubois? I need to use the bathroom.” It was April.

Claudia eyed her a little suspiciously, but after imagining the repercussions of refusing the headmaster’s niece permission to pee, Claudia just said “sure.”

After April left, Claudia flipped through her magazine, still looking up once in a while to make sure no one was cheating. There were several kids looking up at the ceiling now, and she looked up at it herself, to make sure no one had written answers there when she hadn’t been looking.

“Guys? I don’t think the answers are going to appear up there, so maybe we could focus our eyes on our own papers?” She got a couple of embarrassed smiles, several more confused ones, and one dagger-like stare of irritation for the interruption.

Claudia took a sip of coffee and returned to her magazine with a sigh. She was deep into an article when April returned from the bathroom, and Claudia silently reprimanded herself for forgetting for so long that she’d been gone.

Class always ran over on test days and today was no different. She allowed the students who needed more time to use the ten minutes they were allotted between classes to finish up their essays. Today, one of them was April. When she collected the last of the tests, Claudia locked them in her file cabinet, grabbed her purse, and hurried for the door. She did not want to get into a discussion with April, or anyone else for that matter, about when the tests would be graded. Even though the next period was her free period, today Claudia really did have personal business to attend to.

It wasn’t a long walk to the bathroom, but the urgency of her mission seemed to increase the closer she came to her destination. It was empty when she got there and she rushed into a stall.

While the toilet was flushing, Claudia swore she heard a cat’s muffled yowling and she stepped out of the stall, cocking her head to listen, but heard nothing more and walked over to the sinks, her chunky heels echoing on the floor.

As soon as the water was on, she heard it again. She turned the water back off.

The sound had come from her left side. She walked over to the large red garbage can and looked behind it. The mewling sound came again—this time from inside the can.
How could a kitten get inside…?
Claudia lifted the lid off. Blood was smeared on the side and her hand slipped in it. Gross. She hurried her hand over to the sink to run it under water. These girls can be such pigs. She remembered one time she had entered a stall and sat down to see a bloody tampon hanging from its string on the hook on the back of the door.

The mewling sound came again, and she came back to the trashcan. Blood saturated some of the paper towels inside and Claudia’s heart started thumping, afraid of what she would find in there if she dared to look. She heard it again, louder, and this time it didn’t sound like a cat but a baby’s cry. She dug through the bloodied paper towels and found a tiny, tiny baby at the bottom of the can, his eyes closed tight.

“OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod.” She reached in and picked up the baby and cradled him to her chest.

“Oh my God, my little one, what happened to you—what are you doing here?” She touched the side of his little red face. She pulled up the bottom of her sweater and wrapped it over him. He was still wet and gooey, with a strange white paste on his skin. She paced back and forth, breathing hard.
Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out.
Claudia headed for the door. The baby started mewling.

“Ohh.” Claudia walked toward the door then stopped.
I need to keep him warm. He needs to be warmer.
He was already wrapped in the bottom of her sweater, and she enveloped him now inside her suit jacket as well. She needed to get him to the nurse, to Marion. She needed to call an ambulance. Claudia raced out of the bathroom and hurried toward the stairwell. She went down the stairs carefully, holding the baby like a piece of crystal, keeping one hand on the handrail.

These sorts of things didn’t happen at fine, upstanding private schools like Strawn.
This is going to cause a ruckus,
she thought. What was Peterson going to do? Of course they needed to find the mother right away. He would probably lock down the school, but she might already be gone. They had an open campus. Peterson would definitely want to keep this as under wraps as possible, try to avoid a scandal for the school.

The mother had to be one of the girls. Well, probably it was one of the girls, but there weren’t any she knew of that had been pregnant, not in any of her classes or that she’d seen in passing down the halls—or heard about in the faculty break room.

The boy’s little cries subsided and Claudia stopped halfway down the stairs, opening her jacket in a panic to make sure he hadn’t stopped breathing. No. But he started crying again as soon as she’d stopped. Claudia covered him back up with her jacket and continued until she reached the first-floor hallway, where she ran as smoothly as she could to Marion’s office, trying not to jostle the baby too much.

Henry O’Connor turned out of a doorway, his eyes down, reading some forms in his hand.

Henry O’Connor. Upper-grades math teacher. Boys’ cross-country and baseball coach. Mara’s husband.

“Henry!”

“Claudia?” He stared down at her blood-stained sweater. “What happened? Let me help you. Do you need to sit down?” He gestured back toward the office he’d just left.

Claudia kept up her pace down the hallway. “No, Henry. It’s—I found a baby!”

“You what?” Henry fell into a slow jog next to her. His eyes widened when he looked down and noticed the bulge under her jacket. “Holy shit.”

“He was in the girls’ bathroom.” Claudia was breathing hard. “I’m taking him to Marion. Call 9-1-1!”

Henry turned around and ran full-speed back down the hall to his office.

Claudia spun into Marion’s waiting room. Two girls sat on the bench outside Marion’s door. Their mouths gaped open. Claudia ran past without acknowledging them and tried the interior door. It was locked and she banged her fist on its smoked-glass panel so hard it vibrated in its frame.

“Marion! Marion open up, it’s an emergency.” She banged on the door again. “Marion! Please, it’s—”

She could hear Marion muttering from the other side,
always an emergency.

Marion opened the door with a pissy “What is it?” before looking down at Claudia’s bloody front. Claudia pulled back part of her jacket to reveal the baby’s slimy head and crying face.

Marion’s eyes got huge as she sucked in a mouthful of air. “Oh!” she said, her Minnesota roots drenching the word.

“I found him. In the bathroom upstairs. Just now.”

Marion reached her arms out for the baby. “We have to call 9-1-1. We need to get him to the hospital right away.”

Claudia hesitated before handing him over, not sure if it was the baby she didn’t want to give up, or Marion’s starched white cotton she didn’t want to see smeared with blood. Marion always wore the old-fashioned white cotton uniform, even though the trend in nursing fashion these days was toward cartoon animals and multicolored scrubs. After she handed the baby over to Marion, her arms felt strangely empty.