Careful What You Wish For

by Lucy Finn

  I took out another file and labeled it “Peggy Sue.” I was about to get up to retrieve her number from where I had stuck it on the kitchen counter when my phone rang. I made a mental note to get a second line installed for my law practice, but I answered my home number by saying, “Patton law office, Ravine Patton speaking.”

  A soft voice said, “Ms. Patton? This is Mihoko. May I talk to you at this moment?”

  “Yes, go ahead. How can I help you?”

  “We had a—a something happen. Very upsetting.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody wrote on our cows.”

  I paused, squeezed my eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to get a handle on what Mihoko was actually telling me. I finally asked, “Do you mean like graffiti? Somebody painted graffiti on your cows?”

  “Yes, graffiti. Words in spray paint. We are very upset.”

  “What did they write?”

  “Three words, one on each cow. On Miss Milky it said Out. On Lulu was Get. But the third word on Hilda I don’t know.”

  “Spell it for me.”

  “H-E-T-H-U-N. Ken looked it up in the dictionary. We can’t find het-hun.”

  “Yeah, well, the graffiti artist couldn’t spell. I think he was trying for heathen. When did this happen?”

  “Sometime this morning. The cows stay in the barn all night. Ken lets them out right after daybreak.”

  “Did Ken see anyone? Did either of you hear anything?”

  “The cows were grazing up by the woods. We didn’t know anything until they came down for water at the fence. Then Ken saw the words.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “We don’t want trouble, Ms. Patton. Ken is washing the cows. But I am afraid.”

  “Look, Mihoko. I think you should call the police.”

  “No, please, you handle it.”

  “I’ll do what I can. I may want to talk with you and Ken tomorrow, but in the meantime, you need to take some precautions. Do you have a pen to write down what I want you to do?”

  “Yes, Ms. Patton.”

  “Okay, first, keep your doors locked.” I spoke slowly and paused often so Mihoko could record what I was telling her. “Next, buy and set up a driveway alarm so that you know if anyone pulls in. Third, install security lights, the kind that go on when they detect any motion. Put them by the driveway, in the front and back of the house, and at the barn. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. We’ll go to the Home Depot and get them right away.”

  “And one more thing—do you have a dog?”

  “No, just the kitty cats.”

  “Think about getting one. A big one with a loud bark. They’re better than cats when you’re dealing with rats.”

  “Rats?”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to think there’s a big one involved here.”

  I put off making the call to Peggy Sue. I needed some time to mull over the situation with Scabby and the Katos, so I decided to take a break and get out of the office. I figured it was the perfect opportunity to run up to the mall with Gene and Brady. If Brady wasn’t already asleep, he would be as soon as I put him in the car seat. He always dozed off the minute the car started moving.

  Since I did my best thinking on the road, the ride up to JCPenney’s at the mall and maybe a drive past London’s Junkyard might help me formulate a plan. The fly in the ointment to my drive-to-think scenario might be that I was used to driving solo or with Brady. Traveling with Gene meant I was no longer alone with my thoughts.

  Now, with Gene in the passenger seat, Brady in the backseat, and Brady’s stroller and baby bag in the trunk, I pulled out of the driveway and headed toward Wilkes-Barre. I hadn’t gone more than a few hundred feet when I passed my neighbor Jerry walking his King Charles spaniel. He waved. I waved. Gene waved. Then I spotted Mrs. Henny out getting her mail from the box. She waved. I waved. Gene waved. By the time I had driven the mile from my house to the highway, no fewer than six of my neighbors had seen Gene and me together.

  I couldn’t have made a more public announcement that I was “seeing someone” if I had put an ad in the Citizen’s Voice newspaper. The whole town would know about it by nightfall. When Gene left, they’d all be whispering and sending me pitying looks. They’d also be staring at my waistline to see if I had gotten myself “in trouble” before I got dumped…again.

  This was not how I had ever envisioned my life turning out. I had seen a future for myself in which I would be rich, urbane, happily married to an equally rich and urbane lawyer, and—That was as far as my vision had ever gotten. My barely articulated goals would have led to an empty, meaningless life. I saw that now. But fate stepped in and put the kibosh on it all. I had been completely and utterly blindsided by events: my sudden passion for Jake, my pregnancy and resignation from the law firm, my return to a backwater town in the boondocks of Pennsylvania, and then single motherhood.

  That last situation was the part that haunted me. I had a baby and I didn’t have a husband, and it was something that I had always vowed would never happen to me. My mother never criticized me about it. She never said a word. She didn’t have to. I had heard often enough her despair about her girl students, so bright with promise, who ended up pregnant and trapped in a dead-end life instead of going on to college. For years, my mother had fought with the school board about including birth control and family planning in what we used to call “hygiene classes.” Now they were euphemistically called “life skills.” But the Bible thumpers of the community protested, said the school was encouraging teens to be sexually active instead of saying no. So teaching about birth control was forbidden. The girls with so much promise ended up on public assistance, and I heard my mother crying more than once, late at night, over the waste of it all.

  I know she must have cried for me. Maybe she felt as if she had failed. I hoped that she could see my pregnancy as a kind of divine intervention. It had put an abrupt halt to the direction of my life, which had been leading to nowhere. Getting pregnant smacked me hard with a reality I couldn’t ignore. I needed to build a life that mattered. I had to make my life count. I knew that now. In the back of my mind an idea had started to grow, that maybe I was supposed to come back here to Noxen. Maybe this was the place I could make a difference.

  But aside from this seedling of an idea, I was still looking through a glass darkly. And now a genie had shown up in my house, again challenging my basic assumptions about life, time, reality, even my spiritual beliefs. I couldn’t explain his existence by any kind of reason; I had to accept that Gene existed through magic, mystery, or, perhaps, a miracle. I had had no control over Gene’s appearance. I did have total control over his disappearance. In fact, I did not want Brady to grow up with a string of different men in his life. As soon as I decided on my third wish, Gene would be gone and there would be no other man riding around in a car with me unless I found somebody I wanted to marry. With my track record of recent intimate encounters—one with a biker and one with a genie—my chance at finding an acceptable partner seemed highly unlikely. I was better off with no man at all; I was better off single and independent. I sighed and got very quiet as I tried to focus on the traffic.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Gene said as I turned off the back road onto the highway.

  “Nothing much,” I responded disingenuously. “I’m a little worried about the Katos, that’s all. Somebody wrote on their cows.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Graffiti. It was a threat telling them to get out of town. I’m pretty sure Scabby did it, but who told him to do it? He called them ‘heathens.’ Scabby hasn’t stepped foot in a church since he was a kid. I’d bet he hasn’t a clue what a Buddhist is, let alone care whether any moved into town. No, he’s too lazy to go buy spray paint and sneak up on some cows unless he was getting something out of it, you know?”

  Gene thought for a moment. “You’re probably right. But isn’t this something the local constable
should handle? You’re a lawyer, Ravine, not a detective.”

  “First off, we don’t have constables. The only form of law enforcement we have in this area is the state police. I don’t think they’d take an attempt to run over a hen or spraying paint on cows very seriously. They’re stretched pretty thin with manpower and this is what we call ‘criminal mischief.’ They’d pay more attention to kids breaking windows—unless something worse happens.”

  “Which it could.”

  “Yeah, I think so, unless I figure out what’s really going on. Who wants the Katos to leave and why?”

  Somehow, while we were talking, Gene’s hand had ended up behind my head. “You’re very tense, you know,” he said as he began to massage my neck.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I can’t concentrate.”

  “That’s good to know,” he said and smiled as he moved his hand back to the headrest. “Anyway, about the Katos, somebody could be after their land.”

  “I don’t know about that. There’s a lot of farmland around here, so why would anybody go to all this trouble to get theirs?”

  “So find out.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to try. I should talk to them again and see if anybody has made an offer to buy them out. There’s a missing piece to this puzzle, and it’s one I don’t have good feelings about.”

  Gene was quiet for a minute. “Promise me that you won’t do anything risky, like going to talk to Scabby alone.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. Whatever I do, you can come with me.”

  “I can’t if I’m gone,” he said, staring straight ahead out the car window.

  A stab of pain shot through me. “Well then, I can’t promise you, can I? I’m used to being on my own, Gene. But yes, I’ll be careful. I’ve got Brady to consider. Don’t worry about me.”

  Gene didn’t answer and we didn’t talk the rest of the way to the mall.

  It was early afternoon on a Friday. The sky was gray and the wind was raw. The parking lot was more empty than full, and the generic buildings of the mall looked forlorn. The Christmas madness hadn’t yet gripped otherwise sane people who in a few weeks wouldn’t be able to control the desperate feeling that they had to possess the toy du jour or a flat-screen TV.

  Today I didn’t see another human being as I turned the Beemer into the area by JCPenney’s and parked toward the far end of one row. Gene hopped out and retrieved the stroller from the “boot,” as he called it. Brady stirred a little when I lowered him into it and made sure he was securely strapped in, but he was more asleep than awake. I went behind the stroller to start pushing just as Gene did the same thing. Our hands touched on the handlebar. A rush of sensation flashed up my arm from the place where Gene’s fingers brushed over mine.

  “Oh.” The sound escaped from my lips before I could stop it.

  Then Gene’s lips were brushing across mine and I was saying “Oh” again. He kissed me, right there in the mall parking lot. I backed up until I was pressed against the Beemer, but I was kissing him back. I didn’t seem to be able to help myself. I turned my head away only with difficulty. “Don’t,” I said.

  “You’re not driving now,” Gene said into my hair.

  “We’re in public. In broad daylight. With Brady.”

  “We’re only kissing. There’s nobody around. And Brady’s asleep.”

  “But still,” I said, ducking my head so I could only see my feet and pushing him back away from me with my hands. “I can’t. Not here anyway.”

  “I can conjure us up a private place. In a blink of an eye. Just say the word.”

  I looked up into Gene’s face. “No. It’s not really about the place. We shouldn’t, that’s all. You’re being too forward.”

  Gene took my face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop myself when I’m around you. I want to kiss you all the time. Breathe the air you’re breathing. Ever since this morning, all I want to do is make love with you. I’m a man being driven mad.”

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the same way. But that’s what I did when I answered Gene. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not being driven mad. I’m perfectly sane and this morning was—well, it was nice. And it was a mistake. Now let’s go in the mall.” I couldn’t look at Gene when I said it. I had moved away from him as I pushed the stroller.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, walking up behind me. “The air vibrates around you, you are trembling so much. I want you. I can’t help that.”

  I turned an anguished face to Gene. “Don’t, please don’t. Don’t want me, because I can’t want you. Can’t you see that?”

  Gene grabbed my arm and stopped me in my tracks. He turned me to face him and said, “We don’t choose our fates, Ravine. We’re together. We’ve been brought together, maybe for a reason. I don’t know. But I know what I feel. If you need me to go slower, okay, I’ll go slower. If you don’t want me to kiss you in public, okay, I won’t. But don’t ask me to not desire you. I do. I did from the minute I first saw you sitting on the floor after you pulled the cork out of the bottle.”

  The words made me warm and excited, but I couldn’t forget they were only words. I didn’t want to get hurt, and caring about a genie who was going to disappear like a puff of smoke brought with it a one hundred percent guarantee that I would end up with a broken heart.

  I made my face as blank as I could and looked at him. “You hadn’t been with a woman in sixty years. You said so yourself. I could have been an old hag and you would have wanted me. It didn’t have anything to do with me. Your desire doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s all about you, Gene. Your needs. Not mine. I get your hormones going, that’s all. It’s practically an insult. Now as I told you before, don’t. Don’t touch me. Don’t kiss me.” I disengaged my arm and started walking toward the mall.

  Gene didn’t move. He stood there in the parking lot.

  I turned around to look back at him. “Gene, come on. We need to get going here. You need boots. Let’s get them and get this over with. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  “Don’t,” he said, mocking. “I do desire you, Ravine. And it has everything to do with you.”

  “You’re an impossible man. Can we drop the subject for now? The clock is ticking.” And it was, and I knew that only too well.

  Despite my resolve to act angry with him, or at least disinterested, Gene’s sense of wonder as we went into the mall tickled me.

  “Now this is really something,” he said, looking around, his head leaning back to see the second level and his eyes staring at the glass elevator that all the kids loved to ride. “Why, there’s a waterfall right here inside. And all these stores. Like a town, only all inside a building.”

  “That’s the idea. The sad thing is, what used to be towns are now mostly abandoned buildings. It was the lack of parking mostly that led to malls. Everybody drives.” I don’t think Gene was listening to me at all. He was headed toward the food court. I pushed Brady faster to keep up. “Don’t tell me you’re finally hungry,” I said.

  “I’m right peckish, don’t you know. How’s this stuff called pizza taste?”

  “I can’t believe you never had pizza.”

  “How could I? Nothing like it in the outback. Then I was locked up in that bottle. I never heard of it, but it smells great.”

  I bought a whole pie—half sausage, half pepperoni—along with a couple of Cokes. Brady must have smelled the food too, because he woke up. I had bought some french fries for him. We sat on white plastic chairs at a little table. I handed Brady a fry. He enjoyed trying to get it into his mouth and mushing it up in his little fist at the same time. Gene devoured most of the pizza as if he hadn’t eaten in, well, years.

  “That’s the best stuff I ever had,” he said with a small belch. He didn’t bother to apologize about his lack of decorum. He finished off his soda and belched again like a typical guy. “I don’t think I can eat another bite. Maybe we can take some home for later?”

  “Y
ou’re a cheap date.” I laughed. “Sure, we’ll pick up a pie on the way home, or better yet, we’ll get one tomorrow night. We’re supposed to go to my mother’s tonight for dinner, remember.” Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. Being with Gene in the mall, having pizza, going to my mother’s—it seemed as if we were…as if we were…a family. I liked the feeling, too much. We weren’t a family, and pretty soon Gene would be gone.

  “You look sad all of a sudden. What’s the matter?” Gene asked.

  “Nothing. Really. Let’s get your boots and get out of here, okay?”

  “Okay.” Gene shot sideways glances at me as we walked. We didn’t do much more talking, but somehow Gene ended up pushing Brady’s stroller with one hand. With the other he reached out and took mine and put it on the bar, keeping it covered with his. We walked through the mall to Penney’s. Nobody gave us a second glance. We appeared to be a normal couple. I felt inexplicably happy and sad at the same time. I had never done this before. It was a first for me as much as it was for Gene. Since it might never happen again, I didn’t want the experience to stop. I didn’t say don’t to Gene again.

  We were in the middle of picking out a pair of Red Wing work boots, size eleven, when what I feared might happen, happened.

  Gene looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Do you smell sulfur? Wow, it’s really strong.” He glanced around trying to find the source of the truly noxious odor.

  I didn’t look around. I stood up and walked directly over to the stroller. I cautiously peeked down the waistband of Brady’s pants. I gagged and nearly retched.

  Then I shot Gene an angry look. “What you smell is what happens to scrambled eggs when it turns to poop,” I said. “Brady needs to be changed, and he needs to be changed right now.”