Wish Club

by Kim Strickland

  “I need to…I…” Jill was on the verge of tears.

  Marc stood up and turned around. “Cinnamon?”

  She’d been watching them, her blue eyes not missing a thing. “Yeah?”

  “We’re done for today. You can go ahead and get dressed.”

  Cinnamon stood still for a moment, as if she hadn’t quite heard him, before she turned and languidly walked toward the Japanese screen at the back of Marc’s studio. The wool sweater that had been hanging over the top of the screen slid down and disappeared on the other side when she stepped behind it. The pair of jeans disappeared next.

  Cinnamon was back on their side of the screen so quickly, it occurred to Jill she must not be the kind of woman who bothered with the tedium of underwear. The way her nipples flounced under her sweater seemed to confirm it.

  “We can pick this up tomorrow. Ten o’clock again?” Marc said.

  Cinnamon replied with a slow tilt of her head. “Sure.”

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  She walked passed Marc, her eyes boring into Jill’s.

  Jill hadn’t interrupted anything, but clearly Cinnamon wanted to imply that she had.

  When they were alone, Marc asked her again, “What’s the matter, Jilly?”

  Jill hesitated. She wasn’t so sure, now that she was here, that she really wanted to go through with it, confess to him.

  “I’m stuck,” she said finally. “I’m totally blocked. My show is in less than two weeks and I’ve got so much to finish and I can’t…” It felt as if her eyes might start to well up again. She looked up at the ceiling to stop them. “I feel like I’m going crazy. I’m so…so upset. I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before—ever.”

  “You’ve never been blocked before?”

  Jill shook her head and sniffed.

  “Jeez, Jilly girl. Where’ve you been? Everyone gets blocked. Especially before a show.”

  Jill had to admit there were times, and usually right before her shows, when her nerves seemed to get the best of her. Sometimes she’d fuss and fuss with a painting, trying to get it just right, until she’d add that one final stroke—the one that just ruined it. But that wasn’t being blocked. That was nerves. This was different.

  “I can’t paint a thing. I just stare at the canvas. I—”

  “You are putting wa-a-a-y too much pressure on yourself. You need to re-lax.” He walked over to his sink and started washing his hands. “C’mon. Have a seat. We’ll talk this through.” He nodded at his couch under the window.

  Jill gave him a look. It’s where they usually had sex.

  “Not that kind of re-laxing.” He smiled and held up two dripping hands, palms out. “I promise. Just talking. We’ll fix this for you, get you back on track.”

  “Okay, so you’ve gotten a lot of good advanced publicity, right?” Marc said, sitting down on the couch next to her after he’d finished washing his hands. “And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  Jill shrugged, looked up at him with a frown.

  “Well, it is usually, anyway. Okay, sure, I know it adds a little pressure, but you’re my Jilly girl…” He gave her his disarming smile, but Jill couldn’t bring herself to smile back. “Hey…c’mon. This isn’t as dark as you think. You still have enough for a show, right? Even if Gretel—”

  “Greta.”

  “—if Greta says it’ll be a little thin, so what? What’s the trouble? The show’s gonna go on. And if you don’t break out—then you don’t break out this time. No biggie. You do it next time. Right?

  “So here’s the thing,” he continued. “Here’s what you need to try. It’s what I do when I get stuck. I pretend there’s no pressure.” He leaned back and raised his eyebrows at her as if to say, brilliant, huh?

  Jill just looked at him. What’s he talking about? He seemed somehow younger to her right then.

  “I pull out a canvas with no plan and just paint. No pressure. It’s not for anything, I tell myself—it’s not for a show or even for anyone to see. It’s just to paint. It’s for the alley. The landfill. Nothing. No pressure. Just get something down. And you know what happens?”

  Jill shook her head.

  “No, c’mon. You know what happens.”

  “It’s good.”

  “It’s good,” he said.

  Jill nodded her head as though she liked his idea, but what Marc didn’t seem to understand was just how stuck she was. She didn’t even think she could pretend. Especially knowing that a spell was behind it. That witchcraft had brought her to this point. Should I tell him about that? No. That was not the answer. That wouldn’t help anything and it would probably just make things worse.

  “I don’t think I could even pretend; I just feel so stuck.”

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Tonight. Right now, we’re going to leave here and stop by Rick and Dave’s Lakeview Liquors, where we’re going to pick up some Crown Royal. Then we’re going to Blockbuster to rent, what, Casablanca? Caddyshack? Whatever. Then we’re going to go back to my place and get drunk while we watch it. Because tonight it’s just about loosening up and forgetting. Then tomorrow, I’m going to bring you back here with me at ten and you’re going to lock yourself in your studio and you’re going to paint some nonsense for the landfill. And by noon, when you’ve broken through this block, you’re going to come down here and we’re going to piss Cinnamon off again by kicking her out,” he smiled.

  So he had noticed.

  “And you’re going to thank me for my wonderful advice that helped you so very much by taking me to Sally’s for coffee.”

  Jill couldn’t help but smile at him. He was being so sweet, like he really cared. And he seemed so eager to help her. Maybe his plan would work. Maybe she would be unblocked by noon tomorrow. He said it worked for him. And she still had two weeks. There were no laws saying her paintings couldn’t be drying on the walls of Eleventh House when her show opened. She should at least be open to trying his idea. Hell, if she was open to thinking a spell had caused her painter’s block, then she should at least be open to Marc’s wacky pretending plan to break through it.

  Maybe her plan to talk to him had been a good one after all.

  “So? Whaddya think?” he asked. “Is it a plan? Is it good?”

  “It’s good,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Claudia could feel fifty eyes boring holes into her back. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around. What was going on? She’d been tapping a marker on the Dry Erase board in her classroom, trying her darndest to write the words “Heart of Darkness,” but she was unable to control the marker and make it do what she wanted. After a few odd squiggles, the felt tip kept hitting the board with irritatingly calm thuds. Claudia couldn’t make her fingers move the marker across the board to form anything legible.

  “Dang things,” Claudia finally said, shaking the marker, “always running out of ink.” She turned around and smiled stupidly at them. “Well, anyway. Heart of Darkness.”

  “There’s a red one on the ledge,” one of the students offered, pointing.

  Claudia grimaced at it. “Oh. Thanks. Well. Anyway. I don’t care for red. Too much like grading.” She laughed. “Besides, I don’t—we don’t have to have the title on the board. This once I think we can get away without it.” Claudia smiled and pushed her glasses up her nose. “I think we can all remember that we’re reading Heart of Darkness for the next forty-five minutes.”

  Their eyes were boring into her face now. “Oohkaay,” she said, picking up her book and walking around to sit on the front of her desk. She crossed her legs and put her Norton Anthology of Short Fiction on her lap.

  “Who can tell me who the protagonist is?”

  “I love the smell of napalm in the morning, man.”

  “That’s right, Tom. Conrad’s novella was the basis for the movie.” She paused. “But now, since you brought it up, I’d like you to tell me who the protagonist is in Heart of Darkness and in
Apocalypse Now.”

  “Oh, maan.” Tom groaned at the cost of his mistake while the class shared a laugh at his expense. He stuttered and fumbled through an explanation—getting it completely wrong.

  Claudia seemed to have as good a grasp on what was going on in her life as Tom did in English Literature. What is wrong with me? I can’t write. Oh no. Oh God please no. Not her wish—not again. Not like this. She’d even crossed out the one about writing a novel—and she had wished to write. But now she couldn’t write. “No.”

  Fifty eyes bore into her own now, questioning. Tom had fallen silent. Uh-oh. She’d said “No” out loud—and probably too harshly. Claudia shook her head. “No,” she said it again, drawing the word out, trying to make it sound normal this time, in context, like something she meant to say out loud, “but you’re sort of on the right track. Let’s get back to what the difference is between an antagonist and a protagonist, shall we? Who can explain it for us? April—go ahead.”

  April brought her hand down with a smug smile as she launched into her explanation. What if this problem got worse? What if Claudia couldn’t write—ever again? How could she teach? Take a message? Copy an address? The horror, the horror!

  Something clattered to the floor at the back of the room. A compass. The kind they used for making circles in geometry in the math lab. It was resting in the aisle between the last two rows. No one claimed it. But if Claudia had to guess, it belonged to Tom.

  “Where’d that come from?” Claudia interrupted April’s antagonist/protagonist explanation.

  No answer.

  Claudia searched their eyes this time. What had the world come to, she thought, when kids weren’t allowed to carry compasses in school anymore? The zero-tolerance policy covering weapons and drugs covered an age-old tool used to make circles in math class, and therefore compasses weren’t allowed out of the math lab. It’s as if we’ve dropped our moral compass.

  She was surprised someone on the school board hadn’t suggested they change the name of the math lab as well—it sounded way too much like meth lab—and well, goodness only knows where that might lead. Besides, math lab was a stupid name anyway. It wasn’t as if they were cooking cosines over Bunsen burners in there.

  The fifty eyes revealed nothing to her. No one would snitch. Claudia sighed.

  “Well, I have to take that.”

  She walked back and picked up the compass. “Zero-tolerance, and all,” she said. Claudia pointed at the sharp tip, ready to make a point about how ridiculous the policy was, until her finger accidentally touched it. She pulled it quickly back, a spot of bright red blood blossoming on the end of her finger. She hoped no one had noticed.

  Claudia went around to the other side of her desk, opened the bottom drawer, and dropped the compass into her purse. She made a mental note to take the compass back to the math lab later in the day. She certainly didn’t want to try writing herself a real note.

  It figured that, instead of finding a compass to show her the way, she had found one that just went around in circles—and drew blood to boot.

  Claudia sucked on her index finger for a moment while she leaned over, then she stood up and moved back around to the front of her desk. She sat down and crossed her legs, returned the Norton Anthology to her lap, and tried her best to ignore the taste of blood in her mouth.

  “Dr. Seeley’s office.” Mara sang it into the phone, in a tone of voice way more cheerful than she felt. This had been happening more and more often lately. It had started toward the end the previous week, her voice taking on a mind of its own, some of her sentences coming out in a cheery, singsong way. It was especially noticeable over the phone.

  “He’s here Mondays and Wednesdays from eight to five, Tuesdays and Thursdays from nine to seven.” To Mara’s ears, it sounded like a nursery rhyme. “And Fridays from seven to noon.” New—oon. The word chimed out of her mouth like a doorbell. What the hell is going on?

  At least the person on the other end of the line thought it was sweet. The old woman seemed impressed by Mara’s cheerfulness. “I’ve never heard a doctor’s receptionist like you before. Most of them are so rude.”

  Mara wanted to tell the woman that she wasn’t the receptionist, but that would be rude—and it would probably come out in her new singsong voice, which only seemed to make the woman chat-tier. She’d been nattering on about what she thought was wrong with her gums and Mara had let her, a little distrustful of her new voice, hesitant to use it. The woman wanted an appointment this week—the second week of March—and Mara had almost laughed out loud. But then, that would have been rude, too. Instead, she said, “Our next opening isn’t until April thirtieth.”

  The woman was silent on the other end of the line for a long time. She finally said, “You give me that appointment on the thirtieth of April. You sound so nice. And Dr. Seeley has come so highly recommended by the other women at the Foundation. I think I’m going to like him.”

  Mara couldn’t wait to see the expression on the woman’s face when she actually met Dr. Seeley. Although, a lot of these older women seemed to like him, especially the ones from the Women’s Foundation. It was so weird that he was the preferred dentist of Chicago’s aged society women. His office was no great shakes, and he didn’t have a fancy address. Those fussy old ladies probably liked his lack of personality and cold manner for some strange reason. Maybe he reminded them of their wealthy husbands or ex-husbands. Although it was more probable they liked Dr. Seeley for the way he dished out gossip—in a manner that made it seem like he wasn’t dishing out gossip. “How’s Ann Batista? Why, she’s fine. Oh, I was just wondering, worried about her really, what with the way she was so poorly treated in the divorce settlement.” And then Mara could see the woman’s eyes light up. Poorly treated in the divorce settlement? I knew the new Mercedes was a front!

  Mara shifted the phone to her other ear and wrote the woman’s appointment down in the book. She took some of her other pertinent information as well. She should start the file now, so it would be ready when the woman came in, but Mara was hungry. She reached into her bottom desk drawer for a snack. When it was open, Mara stared at it for quite a while. Everything was—albeit very slightly—out of place. As if it had been searched through. Dr. Seeley must have been in here, she thought. Probably couldn’t find an envelope or a stamp, or his ass with both hands. Mara grabbed the box of Fig Newtons. At least he hadn’t said anything to her about keeping snacks in her desk. Maybe he was afraid to—afraid that her husband might come down here and punch him in the nose, give him two black eyes.

  The cellophane on the Fig Newton packet crinkled over the soothing sounds of Lite FM. Mara hummed along with the song, “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings.” She couldn’t help herself, even though she hated that song. With fig seeds cracking between her teeth, Mara rolled her chair back to the filing cabinet behind her desk to get to the stock of new files. The stock drawer looked messed with, too, as if it had been clumsily searched through and then put back together again, with everything just a little out of place.

  What had he been looking for? He should know by now where I keep most everything.

  Mara stopped chewing. The books. Mara had two witchcraft books in her desk. A Wiccan spell book—Everyday Magick for Everyday People and The Basic Principles of Wicca. Mara opened the top middle drawer of her desk—the one she could lock, but never bothered to. Both books were still there. This drawer didn’t seem to have been disturbed. Well, whatever he’d been looking for, he must have found it before he got here. She took another Fig Newton from the packet.

  Did you ever know that you’re my heeee-roh?

  What has gotten into me? She hated this song—and now she couldn’t stop singing it. Mara turned the radio off and shivered. Ugh.

  The song kept running through her head. She couldn’t stop humming it. She couldn’t stop herself from singing.

  I want you to know I know the truth, of course I know it.

  Oh no. Mara swallowed a lu
mp of Fig Newton, forcing it down the back of her throat, then picked up the phone and dialed Claudia.

  As soon as her class was over and all her students had left, Claudia sat at her desk with a pen and paper and tried to write out her name. She couldn’t do it. No matter how she tried, her hand couldn’t make the pen move the way she willed it to. Claudia tried a few other words but all she ended up with was a paper with a hieroglyphic-like mix of scribbles and dashes and dots.

  What the hell was she going to do? I can’t write. Her thoughts ran from arthritis to Alzheimer’s—to all sorts of horrible autoimmune diseases due to which your body starts to attack itself, rendering you unable to control even the simplest motor functions. Just this morning she’d been able to type to check her e-mail, and she’d been able to get coffee in the break room without spilling. She’d tied her shoelaces before class. What could be so wrong with her hands now that she couldn’t write?

  Claudia leaned over her desk and put her head in her hands. She pulled her glasses off her face and rubbed the bridge of her nose for a moment, then absently started chewing on the frame of her glasses. When Claudia realized what she was doing, she pulled them from her mouth. Just what I need. Another nervous habit.

  What she really needed was to talk to someone from Book Club, Lindsay or Gail, but she couldn’t use her cell phone in the classroom and she didn’t have time to run down to the faculty lounge before her next class. She thought about closing the door—but with her luck, someone like April or Nurse Marion or Headmaster Peterson would barge in and catch her in the act of departing from school policy.

  She didn’t know what a call to either of her friends would do for her now, anyway. Lindsay had been so dismissive two weeks earlier when Claudia had told her she thought her wish had caused her to find an abandoned baby. Lindsay had the most amazing ability to skew reality to her point of view. When she was losing weight and her butt was getting smaller by the day, the wishes were working. But when Claudia found an abandoned baby in the trash after wishing for a baby—without delay— well, that was just a curious coincidence.