Wish Club

by Kim Strickland

  “She’ll be back casting spells and putting curses on bad guys before you know it.” Mara flipped down a wrist. She pretended to just notice Dr. Seeley’s startled expression. “Oh, you know I’m only kidding.” She laughed.

  Dr. Seeley smiled uncertainly along with Mara. She was surprised the gesture didn’t make his face creak.

  “Well, anyway.” He coughed. “Carry on.” He backed away from her toward his office.

  Carry on? That man could be so annoying. The way he talked down to her sometimes. Snooping around her desk. Listening in on conversations. And she’d had it with his condescending, judgmental manner.

  She checked her watch. She’d better get to work soon or he’d be back over here growling at her. At least her stomach wasn’t growling all the time anymore. It was almost lunchtime, but Mara decided to finish up the filing before she ate.

  Thank goodness Greta’s spell reversal had been a success. Mara wasn’t singing spontaneously anymore either, and she’d lost four pounds of the weight she’d gained. One pound a week. If only the weight loss would happen for her as effortlessly as it had seemed to happen for Lindsay. But Mara didn’t dare ask for that. A diet was small penance.

  Her appetite was back to normal: no more downing entire boxes of Girl Scout cookies in one session. And Henry had returned to shaving once a day, his extra hair falling out. She’d found a small clump of it on the bathroom floor and had immediately begun to chastise Tippy for leaving bits of himself lying about, until she picked up the clump and realized, after closer analysis, that it must have come from Henry’s back.

  Dr. Bernstein said the results of the hormone tests he’d done were inconclusive. The only explanation he could offer for the onset of Henry’s hairiness—and then its subsequent loss—was stress.

  Mara had never told Henry anything about the wishing and he hadn’t heard any of the early rumors floating around the Strawn Academy about himself or his wife, either. He had, however, noticed the silences that fell over the faculty break room when he entered, and the strained smiles he got in the halls, but he’d thought it was because of all his new hair. He’d never suspected it was because of a rumor that his witchy wife and her book group had turned him into some sort of werewolf. It wasn’t until he’d come up behind a group of boys at baseball practice three weeks earlier that he’d learned the truth.

  “Yeah—his wife and Ms. Dubois are in the same book club. They’re witches,” one of the boys was saying.

  “Shut up.”

  “No, really. Just look at the guy; they’ve turned him into a werewolf. And then Ms. Dubois finds that baby in the bathroom. I’m tellin’ you, this school is like an episode of Supernatural.”

  “Shut up,” the other boy had said again, a harsh whisper this time, because Coach O’Connor was now standing right behind them.

  Henry had confronted Mara that night. It was only a few days after Jill’s abduction and at first Mara had started to deny it, giving him the parlor-game /Ouija-board routine, but she’d stopped mid-sentence.

  “Henry, I’m sorry. The truth is, I think we did this to you.” And then she told him everything.

  It was true, she thought, about the truth setting you free. As soon as she’d told him she felt better, and he hadn’t reacted the way she’d thought he would. He’d actually seemed oddly supportive. Like he kinda wouldn’t have minded a wife that was a witch. “Maybe turn some of the more horrid students of mine into frogs.” He’d laughed.

  She’d thought that’s what would happen, that they’d start learning witchcraft with Greta, but in the end everyone had chickened out. Even Lindsay. They’d all realized that they could get the things they wanted from life without lighting candles, chanting chants, or putting herbs in a bucket.

  But mostly, nobody wanted to risk casting another doozie.

  As much as Mara had been charmed by the idea of casting spells, she’d decided that she’d be better off without that particular brand of wishing. In fact, half the battle of getting what you wanted was just realizing what that was—and not even witchcraft could help her with that.

  Instead, Mara had asked Henry if he would mind if she took some voice lessons, maybe eventually get a job at a piano lounge somewhere. “You know, someplace nice.”

  “I always wondered if maybe someday you’d go back to singing,” he’d said. “I was hoping, actually. I always felt like I was the one who took it away from you.”

  “You didn’t take anything away. You gave me everything.” And as soon as she had said it, she realized how very much it was true.

  Mara now picked up a file and pushed it into its proper place on the shelf. “Ow. Damn it.” She watched blood seep into the white line on her finger. A paper cut. Mara put her finger into her mouth.

  This sucked. The truth was, she hated this job. The truth was, she didn’t need this job. Her boys could work during college. They could take out loans. They didn’t need for her to have this job. What was it that she and Henry didn’t have that she couldn’t live without? Nothing. She had everything she needed. Life is way too short, she thought. I could go at any minute. Just look at what almost happened to Jill. And suddenly she had a great idea.

  Mara dropped the stack of files she’d been holding onto the top of her desk. She looked at the sailboat watercolor. Only 365 days in a year and I’m not wasting another one of them.

  Mara walked down the short hall and knocked on the door to Dr. Seeley’s office, a brief courtesy, and then she just opened it.

  He looked up, completely taken aback at her audacity. He hadn’t granted her permission to enter. His fat lips were pursed out dangerously far.

  “Dr. Seeley,” Mara said. “I quit.”

  Dandayamana Dhanurasana. Sanskrit for Standing Bow Pulling Pose. Lindsay stood on one leg, with one hand holding an ankle and the other reaching for her reflection in the mirror, palm to the ground, her arm stretching forward solid and strong—a laser.

  Sweat trickled down her back, under the palm of the hand holding her ankle, down the side of her face. Fabulous! Her skin had never felt so young. The balancing series in Bikram yoga was hard, but after a couple months, she’d begun to master it. She didn’t fall out as much as she used to.

  “Kick, kick, kick,” the instructor was saying. “Play with it. If I don’t see you guys falling out in the second set, I know you’re not pushing hard enough.”

  In the end it was all about balance. Lindsay stood in rest position, her heart racing. Strong. That’s how she felt now. Strong. She set up for Balancing Stick.

  Her reputation at the foundation hadn’t been as tainted as she’d expected after her fainting episode and the witch rumors. Lindsay was now cochairing a silent auction that was coming up in the fall. Even Evelyn Cantwell seemed to have forgiven her for passing out on her dessert. She’d asked Lindsay to join the guidance committee on the redecorating of the ladies’ lounge at foundation headquarters. Lindsay had heard that when it got back to Evelyn that Lindsay had suggested mauve as the main color scheme, Evelyn hadn’t been sure if Lindsay was serious or if somehow she was making Evelyn the brunt of a joke.

  Some of the women had even approached her about the rumors later, to ask her if they might be true, and Lindsay had surprised herself by not vehemently denying them. In fact, she’d practically encouraged them.

  “A witch? Of course. And I can’t wait until everyone sees me on my new Versace broom.” The interesting thing was the women seemed really curious about it, as though it were something they’d always been interested in or wanted to pursue themselves.

  Deep down, Lindsay thought, every woman knows she’s a witch. But they could have it. Lindsay had decided against witchcraft as a means of achieving what she wanted out of life. She glanced at her butt in the mirror as she turned for Standing Separate Leg Stretching. Thank goodness it’s not growing back too much. She’d been keeping up her fitness routine, although not as rigorously as before. But she had added Bikram yoga.

  It was like
what Greta had told them: the Universe is a witty wordsmith. Her pun, the message for her, had been to get off her butt. Quite literally. It wasn’t so much her wish as her decision, her commitment to it, that finally helped her lose the weight. And now Lindsay realized that if she wanted to change the world, she should just get off her butt and do it, with or without the Chicago Women’s Foundation.

  Lindsay stood, legs wide apart. She bent at the waist, putting her butt in the air, and tried to touch her forehead to the floor. One of the more ridiculous positions she’d found herself in, but really no more ridiculous than fainting on streusel after being accused of being a witch.

  With her arms spread wide, Lindsay held her own eyes in the mirror as her upper body did a swan dive. I look beautiful. The thought floated through her head. It shocked her to have such a lovely thought about herself, and she decided it would be her own secret; no one else would have to know.

  Her hands found her heels and she pulled her head close, close, closer to the floor. Perhaps today, her forehead would finally touch it. She snuck a peek at the woman behind her, whose forearms paralleled her calves.

  This yoga, it was invigorating, in spite of the heat and the sweat, which she didn’t seem to notice anymore. It was something she could see doing for a long, long time. Lindsay smiled, relaxed a little more, and the burning in her hamstrings started to subside.

  Much to her surprise she felt her forehead bump the floor, and a laugh escaped her. Saltwater filled her eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Claudia sat at the long mahogany table, watching the water condense on the outside of her glass. Everyone had a glass of ice water in front of them and several pitchers were placed strategically around the table. The tiny dots of water on the outside of her glass grew larger and larger, some of them joining together with others to form rivulets that rolled down the side, gathering steam as they picked up more and more followers on their cascade to the bottom. They hadn’t given her a coaster. Fine, they can accuse me of leaving a watermark, too.

  Claudia was in a lot of trouble. The Strawn Academy frowned on its teachers getting themselves involved in anything that might bring notoriety to the school. And Claudia’s life the past several months had been fraught with notoriety. It was why Peterson had called her at home. He’d wanted—in his transparent, ingratiating way—to tell her the school board was going to put her questionable conduct on the agenda of their next meeting.

  So now, here she sat at her own personal Salem witch trial: the Strawn Academy school board’s annual spring meeting.

  Instead of taking the word of some adolescent girls, as had the elders of Salem, the accusers here at Strawn were taking the word of some mysterious, unnamed informant. It seemed worse than the Salem witch trials to Claudia, because, as one look at Marion con-firmed, the same kind of self-serving hysterics portrayed in The Crucible were still in operation now, more than three hundred years later.

  Claudia would be required to defend herself against the board’s many “concerns” about her. She had found an abandoned baby in a school bathroom, and then she had had the audacity to try to foster the child. She was, and continued to be, involved in a book group that was rumored to be practicing witchcraft. And there were strange reports coming from her classroom: her teaching ability had been called into question by a reported unwillingness or inability to write on the board.

  Outside the window of the conference room, the buds on the trees had started to open into leaves. The lilacs lining the circular drive were in full bloom on the south lawn, and, if the windows had been open, their rich scent would have wafted in. The sun was shining in a beautiful blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, and on this bright May morning, the outside air finally felt warm, a hope-filled hint of the coming summer. Claudia wanted to throw up.

  Ever since she’d peed on that First Response stick and watched her urine soak into the scientific paper, turning both lines pink—in seconds, not minutes like the package said—she was no longer able to discount her morning nausea as nerves. She’d been stunned at the result. She’d been so caught up in losing Elliot, in Book Club’s errant wishes, in Jill, and in this hearing, that her quest to have a baby had taken a backseat.

  The complete unexpectedness of a positive pregnancy test blew her mind. Her period had been over a week late and she hadn’t even noticed! When Claudia finally had looked over her neglected sheet of graph paper, she’d been more convinced of the possibility that she’d misplaced an entire week of her life than the possibility she could actually be that late. After she’d taken the test, she’d sat down straddling the toilet, trying to get her head to stop spinning. The little plastic stick rested on the ceramic lid and Claudia sat there staring at the two pink lines.

  The real shock had come when she told Dan. She’d wrapped the pregnancy test in wrapping paper and ribbon and nervously handed it to him when he got home from work.

  He’d looked at her, puzzled.

  Claudia had been purposefully cagey. “I hope you like it,” she said. “You’re going to have it for a long, long time.”

  After he opened it and realized what he was looking at, he picked her up in a big bear hug and spun her around, then set her back down, a terrified look on his face, as if he were afraid he’d hurt her or the baby somehow. He was so happy, so excited. His eyes glazed up. Pure joy. She hadn’t really known what to expect, but she hadn’t expected that. He had told her that losing Elliot had changed his mind about wanting a baby of his own.

  “I thought I would be more relieved, you know?” Dan said. “But it made me sad. I felt disappointed. It was weird. Totally not what I’d expected. That’s when I knew if we got pregnant, it would be okay. More than okay. It would be great.”

  And then what she liked to refer to as the “New Dan,” the new, happier Dan, had started to appear more and more. He had talked about buying a condo. We’ve got a ton saved up, when you really think about it. More than enough for a down payment, and a little bit of a cushion. He had begun talking about starting his business soon. I don’t really know why I’ve been putting it off for so long. Fear, I guess. It’s like having a baby. You never feel like you’re ready, so you might as well just jump right in and hope for the best. And he’d started scheduling his Structures tests and formulating his business plan, just like that. It was as though her pregnancy had become his inspiration.

  The wish for Dan, to make him happy, had been an overwhelming success. It was ironic, Claudia thought, that the most unselfish wish she’d made was the one that brought her the most happiness. Then again, maybe that wasn’t irony at all.

  Claudia turned her attention back inside the conference room.

  “But now that the grandparents have come forward, I think it’s really out of our hands,” one of the board members was saying.

  Elliot’s mother had left Strawn a few weeks earlier, when her identity had been made known. Her family was moving back east so she would be able to put all that nastiness behind her. The fact that they didn’t want custody of Elliot simultaneously surprised Claudia—and didn’t surprise her. She couldn’t imagine a family not wanting to keep their own grandchild, no matter what the circumstances of his conception. Then again, she’d been watching these Strawn families for so many years now, she really should have learned not to be surprised at anything.

  Elliot’s mother had been a senior at Strawn and the identity of Elliot’s father, when Claudia learned it, had helped to explain, at least partially, why Elliot’s family had not wanted custody of him. Elliot’s teenage mother had been having an affair with her father’s middle-aged business partner.

  So, April Sibley was not Elliot’s mother. Although she had been in the bathroom at the same time as the mother. In fact, she’d been there while the mother had been giving birth, but April, in her naïveté, had assumed the girl had just been constipated. The mother had the added misfortune of having worn very cool shoes that day, which April had noted, because she had thought it would
be fun to out the girl for taking such a vociferous dump. Her brand-new pair of Skechers were what had given her away.

  It had, however, taken April a while to admit she had this information—more likely because of her embarrassment at not having realized what she’d witnessed rather than because of any desire on her part to protect a slacker or a wanna-be.

  Elliot’s other grandparents—his father’s parents—wanted custody of him now. A rumored quote from the grandmother ran something to the effect of, “Elliot couldn’t possibly be any more of a screw-up than our son.” Which made Claudia like them instantly.

  It made her happier to know that Elliot was going to be with his family, but that didn’t take away from the hurt she felt at losing him. Perhaps it was a small price to pay for dabbling in witchcraft. And she should be grateful that at least she’d had Elliot in her life long enough for him to work his own kind of magic on her and Dan.

  Now Peterson was talking about what implicitly condoning witchcraft could mean for the school.

  At least he wasn’t talking about the “warning signs” of teen pregnancy anymore. What a moron. Claudia tuned him out. She was finding it hard to concentrate on anything these days, with all the hormones coursing through her. She really needed something to eat, to settle her stomach, and she opened a packet of crackers she took from her purse, rattling the cellophane below the edge of the table, hoping it wouldn’t disturb anyone. A few of the board members closest to her looked her way.

  What are they going to do now, she thought, kick me out for eating crackers?

  The water droplets on the outside of her glass had become huge; they looked like bubbles floating in midair. She took a drink and set the glass back on the table, feeling she’d committed another crime somehow, that maybe the water wasn’t there to actually drink.

  Claudia was due in December and she thought this was a good sign; her baby would be home for the holidays. Even if she did get to keep her job, she wouldn’t be able to finish out the school year that would start the next fall. The following spring semester would be void of April Sibley and spit-wad fights and Marion Chutterman and Peterson. No more inquiries into found babies. No more ice water at Strawn school board meetings. Claudia had a vision of herself sitting on a blanket on her living-room floor, playing with the baby, waving one of those black-and-white toys in the air, both of them smiling.