Three Wishes

by Liane Moriarty

  "You're such a ham sandwich, Dad."

  And to her surprise Lyn found herself reaching up to plant a kiss on her father's cheek.

  "What a lucky fellow I am," said Frank.

  CHAPTER 28

  Bottles. Nappies. Wipes. Lotion. Baby powder. Bedtime book. Pajamas. Overalls for tomorrow. Spare clothes for tonight. Funny bathtime toy. Cuddly, sleepytime toy. Noisy, quick-distract-him-with-this toy. Keep-for-full-on-wailing-emergency toy. Oh! What about one of the toys they gave him? That would look good. Favorite apple and pear baby food. Package of rusks.

  What else?

  Gemma was packing a bag for Sal's first overnight trip. He was going to stay with Charlie's parents while Gemma and Charlie went to the wedding.

  His parents didn't approve of Gemma. They found the whole business of their son becoming an instant Daddy upsetting and suspicious. Plus, they unfairly connected Gemma to Dan--their youngest daughter's highly unsuitable new boyfriend who had taken her off to France before she finished her law degree.

  On visits, Gemma sat stiffly and smiled inanely, while Charlie and his parents spoke in rapid-fire, angry-sounding Italian. His nonsmiling mother kept pushing plates of food in Gemma's direction, while his father punched the tabletop a great deal. It was stressful. Gemma was used to people liking her.

  "Well really, Gemma," said Maxine. "What do you expect? I wouldn't approve of you either!"

  But his parents did approve of Sal and Sal approved of them, virtually shot-putting himself out of Gemma's arms whenever he saw them.

  Gemma zipped up the bulging bag and went through her mental checklist one more time. She'd probably forgotten something fundamental that would show her up as an unhygienic, unfit mother.

  What if they just refused to give Sal back? What if they called the Department of Community Services and said, "Take a look at this overnight bag. Can you believe it? Calls herself a mother!"

  She felt cold with fear at the thought. And then they'd find out that she had been planning to have Sal adopted, planning to abandon him. "You never wanted him in the first place," they'd say.

  During those first few months, when Sal would cry and cry for no reason, it sounded to Gemma like a cry of grief. "You never wanted me! You were giving me away!"

  As she paced back and forth down the hallway of Charlie's little flat, rocking and patting and begging him to please, please, please stop crying, guilt would knot her stomach.

  One night at 3 A.M., after Sal had cried for two hours straight, Charlie, with red-rimmed eyes, said, "Why don't we get Cat on the phone? Tell her we've changed our minds. She can have him after all."

  Gemma burst into tears.

  "I was joking!" said Charlie, and the genuine distress on his face made Gemma cry even harder because he was so sweet, so wonderful, and she'd abandoned him too. ("So you're the girl who broke his heart," said Charlie's best friend when he met Gemma for the first time.)

  "Maybe you've got that postnatal depression," said Charlie, while Gemma and Sal wailed into his chest.

  "I've got post-me depression," said Gemma.

  The next day Charlie phoned Maxine, and she appeared like the cavalry.

  "Three!" exclaimed Gemma, watching her rock the baby. "You had three Sals, all at once! And you were twenty-one!"

  "It was a nightmare of truly epic proportions," said Maxine grandly. "It was the worst time of my entire life."

  "It must have been," breathed Gemma. "My God."

  "Your sister said exactly the same thing a few months after Maddie was born," said Maxine. "I'm looking forward to when Cat has a similar revelation. That will be especially satisfying."

  Sal's head lolled drunkenly in the crook of Maxine's arm.

  "There was always one of you crying." Maxine brushed a fingertip along the length of Sal's eyelashes. "Always. I used to long for just one moment when all three of you were simultaneously happy."

  Now Gemma gave up trying to think of anything else that Sal could possibly need and carried the overnight bag out beside the front door.

  "We need to leave here in twenty minutes if we're going to make it," called Charlie from the bedroom, where he was dressing Sal. "Did you hear me? Twenty minutes."

  He sounded slightly irritable.

  In a funny way, Gemma quite liked it when he was annoyed with her. He didn't become someone else. He didn't frighten her. He didn't make her feel ashamed.

  He just got in a bad mood every now and then. Like people did.

  Sometimes, she still felt the beginning of that icy breeze whistling around her bones, but now she had a cure. She simply thought back to the night when Sal was born and she was in the ambulance listening to Charlie's voice on the mobile telling her how a lightbulb worked. "There's a thin little piece of wire and it resists the flow of electricity. That's why the filament glows...Everything has to flow back to earth, you see...Look, Gemma, you're not planning on rewiring or something like that, are you?"

  It was like remembering the words to a beautiful poem. "...It resists the flow of electricity...That's why it glows..."

  She put her head around the door. Sal was chortling up at his father, his legs windmilling wildly while Charlie attempted to hold him still to dress him.

  "I love you," she said.

  Charlie said crossly, "I should think so."

  Frank and Maxine were married for the second time in the little white gazebo on the grassy area opposite Balmoral Beach. Picnicking families and hand-in-hand couples all watched the event with interest from behind their sunglasses.

  Maddie was flower girl and was so entranced by her own prettiness that she managed to be good for the entire ceremony, swaying the silky skirt of her dress. Kara brought along a tall, skinny boy, who actually looked a lot like her father but fortunately nobody was foolish enough to mention it. Nana Kettle wore hot pink and spoke at length about her charming new neighbor, George. George's wife, Pam, was very ill. Nana hoped Pam wouldn't be in pain for too much longer.

  Before they went off to dinner, the photographer that Lyn had organized took some spectacular shots of the family with the sun setting behind them.

  But the best one, the one they got framed and blown up afterward, was one that he took without their even noticing.

  It's when they were all walking toward the restaurant. Nana Kettle has stopped to give a demonstration of her newly acquired tai chi skills and is squatting slightly at the knees, her hands curled in the air. Cat, Gemma, and Lyn are all doing their own untrained, unbalanced versions of tai chi moves, and Gemma is in the process of toppling over toward her sisters. Charlie and Michael are walking behind them, their heads thrown back, laughing. Maddie has stopped to admire her new shoes. Kara and her new boyfriend are also looking at their shoes and secretly holding hands.

  Frank and Maxine are holding hands too. Frank is striding ahead, looking at his watch. Maxine has turned back to watch her daughters. One hand is shading her eyes. She's smiling.

  Epilogue

  But wait, I'm not finished!

  Listen to this! About six months later, I go and meet Cheryl from school one Saturday afternoon. She's all la-di-da at Mosman now, so we go down to Balmoral Beach for coffee. Anyway, we were watching this wedding party come back from having their photos taken. These two old people had got married, which was sort of cute.

  All of a sudden, this girl in the party calls out to me, Olivia! And it's them! The weird triplets from the restaurant! I was like, oh my God, I don't believe it! I was really flattered that they remembered my name!

  So the three of them come over for a chat and turns out it was their parents getting married, for the second time! Seems like the whole family is pretty wacko tobacco.

  The one who'd been pregnant was all skinny again and I'm freaking out, thinking, Oh no, what if the baby died from the fork? I didn't like to ask. But then she said she'd had a little boy and he was fine and showed me photos. So that was a relief. I hate trying to work out what to say with, you know, tragedies and
that sort of stuff.

  The one who threw the fork, she seemed different. I couldn't tell why. I think maybe she got her hair cut.

  They asked me if I recognized the photographer--and I said, hey, he was there that night at the table next to you, wasn't he? And they said, Yeah. Then the fork-thrower, she goes to me, Do you think he's cute? When she said that, her sisters just went off! They're going, Oooh, she likes him, she likes him! You know, even though they're in their thirties, they still act really young and normal. Cheryl could not believe it when I told her how old they were! I'm going to be like that when I get old.

  Anyway, the fork-thrower gives me a wink and says, I'm going to ask him on a date, what do you think? I said, I think you should. I thought her sisters were going to have heart attacks they were so excited.

  So she went off to talk to the photographer.

  By the look on his face, I reckon he said yes, for sure.

  A Reading Group Guide

  to

  Three Wishes

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Told from the perspective of spectators, the prologue begins with a fight between the sisters that ends with a fork protruding from the pregnant sister's belly. How does this event as the opening affect the way in which you read the rest of the novel? How does hearing the story from a variety of viewpoints affect you?

  2. Short vignettes of people who have observed the triplets throughout their lives are interspersed throughout the novel. What was the author trying to achieve with this technique? Was it successful? How does it remind you of the film It's a Wonderful Life?

  3. Why did Gemma never tell her sisters, with whom she shared everything, about the abuse from her fiance? What would her sisters have done had they known? Why didn't Lyn and Cat notice the abuse? We don't learn of the abuse until well into the novel. How does this affect your understanding of why Gemma lives her life the way she does?

  4. Ultra-organized and efficient, Lyn begins to experience panic attacks. Why does she hide them from her sisters and her husband? How are the panic attacks a message to Lyn about changes she needs to make?

  5. Cat learns that her perfect marriage to the perfect husband is not so perfect after all. She believed that she and Dan had great communication and love, but Dan has an affair. How could her understanding of their relationship be so wrong? How does Lyn and Dan's secret relationship prior to Cat and Dan's affect Cat's relationship with her husband and her sister?

  6. Coincidentally, the woman Dan has an affair with is also the sister of Gemma's new boyfriend, Charlie. How does this affect the tension of the story?

  7. When Cat learns that Charlie's sister is Dan's "other woman," she demands that Gemma break up with Charlie. Why did Cat think she had the right to ask this of Gemma? Describe the sisters' relationships with men. How are they manifestations of their personalities? How does sibling rivalry affect the decisions they make about their lives, including the men they choose?

  8. How do each of the sister's relationships with their mother and father differ? Do you think the rekindling of their mother and father's relationship will last? Why?

  9. How do your opinions of Lyn, Cat, and Gemma change from the beginning of the novel to the end? Are you surprised by their transformations?

  10. Humor runs throughout Three Wishes. It endears us to the characters and provides a buffer to some of the "heavier" issues that arise in the story. How would this story be different if the author had not used humor as effectively?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am so grateful to the following long-suffering friends and family members for reading drafts, making suggestions, and encouraging me to keep writing: Vanessa Proctor, Jaci Moriarty, Colin McAdam, Petronella McGovern, Marisa Medina, and Diane Moriarty. A special thank-you to my U.S. agent Faye Bender for her wonderful support of the book and everyone at HarperCollins, especially my lovely editor, Alison Callahan.

  The book Twins: Genes, Environment and the Mystery of Identity (1997) by Lawrence Wright was very helpful to me in understanding the special relationships between triplets.

  About the Author

  The eldest of six children, LIANE MORIARTY grew up in Sydney and was one of those annoying little girls whose friends had to hide their books when she came to play. She grew up to be an advertising copywriter and has written everything from Web sites and catalogs to television commercials and cereal box copy. She is writing her second novel.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  PRAISEFOR

  Three Wishes

  "I adored Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty.... It's fresh, very, very funny, accessible, and entertaining. But it's also intelligent and unsentimental about family dynamics. Moriarty doesn't pull any punches, and I appreciated how she didn't produce any last-minute sugar-coating out of the hat. I really did believe in the strength of the characters to pull through. In fact, it made me believe in the resilience of the human race!"

  --Marian Keyes, author of Sushi for Beginners and Under the Duvet

  "Liane Moriarty is a wonderfully perceptive observer of women. More than accomplished, this is a stunning debut. Bright, funny, smart, and warm. A winner. A joyful, bighearted valentine to sisters. Full of charm and cleverness. Perceptive, right-on. A rich, enticing birthday cake of a book."

  --Patricia Gaffney, author of The Saving Graces

  "Why it's a beach read: because three funny heroines are three times the fun."

  --Dallas Morning News

  "An entertaining exploration of an offbeat, yet surprisingly ordinary, family. You'll long to make friends with these delightful young women."

  --Woman's Day

  "Moriarty's first novel, written with wisdom, humor, and sincerity, is an honest look at sisters who have a bond stronger than anything life throws their way."

  --Booklist

  "Moriarty's novel is a winning combination of smart-alecky fun and feel-good mush (mostly the former). Her writing is smart and playful...her characters are quirky and lovable, and her clever plot turns--like the rekindled love between the triplets' divorced parents--are fun."

  --Publishers Weekly

  "A quick read and a great debut."

  --San Antonio Express-News

  "A compelling story. Once you've started this, you won't want to put it down."

  --Cleo

  "An excellent novel.... Three Wishes is a funny, light novel drawing on themes that anyone who has struggled with their identity as part of, and separate from, their family will thoroughly enjoy."

  --Good Reading(Australia)

  "Moriarty has written a cheeky, chunky first novel with wit, humor, and a lively story that is just the thing to stick in a beach bag."

  --Melbourne Herald Sun

  "A funny, wry, touching tale of triplets.... Each of the beautifully drawn characters is so vividly alive, their triumph becomes your own."

  --Australian Women's Weekly

  "[An] amiable book."

  --Sydney Morning Herald

  Copyright

  THREE WISHES. Copyright (c) 2004 by Liane Moriarty. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Sony Reader January 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-167129-6

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