Wish Club (5 page)

“Besides,” Claudia continued, “with Lindsay as the driving force behind us, how long do you think she’ll stay with it before she decides we all really need to be learning how to free-dive instead?”

Jill’s head dropped and her shoulders shook. A laugh. She turned around, shaking her head, smiling with her eyes closed. “Oh, all right.”

She walked back from the table to the center of the room. “What the hell. Since when have I ever been accused of being a scaredy-cat party pooper? But can we not call it ‘witchcraft’? Can we call it that, um, Wicca circle thing from now on? Okay? Then I guess I’ll be in.” She raised her hand and waved it lamely next to her shoulder, her face saying,
I’m going along with this, but remember that I think it’s dumb.

Lindsay clapped her hands together and did her little hopping thing. Everyone started talking at once, enjoying a brief moment of relief from the tension of the past few minutes.

“Well, Glinda Good Witch,” Gail had a hand on her hip as she turned to Lindsay. “What do we do now?”

“Me?” Lindsay asked. “Why me?”

“This whole thing was your idea,” Claudia said. “This is your show, Linds.”

“I…” Lindsay stopped, and then continued. “There’s really nothing to qualify me here to know what to do next…”

“When has that ever stopped you?”

Lindsay pursed her lips at Claudia, then recovered quickly. “What I think we should do is—get a book.” She raised her eyebrows and continued with a laugh, “Just like a book club. We should get a witchcraft—uh, Wicca how-to book, if you will.”

Gail looked at her incredulously. “Oh sure, you mean like
A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Witchcraft
?”

“Ha!” Mara giggled. “
Wicca for Dummies.
”

“Ohhh.” Lindsay rolled her eyes. “No. A
real
book. I saw one at Borders called
The Sacredness of the Wiccan Way.
I just skimmed through it, and I don’t remember the author’s name, but I can find out. We should all get a copy of it and read it and then maybe take it from there. It was pretty big, but it explained the basics of how to practice witchcraft and went into all the rituals and terminology—”

“Terminology?” Mara looked worried now.

“The names of holidays and deities and things.”

“Deities?” Jill emphasized the “s” at the end, letting it hiss between her teeth. “There are deities?”

“It’s the neatest thing,” Lindsay said. “You get to choose your own gods.”

Jill widened her eyes again. “There are
gods
involved with this?” She closed her eyes for a moment and exhaled a huge breath. “If I ever make it to confession again, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

“You have to pick your own gods?” Claudia asked. “But how do you know? I mean, how do you choose?”

“The book talks about all the different pantheons you can choose from. Roman, Egyptian, Celtic—there’re a lot of them. Then you study up on them and find one you feel you belong to, one that you can align with.”

“Can you mix and match?” Mara cracked. “Hey, what if you pick gods that don’t get along with each other? What then?”

“Do they make pantheon Garanimals?”

“Gail, I think you should really start to take this more seriously—”

A horrible thought occurred to Claudia. She interrupted, “I just don’t want to have to be naked when we chant. We don’t have to be naked, do we?”

“Oh, of course not.” Lindsay rolled her eyes again. “All right, all right. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, why don’t we just see if we agree to buy this book and start studying it and start collecting the things we’ll need for our magical toolboxes?”

“Toolboxes too?” Jill asked. “We need
tools
for this, too?” She looked around at the women in her living room, as if she were trying to find some support. She held her eyes on Gail.

“I guess we can’t keep using Christmas candles forever.” Gail looked up, as if she were writing a mental shopping list. “We’ll need incense and herbs, probably lemon and salt, too.”

“Listen to you,” Claudia said.

Gail shrugged. “It’s shopping. I get excited about shopping.”

“Let’s see a show of hands to see if everyone is agreed—that this is how we should proceed.” Lindsay had her hand up again. “Who thinks we should get this book and start learning more about it?”

All the women raised their hands, holding them up more confidently this time, not too high, just even with their heads. Lindsay’s was waving excitedly in place. Jill’s palm flopped up to face the ceiling.

Claudia tried to hold her hand steady, but she felt her palm buzzing with an inexplicable energy, like an electric cloud, like static that builds up in your body when you walk across a rug in winter, just waiting to give you a shock when you touch something.

Chapter Five

Claudia
moved the eraser over the Dry Erase board in her classroom in large sweeping motions.
What was so wrong with chalk-boards?
Oh yeah, dangerous dust. Good grief. At least chalk never ran dry. She hated these dumb markers. They took away a small part of why she wanted to be a teacher. The pleasant way chalk pressed onto the board, the dust that fell, the smooth, creamy way it erased. Claudia sighed, then began plotting the rest of her day while she finished erasing the board.

Classes were over and she had a lot to accomplish in the remainder of her afternoon. She needed to get to a bookstore. There was a Borders right around the corner from school, and earlier she’d thought about stopping there on her lunch hour to pick up Lindsay’s recommended
Sacredness of the Wiccan Way,
but she had been afraid she might run into some of her sophomore English students there. They hung out in its café, tossing back espresso drinks with not just the feigned sophistication of Claudia’s adolescence, but with actual worldliness. They possessed the real poise and confidence that accompanied a childhood of affluence.

It was hard at times not to be intimidated by them, as they, supposedly going through their most awkward stage, seemed to have it more together than Claudia did. She imagined being called over to their table and asked to show them her literary selection. And why shouldn’t she? She was their English teacher, after all. In the process she would stammer and stutter, break into a sweat, drop her purchase, and then one of the girls would reach down and pick her
witchcraft
book up off of the floor with perfectly manicured fingernails, showing it around the table for all to see. “Look, Ms. Dubois is reading
The Sacredness of the Wiccan Way.
”

No. It would definitely be better all around if she went out of her way and stopped at the Barnes & Noble on Clybourn on her way home.

So after school it would be the bookstore first, and if she could manage to get in and out of there in less than half an hour (something akin to a miracle), she could still make it home before rush hour and in time to run by the dry cleaner’s to pick up something to wear for tomorrow, her available wardrobe getting dangerously thin. And then she had a lot of papers to grade tonight. The students were getting antsy because she hadn’t finished their latest essay exam yet. It had been three days.

“Ms. Dubois?” Claudia recognized the voice at her door instantly. Her shoulders fell, the eraser coming to rest at her side.

“Hello, April.”

Claudia turned to see April Sibley flipping her long hair over her shoulder with one hand. “I was wondering if you had a chance to grade my test yet.”

“I, uh…”

“I really need to know, because, as you know, I’m going for valedictorian and I really would like to,” she flipped her hair back over her shoulder again, even though it hadn’t budged, “see if I’m still on target for it, or if, on the off chance that I’m not,” April gave an
as if
laugh, “then maybe there’s some extra credit I could do to make up the grade.” She looked imploringly at Claudia, flipped her hair over her shoulder again, sniffed, and waited for an answer.

Perhaps on a different day, Claudia would have told April that she’d graded her test the previous night and that she’d gotten an A, but today Claudia wasn’t feeling generous. April always approached Claudia with a conspiratorial, us-against-them attitude, as if it were the two of them versus all the rest of the students, the ones April dubbed “slackers and wanna-bes,” those who failed to achieve April’s level of shining brilliance. Part of that might be because she was the headmaster’s niece, which made her feel she was more on the side of the teachers than the rest of the student body. Part of it was because April was a chatterbox and a suck-up.

Claudia wondered how much of what came out of April’s mouth was attributable to April, and how much of what she said was really the opinion of Headmaster Peterson. “I know you have to put up with it too, Ms. Dubois,” April had once confided. “Believe you me. I know what it’s like to have to deal with lazy slackers and their little jealousies.”

“The essay tests…” Claudia said it as if she were really thinking about them and not about how much she wanted to be rid of April. She turned to put the eraser on the ledge, and then back around to face April, who had already started talking again, as if her words could chase away any possibility of hearing she’d gotten a grade as mortifying as a B.

Claudia collected the papers on her desk, stacked them, and put them into her shoulder bag. April started saying something disparaging about her classmates’ ability to competently complete essay exams, and Claudia looked at April with astonishment.
How is it possible to have such an unwaveringly high opinion of oneself?
“I just don’t know where they think they’re going to get in life,” April said with a flip of her hair. “They won’t get very far, believe you me.” Claudia wanted to tell April she should be grateful for the lackadaisical tendencies of her peers, for without them she wouldn’t be
in the running for valedictorian.

April droned on, something about the importance of being valedictorian and her ability to become an Ivy Leaguer, which, to Claudia, made it sound as if April thought the whole process was like joining a country club.

Claudia tuned out. She hung her head down and then, because it felt so good, stretched her neck down farther, rolling it gently from side to side while staring down at her desk. Quite possibly, this desk had been in this classroom more years than the tree used to build it had been alive. Initials and dates had been carved into it by kids trying to make their mark, preserve a memento of themselves for posterity. Maybe even a few teachers had caved to the temptation. “Aldo was here” was Claudia’s favorite, written in the upper right-hand corner of the desk, angled in such a way as to fill the corner. “Aldo.” Claudia wondered at the poor child named Aldo, or was he really so deserving of her pity, being a child prone to arrogantly pronouncing his presence on other people’s furniture? Whatever. Aldo
was
here. April
was still
here and that was something she needed to fix.

“April,” Claudia interrupted. April had been saying something about her plans to apply to some schools just for the pleasure of turning them down. “April, I really am in a bit of a hurry today. I kind of have to get going.”

“Well. I just wanted to find out if you’d gotten to my test yet.”

“No, not yet,” Claudia lied.

“Do you think you’ll get to it tonight? It’s been three—”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to do any grading tonight. I’m afraid I have some personal business to attend to and I don’t think I’ll be able to get to those tests until, at the earliest, tomorrow night. But they should all be done by Friday.”

“Friday?” April looked as if she’d been slapped.

“Hopefully by Friday.”

“Hopefully?” April looked as if the wait would kill her. “But I really need to know my grade, because if I didn’t get an A and Gretchen Delaney gets an A on the Trig test then she’ll be ahead of me—”

“April, I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you your grade because I haven’t graded your test yet. Even if I had, it wouldn’t be fair to the other kids. If you must know, I haven’t gotten around to grading any of them yet. I’ve had quite a lot going on this week and I’m afraid I’ve been quite a
slacker
as far as my classwork goes. I wish I could tell you otherwise,
believe you me
—”

Claudia had gone too far. April looked as if she’d been slapped again.

Claudia cleared her throat. “Anyway, I do need to get going now.”

April’s eyes, which had momentarily clouded over in what could have been the precursor to tears, had now tensed into a look of pity, as if to say,
I should have known you were no better than the rest. I should have known not to trust you.

Christ,
Claudia thought,
leave it to me to piss off the headmaster’s niece. Leave it to me to bring her to tears. Shit.
Claudia put on what she hoped would look like an understanding smile.

“I’m sure you did fine, April. You always do. Regardless, we’re going to have to wait to see until Friday.”

Claudia swung her shoulder bag off the desk. “Try not to sweat it.” She walked over to the door and opened it, the smile still on her face. She held it open for April.

April flipped her hair over her shoulder one last time and laughed through her nose as she walked through the door, apparently her way of telling Claudia that slackers like her couldn’t understand the importance of these things.

Claudia stood there holding the door open to an empty room, watching April’s back as she walked away.
Shit,
was all she could think.

A
flash of white light caught Lindsay’s eye as she passed Bergenstorm’s. She stopped on the sidewalk and took a step backward and it flashed at her again, a beam from the display window’s overhead spotlight hitting the mirrored surface of some jewelry. Initially, she’d thought the light had been a reflection of the sun, because it was such a bright day, a midwinter treat. The nice weather had brought a lot of people outside. Lindsay stepped out of the foot traffic on Michigan Avenue and up to the jewelry store’s window, her breath misting it in the January chill. A locket had signaled her.

It was very similar to her great-great-grandmother’s, handed down through the generations, which now waited in her mother’s anxious hands. And it would have to keep waiting.

The heart-shaped locket was displayed on a bed of rumpled black velvet, meticulously arranged to look casually thrown there. Even the design on its surface was eerily familiar. Her family’s heir-loom probably was Bergenstorm’s silver. Established in 1885, the marquee proudly declared on the awning over her head, not unlike Tate’s Pharmacy and Apothecary, proudly established in 1872.

She wondered if her great-great-grandfather Tate had ever imagined that his little store that sold ointments—and probably snake oil—would become the Tate’s drug empire it was today. Probably he did. Tates were notoriously motivated.

Lindsay watched the rush of people behind her via the reflection in the window. She really should get going, too. She had a four-o’clock meeting at the Women’s Foundation headquarters. Their spring fundraiser, the Spring Fashion Show Extravaganza, was coming up in March, and Lindsay was on the committee, responsible for luncheon and flowers.

Lindsay watched with perplexed curiosity as all these society women at the Foundation planned their luncheons. It was as if they didn’t get it. They had all this money, all this power, and they used it to
have lunch.
Of course they were raising money for all sorts of causes, and she supposed it wasn’t everyone who could go off and join the Peace Corps, but ever since she was a little girl she had found herself looking around her and wondering at the unfairness of it all.

How come she was born an heiress to the Tate’s Drugstore fortune, and little girls her same age were going to bed hungry each night in India? “What can you do?” had been her mother’s refrain as she tucked Lindsay into her canopied bed, but that was exactly Lindsay’s question: what can you do? More than lunch. More than fashion shows. Her mother had always said that trying to change the whole world was folly, that the best you could do was to try to change your own little corner of it, but Lindsay didn’t believe that was necessarily true.

But it wasn’t so easy. Trying to get these women to change their minds about how they did their good deeds was like trying to turn a fast-moving barge. And Lindsay, despite her family name, never felt she carried enough influence. She always felt that somehow, when she spoke up, people looked at her as if to say,
why are you talking?
Whether it was all in her imagination—as Claudia said—or not, she still felt victimized. It still hurt.

Lindsay wondered if she’d be more popular and influential if maybe she were prettier, or thinner—but she watched other women at the Foundation, plain women, chubby women, and they seemed to have plenty of influence. And she knew it wasn’t about the money. Even Claudia, who always seemed to be so in awe of the Tate fortune, had more influence than Lindsay. At Book Club, the women soaked up her words every time she spoke. Not that Claudia could see it. She always focused on how she’d tripped over her words, instead of how much what she said was valued by the group. And then there was Mara, who seemed to think that having money would solve everything, that it was the means to happiness. Lindsay pictured Mara’s two big beautiful sons and wanted to give her a thump on the head.

Lindsay clenched the front of her coat, pulling it more tightly over her chest. She held her hand over her heart for a moment, over the place a locket might go. She looked down at the locket in the store window, so similar to the one meant for her, for her children. The one she most likely would never have.

When
Claudia pulled into the parking lot at Barnes & Noble she was still thinking about April Sibley, annoyed with April for being April and with herself for letting April get to her. Why had she snipped like that at a student?