Wishless

With the edge of my thumb wedged between my teeth, hot mustard on my tongue, breath trapped behind my tonsils, I was thinking, Jiminy Cricket, one year, speed. My grandmother, with the interstate mapped on her palms, took hold of two fortune cookies. I chose the one on the left. She gave me the other. I told myself it was just a stupid greasy biscuit, and not a crystal ball. I cracked it in two and peeled back the tiny curl of paper. It said, “You will live a long and happy life.”
Those damn things were never right.
It’s no problem. We all have a number, our calling card to the great beyond, which coincides with our allotted days on this great planet earth. If Doc Abner knew anything about anything then mine was 6752, give or take a few. I got sick when I was a little over 16. Most of the girls I knew at that age got one-up parties, where outdoing each other was a must, and in-your-face gifts like diamond stud earrings and in the case of one girl from school, a cherry red Mustang convertible.
Me? I got sarcoidosis. Long, boring disease. Considerably painless. Considerably terminal. Not in most cases. However, I am not most cases. I am the Exception.
I still remember how I felt the day I got the news. No longer human, in that moment I was a steel gray cloud, suspended in mid-air, wringing tears like so many angry, terrified raindrops. And then, after that I felt relief.
I would be with my mom again. It’s what I’d been wanting for so long.
“When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.” From Pinocchio—the classic hook, line and sinker of hope.
* * * *

Doc Abner was nervous because I smiled. He was so cute. Like 60, five-foot-five, five-six if you account for the world’s worst toupee on top of his head. He thought I was loony, still does. Every time we meet I make him tell me again, for the sport of it. On our last visit, one month ago:
“What do you think, Doc?”
“It’s hard to say how long you have, Francesca. I’d be God or I’d be guessing if I did.”
Doc Abner’s hair was crooked as usual. As he leaned over me with his moth ball jacket and stethoscope bathed in rubbing alcohol, I thought his wig would topple forward and land right on my chest.
“Be God,” I said.
“Excuse me?” He straightened up, adjusted his tie and lifted a hand toward his scalp. He had a thin line of lint in his neck fold and two chins. Both of them jiggled.
“Guessing is fine.”
His face turned light crimson; his voice went unsteady. “Twelve months, maybe more, maybe less. You’re the exception, got yourself a diabolical strain. I’m so sorry.”
I faked an unaffected shrug and a grin. “Everyone has to die.”
Seriously, I wasn’t out of my mind. It sucked. Mostly ’cause there were so many things I hadn’t done yet and wouldn’t ever, if Doc Abner knew anything about anything.
But there was no sense in wasting precious time being bitter, not when there was a plan in place. It wasn’t my idea. My mother came to wake me at 2 a.m., shortly after I found out about the Big S, in her dreamy way, all silver screen lit, far off and close at hand. It’s how we communicated ever since she died six years ago. No matter what you might think, it’s true.
She looked exactly the same: long, shiny waves in her walnut colored hair, her left eye pinched at the corner. An easy smile.
“Chessie”—it’s what she used to call me, what most everyone calls me—“collect your wishes. Choose them carefully. Make a list, start with three or four. If you want them badly enough, they just might come true.”
“My wishes? I don’t know what they are.” I stretched my hand out for hers, but there was nothing to touch, only a warm spot of gardenia scented atmosphere.
“They’re inside you, Chessie. Don’t be afraid. Opening your heart doesn’t mean it will break.”
“How? I don’t know how.”
She didn’t answer. She would always make me have to figure stuff out all on my own. Nothing had changed since she’d been gone.
“Trust yourself. You’re stronger and smarter than you think.”
“I miss you so much, Mama. I’m scared.”
“Don’t be afraid, my darling. You’ll be fine. Don’t be afraid.”
With her words I gave fear a shove and set off in search of my deepest desires. I also made a vow that nobody, other than my grandmother, would ever know I was sick. It would make things weirder than they already were. Everyone would greet me with that dreary, helpless, Oh, that poor, poor girl face. And even if they never said so out loud, I’d know exactly what they were thinking.
Chessie Madrid is the girl who can’t escape death.
Not so. I’m the girl with four wishes, offered from the lips of my very own angel.
The morning that followed the visit from my mom I tore a sheet out of a half-used spiral notebook and began.
1) I wish for a brother or sister. Okay, really a sister would be cooler. Someone to tell me I’m wearing too much mascara, or too little. She might be handy for doing the things sisters do, like sharing sweaters and secrets. “I won’t tell Gram you smoke, if you don’t tell her I snuck out last night.” But for seventeen years, two weeks and three days I’ve had to go it alone. Using too much or too little mascara, wearing my own sweaters and keeping my own secrets.
This was an old wish. A ridiculous wish. Surely you couldn’t conjure up a sibling from mere longing any more than you could change the color of your eyes. Yet, there it was in first position.
2) I wish a boy would fall in love with me. Well, not any old boy. My best friend Meg’s big brother, Johnny. Twenty, just finished two years of college, and recently moved back home. I hated his girlfriend for the simple fact that I wasn’t her. Meg had no idea I was crazy about Johnny. If I told her she’d roll her sharp blue eyes and cough up a laugh. She said he’s built for speed, not comfort. But, speed, in my case wasn’t necessarily a negative. Meg also had no idea I kissed him once during a New Year’s Eve party—my first—when someone suggested playing Seven Minutes in Heaven. She wasn’t in the room when he and I crept quietly into the nearest closet, his long lean legs leading the way, his lips waiting for mine. His mouth tasted like beer and original flavored ChapStick, which became my new favorite romantic combo.
This was not merely an erotic wish. It was emotional too—I swear it. Johnny was the absolute hottest guy in all of Eden’s Pond, Missouri. Second place on the list. Securely.
3) I wish I could make my father suffer for his sins. Mark Madrid, AKA Alan Lowenstein, Jr., the man who was technically my dad but only as a technicality and not one iota in the true sense of the word. M.I.A. for most of my life. A fake, a phony, and a fraud. He didn’t even like himself enough to commit to being the person he was born, a Jewish boy, the son of Hedda and Alan Lowenstein, Sr. A trip to Spain when he was the exact age I am now gave Mark the inspiration to reinvent his persona. The only authentic thing about him was that he was genuinely a rotten ass.
This was a solid choice for third spot on the list. That was as far as I got on that morning. I kept thinking of lame, obvious wishes—trips to Europe, buckets of money for GG to live on once I was gone. Yet they weren’t special enough, so I didn’t write them down. I decided to sleep on it, maybe talk it over with my mom the next time we spoke.
Trouble was she hadn’t come back. The wish list went quiet. I folded the page and stuck it inside the spiral notebook, which ended up buried beneath my gym shorts in the corner of my room. I carried on with the business of being pretend-well. That meant going to my job at the Dairy Maid as if it mattered at all, which it certainly did not. Like last night when I worked until closing.
I’d finished my shift, flew home, shrugged off my uniform, balled it up and tossed it onto the floor when my grandmother, GG, arrived at my bedroom door.
“Francesca,” she began with a warning about my poor laundry habits, which she didn’t have to elaborate on. Just the tone in her voice when she spoke my name, my birth I-mean-business name, was enough.
“I’ll pick it up,” I said.
“That’s fine. I have news.” She ran a shaky hand over the edge of my bed, straightening out the puckered squares in the pink cotton quilting then bending at the waist to sit carefully on the mattress.
GG wasn’t really one for drama so I was careful to notice the stagy punctuation in her words. It made me sit too, on the vanity stool in front of my mirror, my rear end landing on a small stack of clean T-shirts that I had yet to file in my dresser drawers. “What? What news?”
She took a sigh, fidgeting with the tissue she had secured beneath her watchband—Never know when you’ll need to blow—and drew her eyes down. GG wears her glasses almost all the time now even though she’s only 65. She insists age has nothing to do with it, that she’s been blind for as long as she can remember. They make her lashes look like two giant caterpillars having a snooze.
“GG…” I prompted with a knock of my foot.
“Chessie, your father is a hugely complicated person.”
“This is news?” It is not.
“Infidelity was among his many inadequacies.”
“Are you saying he cheated on my mother?”
“I am, and he did. Probably more than once, and yet your mother carried right on loving him.”
“So he had affairs, and Mom knew about it. I already know that too.” I grabbed a pair of sweatpants from the floor and folded them in half.
“Yes, well, one of those affairs resulted in a child.”
I felt my heart go beat, beat, skip, beat. I squared my gaze with GG’s, staring directly past the caterpillars and into her dark green eyes. “Mark has another child?”
“He does. Her name is Logan and she’s seventeen. Her mother passed away last year, and since then she’s been living with her aunt. But the woman’s had some trouble with the law recently, and she’s going to prison for a while.”
It struck me that GG may have possibly been making a joke at my expense, concocting an outrageous story to see if I’d buy it and then ending with a “Gosh, Chess, you are so gullible.”
“GG, are you for real?” I scanned the carpet for my notebook. Perhaps she’d discovered it along with a new warped sense of humor.
“This is not my idea of humor, Francesca. This young person is in need of a decent meal and a warm bed. She’s coming to stay with us for a while. She needs a home, and we have one don’t we?”
GG made most things as basic as they could be. We did have a home and right then I discovered I had a sister who would be sharing it with us. My stomach went loopy like that time I rode the roller coaster at the Edenville County Fair right after I ate a chili dog. I turned to stare at my own reflection in the mirror. I never did outgrow those baby doll dimples carved like two commas into the sides of my cheeks. With my mother’s eyes, light hazel, and close set, and my overgrown hair GG said resembled a wig people wear for Halloween when they dress up as Pocahontas. Would she look anything like me?
“Don’t we?”
“Yes GG, we do. When will she be here?” I had so many questions but I figured they would keep.
“In about three weeks.” GG rose to go, padding softly across my green shag carpeting in her old terry cloth slippers. She paused and turned back, one hand on the doorknob. “Oh, and Chessie?”
“Hmm?”
“She’s black.”
“What?”
“Logan. Her mother was black. You’ll straighten up in here, won’t you?”
I said I would but I didn’t. As soon as GG went downstairs I spun around in giddy circles and tore for my measly wish list. There it was, numero uno. Maybe I was dreaming now. Or, maybe I had already died. Yet there hadn’t been a white light, no stifling sensation, no gripping pain and no choir of angels. Most of all there hadn’t been a sign from my mother that she was coming to collect me.
I was 100 percent, unequivocally alive. And all at once I was meeting the realization of my first wish. Suddenly and for just one minute it struck me that sometimes, maybe fortune cookies don’t lie.