Wishful Thinking Read online

  She was just putting the finishing touched on her own private toxic waste dump when she heard an excited yipyipyip and looked up. Nana’s yard was separated by a chain link fence from the nearest neighbor, an elderly gentleman named Mister Clausen who bred toy poodles. He usually had anywhere from ten to twenty animals on the premises, depending on their breeding cycles, so Phil wasn’t completely surprised to see six or seven little bundles of fluff with beady black eyes staring back at her from across the fence. Three or four of them—probably the males—were sniffing the air and pawing at the fence excitedly.

  “No, guys—this isn’t for you,” Phil told the eager poodles. Maybe she should have found a better place to bury the potion. Then again, the flower garden was separated from the neighbor’s yard by a fence. For good measure she piled more dirt on the spot where the potion was buried and packed it down with the flat of the trowel. There.

  “H’lo, Philomena. Long time no see, as I believe they say these days.”

  Phil looked up to see Mister Clausen himself smiling down at her from across the chain link fence. He had kindly blue eyes surrounded by a net of wrinkles and a comical shock of hair as white as his poodles’ coats.

  “Oh, hello, Mister Clausen.” Phil tried to smile. “Yes, in the past few years I haven’t gotten over here as much as I’d like to. Not since I moved in with my fiancé, actually.” She hoped he wasn’t able to smell the potion she’d just buried. She didn’t think she could handle it if Nana’s kindly old neighbor climbed the fence and started humping her leg. “You seem to have a good batch of puppies this time,” she said, indicating the fluffy, yipping poodles.

  “Oh my lands yes, three litters at once, don’t ya know. I reckon if I let ‘em all out at the same time my back yard would be so full of landmines ya couldn’t see the grass.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at his lawn, already liberally dotted with poodle droppings.

  “Looks like your lawn is already more brown than green,” she said before she could stop herself. “Those poodles are just little fluffy white crapping machines, aren’t they?” Oh God, she had done it again—said the first thing that came to mind. Phil wanted to sink into the ground with embarrassment but luckily, Mister Clausen just laughed.

  “You about hit the nail on the head there, young lady,” he chortled, nodding his head until his fluff of white hair waved in the breeze like an oversized dandelion.

  Phil decided she had better go before she said something more offensive. She made sure the saucepan was out of sight behind the zinnias. “Well, I better get going. I think that about does it for gardening today.” She put the gloves and trowel back on the bench where she had found them and dusted her hands together as though she’d just done a hard day’s work.

  “Ya know, Philomena,” Mister Clausen said, still giving her that genial smile. “When I saw you out here I thought you looked like you could use a little refreshment. So I brought you this.” He reached over the waist high chain link fence and held something out to her. Phil walked closer, expecting a big glass of water or lemonade. Instead, she saw a familiar, but dreaded, sight—an éclair. It sat on the small china plate looking limp and withered. On the top of its cracked chocolate glaze sat a small curly clump of white poodle hair, like a bizarre garnish.

  “Went down to the market day before yesterday and it looked so good I just had to have it,” Mister Clausen continued. “But don’t ya know, my diabetes is actin’ up just now so I can’t eat it. And when I saw you out here, somethin’ told me you’d want it.”

  Phil hated éclairs anyway and this one had certainly seen better days. She made herself walk forward to take the plate, struggling to hold her tongue.

  “Thank you. It looks horrible,” she blurted, before she could stop herself. “Horribly good, I mean,” she amended. “But I…I shouldn’t eat it all by myself. I should take it inside and share it with Cass and Rory.”

  “Well, that’s fine then.” Mister Clausen winked at her. “You just tell that pretty little grandma of yours she can bring me back the plate whenever she’s a mind to. I’ll see ya later.” He nodded at her and called the toy poodles which bounced around his legs like animated cotton balls as he ambled back to his house.

  Phil waited until the screen door had banged shut behind him and then grabbed the trowel and dug a new hole in the dirt, right beside the buried potion. She tipped the withered éclair into its grave and covered it decently, shivering in disgust as she did so. Thank goodness Mister Clausen hadn’t insisted that she take a bite. If he had, Phil honestly thought she might have been sick, right there in the zinnias.

  She washed the sauce pan out with the garden hose (no way was she taking it back into the kitchen still coated in gunk) and walked back the way she had come. Cass and Rory had all the windows and the door wide open and the kitchen smelled almost normal again.

  “There.” Phil dumped the pan and Mister Clausen’s éclair plate into the soapy water where Cass was washing dishes. “Mission accomplished. But don’t think that familial guilt is going to get me to do any of your other disgusting chores. Dumping that potion was bad enough to pay for missing the last four Thanksgivings and only spending half days on Christmas,” she said, washing her hands to get the last of the potion off them.

  Her sisters exchanged a look. “Mouthy, isn’t she?” Cass asked Rory with a grin. “So when are you gonna get the FG to reverse that wish, Phil?”

  Phil dried her hands and began digging in Nana’s ancient avocado green refrigerator for salad fixings. “I don’t know, but it has to be soon. I’ve already told everyone in my office off and earned myself an HR review for tomorrow. If I don’t get her to change it by tonight I’ll just shoot off my mouth all over again at the review and get myself fired.”

  “Oh, no!” Rory put a hand to her mouth. “That’s terrible, Phil.”

  “That’s not the worst, either.” Phil pulled out a head of lettuce, a cucumber, and some tomatoes. As she fixed the salad, she told her sisters about her fight with Mrs. Tessenbacker over the paper, her confrontation with the little blind pencil boy and her coworkers, and her argument with Christian.

  “What?” Cass banged the pot she was scrubbing against the side of the sink. “Are you telling me that dirty rat bastard never intended to put you through law school in the first place?”

  “He didn’t say that exactly.” Phil concentrated on dicing a cucumber. “He said…he said it would be a waste of money because…I wouldn’t be a good attorney.” She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “But it wasn’t so much what he said—it was the way he said it.”

  “What—did he yell and scream at you?” Cass asked.

  “No, he got really quiet. And he said that he was just trying to save me the pain of finding out…finding out that I don’t have what it takes.”

  “What? Phil, that is so not true,” Rory objected. “You’d make a great civil rights attorney—you’re so smart. That’s just an excuse because he doesn’t want to spend the money.”

  “Money he owes you,” Cass added indignantly. “You ought to sue him, Phil. Isn’t that breach of contract or something? Come on, you’re the one who wants to be a lawyer—help me out here.”

  “Cass is right—you should.” Rory agreed, stirring the rice pilaf so vigorously half of it landed on the stove top.

  “It’s not a matter of suing him, you guys.” Phil finished with the cucumber and grabbed a tomato. “In fact, just now on the phone he told me to apply to any law school I wanted and name the date for the wedding.” She sighed. “He just sounded so…angry when he said it. Like I was inconveniencing him, asking him to do what he’d promised. And then he got distracted again and promised that we would talk later. But that’s what he always says.”

  “I never liked him.” Cass scrubbed viciously at a frying pan. She looked so mad Phil thought she would scrub a hole right through it. “He’s a controlling asshole, Phil. I say cut him loose.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been saying that fo