The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (28 page)

The coincidence comforted her. It suggested a world in which everything was connected by faint dotted lines. There was a grand scheme to things, a gentle, controlling destiny. Life was a series of projects—Project 75, cooking; Project 78, renovations.

She returned to the diningroom table, picked up the letter about proposed renovations, and traced her finger slowly around
Project 78.
Things that were meant to be would happen. Someday, somehow, it would all work out.

She almost reached for the phone again, to call Warren and let him know.

After the Day of Letters, Cath found that her week was clenching into RAGE.

“What's going on?” she said to Warren in his empty classroom, at the beginning of recess. He was tacking paintings on the wall, ready for parent-teacher night the next day.

“I think,” said Warren, “I think it won't be too much longer. Things are just falling apart. Bree and I are both sensing something's wrong.”

“Mmm,” said Cath. Then, as he continued tacking paintings to the wall, she said, “If it's falling apart, why did you buy a new bed? And put a sign on it saying 'Welcome Home, Breanna.'”

“She told you that?”

“Uh-huh.”

Warren was silent now, gazing at the thumbtack that was lying on its side in his palm.

At lunchtime that day, Breanna found Cath in the staff room, sat down beside her, and said briskly, “I just wanted to let you know that I spoke to that seventh-grader, the one named Listen Taylor? The one you were worried about? I spoke to her yesterday.”

“Wow,” said Cath. “That was quick.”

Breanna looked pleased, so Cath continued to praise her: “Seriously, thanks so much for doing that. That was really nice of you. You're so efficient!”

“Anyway,” said Breanna, opening up a packed lunch, “I think you were right. She seems unhappy to me—she didn't want to talk about her friends, but she's going through a tough time with her home life at the moment. Her dad brought her up, you know—apparently, her mother ran off to explore the world and have adventures when she was just a little baby. Poor kid. You wonder what effect that has, losing a parent when you're a baby. I mean, do you rememb—”

Breanna stopped, gasped slightly, and said, in a low voice, “Oh, sorry, Cath. You lost
both
parents when you were a baby, didn't you? They died in a house fire?”

“Right,” said Cath, frowning slightly, and trying to turn the frown into a smile. “But it sounds weird to me, hearing you say that. My adoptive parents are my parents, really, and I haven't lost them. I don't remember my biological parents at all.”

“Yeah,” agreed Breanna. “The only thing you've got left of them is a faded photograph? Is that right?”

“Mmm.” Then Cath remembered that she should be back in her classroom preparing for tomorrow's parent-teacher night.

When Warren saw Cath at the doorway to his classroom, he said, “You okay?”

“Sure,” said Cath, with a
snap
like a ring binder. “You told her I was adopted. You told her about the photo of my parents.”

“I'm sorry, Cath. I didn't know it was a secret.”

“You didn't know it was a secret? I got out the photo from a locked jewelry box. We
both cried.
And that didn't seem like, I don't know, a
confidence
?”

“Cath, all I can do is say I'm sorry.”

“Stop saying my name,” snapped Cath. “You both keep saying my name. You and your
wife,
she does it too.”

Warren looked surprised, and Cath said, “You can't
do
this”—her voice became trembly—“you can't have an affair with me, and then go back to your wife, you can't say that it's coming apart at the seams and then buy a four-poster bed. It's not
allowed.
” She reached toward him, and he took one step back.

“I'm sorry, okay? I can't do anything about it now—it would kill Breanna. I know this sounds arrogant, but the fact is she's really in love with me.”

“Oh, cut it out,” said Cath. “She's not in love with you. She doesn't even
know
you.”

“Well,” he said gently, “we've been married for three years.”

“She doesn't know you,” Cath repeated. “You're a man who cheated on his wife. She doesn't know that, so she doesn't know you.”

He bowed his head, while Cath's shaky breathing filled the room.

“I can't leave her,” he whispered, after a moment.

“I'm
not asking you to leave her,
” she almost shouted. “I
like
her, she's
nice. I don't want you to leave her.
You said it was
falling apart.
”

“It is,” he said. “I swear, we just have to wait.”

“Well, while we're
waiting,
do you have to keep
touching
her? Do you have to keep holding her hand? I saw you
massaging
her
feet.
Have you
thought
about how
that
makes me feel?”

“Please don't cry,” he said.

“This doesn't make me cry!” Haughtily, she stalked out of the room.

That afternoon, she tried to study Criminal Law but decided, instead, to murder Warren Woodford. She would smother him with cross-stitched bookmarks, or watch, with a smirk, as he drowned in the syrup of his words. She chose her defense in advance: Provocation (Chapter 5). The accused, transported by passion, was simply not mistress of herself.

Later that night, sleeping on the couch, she dreamed that Warren told her he was in love with Breanna again. “It's over between you and me!” he confided, warmly, happily. “I'm in love with my wife again!”

She shouted at him and punched his chest: “You are
not
in love with your wife! You're in love with me! Warren, don't you understand? It's not real! You
think
you're in love with your wife, because she's so
happy
and so
bright
and so
nervous
and so
sweet,
whereas me? Look at me! I'm so
cold
and
angry
and
bitter
and
sad,
but I'm
not,
Warren, if you'd just come back to me,
I
would be the happy person that you want, if you'd just, if you'd just, I'm
not
this brittle, this—Warren, this
does not count.
”

On and on she argued in the dream: passionate, ferocious, eloquent, ingenious. Her arguments sliced the air, but still he smiled his contented smile and shook his head.

By Friday, she had settled into DESPAIR.

Watching through her classroom window in the morning, she saw Warren and Breanna walking from the parking lot.
I hate you,
she thought. He was facing away from her.
Look at me,
she thought,
turn around.

But he reached his hand back like a beckon, and Breanna hurried forward like a reply.

I love you,
Cath thought plaintively. He was swinging Breanna's hand.

At lunchtime that day, Cath sat calmly in the Valerio Couch Potato Café and waited for her blackmailer. She took one sip of coffee and slammed it down on the table, thinking:
I hate these chain-store coffee shops! Why couldn't the blackmailer have met me in a REAL café?
But really she was thinking:
How dare Warren tell his wife my secrets!

She remembered the night she told him she was adopted. He had played soccer that afternoon, and had come straight to her place from the game, his skinny legs streaked with mud, and socks pulled lumpy over shin guards. He carried two cold beers, opened one while he talked and handed it to Cath, opened the other for himself, and sat down on the couch. Then he stood to explain how a tackle went wrong and his knee twisted around during the game.

“You see?” he said, pressing his muddy knee against her knee, to demonstrate. “You see what went wrong?”

They had made pasta together, and he had chipped his tooth on an olive pit. She had shown him the photo of her biological parents later that night. He had run his finger gently over the outline of her parents, and that of the brave, burly firefighter, and tears had formed in his eyes.

Cath's eyes blurred as she looked at her watch. It was two o'clock and the blackmailer was nowhere to be seen.

Later, while her class was doing Music, she tried to read her lecture notes from Principles of Statutory Interpretation.

“
Ejusdem generis,
” she read, “of the same type,” and then she had written, cryptically: “Is a crowbar the same as a mask, disguise, or letter?”

Her notes did not explain themselves. Instead, they descended into
pictures. She had drawn an elegant mask, a swooping cape, a letter sealed with wax, and a crowbar. Her crowbar was set aside slightly from the other more romantic objects.

It's a crowbar,
Cath thought sadly.
It will never belong to the same club as a mask, a disguise, or a letter sealed with wax.
All this time she had believed that her affair was something wonderful and clandestine: a detective novel, a cloak-and-dagger mystery. But an affair, she realized now, is as blunt and as common as a crowbar.

That afternoon, she sat in the staff room correcting schoolwork, waiting for parent-teacher night to begin. Just along the table, Warren and Breanna leafed through IKEA brochures, and giggled at furniture pictures.

“No,” murmured Breanna. “No, you can't have chrome in the living room—we've got a pine coffee table, remember?”

“You're right,” agreed Warren. “I just really like the look of those shelves.”

“Tell you what,” suggested Breanna. “What about the study?”

“Or too big?”

“No! Look. Here's the measurements. See the scale?”

“EXCELLENT WORK,” Cath wrote in an exercise book. “WELL DONE!” and she made a monster checkmark across the page.

“Hey, Cath,” said Warren, turning in his seat beside Breanna. “We should be getting over there now, shouldn't we?”

Cath agreed—it was almost five, and the parents would soon begin arriving.

Breanna said, “Oh, Cath, before you go—I wanted to tell you something. I was showing a new seventh-grader around the school this afternoon, and anyway, I introduced her to your Listen Taylor. You never know. Maybe they'll be friends?”

“Huh,” said Cath, “that's great, Breanna. Thanks.”

“See you at home, okay, Warren?” Breanna was picking up her bag. “I'll stop by the hardware store and surprise you with curtain rings!”

The Grade Two interviews were held in Cath's classroom: Room 2B. Warren set up a table at the back of the room, and Cath used her own desk.

The first parent to arrive was a man who introduced himself as Radcliffe. “I'm Cassie Zing's dad!” he said, before he even entered the classroom. He was wiping his feet on the doormat. “Call me Radcliffe. And you must be Ms. Murphy.”

“That's right,” agreed Cath, and looked around Radcliffe. “Your wife?” she said. “She's not coming? She writes a lot of notes…”

“
Does
she?” cried Radcliffe, pausing and placing his hands on his hips. Then he grinned and walked into the room. He stood still before Cath and continued to grin, shaking his head slowly. Then he remembered himself: “Ah yes, Fancy, my wife. Well, something's come up, I'm afraid, and poor old Fancy couldn't come. Cassie got—well, we had a little incident with Cassie, but she'll be fine. Fancy took her to the doctor.”

His words seemed blustery, overexcited, and they hurried in a stop-start shuffle. He picked up the chair, spun it around, and sat down with his arms around the chair back.

“Well,” said Cath, firming up her voice. “Thank you so much for coming in then, Mr.—ah, Radcliffe. We all adore Cassie—she has a great deal of character. In reading, she—” But she stopped, as the man was gazing at her face, and rocking slightly on the chair.

“So you're Cassie's teacher then?” he said, as if she had not spoken. “
Cath Murphy,
eh? Wonderful to meet you.” He reached out to shake hands, but she was too surprised to offer her own. “Not giving you any trouble, I hope?” he tried, settling back into his happy rocking motion.

“Trouble,” repeated Cath, with an effort. “Well, no, not really.”

“Not really!” He beamed.

“I just worry a little,” Cath explained. “She seems, sometimes, to be—angry at the world? And she uses—strange words. She
chants
strange words and phrases.”

“Oh, that
game
of hers,” agreed Radcliffe. “I know! Where she chooses a word and then repeats it? My wife and I don't have a clue what to do about that.”

“I've tried several different strategies to deal with it,” said Cath—someone had to be the professional here—“but nothing has worked so far. Also, I've done a bit of reading, and I found that children sometimes develop a sort of obsession with things that seem
negative
or
forbidden,
if they sense something dark and negative around the home. Or if they are excluded from—if there is—sorry, I don't mean that any of this applies to
your
family—but, this sometimes happens if there is some forbidden, shadowy region of family knowledge?”

Radcliffe continued to gaze at her.

“Anyway,” she added, embarrassed, “they're the words that were used in the article I was reading and I like them—the words—‘forbidden, shadowy'—”

“Is that right?” Radcliffe interrupted, his voice fascinated. “You're saying that kids pick up on family secrets and get—what was your word? Obsessed with things that are forbidden? Is that the case?”

“Of course,” blustered Cath, “I don't mean that
your
family has a secret, I just wondered if…” She tried to change the subject. “Her writing skills are really coming along…”