The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (7 page)

“It is possible,” called the Canadian, his voice melting distantly against their car windows, “to be both beautiful and tired. A sleeping beauty. You see?”

Fancy adjusted the rearview mirror and reversed with the regular bump of the fender on the steeply graded drive. Cassie, meanwhile, wound the window down slightly, and gave the Canadian a stare.

Dear Ms. Murphy,

Please excuse Cassie for being late today.

It was all my fault! I was up late last night, working, and then overslept this morning.

Best regards,

Fancy Zing

Dear Ms. Zing,

Thank you very much for your note!

I'm sure that Cassie was not more than a few minutes late—some of the children are much later than that, and we seem to get along all right. It is very kind of you to write notes of explanation, but please do not trouble yourself.

I look forward to meeting you at the parent-teacher night later this year, when we can discuss Cassie properly. She certainly does seem to have a good heart, and is quite popular. (I often see other children gathered around her while she entertains them with funny stories—I wonder what she tells them!)

Best Wishes,

Cath Murphy

Turning into her driveway one day, Fancy looked across at her neighbor's veranda and saw that there were two of them. Her neighbor had become two.

She got out of her car, and glanced over quickly. Yes, there were now two men sitting at the breakfast table, slicing up kiwifruit, sipping from their coffee mugs. She kept her back straight, and hurried across the burning driveway to the soft, cool grass. She never wore shoes to drive.

“—so he ate his own arm,” she heard from the porch next door, just as she reached her front door. And then a chuckle.

She couldn't help it. She turned and stared.

“Fancy,” said her neighbor, “hello there. This is my brother, Bill. He's out from Canada for a couple of days. Bill. Meet Fancy.”

“Did I startle you?” said Bill-the-brother with a friendly nod. “You heard what I just said? He ate his own arm?”

How direct the Canadians were. “Well…” she began.

“It's what happened to a guy I know,” he explained. Meanwhile, Fancy's neighbor looked down, slicing up another kiwifruit. “You want to hear the story? Okay. My buddy's hiking in the Rockies up Jasper way; he stops to take a picture of some plant or other; somehow he crouches down by a cougar trap; he gets his
arm
caught in the cougar trap. I mean, seriously caught. Next thing, dumb effin luck, a big mother of a bear comes along and takes a bite out of his leg. Seriously, a bite out of his leg. He's screaming and punching it with his one unstuck arm, but nothing he can do. The bear goes off but he knows, he can just
tell,
that it's coming back later to finish him off. But he can't get out of the trap! I mean, his arm is
completely
stuck! You're in that predicament, what are you going to do?”

Fancy tilted her head to the side. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“You're going to chew through your own arm.”

Bill-the-brother nodded to himself and picked up a slice of kiwifruit. “That's what my buddy did,” he said, green juice dripping down his chin. “He ate through his arm and got away.”

Fancy stared.

Her neighbor offered her a cup of coffee.

“No, thank you. And thank you for the story, Bill. Nice to meet you.”

She opened the screen door to her house, and it let out a long, thin squeal.

Dear Ms. Murphy,

How kind of you to write! I, also, look forward to meeting you at the parent-teacher night.

I'm so pleased to hear that Cassie is popular! I hope she does not give you any trouble.

You know, I just thought I would let you know that I was talking to Barbara Coulton the other day—she is Lucinda's mother—and she told me that Lucinda is happier than she's ever been at school! Barbara is delighted with the standard and variety of work that Lucinda brings home, and is especially pleased that you correct Lucinda's spelling mistakes—such a rare thing in modern teaching.

Take care, and best wishes!

Fancy Zing

“Write this down,” Fancy said to Radcliffe on Sunday afternoon: “
Toilet paper.
” Radcliffe wrote it down. “Follow me down the hall,” she instructed, taking out the vacuum cleaner from the hall closet. Obediently, Radcliffe followed, writing the list.

“The vacuum cleaner's broken, you know.”

“I don't want the vacuum cleaner,” said Fancy patiently. “I just want the bucket from behind it.
Kitchen towels.
I've decided to wash the glass doors. Or will Cassie just run through them? Okay:
Butter, self-rising flour, Valerio Pies.
”

“I think she'll run through them,” agreed Radcliffe, writing carefully. “Don't wash them. Let's go for a walk instead. Anything else?” His pen was at the ready.

“Yes.
Spaghetti.
Okay. Let's go for a walk. Radcliffe, what do you mean it's broken?”

“What's broken?”

“The vacuum, you just said it was broken. Since when?”

“Oh,” he said vaguely, “since the other day. I came home to surprise you at lunchtime and you weren't here, so I smashed a glass, then I tried to vacuum it up, and the vacuum cleaner jammed, and now it's broken.”

“You smashed a glass? Because I wasn't here? Where was I?”

“That came out wrong. I think you were having coffee with your sister in Castle Hill. Remember that day? And Marbie brought Alissa along, you told me. They both had colds. Or at least Alissa did. That's how you put it.”

“She prefers to be called Listen, you know.”

“Anyhow, let's go for a walk and, tell you what, I'll take the vacuum into that new repair shop by the hardware store.”

Thursday already, and tomorrow she had to prepare for the Zing Family Secret Meeting, and Saturday was Cassie's birthday, and Sunday she never worked, so that only left today to write thirty chapters of her wilderness romance. Fancy stared at her computer in wonder.

She decided to write to Cassie's teacher.

Dear Ms. Murphy,

Just wanted to let you know that Cassie has a loose tooth—

But then there was a knock at the front door.

She opened the door and there in the sun's shadow stood a handsome stranger. Tears sprang at once into Fancy's eyes. She blinked them away.

The stranger was carrying a plate covered in a tea towel. He was wearing a loose T-shirt and jeans, and sneakers without socks. His shoulders
were broad, his face was tanned, and his eyes, behind small, wire-rimmed spectacles, were glinting.

“
Hello
there,” he said.

At that, he transformed into the Canadian-next-door.

She was so disconcerted, she did not open the screen door. She stood and simply stared.

“
Not
in any way intending to bother you,” he continued, in a slightly formal voice. “But I've baked you an
apology
cake. My brother from Canada. The other day. I just wanted to apologize for him. He's a good guy but not exactly—and I just about died when he told you that apocryphal story of his. I could tell it bothered you, and I just about died, and now I am here to apologize.”

“Oh!” cried Fancy, in a flutter. “The man who ate his arm! I wasn't bothered by that story at all! I mean, I didn't believe a word of course. Ate his own arm! And what about the blood loss from the wound in his leg…Anyway, but I write wilderness romances. That's my occupation. So, see, bear and cougar stories are
fine
! My characters are always running from cougars and into the arms of handsome strangers. They don't usually eat their own limbs, of course, because then there'd be no arms to run into…But, anyway, it's my career! I know it must sound strange, me, a mother in the suburbs, writing wilderness romances, and the only person I ever slept with my whole life is my husband!”

There was silence for a moment.

Fancy opened the screen door, and it let out its usual squeal.

“I could fix that for you.” He was looking at the door.

“No! No! I can do that! All it needs is a bit of WD-40!”

“I agree,” he said, with that odd little smile. “I still think my brother bothered you, so please take this maple cake. Okay?”

He used one foot to hold open the screen door as he passed the cake toward her. She took the cake, and he withdrew his hands, palms upward.
She saw that his palms were calloused. Then he saluted, with the same glint in his eye, and ran down the steps of her porch.

Rather than crossing directly to his own porch, he took the driveway, walked along the street, and then walked back up his own driveway. She found this extremely moving.

Driving to the Zing Family Meeting the next night, Fancy felt very happy. She was excited about dinner that night—it would be roast chicken, as usual—and about the meeting afterward (she had prepared a slide show). She also felt relaxed about Cassie's birthday tomorrow. How wonderful that Marbie, Nathaniel, and Listen were hosting it! She might go to the gym before the party. How thin she was these days, now that she was going to the gym regularly. And she could always get an extension for her wilderness romance.

She leaned back into her seat, humming along with the tune that Cassie was singing in the backseat.

Then Radcliffe said what he said. “You remember Gemma in the pay office?” he said, changing lanes.

“No,” said Fancy.

“Come on! You must remember Gemma. She's the one who spilled her drink everywhere at the office Christmas party? Remember?”

“No,” repeated Fancy.

“Well.” He shrugged. “Well, trust me, there's a Gemma who works in my pay office. She works afternoons only, lucky duck. Anyhow, turns out she had some kind of laser treatment done on her moles. You know, you'd call them freckles, but they're really moles. Anyhow. Extraordinary. She got about ten of them zapped.”

Fancy could not believe it. She lowered her chin to check the freckles on her bare shoulders: nicely spaced, attractive freckles.
Beauty spots,
really.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” she said coldly.

Radcliffe turned swiftly toward her, a hurt, confused expression on his face. Then he looked back to the road.

Tomorrow, it would be Cassie's birthday. It was a secret, almost scary, wonderful fact which she'd been carrying around the last few weeks, like a smile about to happen on her face.

But what Cassie was actually realizing today was that it used to be better than this, back when she was little. Maybe when she turned five or six, it was more than just a smile: It was like everything was whispering and just about to skip. Now, turning seven, her excitement felt a bit wrong.

It's because I know you can get disappointed,
she realized. One time, she got too excited on her birthday and jumped on the table where the grown-ups were sitting, and at first they laughed, but then she knocked over their champagne and champagne spilled onto her dad's lap and she got in trouble.

She cried, and you should never cry on your birthday.

In the hot noon light of a summer day once, Marbie, nine years old, was almost killed by an umbrella.

She was distracted at the time.

The day before, her sister Fancy had walked into the beach house at sunset and announced that she had done something incredible.

Marbie was supposed to be washing the sand off her feet, but hearing this, she ran inside. She made herself invisible by placing herself in the shadows just beyond the open sliding doors.

Fancy was standing in the center of the main room, her hands on her hips, waiting for her parents. Mummy leaned in from the kitchen, where she was making a beetroot salad. Daddy leaned in from the bathroom, where he had just had a shower.

“What incredible thing did you do, sweetheart?” called Mummy.

“What's up, Fance?” said Daddy.

“I told Radcliffe the Secret.”

Now there was a stampede of parents—Mummy's purple hands flying, Daddy's bath towel flapping—and they gathered around Fancy. Daddy straightened the towel around his waist.

“You did not!” cried Mummy.

“I did,” said Fancy defiantly. “I told you it was incredible.” She looked up at her parents and folded her arms, but her mouth trembled. Marbie, in her door space, thought of the episode of
Charles in Charge,
when the good sister tries to be bad, but she can't pull it off because of her nature.

“When?” cried Daddy.

“Oh, darling,” said Mummy gently. Fancy's hands fell to her side, and she sat down at the table.

It turned out she had told her boyfriend
everything.
She did not know why.

“Tell us again what you told him,” ordered Daddy, over and over. “Why did you tell him?” murmured Mummy, also over and over, until Marbie grew bored and climbed onto the side of one of the doors so she could slide with it, very quietly.

“Marbie!” snapped Daddy. “Go and get changed out of your bathing suit!”

“Okay,” agreed Marbie, looking down to the floor where there were little splatters of seawater from her bathing suit. Quietly, she walked into the room and sat down on the couch.

“Oh, Fancy,” said Mummy, in a low, shivery voice.

“Tell us what you told him,” Daddy commanded. “Tell us exactly.”

“Well, I told him about Ireland and about the cherry pies—”

“Oh, never mind,” grumbled Daddy.

He looked at Mummy, and she looked back. It was quiet.

From the couch, Marbie murmured to herself, “Should I tell them that I never told anyone the Secret? Should I say that out loud?”

The others turned to her. “GET OFF THAT COUCH!” Daddy shouted.

“Radcliffe's not going to tell anybody.” Fancy's voice collapsed into her arms, and her next words were tangled in a sob: “He promerr ewerd terl
any
obee.”

Mummy and Daddy were quiet, figuring out what she had just said. After a moment they both breathed in an “ah” of comprehension.

“Well,” said Daddy, “if he promised he wouldn't tell
any
body, I suppose we have to trust him.”

“But heaven help us when the two of you break up!” fretted Mummy.

“We're not going to break up,” Fancy wept. “He loves me! He said that he loves me forever!”

“There now,” said Mummy apologetically. “Of course he does.” She put her arms around Fancy and said, “Of course he does, hush now, of course he does, sweetheart.”

So the next day, in the high noon sun, Marbie was distracted.

Fancy was sitting on her beach towel under the umbrella, one arm curled around her knees, gazing moodily down at the sand. Daddy was trying to tune his transistor radio to hear the cricket game. Mummy was on her folding chair, reading
New Idea.
The seaside noises and the radio fuzz and the magazine pages turning were only there to heighten the quiet of the family.

From her towel in the sun a few meters away, Marbie was able to observe her family and, in particular, Fancy. It seemed to Marbie that Fancy, who was usually smart, had now been stupid in two ways. First of all, it was stupid to tell her boyfriend the Secret. Second of all, it was stupid to tell her
parents
that she had told her boyfriend the Secret. In fact, and this was what interested Marbie, the second stupid thing was a whole new level of stupidity.

She stared out to sea, thinking hard about the two different levels of stupidity. Soon the levels began to shimmer in the air. Just above the horizon was the first level; somewhere a little higher, striking through clouds, was the second. Marbie stared at the first level, then looked up at the second, down at the first, up at the second, down and up, down and up, until an umbrella hit her smack in the forehead.

It was a beach umbrella, snatched out of the sand by a random gust of wind. It had streaked through the air like a javelin while men shouted
“HO!” and leapt after it. The sharp end hit Marbie in the forehead and knocked her out cold.

While she was in the hospital, there was a lot of talk about how lucky it was that it hadn't hit her just over to the right. Or just up a bit. Or a tad lower. Or a smidgeon to the left. And imagine if it had hit her in the eye! She was that close to death, but all she got was ten stitches, two black eyes, and one night under observation.

Fancy was very emotional, so Radcliffe held her hand and nuzzled his nose into her shoulder for support.

That Friday, Radcliffe came along to his first Zing Family Secret Meeting, and was quiet and polite, but couldn't stop looking at Marbie, who was on a couch surrounded by pillows, and whose forehead was a thunderstorm of purple. The following week he had relaxed enough to point out that the circles of black around her eyes made her look like a raccoon. “See you later, raccoon girl,” he called as he left the garden shed that night. Everybody laughed.

Afterward, Marbie took over responsibility for putting up the family beach umbrella. She alone knew the full extent of the risk. She had a strict routine: first, dig a hole as deep as your arm; deeper; dig until you have to lie down on your side to reach the bottom of the hole and scrape the damp sand with your fingertips; next, take the
bottom half of the umbrella
and plunge it into the hole, then twist to the right leaning with all your weight;
next!
pack the hole with firm sand; finally, pile sand thick and high around the base of the umbrella, twist on the top half, and bury three sea grapes at random spots for good luck.

She was left with a crocus-shaped scar on her forehead, and a lifelong fear that long sharp items (such as umbrellas or fence posts) would somehow end up in her eye.

Friday morning, the second week of the school term, Marbie stood on the porch of their new apartment, drinking a berry-and-banana shake and saying good-bye to Listen.

“Don't walk too fast,” she suggested. “You'll need your energy for the Walkathon. Why don't you skate to school today? Or I could give you a lift.”

Listen laughed, and strode off at her regular high speed.

“You look good,” called Marbie. “You look great. Like a really
hip
walker is how you look.”

Listen laughed again, and changed her walk to something hip and groovy for a few steps, then continued in her normal way. Because of the charity Walkathon that day, she was not wearing her school uniform, but hipster jeans and a tank top that showed off her stomach.

Marbie herself locked up and set off to her car, which was parked down the street. Halfway to the car, the neighbor's black cat crossed her path.

Every day since the day they had moved in, the neighbor's black cat had crossed her path. Sometimes it made an elaborate effort to do so: a triple back flip from a tree followed by a high jump over Marbie's head, for example. But that Friday morning, it didn't even try, it just walked on across her path.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Marbie said aloud. “You don't scare me, you know that, Gary?”

Gary was the name of the cat, and in fact, his name alone scared her.

But it was a perfectly pleasant day at work: a lot of chatting; stamping documents; a plate of leftover sushi from a conference on another floor. Toni went to the stationery department and came back loaded with gifts, so, also, a lot of time setting up her new magnetic paper clip holder.

She spilled some of the paper clips onto the carpet, and picked up a
handful, deciding to leave the rest on the carpet there.
It was a decision she would regret for the rest of her life.
(Let's say, one day, Marbie knocks over a vase of flowers. The water seeps into the carpet, while flowers roll under the desk. She gets down on her hands and knees and crawls under the desk to retrieve a flower or two, and
without her noticing,
a paper clip sticks to her knee. Unaware, she leaves work, travels home, meets Nathaniel, playfully knees him in the thigh, and
the paper clip somehow sticks into his skin, and he gets lead poisoning, and dies!
) (Her eyes filled with tears at the thought.)

So she crawled under the desk and picked up every single paper clip, afterward brushing her knees carefully for remnants. Then she wrote replies to all the e-mail in her
FRIENDS—MUST REPLY
folder.

That evening, at the Night Owl Pub, the others had just left and Marbie was finishing her drink when the aeronautical engineer appeared.

“I have just enough time for one beer,” he informed her, sitting down opposite.

“What makes you think that I have time for one beer?”

“Sure you do! What's the rush?”

The Zing Family Secret Meeting was the rush.

“Okay. Just one.”

“Where
is
everyone?” said the aeronautical engineer, frowning around at the empty seats.

“I wish you'd stop doing that,” said Marbie.

The aeronautical engineer went to the bar and returned with a pitcher of beer, which they shared.

“Airplane wings are supposed to shake,” said the aeronautical engineer after a pause in conversation.

“Okay,” agreed Marbie. He would know.

The aeronautical engineer said: “Play a spot of tennis?”

On the train home, Marbie wondered why she had agreed to play tennis with a stranger. They had arranged to meet at courts close to her place the next day.

She drove from the station to her parents' place, imagining her arrival in time for dessert, hopefully some kind of cherry pie tonight, and also imagining excuses:
Tabitha told this really long story about her pregnant sister, who has started having fits. It's awful; she was really upset. The train was one of those slow, all-stops ones. My car was in a different part of the parking lot from where I parked it this morning! I'm sure it was. I'm sure somebody moved it.
All of these things were true, even though they were not the reason for her lateness.

By the time she got there, dinner was already over, and the Meeting had begun. Listen and Cassie were watching a movie, as usual, in the living room. “Hello!” she called, running through on her way out to the garden shed. “How was the Walkathon, Listen?”

“Fine,” said Listen, her eyes on the TV.

In the garden shed, Marbie sat next to Nathaniel, and leaned over to whisper in his ear that she had just agreed to tennis with a stranger. Before she had a chance to whisper, Nathaniel kissed her. He quietly passed her an extra copy of her mother's handout, which she immediately made into a paper airplane. Nathaniel took the airplane from her hand, held it up, and said a dismissive “
tch
!”, at which Marbie giggled, and her mother, at the front, said, “SHH.”

She and Nathaniel were always getting into trouble at Meetings.

Then Nathaniel reached under his chair, and he had a plate of cherry pie hidden there for her, with a spoon.

After the Meeting, they drove home in Nathaniel's car. Marbie, feeling sleepy in the passenger seat, took her paper airplane out of her pocket, straightened out the crumples, and said, “What do you mean, ‘
tch
'?”

“It'll never fly,” he declared, glancing over at her plane. “Crash and burn.”

“It'll fly.”

“Show me,” said Listen, leaning forward. Then, sitting back again: “Dad's right, Marbie. That won't fly.”

“An aeronautical engineer showed me how. It will fly.”

“Crash and burn,” repeated Nathaniel. “Which aeronautical engineer showed you how?”

“I don't know. Just this guy.”

The paper airplane had a sharp point, which hit Nathaniel smack in the cheek.

“It flew,” proclaimed Marbie.

“It never.”

“It hit you in the cheek!”

“It never flew.”

“Well then
how
did it get to your cheek?”

“You threw it at me. Throwing isn't flying.”

Marbie sat back and pulled on her seat belt. “Hmm,” she said.

“Hey, Listen,” said Nathaniel, checking in the rearview mirror. “How was the Walkathon today? We forgot to collect your sponsorship money from the Zings.”

“Fine,” said Listen. “It was fine.” She didn't say any more than that.

The Walkathon was fifty-five times round the oval to raise money for an international mine-clearance charity. They got their purple sponsorship cards ticked each time around. Every five times, they got a cup of orange juice, and every ten times they got to stop and have a Vita-Wheat, and the teachers laughed and said things like, “Come on! Pick up the pace! Hup-two!”

They walked in groups with their friends, and Listen walked with Donna and the others.

After eight laps, Donna said, “Raising money for mines, eh? What do you reckon we should do with the mines when we get them?”

“Depends on what kind of mines,” said Sia. “If they're diamond mines, we should get out the diamonds. If they're gold mines, we should get out the gold. If they're silver mines…”

The others were laughing, so she stopped.