The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (15 page)

Fancy, unlike Marbie (who was a high-speed swimmer and could have been a champion but never got lessons), swam exceptionally slowly but with grace; so slowly that she tended to hold up even the slowest fellow swimmers if she had to share a lane. That was why she had called about the quietest times to swim.

Calmly, she entered the gym and explained that she wanted to use the swimming pool.

“Sorry,” said the man behind the counter—and it was the man with the rasping voice who had answered her call—“sorry,” he said, “the swimming pool's closed for cleaning. Nine-thirty to eleven-thirty every Friday.”

“No,” said Fancy emphatically. “No, I phoned a few weeks ago, and I was told that this is the
quietest
time to swim.” She intended to stand her ground.

“That was you calling about the quietest pool times? What I said,” declared the man, with a leering grin, “was that the swimming pool is
quietest
at this time! Of course it is! There's nobody there! They're cleaning it!”

Fancy stared at him. That a person could play such a trick! She felt entitled to continue staring, with amazed, accusing eyes, for as long as she liked.

“I did explain,” he said defensively, “I did go on to explain why this was the quietest time. You mustn't have heard me.”

“If the swimming pool is being cleaned now,” said Fancy with a proud swing of her head, “then I don't
imagine
it's all that quiet. I
imagine
the cleaning equipment makes quite a racket!”

She flounced out of the gym.

Behind the wheel again, Fancy felt so foolish that she had to cry a little. The rain was strange on her windshield: It seemed to land with an icy skid rather than a normal, sugar-maple-leaf-shaped splat.

She felt especially foolish at the idea that the Canadian might have been with her. How she would have wasted his time if she'd brought him along. She was cold with fear at the thought. Of course, he might have found her error adorable, and suggested a hot chocolate instead. The car skidded and slipped on the road, and some of her jitters returned.

Back in her own home, the day seemed endless. She tried phoning her mother, and they had a brief chat about whether to cancel the Zing Family Secret Meeting that night because of the weather. They decided they should cancel, so then her mother had to hang up to let the others know. Fancy wandered from room to room, picking up objects from the floor and then letting them slide back down in different places. She took books off shelves and replaced them, and flicked through the pages of photo albums. As she did this, she wept to herself: about the man at the gym with the awful voice; about how close she had been to getting caught at the last Intrusion; about how stupid she was to have left her
phone bill
behind when she got out! About her well-meaning husband, Radcliffe. (Look at him in this picture with his worried expression; and what if he got killed while driving home?) About her beautiful daughter, Cassie. (She was so little. Look at her here in her cozy red mittens!)

And all the time that sad little sentence played itself over in her head:
How is your ocean bream, my love? How is your ocean bream?

Anything but this. Fancy jumped up from the living room floor,
tripping over photo albums, and strode down the hall to the front door, throwing it open.

She stepped onto the porch and something whacked her face like a leather glove—that's how cold it was. The mat, when she stepped on it, crunched with ice. A shudder spiraled through her and pinched her shoulder blades. The sky was low, pale and plaintive, like Cassie when she was coming down with something. The Canadian's porch was empty.

Back inside with the door firmly closed against the cold, Fancy stared down the hall. What if she were to make gingerbread? What if she were to try a little mosaic? What if she were to do some of Cassie's mending? What if she were to—

But no, no, she panicked, and strode back to the front door. The sky was still looking sulky, and the Canadian's porch remained empty. She held the door open a moment as an icy breeze shifted twigs on the lawn, scattering dried leaves on the porch.

“Oh no!” said Fancy, her eyes glinting as a leaf or two skittered past her ankles and into the house. “Now I'll have to vacuum!” Then she remembered that her vacuum cleaner was in the repair shop.

I wonder if the Canadian has a vacuum cleaner I might borrow?
she thought, suddenly and earnestly. At that moment, the vacuum-repair truck turned into her driveway. Fancy accepted the repaired vacuum with cold politeness, and as soon as she had closed the door, she plugged it in.

She vacuumed: the hall, the lounge room, the TV room, Cassie's room. And now she was in the main bedroom. Her lower back ached, the room roared with vacuum cleaner groans, she used her knees to shove the bed to the side, and she busied herself with the baseboards. Crouching down to the floor, she fed the nozzle way under the bed, but then there was a gasping, choking sound, and she switched the vacuum off. There was something caught in its mouth, which she gently removed.

It was a dusty purple sock. Stitched at the back of the ankle with a simple purple daisy.

She held it up and frowned at it. This was not Fancy's sock. Nor was it Cassie's sock. Certainly, it was not Radcliffe's sock. So now, whose sock would be deep under their bed like that?

In the post-vacuum quiet, Fancy rocked back on her heels, looking from the sock to the window to the ceiling to the vacuum. The vacuum had no reply, but there was something wide-eyed about the room.

This sock belongs to another woman,
Fancy whispered to herself.
Radcliffe is having an affair.

Immediately, crouching on the floor by the bed, she laughed to herself. Radcliffe having an affair! It was so unlikely that the word
affair
was instantly surrounded, in her mind, by a circle of witty cue cards. Each card contained a rhetorical question, such as,
When would this affair take place, Fancy, given that you work at home every day?

I know, I know!
When?
(She laughed along.) Although still (she noted, politely) I often
do
go out—on Zing Family Secret business, for instance, or for coffee with Marbie or Mum. He's only ten minutes away and often slips home to surprise me for lunch. He could easily slip a pretty woman home.

But, FANCY, what sort of a pretty woman would have sex with Radcliffe? I mean, seriously.

Me, for a start (she thought tartly). He's not that bad. He has an unexpected charm. And there are plenty of women at his work. There's Gemma, for instance, in the pay office, who spills her drinks at Christmas parties, and gets all the moles zapped from her arms.

Yes, but a purple sock? Why would she leave a purple sock behind?

Here, Fancy had to pause. She had never believed for a moment in bits of gossamer lingerie or single diamond earrings. No woman would have a dalliance with someone else's husband and then flit off in a taxi
without her underwear and earring. No woman! The wind would blow cold against her buttocks! Not to mention her diamondless ear.

But a purple sock. This she could believe.

Let's say Gemma (it might as well be Gemma)—let's say Gemma only works afternoons. (Gemma does only work afternoons—Radcliffe mentioned that.) All right, so let's say one morning Fancy calls Radcliffe to tell him, “I'm going to have coffee with Marbie today, so I won't be home!”

Radcliffe makes a furtive call to Gemma: “Are you still at home, my darling? Haven't left for work? The wife's gone out. Meet me at my place in ten.”

Gemma, dressed in morning attire of shorts, sneakers, and purple socks, arrives breathless. Her work clothes are in a gym bag over her arm. They hurry up the stairs for a few moments of passion; Gemma showers steamily; then she throws her work clothes on (stockings, skirt, lipstick); and off they rush to work. So easy to forget a purple sock!

Well, but really, why would you imagine that Radcliffe is having an affair? You've never thought a thing like that before.

The question (frostily) is why have I
not
considered it before. Recollect that Radcliffe cheated on me when we were fifteen years old and had only just begun going out. If he could not last a single month, why do I imagine he can last a lifetime?

And now she found the word
affair
gleaming and proud, surrounded by fallen cue cards. It waited patiently for her to fill in the details.

It
was
with Gemma! Of
course
it was! Remember how Radcliffe spoke of her? So tenderly, so fondly. “You must remember Gemma,” he had said. “No,” she had replied. And then he had explained how Gemma had the moles zapped from her arms. Why should he know that? Why would Gemma from the pay office tell Radcliffe about her moles? Didn't people in the pay office stay behind closed doors, filling up envelopes with pay?

He must have brought her home on the day Fancy met Marbie and Listen for coffee in Castle Hill. On that day, Radcliffe had come home from work to “surprise” her for lunch.
But,
she realized now,
she had phoned to let him know she was not there.
He came home
BECAUSE she was not there.
He came home with Gemma in purple socks!

And on that day, she recalled in a rush, he had broken a glass. He had broken the vacuum cleaner trying to clean it up. Trying to clean away
the evidence of his affair
!

No! It was
Gemma
who had broken the glass. Gemma was clumsy. She spilled drinks at Christmas parties. He only mentioned his sojourn home, and the breakage of the vacuum cleaner,
weeks
after the event. It was a slip! How strange and awkward he had been when he told her. And then how kind and loving as they carried the vacuum in to be repaired.

All this time, her vacuum cleaner had been trying to let her know about the affair. First, it choked on the broken glass; then it caused Radcliffe to slip up and reveal he had been home that day; and now, today, it had come home to her from the repair shop.
On purpose, to swallow the purple sock.

Fancy lay flat on her back on the bed, and thought with clarity:
Radcliffe is having an affair.

“Oh,
stop
that,” she cried, sitting up with a final burst of scorn.
“It's just a sock!”
She looked at it in the palm of her hand, so flimsy and frail. How could this mean something so immense as an affair?

But then she thought of her recipes: an accidental touch of egg yolk in her meringue; one-eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper in her mango dressing—these tiny things had such an impact! Small things, she realized,
can
mean something immense.

Suddenly the sock felt moist in her hand, a scaly, alien thing, and she flung it back onto the floor. It lay there, seeming to wriggle, like a fish too small to eat.

The day after Cassie's birthday party, Listen sat at a window desk in the Castle Hill library. Her dad and Marbie thought she was meeting the others here to collect the work they'd done for the assignment.

There was no assignment. But she did have English homework.

She was supposed to be defining
irony,
but all she could do was stare at the traffic lights outside, thinking about how ironic it was that Donna had held her strategy meeting before Cassie's party.

The party had been her idea. She had wanted to show Donna and the others her new life. Now, finally, she had a mother, and what a beautiful, dreamy mother Marbie was. Now, also, she had a family, and what an amazing, crazy family the Zings were. She had a family secret too, even if she didn't know what it was. Somehow, she thought, Donna and the others would have realized there was a secret—something to do with the connection between family constellations—and then they would have found out what it was. (Donna could be very persuasive.)

Probably, Listen thought, drawing stars all over her English homework, the Zing family were undercover agents. When you walked into the garden shed, it probably looked like a regular office with white walls, green carpet, and a receptionist wearing chunky earrings and typing at a desk. If you knew the password, the receptionist would pull a leaf from a potted plant on the desk. The floor would open up. You'd fall smoothly down a slide to a basement deep underground, with walls of computers,
flashing lights, spy cameras, disguises, and machine guns. The Zings would be sitting at an oval table dressed in black.

Imagine if she could have taken Donna and the others into the shed and down the slide! Let them dress up in disguises and play with the guns. They would have loved her forever!

But the party had come too late.

Donna had already had her strategy meeting, and now her friends would never meet Marbie, or the rest of the Zings, or learn the Zing Family Secret.

It was ironic.

Another ironic thing was that the Zings seemed to think that she, Listen, was special. They were as blind as her dad had always been. He and Marbie and the Zings looked at her with such admiration, and said things like, “You're so popular!” and “You're so pretty! I bet the other kids are jealous of you!” They asked her questions about school and life as if she was the expert on Grade Seven. When, in actual fact, she was a failure.

Donna had called the strategy meeting because she thought that Listen might jeopardize their chances of survival at Clareville. “I'll go through her reasoning for you,” Joanne had offered on the phone. “Okay, number one, you dance too much. The thing is, you never stay still. You're always swaying and clicking. Personally, I hadn't really noticed, but some of the others have been pretty embarrassed about it. Also, you're always wearing kind of boring clothes, and sometimes you wear them wrong. I mean, boring in that they're just like what we all wear? Like you can't think for yourself? Caro did point out that that's not completely your fault because you've only got your dad to buy clothes for you, and you never had that much money, but then we were thinking that Gabrielle doesn't have much money either, but she's still got a personal style.

“But the main thing is, you're too quiet. It's like your name says. You just listen. You don't talk. Which is obviously not your fault, I guess, but it still means you're kind of like a taker. Not a giver? And Donna was saying, well, you know how Donna's mum got divorced? Well, her mum says that love can die, and Donna was thinking that
like
can die too. Especially when the person you used to like doesn't talk.”

Joanne reassured Listen that the others argued with Donna for a while, trying to point out Listen's good features, but to be honest, they were having trouble thinking of any besides the fact that Listen was a nice person. “There's a lot of nice people in the world,” Joanne had explained wisely. “It's just not all that special.” And Sia had remembered that they had tried to help Listen dress better, by giving her clothes for her birthday, but even then Listen didn't wear them right. Like, the jeans she and Gabrielle gave her were too long, but Listen hadn't got them taken up.

So, she was a lost cause.

Listen could never let her dad or the Zings know what had happened. They would be so disappointed to hear she was a lost cause. She would have to protect them from the truth.

There was another ironic thing. That Joanne had thought she, Listen, had to know the truth about the strategy meeting. When it was actually kind of upsetting.

Still, she was right to let her know, in a way, because now Listen could improve. “You could try asking a lot of questions,” Joanne had suggested, “if you're too shy to think of things to say yourself? You've got to start talking, that's the point.”

Asking questions hadn't worked with Angela's group. Maybe she was asking the wrong questions? Starting tomorrow, she would have to hide
somewhere at recess and lunch, until she came up with a plan for making friends.

The idea of tomorrow made her put her head down on the desk.

When she sat up again there was her dad's car sliding up outside the library. She threw her books into her bag, ran to the sliding exit doors, slowed down, and walked out with a big smile on her face. At the last moment, while her dad was watching and just before the doors closed, she turned back, waved, and called, “See you tomorrow, guys!”

The Monday after Cassie's party, the neighbor's black cat crossed Marbie's path and tripped her up in such a way that she stumbled underneath a ladder. The ladder was leaning quite deliberately against the neighbor's house. She stood under it for a moment, trembling. As far as she could recall, it was the first ladder she had ever walked under. There was now no point going to work.

“Are you up yet?” she called, knocking on Listen's bedroom window. Listen seemed to have slept in. She appeared in her frayed pajamas, rubbing her eyes.

“You look tired,” said Marbie.

“I just woke up,” Listen explained.

“Still,” said Marbie, “you need a break. Let me take you to the seaside and buy you a sarong. Soon, autumn will begin, and the sun will start to fall from the trees and become little shadows at your feet. We should wear sarongs until that happens.”

“Okay,” said Listen, “good idea.”

“I'll write a note and say you've got rabies.”

While Listen found her beach towel, Marbie phoned work and explained
about the cat and the ladder. Tabitha was very understanding. “You stay right where you are,” she said. “Don't take a step toward the office.”

Then Marbie phoned the aeronautical engineer and said she could not meet him after work that night.

“Can't meet me?” said the A.E. with a slurping sound. “I'm sick anyway. Hear this? I'm sucking a lozenge. So, better off not meeting me, but aren't you the one who arranged this?”

Marbie was silent on the phone, thinking about this, so after a moment the A.E. made a crunching sound and said, “Ouch. Bit through the lozenge, and now it's got sharp edges. What say you to Wednesday next week instead?”

Again Marbie was silent, considering this. If she met him again, she could formally explain:
No more tennis.
Or invite him over for a cocktail so she could alter the tone of the thing: “Here, Mr. Aeronautical Engineer, meet Nathaniel and Listen! The A.E. is a sort of colleague of mine.” Then the A.E. would drive away, and she would hold Nathaniel's hand on the doorstep, already talking about something else, such as dinner.

“I say okay to Wednesday next week,” she agreed, and put down the phone. She had a habit of simply hanging up rather than making some conclusive remark such as “Great! See you then. Keep smiling!”

Friday night was Listen's first Tae Kwon Do class. She was embarrassed to be wearing the
dobok,
and suddenly frightened that Donna or one of the others might walk by the window and see her. But that was unlikely. Also, the other three beginners were admiring the way they looked in the mirror, and had started doing a slow-motion charade of a kung fu fight with each other. It was pretty funny. She started laughing, but remembered that
she was being a taker, laughing without being funny herself, so she stopped and just looked serious.

Afterward, two of the other beginners decided to practice with each other. And the third walked up to some kids from higher grades and joined in their conversation.

Listen wondered how you ever got to be that brave.

The following Wednesday, the A.E. arrived in a chatty mood.

He sat down, chuckled to himself, picked up his beer, and made a
brmmm
sound as he flew the glass toward his mouth. “Here comes the airplane!” he said. Then he told Marbie that his father used to be a pilot.

“Huh,” said Marbie.

“So this is how he always fed me,” he explained, “when I was a baby. And
that's
why I studied aeronautical engineering!”

“Hmm.” Marbie wondered if she should mention that babies all over the world are fed by airplane spoons.

Instead, for the sake of politeness, she told him she had been to several festivals of hot-air balloons. She picked up her beer and floated it toward her mouth like a hot-air balloon. He chuckled, then remarked that hot air balloons were “terrifically significant” in the development of the principles of aeronautics. She said she once heard that Leonardo da Vinci figured them all out, all the principles of aeronautics, in sketchbooks five hundred years ago. He said that this was a common myth, such as the myth that William Shakespeare wrote his own plays.

So then Marbie said she thought that myth was actually true, that William Shakespeare did write his own plays. And even if somebody else
had
written the plays, did it matter? Who really knew William Shakespeare these days? He could be a compilation of people, couldn't he, and it would still be William Shakespeare?

“Whoa!” said the aeronautical engineer, making his eyes sparkle to show his fascination and confusion at her point.

Also, she continued, talking about William Shakespeare, she herself came from a family of writers. For example, her father once traveled to Ireland for a year to write a novel (although he then threw the manuscript, one page at a time, into the ocean); and her sister, Fancy, was a writer.

The A.E. looked almost shifty at the news of her family of writers. He did not express environmental concerns when he heard that her father threw his novel into the sea. (That was the usual reaction.) And he did not ask what
kind
of writing Fancy did, which was also a common reaction. Instead, he shifted (shiftily), looked into his beer (sadly), then looked up at Marbie (sharply), and said, “I don't know if I should tell you this or not.”

“Of course you should,” said Marbie emphatically.

“I don't know,” he said, “I don't know,” shaking his head and trying to get something out of his eye for a moment.

“Just count to ten and then tell me,” suggested Marbie.

He looked embarrassed, and gazed at her with unexpectedly vulnerable baby eyes.

“I'm a writer myself,” he breathed eventually. And looked back down.

“What?” she said, although she had heard him.

So that's when he told her. He said he had invented a new form of poetic self-expression which he called the “vision.” He said he had written exactly 1,449 of these “visions” and that he intended to publish them, as a collection, once he had reached 2,000. He had never told anybody this before. Also, he had a selection of his favorites in his pocket right that moment.

Politely, Marbie said, “Can I take them home and read them?”

“Okay, but promise you won't lose them?”

“I can't promise that,” explained Marbie, “because it's in my nature to lose things.” She suggested he make photocopies before he loaned them to her.

“These
are
copies,” he admitted. “It's just I'm scared they'll get lost and someone'll steal the ideas, and, you know,
publish
them.”

Marbie said, “Don't worry, ideas can't be stolen, that's illegal.”

So he let her borrow them to take them home.

“By the way,” she said as she pressed the visions into her bag, “there was something important I wanted to say—”

At that, her handbag meowed and her hand jumped out in surprise.

UP FOR SOME MAINTENANCE
? said the message from her mother.
CONFIRMED 3 HR MARGIN AS OF NOW
.

“Got to go, sorry.” She looked up at the aeronautical engineer. “Got to phone my sister and then leave!” She slid out of her seat and floated away from the table.

Left behind, the aeronautical engineer watched as she took out her cell phone, and idly turned back to his beer.

Marbie read the first of the A.E.'s visions later that night, while sitting in the tree above the ice-cream van. She had watched Fancy safely enter the building and had surveyed the empty street for a few minutes. There were never any problems on Intrusions these days, and being lookout was boring. Also, they were well within the “3 hr margin,” and her mother never sent them in without confirmation.

So Marbie opened her handbag for a Mini Mars Bar, and her hand found the A.E.'s scroll of visions. The first, curling at top and bottom, was vision # 263.

The Visions of an Aeronautical Engineer
Vision # 263

Deep on the inside of my fried egg brains I see:

This! I see this, I see this.

I see a fence along a roadside (an iron-railing fence), sharp arrow tops are snipped along the fence,

And deep on the inside of my fried dead brains I see:

This! I see this, I see this,

I see this fence with its sharp arrow tops and I trip on a scuffle of my boot-lace heel, and I fall
eye-first
atop an arrow top!

Firm atop an arrow top atop an iron fence!

BUT:

deep on the inside of my fried vanilla brains I see:

This! I see this, I see this.

I see myself jogging, calm, alongside the fence,
And I'm breaking off the arrow tops, one by one,
and the arrows snap away
just right,
like fresh asparagus.