The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (27 page)

Late Thursday night, Cath closed the door on Warren, and sat on her couch to imagine.

She had driven straight home from the staff meeting that day, without touching the rose in her pigeonhole, and had waited, breathless, for Warren to arrive. When he did, she threw open the door and said,
“What's going on?”
Then she laughed at her own melodrama: He was sure to have an explanation.

It turned out he did not. The truth was set out in his solemn face: Breanna had a job at Redwood Elementary, beginning Monday. In fact, he could not even stay tonight—he had to go home and get the house in order. Her furniture would arrive the next day. The affair was officially over.

“Why didn't you tell me before?” she said.

“I didn't know until today that it was definite.”

“But why did I have to hear it from
Billson
?”

“I tried to warn you. I left you a rose.”

“But why didn't you
tell
me?”

“I'm sorry,” said Warren. “You're completely right. But it was up in the air until this morning, and I just didn't want it to be true. Really. I left you a rose.”

“But at
our
school! Why didn't you stop it from happening?”

“I couldn't stop it—how would that have looked? When it came up
a couple of weeks ago, I didn't think it was serious. I really didn't think it could happen.”

They spent the evening sitting on the couch, while Cath tried to cry. She found that she could not. There was nothing to cry about. Here he was beside her. The idea of his not being there was absurd.

“It's just that I think I love you,” she murmured, eventually, into his shoulder. Then she panicked: It was the first time this had been said between them. It was the first time she herself had ever said it first.

“I think I love you too,” he replied, and stroked the hair behind her ears.

“It feels impossible,” she said.

Warren agreed. His voice was sad, but practical. “I can tell we'll be together one day,” he said. “Someday, soon, it will all work out.”

“You're married,” she reminded him, but in a teary, smiling voice.

“Yes,” he replied, “but it's coming apart at the seams.”

Then he left, pausing at the door. They stared at each other fiercely, and then laughed, and he placed his hand on her forehead as if checking for fever.

Cath returned to the couch to imagine the affair being over. She pictured a train screeching to a halt with a jolt and a
tick-tick-tick
into silence. (The sound of a window squeaking open and a passenger blustering, “What
now?
”) But, in her vision, the train slid back into motion almost at once. She could not imagine it simply standing still.

It would be
intellectually
interesting, she decided, but otherwise would probably not hurt. It was not as if he was leaving
her,
he just had to return temporarily to his wife.

They had always agreed that contact would cease when Breanna moved to Sydney. Otherwise, they would have to sneak around like people having an affair. And, although she would miss his body, this would be altogether
different to broken hearts of her past. After all, she and Warren were in love. They had just admitted it. Shortly, the marriage would unravel.

Warren would still be around. She would be able to see him, talk to him, tell him her secrets. “It will be fine, won't it?” she confirmed with her cat, Violin.

Late Thursday night, Fancy stood at the long, narrow window by her front door and gazed out across the shadowed lawn.

Radcliffe had driven to the corner store for milk, and Cassie was asleep. For the first time that day, Fancy had a moment to consider how she felt about the end of her husband's affair.

Instead, she thought about hotel lobbies.

Ah,
she thought,
hotel lobbies!
The smooth integration of elevator doors, marble floors, and granite reception desks! The concierge behind his helpful little glasses, which glint in the chandelier light. The glass shop fronts with their indoor plants and neat subtle lettering: Armani, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana. The wine bar in curving stainless steel with dashes of electric blue (martini glasses!)—and the bathrooms, especially the bathrooms! Their frosted glass and their clever taps, towels folded in neat white piles, dried flowers, and the sensors! Everywhere the sensors! Hand driers, toilet flushers, doorways!

As generally happened when she thought of hotel lobbies, Fancy's breathing slowed. She calmed enough to return to her own front hallway.
Your husband is NOT having an affair,
she reminded herself. But watching the front lawn, and hearing the occasional gear change of passing cars, she felt herself jolted back to the imaginary lobby.

Immediately, she ran into a man in a pale gray T-shirt.

She thought she might kiss him deeply. No! She would lean in to kiss him, and he would turn away! She saw him, the man (not quite his face,
more his T-shirt), and she longed for his touch:
Please, put your hand on my wrist!
But he refused.

Jolted again, she was back in her home. She shrugged deeply, feeling the spasm of the stranger's non-touch by touching her own arms with her fingertips.

Was that him now? Had he followed her out of her dream? That was a car!

She peered beyond her reflection into the night. A car
was
pulling into the driveway. There was a succinct click as the headlights turned off. The engine was quieting. It
was
him! The man from the hotel lobby! It was
his
strong hands unbuckling the seat belt, his thumb on the button of his keys:
bip-bip!

His shoes were on the gravel—a quiet crunching, a few running steps up the stairway—and now he would knock! “That was you in the hotel lobby,” he would accuse enigmatically.

“Won't you come in for a drink?” she would reply, breathless, and—

Fancy jumped as keys rapped on the window.

“Fancy that!” cried a voice. “My Fancy is at home!”

Radcliffe leaned around the door with a grin, holding up a carton of milk.

Late Thursday night, Marbie drove home from the A.E.'s house, relieved she had finally ended the affair.

She walked down the hallway of the empty apartment, switching on lights and checking behind doors for intruders. Then she sat down on a beanbag in the living room to think.

The A.E. was not attractive, kind, intelligent, poetic, or interesting, she thought. In fact, he was mostly annoying. Despite that, she had slept with him twice, told him the Secret, and spent several nights in his home.
All the time, she had been conscious of a mild voice asking,
Excuse me, but where is your mind?
She had treated the voice in the same way you might treat a person asking,
What's that burning smell?
You might look vaguely toward the kitchen and then turn back to the TV.

Now she would suffer the consequences. She would wake each morning, conscious of the fact that she had failed to pay attention while her house burned to the ground.

From the campervan, Listen watched her father emerge from the back door of the Banana Bar. He turned, locked the door, lifted his head to the night sky, and sighed. She could see the sigh because it took his shoulders with it and then slumped them down. He leaned against the door now and lit a cigarette.

He gave up smoking years ago.

Now he would get cancer and die, and this would be her fault. Everything was her fault, she realized with amazement. She was pretty sure she had caused the flooding of the Grade Seven classrooms at Clareville: something to do with those fuses she had knocked in that storage room.

She had broken up her dad and Marbie with a spell, and the Spell Book was taking much too long to fix its mistake.

When you thought about it, she had
caused
Donna and the others to break their eternal pact. They had to break it, because she jeopardized their survival. Now they probably felt guilty, and that was her fault.

Right this moment, she and her dad should have been at the Zings' for the Friday Meeting.

Her dad flicked his cigarette between his fingers, and Listen realized something: She'd been wrong when she decided that the Secret was about family life.

In fact, the Secret was a murder.

The Zing family had murdered somebody, and now they had to cover it up. They had to shovel graves and bribe police and blackmail witnesses. They spent Friday nights organizing robberies to cover the costs of the cover-up. The garden shed was a bare concrete floor with a wooden table in the center. The family sat around the table and smoked, squinting at maps and at plans of bank vaults. They were jumpy, looking up uneasily when a bird landed on the shed roof.

Eventually, they would have recruited her to a life of crime. That would have been appropriate too. There was something wicked and wrong about her. She was connected to the Zings by her shame.

If you put a baby sea horse in an aquarium, she thought, it will swallow an air bubble and die. If a whale ever falls asleep, she thought, it will forget to breathe, and it will die.

She watched her dad stamp out his cigarette and brush his hands together.

The following week, Cath found out how it felt, the end of her affair.

It felt suspenseful, frightening, surprising, confusing, obvious, outrageous, and eventually like despair. These emotions arrived individually or in clusters, and sometimes one would brush the surface for a moment before eliding into another. On the first day, Monday, the primary emotions were
suspense
and
fear.

Three significant events took place that day:

1. Seeing Breanna for the first time;
   
2. being introduced to Breanna; and
   
3. having coffee with Breanna.
   

At Monday Assembly, she sat in her usual place, mistaking the suspense and fear for an exciting arriving-at-the-theater sort of feeling. Warren ran in late, as usual, and sat beside her, with a friendly yet restrained, “Hey, hey.” His face was grim and gray, and her excitement increased. She ignored Billson's introductory remarks, but then tuned back in when she realized he was no longer talking but was breathing, unpleasantly, into the microphone.

“I'm
waiting.
” He held up his thumb and then his pointer. He was going to count ten fingers, while the children whispered and giggled. “All right,” he said, growing bored with the game. “Let's show our newcomer
how well-behaved we are at Redwood! A round of applause to welcome our new school counselor, Breanna Woodford!”

And there at last was Warren's wife. She was moving forward to the front of the stage, and she was, on first impression, cheerful and breezy—but then, Cath realized, she also looked extremely nervous about being on a stage. This gave Cath the strangest stab, and she had to look away.

After the assembly, on her way across the playground to her classroom, Cath felt terrified as Billson approached, beckoning Breanna to follow him. Breanna would surely see the truth in her eyes! Or hear it in her voice? Or sense it in the way she held her shoulders?

“Oh,
you're
Cath Murphy,” said Breanna, friendly. “I've heard so much about you!” She swung her right arm forward, as if to shake hands, but instead clapped her own hands together, as if she were very excited.

Recklessly, Cath said, “I've heard a lot about you too!”

“I was really looking forward to meeting you at the Carotid Sticks?” said Breanna. “Remember? It was such a shame I couldn't make it down in time.”

“I know!” exclaimed Cath, but Billson was bored by their chatter and wanted to whisk Breanna away to meet somebody else.

“Do you want to have coffee after school today?” Breanna called, over her shoulder, to which Cath replied, “That's a great idea!”

Watching Breanna hurry away, Cath felt another strange stab. “I know!” she had said about the night when they almost met. And “That's a great idea!” about coffee. It was all so cheap and deceptive.

At coffee, Breanna chose a couch instead of a hard-backed chair, and slumped in it, as if determined to relax. They were in the shopping mall across the road from the school, with a view over the highway.

“I'm so relieved to get this job,” Breanna said, stirring her coffee. “I
didn't know how much longer I could stand being away from Warren for the weekdays. Do you know what I mean? I don't know if it's good for a marriage, for a start.”

Cath breathed in for a moment, her mind looping backward on itself as she tried to figure out a response.
What would I say, in this situation, if this situation were what it's meant to be?

“Mmm,” she said, and then tried to change the subject. “So, you've worked with kids before, have you?”

“A few years ago,” said Breanna. “And actually mostly with teenagers, but my thesis was on nine- to twelve-year-olds.”

Cath prolonged this for as long as she could, asking after Breanna's thesis topic, where she went to college, who her favorite teachers were, whether she took good notes. She enjoyed the conversation. She almost forgot who Breanna was, but the FEAR and SUSPENSE always buzzed just below the surface.

“Anyway,” said Breanna, “Warren tells me—”

“Oh, hang on!” panicked Cath. “Have you heard there are some Grade Seven girls at our school? Because their classrooms got flooded? Do you think you'll be their counselor too?”

Breanna knew about the seventh-graders, but she didn't know if they were part of her job description. They probably had counselors of their own.

“The thing is,” said Cath, “I've been watching one of these girls, because she's somehow related to a girl in my class. And every time I see her she's alone, and she looks sad to me. I think she might not have any friends.”

“Well,” said Breanna, “I don't see why I shouldn't try to help. Do you know her name?”

Oh God,
thought Cath,
there is nothing to dislike. She is kind and obliging, she has pretty eyes and nervous hands, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing to dislike.

But then Breanna took the subject back to Warren. “Warren's as excited as I am about me moving down to Sydney,” she said. “He's like a little boy. You know what? He even secretly went and bought a new bed to welcome me! And he surprised me with it! A four-poster. He put a sign on it saying 'WELCOME HOME.' Isn't he gorgeous?”

After these three distinct events, the week fell into a haze, and Cath walked around a step or two behind herself.

On two separate occasions, she saw Warren take Breanna's hand, and together they ran across the road. Once, she saw Warren beckon Breanna across the playground, and then tip up a small bag of chocolate sultanas, filling Breanna's palm. She also saw Warren demonstrate the staff-room coffee machine. Breanna stood beside him, concentrating so hard that he laughed and told her this was not life or death. Breanna giggled, embarrassed, and shook her shoulders to loosen herself up.

Meanwhile, the other teachers stopped talking about “Warren” and started talking about “Warren-and-Breanna.”
Look at me,
she wanted to shout,
everybody, see what I have been to Warren! Everybody say “Warren-and-Cath.”
But they kept telling Cath what a nice person Breanna seemed to be, and how fun it was to meet Warren's “other half.”

Cath began to feel that the ground was shifting slightly, and that the sky was not quite fixed to the earth.
Now then,
she thought, trying to stay calm,
who am I? Where do I belong? Where are my family? Who are my friends?

She phoned her mother and chatted about her dad's middle ear, and her mum's Tai Chi, and a girl in her own class whose ears were pierced three times. When her mother eventually asked, as usual, “Any young men on the horizon?” Cath wanted to dissolve. Or to pour herself into the holes in the telephone receiver, and sprinkle herself, like pepper, into her mother's arms. She wanted to tell her mother everything, but what could she say? “I had an affair with a married man and now his wife has come
to take him back.” Imagine her mother's silence across the continent. Imagine the slide in her mother's view of Cath.

Cath's parents thought of her as a well-behaved, innocent girl. A quiet girl, courteous, respectful of other people's things.

“Of
course,
his wife has come to take him back!” her mother would say, after the silence. “What did you think?” There would be such disappointment in her tone.

She thought of her three best friends from high school, who, oddly enough, had all ended up in remote, exotic locations: Lucy in Nepal, Kristin in Mongolia, and Sarah in the Sahara. She wrote them a long e-mail with the subject:
HELP
! But Lucy, Kristin, and Sarah rarely got access to the Internet, so she did not expect an answer for a month.

She tried to study her law notes, but could not concentrate. For example, when she read the chapter on “Larceny,” she decided to steal Warren from his wife:

A asked B to lend him a shilling. B agreed and handed A a coin. Both thought it to be a shilling, but later it emerged to be a sovereign. A kept the sovereign.

Ah-ha!
(She looked up from her book.) She would ask Breanna for a loan of a
sovereign,
and by mistake, Breanna would hand over a
Warren.
Cath would carry him away on a white horse, wicked laughter echoing; too late Breanna would discover her mistake!

There was one day during that week—possibly Wednesday—that she thought of as the Day of Letters. The first letter was handed to her in the playground before school had begun. Cassie Zing, sprinting past,
suddenly skidded to a stop and said, “I forgot to give you Mum's note!” She took an envelope out of her pocket and handed it over.

Dear Ms. Murphy,

Just a note to let you know how very much I am looking forward to meeting you at the parent-teacher night this Friday.

Very best wishes and kind regards,

Fancy Zing

Cath looked up in surprise. This note was so warm and unnecessary! Such a kind, pointless thought from a stranger! She felt suffused with comfort—
all would be well.
But then she saw Breanna smiling at her, and she had to crunch the letter in the palm of her hand.
You do not deserve such kindness,
she thought.

This was confirmed when she checked her e-mail and received a reply from Kristin in Mongolia:
CATH!! YOU POOR BABY. DON'T FEEL GUILTY. THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. IT WAS HIS CHOICE. IT'S ALL HIS FAULT. YOU DID NOTHING WRONG! YOU DON'T DESERVE THIS! WILL SEND LONGER E-MAIL SOON. AM RUNNING OUT OF MONEY!!!!!!

But it
is
my fault,
she said to the computer screen. And of course it was wrong. She was a grown-up, and had always known that affairs are wrong. While it was happening she had told herself,
There is no right or wrong. This is passion! It transcends morality! The rules do not apply!
But why had she thought she could slip outside the rules just because she felt a powerful desire to do so? She'd been trying to steal Warren from the start. No wonder she could not tell her mother about the affair. You can't tell your parents you're a criminal.

Then, in her staff-room pigeonhole, she found a large pink envelope,
addressed in swirling purple. At first she felt excited, but then she opened it and read:

Dear Ms. Murphy,

I know something about you.

Something secret and unforgivable.

Meet me Friday, 1 p.m., at the Valerio Couch Potato Café across the road from your school.

A Stranger

So it was true. She was evil, and she could not be forgiven. Self-loathing crept down her spine.

Then she read the note again and panicked: What was this letter about?
Was it suggesting blackmail?
She and Warren had been so convinced that nobody knew! They had even been proud of their subterfuge! How had they been caught out?

It must be someone from the school. Who else could possibly know? She hunched over her pigeonhole, examining the letter, and then glanced furtively around the room. Heather Waratah was eating a blueberry muffin. Jo Bel Castro was reading the paper. They both looked innocent.

She thought she should search for Warren, and show him the letter, but decided against it. The only thing that she and Warren had left now was their secret. Telling Warren about the blackmailer was like telling him there was no secret. Anyway, it would be unbearable to see him panic about Breanna finding out. She, Cath, would deal with it on her own.

That night, Cath arrived home and found a fourth letter in her mailbox. This one was from her landlord, and said that the landlord had purchased the two apartments adjoining Cath's. He intended to knock down the walls between all three, creating one grand apartment. Naturally, Cath
would be welcome to continue living in the grand apartment, which would, incidentally, include a sewing room and a sauna. The letter continued:

Of course, renovation can be noisy and inconvenient! We therefore offer you free accommodation in a penthouse suite at the Winston Hills Tudor Arms for the duration.

Rest assured that, despite the additional comfort which we endeavor to provide with these alterations, your rent will remain as it is for the remainder of your lease.

A sewing room! A sauna! What would she do with such things?

But it was exciting, and she reached for the phone to call Warren. Of course, she remembered, she could not.

It occurred to her that this was a common feature of breakups—the not being allowed. When boyfriends had broken her heart in the past, the worst of it, when she saw them again, was not being allowed to touch. Not being allowed to smooth their eyebrows, or take their hand at the traffic lights, or touch the end of their nose. Not being allowed to phone up and say, “Well! You're not going to
believe
what's happened!” Instead, you had to explain yourself. You had to say, “Hello, this is Cath, how are you?” And that was assuming you were allowed to phone at all.

Of course, all along she had been denied the right to hold Warren's hand in public—but now she was not allowed to see him on weeknights, and she was forbidden to phone.

She reread the letter, to comfort herself—
at least her landlord seemed fond of her
—and noticed, as she did, a pale little footer in the bottom right corner of the page. “Project 78,” said the footer.

Project 78.
Now what did
that
remind her of?

She ran into the kitchen, opened a few drawers, leafed through recipe
books, and found it: a letter she had received a few months before, offering a free course in “Healthy & Delicious Cooking for the Young And Young At Heart.” (She had not taken the offer, had abandoned it in her recipe drawer.)

And there it was—a pale little footer in the bottom right corner of the page. “Project 75,” it said.

She had a strange, scary feeling for a moment—
How was her landlord connected with a local cooking school?
—but then she smiled.
What a coincidence!