The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (39 page)

The evening following the Zings' “explanation lunch” was a still and balmy one. Cath's apartment blinked, apprehensively, when she threw open its front door.

In her arms she held a Tupperware container filled with Mrs. Zing's meringues, and a brown paper bag of lemons from Mr. Zing's tree. These she appeared to notice now with startled exasperation, and she allowed them to tumble to her feet. She marched straight to the dining-room window and ran her fingers up and down the frame. It took only a moment to find the camera, although it was smaller than her smallest fingernail.

At the lunch, she had calmed herself, and set herself apart, by finding the Zing family absurd.
I don't believe a word of this,
she had said to herself, comfortably,
but it's very amusing!

But even as she reassured herself, the contents of the garden shed had rained like arrows through her memory.

And now, here was a camera in the palm of her right hand.

Was it all true? Had this tiny object been observing her all this time? Could something so slight as this have shaped her life? Had fat Mrs. Zing watched her eat dinner, making notes about how much pepper she ground onto her food? Had those strange, smiling sisters slipped into her home and replaced or repaired the camera when she wasn't home? She brought her palms together hard, crushing the camera. When she opened her
hands again, she almost expected to see a drop of blood, as if she had killed a mosquito.

She began a frenzied search through the apartment, without knowing quite what she was looking for: more fingernail cameras, of course, but also anything electronic or odd, anything she might recognize from movies about spies or surveillance. The Zings had assured her that the only equipment in her apartment was the dining-room camera, but she thought she had also caught odd half-references to one additional camera which only ever photographed her ankles. So she ran a knife along the baseboards, pried open electrical outlets, and even turned her socks inside out. Her cat, Violin, watched.

Finally, she collapsed onto the living-room couch. She found that her head was shaking back and forth in disbelief, and her hair was getting caught on the fabric.

She sat up and gazed around the room, from the low bookshelf to the standing lamp to the plasma TV on its chrome stand. At that moment her eyes caught the shape of a small green V. It was the V on her TV remote control. There was a similar V, she saw now, on the side of the leather-bound box by the DVD player. It was her collection of Valerio Classics.

Valerio!
She had almost forgotten. The Valerio Empire had been funding the whole thing!

Well,
that
part,
she thought scornfully,
was
certainly not true.

Valerios connected to her mediocre life? It was ridiculous enough to think of the Zing family examining her ordinary days, but the Valerios! She had studied Nikolai's films in high school Social Studies! She owned a Valerio electric toothbrush, and used Valerio conditioning treatments on her hair! She loved to eat Nikolai Gingerbread Men and had recently signed up for the Young & Fit Valerio Health Plan. That small green V filled her life!

She reached for the leather-bound collection of classics, opened it, and took out the movie at the top of the pile. Nikolai Valerio smoldered up at her from the photo on the front cover. There was the trademark smudge of motor oil, and there were the elegant cheekbones.

“Dad?” she said, then laughed uncontrollably.

Unconsciously, however, she touched her own cheekbones.

I am the daughter,
she thought doubtfully,
of Nikolai Valerio.
It was like thinking:
I am a princess.

It's not true,
she reminded herself, as Violin skirted her ankles. But just in case, she took the movie collection down the hall and hid it in the linen closet. Even as she pressed the cupboard door closed, she was distracted by the small green V on the side of her coatrack. Her eyelid began to flicker.

The day after Maude wrote the Spell Book, she came out to breakfast. David pretended she was there every day and offered her the coffeepot. Fancy and Marbie, in their school uniforms, stared at their mother in amazement.

Maude and David scarcely knew each other. They had spent more than a year apart, and David had returned to the news of Maude's affair and pregnancy. Accepting that he was largely to blame, because he had abandoned her, David had tried to be calm and understanding. He had suggested they raise the child as one of their own—change their names and run away, to escape the publicity. But Maude, oddly detached, had declared that there was no choice. “We can't afford the two girls that we have,” she told him coldly. “And there's nowhere you can run from the Valerios.” Once, he had suggested timidly that they could keep the child and solve the financial problems by embracing the publicity: Sell the story of Cath to a magazine. “You think I would sell my
baby
?” she had shouted, throwing a potted plant at his head.

Then they had both been distracted: the house by the sea; visits from Valerio agents; legal documents and large sums of money; the terrible handover day.

Now that she was up again, they worked on the Secret together. They chose a color for the garden shed, and bought clipboards and maps. David was happy to oblige. At Maude's request, he figured out how to modify cameras
and microphones, to conceal them in shirtsleeves and collars. He learned about zoom lenses and bugging devices. He cheered up enormously.

Together, he and Maude researched baby carriages, and their first major gift to Cath, presented as “market research,” was a state-of-the-art stroller. They were polite and friendly with each other, but David continued to sleep on the couch.

At last, after some months had passed, he knocked on the bedroom door and walked into the room. It was late, and the girls were asleep. He pressed the door quietly closed behind him, his right hand still clenched from the knock.

There was no moon, and the room was deep in darkness. He stopped still in perfect helplessness.

“I'll get the bedside light,” offered a voice from the bed. There was a click and a small glare of light, pooling itself on Maude's hair and the edge of her arm. She sat up against the headboard.

“I hope I didn't wake you,” David said. He sat on the far edge of the bed, in the shadows by the bumps of her feet. Their voices were bright but measured.

David edged his way along the bed, until he was gazing at Maude's pale face. She studied his face also. They were silent, conscious that now they must speak. Their words would be soap-operatic.

Maude would say:
You left me for a year!

David would respond:
That may be, but while I was away, you fell in love with someone else.

Maude would cry:
But how could I know you would return?

David might be silent and torn.

Maude would admit, a tremble in her voice:
I don't know if I love you anymore.

David would murmur:
How can I convince you that you do?

Maude would whisper:
My heart has been broken by another.

David would say bluntly:
He's a movie star. Get over it.

Maude would say:
I gave away my child.

The final truth would eclipse the other truths. In a soap opera, it would give way to an ad break.

Instead of speaking, they continued to stare at one another. David unclenched his fist, and there was a small, crackling sound. He revealed a folded square of glossy blue and handed it to Maude, who moved it into the light.

“That's next weekend,” said David, in a voice like a challenge.

The paper was a pamphlet, advertising a Festival of Balloons at Berowra. “But you're not even interested in balloons,” said Maude, and then added pointedly: “You're afraid of heights.” She caught his eye, and they both acknowledged that this might be the only truth spoken.

“That's true,” he agreed. “But that doesn't mean I wasn't interested in your balloons, Maude.”

“You didn't even listen to my stories.” Her tone was tear-filled, defiant, and teasing.

“Oh, I didn't listen, did I?” He chose the teasing tone. “Lie down,” he instructed. “And close your eyes.”

She moved back under the sheets, so she was flat on her back, her head in the center of the pillow, watching him. “I'm not closing my eyes,” she said.

“But I've decided to tell you a story,” he said. “And next weekend I'll take you to the festival. Look at this.” He took the pamphlet back from her. “They've got balloons in every shape you can imagine. Rabbits, cats, cars, and Pepsi cans. And they'll have arts and crafts for sale, those doily things you like, and they'll have steak-and-onion sandwiches, I bet, and cotton candy.”

Maude did not look at the pamphlet, but at his face. “What story?” she said.

It had been years since Maude told David the story of Monsieur Blanchard, the first man to fly the English Channel. But that night, sitting on the edge of her bed, he repeated the story the way she liked to tell it, almost word for word.

“Now, Jean-Pierre Blanchard was determined to be the first man to fly the English Channel,” he began. “And he wanted to do it alone. Even the American physician who financed his trip was not to be allowed to come, although the doctor, in point of fact, loved the idea and, in second point of fact, insisted.

“Close your eyes,” said David, interrupting himself.

“Am I making you nervous?”

“I'm not nervous. It's supposed to be a bedtime story, that's all.”

He ran two fingers from her forehead over her eyelids, so that they closed, but she opened them at once.

“Jean-Pierre tried all sorts of tricks to stop the doctor from coming. One day, he wore a lead-lined belt in his trousers, so that the balloon seemed to sink beneath their weight. ‘We're too heavy!' he exclaimed sadly to the doctor. ‘I'm afraid you'll have to get out!' But the doctor suspected a trick and made him turn down his pants.

“Look at this,” said David. “The fitted sheet's come away. No wonder you can't sleep. Move over a moment.” Maude moved to the other side of the bed, and David dragged the bottom sheet back where it belonged, pulling it over the mattress corner. He straightened up the quilt, placing it carefully around her shoulders. Then he swung his legs onto the bed, and sat up in her place. She closed her eyes.

“Eventually, they sorted out their quarrel, and Jean-Pierre agreed that the doctor could come along. It was January 7, 1785, that they set off from the Dover cliffs, carrying with them the following: barometer, compass, thirty pounds of ballast, flags, anchors, cork jackets—”

Here David paused, repeating the words to himself: “…flags, anchors, cork jackets…”

“A packet of pamphlets, a bottle of brandy,” prompted Maude.

“A packet of pamphlets, a bottle of brandy, some biscuits, some apples, a pair of silk-covered aerial oars…” He had taken her wrist, as if it helped him remember, and as he listed each item, he tapped her wrist bone once with his thumb.

“A rudder,” provided Maude.

“Hush,” said David, and tapped her wrist again. “And a useless, hand-operated revolving fan.”

“Which
later
—” she began.

“Which
later,
” he reproved, raising a finger to silence her, “which later would be useful as an airplane propeller.”

Maude nodded, satisfied. She turned onto her side, her head pressed into her pillow.

“The flight went very badly. The balloon zipped up and down like a yo-yo, and they began, calmly at first, to throw bits and pieces overboard. Yes, they had to throw the brandy and the apples! By the time they reached the French coast, they were frantically hurling more and more, and Jean-Pierre, most likely, eyed the doctor longingly! Instead, he took off his trousers and threw them overboard.”

David curled a strand of Maude's hair around his finger, let it slide away again, and said, “I didn't listen to your stories, eh?” She smiled without opening her eyes. He had been sitting up on the bed, with his knees propped up before him. Now he lay down close to her and continued.

“The story has a happy ending.” He spoke the words into her hair, and kissed her head once. “They landed safe in the forest of Guines. They were entertained, as heroes, for weeks afterward by the French.”

The Berowra Festival of Balloons was the first of several attended by Maude and David over the years. Later they took to bringing one or both of their daughters along, but this first they visited alone. Maude packed an overnight bag containing four candles, a bottle of wine, bread, cheese, olives, and chocolate brownies. She scarcely knew why she did this, but it did the trick.

Cath held an end of the finish-line ribbon, and scanned the carnival crowd for Zings.

Ah-hah!
That was a Zing on a picnic blanket, trying out the ring tones on her cell phone.

Over there! A little Zing lining up to race.

That could be a Zing, that plump woman carrying the cranberry muffin—

No.

That was not a Zing.

That was Heather Waratah (teacher, Grade 4C).

A year ago she hadn't even known the Zings. Now there was a spasm in her right eye when she saw one. (The letter
V
had the same effect.)

So, that's it for me,
she thought grimly as the finish-line ribbon fell from her wrist to the feet of a tumble of children.

Cath spent the morning of the Redwood Sports Carnival holding one end of the finish-line ribbon. She spent the afternoon supervising novelty events. The novelty events were anarchic: It was something to do with the pointlessness, Cath thought, of running with legs tied together, or with potato sacks strapped around your waist. She did not supervise closely, but allowed small episodes of chaos to erupt and subside while she considered her life.

Since the “explanation lunch” at the Zings' house two weeks before,
Warren and Breanna Woodford had resigned and Lenny D'Souza had returned as full-time counselor. Lenny and Billson were together again, and everybody found them cloying. Cath, meanwhile, was not speaking to those who had been Zing family spies, such as Suzanne Barker or Katie Toby or the Friendly Bus Driver. But she also said little to anybody else.

What was there to say? She had no personality. She had watched the accumulated records of her life burn to cinders in a garden shed. In a gazebo, under the blackened bark of a scribbly gum, she had learned the explanation for practically every important event, surprise, or success in her life. She was nothing. An imaginary character. An elaborate Zing family fiction,
brought to your TV today
(she liked to add, with bitter humor)
by Valerio Soap-on-a-String!

All that was real, thought Cath, were these burn scars on her forearms and this incessant sensation of burning in her cheeks. The feeling of being watched.

She had moved to a new apartment, choosing one through a reputable agent. She had discarded all her furniture, and bought everything new from IKEA. She had washed down the walls and windows of the new apartment and padlocked the doors. She had also threatened the Zings with legal action if they so much as glanced her way. But still she narrowed her eyes if a sales assistant asked her how she'd been, and flinched when she saw a camera.

She could tell the police, of course, or the media, but what was the point? Even if they believed her, her life would just be theater once again.

She stepped backward, absentmindedly, and landed on an egg that had fallen from some child's spoon. Nearby children, seeing this, shrieked and jumped up and down.

The strangest thing was this: Sometimes, in the darkest part of the night, she wished that the Secret continued. While her cheeks burned, angry and humiliated by their surveillance, somewhere in her heart was
the cold recognition that now she was truly alone. It was almost as if, all her life, she had intuitively known they were watching and had basked in the limelight.

Children, she knew, imagined themselves to be performers. She remembered once when she was five or six, turning cartwheels on the sideline of a cricket game. She had believed that the cricketers were secretly watching her acrobatics, far more impressed by her skill than they were by their game. But children eventually realize they are part of a crowd. Had she herself ever learned that lesson?

Now she almost panicked when she woke in the night, alone and brokenhearted, and realized that no one was paying the slightest attention. She might never get over Warren.
She might never fall in love again.
And she had to face this alone: the yearning she would feel when she greeted next year's class on the second-grade balcony; the starkness of the staff room without him in it; her splintering memories of Warren—a glimpse of his shoulder through a moth hole in his T-shirt; feet tapping, side by side, on the dark wooden floorboards of a jazz café.

Her broken heart, meanwhile, was complicated by guilt, self-loathing, and hatred. She hated herself, she hated him, but she longed to have him back, and each night she begged,
Come back to me. Leave your wife. Find someone else, Breanna. Let me have him.

At the time of the affair she had thought,
Breanna doesn't know that this is happening, so how can it hurt her?
Also:
I can't give him up, I just can't—I really love him.

It was the morality of her seven-year-olds. If you don't get caught, it's not wrong. If you really, really want it, you can do it.

Also, it was the strange moral dimension of love. Where love is concerned, the rules fall apart. You can hurt other people, other people can hurt you, and it makes no difference to say,
But he can't do this!

Breanna,
Cath thought,
please forgive me.

As far as she could tell, the Zings had not known about her affair. But she wondered if eventually they would have found out. Would they have gathered in the garden shed, worried, and arranged to send flowers and a “Cheer up” note? (That had been them last year, and not the former boyfriend in New Orleans after all.) Or would they have shaken disapproving heads, just as her own mother might have?

Then Cath remembered Marbie Zing at the explanation lunch.
You didn't know it was happening,
she had said, about the Secret,
so how could it hurt you?

The final of the three-legged race collapsed into fits of giggles, and Cath caught a sudden glimpse of herself in a memory. It was the first week of her affair with Warren, and they were running through the streets of Bowral together in the rain. They ran with their arms held tight around one another's waists, toward the shelter of some shops in the distance, their legs keeping time like a dance.

The three-legged race was not pointless. You used these skills when you ran in the rain with your arm around your lover's waist.

The carnival, she realized, was closing down and thinning out. She caught the eye of Fancy Zing in the distance, opening a car door. Fancy smiled and waved, and then leaned to talk to her daughter.

We couldn't give you up,
Fancy had said at the explanation lunch.
We just couldn't. We loved you.

Their Secret was wrong, it was no excuse, but Cath began to wonder if, one day, she might understand.

She had not returned Fancy's wave. She had simply stared and turned away, but even from this distance, she thought, Fancy's smile was warm.