The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (34 page)

“I'm sorry,” he said again, now in the voice of a teacher who needs to repeat a simple lesson. “I'm sorry, but it happened. It's real. I seriously thought it was gone, but early this morning it came back. I am so sorry.”

She tried brisk. “It's fine, Warren. I knew what I was doing. I never meant you to leave her unless it was really over. And I think it
is
over, Warren, this is just some kind of false hope. I'll still be here. I'll still be waiting, but please God, tell me that Breanna isn't at school today. Because if she's not blaming you, then I swear to God, she must be ready to scratch out my eyes.”

“I'm sorry,” he repeated. “She's in the staff room. Probably watching us right now. I told her I was coming out to let you know. She's angry, but I don't think she would hurt you.” He was standing up and backing away.

“What happened to the seams?” she called.

“What?”

“Forget it,” she said. “I'm trying to work.” And she looked down at her empty hands.

On the edge of her wooden bench, Cath sensed the gleams of light on the staff-room windows, each window gazing fixedly at her. She had yearned to be seen and now felt the shock of exposure.
If Breanna knows,
she thought,
everybody knows, and the whole school is watching me.
Children's shadows crossed her body.
Here is the teacher who loved another teacher,
the shadows seemed to say, placidly enough.
She planned to run away with him, but his wife arrived to take him back.

Meanwhile, the wife was moving from window to window, stalking, judging, despising her, and all with perfect right. The sun was not gentle and tender at all, it was a spotlight.

On the Grade Two balcony, Cassie stood outside her classroom, watching the playground. Ms. Murphy was sitting on a bench, curling her shoulders. The bell was ringing for school to start, and Ms. Murphy hadn't even moved.

“You go inside,” Cassie told Lucinda. “I just have to stay here for a minute.”

Fancy, alone on the porch again, now with a new cup of coffee, listened to the fading engine of Radcliffe's car. He had left for work with a final beseeching request that she forgive him.
Was that possible?
she mused now.

All her life she had longed to meet her baby sister—her mother had promised that she would be the first—and Radcliffe had stolen that away.

Still, she thought, did it matter? She could meet Cath another time. She almost felt embarrassed for Radcliffe, as if he had revealed that he ate the last of Cassie's chocolate Easter eggs, and secretly, guiltily, elaborately covered it up. It was childish and greedy, but what was the big deal?

She thought she could forgive him. Which made her think: What else could she forgive? If Radcliffe
had
been having an affair, for example, would she have forgiven him?
Should
she have forgiven him? Wasn't she supposed to get revenge?

Be cruel, be strong, or sulk.

Of course! She had forgotten. Revenge was just one of the options. The rules were more complex than that.

All this time, waiting for confirmation of Radcliffe's affair so she could pounce with a counter-affair, she had forgotten she might have to be strong. As a matter of fact, strength was a more appropriate response when you were a grown-up with a house, car, garden hose, and child. She sipped her coffee and felt the mug tremble in her hand.

Then again, she thought, as the coffee fanned out in her head, if you chose the “strong” option you had to shave off a piece of love as fuel for that strength. And if great strength were needed, she might have used up all her love. But would she be
allowed
to—

Oh, stop it,
she thought angrily, slamming the coffee mug onto the porch, and burning her hand with the splash.

The paper crushed into the bottom of the tissue box was covered in Listen's curly handwriting. It was entitled, “Things That Make Me Sad,”
and the text began:
Donna has a table-tennis table in the basement of her house, and once Sia's mother made us all eat spaghetti squash.
Even before she had finished the page, Marbie was reaching for the phone.

“Nathaniel,” she said into his answering machine. “Sorry to call again. I know you won't come to the balloon festival, it's okay, it's not that, it's about Listen. I don't know how long ago she wrote this, but there's stuff in here that's scaring me, maybe you know all this now, but if you don't, you should, and I can't believe what her friends have done—”

“Marbie?”

Marbie jumped at the sound of Nathaniel's voice.

“I'm here,” he said.

“Oh,” said Marbie, “okay, hi, Nathaniel, well, I just found this paper that Listen wrote, like a kind of diary, and did you know that Donna and those others threw her out of their group?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm just reading this, and it's full of all the things those stupid girls said were wrong with her, and how she wants to cross highways in front of cars, and she walks through long grass hoping to get bitten by a snake, and switches on the power with wet hands, and how did we not notice, Nathaniel? What were we thinking? And I think she's going to hurt herself, so where is she? I really need to speak to her.”

“Okay,” said Nathaniel. “You have to calm down. I just dropped her at school for a camp. Hang on, I've got a customer.”

When she finally raised her head to confront the staring eyes, there was nobody looking at Cath. Children were running toward their classrooms, teachers were chatting in the doorway to the staff room, and even the staff-room windows had a blank, unseeing look.

The vulnerable, exposed feeling receded slightly, and she decided to be sensible. It was unlikely, for a start, that anybody else knew. Breanna had not become friends with anybody yet.

Anybody, that is, except Cath.

She could not possibly see Breanna. Her briefcase and cell phone were in the staff room, but her car keys were in her pocket. She would just have to drive away.

Warren was emerging from the staff room again, calling out something to somebody inside, and heading across to their building.

“Warren,” she called, “can you take care of my class for the morning?”

“Of course,” he said, grim, solemn, and gentle all at once.

“I just have something to do,” she scolded, and walked briskly toward the school gate. Warren hurried after her, and she quickened her pace. “Are you all right?” he murmured, as he reached her side. This was ridiculous. Now Breanna was watching them together again. She began to jog, but Warren actually jogged alongside her. “I hope you can understand,” he begged.

From her hiding spot under the bag rack on the Grade Two balcony, Cassie watched a crowd of girls forming at the entranceway to the school. Dressed in jeans, they were kicking pillows at each other.

She turned back to Ms. Murphy. Ms. Murphy was gone from her seat. She was running toward the front gate, and Mr. Woodford was running beside her.

It was the two cheetahs running away from the jungle!
Finally, she understood the picture on the dentist's ceiling!

She clambered out from beneath the bag rack and rushed down the Grade Two stairs.

Cath and Warren had to pause as two coach buses were pulling into the driveway. In fact, the entranceway was now a mess of girls and sleeping bags.

“It's the seventh-graders,” Warren said, “from Clareville Academy. They've got a camp in the mountains this weekend.”

“Aren't you full of knowledge?” Cath snapped. “Warren, I'm fine, please go back.”

He looked hurt, shrugged, and hurried away, and Cath felt utterly bereft.

He had given up so easily.

She pressed her lips together, breathed a sigh through her nose, and began to skirt around the seventh-graders. That was when she spotted that girl—Listen Taylor—the relative of Cassie Zing's. Listen was taking something out of her bag, crouching down and pressing it under a rock in the garden that edged the driveway. Strange. Was it a book? Now she was pointing out her name to a teacher with a clipboard, and was stepping back into the crowd.

Watching Listen, Cath felt a rush of guilt. She had asked Breanna for help with this girl—now that Breanna knew about the affair, asking her for help seemed unforgivable.

She looked again for Listen in the crowd, but could not see her. She was turning, then, about to head to the teachers' parking lot and her car, but something caught her eye.

Listen Taylor was slinking toward the school's front lawn—and had just ducked underneath the fence.

Stop it!
Fancy thought.
Stop with these childish games and rules! You can't wait for permission to have an affair! You can't wait for permission to leave!
You have to be
grown-up and make things happen on your own. You have to face the truth:
There is no love left.

Now, trembling on the front porch, Fancy struggled to argue back, setting up the cue cards of her love for Radcliffe. But all she could see were squabbling seagulls, the inside of a hotel lobby, and the neat italic typeset of that recurring sentence:
How is your ocean bream, my love? How is your ocean bream?

Marbie, pressing the phone to her ear, waited through a malted milk shake transaction. She heard a brief exchange about cricket and the jangling of cash register and change.

“Marbie?” Nathaniel's voice was there again, and she could hardly breathe. “Marbie,” he said. “So, this sounds bad, but you know, she's at the school camp so she's okay, and maybe it's all better now. I bet she's got new friends. Kids go through bad phases, so maybe that was just one, so…Could you mail me that paper she wrote?”

“Okay,” whispered Marbie. His voice had turned cold and final again.

“Anyway,” he said, even colder. “Why so interested in Listen? You haven't exactly been thinking of her up to now.”

She tried to hold on to her tears.

“Marbie?” he said, now sounding almost rough.

“I've thought of Listen constantly through all of this.” She made herself speak, and as she did, her voice began to build. “I hate myself for what I did to you, but I wanted to be like a
mother
to Listen, and look what I've done. I love your daughter as much as I love you.”

Now Nathaniel was breathing quietly. “You know, Marbie,” he said eventually, “I'd have forgiven you almost right away if it hadn't been for Listen.”

There was the distant sound of a jangling door and Nathaniel shouted, “WE'RE NOT OPEN.” His voice returned to the phone, softer and quieter. “See,” he said, “I'd have given you years to make up your mind about me, and to have your adventures and affairs if it wasn't for Listen. But she's already lost one mother to that world. I can't let it happen to her again.”

“But I've
made
up my mind,” said Marbie breathlessly. “I know it didn't seem like it, but I didn't
want
to have affairs or adventures, I just wanted you. I can't believe how much I miss you. You and Listen
are
my adventure.”

Nathaniel was silent. “Are you sure you should be going away this weekend?” he said. “You sound like you've got a cold.”

“I know,” said Marbie. “Maybe I won't go.”

Again, Nathaniel was quiet for a moment. “So you met this guy at the Night Owl Pub?” he said, in a just audible voice.

“He asked me to play a game of tennis.”

“Tennis. How was he?”

“Well, a lot better than me. He said he played C—grade competition. But you played A—grade, didn't you?”

There was a strange clanging noise, which could have been Nathaniel stacking and unstacking silver cups.

After a while he said, “Maybe you should come by. So we can talk about Listen.”

Cath thought of calling out to Listen Taylor, but somehow, it seemed more professional to take the entry gate of the school and follow at a lurking crouch.

The girl darted across the street, and Cath darted not far behind her.

Now she walked fast along the footpath, turned down a side street and stopped at a bus stop.

Cath stepped back behind a hedge.

When she thought of squabbling seagulls, Fancy thought of Radcliffe being childish.

When she thought of hotel lobbies, she thought of herself running from Radcliffe, checking in to glamorous hotels.

When she thought,
How is your ocean bream, my love?
she pictured, suddenly, an aging couple in a restaurant. The man was asking his wife, in a loving, interested voice,
How is your bream?

And Fancy understood. She herself would never be part of such a couple, because Radcliffe would never care about her bream.

Panicked, she reminded herself of Radcliffe's wedding proposal: the shoe-polish mud, the winding trees, and Radcliffe clicking a photo of her:
I would like to marry you and everything about you.
She waited for the usual rush of contentment—her husband loved her and everything about her!—but instead was amazed. Why had she never thought of this before?

I would like to marry you and everything about you.

He meant the Zing Family Secret.

He meant the Friday night meetings, the hidden cameras, the network of suburban spies. He meant the edicts from Nikolai Valerio, the labyrinthine corporate structure, and the romantic ideal of Cath: a more beautiful, sculpted version of Fancy herself. He loved the Secret more than he loved her. He loved it more than his own daughter. He was so overcome with the thrill of meeting Cath, he hardly gave a thought to Cassie's bee sting.

It was settled. Fancy was going to have to leave him.

The 382 pulled up, and Listen climbed aboard. Cath leapt from behind the hedge and knocked on the closing bus door, which reluctantly opened to let her aboard. She slipped into the front seat and bowed her head.

Cassie skidded through the gates of the school in time to see Ms. Murphy hop onto a bus. The bus pulled away at high speed.

Nice try,
thought Cassie, with a grim little nod, and began to run. She would have to run as fast as a bus.

It was no trouble. Once, she remembered, she had been sprinting across the icy playground and had skidded into a game of rounders. Mr. Woodford had caught her, and told all the kids: “This is Cassie Zing. Future Olympic champ. I suggest you get her autograph now.”

She pounded the footpath ferociously, sometimes running across three lanes of traffic as a shortcut.

When Listen got off the bus, Cath got off behind her. Listen skittered around a corner. Cath stopped at a real-estate agent to smile at the pictures in the windows, but after an agonizing moment, she gave chase again.

Listen, she saw, had arrived at a blond-brick house, alongside a local junior high. But the girl did not go to the front door. She lowered herself to a crouch and darted around the back. Cath also lowered herself and darted around the house.