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.
Marbie felt curious. She shook her head, trying to shake herself back into herself. She read the vision again, and felt even more curious. For she had never told the aeronautical engineer about her lifelong fear that long sharp items (such as umbrellas or fence posts) would somehow end up in her eye. She had never even told him about the event with the flying beach umbrella.
And yet here, curling in her hand, was a vision containing not only her fear, but also the solution to her fear. He was going to break the arrow tops off the fence! Like the ends of fresh asparagus.
Her hand, which was holding the travel flashlight, trembled violently, and the light slipped and rustled through the branches to the ground. She looked down. And there was the car in the street beneath her, turning into the apartment garage.
GET OUT NOW, Marbie typed into her pager, fingers shaking. She sent the message thirteen times before Fancy finally acknowledged it. A few moments later, she saw Fancy leaping smartly from the window to a tree, and elegantly stepping down its branches.
Marbie phoned the A.E. from work the next day and expressed wonder at his vision. He did not seem surprised at her wonder. In fact, he seemed despondent because, it turned out, he hated writing his visions. He said that, as a writer, one felt a compulsion to write, much like the compulsion that some people have to tear out their own hair. He would give anything, he said, not to be a writer, for writers have expression in their soul, which is tearing and scratching to get out! Worse, he said, far worse, to tear something out of your soul than simply to tear it from your head.
It was his secret anguish, his writing of visions, and it surprised him too, this anguish, given that he was generally practical, objective, logical, just as an engineer, a scientist! should be. But the artist, sadly, was within him.
Also, the A.E. said that he found his visions were at their best just before he fell asleep. So each night when he hopped into bed, he set his alarm for ten minutes hence. Then he let the visions scratch their way out (the agony!) as he fell asleep, and the alarm ensured that the latest visions were not lost in his dreams forever.
He said he got this idea, of setting the alarm, from a particular genius of the past, whose name he could not recall, who used to tie bells to his fingers and sit down for a sleep. The bells would wake the genius just as he began to doze, and he would quickly scribble out the ideas he had had while falling asleep.
Marbie said that there was a famous composer who used to tie weights to his little fingers to strengthen them for piano playing, but often this just broke the fingers.
At school, Listen was a sentry.
In most of her subjects, she had found places to sit away from Donna and the others, although in Science, she was not allowed to change benches. So she still had to sit with Donna and Caro, and when they did experiments together they were very polite.
At lunchtimes, she hovered around the tuckshop door, like a sentry. She stood on the tips of her toes, scanning the crowd at the counter. Where are my friends? her facial expressions said. Why so slow? She had to open up her sandwich and eat it, all the time watching and guarding the door. Then, finally, when she had finished her sandwich, she gave up and went to the library until the end-of-lunch bell rang.
Recess was the most difficult time because there were fifteen minutes to fill, and you were not allowed into the library. You were never allowed into a classroom; everybody had to sit outside on the lawn, even though it was so cold these days that girls huddled together, or rubbed each other’s hands between their own to make them warm, or sometimes groups of girls got up and did the can-can in a row.
The point was, there was nowhere to hide, and fifteen minutes to fill.
Sometimes Listen thought about just going out onto the lawn and joining a group of huddled girls. If she stayed completely silent, they might not notice.
Sometimes, also, she thought about going out there onto the lawn, among the garlands of girls, and simply sitting on the grass. She could sit alone, eat an apple, read a book, and who cares what anybody thinks?
There was never a single person eating lunch on the lawn alone. I am the only one in the entire school with no friends, she realized. Or if not, Where do they go? Where are the other lonely people? Why can’t we join up and be friends?
It was exhausting enough filling up the time at school. She also had to hide in the Vodaphone shop in Castle Towers on weekends, so that Marbie and her dad would think she was out with her friends.
Marbie read the A.E.’s other visions, but none of them spoke to her in the same direct way as the one about the sharp fence posts. That particular vision she pinned to the corkboard above her desk, and read each morning like a mantra.
It is curing me, she thought to herself, in wonder. Whenever she feared a long, sharp item these days, she would close her eyes and imagine the aeronautical engineer prancing plumply alongside a fence, snapping off the sharp bits one by one. In her imagination, he turned to her with an armful of fence ends clutched to his chest, and he blushed, and lowered his head.
One Tuesday afternoon, Marbie looked at the phone on her desk and thought, Well! Because why had he not called?
She had not had a chance to say: No more tennis, so why had he decided no more tennis? All of his own accord. (Did he have a vision that she had meant to say it?) Of course, the weather had turned gray and chill, and there was talk that it was going to get freakishly cold, so maybe tennis was no longer appropriate. Bare legs would goosebump as they ran toward the net. Still, he could have called for a chat.
“I’ll try harder to get her to talk,” Marbie promised. “I’m kind of sad because I thought she and I would hang out together, but she’s always out with her friends.”
Now, on the phone she said, “What are you doing tonight?”
“Going ice-skating with Donna and the others,” Listen said at once. “It was so great when we went on the weekend? Sia was, like, super fast, but Caro wouldn’t let go of the gate. Me and Donna held hands and just spun around and around till we got dizzy. So, we’re going again tonight; maybe every Tuesday night from now on.”
“Sad,” said Marbie. “I was going to see if you wanted to come to the movies with me.”
“Huh.” Listen was quiet. Then she said, “Maybe another night?”
Marbie hung up and called Nathaniel. “I just have to come to terms with it,” she said. “Listen prefers to be with her friends, so probably that’s why she seems depressed when she’s with us. She’s so sweet and polite though, when I asked her out tonight, she suggested we do something another night. I guess I should leave her alone.”
“Me too,” Nathaniel agreed. “If she’s in that phase she definitely doesn’t want to hang with her dad.”
Marbie wandered out of her office and found Tabitha and Toni gasping in the corridor. It turned out that Abi and Rhamie had joined an A-grade basketball team, abandoning the office competition. “Call me old-fashioned,” said Toni hotly, “but Abi is just not an A-grade player!”
“Let’s have some wine from the small boardroom fridge,” suggested Marbie, “and discuss it.”
The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor Page 15