She began to formulate a sentence: “Pressing its delicate hoof into the mist-curling grass of the copse, the deer breathed the stench of gingivitis”—But then Radcliffe’s car turned into the driveway, and he called through his open window, “Hey, Fance! Can you grab my tuna sandwich?”
When she opened the front screen door again, carrying his sandwich in a brown paper bag, she had an aren’t you silly? expression ready on her face. But he was standing on the porch.
“Oh,” she said. “I was going to bring it to your car.”
The shape of him was dark against the sunlight.
“Right,” he said. “But, Fancy, I’ve got to tell you something. I can’t stand this deception.”
She felt the familiar leap of excitement—He’s having an affair!—but was so weary of that leap that she dispelled it with a breath of mocking air. “Ye-e-es?” she said almost tauntingly.
“Can we sit down?”
Obediently, she sat beside him on the edge of the porch.
He swiveled toward her, and began haltingly: “The reason I offered to drive Cassie to school this morning was that—now, you might think it was nice of me to make that offer, but the reason was that…”
“Ye-e-es?”
Then he told her his secret in a breathless rush. “The reason was that I didn’t want you to see Cath Murphy! Because you’re waiting for a call from her, and maybe you would say something to her about it, but you’re never going to get a call, Fancy, I made the whole thing up. I went to the parent-teacher night in your place! When Cassie got stung by a bee, and you took her off to the hospital, well, that’s what I did. I just went. And I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t stop thinking that the bee sting had happened for a reason. The reason being that I was meant to get to meet Cath. Me. A non-Zing family member. The first of us to meet her. I wanted to talk to her, to see her, to have her see me. I wanted her to meet me! Fancy, I am so, so sorry.”
Fancy stared at her husband. She shifted away from him slightly. “So, I didn’t get to meet Cath first,” she said. “And Cath is not going to call me. Right?”
“Right,” he agreed. “I am so sorry.”
“Fine,” she said, “it’s fine, Radcliffe. But can I just check something with you? When Cassie got stung by a bee—our Cassie who is allergic to bees, who could die from a bee sting—when that happened, Radcliffe, all you could think about was going to the parent-teacher night?”
“Mmm,” he nodded mournfully.
Marbie left her message for Nathaniel, hung up the phone, and breathed in sharply. The sound of the phone clicking back onto its hook had struck her with the truth. Nathaniel would never call her back.
She could send as many letters as she liked, she could leave apology messages, and messages inviting him to hot-air balloon festivals, she could invite him on a trip to the moon, but Nathaniel was never coming back.
Then she had to stop this unfurling chain because she was sneezing. Her sneezes were immense and shivery.
She thought she might just get back into bed for a while before she packed for her weekend with her parents.
She saw herself in the bedroom mirror—bleary eyes, pink nose—and gathered her bedclothes around her. She had used up a whole box of tissues in the night, but felt around the cardboard bottom, hoping for a single loose tissue. She found something odd and crackling.
What was this crumpled piece of paper doing in the bottom of a tissue box?
Cath arrived early on Friday morning and sat on a bench in the sun.
The weather reminded her of her early meetings with Warren: the day he stood at the opposite end of the second grade balcony and pulled his funny face; the day he brought her a coffee, saying, “White, no sugar, yes?”
Such a soft, warm breeze, such a tender, blue sky. It was spring, and the weather had relented, promising gentle surprises. The warmth made her long for the touch of Warren’s hands and, for the first time in a while, she was confident of that touch. Today could easily be someday!
A voice behind her said, “White, no sugar, yes?” and a coffee appeared in the air.
Warren Woodford straddled the bench like someone riding a horse, and now he was facing her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the coffee and smiling at him.
He smiled back. There was something so generous in his smile that she almost wept with relief. “Cath,” he said, “I need to tell you something.”
She continued to trust in his smile.
“This morning something happened,” he explained. “Something amazing. Bree and I woke up really early, and we looked at each other, and I’m sorry, Cath, but we fell in love again.”
“Ah-hah!” she said, kindly, as if a child had shown her a magic trick.
“I’m so sorry about all this, Cath, but I’ve got to say, for me, it’s a relief. I couldn’t go on this way much longer. It just happened, out of nowhere, we fell in love again.”
“You’re not in love,” Cath began her speech, carefully but firmly. “You’re not in love because she doesn’t know what you’ve been—”
“That’s the thing,” said Warren. “I told her last night. Well, she kind of already knew, she says. She says she sensed something—that there was a secret just out of her reach—and that’s why she’s been feeling so nervous and on edge. It’s so much better to know than not know, she says. Still, she’s pretty upset, but we talked and talked and we both cried, and it was great. It was like we’d never talked before. And that’s why, this morning, early, we woke up and fell in love again.”
“That’s why, is it?” Cath was suddenly outraged. “Lessons on how to save a marriage by Warren Woodford. Lesson one, cheat on your wife. Lesson two, tell her about it. She’ll fall head over heels! You just talked and you cried, and now you’re both in love, and I really, really think you should trust that feeling, Warren, that must be so real.”
She saw his panicked expression and adjusted her face. “Warren,” she said, “come on, seriously. I see how it must feel like a relief, but she can’t love you now she knows. She must hate us both.”
“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.
Two
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.
“Y
ou 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 L
isten 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.
The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor Page 32