The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  People went around warning you: Never imagine you can change someone, for people NEVER CHANGE. Then they talked about leopards and spots. Forgetting altogether about chameleons. Or that octopus, which lives on the ocean floor and can change its shape to become a stingray, a sea anemone, or even an eel, depending upon its fancy.

  Furthermore, Fancy recalled, she herself had changed. There had been a time when, after a shower, she would leave the shower curtain where it was when she stepped onto the bath mat: crowded together, pressed against the bathroom wall.

  Radcliffe explained, a month or so after they were married, that this was unhygienic. “The shower curtain should be drawn closed,” he explained, demonstrating, pulling the curtain all the way along its metal bar as if somebody were taking a shower. This would help to prevent mold.

  Just like that, Fancy changed, and began to close the shower curtain tight.

  Stepping out of the shower that morning, and drawing the curtain closed behind her, Fancy regarded her husband, shaving at the basin. Tap, tap, tap, said his razor.

  “So, that’s how you get the whiskers out of the razor, is it?”

  He turned to her. He had a white towel around his waist, a white smear of shaving cream around his chin, and he was squinting in the steam from Fancy’s shower.

  “Is there another way you could get the whiskers out?” she suggested.

  “We should change this routine,” he replied, turning back to the steamy mirror. “Me shaving, you showering. Same time, eh? Look at the mirror here. Can’t see a thing.”

  She leaned around him and flicked the switch on the overhead fan, so the room was filled with its buzz.

  “What’s with that rash on your arm there?” he said, raising his voice over the buzz.

  “I know.” She reached for her skin cream. “I feel like a fish. It’s just dry skin. I burned my skin too often as a teenager.”

  “Wouldn’t be that, would it? It’s eczema. Or what? Psoriasis?”

  “No,” said Fancy coldly. “It is not.” But Radcliffe was picking up her arm, turning it this way and that to catch the light, and whistling through his teeth.

  “Here, Cassie, don’t forget to take this note to your teacher, okay? Where are you going to put it so you don’t forget?”

  “In my pocket.”

  Cassie stood on the footpath, next to the open car door, and showed her mother her open pocket.

  “Good girl. Will you remember it there?”

  “Yes, because I’ll sneeze, and then I’ll have to get out my hanky, and then I’ll find it there and I’ll go: I HAVE TO REMEMBER TO GIVE THIS TO MS. MURPHY.”

  “That’s my girl,” said Fancy.

  “See over there.” Cassie pointed to a bench just inside the school gate. “That’s Lucinda.”

  “So it is! We’ll have to invite her over again one day soon. What do you think?”

  “Okay,” agreed Cassie, nodding. She walked through the school gate and, without turning back, raised one hand in farewell to her mother.

  “Eczema, eczema, eczema.”

  Cassie had a new word. It was a disease that made your skin fall off and then your blood went everywhere, like a laundry flood. Then you turned into a fish. Then you died.

  “Eczema, eczema, eczema.” Cassie sang her word, eating her sandwich before school had even started.

  “Eczema?” Lucinda put her elbow in Cassie’s side. “I’ve got eczema.”

  “No, you haven’t.” Cassie rolled her eyes at an imaginary person on the bench alongside Lucinda. She looked back from her imaginary person to Lucinda and saw that Lucinda was also eating her lunch before school. Lucinda’s lunch was brown bread with soggy tomato. It was disgusting.

  To change the subject, Cassie pointed to the ground and said, “See that? That’s a stick insect.”

  “No,” said Lucinda. “It’s just a stick.”

  It was a stick insect though.

  Lucinda pointed to her wrist: “See that? That’s eczema.”

  “There is no point in our having this discussion,” Cassie announced.

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Eczema’s when you turn into a fish, actually, Lucinda.”

  “Do I look like a fish? No. I don’t think so.” Lucinda swung her legs and ate her tomato sandwich.

  The word, Cassie realized, was spoiled now.

  “Eczema, eczema, eczema,” she said listlessly. She had her eye on the stick insect, but so far it was just asleep.

  When she got back from taking Cassie to school, Fancy knew that she ought to be working on her wilderness romance. She had promised thirty thousand words to her editor by tomorrow, and she had only written eleven. Specifically:

  His rhinoceros smelled like a pappadam: sweaty, salty, strange, and strong.

  Her editor would cut that line.

  She reached for the phone and selected the button for MARBIE AT HOME.

  “Hello,” said Marbie’s voice.

  “You’re at home! Why aren’t you at work? I was just going to leave a message. Well, if you’re home, let’s go out for a coffee!”

  Marbie agreed, explaining that she and Listen were taking a day off because they had ticklish throats, which could be the start of colds.

  “Or hay fever,” suggested Fancy. “I’ll call Radcliffe and let him know, in case he was thinking of coming home for lunch. And then I’ll see you in Castle Hill.”

  Marbie looked fine when Fancy saw her, although Listen appeared to be weary. Also, she was behaving strangely: wearing sunglasses inside the shopping center; walking backward wherever she went.

  Marbie was excited about buying a tennis racquet, and wanted to talk about something that the tennis racquet had that was called the sweet spot.

  After the coffee break, Fancy did not feel ready to go home, so she shopped for Cassie’s birthday. At home again, she stood before her computer, and decided she ought to do some housework.

  “Oh, Cassie,” she said aloud to herself when she put on the washing-up gloves. Cassie was always putting soapy wet hands into the gloves, and leaving them wet, cold, clammy, and unpleasant on the inside.

  Luckily, by the time she had finished washing up, it was just about time to fetch Cassie from school.

  Dear Ms. Murphy,

  This is just a note to thank you for keeping an eye on my daughter (Cassie) yesterday afternoon. I noticed that you were on “bus duty,” and I also noticed that you are very good at keeping all the children within your “radar.” As I waited for Cassie, this is something I observed, and as a mother, I was pleased.

  I do hope our Cassie is behaving herself. I know she can be a little erratic, but she has a good heart.

  Kind regards,

  Fancy Zing

  At nights, staying up with her wilderness romance, Fancy felt afraid sometimes when she went to the bathroom. She would glance at the shower cubicle, with its curtain tightly closed, and think, There is somebody in there!

  She supposed she would see a shadow through the curtain, but it was a thick forest green material, and she was nearsighted, not wearing her glasses in the bathroom generally (preferring to see herself, in the mirror, as somebody blurry and unmarked).

  Sometimes she swung the curtain open quickly, to catch the stranger out, but so far the cubicle was always empty.

  “You look tired,” remarked the Canadian from his porch next door. He was eating sliced mango and kiwifruit this morning.

  “It’s funny you should say that,” said Fancy, “about me looking tired. Because I just saw myself in the hallway mirror without my glasses on and I thought, ‘I look awful,’ and then I thought, ‘Isn’t it lucky I wear glasses so that nobody can see my eyes?’ I put my glasses on and felt safe. And now I come out here, and you notice right away.”

  The Canadian took a pensive sip of coffee.

  “Cassie, honey!” Fancy called, as usual, through the screen door.

  “Mum, I can’t find my shoes, where are my shoes? What did you do with my sh
oes?” came a panicky little call from upstairs.

  “I didn’t do anything with your shoes. They’re right here by the front door where you left them.”

  “To be honest,” said the Canadian from his porch, “I didn’t notice that you look awful. If you look awful,” he continued, and peeled the foil lid from a boysenberry yogurt, “your glasses are hiding that well.”

  Fancy looked at his wide white breakfast plate, with its elegant butterflies of fruit, and tried to think of something to say besides, Isn’t it hot?

  “Kiwifruit is very good for you,” she declared. “Vitamin C and zinc.”

  “You don’t say?”

  Cassie clattered down onto the front-door mat to put on her shoes.

  “I’ll do one lace, and you do the other,” offered Fancy.

  “No, Mum. I’ll do them both.”

  “Bye now,” called Fancy to the neighbor as she tightened the straps on Cassie’s satchel, her keys at the ready to open the car door.

  “It is possible,” called the Canadian, his voice melting distantly against their car windows, “to be both beautiful and tired. A sleeping beauty. You see?”

  Fancy adjusted the rearview mirror and reversed with the regular bump of the fender on the steeply graded drive. Cassie, meanwhile, wound the window down slightly, and gave the Canadian a stare.

  Dear Ms. Murphy,

  Please excuse Cassie for being late today.

  It was all my fault! I was up late last night, working, and then overslept this morning.

  Best regards,

  Fancy Zing

  Dear Ms. Zing,

  Thank you very much for your note!

  I’m sure that Cassie was not more than a few minutes late—some of the children are much later than that, and we seem to get along all right. It is very kind of you to write notes of explanation, but please do not trouble yourself.

  I look forward to meeting you at the parent-teacher night later this year, when we can discuss Cassie properly. She certainly does seem to have a good heart, and is quite popular. (I often see other children gathered around her while she entertains them with funny stories—I wonder what she tells them!)

  Best Wishes,

  Cath Murphy

  Turning into her driveway one day, Fancy looked across at her neighbor’s veranda and saw that there were two of them. Her neighbor had become two.

  She got out of her car, and glanced over quickly. Yes, there were now two men sitting at the breakfast table, slicing up kiwifruit, sipping from their coffee mugs. She kept her back straight, and hurried across the burning driveway to the soft, cool grass. She never wore shoes to drive.

  “—so he ate his own arm,” she heard from the porch next door, just as she reached her front door. And then a chuckle.

  She couldn’t help it. She turned and stared.

  “Fancy,” said her neighbor, “hello there. This is my brother, Bill. He’s out from Canada for a couple of days. Bill. Meet Fancy.”

  “Did I startle you?” said Bill-the-brother with a friendly nod. “You heard what I just said? He ate his own arm?”

  How direct the Canadians were. “Well…” she began.

  “It’s what happened to a guy I know,” he explained. Meanwhile, Fancy’s neighbor looked down, slicing up another kiwifruit. “You want to hear the story? Okay. My buddy’s hiking in the Rockies up Jasper way; he stops to take a picture of some plant or other; somehow he crouches down by a cougar trap; he gets his arm caught in the cougar trap. I mean, seriously caught. Next thing, dumb effin luck, a big mother of a bear comes along and takes a bite out of his leg. Seriously, a bite out of his leg. He’s screaming and punching it with his one unstuck arm, but nothing he can do. The bear goes off but he knows, he can just tell, that it’s coming back later to finish him off. But he can’t get out of the trap! I mean, his arm is completely stuck! You’re in that predicament, what are you going to do?”

  Fancy tilted her head to the side. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “You’re going to chew through your own arm.”

  Bill-the-brother nodded to himself and picked up a slice of kiwifruit. “That’s what my buddy did,” he said, green juice dripping down his chin. “He ate through his arm and got away.”

  Fancy stared.

  Her neighbor offered her a cup of coffee.

  “No, thank you. And thank you for the story, Bill. Nice to meet you.”

  She opened the screen door to her house, and it let out a long, thin squeal.

  Dear Ms. Murphy,

  How kind of you to write! I, also, look forward to meeting you at the parent-teacher night.

  I’m so pleased to hear that Cassie is popular! I hope she does not give you any trouble.

  You know, I just thought I would let you know that I was talking to Barbara Coulton the other day—she is Lucinda’s mother—and she told me that Lucinda is happier than she’s ever been at school! Barbara is delighted with the standard and variety of work that Lucinda brings home, and is especially pleased that you correct Lucinda’s spelling mistakes—such a rare thing in modern teaching.

  Take care, and best wishes!

  Fancy Zing

  “Write this down,” Fancy said to Radcliffe on Sunday afternoon: “Toilet paper.” Radcliffe wrote it down. “Follow me down the hall,” she instructed, taking out the vacuum cleaner from the hall closet. Obediently, Radcliffe followed, writing the list.

  “The vacuum cleaner’s broken, you know.”

  “I don’t want the vacuum cleaner,” said Fancy patiently. “I just want the bucket from behind it. Kitchen towels. I’ve decided to wash the glass doors. Or will Cassie just run through them? Okay: Butter, self-rising flour, Valerio Pies.”

  “I think she’ll run through them,” agreed Radcliffe, writing carefully. “Don’t wash them. Let’s go for a walk instead. Anything else?” His pen was at the ready.

  “Yes. Spaghetti. Okay. Let’s go for a walk. Radcliffe, what do you mean it’s broken?”

  “What’s broken?”

  “The vacuum, you just said it was broken. Since when?”

  “Oh,” he said vaguely, “since the other day. I came home to surprise you at lunchtime and you weren’t here, so I smashed a glass, then I tried to vacuum it up, and the vacuum cleaner jammed, and now it’s broken.”

  “You smashed a glass? Because I wasn’t here? Where was I?”

  “That came out wrong. I think you were having coffee with your sister in Castle Hill. Remember that day? And Marbie brought Alissa along, you told me. They both had colds. Or at least Alissa did. That’s how you put it.”

  “She prefers to be called Listen, you know.”

  “Anyhow, let’s go for a walk and, tell you what, I’ll take the vacuum into that new repair shop by the hardware store.”

  Thursday already, and tomorrow she had to prepare for the Zing Family Secret Meeting, and Saturday was Cassie’s birthday, and Sunday she never worked, so that only left today to write thirty chapters of her wilderness romance. Fancy stared at her computer in wonder.

  She decided to write to Cassie’s teacher.

  Dear Ms. Murphy,

  Just wanted to let you know that Cassie has a loose tooth—

  But then there was a knock at the front door.

  She opened the door and there in the sun’s shadow stood a handsome stranger. Tears sprang at once into Fancy’s eyes. She blinked them away.

  The stranger was carrying a plate covered in a tea towel. He was wearing a loose T-shirt and jeans, and sneakers without socks. His shoulders were broad, his face was tanned, and his eyes, behind small, wire-rimmed spectacles, were glinting.

  “Hello there,” he said.

  At that, he transformed into the Canadian-next-door.

  She was so disconcerted, she did not open the screen door. She stood and simply stared.

  “Not in any way intending to bother you,” he continued, in a slightly formal voice. “But I’ve baked you an apology cake. My brother from Ca
nada. The other day. I just wanted to apologize for him. He’s a good guy but not exactly—and I just about died when he told you that apocryphal story of his. I could tell it bothered you, and I just about died, and now I am here to apologize.”

  “Oh!” cried Fancy, in a flutter. “The man who ate his arm! I wasn’t bothered by that story at all! I mean, I didn’t believe a word of course. Ate his own arm! And what about the blood loss from the wound in his leg…Anyway, but I write wilderness romances. That’s my occupation. So, see, bear and cougar stories are fine! My characters are always running from cougars and into the arms of handsome strangers. They don’t usually eat their own limbs, of course, because then there’d be no arms to run into…But, anyway, it’s my career! I know it must sound strange, me, a mother in the suburbs, writing wilderness romances, and the only person I ever slept with my whole life is my husband!”

  There was silence for a moment.

  Fancy opened the screen door, and it let out its usual squeal.

  “I could fix that for you.” He was looking at the door.

  “No! No! I can do that! All it needs is a bit of WD-40!”

  “I agree,” he said, with that odd little smile. “I still think my brother bothered you, so please take this maple cake. Okay?”

  He used one foot to hold open the screen door as he passed the cake toward her. She took the cake, and he withdrew his hands, palms upward. She saw that his palms were calloused. Then he saluted, with the same glint in his eye, and ran down the steps of her porch.

  Rather than crossing directly to his own porch, he took the driveway, walked along the street, and then walked back up his own driveway. She found this extremely moving.

  Driving to the Zing Family Meeting the next night, Fancy felt very happy. She was excited about dinner that night—it would be roast chicken, as usual—and about the meeting afterward (she had prepared a slide show). She also felt relaxed about Cassie’s birthday tomorrow. How wonderful that Marbie, Nathaniel, and Listen were hosting it! She might go to the gym before the party. How thin she was these days, now that she was going to the gym regularly. And she could always get an extension for her wilderness romance.