The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  In the backseat of the car, Cassie wore the middle belt so she could lean forward between the two front seats and talk to her dad or mum.

  Her mum was driving, and her dad was changing the radio station. Dad tipped his head sideways to listen carefully to the news. Mum was behind her glasses, and you couldn’t tell if she was listening to the news or not.

  Cassie looked through the groceries in the box beside her, which they had just picked up from Coles. They were extremely boring. Celery sticks and milk, cauliflower and toilet paper.

  “Mum?” said Cassie.

  “Shh,” said Dad, listening to the news with his head on his shoulder.

  “Radcliffe,” said Mum, “it’s just the weather.”

  “I want to find out if there’ll be good sailing weather this weekend, actually,” said Dad, with his calm voice. “There’s a cold front coming in the next week or so, so this could be our last chance for a while.”

  “We can’t go sailing this weekend!” said Mum. “There’s the Bellamys and Samsons for dinner on Saturday and then your parents on Sunday!”

  “We don’t need to see the Bellamys and the Samsons,” said Dad. “We can cancel.”

  “I think you’ll find that we do, actually,” declared Mum.

  “You know I don’t like routine, Fancy.”

  “It’s not a question of routine, Radcliffe. It’s a question of manners. You can’t invite people and then uninvite them because you feel like going sailing. And besides, what do you mean when you say routine? It’s been ages since we had the Bellamys and the Samsons!”

  “That rhymed, Mum,” said Cassie from the backseat. “‘What do you mean when you say routine?’”

  “I also don’t like being told what I can and cannot do,” her dad said coldly.

  “Radcliffe, would you not be ridiculous? Please?”

  “There is no point in our having this discussion,” said her dad, shrugging. “I just do and don’t do exactly as I please. Thank you very much.” He switched off the radio, so he could be angry in peace.

  “No point in having what discussion?” muttered her mum.

  Cassie thought she should be quiet, but first she had to murmur softly, “What do you mean when you say routine? What do you mean when you say routine? What do you mean when you say routine?

  “The light’s green, Mum,” Cassie interrupted herself.

  “Thank you, Cassie,” and her mother made the car jump forward.

  Irritating Things About My Husband #22

  Let’s say we’ve just had the Bellamys and Samsons to dinner on a Saturday night. Let’s say, after a night of booming storytelling, buttoned shirts, swishing skirts, etc., the Bellamys and Samsons set off, leaving behind candle wax, salad bowls, bread knives, eggshells, stacked plates, and beetroot on the floor. Well, after such a party, closing the front door, I like to take a garbage bag from beneath the kitchen sink and begin with the dirty napkins.

  Behind me, at once, the bleary port breath! Radcliffe with his gravelly voice: “Leave it,” he murmurs, “leave it for now,” his hands on my shoulders ready to steer me to the bed.

  Leave it! As if he were a king, offering the wondrous treasure of himself

  Fancy flipped open a notebook, took the cap from a thin black marker, and instructed: “Radcliffe, tell me some sounds that are unpleasant.”

  “Right then.” Radcliffe leaned back in his television chair to think. The TV commercials blazed.

  “The sound of a fingernail on a blackboard,” he declared after two commercials had gone by.

  Fancy replaced the cap on her marker. “I’m not writing that down.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s very common, Radcliffe. I think I need something original.”

  “Too common? Well then.” He thought again, but had to pause to watch a humorous commercial for margarine.

  “Heavy footsteps,” he suggested eventually, “walking around upstairs.”

  From the floor by the couch, Cassie said, “That’s a good noise.” She crawled around toward them. “I think that’s a good noise if you hear footsteps upstairs, because you wonder to yourself, Who’s upstairs? You wonder if maybe it’s a ghost, or maybe Santa Claus, or maybe Grandma, or anyone.”

  “What’s Grandma doing upstairs?” wondered Radcliffe.

  “I agree with Cassie,” Fancy said. “Sorry, Radcliffe, I need you to think again.”

  “Ah!” sighed Radcliffe, exasperated. “The sound of your voice!”

  Fancy and Cassie both cried, “HUH!” and Cassie said, “Mum’s got a beautiful voice!”

  Radcliffe shrugged: “Show’s back on.”

  “You have no imagination,” Fancy declared, closing her notebook.

  “No need for one,” Radcliffe replied, amiable, tilting his wineglass toward his mouth. “That’ll be the telephone,” he announced next, as it had just begun to ring.

  “Dressed in black?” said Marbie.

  “Oh really? Tonight? What for? It’s cold!”

  “For the Maintenance,” explained Marbie. “Mum just paged me. It’s blurred, remember? We can do it easy if we leave right now. Meet you at the ice-cream truck?”

  Marbie was not at the ice-cream truck when Fancy arrived. She was in the tree above the truck.

  Fancy pretended to consider the range of ice creams (single cone, double cone, single dipped in chocolate with a Flake on the side, etc.), and then squinted up into the darkness.

  Marbie gave the sign for “all set” (both hands flat on the head). She almost lost her balance and had to grab noisily at clumps of leaves.

  Fancy gave the sign for “Great, and I’ve remembered all the tools” (a playful twirl of her handbag), then clipped across the road to the apartment block. Without pausing, she firmly pressed in the security code, and entered the building.

  She and Marbie had both learned to pick a lock when their fingers were fresh and nimble. She got into the apartment in less than three seconds, smiled at the cat, and slid silently from room to room in a quick Emptiness Check. (There had once been a plumber in the bathroom, but Fancy ingeniously recruited him on the spot.)

  In the dining room, she opened her handbag, reached in for the nail file, and accidentally took out her telephone bill. The cat meowed.

  “Hmm,” she murmured, and sat down at the dining table, turning over the telephone bill. There was a clutter of papers there, which she shifted slightly so she could study her List of Potential Lists.

  UNPLEASANT SOUNDS!!!

  things that are very hot

  delicious things to drink

  foreign currencies

  fish

  Except that the word fish was now caught in a tangle of lines, each linking fish to various fish species. “Objects in a family home,” Fancy wrote at the end of the list. The cat meowed again, and Fancy said, “Hello,” and added cats in a flash of inspiration. Beside it, she scribbled, “Include lions, tigers, panthers, etc.!!! Also, basic domestic cats?”

  Meow, meow, said the cat.

  “Are you hungry, is that it?” Fancy murmured soothingly, reaching out her left hand to stroke the cat, but not being able to find it.

  She looked up, and the cat was standing way across the room in the doorway, its collar bell tinkling faintly.

  “How—?” began Fancy.

  Then she gasped, took out her pager (which meowed at her even as she pressed the message button), and read: GET OUT NOW.

  At which exact moment, a key turned in the lock.

  On Friday night at Grandpa and Grandma Zing’s, Fancy sat on the carpet next to Listen and said, “Tell me some sounds that you don’t like to hear.”

  “The sounds of cars crashing,” offered Nathaniel from the dining-room table.

  “Not you,” Fancy said, but she wrote it down in her notebook. “I’m asking Listen now. I’ll ask you later.”

  Listen thought hard.

  “You have to think outside the box,” advised Radcliffe dryly. “Otherwise, she cuts
you to the quick.”

  “Oh!” cried Grandma Zing. “Radcliffe! Was she mean to you?”

  “Not mean,” said Radcliffe thoughtfully. “More malicious.”

  “The sound of a puddle,” Listen said now, “going splat when you just accidentally stepped in it with your sneaker.”

  “Good!” Fancy wrote fast.

  “The sound that our school library computer makes,” Listen said calmly, still thinking about Fancy’s question. “Kind of a mean-sounding bleep? When you return your book, and it turns out it’s overdue. Does that count?”

  “Perfect!” Fancy scribbled frantically.

  “Come on, Fancy!” Grandma Zing called. “We’re all going out to the shed!”

  “Fancy,” beckoned Radcliffe, at her mother’s shoulder, “come on, hon.”

  From the slightly raised platform at the far end of the shed, Grandma Zing frowned at her clipboard.

  Fancy turned to her sister. “Tell me some sounds that you don’t like to hear.”

  “I think your mother wants to start the meeting.” Radcliffe sat straight in his chair. He had his reading glasses on and had already replaced two of the bulbs in the halogen track lighting.

  “No, no,” said Grandma Zing. “Carry on, I’ll just be a moment.” She flipped through documents piled in a box.

  Marbie thought. “Some people,” she said, after a moment, “make this kind of grunting sound. This sound kind of like uh, when they’re reading or thinking, and they don’t even know that they’re doing it.”

  Fancy wrote the word UH.

  “I imagine the sound of a key in a lock might be a sound you don’t like to hear,” said Grandma Zing, with a glint.

  There was a clamor at this as everyone cried, “How did you make it out the window?” and “That was such a close one,” and Radcliffe said bossily, “We should discuss this at the appropriate time in the meeting, shouldn’t we?”

  “Oh God,” said Fancy, closing her notebook again. “How did I let it happen? I think I must have lost my touch!” (There was another clamor as everyone assured her she had not lost her touch.)

  “Look at the way you opened the window, closed it behind you, jumped into a tree, and climbed down without being seen,” Marbie said. “I think you’re amazing. And anyway, Fancy, it was my fault—I didn’t notice the car coming down the street until the last moment.”

  “Why didn’t you notice it?” said Radcliffe pointedly.

  “I was distracted.”

  “Distracted by what?”

  “But still,” interrupted Fancy, “it was so lucky she switched on the TV right away, and stayed in the front room—if she hadn’t…”

  “Gotta change that pager sound,” said Radcliffe.

  “And we all thought that it was the cat’s meow,” offered Nathaniel.

  Everyone groaned, and Marbie hit his leg, but then she embraced him proudly, while Grandma Zing said, “Shall we start the meeting? We have an edict today!”

  “Worn-out brake pads,” whispered Grandpa Zing, leaning over to Fancy, “make an awful squealing sound.” He pointed at Fancy’s notepad, and she mouthed, “Thanks, Dad,” and wrote it down.

  Fancy was at her computer working on Love Among the Wildebeests, while Cassie played on the floor by her feet. She tapped the space bar several times, sighed, turned away from the screen, and took up her pen to write to Cassie’s teacher.

  Dear Ms. Murphy,

  You may be pleased to know that my daughter (Cassie’s) loose tooth has come out. And the tooth fairy has come and gone.

  She stopped. She had already written about Cassie’s asthma, her allergy to bees, her aversion to gingham. What else was there?

  Cassie sat on the floor behind her, threading plastic beads onto a string and saying now and then, “Mum? Will Listen really come to my school next term?”

  Fancy swiveled around and looked at Cassie. “Any more loose teeth, darling?”

  “No,” said Cassie sadly. “Wait.” She tested each tooth with her tongue. “No. No loose tooths.”

  “Teeth! You know that. Cassie, anything interesting happening at school?”

  “No,” asserted Cassie confidently.

  “Hmm.” Fancy turned back to her note and stared at it for a while, while Cassie continued to chant, “Mu-um, will Listen really come to my school after the holidays?”

  “Right then,” Fancy said suddenly. “I’m trying to work, Cassie, and you should be in bed!” Then her eyes roved over the pink plastic beads scattered on the study floor like sugar drops. “Sorry, Cassie! Yes. Marbie called today to tell me that Listen is going to your school next term. After the holidays, Listen will be at your school for just one term. Because her classrooms got flooded.”

  “Thanks,” said Cassie solemnly, and stood up at once, ready to go to bed.

  Fancy had a happy flash of inspiration then, and continued her letter:

  I hope you will forgive me for writing again so soon, but I have a small favor to ask.

  Cassie was climbing under the covers, and her mum was picking clothes up off the floor.

  “Cassie, these are your sports clothes! You should have put them in the wash!”

  Cassie said, “Whoops!”, slid under the Harry Potter quilt, and squashed her cheek against the pillow. Her mother shook out the clothes, frowning at them. She folded them over her arm, pulled the curtains tightly closed, patted Harry Potter smooth, and switched off the light.

  In bed, Cassie imagined her own school flooded. She thought of papers, teachers, desks, and bottles of white-out bobbing along in a river. Ms. D’Souza in a life raft, Mr. Woodford in a rowboat, Ms. Murphy treading water. She thought of blackboard erasers, whiteboards, and pink chalk; overhead projectors, flower vases, cardboard boxes. She thought of the school turtle, swept out of his pond, paddling and honking in alarm.

  The whole thing seemed suspicious to Cassie, and also, absolutely strange.

  On the Monday of the final week of term, Fancy found an uncapped purple marker in the pocket of Cassie’s sports shorts. A purple butterfly bloomed at the hip of the shorts, but Fancy attacked it with prewash stain remover, and watched as the wings began to dribble.

  In inky purple marker, on a piece of tissue paper, she then listed:

  Objects in a Family Home: The Laundry

  Tide

  oatmeal soap

  a bucket containing a pink sponge and Spray ’n Wash

  a puddle at the base of the washing machine

  washing machine

  On Tuesday, Fancy found a coffee filter, filled with aging coffee grounds, quietly wilting in her coffeemaker. “Oh, Radcliffe,” she said aloud. She then listed:

  Objects in a Family Home: The Kitchen

  calendar with photos of the Canadian Rockies

  collage of family snapshots in silver frame

  name stickers

  doll’s underwear

  port decanter

  collapsed birthday-card display

  on the table: spots of candle wax

  also on the table: a ceramic bowl filled with this and that

  On Wednesday, Fancy sat at the kitchen table to scrape at the candle wax. After a moment, she reached for a notebook and a pen.

  Objects in a Family Home: Ceramic Bowl Filled with This and That, Specifically:

  pushpins

  elastic bands

  empty film canister

  business card

  Valerio Sore Throat Gargle

  cotton

  AAA battery

  bobby pin

  Hong Kong two-dollar coin

  glue stick

  nail file

  a tube of sample Musk perfume

  a safety pin

  a paper clip

  a token for a locker at Baulkham Hills Shire Council Library

  moisture absorbent in white paper wrapping: DO NOT EAT, DO NOT EAT, DO NOT EAT

  On Thursday, Fancy felt she could not possibly go on. She reached for her handbag to choose something
new to be listed: she would strike through Objects in a Family Home.

  Her List of Potential Lists was not in her handbag.

  “Ah,” she sighed, moving into her study and checking on her desk. It was not there. It was not in the desk drawers either. “Hmm!” she said, with a jaunty frown.

  She was not concerned because she remembered exactly what was on the list. It would be easy to rewrite on the back of another phone bill. Nevertheless, she began a thorough, cheerful search of the house: the kitchen, the laundry, the bedrooms, the garage, the car. She found herself running up and down the steps, searching in random places such as the cutlery drawer and the liquor cabinet.

  It’s probably in a pocket somewhere, she realized. Now, when did I last have it?

  And then it came to her. The last time she had it was at the Intrusion. The near-disastrous Intrusion—when she had failed to notice Marbie beeping her, had come within a cat’s whisker of getting caught, and somehow had climbed out of the window. So, it would be in the pocket of my black pants, of—

  But there was the strangest sensation in her cheeks, as of automatic doors closing slowly toward her nose. Because there were no pockets in her black pants.

  She had left her List of Potential Lists on the dining-room table by the window inside the apartment. And her phone bill was on the back.

  Her mother, when she telephoned with shaking hands and teary voice, was remarkably professional. “There was a pile of papers on the dining table there?”

  “Yes,” Fancy quavered.

  “Chances are it’s still exactly where you left it,” said her mother contentedly. “I’ll put out an Urgent Request for a Distraction. You let Marbie know what’s going on. And we’ll have an Intrusion under way before the end of the day, you mark my words.”

  “I’ll sit by the phone,” promised Fancy.

  “Don’t worry so much, darling. Just go about your day as planned, but keep your pager with you. We may have just a slight margin.”

  Of course, Fancy could not possibly leave the house. She was agitated and hysterical all day, gasping whenever the phone rang and whenever she heard leaves rustle (that was the new pager sound). She called Radcliffe and asked him to fetch Cassie from school as she was too overwrought to drive. Radcliffe tried to reassure her, but the excitement of disaster bristled in his voice. She called Marbie several times to confirm that she would leave work early. Marbie laughed and was serene about the whole thing when Fancy first told her, but even she seemed to grow a bit tetchy after Fancy’s fourth phone call.