The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Over the next few weeks they fell into a pattern. During the day they practically ignored one another, except for occasional acquaintance-friendly chats. But late each evening, Monday to Thursday, Warren found his way over to Cath’s place. He returned to his own home early the next morning. When Warren had a soccer match, he arrived muddy in his soccer clothes and took a shower while Cath made dinner. When Cath had a law class, Warren let himself into her apartment and got dinner ready for her return. He liked to wrap things in phyllo pastry—chicken, eggplant, goat cheese—and then bake it alongside a tomato. They watched movies, listened to music, and did schoolwork sitting side by side at the diningroom table. But mostly, they spent their time in bed.

  Warren chipped a tooth slightly at Cath’s place once.

  They were cooking together on a Monday night, in Cath’s kitchen, which was crowded with ingredients. She made him dance with her, to her favorite Suzanne Vega song, while the ingredients waited. They were sleepy, wearing bathrobes, drinking red wine, and eating occasional olives.

  Cath was telling a story that included an impersonation of Billson, the school principal. The impersonation made Warren laugh so suddenly that he bit down on an olive pit and chipped a tooth.

  Later that night, Cath made Warren look through her family photo albums. He was very obliging, and remarked on such things as the healthy fur of their family dog, and the resemblance between Cath’s and her mother’s hair coloring.

  At that, Cath unlocked her secret box and explained that she had been adopted. She only had this one photograph of her biological parents: They had been killed in a fire that burned down their house in the outback. The photo was hazy, as if the smoke had seeped into its edges. Warren stared at it for a long time, and eventually said he could see that Cath’s parents were in love.

  The only other photo Cath had was one showing the firefighter who had rescued her, a sleeping baby, from the fire.

  “Do you think we should stop?” Cath said occasionally in the early dawn light as Warren buttoned his shirt.

  Warren always considered the question grimly, and always said the same thing. “You’re right. We should stop. We should stop soon. But I can’t.”

  And in the silence that followed, they would think the same thing:

  This affair has parameters. It’s only the weekdays. It’s only at Cath’s place. It’s a secret from everyone else. We have plenty of chats about guilt, about marriage, about lost opportunities and fate (“If only we’d met sooner!” “We’re so right for each other!” “I never thought I’d do this kind of thing.”) This affair has an end date! Soon it will finish! The moment Breanna gets a job in the city, we will call the whole thing quits. But for now, why should we stop? The betrayal has already occurred: On the night of Lenny’s party, the marriage was broken. If it’s already broken, why stop? With parameters in place, why stop?

  Two or three times, Breanna phoned Warren on his cell late at night, and he pretended to be at home. “Something’s wrong with the home phone,” he explained. “For some reason I don’t hear it when it rings. Don’t worry though, you can always reach me on my cell.”

  Then he and Breanna would talk as Cath waited in bed, staring at his naked back in the darkness of her hall. She could hear the chatter of Breanna’s voice, saying things like, “Can’t wait until the weekend! Oh God, I miss you!”

  Afterward, they were both silent for a while. Warren sat on the side of the bed with his head in his hands. Cath kept her body careful and separate.

  Eventually, Warren would say, “I’d better go home,” and Cath would say, “Yep,” and he would dress in heavy silence and go home.

  Thursdays, they made mulled wine to say good-bye for the weekend. Warren had a crisis, and Cath agreed at once to end the fiasco. Warren always looked crestfallen and torn.

  Then he decided. “No. Let’s keep going until she gets a job in Sydney. Why stop now when we have come this far? When she gets a job in Sydney, we will stop. But until then, I just can’t.”

  Cath always said, “Are you sure?”

  And Warren said, “Yes.”

  Then Cath had her own crisis. What exactly did he think he was doing? He was cheating on his wife! And every weekend, he was cheating on her! But the worst thing of all was Breanna’s voice. When she heard the voice on the cell phone in the hallway, it was as sharp to her as a paper cut. But imagine if Breanna knew he was allowing his lover to hear those conversations! That was the worst betrayal, worse than the physical part. Breanna believed her voice to be safe within her husband’s home, safe within their private, married world—when instead it was here, on display, in the hallway.

  He listened fiercely to Cath’s every word, and agreed, nodding his head. She put special emphasis on the word lover in her attacks, embracing the word, loving it.

  He listened, and then he explained, over and over, how sorry he was, how shocked he was at his own behavior, that he could not hurt his wife, that telling her would kill her. And Cath pounced, “I don’t WANT you to tell your wife, I don’t WANT you to leave your wife, I’ve never ASKED you to leave your wife,” and he said, “Yes, but it’s coming apart at the seams.”

  It didn’t have long, their marriage, he said, it was coming apart at the seams. Then she would relent, and they would look at one another and say, “This is all so stupid, because you and I are right together.” And, “I’m sure that it’s going to work out.”

  Cath spent the weekends pacing her apartment, trying not to think of Warren and Breanna, the closeness of their bodies and hands. In the dark of night, she would wake in a panic of disbelief. In the cold light of day, she would shake her head in wonder at her own behavior. She had always been opposed to mistresses. She was a vixen, a villain, she was betraying her own kind. She was a home wrecker!

  But she didn’t really mean these lectures to herself, and quickly rallied to her own defense:

  If she doesn’t know, how can it hurt her?

  I haven’t told a single person!

  If nobody knows, then it’s not really happening!

  Besides, I only get him on the weekdays—she gets the fun days, the weekend days.

  Why should she get him, anyway, just because she met him first?

  Anyway, I love him, so I can’t. I cannot stop.

  And all the time, she was really just waiting until Monday, and her heart was beating quickly and excitedly, because she knew that it would all work out. Somehow, it would all work out, and nobody would end up getting hurt.

  Sometimes, of course, she worried vaguely about the job in Sydney. “I’ll give you a rose as a poignant good-bye,” Warren joked, “the moment she gets herself a job.” What if she did get herself a job? But really, Breanna had been looking for work in Sydney for months. She was probably not trying very hard. She probably didn’t even want to spend the weekdays with Warren! Besides which, it was a joke. The idea of saying good-bye! It was funny.

  Meanwhile, the weather grew steadily warmer, and the only remnant of the strange Sydney snow was the fact that ski poles occasionally washed up on Bondi Beach.

  Strangely, Cath did not think of the pact about the rose when she found a short-stemmed rose in her pigeonhole on Thursday afternoon. She simply blushed and thought, That’s a risk! Because people would wonder where she got it from. Then she sat at the table ready for the staff meeting. She would slip the rose into her handbag when nobody was watching, as soon as the meeting finished.

  Billson started with a joke about the seventh-graders and how nobody expected them to hang around this long! The one Clareville teacher attending smiled warily.

  Cath kept her eyes away from Warren. She was talented at pretending there was nothing going on (he was always telling her this).

  Billson suggested a new format for the school newsletter, and a couple of teachers had far too many thoughts on this theme.

  Cath wanted Billson to get a move on. It was Thursday, and they had to go to her place for their crises and mulled wine.
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  “A temp is a temp, as fine a temp as Mrs. Rory has been.”

  Billson was nodding at the temporary Grade Six teacher, the emergency replacement for Lenny. Cath watched his face carefully for signs of a broken heart when he said Lenny’s name. He seemed perfectly all right. Perhaps he was an actor like Cath?

  “And as you all know,” Billson continued, “we have put our heads to the wheel on this particular one.”

  “Heads to the wheel,” murmured Warren from across the staff-room table, “ouch,” which gave Cath an excuse to look at him and smile.

  “Excuse me,” said Ms. Waratah, raising her hand slightly. “I think the phrase is shoulders to the wheel.”

  Billson ignored her and continued, “And Mrs. Rory has agreed to become permanent! As you all know, she’s had plenty of experience, she’s rock solid, and she’s loads of fun!” Mrs. Rory smiled modestly, and everyone said congratulations.

  “So!” Billson got a move on, gathering his papers. “So, that’s the sixth-graders taken care of! And—” He held both hands high, to still the stirring room. “And, here’s some news!” He had trouble keeping his smile in check. “You remember how Lenny used to be sixth-grade teacher and school counselor? Well! Never let it be said that we don’t fly with the times here at Redwood!”

  The teachers paused with their bags and their jackets at the ready.

  “Guess what?” Now Billson was beaming. “We have reached a decision to employ a separate school counselor. A full-time school counselor! And guess who we have chosen?”

  Nobody could guess.

  “A woman by the name of Breanna!” Billson practically whooped as he beamed his delight about the room. “The psychologist wife of our very own Warren Woodford here!”

  “Huh!” cried the room, and, “Congratulations, Warren!”

  Warren leaned back in his chair and took a bow.

  Two

  Returning home after dropping Cassie at school the first day back after the holidays, Fancy paused to look at the vacuum cleaner. She had placed it in the hallway, alongside the umbrella stand, as a cryptic message to Radcliffe that she knew about his affair.

  The vacuum cleaner gazed back at her, its hose neatly coiled at its side. I was once broken, it said. I choked on the shattered pieces of a marriage. A glass had been broken by the husband’s lover; the husband used ME to clean it up. But no, I choked on his deceit. Now, the repairman has fixed me: Can the same thing be said of the marriage? So far, Radcliffe had not appeared to hear.

  Fancy pushed it a little farther out into the hallway: If Radcliffe tripped over it, he would surely get the message. But, of course, her plan was more concrete than that, and now that Cassie was back at school, she could set it in motion.

  First, she ran upstairs and crawled around her bed, peering into the darkness for further clues of the affair. As usual, there was nothing. She returned to the downstairs hallway and picked up the phone, her heart beating gently.

  “Radcliffe!” she said, when he answered. “Just thought I’d let you know that I’m going to the city for the day. I’m on my way out the door right now. Doing some work for Mum. So, don’t bother coming home for lunch, will you? I won’t be here all day.”

  Radcliffe thanked her, and she hung up, walked out the front door, and sat down on the porch.

  The way she walked out the door and sat down, with her head oddly tilted and her posture straight, it was as if she were a ballerina. My husband is having an affair. She smiled softly, and hugged her knees. She could have been wearing a gossamer gown.

  The Canadian was not on his porch. She longed for it to snow again. Imagine this, she thought, imagine that this is now a city of snow. Imagine that everything has changed: There are caribou, polar bears, and wolverines. In fact, helpfully, Cassie had left footprints in the muddy front lawn, which could almost resemble claw marks. Bear prints!

  Imagine this, thought Fancy: A black bear moving gracefully—as if the bear had glandular fever, or as if the bear’s husband were having an affair—is making its way up the street. It passes open curtains, parked cars, and FOR SALE signs; pokes its snout into mailboxes; sharpens its claws on telephone poles. Its movement is silent in the snow. It pauses now and then at distant sounds: a truck on the highway; somebody’s screen door.

  The fantasy was complicated slightly, Fancy realized, by the presence of a man in a pale gray T-shirt and jeans, standing inexplicably still by the side of the house next door. When the bear approached, that man would have to be warned.

  It was the Canadian, looking at the wall of his house.

  “Hello!” she shouted.

  He turned slowly and waved. “Just checking for structural damage,” he called. “I had a minor explosion in my basement just now. Did you hear it?”

  “No!”

  “Great!”

  He turned back to the wall and stared some more. After a while, he waved and smiled at Fancy again, and then disappeared into his house.

  Fancy waited on her front porch until 3 P.M. that day, but the Canadian did not reappear. Nor, for that matter, did Radcliffe and his lover.

  Over the next few weeks Fancy’s days fell into a pattern. She would drive Cassie to school, return home, phone Radcliffe and tell him she was out for the day, and then she would sit on her porch. After a few days, she remembered that Gemma-from-the-pay-office worked afternoons, so she decided she could stop around lunchtime. Any liaison must surely take place in the morning.

  This was fortunate because she needed the afternoons to work on her prize-winning novel, or on the Zing Family Secret, or to go to the gym. Meanwhile, her sister Marbie kept arriving unexpectedly at dinnertime and asking frantic legal questions.

  Very occasionally, on her morning vigils, the Canadian would emerge onto his front porch and sit at his breakfast table. These days he was eating blueberry muffins and breadfruit with his coffee. He never seemed to wonder at Fancy’s presence on her front porch, simply chatting to her about this and that, and Fancy felt that her neck was slender and that her hands, when she spoke, were like butterflies.

  One day the Canadian had a small portable stereo alongside his blueberry muffin. “Hey, Fancy,” he called, “you want to help me out with this?”

  “Okay!” she called back happily.

  It turned out that he was required, for some reason, to compare two different versions of a song called “Love Cats.” One version was the original, by a band called The Cure. The other was a more recent cover, by a man called Tricky. Such a jumble of intriguing words and names! Fancy felt nervous and excited.

  “Which one do you think is slicker?” the Canadian called. “Which one is more powerful? Which is more beautiful? Which one makes you want to dance? Which one do you think is sexier?”

  He played the two songs over and over, facing the stereo toward her porch, and the space between their houses filled with drumbeats. Fancy answered his questions solemnly, and he jotted down her words, nodding with interest.

  “I like them both a lot,” said Fancy.

  “Tell you what,” offered the Canadian, “I’ll make you a copy.”

  “Thank you!” said Fancy, tears in her eyes.

  Not once did Radcliffe’s car appear in the driveway, nor did Gemma arrive to reclaim her purple sock. Meanwhile, Fancy’s prize-winning novel had stalled. She had reread the book about love-and-leaves and had made a discovery. The author had done more than simply list leaves, he had also provided information about them—there were entire sections of the book devoted to pigmentation and photosynthesis.

  It was not just lists that were required, Fancy realized, it was language. By the time a reader reached the end of a prize-winning novel, she or he had to know a new language—photography, geography, topology. The language of fly fishing, Malta, or bread making.

  Fancy was not sure she knew any languages worth teaching, and sensed that she ought to learn one. Meanwhile, each new prize-winning novel released took another language away—the better books
, the Booker-winning books, often used four or five.

  One day, Cassie’s mum collected her from school and took her to the dentist.

  “This is not the way to the dentist,” said Cassie.

  “You have an excellent memory, darling,” her mother declared. “You’re right. It’s not the way. But we’re going to try a new dentist at Round Corner. On the way, tell me how school is going.”

  “Okay,” agreed Cassie. Then she thought about other things for a while.

  “How’s Ms. Murphy?” tried Mum. “Do you still like her?”

  “Uh-huh. She’s pretty nice, actually.”

  “Mmm. Do you think she’s good friends with any of the other teachers at your school?”

  “Well,” said Cassie, thinking and staring out the window. “She’s got two friends. Mrs. Barker and Mr. Woodford.”

  “Mr. Woodford, eh? He’s the other Grade Two teacher, isn’t he? What’s he like?”

  “He is so funny.” Cassie swung back from the window. “Everyone’s always laughing at his jokes.”

  Actually, she thought, Ms. Murphy laughs the most. But she didn’t mention that to her mum.

  At the dentist, Mum held out her toothbrush. “Here,” she said. “Run to the bathroom down the hall and clean your teeth.”

  Cassie took the toothbrush, and the woman at the desk said, “Cassie? Would you like a treat?”

  By treat, the woman meant the tiny plastic zebra she was holding up. Cassie did not want a plastic zebra, but she said, “Okay.” The zebra could be a trick. The woman might have a fun-size Mars Bar hidden in her other hand.

  Fancy sat in the dentist’s waiting room, took out her cell phone, and selected her mother’s number.

  “I’m here,” she murmured. “Nobody else in the waiting room. Perfect layout. Now is good.” She hung up.

  Almost immediately, the phone behind the reception desk rang.

  “Round Corner Dental Center,” the receptionist said. “How can I help you? Uh-huh? Oh, gosh! Hang on then. No, I’ll—wait right there and I’ll be out!”