In the hot noon light of a summer day once, Marbie, nine years old, was almost killed by an umbrella.
She was distracted at the time.
The day before, her sister Fancy had walked into the beach house at sunset and announced that she had done something incredible.
Marbie was supposed to be washing the sand off her feet, but hearing this, she ran inside. She made herself invisible by placing herself in the shadows just beyond the open sliding doors.
Fancy was standing in the center of the main room, her hands on her hips, waiting for her parents. Mummy leaned in from the kitchen, where she was making a beetroot salad. Daddy leaned in from the bathroom, where he had just had a shower.
“What incredible thing did you do, sweetheart?” called Mummy.
“What’s up, Fance?” said Daddy.
“I told Radcliffe the Secret.”
Now there was a stampede of parents—Mummy’s purple hands flying, Daddy’s bath towel flapping—and they gathered around Fancy. Daddy straightened the towel around his waist.
“You did not!” cried Mummy.
“I did,” said Fancy defiantly. “I told you it was incredible.” She looked up at her parents and folded her arms, but her mouth trembled. Marbie, in her door space, thought of the episode of Charles in Charge, when the good sister tries to be bad, but she can’t pull it off because of her nature.
“Oh, darling,” said Mummy gently. Fancy’s hands fell to her side, and she sat down at the table.
It turned out she had told her boyfriend everything. She did not know why.
“Tell us again what you told him,” ordered Daddy, over and over. “Why did you tell him?” murmured Mummy, also over and over, until Marbie grew bored and climbed onto the side of one of the doors so she could slide with it, very quietly.
“Marbie!” snapped Daddy. “Go and get changed out of your bathing suit!”
“Okay,” agreed Marbie, looking down to the floor where there were little splatters of seawater from her bathing suit. Quietly, she walked into the room and sat down on the couch.
“Oh, Fancy,” said Mummy, in a low, shivery voice.
“Tell us what you told him,” Daddy commanded. “Tell us exactly.”
“Well, I told him about Ireland and about the cherry pies—”
“Oh, never mind,” grumbled Daddy.
He looked at Mummy, and she looked back. It was quiet.
From the couch, Marbie murmured to herself, “Should I tell them that I never told anyone the Secret? Should I say that out loud?”
The others turned to her. “GET OFF THAT COUCH!” Daddy shouted.
“Radcliffe’s not going to tell anybody.” Fancy’s voice collapsed into her arms, and her next words were tangled in a sob: “He promerr ewerd terl any obee.”
Mummy and Daddy were quiet, figuring out what she had just said. After a moment they both breathed in an “ah” of comprehension.
“Well,” said Daddy, “if he promised he wouldn’t tell anybody, I suppose we have to trust him.”
“But heaven help us when the two of you break up!” fretted Mummy.
“We’re not going to break up,” Fancy wept. “He loves me! He said that he loves me forever!”
“There now,” said Mummy apologetically. “Of course he does.” She put her arms around Fancy and said, “Of course he does, hush now, of course he does, sweetheart.”
So the next day, in the high noon sun, Marbie was distracted.
Fancy was sitting on her beach towel under the umbrella, one arm curled around her knees, gazing moodily down at the sand. Daddy was trying to tune his transistor radio to hear the cricket game. Mummy was on her folding chair, reading New Idea. The seaside noises and the radio fuzz and the magazine pages turning were only there to heighten the quiet of the family.
From her towel in the sun a few meters away, Marbie was able to observe her family and, in particular, Fancy. It seemed to Marbie that Fancy, who was usually smart, had now been stupid in two ways. First of all, it was stupid to tell her boyfriend the Secret. Second of all, it was stupid to tell her parents that she had told her boyfriend the Secret. In fact, and this was what interested Marbie, the second stupid thing was a whole new level of stupidity.
She stared out to sea, thinking hard about the two different levels of stupidity. Soon the levels began to shimmer in the air. Just above the horizon was the first level; somewhere a little higher, striking through clouds, was the second. Marbie stared at the first level, then looked up at the second, down at the first, up at the second, down and up, down and up, until an umbrella hit her smack in the forehead.
It was a beach umbrella, snatched out of the sand by a random gust of wind. It had streaked through the air like a javelin while men shouted “HO!” and leapt after it. The sharp end hit Marbie in the forehead and knocked her out cold.
While she was in the hospital, there was a lot of talk about how lucky it was that it hadn’t hit her just over to the right. Or just up a bit. Or a tad lower. Or a smidgeon to the left. And imagine if it had hit her in the eye! She was that close to death, but all she got was ten stitches, two black eyes, and one night under observation.
Fancy was very emotional, so Radcliffe held her hand and nuzzled his nose into her shoulder for support.
That Friday, Radcliffe came along to his first Zing Family Secret Meeting, and was quiet and polite, but couldn’t stop looking at Marbie, who was on a couch surrounded by pillows, and whose forehead was a thunderstorm of purple. The following week he had relaxed enough to point out that the circles of black around her eyes made her look like a raccoon. “See you later, raccoon girl,” he called as he left the garden shed that night. Everybody laughed.
Afterward, Marbie took over responsibility for putting up the family beach umbrella. She alone knew the full extent of the risk. She had a strict routine: first, dig a hole as deep as your arm; deeper; dig until you have to lie down on your side to reach the bottom of the hole and scrape the damp sand with your fingertips; next, take the bottom half of the umbrella and plunge it into the hole, then twist to the right leaning with all your weight; next! pack the hole with firm sand; finally, pile sand thick and high around the base of the umbrella, twist on the top half, and bury three sea grapes at random spots for good luck.
She was left with a crocus-shaped scar on her forehead, and a lifelong fear that long sharp items (such as umbrellas or fence posts) would somehow end up in her eye.
Friday morning, the second week of the school term, Marbie stood on the porch of their new apartment, drinking a berry-and-banana shake and saying good-bye to Listen.
“Don’t walk too fast,” she suggested. “You’ll need your energy for the Walkathon. Why don’t you skate to school today? Or I could give you a lift.”
Listen laughed, and strode off at her regular high speed.
“You look good,” called Marbie. “You look great. Like a really hip walker is how you look.”
Listen laughed again, and changed her walk to something hip and groovy for a few steps, then continued in her normal way. Because of the charity Walkathon that day, she was not wearing her school uniform, but hipster jeans and a tank top that showed off her stomach.
Marbie herself locked up and set off to her car, which was parked down the street. Halfway to the car, the neighbor’s black cat crossed her path.
Every day since the day they had moved in, the neighbor’s black cat had crossed her path. Sometimes it made an elaborate effort to do so: a triple back flip from a tree followed by a high jump over Marbie’s head, for example. But that Friday morning, it didn’t even try, it just walked on across her path.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Marbie said aloud. “You don’t scare me, you know that, Gary?”
Gary was the name of the cat, and in fact, his name alone scared her.
But it was a perfectly pleasant day at work: a lot of chatting; stamping documents; a plate of leftover sushi from a conference on another floor. Toni went to the stationery department and came back loaded with gifts, so, also, a lot of time setting up her new magnetic paper clip holder.
She spilled some of the paper clips onto the carpet, and picked up a handful, deciding to leave the rest on the carpet there. It was a decision she would regret for the rest of her life. (Let’s say, one day, Marbie knocks over a vase of flowers. The water seeps into the carpet, while flowers roll under the desk. She gets down on her hands and knees and crawls under the desk to retrieve a flower or two, and without her noticing, a paper clip sticks to her knee. Unaware, she leaves work, travels home, meets Nathaniel, playfully knees him in the thigh, and the paper clip somehow sticks into his skin, and he gets lead poisoning, and dies!) (Her eyes filled with tears at the thought.)
So she crawled under the desk and picked up every single paper clip, afterward brushing her knees carefully for remnants. Then she wrote replies to all the e-mail in her FRIENDS—MUST REPLY folder.
That evening, at the Night Owl Pub, the others had just left and Marbie was finishing her drink when the aeronautical engineer appeared.
“I have just enough time for one beer,” he informed her, sitting down opposite.
“What makes you think that I have time for one beer?”
“Sure you do! What’s the rush?”
The Zing Family Secret Meeting was the rush.
“Okay. Just one.”
“Where is everyone?” said the aeronautical engineer, frowning around at the empty seats.
“I wish you’d stop doing that,” said Marbie.
The aeronautical engineer went to the bar and returned with a pitcher of beer, which they shared.
“Airplane wings are supposed to shake,” said the aeronautical engineer after a pause in conversation.
“Okay,” agreed Marbie. He would know.
The aeronautical engineer said: “Play a spot of tennis?”
On the train home, Marbie wondered why she had agreed to play tennis with a stranger. They had arranged to meet at courts close to her place the next day.
She drove from the station to her parents’ place, imagining her arrival in time for dessert, hopefully some kind of cherry pie tonight, and also imagining excuses: Tabitha told this really long story about her pregnant sister, who has started having fits. It’s awful; she was really upset. The train was one of those slow, all-stops ones. My car was in a different part of the parking lot from where I parked it this morning! I’m sure it was. I’m sure somebody moved it. All of these things were true, even though they were not the reason for her lateness.
By the time she got there, dinner was already over, and the Meeting had begun. Listen and Cassie were watching a movie, as usual, in the living room. “Hello!” she called, running through on her way out to the garden shed. “How was the Walkathon, Listen?”
“Fine,” said Listen, her eyes on the TV.
In the garden shed, Marbie sat next to Nathaniel, and leaned over to whisper in his ear that she had just agreed to tennis with a stranger. Before she had a chance to whisper, Nathaniel kissed her. He quietly passed her an extra copy of her mother’s handout, which she immediately made into a paper airplane. Nathaniel took the airplane from her hand, held it up, and said a dismissive “tch!”, at which Marbie giggled, and her mother, at the front, said, “SHH.”
She and Nathaniel were always getting into trouble at Meetings.
Then Nathaniel reached under his chair, and he had a plate of cherry pie hidden there for her, with a spoon.
After the Meeting, they drove home in Nathaniel’s car. Marbie, feeling sleepy in the passenger seat, took her paper airplane out of her pocket, straightened out the crumples, and said, “What do you mean, ‘tch’?”
“It’ll never fly,” he declared, glancing over at her plane. “Crash and burn.”
“Show me,” said Listen, leaning forward. Then, sitting back again: “Dad’s right, Marbie. That won’t fly.”
“An aeronautical engineer showed me how. It will fly.”
“Crash and burn,” repeated Nathaniel. “Which aeronautical engineer showed you how?”
“I don’t know. Just this guy.”
The paper airplane had a sharp point, which hit Nathaniel smack in the cheek.
“It flew,” proclaimed Marbie.
“It never.”
“It hit you in the cheek!”
“It never flew.”
“Well then how did it get to your cheek?”
“You threw it at me. Throwing isn’t flying.”
Marbie sat back and pulled on her seat belt. “Hmm,” she said.
“Hey, Listen,” said Nathaniel, checking in the rearview mirror. “How was the Walkathon today? We forgot to collect your sponsorship money from the Zings.”
“Fine,” said Listen. “It was fine.” She didn’t say any more than that.
The Walkathon was fifty-five times round the oval to raise money for an international mine-clearance charity. They got their purple sponsorship cards ticked each time around. Every five times, they got a cup of orange juice, and every ten times they got to stop and have a Vita-Wheat, and the teachers laughed and said things like, “Come on! Pick up the pace! Hup-two!”
They walked in groups with their friends, and Listen walked with Donna and the others.
After eight laps, Donna said, “Raising money for mines, eh? What do you reckon we should do with the mines when we get them?”
“Depends on what kind of mines,” said Sia. “If they’re diamond mines, we should get out the diamonds. If they’re gold mines, we should get out the gold. If they’re silver mines…”
The others were laughing, so she stopped.
“We should plant them in the Science labs,” suggested Caro. “So we wouldn’t have to go to Science anymore.”
“Yeah, you would,” said Gabrielle. “It’d be cool, because Science’d be like a minefield. So you’d have to get someone to go into the lab first and, like, test out the path to your bench.”
“You’d get Caro to do it,” said Donna.
“You would NOT!” shouted Caro, and they all laughed again.
“Let’s run now,” Donna said, when they’d stopped laughing. “You wanna run for a while?”
Then she counted. “One, two, three, and four,” she pointed as she counted, Joanne, Caro, Gabrielle, and Sia, and pointed at herself, “and five.”
She didn’t point at Listen.
“Just us five,” she said, without looking at Listen: “Let’s run.”
They had funny sparks in their eyes, and smirks, and they all began to run.
Listen was confused for a moment. She thought that Donna had just forgotten to point to her, and she started to run too, but they were running faster, and looking at each other as they ran, like “She’s coming with us! What will we do?!”
She slowed down for a moment, to see if they would stop.
They didn’t stop. They kept on running into the distance, and around the corner of the oval. They slowed to a jog, without looking back. Then they kept walking, fast.
Okay, thought Listen, the idea is to catch up with me on the next round?
Listen walked alone then, forty-seven times around the oval, slowly, to give them a chance, but they never caught up with her once.
On Saturday morning, Marbie explained to Nathaniel, through the bathroom door, that she was going to her parents’ place to look through decorating magazines and collect her car.
“Hey, Sporty Spice!” said Nathaniel, coming out of the shower and seeing Marbie dressed up in her sports gear. He pretended to box with her, but Marbie did not have the time.
On the way to her parents’ place, she stopped and bought a can of tennis balls. She stayed at her parents’ place for ten minutes, and then she drove to the tennis courts. Her old racquet was hidden in the trunk.
The air was still, under a low, hazy sky, with vague swarmings of pollen and specks of black bugs. Crossing to the courts, Marbie felt the dry grass crunch beneath her sneakers, and then, in the distance, she saw the aeronautical engineer. He was already at the court, unzipping his tennis racquet and staring at her. He was dressed all in white, including white ankle socks and bright white tennis shoes. The only other color on him was the black of the hair on his legs and arms.
She herself was wearing the following: black, shiny Lycra shorts; a lemon yellow T-shirt with a faded announcement, BEAR HUGGER; a pink, terry elastic in her ponytailed hair; and Reeboks.
From a distance, the aeronautical engineer looked troubled. But as soon as she arrived, he smiled his shiny smile and said, “Warm up?”
“No,” said Marbie. “Let’s just play.” If they played, she could call, “Good shot!” whenever she missed the ball, so it would seem to be his skill that made her miss, instead of her lack of skill.
“All right.” He seemed surprised. “Here, I’ll spin my racquet.”
“Ah!” Why does he want to spin his racquet?
The aeronautical engineer spun the racquet, asking, “Rough or smooth?”
“Rough!” panicked Marbie. She waved at a swarm of bugs, and sneezed: once, twice, three, four, five.
“Phew!” he said (about her sneezes), and the racquet hit the court with a low-level thud. “Rough it is!”
Marbie served into the net, twice, and clicked her ticklish throat, annoyed. The bugs touched her tongue and the edges of her nose, and she scratched at her ears and her knees.
“Love—fifteen,” called the aeronautical engineer helpfully.
“Thank you.” She stamped one foot at the itches and the bugs, and agreed: “Me too! Love it too!”
The aeronautical engineer said, “What?” and then laughed once: “Ha.”
Arriving home, sweaty, Marbie explained to Nathaniel that she had decided to go for a run around the oval after she visited her parents, and that was why she was sweaty, and so now she would just have a shower.
“Listen’s gone shopping,” Nathaniel said, following her down the hallway, “but I just remembered I forgot to tell you something she suggested the other day. She had an idea. Okay, let me remember the idea. The idea was, she thinks we should have a housewarming party. She’d invite Donna and the others from school. And she said we should combine it with Cassie’s birthday—have Cassie’s birthday here. She tells me it’s Cassie’s birthday in a few weeks.”
“She tells you that, does she?” said Marbie, taking off her sweaty sports clothes and stepping into the shower. “I think it’s a perfect idea, and I think Listen is beautiful, and I think that you are too.” The last part she gurgled through the shower water.
“Thank you,” said Nathaniel, pulling his shirt over his head, unbuttoning his jeans, pressing them down his legs and over his feet, and stepping into the shower with her. Marbie stared at the fine, light brown hair on his chest, and at his muscular shoulders and arms. He was well built because he was always lifting boxes of bananas. As he kissed her in a warm, wet, shower-water way, Marbie began to draft a letter to an Advice Column inside her head:
Help!
I’m a 28-year-old woman (Sagittarius), and I’ve just moved in with my boyfriend and his daughter. My boyfriend is an excellent lover. I can confirm right now, even as I speak, that he really is a sensational—that he is—
Anyway, the problem. You won’t believe it, but I seem to have had an affair this morning. (Why?)
Well, it wasn’t so much an affair. More a game of tennis.
The score was 6-0, 6-1. I lost. And that game I won in the second set was just because he hit four double faults. “Hooroo,” he said (mysteriously) after every double fault, and then he wiped the sweat from his sideburns.
So, that was strange enough. But then do you know what I did? I arranged to have a SECOND AFFAIR. Well, not so much a second affair as another game of tennis. (Why?) I arranged it for next Wednesday, during my lunch hour, at the Sydney University courts. I’ve got to say though, because this is what’s so mystifying and the reason I’m asking for help—I’ve got to say, and this is really ironic—but Nathaniel is really an excellent—that he’s a fantastic—
The Monday after the Walkathon, Listen watched Donna and the others out of the corner of her eye, waiting to see what would happen. At first she thought, Well, if they don’t want me around, that’s fine with me, and she went to the library at lunchtime. You weren’t allowed to eat in the library, so she saved her lunch to eat walking home. In classes, she decided to concentrate on what the teachers were saying. It’s pretty interesting anyway, she told herself, but actually it wasn’t.
Meanwhile, the others were getting on with life, talking to each other about ordinary things.
The same thing happened Tuesday, but on Wednesday morning, Listen woke up and thought, This is all a mistake! They think that I’m the one who’s ignoring them! It was just a joke, that running away thing at the Walkathon, and now they think I can’t take a joke! How terrible! But such a relief, and she practically ran all the way to school to clear things up.
Caro was arriving at the school gate at the same time as her, so Listen called, “Hi!”
Caro looked around and said, “Hi-i-i,” sort of comical and musical, like the “hi” you might say to a big blue beetle that landed on your plate at a picnic. Everyone would laugh and you’d shake the plate and the beetle would fly away.
“What’s going on?” said Listen, walking in step with Caro.
“No-o-thing,” said Caro, quickening her pace.
“SIA!!!” shouted Caro suddenly, and she waved at Sia, who was down in the teachers’ parking lot. Sia turned and stared, and Caro sprinted away from Listen, pounding down the driveway. Listen paused, and watched as Caro reached Sia and seemed to hunch over, gasping and talking rapidly, until Sia hugged her as if she needed comforting.
Listen walked on quickly then, in a different direction.
Later that day, packing up to go home, Donna spoke to Listen in a kindly voice. “Can I just explain something?” she said.
“If you want.”
“It’s just that we all agreed on this, okay? It’s no offense at all. See, the other day we had a strategy meeting at my place, and we decided we have to kind of like make the tough decisions? If we’re going to survive, because, you know, I realized that this place is even more of a fundamental shift in the universe than I thought it would be? And we have to shift away from you, if we’re going to survive the shift. It makes sense if you think of it that way.”
Listen nodded, trying to figure out what Donna meant.
“And it was a good example at the Walkathon,” Donna continued, looking thoughtful. “It was kind of like confirmation that we’d made the right decision? When we were all making jokes about mines and that, and you were laughing but you weren’t making jokes yourself. You were kind of like taking because you were laughing, but you weren’t giving anything to us. And this is really, really hard for us, okay?”
“O-ka-a-ay,” said Listen, trying to give her “okay” a lilting, comical edge.
The next day, Listen stayed home from school. Marbie was taking a day off work because she had a ticklish throat, and she suggested Listen might need a break too. After clearing her throat several times, Listen decided she had a tickle too.
“I’ll write a note and say you’ve got pneumonia,” offered Marbie. So that was settled.
Marbie was reading a novel in the sunny part of the kitchen, and Listen went into her bedroom, stared around the room, and remembered, It’s the Thursday after next! I’m allowed to do the next spell!
It was A Spell to Make a Vacuum Cleaner Break.
“Well,” she said to herself, “that’s a pretty stupid spell.” But then she remembered that their new vacuum cleaner was already broken. It got broken in the move: Grandpa Zing dropped a wardrobe on top of it, in the back of the truck. Maybe a Spell to Make a Vacuum Cleaner Break would have the reverse effect on a broken one? You never knew.
1. Wear sunglasses all day. From now on. Quickly, go and get the sunglasses and put them on.
2. Walk backward, but every few steps skip a bit and say “Oh!” as if you’ve just remembered something.
3. Phone up a Tae Kwon Do class and sign yourself up, then phone again ten minutes later and cancel.
4. Peel fifteen potatoes and sticky-tape the peelings back together.
NOW YOU HAVE TO WAIT SIX WEEKS PLUS ONE DAY BEFORE YOU CAN TURN ANOTHER PAGE! (You’d better put the date in your calendar.)
These were challenging things, but Listen did them all. Even when she and Marbie went out with Marbie’s sister Fancy for a coffee in Castle Hill. It was difficult wearing sunglasses inside and walking backward, but she explained that her theory about the flu was to disguise herself and run away from it, so it wouldn’t find her. Marbie and Fancy were impressed.
That night, Listen checked in the hall closet, but the vacuum cleaner was still crushed, as she had known it would be.
She instant-messaged Sia, but Sia didn’t answer. She found Caro and Gabrielle in a chat room, but they slid off-line when she tried to join the chat. Finally, she phoned Joanne.
“Okay,” said Joanne. “You deserve the truth.” Then she explained in detail the strategy meeting that Listen had missed at Donna’s place.
The next day Listen joined a new group.
She chose Angela Saville’s group, and each day she asked them questions. For instance, she asked everyone what they did on the weekend, whether they watched the Valerio movie last night, whether they liked it, what subject they had after lunch, whether they liked that subject, and so on. She listened to their answers.
One day, she ordered her lunch from the tuckshop, and it arrived in the basket at the front of the room, in a brown paper bag with her name: LISTEN TAYLOR. GRADE 7A.
The lawn was set with its garlands of girls. She saw Angela Saville’s group, and she walked on the grass carefully, toward them, ready with a smile. The circle felt funny. Angela and the others saw her coming; their heads bobbed down, and their eyes giggled slyly at each other.
Listen, from not far away, saw that the circle was perfect, and tight. She stopped. She was not going over.
She stood on the lawn among the garlands of girls, and she felt, for a moment, like a Christmas tree. A fading Christmas tree, awkward and bulky in the center of a room, when Christmas had finished weeks before. Stupidly conspicuous and perfectly invisible, both at once. Colored lights were blinking down her legs, her arms were branches slung with rusting baubles, and strings of stale popcorn dangled from her hair.
Seriously! Help!
Well, it’s continued, and I can’t figure out exactly why.
In the last week or so, I’ve had three more affairs, well, three more games of tennis, with the aeronautical engineer. I bought a new tennis racquet, thinking it would improve my playing, but it didn’t.
It’s true that the A.E. is wild and weird and the world needs more of that sort of thing. He’s kind of side-on to the universe. But so what? I really, really love Nathaniel. Anyhow, this morning I played tennis again, and three important things happened.
First, when he arrived at the tennis court, the A.E. mentioned that he has read Madame Bovary in the original French. “Have you?” I said. “Yes,” he replied.
Second, halfway through the first game, the A.E. stopped and took off his right tennis shoe and sock, to check on a blister. The blister was so bad that he had to PEEL the sock away from his foot. It was disgusting. I noticed that his toes are hairy.
Third, and I guess this is actually the only important thing, third, after he’d put a Band-Aid on the blister, and replaced his sock and shoe, he stood up, turned to me, and said, “You want to come to my place, and, you know, fool around?”
Fool around!!
I said, “I have a boyfriend!”
He shrugged. I’m not sure whether his shrug meant “So what?” about my having a boyfriend, or “Oh well” about my not wanting to fool around.
Whatever, we played a set of tennis, I lost every point, and then, of course, I went back to work.
So my question is, Why have I been playing tennis with this man? And why did I invite him to meet me at the Night Owl Pub on Monday night?
Yours,
Bewildered
P.S. I’m writing this in the kitchen while watching Nathaniel stir the pumpkin soup he just prepared for dinner. I can hear Listen’s loud music blasting from her bedroom down the hall. And I really love this life; all of it. Which makes you think.
“Have you noticed,” Marbie said to Nathaniel, “that Listen isn’t talking about school anymore?”
“I know,” he said, serving up the soup. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. She’s always quiet, but then she has—”
“She has those sudden outbursts of talking,” agreed Marbie. “And I keep waiting for one. I’ve been asking her questions about school, but she—”
“Exactly. Me too. Every time I ask her a question, she says, ‘Fine.’ The other day I asked her what they sold in the school tuckshop and she said, ‘Fine.’”
“Maybe she doesn’t like us anymore,” Marbie said, sadly. “Maybe she’s become one of those teenager people who only talk to their friends. She’s got the volume on her music turned up pretty high right now, so that’s a symptom, I guess.”
“Well, when your family’s here for Cassie’s birthday this weekend, they’ll ask a lot of questions,” Nathaniel pointed out. “They won’t let her get away with fine.”
“Remember her first week of Grade Seven, how she didn’t stop talking?” Marbie said, nostalgically. “She told us about the Geography teacher who ran around the room pretending to be the monsoon wind, and about the Science teacher who said they had to dissect frogs, and Caro said she would get a note from her mum saying she didn’t have to dissect frogs, and the teacher said, ‘Notes don’t count!’ and Caro said, ‘Notes always count,’ and the teacher said, ‘Have you read—’”
At that moment, Listen walked in and sat at the table, saying, “Cool. Pumpkin soup.”
“Have you read Madame Bovary?” Marbie said smoothly. “In the original French? Oh, hi, Listen, I like the music you’re playing down there.”
“No,” replied Nathaniel. “I’ve only seen the movie.”
“I’ve read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” offered Listen. “But I haven’t seen the movie. The old one or the Johnny Depp one either.”
“You haven’t seen the movies!” Marbie cried, and Nathaniel rain-danced around the table. The telephone rang, and he incorporated the answering-of-the-phone into the dance, so that his head was upside down for most of the conversation.
“Yes…yes, there’s a Listen Taylor here, shall I—…Okay, sure, you’re from where?…From the Kenthurst School of—Really! Uh-huh. She did? Well no, I didn’t…I mean, of course! Well, I’m sorry about that. You know what? I’m going to call you back in five minutes. Okay. Can I get your number? Okay, okay, I’ll call you back.”
He wrote a number on the back of the electric bill, which he swiped from under a magnet on the fridge, and then he turned his head the right way up to hang up the phone.
“Hey, Listen,” he said, sitting back at the table. “Why didn’t you tell us you wanted to do Tae Kwon Do?”
“Because I don’t want to do Tae Kwon Do.” Listen took a bite of her bread roll.
“Well, the guy on the phone says you joined his class, and then you phoned back ten minutes later and canceled.”
They both looked at Listen. She dipped her roll into her pumpkin soup, studying the soup to do this, and then she looked up from under her fringe, saw they were still staring, and said, “What?”
“Could it have been a different Listen Taylor?” suggested Marbie. “There would be a lot of them around. Listen is a very common name.”
“Okay, shut up. You should talk. Marbie Zing. I wanted to do Tae Kwon Do, but then I didn’t want to. I changed my mind.”
“In the space of ten minutes!”
“I decided it would be too expensive. Hey, should I sand the kitchen cupboards tonight, ready to repaint?”
“Don’t try and change the subject. Nathaniel, call the man back and enroll Listen in his class.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Nathaniel was reaching for the phone.
“Oh, no, that’s okay. I changed my mind. I seriously don’t want to do Tae Kwon Do, guys. Do we have enough sandpaper?”
“Because it’s too expensive!” cried Marbie. “Listen! You must do anything you want. You should be learning Portuguese and auto mechanics and candlemaking, and definitely Tae Kwon Do! Fancy learned the drums when she was your age, and she is now a more interesting person than I am! Because I don’t play the drums! Money is no object where interest is concerned! Would you like to play the drums?”
“Well, but I’m not really interested—”
“Shush, Listen, it’s ringing.”
“You don’t need to be upside down this time, Nathaniel.”
“Is this the Kenthurst School of Tae Kwon Do? Yes, we just spoke. I have a new student for you! I know. I know! I know.”
What have I been thinking?! Forget I said a word.
Okay, it’s after midnight, and I’m lying awake staring at Nathaniel, and thinking of how great he is with his daughter, and how I’ve never even seen the movie of Madame Bovary, let alone read the book.
Plus, it’s not an affair. I’ve just been playing tennis with a stranger. He did ask me back to his place to fool around, but maybe he was talking about PlayStation?
The only reason I called it an “affair” is that I haven’t told Nathaniel about the tennis. Interestingly, the only reason I have NOT told him is that it’s NOT an affair.
Tomorrow, Nathaniel and Listen will spend all day helping to prepare for Cassie’s party. And I know Nathaniel thinks our Family Secret is dangerous and wrong, but he still accepts it’s part of my life, and he comes along every Friday night, and he’s much more punctual than I am.
He just woke up and asked if I’m okay and can I sleep? “Should we go for a swim at Bellbird?” he said, even though he has a cold and an early start.
I told him I was writing a letter to a magazine problem page, and he kissed my elbow.
I will cancel our meeting on Monday. I will never see him again.
Yours,
Temporarily Insane, but Now Recovered