The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (26 page)

The Visions of an Aeronautical Engineer
Vision # 1,562

Trapped within the cobwebs of my counterintuitive chin,

I see this, I see this, I see this.

I see, with startled clarity, for just a whispered moment:

Bidirectional Evolutionary Structural Optimization.

The following Thursday was a difficult day for Marbie. Things such as this kept happening: She made a call to get somebody's number, scribbled the number on a Post-it note, and then lost the Post-it note. She ordered a salad sandwich for lunch and when the girl behind the counter said, “Salt and pepper?” she replied, “Just pepper, please,” and the girl gave a glazed and rueful nod, meaning,
That's what everybody says.
She bit the inside of her cheek, by accident, and then kept biting the same spot. Also, her nose and her eyes were itchy, and she was always on the verge of a sneeze.

She was almost relieved when the A.E. phoned in the afternoon and asked her to slip out of work to meet him at a nearby café.

In order to change the nature of the day, she ordered a piece of chocolate cake.

“Whoa,” said the aeronautical engineer, when the chocolate cake arrived. The waitress smiled, as if it were a compliment. “You gonna eat all that by yourself?” He himself had only ordered an espresso.

“You can share it if you like,” said Marbie politely.

“Heeeee-uge,” whistled the aeronautical engineer between his teeth, and then shook his head: “No thanks.”

Marbie adjusted her chair slightly, and took up her spoon.

“It's not
that
big,” she said after a moment, at which he chuckled slightly and said, “You'd better get stuck in. I mean, we don't have all
day
here; sure, if you wanted to share it with a starving nation, you might just—”

She touched his thigh lightly to make him stop.

“Ho ho!” he said, looking at her hand on his thigh with a grin. “Ho
ho
!”

When she returned to work, the day continued exactly as before. Worse even: One of her toenails seemed to have developed a sharp edge and was cutting into the next toe along whenever she walked to the photocopier.

Later that night, she drove to the A.E.'s place to watch TV.

“I'm hungry,” she said, during an ad break.

“After that piece of chocolate cake!”

“That was hours ago,” Marbie pointed out.

He raised his eyebrows. “
I'm
not hungry,” he declared.

“I assume you realize,” said Marbie spitefully, “that your not being hungry doesn't make you a better person than me?”

He chuckled and leaned back on the couch, stretching out an arm as if to parallel park. Marbie stood up. She stared at him.

He gave her a little
oops
grimace. “What's up? Feeling fragile today?”

Formally, she announced: “I'm leaving. Sorry, but we have to end it now.”

“Come on,” he smiled wryly. “You're ending it because of a piece of chocolate cake?”

“Because of a piece of chocolate cake,” she agreed, and she gathered up her handbag and her shoes.

Once upon a time there was a man named
Monsieur Blanchard,
who fell in love with hot-air balloons. By lucky chance, he also fell in love with a woman (
Madame Blanchard
) who herself was enamored of balloons. Together, they cast their ballooning spells, performing sky shows all over France.

Madame Blanchard was a sensitive soul who could not stand the clamor of noise. Often, of an evening, she took her balloon into the sky, and remained there, with the moon, until dawn.

Sadly, Madame Blanchard died in a balloon crash. It was during a fireworks display over the Tivoli Gardens in Paris. From the basket of her balloon, Madame Blanchard sent gold! and silver! in cascading stars to the delight of the crowd below, and then she sent a great burst of fire. The crowd cheered happily, not understanding that this burst of fire was an error, and signified disaster: In fact, the balloon was on fire.

She crashed onto the roof of a house in the rue de Provence, and broke her neck.

Maude Sausalito, now older, and married (and in fact not Maude
Sausalito
anymore), wore her hair long and flat like a shawl. She was telling her husband about the Blanchards, the legends of ballooning, while he polished his shoes. She herself was icing cupcakes on the one clear corner of the kitchen table; he had spread newspaper across the remainder and was nodding as he dipped a brush in polish. He had just been promoted to
Assistant-Manager-in-Training at the menswear store where he worked, which is why shiny shoes were important.

When Maude told how Madame Blanchard took to the sky of a night, her husband, David, chuckled to himself, and said, “Not a bad idea!”

They both glanced down at their first child, Fancy, who was sleeping in the pram that Maude had found abandoned on the street (David had refurbished it completely). Lately, Fancy had been teething, so that their nights had become precarious affairs: They did not sleep so much as teeter in suspense. The baby's cries were so sharp, they both felt the cut of the tooth.

Maude and David had married two years before, and honeymooned in a tent in the Hunter Valley. Maude had secretly arranged a dawn balloon ride for the second day of the honeymoon, but, during the wedding reception, David's brother made several jokes about his vertigo.

“What's vertigo?” Maude whispered.

“A fear of heights,” David whispered back.

He had never told her! Secretly, she canceled the balloon ride.

They never mentioned his vertigo, but both acknowledged it silently—for example, when Maude's kite got caught on the chimney, she herself climbed up to retrieve it, while David watched, trembling and pale.

Generally, David was happy to hear her balloon stories, but when Maude finished the story of the Blanchards, he said sternly, “She died in a balloon crash? That's not a nice story, Maude. Why tell me that story?”

“Okay, here's a nicer story,” said Maude at once. “About
Monsieur
Blanchard. The husband. About how he crossed the English Channel in a balloon! Just rock the pram with your foot, would you? We'll trick her into going back to sleep.”

As she told the story of Monsieur Blanchard, Maude daydreamed about the journey they would take in a hot-air balloon, once David was
cured of his vertigo. (If she told enough balloon stories, then surely…?)

The pilot would have long curling hair, almost to his shoulders. In the creaking basket of the balloon, one night, he would point out a powerful owl. “Is that actually a bird?” David would say. “Isn't it just a bit of dust?” But the pilot, his muscular arm reaching up to tug a rope, checking the wind with a private little nod, would steer them closer to the dust, which would turn into a powerful owl. He would glance at her reaction, shy for a moment, but then he would grin, mischievously, and turn to the care of his balloon.

Blushing, she would look down at the slice of lime, perched on the side of her martini.

When Fancy Zing was eleven years old, her father went to Ireland for a year. The day that he was due to return she sat at the kitchen table to write a poem:

Today! Today! My Daddy's Coming Home!

At last! At last! Fetch the Cheese and Honeycomb!

The thick black lead of the HB pencil slipped when the table wobbled, and the “Cheese” spilled its “s” across “Coming.”

Fancy examined the table. It was cracked, and scribbled with words such as
MARBIE ZING
and cow! She laid her hands flat and rocked the table to pinpoint the wobble, tore a corner from her poem paper, and crouched next to the table leg. As she crouched, she stopped and swirled her skirt, making it touch the floor in a parachute circle. It was a brand-new secondhand skirt, to Welcome Daddy Home.

Her mother had said, “New jeans?”

And Fancy had said, “I think I'd like a skirt.”

“A skirt!” cried Mummy. “Aren't we growing up!”

Then she took most of the money from the St. Vincent de Paul box on top of the fridge, took Fancy's little sister, Marbie, by the hand, and all three walked to the bus stop. Only, Mummy realized she didn't have exact change for the bus fare, so they walked into Castle Hill.

At Pre-Loved Fashion, Fancy's mother bought herself a pale green
scarf, which floated in the air when she tossed it about, making up her mind whether to buy it (and she leaned toward Fancy and explained, “A little pink lipstick and a pale green scarf, and you'll find you win any man's heart!” “Will you?” said Fancy, surprised.) They also bought a purple T-shirt for Marbie, and for Fancy, a skirt in the colors of a rainbow lorikeet.

Now Fancy stood up from the floor, graceful, a flamingo, and felt the skirt rest against her legs.

The wobble was gone when she sat back down, and she took up her pencil again. But here was the problem. She could not write the poem too fast, because she had to be there, writing it, when her father arrived. She had to be sitting at the table, her pencil chatting poetry, frowning as she worked on the last few words.

He would walk through the door and say, “Fancy! Hi! Doing homework?”

And she would say, “Writing a poem to welcome you home.”

She would stand, her skirt would fall against her legs in a great spray of color, and he would say, “You're all grown up!”

And she would say, gracefully, “Welcome home, Daddy.” And present him with the poem.

So she sat at the table and drew tiny flowers in the space between the lines of her poem. Then she wrote the heading
WELCOME DADDY
in bubble letters, and made a 3-D effect by shading around the edges.

The telephone rang, and Mummy shouted from the laundry, “Get that, would you, Fancy?” But Marbie came skidding through the back door, and grabbed it from just beneath her fingers. “Hello?”

Fancy whispered sternly, “Good afternoon, Marbie Zing speaking.”

Marbie shivered her muddy face and turned toward the wall. “Yes,” she said to the receiver. Then, “Ye-e-e-s! Of course!” Then, “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay. Bye.”

Fancy said, “You're all muddy, Marbie. Who was that?”

“Nobody.” Marbie squirmed past and ran down the hallway.

“It can't have been nobody,” Fancy murmured to herself. She followed Marbie at a more stately pace.

“Who was it?” Mummy asked.

“Guess.”

Mummy stood up slowly from the laundry basket, carrying a pair of Marbie's shorts. She put her hands in both shorts pockets, one at a time, and took out crumpled tissues and dirty handkerchiefs. “Look at you, Marbie,” she said, shaking her head. “Look at your lovely new T-shirt.”

Marbie looked down and said “Oops!” seeing the purple T-shirt splattered with mud specks.

“Oops is right, young lady.” Mummy took an apple core from Marbie's shorts pockets.

“Who was it?” Fancy demanded. “On the phone?”

“But it already had that mark on it when we bought it, remember, Mum?” Marbie licked her fingers and began scraping at the mud.

“Stop that,” said Mummy. “You'll only make it worse. Here, take it off right away, and I'll put it in with this lot. Marbie, who was on the phone, darling?”

Marbie lifted her T-shirt up over her face and from behind the purple she said, “Daddy.”

“Daddy?” Fancy cried.

“Hang on,” said Mummy. She had noticed something deep in the washing machine. Being quite fat, she had to reach over her stomach before she could get into the machine. Marbie and Fancy waited. “Hmm,” she said, coming back out and holding up a sock. She tossed it into the basket and turned around to reach for Marbie's shirt.

“Yeah,” said Marbie. “Daddy. And he says he's still at the airport now because the plane was late, and he'll come home soon, okay?”

“Right,” said Mummy, bending to the basket once again. “We may as well get dinner started. No sense in us starving, is there?”

“I'll start dinner, Mummy,” offered Fancy.

The chicken and chips were sitting on the counter, wrapped in a great white bundle. Fancy took the aluminum tray with its burned biscuit stains, and let the food tumble from the paper onto the tray. She switched on the oven and placed the tray on the center shelf.

Ceremoniously, she moved to the table, took her HB pencil, and crinkled her forehead at the poem.

When Marbie Zing was five years old, her father went to Ireland for a year. Every night that he was gone, Marbie crept into the school yard next door and took midnight swims in the pool. During the days she sailed paper boats in the kitchen sink.

The day that her father came home, Fancy wrote a poem, Mummy washed the curtains, and Marbie turned the hose onto the trampoline.

It was Marbie who answered the phone when he called from the airport.

“That's Marbie, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember your old dad?”

“Ye-e-e-s! Of course!”

They ate chicken and chips for dinner, and their mother said, “Let's get this place looking perfect for your dad!”

Fancy threw away the chicken bones, and Marbie, accidentally, threw away Fancy's poem. Mummy hung freshly washed curtains in the kitchen windows and stood back. “Girls, what do you think!”

Fancy said, “Beeeautiful.”

Marbie said that the curtains looked crinkled and raggedy.

“Did anybody see my poem?” said Fancy, shifting magazines around.

Mummy took another step back and bumped into Fancy. “Maybe you're right. I should iron them.”

“They look beautiful, Mummy,” Fancy said. “Leave them. But I can't find my poem. Did anyone see my poem?”

“Only I don't know if I have time.” Mummy looked at the kitchen clock, the curtains, and the closed front door. “Oh dear.”

“Maybe you should just throw the curtains away,” suggested Marbie.

“That's not the answer, precious one,” said Mummy, then: “Fancy! What are you
doing
?”

Fancy had the kitchen trash can tipped upside down. She was sitting among chicken bones, tin cans, paper towels, tuna fish, carrot peels, and corn.

“My poem!” Fancy cried. “I can't find my poem!”

“The floor!” Mummy cried.

Headlights flashed through the kitchen curtains, and an engine grumbled in the drive.

“He's
here
!” Fancy shrieked, and Mummy and Marbie jumped.

“And I'm all ruined, and I can't find my poem, and—” Then she found her poem.

“My
poem
!” Now she was crying properly. “It's
ruined,
it's got
chicken grease
all over it, and LOOK AT MY SKIRT.”

Which is why, when Daddy got back from Ireland, the first thing he looked at was Fancy's new skirt.

“That's tuna on your skirt there, isn't it?”

Those were his first words. He was carrying a large brown suitcase, and his face, Marbie thought, was like a fat pink balloon. Fancy stood up in a tumble of garbage, and ran from the room in a sob.

“I hope you're not hungry,” Mummy announced. “We've eaten all the chicken and chips.”

“Have you got presents?” said Marbie.

“Of course I've got presents!” said Daddy. “I'll put my suitcase away, and then we'll all go sit in the lounge.”

In the lounge, Daddy gave them presents: bags of M&M's and packets of chips. They waited hopefully, but that was it, so they began to eat the M&M's. Daddy looked around the room and began picking up objects and putting them back down.

“Just leave that one,” said Mummy suddenly, but Daddy had put down a photo frame and picked up a magazine. When he did, a dried flower fell onto the floor.

“Oh,” said Daddy, “sorry,” and he tried to pick up the pieces of the flower. “Just leave it,” Mummy said again.

Meanwhile, Fancy sat on the carpet in her dirty skirt and sniffed. “I wrote you a poem,” she said eventually, “but it got thrown away and now it's ruined.”

“Here, come sit on my lap,” Daddy suggested. “You can write me another poem if you like!”

“But I can't…” Fancy burst into tears, and nobody heard what she said next.

“We can't hear you,” Marbie explained. “You have to stop crying.”

Fancy kept crying anyway, and Mummy said, “Hush now,” and leaned forward to stroke her hair.

“I can't sit on your lap, Daddy.” This time they heard Fancy. “The couch is broken, and we'll fall right through, because I'll be too heavy and my skirt's too dirty.”

“Rubbish!” cried Daddy.

“Yes,” Marbie explained, “it's rubbish. All over her skirt.”

“Come along.” Daddy patted his knees. “I think on this special day you can sit on my lap, no?” So Fancy did. Daddy shifted so he wasn't sitting on the broken spring.

“Where did you go for a whole year, Daddy?” said Fancy, wiping away her tears.

“I went to some islands, Fancy, off the west coast of Ireland.”

“How many islands, Daddy?”

“Three.”

“What are they called?”

“Inishmore, Inishmaan and Inisheer.”

“What are they like? Are they nice?”

“The soil is almost paved with stones,” said Daddy, clearing his throat, and continuing, “so that in some places nothing is to be seen but large stones with openings between them, where cattle break their legs. The only stone is limestone, and marble for tombstones. Among these stones is very good pasture, so that beef, veal, and mutton are better and earlier in season here than elsewhere.”

“Interesting,” said Mummy.

“Yes,” agreed Daddy.

“What did you do on the islands, Daddy?”

“I wrote my novel, Fancy.”

“Can I see your novel, Daddy?”

“No. Once I had finished my novel, Fancy, I took the pages, one by one, made each into a paper boat, and sent them all to sea. Because, Fancy, my novel took me away from my family. So I washed it away in the waves.”

“Daddy!” whispered Fancy, then: “Welcome home.” She cried again, and threw her arms around him.

“Little Fancy,” whispered Daddy, “little Fancy.”

Marbie blinked her eyes to make herself cry. “What's the matter, Marbie?” said her mother. “Don't tell me you're allergic to the carpet?”