Come, Thou Tortoise Read online

  I find my voice. Oh oh oh. Is that what he’s telling you.

  Ma’am. He would very much like you to exit the bathroom.

  I bet he would.

  Now Tweed’s voice: My name is Caesar Marshall. And I assure you I am a federal air marshal. Please exit the bathroom and return my weapon and you will not face prosecution.

  I don’t negotiate with terrorists!

  Laughter. Now his mouth is very close to the door. Possibly his lips are touching the OCCUPIED sign. Do I look like a terrorist.

  So I was right to despise him.

  Okay. Say he is an air marshal whose last name is conveniently Marshall. Nevertheless he is a terrorist insofar as he has terrorized me and probably all the other passengers on board flight 880. Yelling and pounding the door. He has destroyed our web of goodwill!

  Also, I am having trouble believing in my future.

  He raises his voice and tells me again that he is a federal air marshal, and if I will kindly exit the bathroom he will show me his identification.

  Slide it under the door.

  Not enough room.

  How convenient.

  Tuesday Miller assures me that she is right now, at this very moment, looking at Caesar Marshall’s badge and boy is it authentic.

  An expert, is she.

  As a matter of fact, yes. She is trained to be. Further, Tuesday has known Caesar personally for two years. They have been on several flights together—

  Tuesday, would there by any chance be a plastic knife sawing into your jugular at this moment.

  Pause.

  Of course not.

  Look, I don’t care if Air Marshal Marshall is the director of Homeland Security. Guns are not allowed on planes, right. Rule Number One. I think I’ve just demonstrated why that rule exists.

  Silence now on the other side of the door. Perhaps they are nodding, conceding my excellent point.

  I am a federal air marshal, Tweed says again.

  If you are, I’d wager you won’t be one much longer.

  More silence. More nodding and conceding my excellent point.

  Imagine bringing something on board that could punch a hole in our snow globe. Imagine. I could shoot that Air Marshal Marshall.

  Nothing has been said on the other side of the door for some time now. I check my watch—for five minutes. It feels like longer. Time passes slowly when you’re alone in a small metal room with a gun in the sink. I check myself in the mirror, tighten my ponytail. Nope, I am not feeling a future of any kind.

  Concentrate on your destination. Your dad is waiting for you to open his eyes. You have a necessary future. Try to envision it.

  Can’t. We are a plane divided. We are a plane with an air marshal.

  The plane dips a little.

  A knock on the door. Audrey.

  A new voice from the OCCUPIED sign. Ms. Flowers.

  What.

  I’m co-pilot Keith Gordon.

  Really.

  Yes. And Caesar Marshall really is an air marshal. And we have not been hijacked. Nothing is amiss, I promise you. You have acted bravely. Even heroically. But you need to come out now and return the gun. Otherwise we will have to land the plane immediately. That is the rule. When we have a situation such as this on board, we have to land the plane.

  Where.

  We’re looking at Cincinnati.

  I have to get home, co-pilot.

  Where is home. Toronto.

  No. You’ve never heard of it.

  Where.

  St. John’s.

  Of course I’ve heard of it.

  Oh.

  Please, Audrey.

  Yes, okay. But how do I know he doesn’t have a gun to your head, or a very sharp white plastic knife.

  You have to trust what I’m telling you, that everything is really okay.

  If everything is really okay—

  I promise you it is.

  And you are a pilot—

  I am.

  Something happened in the cockpit before we took off. I saw something through the window.

  Ah.

  What was that thing I saw. Tell me and I’ll come out.

  You saw me kiss the pilot.

  I thought that’s what I saw.

  Put her under your armpit.

  No, you.

  You.

  A knock on my shell. Winnifred.

  What.

  Hello in there.

  But I cannot move. When was the last heartbeat. If I have to choose armpits I choose Linda’s.

  I think she’s traumatized, says Linda.

  Shell-shocked, says Chuck.

  Try freezing. Why am I beside the fridge so that every time Chuck opens the door and stares at its contents I get a blast of cold air through my castle. Why. Someone once said that there is no such thing as cold, only degrees of heat. That person was an idiot. A fridge proves that cold is a thing. A fridge is a rectangle of cold.

  What I am thinking about is a warm dashboard.

  It was weird, coming here last night, because normally in the car I ride the dashboard (hook my claws into the defrost vents and hang on!) but last night, since my castle and all its amenities, as she calls them, were being relocated, I was shoved, castle and all, into the back seat. Cold back there. And the castle floor was sloped. So crawling up to the window took even longer than usual. When I finally arrived I stuck my head out and the speedometer said 20 mph. Twenty! I can walk faster than that. She was saying, Which president comes after Harrison. Lincoln. No.

  I looked around for a piece of lettuce to drop. Depends which Harrison.

  Over the dashboard I could see little waves of heat, beckoning. Come hither, tortoise.

  Here we are, she said. Taft Street.

  Whereupon I was transported up some steps and transferred into Linda’s custody. I watched her go with my head out the window. Don’t planes have dashboards. Why not take me with you. Why.

  Now they are fighting over whose armpit. Well spare me.

  Linda says, Turn up the radiators full blast.

  From inside my shell I can conjure the old flat because I have what is called internalized it. For instance, the red light of the fire alarm. I can still see that. The fire escape. The stove. The ceiling that became the overhang. The walls that grew teeth so that they might be climbed. Yes, if it weren’t for the new voices and the rectangle of cold, I might be back in the old flat.

  Chuck is saying, Don’t tortoises carry salmonella.

  Right. I will not be warming to Chuck anytime soon.

  When was the last heartbeat. I think yesterday. But do not be sad for me. When the heartbeats do come, they are magnificent. Though of course they are followed by the ebb.

  Let’s capitalize Ebb. The Ebb is rather sad, I do admit. And when the heartbeats are few, the Ebb stretches on. The Ebb is like a path that becomes less a path the farther you travel along it. Until you are forced to stop because you are in some nondescript place and there is no path and what is the point of going forward.

  The drafty, Tafty kitchen slowly heats up. I come out of my shell. I drag myself over to the window. Linda is on the phone.

  Shit, she says. She’s got her head out the window. That is so frickin cute.

  Pause.

  Yes, really. She’s alive. She’s watching me.

  I break eye contact with Linda and make for the pool. So I was presumed dead. That hurts a little.

  Water. I like putting my head right under to drink. The bottom of my pool has a recipe for Lemon Pie.

  There is always a moment on the rim when all my legs are in the air and I’m balanced on my plastron. I like to pretend I’m coming in for a landing. Then I drop my front feet and pull myself forward. Splash.

  The water is 65 degrees and rising.

  Once, pre-castle, pre–heat lamp, Cliff assumed I was dead. I heard him calling out to her. It was only 60 degrees in the kitchen. What were they thinking.

  He said, There’s something wrong with Iris. I think
she’s dead.

  I felt him lift me and carry me to the futon. I could hear her floppety feet following. Then I was on the warm expanse of Cliff’s chest. I recognized his fast heart with the whoosh in it.

  I heard her say, Rule Number One.

  I looked out.

  They were both very close. Her blue eyes. His grey ones. Their eyelids blinking down. I blinked up. You two look pretty happy, I said. Buy me a heat lamp.

  She turned her face into his neck and closed her eyes. He closed his. Their hands linked over my shell. This was a good moment. I was warm. I felt my heart gear up for a tremendous beat.

  But increasingly there were bad moments. Such as when he banged his head on the overhang and sat dazed on the futon. And she would look out the window and say, How can we be on the fourth floor and the trees are just getting started.

  Well, this is Oregon, Cliff said.

  Where I’m from the trees don’t exaggerate, she said.

  I know but this is Oregon, he said.

  You already said that. What is a concussion, because I think you have one. Possibly.

  It was Cliff’s country and Cliff’s state and it didn’t feel exaggerated to him. He liked to enumerate Oregon’s amenities. He was always enumerating. Mountains, desert, ocean, rivers, plus the giant trees.

  Good. Yes.

  She got a job mowing grass under a table. She sometimes said to Cliff, I have to love you under the table. And he would climb the walls and say, You drive me up the walls. All this I watched through the roof of my Panasonic printer box, because this was, as I say, pre-castle.

  Cliff had ropes hanging off his shoulders. He liked to rappel off the fire escape. He was always rappelling. Then one day he was gone.

  Before he left they made arrangements for me. She held me close to her face and promised me a castle.

  The castle was built of newspaper and made to stand tall and stately. She gave it a French name: Papier Mâché. She painted it purple. The Lemon Pie dish was filled with water and some of her tears too. The heat lamp arrived. Every day was for me bright and lemony. I was warm.

  She said, You’re going to be Winnifred, okay.

  Okay.

  We waited for Cliff to come back. We expected at any moment to see his hands on the fire escape. Followed by his head. Followed by his torso. Followed by his harness. To nutshellize, we waited. But he did not come back.

  He became the previous tenant.

  I became more and more fond of her. I learned that when the sun glinted off the stove she would soon be home. I waited with my head out the window. When it got colder, she came home earlier, still when the sun struck the stove, but now it hit the metal handle. She smelled less like cut grass and more like diesel and then fire. She ate cereal. Sometimes she brought home Taco Bell and fed me the shredded lettuce.

  She decided the heat lamp was dangerous. The turrets of my castle had singe marks.

  My heart rate got slower. The sun got lower. Winter came on. I memorized the recipe for Lemon Pie and dreamt it was a recipe for me. I had to plan trips to the pool days in advance because they took so long. I had to plan footsteps around heartbeats.

  Then came the phone call. I didn’t really think she’d go. Home. But it did get me thinking about where exactly mine is. Is it this shell or is it this castle or is it the old flat or is it somewhere bigger or smaller. Is it the place I call the Ebb.

  The last leg of my transcontinental leap: Air Canada flight 696. The latest flight you can take to St. John’s. No guns. No napping. Much laughter. My neighbour, even as the plane was taking off, held her catalogue in front of my face and showed me a digital belt buckle that could be programmed to scroll messages like HI MY NAME IS AARON or HAPPY BIRTHDAY. She wiped tears from her eyes. Sweet Jesus, imagine wearing that.

  Imagine. I discreetly appropriated her armrest.

  Frequent guffaws from the rear. I looked over my shoulder. There was a party going on. Chips, not purchased on board, were being consumed in large quantities.

  The sound of Newfoundlanders on a plane: If sarcasm were generous, that is the sound.

  When M. Latourelle, the flight attendant, came by with the snack cart, the man in 23D offered him, M. Latourelle, some chips and a beverage. Talk about funny. And nice.

  M. Latourelle did not find the offer funny. Or nice.

  He asked me three times, hand on shoulder, to please keep my pieds magnifiques out of the aisle.

  What do you mean by magnifiques.

  Catalogue Woman offered me her window seat.

  I would not say no to a window seat.

  M. Latourelle put on a newscast and told us—especially those of us in rows 21 and higher—to please settle down.

  I tilted back my window seat.

  When you’re flying, the newscast is always cheery. Notice that. There are no plane crashes. If you could just keep flying forever, there’d be no plane crashes.

  Tonight’s broadcast is all about the merry-Christmas election coming up. And oh. The hostage-taking. Yes, it is still going on, but the hostages, the Canadian ones, are being fed candy.

  What kind of candy, I wondered.

  Probably Turkish delight, said Catalogue Woman.

  Oh. Nice.

  The non-Canadian hostages were not getting candy.

  I am on the late flight due to prolonged questioning in Toronto where, immediately upon landing, I was escorted by two Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA) guards to a room in Terminal 1 that you never want to visit. It is American with its own flag. I knew when I saw the flag that I would miss my connection.

  The room was oval with an oval table and a window looking out onto a hallway. Tweed was already there, mysteriously sans pendant, leaning against the window. Also present were the two pilots and Tuesday Miller, long throat intact.

  Enter the airport chief of security and various men with INS badges, all packing pieces and not bothering to conceal that fact.

  Sit, said the chief.

  We sat.

  Keith Gordon and the other pilot sat together. I pretended to drop my passport so I could see if they were holding hands under the table.

  They were.

  I was asked about a lot more than my theft of Mr. Tweed’s piece. I was asked: How long had I been in America. Why. With whom. Where did I live. Where did I visit. Where did I come from prior. Did I work.

  I painted a careful picture of an extended love affair with America during which I spent freely but did not seek employment.

  Then I steered the conversation back to Tweed, who was staring moodily into the hallway like it had a horizon and he was about to ride into it. I related how I was immediately suspicious of his failure to turn the page of a page-turner. How his pendant gestured towards his weapon. How absurdly quickly he fell for my here-comes-the-pilot trick. How he pounded the door and destroyed the web of goodwill on board flight 880. How he yelled. How it was unnecessary to yell, as is evidenced by the ease with which I could hear the soft-spoken Keith Gordon and Tuesday Miller when they spoke directly into the OCCUPIED sign.

  At what point did I stop believing Caesar Marshall was a terrorist.

  Not until I spoke with co-pilot Gordon.

  You really thought Air Marshal Marshall had hijacked the plane.

  I thought he was planning to. Frankly I could think of no reason besides an evil one for carrying a gun.

  Silence.

  On a plane, I added. And his violent reaction to being disarmed by me did nothing to persuade me otherwise, let me tell you.

  Disarmed by you, repeated the chief of security.

  We all looked at the air marshal. Christ he was a big man.

  I am very disarming.

  You are very something, said the chief, and he wrote that something down.

  Look. I did what I was supposed to do, didn’t I. I was vigilant. I thought there was danger so I acted.

  Keith Gordon put both hands on the table and said, To her credit, she did exit the bathroom and return t
he weapon immediately upon my assurance that we were not being hijacked.

  Why did you believe co-pilot Gordon and not Ms. Miller or Air Marshal Marshall.

  Because co-pilot Gordon was persuasive.

  In what way was he persuasive.

  I hesitated. He knew my name.

  Ms. Miller also knew your name.

  If she did, she never said it. Also, co-pilot Gordon knew where St. John’s was. Is.

  How does that make him persuasive. Okay, it makes him rare.

  Rare how. I’m sure Ms. Miller knows where St. John’s is. As does Air Marshal Marshall.

  Antigua, Tuesday piped up.

  I think we’re done here, said Keith Gordon. Aren’t we done here.

  But the chief and his henchmen were not done with me. I must be delayed and put on the latest flight possible to St. John’s. How to achieve this. They discussed it quietly in the corner. Finally one of the INS officers turned around and said, Relinquish your phone and any other electronic device you might be carrying.

  Oh, well that’s easy. I only have a phone. But I need that phone because I have a tortoise and a father both in comas.

  I waited, but nobody said, What a terrible coincidence. How did that happen.

  They said, Hand it over.

  I handed it over.

  Then two INS guys with surgical gloves searched my carrion bag right there on the oval table. Humiliating.

  Why are you on the outs with me, INS men.

  No answer.

  Time marched on.

  The chief disappeared and returned waving a boarding pass. Flight 696 for you, Ms. Flowers.

  Flight 696. The one that gets in at 3:35 in the ante meridiem!

  That’s the one, he said. Then he gave me a voucher for the Skyway Bar and said to please, have a drink on him. And with that I was released into Terminal 1 on my own recognizance. Sans phone.

  Terminal 1 had been refurbished. Boy had it. The ceiling was unlimited and everywhere Céline Dion was faintly singing “O Tannenbaum.” Also there were moving pedways, which I would be riding momentarily.

  I dragged my carrion bag with a bit of nightgown hanging out towards a pay phone. I made two calls, one to Uncle Thoby, who wasn’t home, and one to Linda, who was. She confirmed that a living, breathing tortoise was right now basking in the warmth of an 80-plus-degree apartment.