Come, Thou Tortoise Page 6

  Which Linda found for some reason very amusing. Would you like to donate some blood, Mr. Stanch.

  Shut up. You’re going to be Mrs. Stanch soon.

  Over my dead body.

  Later he threw his book on the floor and said there was an Antonio in every play and it was always him.

  Linda said, Well, some of us are bricks.

  What the hell does that mean.

  It means we can’t all be the entire edifice.

  To which he replied, Fuck that.

  Chuck wants to be Prospero, not his brother. He wants to be lord of everything and then fall on his own sword. Or staff. Or whatever. He is sick of bit parts, he said. They make him want to fight.

  On the floor, Lowering the Bard was slowly closing of its own accord.

  Chuck is what is called a pugilist.

  As Linda explained it once to Audrey: You know those actors who put on Shakespeare in the Park. Yes. Well, Chuck is not one of those actors. Chuck finds one of those parks and stages his own production with his own actors. So on any given night there might be two Shakespeares happening in the same park. Often the two casts fight each other. These fights bring in a whole other audience. Which is where the real money can be made.

  It is a dangerous business. Last summer Chuck broke a rib. If you look closely at his torso, you can see the dent.

  It is not that they are unlovable, Linda and Chuck. Well yes, it is that they are unlovable.

  I have switched allegiances many times—many many times—but it is never easy, and I always think, This time I won’t be able to do it.

  For instance, the Panasonic salesman. He was the tenant prior to Audrey and Cliff. How I loved the Panasonic salesman. He was not often home, but I lived for the moments when he was. He would come through the door, tie askew, and say, Phew, what a week. He had a region to tend to. It was a big region. I lived in a Panasonic printer box, sans heat lamp. I slept a lot.

  He called me Iris after the Panasonic Iris Reader, one of the new biometric security devices in his sales portfolio. Actually tortoises don’t have irises. We have nictitating membranes. But nevermind. The Panasonic Iris Reader, as he explained it to me (or rather rehearsed it to the bathroom mirror), verified the identity of (hopefully) authorized persons before admitting them to, say, a Highly Infectious Disease Research Area, by scanning their eyes. Each iris has a unique pattern, he said. An iris is more unique than a fingerprint. Can something be “more unique,” I queried. I hope you don’t say “more unique” when you’re giving your sales pitch, Mitt. Which was his name. In any case, he became a very successful salesman. So successful that his own irises got pale from so many successful PIR demonstrations.

  Then one day out of the blue he said he was being transferred to Dubai, where they have more money than you can shake a stick at and bright, beautiful irises just waiting to be leached of their colour. Dubai, I said. Wow! I’ll pack my bags.

  Um, said Mitt.

  I looked up.

  Bringing a tortoise to the United Arab Emirates, Mitt said. That would not be happening.

  Oh.

  The new tenants need you, Mitt said.

  Oh.

  And so they did. But I didn’t love them, not at first. And then slowly I loved Cliff. And then I loved her too. They spent a lot of time reminiscing about the country where they had met and been happy. This other country had a lake, a tram, mountains called the Yelps, and high ceilings. They liked to remember the tram and how Cliff never bought tickets and mostly got away with it.

  They had slept together secretly in the house of a woman who did not find Cliff very sympa. This did not matter. They were on the brink of togetherness. Which is apparently better than togetherness. The bedroom had high ceilings with wood beams and a skylight. Cliff stood on a chair to carve their names into a beam. He never banged his head.

  They went into the mountains and engaged in extreme sports. This was the clincher. When they came down from the mountains they were sore and in love. They had to make a decision. Would they live in his country or her country or the country with the Yelps. They chose his country. Which in retrospect was maybe not the best decision. In any case, they came to this country and this state and the flat where I was waiting in the Panasonic printer box. Cliff picked me up. He passed me to Audrey. Look, he said. A tortoise. I would not say no to a tortoise, she said, and not for the last time either.

  After Cliff left she started climbing the walls, going round and round in sad circles, circumnavigating, as she called it, the flat that did not have Cliff in it anymore. Watching her was enough to penetrate any tortoise’s plastron. Especially when she fell and crashed. Not that she had far to fall, but still.

  She had strong arms from mowing grass under a table, but strong arms are not what you need to be a good rock climber. Strong legs are what you need.

  Big hands are an asset. Big feet are not.

  Later we travelled together and I started riding the dashboard. That was the clincher.

  She is not the previous tenant. She is the tenant.

  But I do wonder, how long before she meets a Canadian tortoise she cannot say no to. And builds that tortoise a new fireproof castle with a state-of-the-art heat lamp. But oh. Wait. The Canadian tortoise will not require a heat lamp because Canadian tortoises embrace the cold. Oh yes, I can see it now. The new castle flies a Canadian flag from an unsinged turret. Audrey and the new tortoise frolic in the snow. Make snow angels. Yes, the new tortoise is more dog than tortoise.

  Uncle Thoby has been gone for three hours. He went off in a Clint’s cab in the middle of the Weather Bomb to meet Toff at the airport. Amazingly the flight was on schedule. Glad I’m not on that flight, I said. Glad Toff is.

  Why did Uncle Thoby have to risk his own life in a Weather Bomb, I wanted to know. Couldn’t Toff find his own way to his hotel.

  Uncle Thoby pulled on his bright orange gloves and looked tired.

  Sorry, I said.

  Here is a lesson I never seem to learn: Whenever you say something unkind about anybody, it is as if you have said something unkind to Uncle Thoby personally.

  I followed him onto the porch. The wind flapped our hair. Toff has to be told, he said. In person.

  Told what. Oh. That the comma is over.

  Poor Uncle Thoby. A repeat performance of last night. Toff’s slow and final descent via the escalator. Walter is dead. Period. Would Toff wobble. Or would he simply open his briefcase and say, That’s what I thought.

  I’m taking a Clint’s cab. There’s no risk to my life.

  You don’t want me to come with you.

  Do you want to come.

  Um. No.

  He kissed my forehead. A black cab pulled up. It wasn’t Clint, but it was someone with a moustache who looked a lot like him.

  Be Qantas, I said.

  Back inside I felt like: What if this is the future.

  And I realized I could smell the house. You can only smell your own house if you have been subtracted from the smell. Or if someone else has been subtracted. Or if you have not taken out the garbage. We used to have a family smell that I could not smell.

  I decided to do something useful. I would grease Wedge’s wheel. A little WD-40 would be just the thing. He was asleep in a corner of the terrarium. Soon he would be up and running, and what a surprise to find his wheel all greased and soundless!

  I took the wheel to the kitchen table. I was not prepared for the force of the spray. Shit. WD-40 all over the place. All over the metal treads of the wheel too. So now Wedge would have a toxin on his hands and feet, and when he bit his nails he’d be poisoned. Jesus Christ. My dad used to take care of this. How did he do it.

  What you should have done is sprayed a piece of paper towel, then greased the axle of the wheel only.

  Yes, well, I’m none too swift.

  Clean it up.

  In a while. Suddenly I felt like crying. I put my elbow on the table and it slid out from under me.

  The range ho
od sang its ominous B-flat. Outside there was no pond. The Weather Bomb had erased it. Was it a Weather Bomb when he walked home that night. Don’t picture it. But I do. And I realize there are many more pictures to come and each one will hurt more than the last. It’s a Weather Bomb and he’s leaving the Before Building and he says bonsoir to Verlaine, who offers to drive him, but he declines because he has this policy of never taking the weather personally. And there are no sidewalks. But off he goes. And the last word he said was probably bonsoir.

  Uncle Thoby said Verlaine had come to the hospital and was not in good shape. I can’t picture Verlaine not in good shape. I’m glad I can’t picture it.

  The last time I talked to my dad, I had an agenda written out. I like to write out agendas before important phone calls. They keep me on track. And this was an important phone call because I had just received my old student file from GOLEM (God of Light and Eternal Mercy) and I had good news. Or I thought I had good news.

  It was the kind of file that you, the subject of the file, were never supposed to see. Other people (teachers, employers, friends, neighbours) might petition the school to see your file. But not you. You were supposed to be protected forever from its contents. Probably the accident of my receiving such a file had something to do with the collapse of the Catholic school system and the soon-to-be-demolished building that was GOLEM.

  On my agenda I had the following items:

  1. Growth of grass in Oregon, astounding rate of.

  2. Smoke detector vs. fire alarm, differences between.

  3. Mercury in canned tuna, dangers of.

  4. French submersion, value of.

  5. My IQ!

  We moved through the first four items pretty quickly. (No more tuna for you, Win.) Then I broke the news. That manila envelope my dad had forwarded. Yes. Well get ready. Because inside were the results of those tests all the Frenchly submerged students had had to take, to make sure we could all still speak English and recognize basic geometric shapes, and guess what.

  What.

  Guess what my IQ is!

  Pause. What.

  I told them the number.

  No response.

  I should mention that Uncle Thoby was also on the line.

  Isn’t that great, I said. I mean, wow.

  It’s bollocks is what it is, said my dad after a moment.

  Why. Why is it bollocks. You don’t think I’m that smart.

  We think you’re off-the-scale smart, said Uncle Thoby energetically.

  So—

  Listen to me, Audrey. You know what those tests measure. They measure how similar your brain is to the brain that made up the test.

  Yeah, I said. So. And then it dawned on me. Slowly. That what I had assumed was a high score was not a high score. It just sounded like a high score. It sounded like a not-bad grade, the kind of grade I never got in school.

  Oh. It’s low, isn’t it.

  IQ is not even a real acronym, Uncle Thoby was saying. GOLEM is a real acronym. SCUBA is a real acronym. You can’t even pronounce IQ. Don’t take it personally.

  You can too pronounce it, I said. You can pronounce it Ick.

  Okay. True.

  I had always been good at acronyms. Acronyms were for smart people with secrets.

  My dad said, What in Christ was GOLEM thinking. How enlightened. How merciful.

  I have to go now, I said.

  Audrey.

  You knew, I said. You knew my Ick was low and you didn’t tell me.

  Oddly—

  This is why I hate the phone, my dad said. I can’t see her face.

  Why couldn’t we have just bantered as per usual, Uncle Thoby complaining that the dramatis personae of Portland was very confusing—who is Chuck again—and my dad saying, Dramatis personae, do we have one of those, and Uncle Thoby saying, Of course, but we are easier to remember. And me saying, Ha ha.

  I hung up the phone and said, Low IQ. Ce n’est pas possible.

  Winnifred dropped a piece of lettuce.

  It’s not possible, I translated.

  The problem was, it felt a little bit possible.

  From across the room, Uncle Thoby says, Are you there. The phone is ringing. Do you feel like answering. Are you there. No pressure to answer.

  Except Uncle Thoby is not in the room.

  I drop Wedge’s wheel.

  My first thought is: Uncle Thoby is dead, and that is his ghost. Or ghosts, plural. Because I can also hear his voice coming from upstairs.

  Are you there. The phone is ringing.

  And then I remember. It’s the new phone. The Hear Ye 3000. Which I had yet to hear “ring.” So this is the ring.

  The Hear Ye 3000 was a gift from Uncle Thoby to my dad on their last birthday. I remember my dad telling me about it. He said finally a phone that did not torture him. He had always likened the sound of a ringing phone to being stabbed.

  When have you been stabbed, Dad.

  He said okay, he had a sinking feeling every time he heard a phone ring.

  So Uncle Thoby had bought a phone that played a Bach fugue. My dad said the “fugue” was just three notes repeating and was clearly a ring. Next Uncle Thoby bought a phone with a purr setting. The purr, my dad said, was just a ring on low volume. A dagger as opposed to a butcher knife.

  But now, behold the Hear Ye 3000! Wherein you can record your own summons. Now you can be coaxed to the phone by the voice of someone near and dear to your heart.

  The Hear Ye’s keypad glows gold. I lick the grease off my fingers. Pick up.

  Hello.

  One disconcerting effect of the Hear Ye 3000 is that you expect the caller to be the person whose voice summoned you. It is not the same voice.

  Can I speak to Walter Flowers.

  No.

  Silence at the other end while the caller awaits an explanation. There is no explanation, caller.

  He coughs. Well, I represent Christmatech. We’re recalling our D-434 model Christmas lights. We’ve sent you several notices in the mail.

  Recalling. As in withdrawing from circulation. Or as in fondly remembering.

  Long pause. As in withdrawing. We’d very much like to exchange those lights for the D-534 model. And give you a ten-dollar coupon.

  I’m sure you would. But you’ll excuse me now because I think I just ingested poison.

  Oh. Of course. By all means. Do—

  I hang up. Spit in the sink. Wipe my mouth on my sleeve. Jesus Christ I can’t believe I just licked WD-40 off my fingers. Now would be the time to throw up. If I could.

  Outside the LeBaron is dwarfish under a mushroom cap of snow. The air is deep dark blue. The snow sparkles. Why does snow sparkle. Because snowflakes are prisms.

  The Weather Bomb has detonated. It’s all over. Uncle Thoby is still not home. True, the roads are deep. But he has been gone too long. What if Toff has done something to him.

  Like what.

  Kidnapped him. Disappeared him.

  Don’t be ridiculous.

  I decide to do something useful. I will shovel the driveway. I head out to the shed for my old Flower Shovel. The Flower Shovel has an imprint of a flower on the bottom so you can make floral patterns in the snow. Really it works best if you whack the snow rather than shovel it.

  I had the idea for the Flower Shovel after noticing the vertical stripes left in the snow by run-of-the-mill shovels. Why not decorate your snow while you shovelled it. Say, with a flower! Uncle Thoby said I was a genius. So he had the Flower Shovel custom-made for me at Murph’s Turf, Lock, and Key. Uncle Thoby said I should patent the idea. I didn’t know what patent meant. It means you own the idea, he said. I already own the idea, I said. But not in the eyes of the world, he said. Oh, in the eyes of the world.

  He said Murph’s eyes had sparkled entrepreneurially when he’d handed Uncle Thoby the Flower Shovel.

  Sparkle entrepreneurially, said my dad. Do my eyes do that.

  Of course they do.

  I think Uncle Thoby might ev
en have ordered the patent forms for me. Possibly the shovel is already patented in my name. It wouldn’t surprise me. For someone so law-abiding, Uncle Thoby is weirdly lax about signing other people’s signatures. Anyway, I must remember to ask him if he did patent it. Because that would make me an inventor.

  At the time, we thought up other shovel designs. Uncle Thoby said snowflakes would be popular. Hearts for Valentine’s Day. You could also have words, I said. They’d have to be spelled backwards on the shovel so they’d come out right on the snow. Like MERRY CHRISTMAS or BURIED ALIVE.

  My dad said porn would be a big seller.

  Walter.

  I’m just saying.

  You want your daughter to patent porn shovels.

  It would be lucrative.

  That’s naked people, right.

  Of course my shovel had to have a flower because Flowers are what we are.

  I have been out here all of fifteen minutes, fluffing up snow with the Flower Shovel™, when Byrne Doyle and Jim Ryan converge, Byrne from number 11 across the street, Jim from next door. They are both brandishing shovels as tall as they are.

  They are sorry. God, they are both so sorry. Byrne Doyle hugs me. How you holding up. Good to see you.

  Byrne looks more like Jacob Marley than ever. He’s wearing a long wool coat and a button on the lapel that says VOTE FOR BYRNE DOYLE. The button is a bit rusty, like it might be from a past election and he never bothered to take it off. The lines around his mouth have deepened.

  Jim Ryan indicates the Flower Shovel™ and says, Fisher-Price make that shovel.

  Of course not. Murph made it.

  Oh. Apologies.

  I remember that shovel, says Byrne fondly.

  I hoist it in the air. I’ve whacked some pretty patterns in my day.

  So, Byrne says. Some WMD, what.

  What.

  Weather of Mass Destruction. I’d heard Weather Bomb.