Come, Thou Tortoise

by Jessica Grant

  So she’s really okay, I said. Really. You swear.

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

  There. You see how important Rule Number One is.

  I hung up, elated, and jumped aboard a moving pedway.

  At the Skyway Bar I ordered coffee and remained vigilant. There were three ground crew workers on break. They wore bright orange vests and ignored their walkie-talkies. You can’t help but admire people who ignore their walkie-talkies. Plus, one of the vests said LEAD. I asked who or what he was leading. He explained that he was a lead marshal and it was his job to lock eyes with the pilot out on the tarmac and wave him in with a come-hither look.

  That’s you, I said. With the pink light sabres and the come-hither look!

  Yup.

  The other two men were in charge of de-icing aircraft. We are known around dese here parts as De-Ice Men, they said.

  Which made me laugh. I turned to the lead marshal. And is your last name conveniently Marshall.

  No.

  I nodded. We drank our coffees. Then, just to make conversation, I asked who was in charge of fuelling the planes.

  They looked at each other, like, good question.

  Independent company, said one of De-Ice Men.

  Oh. And I guess that company is subject to some pretty rigorous background security checks. I mean, I would hope so.

  Couldn’t say.

  Couldn’t or wouldn’t.

  The lead marshal tipped back his coffee cup. Well, break’s over.

  Lead on, Macduff, said one of De-Ice Men.

  So soon, I said.

  Yes. But it was lovely meeting you.

  Same.

  And off they went to marshal a plane into gate 137 and spray pink foam on its wings.

  There is so much in Terminal 1 to distract you from the word terminal. For instance, the store filled with chunks of exposed soap that smell so much like candy that you have to immediately run across the “street” to the fudge store and purchase yourself a big chunk of fudge.

  As I was consuming said chunk of fudge on the moving pedway, I was approached by a fast-walking man in a blue suit and a GTAA badge that I could have made myself on my printer. I moved aside to let him pass, but he paused and leaned against the rubber rail. He said for what purpose had I been questioning three ground crew workers in the Skyway Bar. Excuse me, I said. Why had I wanted to know about the fuelling of planes, etcetera. Will my ordeal never end, I said. Pardon. Nothing. He asked why I had subsequently gone to gate 137 and waved at those workers from the window. What information had been transmitted.

  None at all. It was a hi-how-are-ya wave.

  We stepped together off the pedway and he put a hand on my elbow. Oh boy. Noli me tangere, I said.

  What.

  Give me a wide berth, friend. Or else.

  Are you threatening me.

  Remove your hand from my elbow. Yes I am.

  Come with me, please.

  I was pretty sure my three friends had not reported me, since they had been so congenial and forthcoming. Either the Skyway Bar was bugged, or one of the walkie-talkies had transmitted our conversation up the food chain.

  Once again I was remanded into custody. The GTAA man escorted me through a door that otherwise blends completely into the north-facing wall across from gate 122. We descended some stairs. We descended some more stairs. You think the ceiling in Terminal 1 is unlimited. Try the basement. We walked for a long time through a maze of subterranean hallways. He was not touching me, lucky for him. Then we entered a room. This room did not have a flag.

  The airport chief of security arrived soon after.

  He flapped his arms and said, Again, Ms. Flowers.

  Chief Dweck, how have you been.

  He slipped another voucher into my palm and urged me to go, please, have a drink on him.

  Merci.

  Whereupon I returned to the Skyway Bar and ordered more coffee and observed that many of the children in the airport had wheels embedded in their sneakers.

  Flight 696 is dark. The lights go out after midnight Toronto time. This is to encourage napping and quell boisterousness. Good luck. Someone calls down the aisle: Mister Lateral, could we have some beverage-cart action back here in the 21-and-highers.

  M. Latourelle, over the intercom: Non.

  Where’s that little guy hiding.

  Soon we are beginning our final descent into St. John’s International Airport. Why do they always say final. The temperature is just above zero, says the pilot. Weather is moist. Local time is—

  The plane banks steeply to the right.

  —3:25 a.m.

  Catalogue Woman pats my leg. Just the pilot checking his watch. Neveryoumind.

  I look out the window. I can see ocean. I can see city. Is the landing gear down because I haven’t heard any landing gear.

  Don’t you worry about landing gear. Catalogue Woman licks her thumb and turns a page. You want that, she says, pointing at a sumo wrestler garden ornament.

  No. I look back out the window. Hey. I can see Wednesday Pond shaped like a skillet with a broken moon in it. And I can see the Piety pie factory with its sign glowing pink.

  Is this the usual flight path. Because the last time I saw Wednesday Pond from the air—

  Don’t you worry about the flight path, says Catalogue Woman.

  I press my forehead to the glass. I push the button on my armrest. You’re already as upright as you can go. Fine.

  We swing back out over the ocean and someone from the 21-and-highers says, Dropping fuel.

  Catalogue Woman winks at me. Don’t you listen to that. You’re as good as home.

  Uncle Thoby meets the plane wearing his bright orange gloves. I see those first. The airport has changed. It has learned what other airports look like. Who told it. The escalator takes forever. The old airport used to have low ceilings and heat.

  We have time to look at each other, Uncle Thoby and me, as I make my slow and final descent into St. John’s International Airport. His hands glow like a lead marshal’s. His face makes me sit down. As a rule I am vigilant on escalators. I remain upright with nothing dangling. But I read Uncle Thoby’s face and get wobbly.

  Someone behind me puts their hands under my arms. Upsy-daisy my darlin.

  Oh no.

  Uncle Thoby is stepping up the sinking stairs. Oddly. I am hugged into his noisy coat.

  You said it was a comma.

  I know, but it’s over.

  Period.

  This is the wrong airport. The old airport had no escalators and we were all alive in it. It had a red brickish floor that made your luggage chatter. We used to arrive early and have a bite to eat at the Bite-to-Eatery. The Bite-to-Eatery was dark and had no windows. There were woodcuts on the wall but you could barely see them. You had to stand up on your seat. One woodcut was of a fisherman in agony. He looked like Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back when he gets frozen by Darth Vader.

  Outside the Bite-to-Eatery there was a rectangle of ocean. The lobsters inside the rectangle had claws like pigtails with elastics. They were harmless. You could put your hand in the rectangle and touch the pigtails. You could touch the bottom of the ocean and then fly into the sky all on the same day.

  Or, if someone else was departing, not you, you could run outside to the chain-link fence and wave goodbye. If the departing party had a window seat, they could see you at the fence and wave something bright and cheery like the aircraft safety card or the sick bag. They could wave something bright as the plane took off. So you knew which window was theirs.

  The day I left, I waved the sick bag from seat 21F. Uncle Thoby made a giant arc with his left arm like a windshield wiper. My dad waved smaller, with his fingers. They were all for it, this great safe adventure I was embarking on, so why did they look so sad.

  I watched them from the sky. Long after they thought I was gone, I was still watching. I saw them drift back across the parking lot. I saw my dad sit
down on the pavement. Because this is what he does when something bad happens. Because he is wobbly like me.

  Uncle Thoby has been waiting at the airport since three o’clock. Ante meridiem.

  No.

  You’ve been here for twelve hours.

  Don’t picture him. Standing at the bottom of the escalator. Unshaven. Alone. I hold on to his coat.

  It’s okay, he says.

  He picks up my bag and we head for the exit.

  The revolving door is new. Don’t push it. It revolves by itself. If you touch it, it will stop. It is like one of those dessert displays. You are the dessert. At the centre, encased in glass, is a small artificial Christmas tree.

  Uncle Thoby steps in. Looks over his shoulder. Coming.

  Yeah.

  He is outside now, waiting.

  I rush into the door’s open mouth. I guess I touch the glass, because the whole mechanism grinds to a halt. I am stuck inside a revolving door that has stopped revolving. With a fake Tannenbaum. Do not look at the Tannenbaum. I press the glass. Uncle Thoby lifts an orange glove. I look past him to the taxi queue. Past the taxi queue to the parking lot. Past the parking lot to the small black trees, just about my size, overlapping. Maybe this is Antigua. I have arrived in St. John’s, Antigua. My dad is still in a comma in the other St. John’s. The real St. John’s.

  Except that, on the other side of the glass, Uncle Thoby is definitely himself. Asymmetrical. Pirate patch of hair.

  The door starts to move. Spits me out. Uncle Thoby hugs me like I’ve been in there for years.

  We walk past the taxi queue. A Clint’s cab pulls up. I check to see if it’s Clint driving. It’s not. Uncle Thoby says Clint is running in the election.

  Oh right. There’s an election.

  As we pass the line, I recognize M. Latourelle, the flight attendant. He feels like an old friend.

  Bonsoir, mademoi—

  Then he notices Uncle Thoby’s arm.

  Now is probably a good time to mention that Uncle Thoby’s left arm is very long. Like a whole foot longer than his right. The orange gloves don’t exactly downplay this discrepancy. He usually puts on a show that whatever he’s carrying is really heavy. But tonight he forgets to put on the show. So as we walk by the taxi queue I point at my bag and say, One hundred pounds. Then make a gesture like wiping sweat from my brow.

  Nobody laughs. Usually people laugh.

  At the front of the line there’s a couple with a stroller. They’ve got a rear-view mirror rigged up so the baby can see them, and they can see the baby, at all times. What a great idea. I crouch down. I predict this baby will be an excellent driver, I say.

  We hope so, says the dad.

  Crouched there, I have an escalator moment. This is when the body remembers having been recently on an escalator. You could also call it a sinking feeling. I put my fingertips on the wet pavement. Steady.

  The short-term parking lot is full of winter topography. I am no longer used to winter topography. Uncle Thoby says to watch my step. I breathe deep. It smells like home. It smells like Atlantic Ocean with jet fuel mixed in.

  Why didn’t you take a cab, I ask. Or let me take a cab.

  Because it’s an emergency.

  Oh.

  The topography is melting. It rained yesterday, he says.

  Weird to think that the raindrops on the car landed before I did.

  He asks if I will drive.

  Of course I will drive.

  How can there be only two of us. I keep looking over my shoulder.

  Uncle Thoby has this rule that he will not chauffeur someone he loves. Ever since he came to live with us, this has been his Rule Number One. He said he was bound to someday forget which side of the ocean he was on, and when that happened the child (me) would not be in the car. He would only drive himself, he said. In an emergency. Okay, he might, in the most emergent of emergencies, drive an adult he did not love. But both of these (emergencies and adults he did not love) were few and far between. So he did not drive.

  My dad, who could always remember which side of the ocean he was on, drove. And later I drove. And of course there was Clint.

  Clint’s is the Qantas of cabs, Uncle Thoby liked to say. Because of that airline’s impeccable safety record.

  Uncle Thoby once witnessed Clint avoid a head-on collision with a hydroplaning minivan by driving his cab lickety-split up a concrete staircase. The driver of the minivan had applied her anti-lock brakes, which, according to Clint, just let you aim at what you are already crashing into. You might as well have death built into your braking system, Clint said.

  Uncle Thoby, who was in the cab at the time, nearly choked on his free mint. Later he said he had never seen such vehicular prowess.

  Vehicular prowess, said my dad. Do I have that.

  Of course, said Uncle Thoby, patting his shoulder. But Clint has a superabundance of vehicular prowess.

  A Clint’s cab will not crash. Has never crashed. In more than three decades, not one cab in Clint’s entire fleet has been involved in an accident. Sorry, collision. Which is pretty remarkable when you consider that Clint’s fleet consists of sixty-five cars.

  Clint’s cabs are bright black and say CLINT WON’T COST YOU A MINT on the sides. All the cabbies are trained at a secret boot camp in our twin city, Mount Paler. Which boot camp I attended, even though I had no immediate plans to become a Clint’s cabbie. Special allowances were made because I was Uncle Thoby’s niece, and Uncle Thoby was Clint’s most loyal customer.

  Here is the secret of the boot camp. It has an ice rink. I learned to drive on an ice rink. At Clint’s boot camp I learned to write my name with my tires. I also learned to palpitate my brakes, which is not the same as pumping them, not the same at all, but I can’t explain brake palpitation to you, it is something you must feel and coordinate with your own heart.

  Don’t brake, Clint always said. Palpitate. Which is one of those phrases you find yourself saying in all sorts of slippery situations, not necessarily automotive.

  None of this is to disparage Young Drivers of Canada. Which I also attended. My dad thought I should attend YDOC since I was both young and of Canada. Uncle Thoby thought I should attend the boot camp. So I did both.

  Herein lies the formula of my childhood: My dad plus Uncle Thoby equals Qantas. Which in our family means safe. Be Qantas. Be safe.

  What I learned at YDOC was to never say accident. Say collision. Look in your rear-view mirror every ten seconds. Filter out Ambient Vehicle Distraction (AVD). Assume every other driver on the road is drunk, or putting on makeup, or both. Give everyone a wide berth. Make Noli me tangere your motto.

  The parking lot attendant can’t get his sliding glass window open. So we wait, the car idling, while he struggles. The bright light in the booth and the man trapped inside make me sad. I look away.

  Uncle Thoby puts a toonie in my palm.

  Oh, I had forgotten toonies. They are so lovely. I turn it over and over. Will they ever make a three-toned coin. Or a four-toned. I eagerly await more complex concentricity in our Canadian coinage.

  Uncle Thoby says, That poor man.

  He’s like a bug in there, I say. Don’t look at him.

  Uncle Thoby’s legs in their brown cords are shaking.

  I have another escalator moment.

  Uncle Thoby presses his hands down over his knees to stop the shaking.

  Finally Bug Man gives up. I show him my toonie. He waves us on. Forget it, he mouths. Just go.

  So we have short-term parked for free.

  The little LeBaron’s dashboard glows a pale brown. This car is old. You can tell it is old because it is brown on the outside and brown on the inside. Most new cars have a different but complementary colour on the inside. For instance, burgundy inside grey. Grey inside black. Blue inside cream. This reminds me of how my favourite fruits also have different but complementary colours inside and outside. I’m thinking of apples, pears, plums, oranges, and lemons. Yes, even oranges and
lemons. Their exteriors are not as bright as they pretend to be.

  A Clint’s cab is black on the outside and black on the inside, but a Clint’s cab can get away with it because the dashboard is spectacular and the blackness is leathery.

  You’re driving a bit slow. Am I. Am I going the right way. Not really, says Uncle Thoby, but it’ll do. The speedometer is in kilometres. That is my problem.

  Only it isn’t.

  I shift into fourth. And I remember how, all those years ago, when my dad and I went to pick up Uncle Thoby at the airport and he wasn’t on the flight, my dad could barely shift out of third on the way home.

  This looks a lot like Mount Paler, I say.

  Only it isn’t. It’s a new subdivision.

  Oh.

  I don’t recognize this latest permutation of the Trans-Canada. It is wide and makes a wet sound. On either side there are pastel houses with their backs to the highway. They have that hunched look like, yuck, is that a highway behind us. Why yes, it is. And I am on it. And why did you get built out here on your fancy treble-clef streets if you did not intend to embrace your location.

  All the houses have tiny upstairs windows that open sideways. I imagine trying to open one of those windows, unsuccessfully.

  It would be frustrating to live in one of those houses. To see your house from the highway and know that you are only two minutes away as the crow flies, but still you must drive for twenty more minutes to get there. You must take an exit and perform a short sonata on the streets leading to it. Meanwhile, the person waiting for you in one of those upstairs windows has seen you coming but still has time to watch a sitcom before you get there.

  Holy. What happened to the blue lights.

  What.

  I jab my finger at the Christmas lights around an upstairs window. Look how big the blue is compared to the other colours.

  The road, Oddly.

  It’s so spacious, that blue. I can feel the mind that invented it.

  It is impossible, as we enter the city proper, that my dad is not here to enjoy this confluence of Election and Christmas, his two favourite things. The city is bedecked with election signs and Christmas lights, the combination of which creates much Ambient Vehicle Distraction. For instance: Up ahead there is a giant election sign for Noel Antle. Someone has changed his name to Noel Antler and given him a pair. Pretty funny.