Come, Thou Tortoise

by Jessica Grant

  Not years. A month. Maybe Verlaine can read Shirley MacLaine to you.

  I gave him a look.

  Or not. Or you can read Shirley yourself.

  I can’t read.

  Shirley you can. You can write. If you can write, you can read.

  Not true. Whenever I tried to read, I turned the pages backwards. This was from watching my dad read so much. His right page was always my left. So when I got over to the other side of a book, his side, I kept turning the left pages and got confused. Also, the other side of a book was a lonely place when my dad wasn’t on it.

  My dad said it was important to read books and not just watch movies like Star Wars. He said the reason it was important to read was so I’d get all the jokes out there in the world.

  What jokes.

  You’re only getting about twenty percent of the jokes, he said. And that is a low percentage.

  Twenty percent!

  Now my dad poked my leg and said, I have an idea. Why don’t you write a biography while I’m away. And when I get back, I’ll read it. How would that be.

  I nodded to myself. Very clever.

  Biographer is within your repertoire, he said.

  Who would I write a biography about.

  Outside, Jim Ryan was getting into his car and pulling out of his crescent.

  How about him.

  We were both quiet a moment. Then my dad laughed. He thought he was pretty funny.

  We talked some more. I asked a lot of questions. They were all dumb. Finally I asked the important one, the not dumb one: How can you go back to England when it tried to murder us the last time.

  My dad reached across the back of the sofa and pushed my bangs off my forehead. His hand was warm and dry. Nobody tried to murder us, Audrey.

  I think they really did.

  I have to help Uncle Thoby, he said. And that was that.

  The night before he left, Verlaine came for supper. She stabbed her baby potatoes and gobbled them up whole while my dad gave her the scoop on the house. He had a checklist on the table. He told her about the sump pump. He explained the Northwest Shove. Audrey knows how to do it. Then he said, Wedge’s food—

  I kicked him under the table. Which food do you like best for dessert, I amended. All we have is ice cream sandwiches, so say them.

  Them, said Verlaine.

  So I went to the freezer. Shirley MacLaine was propping open a window, arms akimbo.

  There’s nothing I can do, I told her.

  My dad was telling Verlaine about my routine. Actually Audrey doesn’t have a routine in the summer. Except bedtime at ten o’clock sharp.

  I’m writing a biography, I said, dropping dessert on the table. In the mornings. That’s my routine.

  Oh right. Audrey’s writing a biography of our neighbour, my dad said. In the mornings.

  Verlaine unwrapped her sandwich. A biography of your neighbour.

  Yup.

  How interesting.

  But he doesn’t know I’m his biographer, I said. So mum’s the word, okay.

  Verlaine buttoned her lips.

  Now it was time to hear about her routine, which I, Audray, would have to be folded into. Great. I folded the chocolate roof of my ice cream sandwich into a fan. Then I ate one fan segment at a time.

  There was the Before Building, of course. And there was a horse to be tended to.

  A horse of course, I said.

  Would I mind going out to the stable every day for a few hours to help look after the horse.

  I gave my dad a look, like, I think that sounds a bit dangerous, don’t you.

  I think that sounds fun, he said. Don’t you.

  Um.

  You’ve got ice cream here and here, he said, pointing.

  I wiped my mouth on my shoulder. What’s your horse’s name, I asked.

  Rambo.

  Whereupon my dad laughed. So I did too.

  The next day Verlaine and I waved goodbye to my dad’s plane from behind the airport’s chain-link fence. My dad had promised to wave something bright and white, like the sick bag. He would wave the sick bag.

  But promise you won’t need it.

  I won’t need it.

  I had put a secret note in his carry-on luggage that said, Dear Plane. Do not crash. I love you.

  A little car pushed the plane back from the gate because planes can’t back up by themselves, which seems to me a serious design flaw, but what do I know. The car looked too small to be able to push such a fat pigeon as that plane was. I tried to see the pilots, but the cockpit was dark. They were not waving sick bags.

  I felt sick. My dad was flying without me. I climbed the fence and Verlaine held on to my shirt. She didn’t pull but her grip said that’s far enough. I stuck my hands and toes through the fence. Held on tight. The wind was flappy.

  The plane rolled slowly down the runway on its pigeon legs. I let go with one hand and waved but nobody waved back. He’s on the other side, Verlaine said. Wait until the plane turns around.

  Pigeons can barely fly. At least the ones I know can only stay in the air for about a minute before they fall down. And then they’re out of breath for an hour.

  At the end of the runway, the plane turned around and stood for a long time, gathering its thoughts. Then it girded its loins.

  Now I could see him waving. Something white flashed in the fourteenth oval.

  Dad!

  I jumped off the fence and waved big. With both arms.

  Verlaine waved too.

  The loins girded louder. The plane rolled forward. Faster and faster it rolled on its tiny legs. And then, instead of taking off, the ground just let it go. The ground let go of the front wheel first, and then the back wheels. The plane climbed steeply and slowly. Too steep and too slow. It’s going to fall back. I covered my eyes. Then uncovered them.

  Remember in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda is training Luke to be a Jedi. He lifts Luke’s plane out of a swamp using only the Force. He points at the plane and holds it in the air.

  I pointed at my dad’s plane. Stay in the air.

  The plane’s legs folded up.

  The plane got so ridiculously small that there was no way my dad could still be inside it.

  This was the first time I’d been away from him. Ever. Verlaine took my hand. We walked back across the parking lot. I kept looking back. We got inside the Lada. We shut the doors and the wind came up through the hole in the floor.

  What if this is forever.

  Rambo’s eyes are so big that you can actually see inside them. I mean, right inside the pupil. What do you see in there. You see a dark blue world with an upside-down mountain. You remember your dad saying that the eye flips things over and the brain flips them back, and you wonder, are you intercepting this process. Are you witnessing the first flip.

  Verlaine says to go ahead and pat his neck.

  So you do. And it is love. And before long you will know that he likes his neck scratched under his mane, where it gets hot. And when he’s in his stall with his head down, he doesn’t mind if you kiss the small dent over his eye. And he likes to rest his nose on your shoulder and chew a bit of your hair. And he likes carrots. And if you pull down his lower lip you will find bits of carrot left over, in storage.

  His teeth are fat and not very frightening.

  Why did she name her horse after that sweaty, bullety Sylvester Stallone.

  Verlaine says a horse walks on his middle fingers. After I get to know Rambo a bit better I’m not surprised he’s giving me the finger. He can be grumpy.

  No, actually by middle fingers she means that a long time ago horses had paws with stubby fingers, and all the fingers except the middle one crawled back up the leg and are now buried inside, under the fur, except for one that still peeks out and is called the chestnut. So the hoof is really an old middle finger.

  The hoof when you pick it up has a triangle inside called the frog. The frog is a shock absorber so that Rambo’s toothpick legs don’t shatter
when he runs. The frog is also a second heart that pumps the blood back up those incredibly long legs.

  So he has five hearts.

  Sort of. Verlaine puts down the hoof.

  I march up to Rambo’s flippy eye and stare right in. You crazy cat. He seems to me a perfectly magical creature.

  Verlaine takes me downtown to a shop with a sideways sign that sticks out like a flag. It says THE SADDLERY.

  The Sad Larry, I pronounce.

  Downtown is a bit smooshed. It takes Verlaine five tries to park the Lada. The stores all touch shoulders and tell pretty much the same story. Food, clothes, books. Food, clothes, books. But the Sad Larry tells a different story. A bell rings hoarsely when we step inside.

  Horse stuff!

  The guy behind the counter is called Larry. He has a long black braid. The braid starts out thick and gets thinner and thinner until it is only three strands. The braid doesn’t lie straight down his back but comes over his shoulder to say hello. Verlaine says we are in the market for a hard hat.

  I discreetly bring my ponytail over my shoulder and look around.

  There is a lot of brown leather. On the floor there are tubs of bright-bristled brushes. Some of the brushes are hard. Some are soft. Some are in between. I use a soft one to fluff up my bangs. Whoa, static. There is also a tub of silver question marks. I twirl one around my finger and slide it into my back pocket.

  Sad Larry does not seem sad so much as not very excited. He disappears into a back room and returns with a box. I’m guessing, he says (glancing at my bangs), that she’s five and seven-eighths.

  If Larry is guessing how old I am, boy is he Saddlery mistaken.

  Larry fumbles with the box. Five out of ten of Larry’s fingers, count them, have purple blotches from being careless with a hammer or a car door.

  On the box there’s a picture of a girl riding a white horse over a jump. She’s wearing a black velvet hat and her brown hair makes a beaver’s tail down her back. She is looking over her shoulder at the next jump. The next jump is red and white like a sideways candy cane.

  Larry lifts a black velvet hat from the box. He passes it to Verlaine who holds it over my head like a crown.

  Lower that ponytail, Larry instructs.

  The ponytail is lowered.

  I look up. The inside of the hat is red satin and says 5⅞ in gold.

  The hat fits snugly. Verlaine adjusts the strap under my chin. Then she whacks two fingers down on the visor. It doesn’t budge.

  Merci, Larry, she says.

  I can feel my hair trapped in a wave under my new hat. I am different in this hat. I am older. I check out my reflection in the car window. Before I open the door, I look over my shoulder for oncoming pedestrians. None. Okay.

  The way I looked over my shoulder just now. Exactly like the girl on the box.

  I slide into the car. I have stolen a hoof pick. Oops.

  Verlaine asks if I’m going to keep the hat on in the car and I say yes.

  The road rushes by under the hole in the floor. The city is different now that I have a hard hat. Now that I know there is a Sad Larry downtown. Now that there is a horse in the vicinity who can be driven to. I could probably drive the Lada myself if I were wearing a hard hat.

  I turn the box around in my lap and ask Verlaine how the girl makes her hair go into a beaver’s tail.

  A hairnet, she says. Much simpler to have short hair like me.

  Verlaine’s hair sticks up like she was just electrocuted. No thanks.

  Can I have a hairnet.

  So we stop at the drugstore on the way to the stable. Who knew drugstores sold hairnets. Everything I need is everywhere I need it.

  The city is new. I have a black visor and I don’t squint into the sun. This new city does not have my dad in it. And I don’t expect to find him in it. So I don’t miss him. Which, I know, is the plan. But there is still nighttime. I still miss my dad pretty bad at night when my bare head is on the old Charlie Brown pillow.

  I try, not very hard, to work on my biography of Jim Ryan. I have a notebook that says The Life and Adventures of Jim Ryan, but all I’ve written so far is: Jim Ryan is brave. Jim Ryan is stupid.

  Because the other day he went up a ladder with a broom and swatted a wasps’ nest. Of course they all swarmed him and he had to run away. Later, when everything had calmed down, Mrs. Ryan went up the ladder in a flowery dress with long sleeves and a can of something. No more wasps.

  I am surely lucky to have a bedroom that looks out directly onto my biographee’s house. Most biographers would kill for such a location. Verlaine suggests I go out there and interview the man. Come clean about being his biographer.

  Well. I have already gone out there with my camera and taken some pictures for the cover.

  The cover of the biography he doesn’t know you are writing.

  Right.

  Jim Ryan, over his shoulder, says, Nice hat.

  Thanks.

  Should I be posing.

  No. Don’t mind me.

  Possible covers:

  Jim Ryan coiling a hose.

  Jim Ryan running from wasps.

  Jim Ryan doing a cartwheel in his crescent. (If only Jim Ryan would do a cartwheel in his crescent!)

  When I’m not being a biographer, I’m being a rider. When I ride Rambo, the stirrup leathers have to be looped around twice because my legs are too short. Hold on to the mane for balance, Verlaine says, not the reins. She assures me Rambo has no feeling in his mane.

  No feeling. I give his mane a tug and lean forward to look at his face. No response. I pull a bit harder. He sighs. And begins to walk in the direction of the barn.

  The walk is a four-beated gait, Verlaine says. The trot is two-beated. The canter is three-beated. There is usually at least one hoof on the ground.

  Oh good, I say. Good. Then I think about it. I look down at Verlaine.

  Yes, there will be moments, split seconds, when no hoofs touch the ground at all. When you are galloping.

  Holy Lada, I say.

  The stable is not far from the airport, and sometimes planes fly so low that the landing gear scrapes my hard hat. Just about. When the planes fly low, I duck and Rambo swirls and Verlaine has to hold on to him tight. All four hoofs leave the ground.

  Is he afraid of the noise. Or the plane crashing. Or what.

  Verlaine says he is not really afraid. He’s just faking.

  Faking!

  Planes, she says, are old hat to him.

  Slowly I unlearn the old Verlaine. She is not a basement troll. She still eats Swissly, but her arms no longer seem dangerous. I drag Wedge’s terrarium out from under my bed. She laughs. Did you think I didn’t know that mouse was somewhere in this house.

  We eat ice cream sandwiches after every meal, including breakfast.

  She takes Wedge out of his terrarium and handles him like an expert. Hello my little sandwich. She rubs the ear that says 18 and Wedge goes all dreamy and closes his eyes.

  I watch her. Do you love Rambo.

  Of course.

  What about the mice in my dad’s lab. Do you love them.

  Non.

  Why not.

  Because I have decided not to.

  But do you secretly and pretend to yourself that you don’t.

  What.

  Do you secretly love them.

  Non.

  Secretly.

  Non.

  Wedge’s whiskers twitch. He sits up.

  Well, I love all animals, I say, grabbing him. He squeaks in protest.

  Even a fly, says Verlaine.

  I’m about to say yes, but then I recall killing one that very morning.

  You love pieces of yourself.

  My dad calls. I tell him all about Rambo. I gush.

  He says, Do I hear Wedge in his ball.

  You do, you do! Wedge is rolling by on the kitchen tile.

  Verlaine hasn’t gobbled him up, then.

  No, I snort. Of course not.

  I
hand the phone to Verlaine and follow Wedge into the living room.

  Fine. Yes. Good. Non. Do you think I would put that child on a horse without a helmet. She won’t take the thing off. She’s a natural.

  I feel myself getting hot with happiness. Wedge, did you hear that. A natural. Moi.

  Wedge puts his hands in the air and runs towards me.

  I bend my arms like I’m holding reins and check out my muscle.

  Three weeks without my dad and I am what Verlaine calls a gutsy rider. I no longer crouch when the planes fly low. I swat Rambo’s neck and tell him to chill out. I can do a posting trot and keep the beat. We go for a hack. Verlaine walks beside me while I ride. The trails are rocky and Verlaine complains about this goddamn rock always giving birth like a bitch to more. We cross a river. Verlaine hops from rock to rock. So I guess they are useful sometimes. Rambo takes a long drink and I lean forward and hug his neck. I can feel the gulps travelling up under my arms.

  At the end of a trail we reach a familiar chain-link fence. There’s a field on the other side, then pavement.

  That’s the runway, Verlaine says. And the airport. She points at an itty-bitty building.

  Holy Lada.

  Will you stop saying that, you cheeky souris.

  We wait for a plane to show up. Finally one does. Rambo pricks his ears. It’s a dot that keeps getting bigger. It drops and gets bigger, drops and gets bigger, until it probably has people inside it. I watch from under my black velvet visor.

  Soon, Verlaine says. That will be Walter.

  The night before my dad is scheduled to come home, I can’t sleep. My legs ache. Verlaine says it’s growing pains, but it’s not. It’s waiting pains. The only thing that will make my legs stop hurting is to go out to the airport and run up and down the runway until my dad’s plane lands.

  Well, that is out of the question, Verlaine says over breakfast. She studies me a moment. You look dépeignée. What. Uncombed. She reminds me that a hairnet is not a substitute for combing my hair.

  I think it really is.

  I think it would be nice to be well groomed for Walter’s homecoming.

  I concede that, okay, maybe it would.

  Here are a few things I did yesterday to welcome my dad home:

  Cut out a picture of Sylvester Stallone all sweaty and taped it over his bed (originally intended for Verlaine but she’d said, Non, merci, and suggested current location).