Come, Thou Tortoise

by Jessica Grant

I know what a you-fizz-em is.

  No you don’t.

  I bet it’s when you say one thing and mean another.

  Well, yes.

  So like sarcasm.

  No.

  Now he’s tangled up. This is good. Keep his brain on this.

  I’m not sure how many times Uncle Thoby failed to show up. It feels like five. But maybe it was only three. Out to the airport. Knock knock on the who’s-there wall. No answer. No Uncle Thoby. Back home in excruciatingly low gear. No shepherd’s pie for dinner.

  In my mind Uncle Thoby becomes a cross between a shepherd who loves pie and a black sheep. A black sheep, I decide, is a euphemism for the son who is loved less.

  My dad spends hours on the phone after I’ve gone to bed. I can hear the annoying phone voice through the vent. In the morning he tells me that Uncle Thoby has the flu. That’s why he didn’t fly. He was about to get on the plane at Heathrow, but then he was sick in the bathroom.

  Heathrow-up airport.

  My dad laughs and sips his coffee. Apparently I am funny again. For days I have not been funny.

  He can’t fly because of flew, I say and kick Uncle Thoby’s chair under the table. I think about how I would like to cut down the legs with a saw and make that chair really low. So that when and if Uncle Thoby ever shows up, only his head will be visible over the table. I recall the fangs on his bedposts and smile a fangy smile of my own.

  What are you smiling at.

  Does the arm get a fever when he does.

  My dad wants me out of his hair. Thus I am sticking around. I go with him to the Before Building. Verlaine offers to take me out to the stable but I say no. I will not leave my dad. The most I will do is put on my hard hat and ride my bike around the wraparound porch. Around and around I go, practising my posting trot even though there is no beat. I ride down the steps and pretend they are jumps.

  Every so often we go out to the airport and return without an uncle. It is humiliating. We are humiliated. Humiliation is being left like an uncollected bag on the carousel.

  Remember when Big Bird tried to introduce Mr. Snuffleupagus to the rest of Sesame Street. Remember how he never showed up.

  My dad and I are playing Clue. Clue is not really a game for two people, but I don’t know that yet.

  Remember when Big Bird—

  I suspect Colonel Mustard with the Revolver—where is the Revolver—in the Billiard Room.

  I check my cards. Nope. Remember in the old Sesame Street how Mr. Snuffleupagus never showed up.

  My dad marks something on his scoresheet. Uncle Thoby is not Mr. Snuffleupagus.

  Yes, but he is. Why doesn’t he call before we go out to the bloody airport for the millionth time. Is he trying to humiliate us.

  The Revolver is missing, my dad says, lifting the board. Where is the Revolver.

  After my dad has gone to bed I sneak back downstairs. Wedge’s wheel stops. What are you doing.

  Neveryoumind.

  The wheel starts up again, but more slowly.

  It is easy to solve a crime. You just pick up the phone and push the redial button. Then you wrap yourself in a curtain to muffle your voice.

  All the beeps sound like that pirate song. Pour, oh pour the pirate sherry.

  Hello.

  You, in your deepest pirate voice: Is this Thoby Flowers.

  I’m sorry.

  I said is this Thoby. Who is this.

  I think you know who this is.

  Yes. I think I do.

  Listen, don’t bother getting on that plane tomorrow or the next day or whenever. I don’t care if you come here. Neither does my dad. You and your homemade arm can stay where you are. I’ve got a Revolver. I might shoot you if you come here.

  Silence.

  Do you understand me, gnomon.

  Gnomon. Well. I’m sorry we had to meet like this, Oddly.

  What did you call me.

  I want to hang up now. I try to hang up. But I am caught in the goddamn curtain. I try to push the receiver away, but it’s holding on to me. I kick at the curtain until I find the opening. Wedge has stopped running. He is watching me. It is dead quiet. I put the receiver back in its cradle.

  The shadow I make on the wall is monstrous.

  Wedge’s hands press the glass. Want a hug.

  I shake my head, no.

  Actually, Walter, I was all set to board the flight this time—I’m feeling much better, thank you—but then I got a call from your daughter at six o’clock in the ante meridiem, my time, telling me to stay put if I did not want to be murdered upon debarking from the plane.

  You must be mistaken, dear brother.

  That is how I imagine the conversation going. I am sick with dread. I ride my bike in slow circles around the porch. My dad is upstairs taking a nap. He is tired from being on the phone so much.

  I hate the phone.

  Uncle Thoby’s flight is scheduled to arrive at three thirty. Will he or won’t he be on the plane this time. At two o’clock I’m supposed to wake my dad. What if I don’t wake him. What if I let him sleep straight through the arrival time. Then, if Uncle Thoby does show up, he’ll be the one humiliated for a change. He’ll be the one waiting on the baggage carousel like an uncollected bag.

  But then I remember his biography and I have hurt feelings. Because what if this is the big obstacle in his biography. Getting on a plane and coming here. And I just made the obstacle bigger. Of course he is afraid to get on the plane. Of course he is.

  Inside, the house is quiet. I take off my sneakers. Pad into the kitchen. Drink some milk. Take off my hard hat. Scratch my head. Put it back on. Stare at the table with its three chairs.

  A fruit fly bobs by. En route to the hedge in the living room. Excuse me.

  I move out of its way.

  That chair, Uncle Thoby’s chair, looks empty. It didn’t used to look empty. How can it be empty now. How can someone have his own chair when he’s never been here.

  Pad, pad upstairs. I pass the slice-of-hedge on the landing. Three fruit flies bob in formation over it. Onward to my dad’s bedroom. Open the door. He’s asleep on his side. How can he sleep in the early post meridiem. This is unacceptable. But while he is sleeping I will steal some chocolate from the pie-shaped drawer.

  My dad has a desk from Denmark that holds itself together without nails or glue by some miracle of gravity. The drawers are circles that swivel out. I swivel out the top drawer where the dark chocolate lives.

  Why is his breathing so stupid and deep when he sleeps, like he doesn’t care if I steal his chocolate. I creep over to the bed and lie down beside him. I push the chocolate against the roof of my mouth. Overhead, Sylvester Stallone is looking mighty muscly.

  I put my ear against my dad’s back, between his shoulder blades, because maybe I will hear what he’s dreaming. He’s wearing a blue shirt that was dapper this morning. Now it’s a little bit damp. I listen. Nothing.

  Just when I’m about to give up, he rolls onto his back. I yelp. Good thing I’m wearing my hard hat.

  He sits up and says, Christ Audrey.

  Hi.

  What are you doing.

  Having a bit of a lie-down.

  He scratches his head, which is the first thing he does when he wakes up. I call it waking up his hair.

  What time is it, he says, suddenly anxious.

  One thirty.

  He flops back down. You’ve got something here.

  Where.

  He points on his own face. What have you been nibbling on.

  Nothing. I swing my legs off the bed and bend down to adjust my sock. I spend a long time adjusting it.

  Ready to go to the airport, he says.

  I keep my head down. Now is the time to tell him: Dad, I called Uncle Thoby at tooth hurty in the ante meridiem and pointed the Clue revolver at the phone and told him not to come. I was mad. I’m sorry.

  But I don’t say this. Instead I keep adjusting my sock. Yup. Ready.

  And lo and behold,
this time, when I knock on the wall, someone knocks back.

  It’s him!

  I canter to the edge of non-Canada and peer around the corner. He’s talking to the customs guy. It’s definitely him because he does not have two arms the same length.

  Holy Lada. I spin around, my back to the wall.

  My dad looks at me, like, what is your problem.

  It’s him, I say.

  Are you sure.

  I close my eyes. Yup.

  He steps out from behind the wall and it is true love. He looks around, eyebrows up. Well, you can only see one eyebrow because the other is hidden under a flop of hair. Also, he has a short scruffy beard. He’s dragging a suitcase behind his long arm.

  He sees us.

  Then my dad is saying, So you made it, did you have any trouble, good flight, etcetera. And Uncle Thoby is saying, Customs. Bloody customs was terrifying. He laughs. He scratches his beard.

  Their voices overlap. They both make their words bounce in the middle.

  I hide behind my dad.

  Oddly. A knock on my hard hat.

  I look up. There he is, under my visor.

  The knock becomes an open palm. Finally we meet, he says.

  So. He will not give me away.

  When I grab his hand, his left hand, to take him on a tour of the house, it feels like a normal hand. It feels 37 degrees Celsius.

  He smells sweet, like perfume.

  I introduce him to Wedge. Hello little man, he says. Wedge proceeds to drink from his bottle and look very winning. When Wedge drinks he holds on to the bottle with two hands. Uncle Thoby is very much won. He asks about the number 18 on his ear. That is from his lab days, I say. That is Verlaine’s doing.

  Of course, he says.

  I can ride a horse, I tell him. But you knew that from my biography.

  And from your hat.

  Oh. Right. I’m in full riding regalia. Also, I’m wearing a white blouse with buttons all the way up the sleeves that can’t be undone. There’s a Bite-to-Eatery stain on the ruff.

  I show him the infinity of Wedges in the cheval glass.

  Yikes, he says.

  Then I show him my floating-in-the-mirror trick. Now you try, I say, because I am generous with my trick.

  Uncle Thoby stands to the left of the mirror and moves his right arm and leg in front of the glass. His flop of hair disappears. He has two arms the same length. He is not himself in the mirror. He is Symmetrical Uncle Thoby. I pull him away. Okay, that is my trick, I say, not yours.

  We head upstairs. I do a sort of dance in front of the fangy bedposts, to distract him.

  He joins me in the jig. Why are we dancing.

  Supper’s ready, my dad calls from downstairs. He sounds so happy that I feel instantly afraid.

  Let’s go, I say. I grab the hand.

  As we turn to leave, Uncle Thoby’s eyes alight on one of the bedposts.

  Yeah. Sorry about that.

  It is love. But it is one thing to love someone at the airport, or when you are giving him a tour, and another to love him in the presence of your dad, who is talking solely to him.

  So there will be conversations now that do not include you.

  You sort through the mail, loudly. Rudely. You wave an election flyer. Byrne Doyle, you announce to your dad and roll your eyes and don’t explain to Uncle Thoby who he is.

  You mention Jim Ryan. You casually mention your biography-in-progress, even though it no longer is.

  Your dad relates the carcinogenic creosote episode. He tells how Jim Ryan waved a brush dripping with creosote right in his face. Did that really happen. Your dad makes the story funny. Uncle Thoby is laughing and leaning against the fridge.

  You say, Move, because you want to get milk.

  Later, forever, you will remember how he stopped laughing, how politely he moved out of the way, and how he looked unsure of where to move to.

  Over dinner Uncle Thoby asks about my biography. I tell him it’s actually on the back burner.

  The back burner.

  He and my dad make twinkly eye contact. So I am amusing behind my back now. This will be another new thing.

  My dad tells more Jim Ryan anecdotes. Wasps. Crescent driveway. Pull in forward, pull out forward. My dad does a killer Jim Ryan imitation. Since when.

  That is not very nice, I say.

  And they stop.

  I make my fork stand up in my shepherd’s pie and go to the fridge for ketchup. Why couldn’t I write a funny biography like my dad’s, full of jokes and imitations. Maybe put in a few car chases.

  We sit at the table for a long time and forget to turn on lights. The colours go out one by one. Uncle Thoby props an elbow on the table and rests his cheek in his hand. Pushes his hair back. He looks happy.

  I try to keep my eyes open. Their voices seem very far away. I hear Uncle Thoby express surprise that Shirley MacLaine is holding up the window.

  Then suddenly, thump. I am on the floor.

  Gasps from above.

  Are you okay, sweetheart.

  I scramble up, lift my arms, like, ta-da! But then I feel confused and for a moment I can’t remember who Uncle Thoby is. I push my face into my dad’s stomach. Someone is exhausted, he says.

  He picks me up and carries me upstairs. Straight into bed with my frilly blouse and fake buttons and the Bite-to-Eatery stain.

  Good night Oddly Wobbly Flowers, he says.

  So that is who I am now. I snuggle in. Am instantly asleep. Or almost instantly. I can feel him tugging at my hairnet. I turn my head to make it easier.

  And somehow I discover, by turning my head and corkscrewing my arms so that the backs of my hands touch, a new sleeping position that is the best one yet. When the backs of your hands touch, they feel like someone else’s hands, but not in a bad way. They feel like you, from the outside. My legs are in a leaping position. I am falling asleep in a corkscrew-leaping position. The last thing I think is, remember this position so you can find it again tomorrow night.

  The next morning he is gone. There is a note on the counter. Out for a stroll. See you anon.

  Grognard Man is having trouble with the coffee filters.

  I run to the window. It’s raining sideways. The range hood is whistling. Oh no. He’s run away.

  He’s still on English time, says my dad. Like that explains something.

  Let’s go find him, I say.

  No, let’s not.

  Who the hell is anon.

  Anon means soon. Anon means bientôt.

  There’s an orange cut into sixteen pieces at my place. I climb into my chair. A fruit fly bobs like a helicopter over my plate. I swat it away. It comes back. It crashes into my orange.

  Goddamn it.

  What.

  Fruit fly.

  Do we have a Drosophila melanogaster problem, says my dad. Can you. He hands me the filters.

  The flies came with the hedges, I tell him.

  Don’t call them hedges.

  I separate two or three filters from the stack. What should I call them.

  Indoor plants.

  Yesterday, when I gave Uncle Thoby the tour of the house, he said he’d never seen hedges indoors before.

  They’re for you, I told him.

  They’re lovely.

  The fruit flies live in the hedges but make daily reconnoitring trips into the kitchen for food. They also like toothpaste, which is gross. At least one fruit fly lives in the bathroom. I can’t believe my dad hasn’t noticed this. Nine times out of ten, when I look in the bathroom mirror, there’s a fruit fly doing a jig over my shoulder.

  Are you going to be brushing your teeth any time soon.

  No. Get away.

  Okay. Let me know.

  Bob, bob.

  Look at you, I say. You with your little antennas parted in the middle. You with your toothpaste addiction. Sad. Truly sad.

  I clap my hands over my shoulder, but he always bobs to a safer altitude.

  The rain sounds lik
e it’s chewing the window. I slide off my chair. There he is! On the other side of the pond. Having an argument with an umbrella. Look, Dad.

  A moment later I’m on my bike, bumping down the porch steps. I pedal hard, keeping my head down like a jockey with aerodynamics in mind. The bike is Rambo, pretend. I am soaked in two seconds. The path has rocks that must be dodged. Mud. A few snails with portable rooms go crunch. Oh sorry, sorry, sorry.

  Me to the rescue. This is my pond. This is my rain. You should have consulted me on the subject of umbrellas in Newfoundland. You should have waited for a proper tour.

  He sees me. Lifts a hand. The umbrella is inside out. I put on the brakes. Be casual. Hi, I say.

  He points at my feet. You’re not wearing shoes.

  Forgot.

  His cheeks are red and wet and raw. His flop of hair is plastered like an arrow. He looks different from last night.

  I point at my own chin. What happened to your—

  Shaved it off.

  Why.

  Itchy.

  I walk my bike beside him. Careful of the snails. Don’t your feet hurt. No. He carries the umbrella like a dead friend. Stupid Newfoundland, killer of umbrellas. I stomp a bare foot on Newfoundland.

  He laughs.

  I laugh too.

  I was chased by one of your swans.

  Those swans are not native to our province. Look how bright their beaks are. You should have waited for a tour from me.

  He watches my feet worriedly. A smack of rain hits us hard from behind and we fall forward a bit. Mother of God, he says.

  Don’t take it personally.

  When we get back my orange has five dead Drosophila melano-gasters in it. Uncle Thoby says, Poor little guys.

  Poor. Stupid. They get stuck in their own food.

  My dad points out that we share ninety percent of our DNA with the Drosophila melanogaster.

  Uncle Thoby says he will cut me a fresh orange. Do we have any Alka-Seltzer by the way. The coffee burbles. My dad says yes, there is Alka-Seltzer upstairs.

  It all feels incredibly normal.

  I race upstairs to get the Alka-Seltzer. Back downstairs. Pause on the landing. I can hear my dad whistling along with the range hood.

  B-flat, he says.

  A-sharp, says Uncle Thoby.

  At my place at the table there’s a work of art. It’s called an Orange in a Castle. All the slices lean out over the parapet.