Come, Thou Tortoise

by Jessica Grant

Uncle Thoby. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. Open your eyes. Please. I’m sorry. I was having an adventure. I was solving a mystery. I was afraid.

  Don’t be like a mouse burrowing and dying. Don’t be like the pilot who flies away from a populated area in order to crash his plane alone on a desert island. Be Qantas. Be Uncle Thoby.

  Wake up.

  Okay, I have a question for you. Are you ready. Here it is. Why did you leave me. Was it because

  a) I was a straw breaking your back, or

  b) Toff said enough is enough, the game is over, or

  c) you wanted to make amends with Grandmother, or

  d) you had to run away to a place that did not have my dad dead in it, or

  e) you were afraid to crash in front of me.

  Answer my question.

  It’s because of me, isn’t it. I grab his left hand. It’s my fault.

  Of course if it isn’t my fault—if I am making a false statement—you should wake up right now and correct me. You should wake up and tell me it isn’t my fault.

  Mr. Green, remember when we played Clue and my dad would accuse someone—say Mrs. White—and then he’d look in the envelope and it wouldn’t be Mrs. White, and he’d get all annoyed and start accusing one of us of having Mrs. White and concealing her. Remember that. But no one had Mrs. White. No one had cheated. Okay, sometimes I cheated. Sometimes your long arm made it easy to see your cards. And sometimes I left the room on business and glanced at a scoresheet en route. But it was all above board. And I did not do too badly at Clue, considering I refused to roll the dice and visit the five rooms I could not leap to.

  Remember that.

  But sometimes a card went missing. Sometimes a card fell on the floor. And we were so absorbed in the game on the table, in the rolling-pinned-flat house so like the one my dad had escaped in England, that we forgot there was a floor, and a real house around us, and an under-the-table world where other mysteries might be unfolding.

  At least I forgot.

  Because I was on the board. I was leaping. And okay, I was cheating, a little.

  And where was Mrs. White.

  I slipped off my chair and there she was, on the floor. I crouched down to pick her up, and as I did, I saw my opponents holding hands under the table. Outside the game.

  I grabbed the card and sprang up with this surge of happiness. What was the source of this happiness. I thought it was because I’d found the lost card. Look! Look what I found! But it was not because I’d found the lost card. Do you hear me. That was not why I was so happy.

  I shake my head. Do you know, when I first read your note, I thought you’d gone out to buy a sweatshirt or clipart. Isn’t that funny. I mean, who buys clipart. Your handwriting is really bad. Or it has its bad moments. But I could make out anon. That I could make out. But how long is anon. How long before you were going to come home. Or was coming home not on the agenda.

  How could coming home not be on the agenda.

  I look out the window. Snow polka-dots the air. Check out the snow falling on palm trees. Check it out, Uncle Thoby. Have you ever seen anything like it.

  No response.

  How can you not be responding.

  I watch the rise and fall of his chest.

  There’s an old saying that goes, Fly the plane in a different direction. Fly the plane in my direction. Remember that.

  You won’t believe this, but Wedge is missing. Wedge is gone and I’ve been conducting an international search that has put me very much in harm’s way. I’m bruised and battered. Look at me. Look at my face. I look almost as wrecked as you. Look at me. Please wake up.

  Okay, last card.

  I know who you are, Mr. Green. Mr. Moss. I know it was because of me that you met my dad. I know you answered my letter. Thank you for answering my letter. Thank you for loving my dad. Thank you for coming to live with us.

  This is the moment when you are supposed to open your eyes. Open your eyes, Uncle Thoby.

  He doesn’t open his eyes.

  I fall asleep on the floor beside the sofa with my chin on his arm, a position not unlike Hamlet’s of the night before. I can feel his pulse in my jaw. Cold air pours through the walls. There is no heat. No heat vents. Is that why you didn’t hear me calling.

  I wake to the sound of a snowplough scraping cobbles. Pray you never hear this sound.

  Uncle Thoby shifts his arm. Opens his eyes. Closes them. Opens them again, wider. We stare at each other. He doesn’t say anything. Then he scrambles up the back of the sofa.

  Hi.

  Holy Christ.

  You’re awake.

  I’m having a montage that Oddly Flowers is here.

  It’s not a montage.

  Miss Scarlet in a red cape.

  Parachute actually.

  How on earth.

  I get up and hug his head. I tell him I made a moving speech at his sofa-side. Does he remember.

  He shakes his head.

  I think you really do.

  I think I’m going to be sick, he says. And he gets up and goes to the bathroom. I listen for the sound of him being sick, but all is quiet.

  Sun pours through the front window and glints off all the bottles. If they weren’t so scary they’d be beautiful. I look around. There’s a bedroom off the living room. The bed hasn’t been slept in. There’s an electric heater on the floor, the kind with coils that glow orange. I look up at the ceiling. No fire alarm.

  Uncle Thoby.

  From the bathroom: I’m okay.

  When he comes out, his eyebrows are all up and worried. Oh Odd.

  S’okay.

  You shouldn’t be here.

  Were you ever going to call me.

  When I wasn’t like this.

  Like this. But how long can someone be like this. How long can someone carry on like this. Doesn’t he know that I’m a caryatid. A what. A caryatid. A pillar of strength. Oh, I know that sweetheart, I know. Let me carry the tid then. The tid. The ceiling.

  He sits down next to me. Puts his hands over his eyes. Oddly.

  Yeah.

  What happened to your face.

  A stye.

  But who punched you.

  London.

  Oh, sweetheart.

  Don’t cry.

  I’m not crying.

  Yes you are. Plus, I have tuberculosis. But don’t worry.

  I’m sorry, he says. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to look out for you.

  And what about you, I say. Who’s looking out for you in this tinderbox without a fire alarm.

  Penzance is lovely by the sea, my Dad said in his biography of Uncle Thoby. He was right. The beach beneath Uncle Thoby’s cottage is deep and white. Five centimetres of snow covers the sand. The palm trees flap black. We walk along Tremorden Lane, then follow a trail down to the beach.

  He asks how I found him. Deductive reasoning, I tell him. Or possibly inductive. He looks at me. What, he says. Nevermind. I’m a sharp antler, let’s leave it at that. True, he says. Okay.

  It is windy and cold. I am wrapped in my parachute. Uncle Thoby wears a coat I don’t recognize and his bright orange gloves.

  The beach has two boulders like giant tortoises with their middles carved out. You can sit in them like armchairs. They are smooth like the ocean. But today the ocean isn’t smooth. Today it is green and churning like an upset stomach.

  Uncle Thoby clears the snow from the boulders and we sit.

  His legs are shaking. His pirate patch of hair blows up. He looks thinner. Has he been eating. When we stepped out of the cottage, there was a basket of food on the stoop. ’Tis Mabel again, he said. They take care of their pirates in Penzance.

  Maybe. Maybe they try. But who is Mabel. Not me. Not family. And this is not home.

  Hey look, I say, gesturing at the horizon. Look, there’s Newfoundland.

  France actually.

  Whatever. I knock my boots together.

  Oddly—

  This feels like the en
d of a Shirley MacLaine memoir.

  He nods. Then: Have you ever finished a Shirley MacLaine memoir.

  No. But I’m sure it ends just like this. It ends on a beach after I rescue you. Then we go home.

  He pushes his orange gloves down over his knees. Oddly.

  Of course there’d be a dog. Ears flapping in the wind.

  Odd.

  Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.

  I’m not ready to go back.

  Then I’m not either.

  Odd.

  I’m not leaving you here to burrow on Delirium Tremens Lane.

  Years ago my dad arrived here just like me, minus the red cape. Overnight. Because Uncle Thoby was in a spot of trouble. Remember that. Yes. Well, it was more than a spot. He had lost his job. At Heathrow. Yes, at Heathrow. And there was some trouble with the law. What kind of trouble. Well. He had lost his licence. Let’s leave it at that.

  He was living in London, trying to put his life back together. And for a while it seemed to be working. For a while he thought he could do it. He was corresponding with my dad, and this correspondence kept him afloat.

  But then he had a relapse. He crashed. He came back to Penzance. He was sleeping indefinitely. And so my dad arrived here overnight. And when the right person arrives at the bedside of the sleeping person, the sleeping person opens his eyes. Rule Number One.

  My dad rescued you.

  You both did, he says. It was both of you.

  The shadows of the palm trees lengthen. We sit and watch the water. Weird that a boulder can be comfortable.

  You have to come back with me, I say, because Wedge is missing.

  Uncle Thoby’s eyebrows fly up.

  Yes, I tell him. Wedge is missing. Someone kidnapped him. Lionel de Tigrel was my last suspect, and he turned out to be not who I thought he was. I thought he was that lion guy at my dad’s funeral.

  What lion guy.

  Exactly. I don’t know.

  Uncle Thoby says he is sure Wedge is in the house.

  But I searched.

  Is Verlaine checking the house.

  I look at him. Nod.

  He’ll turn up.

  Will you, I ask. Will you turn up.

  He gets to his feet. Come on, he says.

  Anon.

  He starts walking. Come on.

  No.

  I sit in my boulder and wait for him to come back. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t. He keeps walking. And I can’t stand it, so I jump up and run after him. But now the wind is against me, and my parachute billows. Help. It wants to pick me up and carry me home without you. Don’t let it carry me home without you.

  I reach out and grab his arm. Is it because of Toff. Because if it is, he’s sorry. He told me to tell you he’s sorry. He’s waiting for us back on St. Erth.

  Uncle Thoby stops. What.

  He’s waiting in St. Erth with an olive branch.

  Toff is in St. Erth.

  I nod.

  Since when.

  I check my stopwatch. Um. I don’t know. Yesterday afternoon.

  Oh Oddly.

  Oh what.

  You have to go back and accept it. Not without you.

  He adjusts my parachute around my shoulders.

  I look into his face. I hang on to his arms. You came here to disappear.

  He shakes his head, no.

  I nod my head, yes.

  He stops shaking his head.

  Why, I say.

  He doesn’t look at me.

  Okay. I know.

  I just need some time, Oddly.

  I look at him. Really look at him. I won’t let you be disappeared. Promise me you’ll come back. You have to promise me.

  We go back to the cottage. My carry-on bag is parked in the corner of the living room. Through the front window I can see Uncle Thoby sitting outside on the rock wall, waiting. What if I refuse to go. What if I chain myself to the coffee table. Will that work.

  That is not what he needs me to do, though. He needs me to go.

  My dad came to Uncle Thoby’s rescue, but then he left. He left and let Uncle Thoby arrive in his own time, didn’t he. We had to wait.

  I open the outside pocket of my bag and pull out the piece of paper I’ve been carrying since I left St. John’s. I leave it on the coffee table, map side up.

  There are degrees of invented. My dad’s biography of Uncle Thoby feels like a montage we invented together. It was made up. But it was also true. It was fast and true and mixed up. There is no Leg and Arm Reconstruction Camp in Penzance. But there are palm trees and snow. There are kindhearted pirates. Penzance is not just a biography. It is not just an operetta. It is a real place.

  I figured out pretty early on that Uncle Thoby’s arm was not made up. It was not true that he had lost a part of himself and then rebuilt it. But it was true. With much effort and pain and falling down and getting back up, he had rebuilt himself.

  Here is a walk down a memory lane. Walter, Uncle Thoby, and Oddly sit on the wraparound porch. It is September and the sun has already set its sights on the other hemisphere. The air is cool, but not so cool that we cannot sit outside after supper and eat Piety pie in the fading light. There is no wind. A mosquito hovers. It has already bitten my dad, who brushed it away. It has already bitten me, who did not notice until the evidence bumped up on her ankle. Goddamn it. Mosquito bite.

  Now it hovers over Uncle Thoby’s shoulder like an exponent. He looks at it. It looks at him. It lands on his arm. His left arm, mark.

  Meanwhile I have been tasked with calculating the midpoint between Uncle Thoby’s and my dad’s birthdays. So they can celebrate a joint one. What is the midpoint between July 14 and September 10. I am counting forward on my fingers.

  I am about to invent the Doozoo.

  And I am watching the mosquito on Uncle Thoby’s arm. Of course he does not swat it. He lets it bite him.

  My dad says, Like Donne’s flea.

  Whose flea, I say.

  Nevermind.

  And I suppose I know in that instant that Uncle Thoby’s arm is flesh and blood because a mosquito is biting it. I know that we are all mixed together in the mosquito. I know that we are all mixed together in the twelfth of August. But there is no aha moment. I don’t jump out of my seat and say, I’ve got it, by Jove. I’ve figured it out. Because you cannot figure out what you already know but don’t know you know.

  The train pulls into St. Erth and there he is, leaning against the yellow brick wall. Like no time has elapsed. I pull down my window. Toff.

  He lifts a hand.

  Get on.

  He gets on. Looks around the empty car.

  He’s not ready to come home, I tell him.

  I see. But is everything okay.

  More or less.

  He sits down across from me. Adjusts his cravat.

  Did you sleep out there, I ask.

  On the bare Erth, he says, smiling. No. I waited till the last train and then checked into a B & B.

  Oh. Good.

  The train rolls forward. A triangle of sunlight appears on the table.

  I brought you a snow globe, I say.

  How kind.

  Palm trees and snow.

  Yes. Lovely.

  Thank you, Toff.

  You are most welcome.

  Do you know what I’m thanking you for.

  Looking out the window: Yes.

  Epilogue

  THE GRAND FINALLY

  A cold night in May and we are on our way to the airport. She has said three times that we should not get our hopes up. Judd takes another mint from the bowl on the dashboard and says there is nothing wrong with getting our hopes up. I look over my shoulder at him. His face is green in the light of the GPS readout. We’re early, he says.

  Audrey says we need to allow time to get through the revolving doors. People get stuck, she reminds him.

  This is true. The day I arrived we were stuck for ten minutes in the airport revolving door with a man a
nd a mandolin. The man immediately started playing a mournful tune. It was cold and Audrey put me inside her coat while we waited. I poked my head out. The coat was new. Otherwise she looked just the same. The coat said CLINT’S CABS and was black leather, quilted on the inside. An announcement came over the intercom that a man, a mandolin, a woman, and a tortoise were trapped inside a revolving door and would someone from Facilities please proceed directly. Soon a crowd had gathered to look. This was my first impression of Canada.

  I was tired and dizzy from having travelled most of the trip upside down in a louvred crate with a note from Cliff taped to the inside. The note was two sentences. I read it many times. I know you will not say no to a tortoise. I am really sorry about your dad. Love Cliff. Okay, three sentences.

  At customs they couldn’t figure out what I was, which was humiliating.

  Then on the flight to St. John’s I was tucked into a compartment behind the cockpit and I heard the pilot say to the passengers, We have a tortoise on board but hopefully that won’t affect our airspeed, ha ha. No doubt this was the metric sense of humour I’d heard so much about. It would take some getting used to.

  Audrey was at the airport to greet me. Tears filled her nictitating membranes as she lifted me from the crate and pressed me to her chest.

  I observed how professional she looked in the black jacket.

  When we finally stepped out of the revolving door, a blast of cold wet wind shocked me straight into my shell. I have since learned to expect this. A shining black cab awaited. I was placed on the dashboard.

  Look, Win, she said. Snow.

  And indeed there were huge dirty banks of it, dwarfing the trees.

  I looked over my shoulder at her. She was a cab driver.

  The GPS readout in a Clint’s cab not only shows you where you are going and if there are any snowploughs in the vicinity, it also tracks incoming and outgoing flights. Judd is mesmerized by this feature, and who can blame him. For Audrey now it is old hat. She concentrates on the road, which is her job. Judd says the plane is still an hour away. The readout shows the plane’s path in green and our path in red, and it shows how, in an hour, the twain shall meet.