Come, Thou Tortoise

  I step into a small square room. Rolls of green wire on the floor. Dark bulbs. Stacks and stacks of pizza boxes. But they are not pizza boxes, he says, offended. I mean, they never contained real pizzas. Yes, they are recycled cardboard. Yes, they were originally intended for pizzas. Nevermind that. They are not pizza boxes now. They are Christmatech boxes.

  Got it.

  The only furniture in the room is a round table with no top. There is a metal grid where the top should be with wires hanging down.

  What’s that.

  A table.

  Doesn’t look like a table.

  When it’s finished you’ll be able to see stars in it.

  He crouches down and wraps some wires around the base. He smiles up at me. Seriously, he says. As in famous people.

  As in constellations. He gestures with his chin. There’s a star map on the wall.

  Oh.

  So Judd is putting the sky into a table. Well, if anyone can do it, the inventor of the D-534 Christmas lights can. The blue in your lights, I tell him.

  Yeah.

  Better than anything I’ve seen.

  Thanks.

  Bunsen-burner blue.

  I love Bunsen burners.

  Me too.

  The Christmatech workshop has a single window with a sliding pane. The sun is going down fast, like someone’s got a finger on a dimmer switch.

  Judd prepares a package of the new-model lights.

  How did my dad find you.

  Find me.

  Where did he get the D-434 model.

  Canadian Tire.

  Canadian Tire sells Christmatech lights.

  He is kneeling on the floor surrounded by bulbs and pizza boxes. He looks up at me. Twinkly eyes. Okay, their parking lot does. When I’m in it.

  I laugh. I ask if he remembers my dad. He says no. I kneel down beside him. Sure you do. British guy.

  He is twisting a twist tie. Really twisting it.

  Okay, that’s good. I stop his fingers. Think. You remember him.

  British guy, okay, yeah, maybe.

  Good. This is all I wanted. I sink back on my heels.

  One last thing. When Judd was at the party the other day—

  I wasn’t exactly at the party.

  Did you see anyone leave the house with a mouse.

  Like a computer mouse.

  No, like a real mouse. A Christmas-coloured mouse.

  Christmas-coloured.

  White. Red eyes. A number 18 on his left ear.

  No.

  He hands me a pizza box with D-634 written in black marker across the top.

  As we descend the metal staircase, me first, Judd behind, I look down through the steps (because they are more air than metal, really, just hollow metal circles all shivering together like enlarged atoms) and I think about what my feet are doing. Which you should never do if you are Wobbly Flowers. You should never think about what your feet are doing, or not doing, on a staircase.

  I stumble.

  I feel myself fall like in a dream when falling turns into flight. Slow like that. You know how in a dream, when you fall, it is slow motion and you end up floating or flying. I have often wondered why this would be, why we would have such dreams, if our brains were not remembering how to do it. If we were not recalling a time when our genomes were smaller and we learned to fly by falling slower and slower from trees. Staircases are just modern-day trees.

  But I don’t fly. I fall down sixteen stairs. Then: impact.

  A staircase made of air should not hurt this much.

  Wobbly Flowers has had too much coffee today and not enough sleep, and she is made dizzy by airy-fairy staircases, and her retinas are burned, and her imagination is the inside of a Rubik’s cube, and she is trying to solve six mysteries at once, five of which she can’t even bloody see. No wonder she fell.

  And Judd comes tumbling after.

  No, he stays on his feet. But he is rushing down the stairs.

  Oh my God. He puts his hands under my arms. Steady.

  There’s a cowboy hat on the landing. I forgot I was wearing that.

  To my left, Jim Ryan is pulling frontwards out of his crescent. He rolls down his window. I roll down mine.

  Everything okay.

  I give him a thumbs-up.

  What in Christ happened to your face.

  Neveryoumind.

  I’m sitting in the LeBaron, in the driveway, not moving. I guess this is unusual behaviour.

  Haven’t pulled the new knob off, have you.

  Nope.

  Sure you’re okay.

  Yup. Carry on.

  He carries on. Reluctantly. What was he implying. That I pulled the old knob off on purpose. I look at my face in the rear-view mirror. My left eye has the beginnings of a stye. As for the rest, it is best not to look too closely.

  Uncle Thoby has not called. Wedge is still MIA. There are no bite marks in the Allsorts I left by the heat vents and the basement door. I have put down saucers filled with water. There is nothing to do. I stare at the dark house. Go on in.

  Anon.

  What if, when it comes to people I love, I am the straw breaking the camel’s back instead of the camel driver who removes the straw. Or whatever the expression is. What if I make things worse, not better. And now Uncle Thoby is in England with his back broken, being held hostage by Toff and Grandmother. Or maybe he’s tied up in customs with ropes and unable to get to a phone. And it is my fault because I increased his stress level instead of decreasing it.

  Also because I fell asleep on the job and didn’t stop him.

  And isn’t this what I always feared would happen, and what my dad always feared too, although he never said so: that Uncle Thoby would go back. That we would lose him. Because he felt like a prize we had won by accident. We had just lucked out after a third trip to the airport.

  One day when my dad was at work, I asked Uncle Thoby to drive me out to the stable. I knew he couldn’t, wouldn’t, drive the car. But I asked anyway. Why. Because earlier he’d been talking about how efficient the London tube was, and by implication how inefficient our Metrobuses were, and that was not acceptable. Didn’t we have Clint. The Qantas of cabs.

  Oh yes. Clint was a jewel. But you would love the tube, Odd. Secret tunnels. Like heat vents. Take you anywhere you want to go. Someday when you travel you’ll see.

  I don’t want to travel.

  Now he was lying on the sofa reading a book about people in London. Again, not acceptable. So I put on my riding gear and stomped into the living room and asked him to take me out to the stable.

  He put the book down on his chest with its wings open. Maybe Verlaine will take you after work.

  You take me.

  I can’t.

  I threw the car keys into his lap. They landed below the belt. Ouch. The book slid off his chest.

  I can’t, Odd.

  Fine, then I’ll ride my bike.

  Of course I couldn’t ride my bike to the stable. The stable was out by the airport for Chrissakes. But I marched out to the porch and got on my bike, which was Rambo, pretend.

  Let me call Clint, Uncle Thoby said. If you really want to go.

  I looked up from under my visor. I want you to take me.

  I can’t drive you, sweetheart.

  Yes you can.

  I’m saying no.

  Okey-dokey. I pedalled down the steps.

  Oddly.

  He kept talking.

  As fate would have it, Jim Ryan was pulling out of his crescent. He didn’t see me. I braked at the end of the drive. His bumper passed within arm’s reach. It practically scraped my tire. My first impulse was to reach out and punch that bumper. My second was to reach out and hang on. Hey, free ride, I thought.

  I heard Uncle Thoby say, Don’t.

  So I did.

  I was hanging on and I didn’t have to pedal. The hardest part was keeping my balance. One hand on the handlebars, the other curled around Jim Ryan’s metal bumper. Datsun. Bronz
e colour. We turned at the end of Wednesday Place. That was a trick. Lean into it. Then we turned again. Now we were whizzing down Blackbog Drive, past the Civil Manor and the Piety factory. Whiff of pie. I’d never gone so fast on a bike before. The street was rolling backwards the way it did under the hole in Verlaine’s car.

  I got down all aerodynamic.

  Cars were honking. Jim thought they were saying hi. He honked back.

  They pointed at me.

  He pointed back at them.

  You’ve got a lapsed biographer hanging off your ass, Jim. In an English riding hat.

  Faster and faster. It now occurred to me to wonder where Jim Ryan was going. Um. Probably not the stable. No, probably definitely not the stable. Had he ever been to the stable. No. He was heading for the Trans-Canada probably. Which did not go across Canada because this was an island. So it went to the airport, almost. If Jim Ryan was going to the airport, maybe I could ride my bike across the runway to the stable.

  My hand began to hurt. I thought of Uncle Thoby lumbering down the driveway after me. The way he had yelped, Don’t. I began to hurt inside. I assumed a crash position. Which is not very different from getting down all aerodynamic.

  A pickup truck passed by on the left and a boy yelled, Let go, you retard.

  I hated him.

  I hated Jim Ryan. There were no red lights on Blackbog Drive. We kept going and going. We would never stop. I couldn’t unclench my hand even if I wanted to. It was freezing for one thing. When had it got so cold. My hand was stuck to the bumper. I felt tears streaming.

  Suddenly there was some prolonged and familiar honking. I knew that honk. I looked sideways. Guess who. Uncle Thoby in our little brown LeBaron! Windows down. His face exaggerated. Pull over. Pull over.

  I think at this point Jim finally checked his rear-view mirror. No doubt he had got out of the habit of using his mirror, never having to back into or out of his crescent. Rear-view mirrors were for people without crescents.

  He braked hard and swerved to the right, which was not a smart move and might have been accidental.

  Ambient Vehicle Distraction. That’s me. I went flying. I was riding my bike sideways through space. Then the bike was gone. Then it was just me sliding sideways. I went splat into the space between the street and the sidewalk. Not the gutter. Well yes, I guess the gutter. I fit into it quite nicely. Face first, I went into this space. For a moment it felt cosy and quiet. And guess what protected my face. My black visor. And guess what protected my whole brain. My hat. I had torn the black velvet on the left side. I had heard it, or felt it, tear.

  Soon there was swearing. Jim Ryan on the sidewalk. I was rolled onto my back. Uncle Thoby was poking my legs. Cars were slowing down. It was sunny, but there was no warmth. I couldn’t remember for a moment what season it was. Is it summer.

  Can you feel this.

  I nodded.

  What about this.

  I fell off my bike. Where’s my bike.

  Uncle Thoby thought I was paralyzed. I was not paralyzed. I stood up. I was wobbly like someone who has just broken a world record for speed.

  Uncle Thoby, driving slowly home, hugging the shoulder of Blackbog Drive, said, That was not the kind of travel I meant.

  Me: I know.

  Uncle Thoby: Adventures are good, but not that kind. I want you to have great safe adventures.

  Me: I know.

  Uncle Thoby wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

  Me: Why are we going so slow.

  Uncle Thoby: We’re not. You’re velocitized.

  Me, after an interval during which I made Uncle Thoby explain velocitized: I don’t want you to go away.

  Uncle Thoby: I have no plans to go away.

  Me: Ever.

  Him: No.

  Me: No what.

  Him: No, I will not ever go away.

  Me: Promise.

  Him: Yes.

  Me: Don’t you want to go on great safe adventures in tubes.

  Him: This is my great safe adventure.

  Me: What is.

  Him: You. Your dad. This.

  Verlaine answers the door, hair like a serrated edge. What happened to your face.

  Are you referring to the gouge in my chin or the stye.

  You look like that ex-president of Russia.

  Oh, right. The bruise on my forehead. Also my teeth feel like they’re jammed deeper into my jaw. I fell down some stairs.

  She looks unsurprised and asks if I want tea.

  Verlaine’s living room is cold and drafty. There’s a window divided into fifty-four diamonds. What’s the word. Mullioned. There are no Christmas decorations, as such. Verlaine’s idea of decorating is to put little antlers on the horses already prancing about on all her flat surfaces.

  I call out that I have a list. And I take the Clue scoresheet out of my back pocket. Dr. O’Leery. Patience. My dad’s grad students. Lionel de Tigrel.

  She comes back with two mugs of tea. I sit in the rocking chair. She sits on the sofa. My mug has a weather system. I blow it away. It comes back.

  Pretty chilly in here.

  She is wearing a T-shirt, of course. It says PSYCHONEUROENDOCRINOLOGY. The OLOGY disappears under her armpit. She says it was a gift. From who. Some idiot in the building.

  I rub my stye. Okay, so the suspects.

  She knows Wedge has disappeared. On the phone I told her I suspected Foul Play. She had no comment. So I said, Can I come over.

  She listens to my theory. Which is actually several theories. Either: Dr. O’Leery, who is now working with mice, decided he needed an extra one. Or one of my dad’s grad students, besotted with him, decided to slip away with a living memento. Or Patience. I don’t know. I just suspect her. Or Lionel de Tigrel.

  Who.

  My dad’s arch-enemy. Remember all those articles in the living room.

  Vaguely.

  Vaguely!

  Your father had no enemies, Audray.

  That’s nice of you to say, but trust me. Lionel de Tigrel. I fold my list.

  Verlaine says she has a theory too.

  Okay, let’s hear it.

  The little croque monsieur is somewhere in the house.

  I’ve searched the house.

  Audray.

  What. I acknowledge that my case is weak for Patience. But as for the others, not so weak. My plan is to rule out the local suspects and, once I’ve checked them off my scoresheet, expand my investigation to include non-Canada.

  Non-Canada.

  England.

  You haven’t heard from your uncle.

  Blink.

  Audray.

  What. Lionel de Tigrel is my strongest case. I’ve been doing some research. There’s a laboratory at Cambridge called Humouse House. It’s sponsored by Duracell and run by Lionel de Tigrel. If he can make a mouse live for—

  A mechanical mouse.

  No, a real mouse.

  But it runs on batteries.

  No. Humouse House is sponsored by the batteries. Lionel de Tigrel works with knockout mice. Which is probably one of the reasons he wanted Wedge. For his upper body strength. But that is beside the point. His real motive is Wedge’s longevity. Not to mention his lifelong vendetta against my dad.

  Verlaine scratches her head with both hands. Where did this come from.

  Are you asking me or yourself.

  She looks up. You.

  I did some research on my dad’s laptop. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how did Lionel de Tigrel kidnap Wedge if he’s at Cambridge.

  She raises her eyebrows.

  Good question. Remember the Belgian.

  What Belgian.

  At my dad’s post-part-him party.

  At the what.

  The guy who called me a leapling.

  Oh. Yes.

  Who was he.

  I don’t know.

  Exactly. I lean back.

  She says nothing.

  Exactly, I say again. He came here to kidnap Wedge.


  From Belgium.

  From England.

  From England. To steal a mouse.

  Yes. Because my dad had been successfully engineering negligible senescence and Lion the Tiger knew it. And maybe my dad had plans to start his own Humouse House and win the two million dollars and the trip to Stockholm.

  The what. Wait. You’re saying this man at your father’s funeral was the Humouse man.

  Yes.

  Lionel de Tigrel.

  Yes.

  So Lionel de Tigrel is Belgian.

  Probably. Remember how big his eyes got when I said we’d had Wedge since I was a kid.

  For a moment Verlaine seems to be entering into the spirit of the thing. Then she gets a balloon-bursting look. Audray.

  What.

  She hesitates. The average lifespan of a mouse.

  I rock in my chair. I know.

  Do you.

  Four years, I say.

  Try two. That is a far cry from twenty.

  You’re telling me. Rock, rock. What is she getting at. That Wedge is not Wedge. That Wedge could not be Wedge. That is what she is getting at.

  Does she think I wouldn’t know my own mouse. Having nursed him back to health after a near drowning in a Canadian Tire garbage can and lived cheek by jowl with him for all, or most, of my life. That would be like Verlaine not knowing Rambo from, I don’t know, Sylvester Stallone.

  The day we brought Wedge home, he was cold and shivery, so we put him in a small box banked with Kleenex. He burrowed in. Then we shone a desk lamp on the box to keep him warm. He wouldn’t eat, so I fed him milk from an eyedropper.

  My dad warned me that he didn’t seem right. There was something not right about him.

  Wedge liked being held. So I held him a lot. My dad said there had been some research (not his) that showed that mice who were cuddled when they were young lived longer. He wasn’t sure he believed this. He disapproved of cuddling lab animals. Drying them gently with a towel behind the ears and making them go all dreamy with happiness, that was one thing.

  What was it.

  Not cuddling.

  Sometimes the drops of milk would be more than Wedge could swallow and there would be overflow onto his whiskers. I remember how his nose looked when damp. I remember how his eyes looked when closed. I remember how he didn’t have eyebrows.

  After two weeks he was better. He started trying to climb out of his box. So we moved him into the terrarium.