Come, Thou Tortoise

  So like a biography.

  Sort of. Uncle Thoby said real life was packed with stuff that didn’t matter. Whereas in a montage, you only saw the stuff that mattered. If this were a dream, he said, I wouldn’t see the horses on your blanket or Yoda on the shelf. I wouldn’t look out the window and see a car parked in the driveway. Unless all those things were going to matter soon. Unless someone was going to get in the car and drive away. That’s the thing about a dream. You get to decide what matters. You get to decide the outcome. Hold the plane in the air from the ground. Fly the plane yourself while the pilots have a party in first class. Take the dream in a different direction.

  Okay. This worked for a while. But then I found the hangar.

  Uncle Thoby, I said into the heat vent. My bed is crashing.

  Two seconds later he was in my room. What’s up.

  I found a building with a plane crash in it.

  A what.

  He sat down on the ottoman and listened. Then he asked where was this building and how many seats were there and what on earth was I doing riding Rambo on airport property.

  Don’t tell my dad.

  He said he wouldn’t, but he did. Not to get me in trouble but because he had this idea. He had this idea for a plane in the basement.

  Apparently he and my dad were more worried than they’d let on about my fear of flying and my insistence that I was never, ever going to get on a plane again, for as long as we all three shall live.

  That is a bit extreme, said my dad.

  Uncle Thoby agreed. There are too many great safe adventures to be had.

  And so they devised this plan, to help me get over my fear.

  The basement had already been converted into an apartment for Uncle Thoby. Well, a bedroom with a bathroom. It was bigger than it needed to be. Essentially it was a long rectangle with a bathroom at one end. What does that remind you of.

  Oh. And it was painted the colour of iceberg lettuce with the sun coming through.

  They rented a truck and went out there. I was not with them. I knew nothing about it. It was a surprise for me on their joint birthday. I got a present on their joint birthday. A plane in the basement.

  They had stolen the seats, and a beverage cart, from the hangar.

  Holy, I said, when they took off the blindfold. Sweet Jesus in the garden!

  They looked at each other. That’s a new one.

  The seats were arranged in audience formation, facing the short end of the rectangle. They were navy blue with a diamond pattern. They were bandaged (duct-taped) where necessary.

  A plane, a plane!

  I did a little jig of happiness. Uncle Thoby joined in. My dad tapped his foot.

  But that wasn’t all. At the front of the plane was a “cockpit” consisting of an old desk with knobs and dials glued on. Some of them actually lit up, don’t ask me how. I think they were part of an old stereo. A steering wheel was bolted to the front of the desk. Where did the steering wheel come from.

  Someone’s front lawn on Logy Bay Road.

  Much laughter.

  I stared at them. They were burglars. They were pirates. They were amazing.

  Captain, said Uncle Thoby. And he gestured at the pilot’s chair. I sat. My dad assumed passenger status. Uncle Thoby sat beside me. My co-pilot.

  I looked over my shoulder at my dad. I don’t think I’ve ever smiled so big as that.

  A plane. In our basement.

  Welcome to Qantas flight 123. This is your captain speaking.

  Okay, so we just stared at the pale green wall when we were flying, but we were flying for Chrissakes. We flew all over the world. We flew to China and France and I played with the knobs and said, Ladies and gentlemen, we will be experiencing some turbulence. When we were out of the turbulence, Uncle Thoby headed for the beverage cart. My dad said, Anywhere but London. Uncle Thoby, when he walked down the aisle, pretended to lose his balance. Steady on, Airbus 320.

  This is a 747.

  Sorry. Do you mean it has two floors. Yes!

  We are not converting the whole house into a plane, said my dad, who was reading the Telegram in seat 1C.

  Uncle Thoby sipped his beverage in 1D.

  I turned the seatbelt sign on.

  No reaction.

  I just turned the seatbelt sign on.

  Oh.

  That’s something we need to work on, said Uncle Thoby, fastening his.

  Sometimes I felt like being a passenger, and so my dad and Uncle Thoby flew. If my dad was flying, we went to places like Ouagadougou, Shanghai, and Dubai. If Uncle Thoby was flying, we usually went to Corner Brook.

  Since when does Qantas fly to Corner Brook.

  Since Australians began immigrating en masse to that lovely city.

  Oh. Okay.

  We never went to England.

  The flights were always more eventful when my dad and Uncle Thoby were flying because they’d had more in-flight experiences and could think up all sorts of (near) mishaps. Whereas for me there was only ever a) turbulence or b) trouble with the landing gear.

  When my dad flew, we often lost altitude. Inexplicably. Crap, we’re losing altitude again.

  What is it with you and altitude, said Uncle Thoby, flipping a switch.

  I’m going to drop fuel.

  No, you’re not.

  Yes.

  No.

  Into the ocean. It has to be done. Sorry marine life.

  Bloody hell.

  Three seats only had their flip-down tables intact. I always sat in a seat with a flip-down table. So I could flip it up and down, up and down. Ad nauseam.

  Speaking of which, we sometimes had our meals in the basement. All three of us facing forward, in our different seats. None of us in the cockpit.

  What is this barfy airplane food. Please pass me a sick bag.

  Hey.

  Who’s flying this plane! my dad would ask suddenly, leaping up. Oh my God who’s flying the plane.

  Much laughter.

  I stopped having plane crash dreams.

  Before a flight, Uncle Thoby would load our baggage. The cargo hold was under his bed. We were allowed only one item. I usually brought Wedge in his ball, who inevitably rolled out of the cargo hold with his hands in the air like there was some great emergency. Evacuate!

  My luggage has gone astray, I said, looking over my shoulder.

  If only we could train him to push the beverage cart, Uncle Thoby said.

  When Uncle Thoby flew, there was fog. Visibility is bad, he would say. I can’t see a bloody thing. I’m waiting for clearance from the tower. The ground could be anywhere. We may have to go back to St. John’s. Yes, I think we will have to go back to St. John’s. No Corner Brook tonight. Just a big old circle in the sky.

  Let me fly, my dad would say.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  Punch on the shoulder.

  Smoke in the cockpit, said my dad. Can you smell that. Sniff. Yes. That is a bad sign. Land immediately.

  Did you see a horse on the runway, I asked co-pilot Thoby.

  No. I was busy turning these knobs.

  There was a black horse on the runway.

  He looked at me. I don’t like the sound of that, Captain Oddly.

  I winked at him. Neveryoumind.

  Over time the plane was embellished. The cockpit got new lights. I liked to fly in the dark. Oval windows lined the walls with a sun-setty sky beyond. The cockpit got a windshield. In the distance, if you looked closely, you could see other planes flying.

  All this courtesy of Uncle Thoby’s long arm and a paintbrush.

  But what I wanted, what he couldn’t paint, was an actual glittering city to descend into. A New York, say. Or a Las Vegas. Captain Oddly flew into Las Vegas a lot. She had seen it on TV. The lights were bloody dazzling. Like a campfire when it is just embers. She was developing a taste for great safe adventures.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we are beginning our final descent into Las Vega
s International Airport. Can I ask you to ensure that your seatbacks are in an upright position and your seatbelts—

  Only gentlemen back here, said co-pilot Thoby, sipping something strong.

  It was all practice. So that I would be brave enough to be curious. Or curious enough to be brave. So that I would be able to get on board to new places. And when I finally did get on board, I would sit calmly but alertly in seat 12A or 14A or 21F. I would have a table of my own, or I wouldn’t. I might or might not have a secret compartment in my armrest. But I would not assume a crash position prematurely or don a life vest without due cause. And if things went terribly wrong, I would not sit idly by in audience formation.

  And in the event of the very worst thing happening—and by worst I don’t mean a plane crash, I mean, say I was left alone, really alone, on a desert island—well, I would just have to build a plane of my own, wouldn’t I. And I would practise taking off and landing. Just like in the basement. And I would make big circles to Corner Brook and back. And then I would widen the circles. I would widen and widen until I had crossed the ocean. Because maybe across the ocean there is another person, also on a desert island. And he thinks he is alone. But surprise, surprise. Here comes my Boeing 747 with a big maple leaf like an open hand on its tail. Bonjour, bonjour. And this other person looks up and makes his hand a visor. Sweet Jesus in the garden, he says. I am not alone. No, you are not alone. And I land my homemade plane expertly and dismount, sorry debark, and there he is on the runway, waiting.

  ANTONIO: In sooth,1 I know not why I am so sad.

  It wearies me, you say it wearies you;

  But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

  What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,

  I am to learn;

  And such a want-wit2 sadness makes of me

  That I have much ado to know myself.3

  I find Shakespeare’s use of exponents curious.

  I am on bookmark duty while Chuck stares out the window. He has been wearing the same boxer shorts for three days. Again he mutters something about the Willamette looking inviting. Well. That is getting a bit old now, isn’t it.

  Sooth to the power of one means what.

  When Chuck rehearses he does not say the exponents out loud. Nor does he say, I have much ado to know myself times myself times myself. In fact, today he is not saying much of anything. He looks pathetic over there from behind. Of course all humans look pathetic from behind, but Chuck especially so.

  You can’t be Hamlet every day. Or maybe you can. Maybe part of being Hamlet is not knowing if you are Hamlet. Maybe part of being Hamlet is being Antonio. Some days, anyway.

  Today he is Antonio. But he will not lower the bar so far as to play a Salarino, Solario, or Salerio. He has his standards. A moment ago, when he plopped me down on the Antonio passage, he said, The reason you’re so sad is because you’re a chump.

  Who, me.

  The way Chuck stands at the window waiting for someone to pick him up and hold him under their armpit—that is pretty sad. He is waiting to be told he isn’t a chump. He is waiting to be told he matters. That there are other roles in his repertoire besides a sad-sack Antonio who doesn’t know who he is because he is three different people in one (himself to the power of three). And if he has to die—today, tomorrow, someday—at least his death will not be a stupid one, let us hope.

  According to Chuck, Shakespeare gave all the characters he didn’t care about roughly the same name. But Hamlet. Now there’s a name. And wasn’t Hamlet roughly the name of Shakespeare’s son whose premature death the Bard never got over. That is mentioned somewhere in Lowering the Bard.

  Outside it is raining and what is Chuck thinking. That it is just Bend and Boring from now on. He opens the window. He stands atop the radiator and leans out. Hey. I do not have a piece of lettuce to drop. Hey. Do not be stupid to the power of two. Get back in here.

  Oh. He is just smoking. He is just breaking Linda’s rule and smoking with his torso out the window.

  Fine. Still, it seems to me that if you are going to lean out a window like that, and if you are not shaped like a tortoise (i.e., the rest of your body could also fit through the window), and if you are four or five storeys above ground, you should probably be wearing a harness. You should be what is called anchored in. Even Cliff, whose prime directive was not safety, was never so repelled by the role he had to play in life that he failed to anchor himself in properly before he rappelled off the fire escape at great speed. But of course Cliff was what is called a gearhead. Which means someone who loves gear for its own sake. He often slept in his harness.

  Sometimes of course it is necessary to sleep in a harness if you are leapfrogging up a tremendous cliff with another climber. If the cliff is so tremendous that it takes more than a day to climb, then you must bolt a special hammock into the rock and sleep 37,000 feet or thereabouts above ground with your harness on and eat nothing but Power Bars and wait for the sun to wake you in the morning when it hits your hammock. Cliff has done this on several occasions.

  Not that I have ever accompanied Cliff on a real rock climbing adventure. But I have, on one occasion, been part of a rock climbing day trip. That was when we all piled into Cliff’s car (Cliff and Audrey in front, Chuck and Linda in back, me on the DB) and spent the day at Lake Soupçon, which when Audrey pronounced it meant a little bit of suspicion, and when the others pronounced it meant supper’s ready.

  In any case, the reason for the trip was so Cliff could teach Chuck the basics of rock climbing. Really I think Chuck just wanted to learn to rappel. He had visions of rappelling into productions he was not cast in.

  Lake Soupçon is a shallow lake shaped like a soup bowl with sides that can be climbed by novices. These sides are not so tall that you have to leapfrog up. Rather, you can anchor a single rope at the top and practise climbing up and rappelling down, ad infinitum. Cliff could have climbed the sides of Lake Soupçon in his sleep. What was a soup bowl after the Yelps. But Chuck, with his scrawny arms, not so easily. Even though Cliff said arms don’t matter in rock climbing, they sort of do. I mean, an armless guy couldn’t climb a mountain without some pretty fancy prosthetics. What Cliff meant, of course, was that your legs are what matter most in climbing. You’ve got to walk up the rock, even if it’s vertical, not haul yourself up by your hands. Comprendez.

  Meanwhile, Audrey, Linda, and I bobbed in a rented boat in the middle of Lake Soupçon. Linda kept her head tilted back because she was trying to get freckles. Audrey already had freckles enough. She was holding the oars. I was on the dashboard, which is not called a dashboard in a boat but nevermind. I was on the dashboard, taking a bow over the edge and admiring my reflection in the still brown water.

  Careful, Iris. Will you grab her.

  Linda grabbed me and plonked me down in Audrey’s bare lap. I turned slowly around. It was hard to see Cliff because he was wearing his beige STEREOTYPES ARE USEFUL T-shirt—which is a joke, but one I don’t find particularly funny—so he blended into the rock. Mostly you could only see the pink rope and Chuck at the bottom, standing beside the cooler.

  Cliff was, I think, demonstrating a traverse. A traverse is when you move sideways along the X axis.

  Chuck was belaying. Belaying is when you hold the rope that is attached, via a pulley, to the climber. To nutshellize: Chuck was holding Cliff’s life in his hands, a situation that, judging from the tension in Audrey’s upper legs, did not sit well with her.

  Cliff started up the Y axis.

  Chuck decided he was thirsty. You could tell he had decided this by the way he suddenly had eyes only for the cooler. Audrey’s legs tensed so much that I nearly tipped off. Why. Because Chuck was breaking Rule Number One of Belaying, which is: Don’t take your eyes off the person whose life you hold in your hands.

  And then he broke Rule Number Two, which is: Do not let go of the rope when you are holding someone’s life in your hands.

  Followed by his breakage of Rule Number Three
, which is: Do not partake of a cold one while you are holding someone’s life in your hands.

  Audrey started rowing swiftly back to shore.

  Linda said, What the.

  But really, why was the cooler there if not to tempt him. And shouldn’t Cliff have known better. But, as I say, safety never was his prime directive. It was Audrey’s. Although the chances of Cliff falling during that brief interval when Chuck was not looking at him, when Chuck had exchanged the life he held in his hands for a beer—well, the chances were pretty slim because, as I said, the sides of Lake Soupçon were not so slippery as to foil an expert climber like Cliff.

  Audrey continued to row powerfully. Which is something you do need strong arms for.

  When we arrived on shore, or near enough that Audrey could splash out, she deposited me on the dashboard and bolted towards the base of the cliff.

  What is going on, said the clueless and freckleless Linda.

  Audrey scrabbled. She hip-checked Chuck and grabbed the rope. She yelled something to Cliff, who looked over his shoulder and started back down the rock. Now there were four hands on the rope and all eyes were on Cliff. When Cliff reached the bottom, he turned around—his T-shirt making its stupid statement—and Audrey dropped the rope and walked away. Stomp, stomp, scrabble, splash, she came back to the boat, picked me up, and headed for the car. For a moment I thought we were going to drive off into the sunset together. But we didn’t. Stranding is not her style. We sat together on the hood and looked up at the sky and waited for the others to pack up the gear. This took a long time. The sky got darker. The hood got colder. She put me under her T-shirt. Warm enough, she said.

  Two weeks later she came home with six boxes of climbing holds and proceeded to turn our flat into an indoor mountain. So that the walls became cliffs. Sorry, Cliff’s. So that if he fell, he fell six feet to the floor, max.

  Since the fall down the stairs I have been having some dental issues. What does impacted mean, because I’m pretty sure that’s what has happened to my teeth. They are impacted, I tell the receptionist in Dr. Overli-Domes’ office.

  She pauses in her typing. All of them, she says.