Come, Thou Tortoise

  One wire!

  That’s why you feel a gust of wind a long time after the power flickers. That’s how long it takes the wind to get here from the isthmus.

  We lie still and listen.

  Judd says the sound of the wind is the sound of the earth moving through space.

  I think I will sleep tonight. My head on Judd’s stomach. My hair still damp. He is knitting something blue. I watch the distant city on the table. You deserve a trip to Stockholm for your lights, I tell him.

  The needles pause. Hand on my shoulder.

  Thank you for my parachute, I say.

  There are tiny battery-powered Christmas lights strung around my ramparts. Nice touch. I examine the nine-volt battery in the corner of my castle and, when no one is looking, try to eat it. No. That won’t be happening.

  Chuck and Linda are having a Christmas party. Lucius, Dick, and co. are invited, plus their insignificant others. Linda is already dressed and jingling. The footfalls of actors will soon be heard on the stairs. Chuck bloody Stanch, she yells. Are you ready.

  Anon, good nurse.

  She rolls her eyes and pours herself a shot of Baileys. What the hell, she says, and pours me a shot too. Merry Christmas, Winnifred.

  Okay, maybe I am warming to them. Earlier, when Chuck was decorating my ramparts, he said, You have a beautiful castle, Winnifred.

  I dropped a piece of lettuce. It has a name. Papier Mâché.

  And it is a beautiful castle, only sometimes I get tired of reading the same old stories through the wash of purple paint. For instance, that story about canine acts of heroism on the north wall. Sigh.

  I sip my beverage and reminisce about Christmases past.

  Speaking of dogs, there was the Christmas we spent in Boring with Cliff’s parents who own a Seeing Eye dog training facility. Cliff’s parents have twenty acres of land in Boring and more than a hundred golden retrievers. On the way out to Boring, Audrey expressed some concern about meeting Cliff’s parents and so many canines at the same time.

  From the dashboard I seconded that concern.

  Cliff said, They’re really very boring. You’ll see. We’ll watch Lawrence of Arabia and you’ll want to put a gun to your head.

  Audrey said there is a rule that goes: If you own a dog, you are sad. So what does owning a hundred dogs mean. You’re suicidal, I offered.

  Cliff said, My parents aren’t sad about anything except that their elder son climbs rocks and wants to be a stuntman.

  Audrey patted his leg and looked out the window. She remarked on the abundance of ivy.

  Cliff said that if you grow ivy on purpose in Oregon they throw you in jail.

  Go on, she said.

  It’s true, he said.

  So if I cut off a sprig of ivy and put it in a glass of water—

  I’d have to report you to the authorities.

  Which made her smile. All was fine. She relaxed.

  We arrived at the ranch and the Seeing Eye dogs were everywhere and golden. Mother of God, don’t open the door. She opened the door. I could tell by the way the dogs sniffed the air and turned somersaults that my presence was intoxicating, that I would be fulfilling a lifelong dream if I were to consent to a quick romp around the yard between clamped canine jaws. I withdrew halfway into my withdrawing room.

  They bounded around us. They tried to trip us up. What kind of Seeing Eye dogs try to trip people up.

  On the porch stood Cliff’s mother, father, and brother Ridge, none of whom were blind. I expected one of them to be blind. Audrey carried me like a dish over her shoulder.

  Cliff’s father made a joke: Is that dessert.

  The actors have brought a tomato plant. For some reason this is funny. Chuck chuckles. Merry Christmas. Also there are girlfriends. Are the girlfriends real or are they actors. One is definitely not an actor because she is a nurse and she has just got off duty and is still wearing her nurse’s uniform, which looks to me like pyjamas. In fact, the cartoons on her pyjamas are very similar to the ones on my castle floor. I would like to show her my castle floor, if she would look my way. Her name is also Linda (confusing) and she works on the maternity floor. She helped deliver a Christmas baby today. They named the baby Poinsettia. You’re kidding, says Linda. No, says Linda.

  In the living room Chuck is waxing on about Kenneth Branagh, of whom he is not a fan.

  Fuck, who got him started on Branagh, says my Linda, depositing the tomato plant on the counter.

  Cheers, I say to no one in particular.

  Two Lindas and a Twyla bend over my castle.

  Wow, she liked the Baileys, says Linda.

  You gave a tortoise Baileys.

  I gesture at the floor. Yes, they nod. They have noticed the cartoons and they are indeed a match for those on Linda’s pyjamas. Charlie Brown never gets old, remarks Twyla.

  There were no adults in Charlie Brown, says Maternity Linda.

  Wasn’t there a teacher, says Twyla.

  She was just a squawking voice, says my Linda.

  Distance education, says Twyla.

  I’ve always found Charlie Brown creepy, says Maternity Linda.

  I back into my shell, which is involuted like a galaxy. Involuted means spiral-shaped but also raised to the power of. As in an exponent. As in, I have much ado to know myself times myself times myself. In short, the underside of my shell is both infinite and cosy. How can infinite space be cosy, you ask. Clearly you are not a tortoise.

  In the living room, Chuck says, Don’t be such a want-wit.

  Space swirls above me.

  Kissing on the porch, all that.

  I was on the railing. The dogs had closed their eyes. From inside came the sound of Lawrence of Arabia. It was warm. No wind. She said how excruciating the beginning of that movie was. How long it took the bloody man on a camel to arrive.

  It’s filmed in real time, said Cliff.

  Kissing on the porch.

  The sky was clear and full of stars.

  Cliff said about Switzerland, about going back to the Yelps. Madame Mourou had warmed to him in the end, hadn’t she. She had stopped calling him Hollywood. Maybe they could stay with her.

  My shoulders sagged. Would this be another Dubai. Would I be left behind for the next tenant. Would I be left.

  She stopped calling you Hollywood in order to call you something worse, said Audrey.

  Oh, he said. Right. What did she call me again.

  Ivrogne.

  Cliff, who had climbed in French but not spoken it much, said, Which means.

  She hesitated. Stuntman.

  Cliff’s parents wanted him to go into the Seeing Eye dog business. They were tired of supporting his stunts. Now Cliff was thinking a good compromise might be to go back to the Yelps and train sniffer dogs to rescue people buried alive. Be an avalanche technician.

  Audrey said, But wouldn’t an avalanche technician have to go what is called hors piste.

  Well, yes.

  I think I would say no to you going hors piste.

  The thing about life in the Yelps is, it isn’t boring. Remember, said Cliff, how I came to your rescue on top of Mont Dieu. You fell on your ass and lost both skis, remember. And—

  And you sat beside me and shared your trail mix.

  Yeah. Good times.

  I knew this story. How he came to her rescue, retrieved both her skis, and said he was from Boring, Oregon. But I think you’ll find I’m not, he’d said.

  True enough.

  And they’d come down from the mountain and she’d introduced him to Madame Mourou, who’d said what kind of name was Cliff. A Bold and the Beautiful name, she’d said, which was a soap opera she watched religiously and with much scorn.

  And Audrey had said, He is very bold and very beautiful. And she had sneaked Cliff into her room, which was directly above a bar named Pauvre Jean-Jacques! after a famous French philosopher known for his whining. She sneaked him into her room, and the music from Pauvre Jean-Jacques! came up through the flo
or, and they danced until their clothes came off, and she said things like, You are so sculpted, Cliff.

  And Cliff could do this thing where he fell downstairs but never got hurt. He called it waterfalling. It was a stuntman’s trick, he said. Stuntmen have to know how to fall and never get hurt.

  Yes, but if you are climbing a mountain and you fall, it is curtains. And if you are buried under an avalanche, it is also curtains, even if you are a stuntman.

  Now he kissed her. And I wanted to move along the railing to give them some privacy, but I could not. My feet were straddling the beam. Plastron flat against the wood.

  Earlier, when Cliff’s brother Ridge had called me a turtle, Audrey had pointed at my feet and corrected him thusly: A turtle is to a tortoise what a mermaid is to me.

  That hurt a little.

  I looked away. I stared up at the moon with all its goddamn ski hills.

  Ridge poked his head out to say, Opening scene’s over. Camel’s arrived.

  Boxing Day and I’m sitting on the steps of the Before Building with my fists clenched. The wind punches me in the face. Jesus Christ I could beat the crap out of the guy who designed this campus to increase wind speed. My eyes water. My stye itches.

  Here comes the Lada.

  Verlaine sits for a moment and looks at me through the windshield. I wave.

  Of course she’s not wearing a coat.

  Guten Morgen, I say as she comes up the steps.

  She gives me a dark look. Non.

  Please. I scramble to my feet.

  She unlocks the door. I’m not a tour guide.

  You used to be. In Christmases past. Is it because I hung up on you.

  Non.

  I just need to see Dr. O’Leery’s torture chamber so I can cross him off my list.

  I follow her inside. She glances at me over her shoulder. You look better, she says.

  Really. I fluff my bangs.

  But you sound as détraquée as ever.

  Détraquée.

  Off the rails.

  Yeah, I know. I follow her down a corridor. Just give me thirty seconds.

  I’d have noticed if your Wedge was in O’Leery’s lab.

  Did you look.

  Bien sur I looked.

  I don’t think you really did.

  In my experience Verlaine does not look closely at the animals in her care. She looks closely at their water levels and food pellets and sawdust.

  We stop outside a door that reads her thumbprint. Wow, that’s new. Why is security so tight.

  Because it can be.

  Oh. She doesn’t say I can’t follow her. So I do. We pass my dad’s lab. His name is still on the door.

  Thirty seconds, Verlaine says as she unlocks Dr. O’Leery’s lab.

  The mice in Dr. O’Leery’s lab have crushed spines. I walk up and down the rows. The spines have been crushed but the mice are alive. They drag their lower bodies around.

  A mouse-sized sob rises in my throat. What is this research for.

  Didn’t I say this was a bad idea.

  I thought Dr. O’Leery was a psychologist.

  I don’t know what he is these days. Look, Audray. If you really believed Wedge was here you’d have beaten down the door five days ago. He’s not. Let’s go.

  The mice have alphanumeric codes on their ears like licence plates. No simple numbers.

  How do their spines get crushed.

  No response. She is holding the door open. Big arms folded. Okay. Moving right along. Who tattoos their ears. You do, don’t you.

  Sorry.

  How many mouse ears have you tattooed.

  It is not exactly tattooing.

  How many.

  She turns off the light. Over the years, I don’t know. Too many to count.

  What did I expect to find in there. I don’t know. If not Wedge, then maybe a picture of my dad being used as a dartboard. Something. I stop outside the door of my dad’s lab. Can I.

  Verlaine hesitates, then takes her keys out of her pocket.

  It is empty but it still smells brainy. Hey. The cauliflower brain! That brain is a person. My own brain still trips over that. What will happen to Mr. Cauliflower. Will he find a home. I take him down from the shelf.

  Don’t, Audray. It is toxic.

  I’d like to keep it.

  She sits down in my dad’s chair. So is that what this is all about.

  What what is all about.

  Why didn’t you just say you wanted to visit your father’s lab.

  Because I didn’t know I wanted to.

  You can’t keep the brain. It is not yours to keep. But you can visit it.

  Which idea, visiting the brain, makes me laugh.

  She watches me.

  What.

  What is the English word for oeillères, she says. When you—and she cups her hands around her eyes.

  Blinkers.

  Yes. Blinkers.

  I turn away from her.

  I spoke to my aunt, she says. She scolded me for leaving you alone at Christmas.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Non.

  Non. Remember the Christmas light inventor.

  The boy who was looking for your father. Please put the brain back, Audray.

  Anon.

  You spent Christmas with a Christmas light inventor.

  Who better to spend Christmas with.

  Indeed.

  I turn the brain around. Where is the medulla oblongata. Where.

  Verlaine slaps her thighs. Okay, she says. Allons-y.

  I have a question for you.

  She’s at the door, hand on light switch.

  Uncle Thoby said you went to the hospital.

  She drops her hand. Don’t look at her.

  My question is: Did you make a moving speech at my dad’s bedside.

  A moving speech.

  Did you talk to him.

  I might have talked.

  About me.

  Non.

  Did you secretly talk about me.

  I don’t know what that means.

  Did you secretly talk about me and pretend that you didn’t.

  Non.

  Secretly. I sneak a look at her.

  No response.

  I just mean. Talking about me might have made him open his eyes.

  He didn’t open them.

  But you tried.

  I tried.

  I nod. I put the brain back on the shelf. On the way out, I notice my dad’s stopwatch hanging from the coat rack. It’s stopped at 10:02:48. My dad pushed the stop button at 10:02:48. Can I keep this, I ask.

  That you can keep, yes.

  Back at the Civil Manor, Judd is asleep with his arms over the covers. I lie down on top of him. His arms close around me like a gate. Outside, the wind dies down.

  Did you find him.

  No.

  That’s good news, isn’t it.

  I nod into his neck.

  The stopwatch digs into our chests. What is that, he says.

  I shift. The clock is counting forward again. I’m down one local suspect, I say.

  I meet Patience for lunch at the Snark, the faculty lounge, and interrogate her about Humouse House and Lionel de Tigrel. Has she ever heard of them.

  She rolls her eyes. Don’t get me started.

  So you have.

  No. But just the names are enough.

  I tell her that Wedge, my valuable childhood pet, has disappeared. And I mean valuable. Two million dollars valuable. I raise an eyebrow, like, are you sure there’s nothing you’d like to confess to.

  She listens to me with her feet tucked under her. The chairs in the Snark are big and leather. She asks if I’ve heard of a Victim Impact Statement.

  I’m still so focused on Wedge that I think she means on his behalf.

  It might be good for you to write one.

  Then I realize she’s talking about my dad. And the people who mowed him down. And me.

  At the end of the day, she says, you need
to carry on.

  I nod. I study my list of suspects. By the end of the day, I tell her, I need the email addresses of my dad’s grad students.

  My dad used to say I was chalant. A lost positive. Nonchalance, he said, is indifference to mystery. Nonchalant is one of the worst things a person can be. You hang on to your chalance.

  Right. Patience is a bit nonchalant. But I am not discouraged. Indifferent to mystery is the last thing I am.

  Later that afternoon I send my dad’s students a message. Subject line: Si Difficile Outbreak.

  This is to alert you that the antibiotic-resistant superbug known as si difficile has been discovered circulating among laboratory rodents in the St. John’s area. If you have been in direct physical contact with a laboratory animal, especially a mouse (including domestic pets), during the past seven days, could you please report to the Student Health Centre tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. for treatment.

  Sincerely,

  Denise Cavalier-Smith

  Director of Student Health

  I rub my hands together. I think this such a clever little mousetrap. It is all si facile!

  Until I get one reply, then another, then another.

  It’s C. difficile, you idiot.

  This is what happens when your suspects have higher IQs than you do.

  Still, the next morning, I wait outside the Student Health Centre, hoping someone will show up, hands in the air, confessing, It was me. I loved your dad and wanted his mouse. I’ve been taking excellent care of him.

  I’m sure. But he’s not yours to keep.

  I wait and wait but no one shows up.

  It is amazing how si facile it is to get the names of the people who killed my dad. I ask Jim Ryan and he tells me. He already knows. He has been holding on to this information since the collision occurred. One of the first things he did when he heard about my dad was call a friend at the Stab.

  The names: Gill and Tina Tilley.

  It’s for a Victim Impact Statement, I tell him. Emphasis on Impact.

  Is that a good idea.

  Don’t you worry.

  And so it is that Judd and I end up in the backyard of the Tilleys out in Mount Paler, swinging on their swing set, waiting for them to come home.