Call Me Alastair Read online

  Step 7. Fly? Float? Flutter? Flop? to ground and hide self in Fritz’s bicycle basket.

  And Step 8. Let Fritz chauffeur you, unawares, to Aggie.

  (From Fritz’s to Key West: to be determined at a later date)

  It’s brilliant, if I do say so myself.

  CHAPTER 23

  It’s been raining for days. Pouring.

  The one hitch in my plan has been that between substitute newspaper carriers and the car that’s dropped him off on these endless stormy days and has sat idling, waiting to whisk him off to the next stop, Fritz hasn’t bicycled in ages. (I’m pretty sure the car’s driver is Fiona. I spotted blue hair.)

  Bertie sighs. “How I melt in the rain. It’s the one thing Tiger and I agree about – neither one of us want our curls wet.” The forgotten curler at the back of her head looks limper than usual. Dejected even. “Plus, I don’t like driving in it. Phooey. Rain.”

  But after the fourth day of missing all her appointments, Bertie’s decided to brave the weather for the community centre and a trip to the corner store for essentials. She’s out of oatmeal.

  In a splash of rainwater, we rumble up to the two-storey, brick Shirley River Community Centre. Bertie sets the car in park, turns the key, and the rusty heap coughs and gives up the ghost in a cloud of exhaust. She pops open an umbrella and grabs a sandwich-board sign from the trunk. POP-IN FOR PARROTS MEETS HERE, the sign says in bright red lettering. And just below, somewhat smaller: A SOCIAL HOUR FOR SENIOR CITIZENS AND THEIR PETS (PARROTS AND PETS NOT REQUIRED). Bertie lugs it over to a puddle-less spot on the sidewalk, sets her umbrella down, and arranges the sign as the rain slaps against her coat and the plastic kerchief she keeps over her curls.

  “We’re here!” Bertie says, retrieving my travel cage from the back seat. “Are you ready to meet some new friends? Got a couple new people signed up this week. Fritz and Aggie won’t be here, but we’ll manage. It’s what we’re here for. Friends and good feelies.”

  Fritz has missed Bertie’s pop-in the past two weeks, once for a conference on bone spurs, and this time for a destination vacation to the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

  Bertie hauls my cage up the steps and through the oak door, huffing and puffing like the broken bellows of an accordion. The gym is dark when we step inside. Bertie flips a light switch, and nothing happens. She tries another. “Oh poo. The power’s out,” she says.

  It’s dreary outside, but the large windows in the gymnasium send in just enough light to see by. Bertie carries my travel cage up to the stage and sets it on the folding chair next to her. She pulls off her kerchief and coat, shakes off her umbrella, and sets all three beside her. She folds her hands in her lap and stares at the door.

  “Now we wait.”

  We wait. And wait.

  In the dark. In the quiet.

  For friends and good feelies that never come.

  We return home in silence. Bertie carries my cage up to the apartment and goes back down to gather her groceries. “That step nearly got me this time,” she says as she unties the plastic curl-protector from under her chin. She places the dripping umbrella on the radiator and carries a sack of groceries to the kitchen.

  “I keep telling Donny downstairs to fix that step. Donny, I says, I’m gonna take a spill, and it’s gonna be all your fault. You’re gonna have to come bring me flowers in the hospital, and violets are my favourite…” She unearths a canister of oatmeal from the bag, and then a flash of scarlet.

  My eyes fasten themselves to that colour.

  Then another flash. On the counter, two large bags of cherries sit gleaming in a pool of lamplight. I tremble.

  Bertie turns the radio dial to the wail of a few bluesy horns and sets about her baking. She stays mostly quiet, a stark contrast to the constant drone of the last week. Henry’s away on business, Alice and Betty are off on a cruise, and Irma’s got a new cell phone she doesn’t know how to use. The rain having kept Bertie from trips to the beauty parlour, the post office, even church, her listening audience has been down to three: Tiger, the fish and me.

  “Forget dinner,” I hear her say to herself. “Weather like this calls for pie. Pie’ll cheer anyone up.”

  The table is set for three.

  Rain beats against the window as Bertie shuffles over with two large pie plates. She’s spent the afternoon pitting cherries, rolling out dough and pinching it into pie plates, and slopping a gooey cherry mess in the middle of it. One pie has a crumbly brown top. The other has a blanket of flaky crust. I can make out something written on top of it, but I can’t get a taste for the words from my spot at the table.

  “I had planned on making a pie for Joan with the last batch, but Joan’s doctor says she needs to cut back on the sugar, and anyway, we could use the pie, now couldn’t we? One prize-winning Chocolate Cherry Crumble, and one Pie Surprise, coming right up. Sound good?”

  I’ve held my breath all afternoon, hoping she’d be generous with the cherries. All of a sudden, I’m not so sure. “Sounds suspicious,” I squawk.

  “Sounds suspicious,” Bertie agrees.

  Bertie sets an entire pie in front of me and the other at her place at the table. “Here we are. I gave myself the Chocolate Cherry. Chocolate’s not good for birds.” Bertie lowers herself into her chair. “Go ahead – dig in.”

  I look down at the pie in front of me. A flaky layer of pastry rests on top, with words painstakingly written in tiny flaxseeds.

  I am not eating it.

  Now I get it. It’s revenge pie. Bertie’s getting me back for eating all her cherries the last time.

  Maybe she’s followed Joan’s recipe and put in the wrong ingredient.

  It’s probably full of kitty litter.

  Pie Surprise, my foot.

  “Oh, silly me, I forgot the tea,” Bertie says. She grabs the kettle and pours a mug for herself and one for the absent Everett, whose picture is propped on the table.

  “A slice of pie, dear?” she asks, and serves his picture frame a slab. “My Everett loves this pie. You approve of pie for supper, don’t you, Everett?” She waits for an answer. “Good. Me too.”

  I look down at my pie again. I’m feeling my willpower ebb with each waft of cherry. I can’t smell the kitty litter yet, but I’m sure it’s there. The words I can’t read, but they call to me too.

  Probably says something really bad.

  A crash of thunder cannonades into the room. I pitch forward, and failing to catch myself, my beak cracks the surface of the piecrust. I straighten and lick the cherry goo from my beak as Bertie looks up, surprise on her face. She quickly realizes I don’t want to be ogled right now and lowers her eyes to her own pie.

  I’m glad she’s being considerate.

  I dip my beak in again. I pick around for bits of kitty litter, but it’s all sweetness – warm waves and pools and pockets of cherry. The taste is better than the smell. Divine. Sublime. I catch the taste of the flaxseeds and the words. They bump into one another, sorting themselves out. I continue to eat, and a simple poem takes shape in my mouth. It’s Bertie’s. It’s what she’s written on the pie.

  Roses are red

  Violets are blue

  Cherries are sweet

  And Alastair too.

  My beak hits the plate. I look down.

  I’ve eaten the whole pie.

  Bertie looks up again. Her face breaks into a sad sort of smile, and she winks at me. “Maybe we should eat pie for dinner more often,” she says.

  “Maybe we should,” I answer.

  All right, so she’s not so bad after all.

  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bertie1

  I

  Amid thirty flowered pillows,

  All that stirred

  Was the mouth of a Bertie.

  II

  I reckon I should fly

  To a palm

  With an absence of Berties.

  III

  Bertie spun like a polka record.

  And crashe
d a hip into the unoffending bureau.

  IV

  A husband and wife:

  A family.

  But a husband and his widowed Bertie?

  It changes nothing.

  V

  I cannot think which I like better,

  The prior calm

  Or the stillness after,

  Bertie’s silence before the phone rings

  Or the final click of the receiver.

  VI

  Raindrops tapped against the fire escape

  In melancholy time,

  As the bent shape of a Bertie,

  Trotted dismally by,

  Dusting

  Her path with words

  And the motes from silver picture frames.

  VII

  O wise fish, Humpty Dumpty,

  Do you sense something deeper?

  Does Bertie scatter

  More than fish flakes

  On the waters of your bowl?

  VIII

  I have savoured Norton’s prose,

  Relished rich and piquant2 poems;

  But I taste, too,

  Bertie’s pie

  And the simple words she left there.

  IX

  When Bertie tangoed to the kitchen,

  A lot of noise left the room

  And a little light.

  X

  It was just glimpse of Bertie

  Dancing with the teapot

  That found a bird of stolidity3

  With a smile of his own.

  XI

  He dropped letters in every mailbox

  The county over.

  When his heart gave out

  On a winding country road,

  He left a truck of bills and unopened birthday cards

  And a Bertie.

  XII

  The clock is ticking.

  Bertie must be talking.

  XIII

  It was dark in the gymnasium.

  The sky broke open,

  And continued to break.

  And Bertie waited,

  Wiping tears from her wrinkles.

  FROM THE DESK OF ALBERTINA PLOPKY

  Dear Everett,

  Let me set the record straight. I did not hit that fire hydrant on the way home from the community centre last week, I don’t give a fig what Delores says.

  But thanks to that meddling old bat, everything’s gone topsy-turvy.

  Henry decided he was going to make me take a senior-citizen driving test. Said he was going to come up here and take my keys if I didn’t. You can imagine my reaction.

  Your son and I have traded phone calls, written letters. He’s been no peach, let me tell you. Started in on me about moving again too. We’ve been duking it out for what seems like for ever over these nasty bits of business; I never thought he’d finally put it on ice, let me have my own way.

  Then today I get a letter. Says he’s done pestering me about Florida, about the Pines, about my driver’s licence. Said he can give me a recipe, but he can’t make me cook.

  I don’t need bifocals to see he’s looking out for me, thinks he’ll keep me out of trouble.

  But I see things the way I see them. There’s no changing an old bird’s mind when it’s stuck on a thing. (Plus, I can throw a mean kick to the shin when it’s called for.) I got my reasons for wanting to stay cooped up in this old apartment. Henry might not like them, but they’re reasons sure. He might find he’s got a different pair of eyes when he’s on this side of the hill.

  I know I’m no spring chicken.

  I may not be as spry as I once was.

  I may get tired sometimes and have an ulcer that acts up. Got more chin hairs than I’d like to say.

  Getting old is the pits.

  But I don’t want to be depending on anybody. I’ve been driving for sixty-five years, and nobody’s taking that away from me. It’s like taking flight from a bird.

  I’ll be right as rain here. Surrounded by my pictures and pets. With your old books and window boxes that would hurt too much to leave. The three of us were a family in these rooms. And all those memories can stay whirling in the air, making me smile a million smiles. I’ll be smiling here till my dying day.

  And that’s just fine by me.

  Love always,

  Bertie

  Medical Log, May 19

  •Age: 12 years 10 months

  •Weight: 55.5 kgs

  •Height: Only 134 cm (I had on two pairs of socks the last time.)

  •Current status: Pretty OK, minor cramping in the lower abdominal region (reassess hourly for possible appendicitis diagnosis), ingrown toenail still, wart

  Mrs Plopky was supposed to come for the grand opening of the Pet Pals room at school yesterday. We were both really excited about it.

  But she never came.

  So this morning, I got up enough courage to knock on her door while I was delivering papers. She seemed really happy to see me and told me it’s been raining too hard to drive and that she hasn’t been feeling like herself lately. Then she invited me to meet her at the Burger Den after school to make up for it.

  She came in a taxi. We got a booth by the window. I told her how Aggie was a hit and how almost everyone in school wanted to come visit her. Kids I don’t think I’ve ever even seen were coming in to pet her and feed her cashews. I told Mrs Plopky about James and a few of the older kids who said pet therapy was dumb, but she said they were nincompoops and not to pay them any mind.

  And there we were, watching the rain and sipping our milkshakes, when out of nowhere, I told her the secret. I don’t even know how it came out of my mouth. It just slipped out!

  I thought she’d get upset and give me that look people give you when they feel awkward around you now. I thought she’d at least agree that I made a big, huge, awful, horrible mistake. But she didn’t. She just looked at me real calm for a long minute. Then she said, “Well isn’t that just the pits.”

  At first I thought it was a weird thing to say. I mean, when somebody tells you they let their grandfather die – because they missed the early warning signs they shouldn’t have missed because they were all right there in their medical chart, and that maybe they even tried to tell themselves it was nothing and that everything was OK because they were just too scared and couldn’t even think of what to do – then saying it’s the pits doesn’t seem very nice. I thought maybe she didn’t really hear me because I was crying, so I said it again. That Grandpa Bud had a stroke right there in front of me, and I didn’t do anything. He died. And it was all my fault.

  “Is that why you started your Pet Pals?” she asked. I kinda nodded my head and told her it was partly why – not the whole reason; I wanted to help other kids too.

  She stared at me for a few seconds again, like she was thinking. Then she shook her head, reached for my hand, and said that carrying that weight is an awful burden to bear and one I didn’t need to. She said it was just the pits that I had been for so long, that it was absolutely not my fault. No kid should bear the burden of being a doctor, she said, and any way you look at it, there are times the good Lord calls a person home and there just isn’t a thing anyone can do about it. All I could really do was just nod my head and listen.

  She said Grandpa would’ve hated me blaming myself and that living that way wasn’t doing anyone any favours. She told me to leave that guilt right there in that Burger Den booth and walk right on out. Then Mrs Plopky said this:

  She said life’s a lot like baking a pie. Something as small as salt can screw the whole thing up if it’s the wrong ingredient.

  “And the past is the past,” she started to say. “Don’t go ruining your pie because you left any one thing in the oven too long.” But then she stopped.

  I thought Mrs Plopky almost sounded like Letizia Tortelloni for a second, and I was hoping she’d explain what she meant a little more. But then she flicked her hand like she was waving something away and patted my cheek and said she was going to think on this some m
ore and we’d talk about it again soon.

  I really hope we do.

  Signed: The future Dr Fritz

  1. A Bertie-flavoured poem inspired by “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens.

  2. piquant: pleasantly strong in taste

  3. stolidity: the quality of remaining always the same and not reacting, changing, or showing much emotion or interest (I ate that exact definition from the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary.)

  CHAPTER 24

  “If you’re feeling any weakness or numbness in your arms or legs, it could be a bone spur,” Fritz is telling Bertie. It’s an unseasonably warm day, finally, the first of a week of them, the weatherman reports, with no rain in sight. The Burger Den has fans in every window.

  Aggie’s perched on the back of the booth, an inch from a fan, wings up, feathers billowing. Since her pet store days, she’s grown a glossy coat. My eyes dart over her. It’s obvious not a feather is missing. Even the ones perpetually askew at the top of her head look somehow more put together. “Alastair,” Aggie calls down to me.

  I’m in my carrier. I was allowed out for a second there.

  But then I tried to bite Fritz.

  “Yeah?” I answer.

  “I really love this, you know.”

  “Love what?” I ask.

  “This. All of it. I love seeing you every week. I love Fritz and Bertie. I love bone spurs—”

  “Aggie,” I cut her off. “This – this isn’t ideal at all. I mean, it was far from ideal when we lived at Pete’s! We see each other, what – once a week? For two hours, tops? And even then we’re shouting over the sounds of sizzling patties and ‘Order up! Got a Big Bear burger with cheese!’”

  “Oh, Alastair—” Aggie begins.

  “No, Aggie,” I say. “I mean it. This was not in the plan.”

  Aggie cocks her head. “What plan was that?” she asks innocently.

  “What plan!” It comes out gruffer than I intended. I soften my tone. “What plan? The plan to break out of here. You and me. The plan to fly off, find a nice place to live? Remember Key West? Our palm tree? That plan?”

  Aggie smiles weakly. “I thought those were stories,” she says. “They were really nice stories. They made me feel better when I was sick.”