Call Me Alastair Read online

  Sometimes the nights take more than you’d expect.

  Eulogy for Melman Number Three

  You went belly-up sometime during the night.

  No one noticed your last gulp,

  except for maybe your goldfish kin

  who, eyes ever-open, see the whole

  world, both awake and asleep, with that

  unblinking gape and vacant stare.

  Did any one eye shed a tear as you went?

  You went belly-up, and though

  I knew you no better than

  Melman number one or two, I felt an

  unexpected diminishment at your

  loss – as if some last breath in

  you was taken from me, too.

  Does the chest sink a bit at every small passing?

  You went belly-up, and though there was

  no priest, no headstone,

  no final word to mark your dying,

  I want you to know that in

  the moments of your last

  walk to the porcelain grave1,

  there fell such a silence –

  over bird, cat, dog, mouse and man –

  that all of

  heaven

  seemed to wait

  in expectation of your soul.

  Medical Log, January 25

  •Age: 12 years 6 months

  •Weight: 55.4 kg

  •Height: 135 cm

  •Current status: OK, I guess – except for that toenail

  It was one year ago today that Grandpa died.

  It seems like it was yesterday.

  We went to the cemetery today, me, Mom and Fiona. It was cold and windy. It was one of those winds that comes right up the bottom of your coat, finds every hole in your pockets, and freezes your spleen. We didn’t stay too long because it started raining, but we left some stuff for Grandpa. Mom brought roses. Fiona propped up a small velvet picture of Elvis against his gravestone. Grandpa loved Elvis.

  I couldn’t think of what to bring. At first I thought I’d bring my report card, so he could see it, but I got one B, and I didn’t want him seeing that. Then I thought I might bring a picture of Aggie to show him, until I remembered how he always said he had a terrible fear of birds after one ran off with his hairpiece. He said it pecked him for good measure as it left. Never trusted a bird since, Grandpa always said. I ended up not bringing anything.

  When Mom and Fiona ran back to the car to get out of the rain, I stayed for a second longer just to tell Grandpa how much I missed him and how sorry I was. Then I reached inside my pockets because my hands were starting to get frostbite, and my fingers wrapped around some of my medical flash cards. I like to keep them on hand if I’m on the bus, or just whenever.

  Grandpa used to sit at the kitchen table with me and test me. Almost every night, right after dinner, just the two of us. I remembered one night he pretended to fall out of his chair in shock that I knew the definition of “zygomycosis”. I told him I had a book with that word in the title; it would’ve been kind of hard not to know. He laughed so hard tears ran down his face. Then he told me I must get my smarts from my grandmother’s side, because he couldn’t even remember how many toes he had. (He’d lost a few in an unfortunate encounter with a snapping turtle.)

  So, when my hand wrapped itself around those cards today, I knew what to do. I found a rock to keep them from blowing away and left a stack of them there. Maybe Grandpa will see them.

  And maybe now he’ll know the definition of “zygomycosis” too.

  Signed: Fritz Feldman, MD

  PS. As I was trying to think what to write tonight, I caught myself staring at my “rara avis” poster. (Alastair ripped up the last one, so I got a new one for my room.) I realized I never actually looked up the rest of what it meant. So I did.

  Amicus verus est rara avis: A true friend is a rare bird.

  FROM THE DESK OF ALBERTINA PLOPKY

  My dear Everett,

  Well, I’m happy to report I’ve kicked that pesky flu to the kerb. I’m fit as a fiddle! Took long enough. I’ve barely left the house except for a few doctor appointments since Christmas.

  Got me out of the trip, though.

  Henry went and bought me an aeroplane ticket to come visit him and the family in Florida after the new year. Said he had a big project at work and they couldn’t come here for the holidays like their usual.

  I’ll give you one guess as to how I reacted.

  Pernickety as a pig in a tutu?

  Exactly what I was thinking.

  Henry not visiting is one thing. Spending Christmas alone and not seeing my granddaughters open the dresses I bought them is another. But that boy knows how I feel about aeroplanes! A few hunks of metal held together by spit and glue have no business shooting me halfway around the world. And let’s not forget the last time. Lost in the terminal for an hour before he found me.

  I thought I’d have to tell him moths ate my luggage or some nonsense excuse, but in the end, I caught the flu. And it wasn’t a bad thing I did, because I have news.

  I bought a bird.

  Now don’t go getting your knickers in knots; one more pet won’t do me in!

  Here’s how it happened:

  I couldn’t sleep the other night, so I decided to hop in the old car to see if anything was open. Even the Thrift Mart was closed by that hour, but as I passed the pet shop, I noticed a light on and figured I’d stop.

  Peter looked less than pleased when I rapped on his door, said he was busy fixing his books. And I decided right then.

  I paid Peter no mind, told him I’d come for my bird, and I pointed to the one. He perked up after that. We agreed on a fair price (the poor thing was losing its feathers, so I got the scratch-and-dent special), and I ran on home, got my money, and ran right back to make my purchase.

  Your panties are in a pinch right now, I can tell, so I’ll tell you what I told Henry.

  Parrots make fine companions.

  A bird will keep me busy, so I’m not calling our son to remind him to take his vitamin C every chance I get.

  I always said a person should leave no good deed left undone. I’m taking my own advice. The bird’s bedraggled. He needs me.

  You only live once. I’m old. Why shouldn’t I own a parrot if I want one? Would you deny an old lady a bit of fun?

  If anyone’s that concerned, I’ll teach the thing to call me an ambulance.

  All my love,

  Your healthy, charitable, parrot-owning wife

  1. porcelain grave: the toilet

  PART III

  The Great Plopky

  – or –

  Alastair’s Adventures in Bertie-Land

  CHAPTER 16

  You can always tell the ones who are buying.

  It’s never the thin-lipped parents, pulled through the store by their sticky-fingered brood. They’ve come to fill an hour, not a cage. It’s not the pin-striped couples, either. They come with romantic notions about frizzy poodle pups or sprightly spaniels. They’ll leave to buy an easygoing plant.

  You can tell the ones who are buying.

  It’s the eagle-eyed kid with a sack filled with pennies. He trades it in for another sack full of goldfish.

  It’s the terrorized homeowner with a yard full of squirrels. He’ll leave with a squirrel-hunting cat.

  It’s the misty-eyed lady, empty nested, all alone. She leaves with a parrot. And a heart full of hope.

  “We’re home, Tiger! We’re home, Humpty! Yoo-hoo! Look who I’ve brought with me!”

  She took me from the pet shop in the middle of a cold, drizzly night. Fritz was nowhere in sight. Pete was deliriously happy.

  I somehow lost fourteen feathers on the eight-minute ride here.

  I’m devastated. I’m one of those robins who thinks he’s flying into clear blue sky – then crashes into the shop window.

  I’m like the kid who thinks his dad’s gonna call, only to realize he isn’t.

  I’m the guy who thought he wa
s going to rescue his sister and now has no earthly idea where to begin.

  She paid using small notes – ones, fives, a few tens – her rainy-day stash, as she called it, kept in her hose drawer. “I’m a little embarrassed to be flaunting my undergarments here, but I couldn’t find any envelopes or rubber bands to save my life!” she said, and pulled out a pair of roomy stockings stuffed to the hilt with cash and knotted at the top. Two lumpy legs dangled from her grasp and twitched like dying fish as she drew note after note from their open mouths, smoothed them out on the counter, and for an hour kept a running count. In the end, there was a thousand in each leg: a thousand for me, and a thousand for a cage and the various supplies Pete managed to wheedle her into buying.

  Fun fact: my life is worth the same as thirty kilos of iron bars, a bag of pellets and a plastic parrot scratcher.

  “Yoo-hoo! Ti-ger! Where’d you slink off to? Don’t you want to come meet your new brother?”

  Bertie’s apartment is a first-floor walk-up on a tree-lined street. Bertie takes me through its rooms, pointing out her bedroom (roughly the size of a closet), the parlour, and the kitchen furnished with a sink, stove, refrigerator and a small table, draped in a lace tablecloth. A tree of sorts sits at the table’s centre, balancing four fat, red mugs on four limbs.

  Everywhere you look, flowers bloom: bouquets in pictures hung slightly askew, petunias climbing the curtains, busy geranium wallpaper. About twenty pillows in just as many floral prints fatten the sofa, while crocheted afghans explode in colourful rainbows along the back of it and drape themselves over every stuffed chair and footstool in sight.

  Bertie rests a hand on her hip and frowns. “Well, I’ll bet that rascal is off sleeping somewhere. I guess you’ll have to meet him in the morning.”

  She points to the fishbowl, where a bulgy-eyed goldfish appears to hover in the middle, fins barely twitching. His mouth is a silent O. “That right there is Humpty Dumpty. My Everett bought him for me twenty-two years ago when I retired from teaching – isn’t that amazing?” She stops to sprinkle food in the bowl, but the fish makes no effort to reach it. After twenty-two years, I suspect nearly all the life’s been wrung out of him.

  “Everett said he was just the right pet for an apartment of our size. I told him I wanted a pony. But I wouldn’t give you up, Humpty,” she tells the fish, tapping on the glass. The goldfish doesn’t blink. “Humpty kept me company when Everett was out delivering mail all day. My Everett was a mailman, you know.”

  Bertie begins to move about a dozen plants from a corner in the parlour. “Your house is being delivered tomorrow,” she calls over to me. When she finishes, she brushes a few flecks of dirt from her hands. “There! Voila! There’s a big enough space for the cage after all!”

  Just then an enormous orange cat saunters into the room. He walks on tiptoe, baby-pink nose held uncommonly high.

  “Why, there you are, you darned cat!” exclaims Bertie. She scoops up the hissing ball of fur and comes hobbling over to me, the cat dangling in her outstretched arms.

  “See! This here is Mr Tiger. He’s – well, he’s none too friendly, but we love him anyway.”

  “Eat fur, bird,” Tiger snarls.

  I snap my beak at him.

  “Isn’t that sweet,” Bertie coos. “You two are making friends already.”

  Anxious and sour, I’m settled in my cage a few days later, taking stock of my feathers, while Bertie’s out getting her hair curled.

  “My, my, aren’t you a lucky bird?”

  Tiger oozes past my cage, back and forth, rubbing his side against the bars. He smiles wide and shows off a row of pointy teeth. It’s not a nice smile. More menace than mushiness, I’d say. He’s bent out of shape because Bertie’s given me a heap of toys from his personal hoard.

  “Whatcha got there?” he asks. “Is that – is that my stuffed mouse?” He rakes a paw against the bars and his claws chink, chink, chink on the iron. “What’s a wittle bird like you need a mouse for, huh?”

  “That yours?” I ask, pointing to the toy at the bottom of my cage. “Funny. Haven’t seen you playing with any toys.”

  “I don’t play with toys,” Tiger snarls. “I own them.”

  I’m not in the mood.

  I’m tired and cranky, and it’s increased greatly since I got here.

  The last few nights, sometimes twice nightly, Tiger’s parked his rump next to the fire-escape window and yowled until Bertie’s stumbled blindly from her bed to let him out.

  Now, were it simply the call of nature, that would be one thing. But what I thought was a nuisance, a simple case of night-time overactive bladder, I’ve come to realize is all about one thing:

  Power.

  Does Tiger find the kitty lavatory once he’s out there? Does he prowl at least, maybe hunt around like any self-respecting cat? Nope. He seats himself two inches from where he had just sat … and licks his paws.

  He. Licks. His. Paws.

  You can understand my current appetite for violence.

  Tiger stops stalking, and his eyes become slits. “Is … that … my … stuffed mouse?” he asks again.

  I turn my voice to syrup. “Well now, let me see,” I say, climbing down the bars of the cage and hopping to the bottom. “No – no, I do believe this is my mouse!” I snatch it in my beak and nearly spit it out. It bears a certain tuna fish aroma all over it.

  The willpower of an African grey, however, is steel. I grip the toy harder and pretend to play with the putrid little thing. “Yup – definitely mine,” I mumble through its matted fur.

  “Is it?” Tiger’s voice is eerily close to the fine whine of a rabbit. He thinks I can’t see it, but he quivers with fury. My eyes are pinned on him. I could see a mouse whisker in his intestine if I wanted to.

  “You know,” he says, “the last little critter that tried to play with Tiger’s toys – now let me see, it was a kitten, wasn’t it, a little kitten ol’ Bertie thought she’d pet-sit – well, he left. Minus an eye.”

  “Oh?”

  “I can’t promise I’ll be that easy on a bird.”

  I smile. “Not to worry,” I say. “I won’t be staying long.”

  (What. You thought I wouldn’t escape? I will as soon as I chew through these bars. Steel, however, is remarkably solid. It could be a while.)

  Tiger raises an eyebrow and freezes mid-clink.

  “This whole situation,” I continue, “it’s temporary. But until then…” I dangle the toy within his reach. “It’s my mouse.”

  We are locked eye to eye. Seconds tick. Bird and cat. Cat and bird. Nature at its best.

  Finally:

  “I think not!” Tiger screeches, and, like lightning, a paw flashes out and makes a swipe for the mouse.

  A single claw comes within millimetres of grazing my chest.

  I’m of course ready for it.

  The cat may or may not have a deep puncture wound right around the wrist area.

  CHAPTER 17

  Forty-four days, three hours, twenty-two minutes, eleven seconds.

  Fifty days, seven hours, twenty-four minutes, forty-six seconds.

  Fifty-five days, six hours, thirty-eight minutes, sixteen seconds.

  Since I last saw my sister.

  You get locked in a cage for a few weeks with nothing else to do but think about that stubborn pain in your wing, your failed escape plans and Aggie’s sweetly crooked smile, and you get the lay of the land pretty quick.

  Let me put this in terms of poetry:

  Bertie’s your sonnet: structured, predictable rhyme scheme, somewhat boring if you ask me.

  Then there’s Tiger. A bad free-verse poem. No rhyme or reason, a bit bloated, sloppy, lazy and painfully self-important.

  Humpty Dumpty – he’s more of a eulogy. I’m expecting him to go belly-up any moment.

  As for me, I suppose if I compare myself to something, the closest thing would be a limerick. A bit of a joke. I won’t mention the state of my feathers. The bald spots? Probab
ly an allergy.

  I’ve gone from fledgling to plaything (people like to throw their playthings) to prisoner and pet-shop special, then sold off to the only bidder: a little old lady who smells of talcum powder and has an affinity for talking.

  Without further ado, I give you: A Limerick.

  There once was a parrot named Al,

  Who had neither sister nor pal.

  One day he was bought

  (Which steamed him a lot)

  By a rabidly gabby old gal.

  “Janet told me last week that pears were on sale down at the farmer’s market. Ten cents a pound, Delores told her! I didn’t believe her – oh no I didn’t. ‘Janet,’ I says. ‘Janet, Delores is blind as a bat…’

  “Would you believe they found a paper clip in Alice Stevens’s fruit cup at the home? A paper clip right there in the peaches! Nearly choked on it, poor dear!”

  Bertie’s been on a roll this morning. She’s taken two breaths in three hours.

  “Guess who signed me up to make a casserole for the potluck supper at church next month? Wait’ll I tell Henry. Everyone’s talking about how they can’t wait to try my tuna noodle!” Bertie frowns. “Delores. She knows I’m no good at casseroles.”

  Henry is Bertie’s only child. She speaks with him every chatty Saturday unless his girls have a baseball game or he’s working. When she hangs up, it’s the only time Bertie gets quiet. Sometimes she’ll lower herself next to the bed, bruising her knees and getting a crick in her neck, as she bows her head and whispers into the mattress. “Casting my cares on the good Lord” is what she calls it.

  I’m not sure who this good Lord is, but he must have the patience of a saint.

  This week I’ve heard of nothing but last month’s potluck supper in the church basement and how Joan Merton mistakenly used salt instead of sugar in her strawberry-rhubarb pie, and how Reverend Hopkins was the first to take a big ol’ bite and oh! How he did holler!

  “Poor Joan,” she says, in today’s retelling. “Thought she was doing herself a favour by putting her salt and sugar in those fancy canisters.”

  Tiger, who’s been sitting on the counter all this time licking his paws, suddenly gets up and jumps to the floor, knocking over a box fat with recipe cards. They scatter over the floor like flower petals.