A Tortoise For the Queen of Tonga by Julia Whitty

Author:Julia Whitty [Whitty, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

It rains and rains this winter. He carries the green umbrella everywhere. When he doesn't use it in the rain, he uses it to lean on, like a cane, or on rare days of sunshine as a parasol. Additionally, it can be used defensively to jab with (or so he imagines). Conversely, it can be turned around and used like a crook, to pull things closer.

It's a marvelous tool.

A woman from campus administration stops him and asks him where he got it, then chats for a while. His photo appears on the cover of the college newspaper, an old man bent under banana leaves. As a result he seems to develop into something of an eccentric mascot, becoming, after generations of obscurity in the Mathematics Department, almost popular. Young male students pass him in the pounding rain, their jackets pulled over their heads, shouting jovially, "Hey, Umbrella Man."

He checks on it, and because no one ever claims Flora's remains, he finally does, which means he is charged for the urn, cheap and plastic, something like a thermos. He has no idea what he's going to do with it. For several days it rolls around on the back seat of the Buick. Then he moves it inside the house, onto the laundry room shelf above the washer and dryer. But that seems wrong. He debates walking across the bridge and tossing it back into the sea.

When his daughter discovers it, he has placed it on top of the refrigerator.

"Is this a crematory urn?" she asks, incredulous.

He is startled. "Yes."

She stares at him, words forming slowly.

"Is this ... Mom?"

"God, no." He sets his piece of chalk back into the cradle at the base of the blackboard. "Of course not."

"Oh," she says. "Someone I know?"

He lifts the urn from the refrigerator and sets it on the kitchen table. "It's Flora. The woman who jumped off the bridge."

"Flora," says Carla softly, trying out the sound of the word.

Their eyes meet.

Carla nods. "No one else wanted her?" she asks.

"No," he says. "No one did."

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