A baking-soda scrub takes most of the rust off the key. To Tova’s surprise, in spite of what it must have been through, it fits smoothly in her front door. She restores the original to its rightful place on her keyring, then unthreads the spare, which never did overcome the fact that it hitched in the lock on occasion. She tosses the spare in the kitchen junk drawer.
She’s only just returned to her morning coffee and crossword when a soft scraping on the front porch interrupts her. Her lumbar region pops as she rises from the kitchen chair, and with one palm bracing the small of her back, she shuffles toward the door, arriving in time to watch Cat shimmy through a loose flap in the screen door. When did that flap come loose? Another minor repair needed. They accumulate so quickly now that Will’s gone. It might be fixable with superglue.
She could go to the hardware store for superglue. It would be the same hardware store where Terry had gone to get a bit of wood to make that clamp work. The same clamp that had landed with a heavy thump in the trash collection bin when she’d thrown it away.
Cat sits down in the center of her foyer, tail wrapped neatly around the base of his slender body, and blinks at her, as if asking her what she is doing here, rather than the other way around.
What is it with creatures and small gaps lately? “Well, come along. We eat breakfast in the kitchen. I’m afraid
porch service has been discontinued.”
AT THE AQUARIUM that evening, her footsteps echo in the empty foyer. She begins her usual preparations. “Hello, dears,” she says to the angelfish on her way to the supply closet, then gives an efficient greeting to the bluegills, the Japanese crabs, the sharp-nosed sculpin, the ghastly wolf eels. She mixes the lemon and vinegar and props the mop and bucket in the hallway. It will be ready for her when she returns.
As usual, Marcellus is tucked behind his rock. She ducks through the door to the pump room, immediately relieved to see no clamps on his tank. A wave of guilt washes over her. Does Terry assume he misplaced it?
The image of Cat where she’d left him on her way out, curled up on her davenport, flashes through her mind. Without really intending it, she arrived at a decision not to repair the screen, at least for now.
Let the creatures have their gaps, then. She laughs aloud. The pumps gurgle their agreement.
She pulls out an old step stool and carefully climbs, then slides off the cover over the back rim of the tank. Looking down at a bird’s-eye view, she sets her jaw through a wave of dizziness brought on by the mechanical rippling of the water below. Then she pushes up the sleeve of her sweater and hovers a finger over the surface, wondering if her arm would be long enough to reach if she tried to poke him in his hiding spot. Not that she would ever try. Hiding spots ought to be sacred.
But she needn’t have considered such drastic measures, because he floats out and drifts upward, his eye trained on her. One of his arms wafts back and forth, and Tova imagines he is waving. She lets her hand drop in, and her breath catches, either from the cold water or the absurdity of what she is doing or perhaps both. Almost instantly, the octopus reciprocates, winding two of its tentacles around
her wrist and forearm in his particular way that makes her hand feel heavy and peculiar.
“Good evening, Marcellus,” she says formally. “How has your day been?”
The octopus tightens his grip, but in a genteel manner Tova interprets as a pleasantry. The equivalent of Very well, thanks for asking.
“You’ve been staying out of trouble, then,” Tova says with an affirming nod. His color is good. No more dustups with the pile of cords in the break room. “Good boy,” she adds, then immediately regrets it. Good boy is what Mary Ann says to Rolo when he sits for a biscuit.
If Marcellus takes offense, he doesn’t show it. The tip of his arm attaches to the crook of Tova’s elbow, then reaches around the other side and taps the knob of her funny bone, as if trying to understand the mechanics of the joint. How strange her anatomy must seem to him, all sockets and brittle bones. He pokes at the flap of skin sagging from her tricep, pulled by gravity’s hand, which grows more insistent each year.
“Skin and bones. That’s what the Knit-Wits say, when they think I’m out of earshot.” She shakes her head. “We’ve been friends for decades, you see. Used to meet for lunch every Tuesday, but now it’s every other. When Will was alive, he’d chuckle at me as I went out the door. ‘Don’t know how you stand that old pack of hens,’ he’d say.”
The octopus blinks.
“They can be a terribly gossipy bunch. But they’re my friends . . .” Tova trails off, allowing her words to be swallowed by the hums and gurgles of the pumps. How strange her voice sounds in here, muted by the muggy air. Oh, what the Knit-Wits would say if they could see her now. The old pack of hens would have a field day with this. Tova wouldn’t blame them. What is she doing here, telling her life story to this strange creature?
Still gripping her wrist firmly, the octopus traces the birthmark on her forearm, the one Tova used to hate when she was young and vain. Back then, it sat like an outcast on her smooth, pale skin, three outrageous splotches, each the size of a kidney bean. Now, the birthmark is barely noticeable among the wrinkles and liver spots. It seems to be of great interest to the octopus, though, as he prods it again.
“Erik used to call it my Mickey Mouse mole.” Tova can’t help but smile. “He was jealous, I think. He said he wanted one, too. One time, when he was about five, he got ahold of a permanent marker and drew one on his arm, just like mine.” She lowers her voice. “Mind you, he also decorated the davenport with that pen. The marks never did come out.”
The octopus blinks again.
“Oh, how upset I was at the time! But I’ll tell you what, when Will and I finally got rid of that davenport, years and years later . . .” Tova just nods, as if the sentence ought to have the decency to finish itself. And she doesn’t add that she hid in the bathroom as the furniture men made their way down the gravel driveway. Every piece of Erik was a fresh loss, even his ill-gotten artwork.
“He died when he was eighteen. Here, actually. Well, out there.” She tilts her head at the far end of the room, toward the tiny window overlooking Puget Sound, now darkened by night. Has Marcellus ever hoisted himself up there and peered out? Would the sight of the sea be a comfort to him? Or would it be a slap in the face, seeing his natural habitat, so close, yet so far? It reminds Tova of when her old neighbor Mrs. Sorenson would sometimes put her cage of parakeets on her porch when the weather was pleasant. They liked to listen to the wild birds sing, Mrs. Sorenson explained. It always made Tova feel oddly sad.
But Marcellus doesn’t follow her gaze to the dark little window. Maybe he doesn’t even know it exists. His eye is
still fixed on Tova.
She continues. “He drowned one night. Out on a little boat. All by himself.” She shifts on the stool, chasing the ache away from her bad hip. “It took weeks of searching, but they finally found the anchor. Its line was cut.” She swallows. “They continued to look for the body, but Erik was already picked apart by then, I’m sure. Nothing lasts long at the bottom of the ocean.”
The octopus averts his eye for a moment, as if accepting some measure of culpability for his brethren, for their position in the food chain.
“They said he must have done it himself. No other explanation.” Tova draws in a ragged breath. “It’s always been so peculiar, though. Erik was happy. Well, he was eighteen, so who knows what was going on in his brain? And yes, we had that argument . . . oh, it was silly. He and his friends were kicking a soccer ball in the house and they knocked over one of my Dala Horses. My favorite one. It was old, brittle . . . My mother brought it over from Sweden . . . Its leg broke off.”
She straightens on the stool. “In any case, he was also upset with me for forcing him to take that job working the ticket booth. But what was I to do, let a teenager loaf around all summer?”
The loafing was a trait Erik had inherited from Will. The two of them would lounge for hours in the den, watching football or baseball or whatever sort of ball was in season. Afterward, Tova would come through with the vacuum and suck up the potato chip crumbs from the seams of the davenport and take a rag to the water stains their sweating soda cans left behind on the coffee table. Even after Erik was gone, Will would do the same thing every time there was a game on: sit on his same cushion while Erik’s sat empty. Loafing as usual, as if nothing had changed. It always irritated Tova.
Keeping busy was much healthier.
“Any reasonable parent would have insisted their child get a summer job,” she continues with a tiny tremor in her voice. “Of course, if I’d have known what would happen . . .” Without thinking much about it, she reaches her free hand into her apron pocket, finds her rag, and begins to scrub at the crusty white calcifications lining the black rubberized rim of the tank. Stubborn, but eventually the gunk relents. The octopus maintains his grip on her other arm, although his eye shimmers in a quizzical manner that Tova interprets as: What on earth are you doing, lady?
She chuckles softly. “I can’t help myself, can I?”
On the far side of the tank, the grimy rim is just out of reach. She shifts her weight, stretching her arm, then suddenly the stool starts to wobble beneath her feet. In a flash, the octopus’s tentacles slip through her fingertips. She lands in a painful crumple on the hard tile.
“Goodness gracious!” she mutters, taking mental inventory of her various parts. Her left ankle feels tender, but when she stands, it bears weight. She plucks up her rag from where it landed beneath the tank. The octopus peers from behind his rock, where he must’ve retreated with all of the clatter. “I’m fine,” she says with a relieved sigh. Everything intact.
Except for the step stool.
It lies on its side, jammed against a pile of clutter next to the tank pump. It must’ve shot out from underneath her when she moved. Now its upper rung dangles, one end detached. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she grumbles, limping across the room to retrieve it. She tries to jam the rung back into place, but it’s missing some doohickey. She scans the tile for a screwlike object, squinting in the pale blue light, then retrieves her glasses from her apron pocket and looks again. Nothing.
She tries again, more urgently this time, to fit the rung back on, but it’s no use. How will she explain this to Terry? She is not supposed to be climbing on stools, and certainly
not pump room stools. For a fleeting moment she considers disposing of the evidence. Pitching the broken stool into the dumpster along with the night’s trash. Or better yet, removing it from the scene of the crime altogether. Taking it home with her and setting it out on her curb on trash day. But what if Terry were to drive by her house and see it there? Her heart hammers at the thought.
“No, I can’t do that,” she says firmly. And she can’t. Tova Sullivan is no liar. She’ll have to tell him.
Perhaps Terry will relieve her of her duties. At her age, he’ll conclude, the risk is too great. She won’t blame him.
Something sloshes behind her, and when she turns, the octopus is already partway out of his tank.
Tova freezes, rapt. “Terry was right,” she whispers, watching the creature flatten one of his thick arms and, in a way that seems to defy the laws of physics, squeeze it through the narrow gap between pump and the lid. It should be impossible. The gap can’t be wider than a couple inches. When he somehow morphs his enormous mantle, easily as large as a late-August watermelon, into seemingly liquid goo and works that through as well, Tova realizes she’s actually holding her breath in anticipation.
She exhales as he slides down the wall, then slinks across the tile and slips under one of the cabinets against the wall, vanishing completely. When he doesn’t promptly reappear, Tova wonders whether he intends to return. Perhaps he’s escaping for good. She swallows, surprised at the sting she feels at the thought. Like he ought to have at least said goodbye.
“Oh, there you are,” she says as he emerges from under the cabinet a moment later. Looking her directly in the eye, he slides over and, with one of his curled arms, deposits a small silver object at the toe of her sneaker.
Tova gapes. A screw. The missing doohickey.
“Thank you,” she says, but by then he’s already slipping back into his tank.
THE NEXT MORNING, when Tova wakes and steps into her slippers, she crumples to the ground again.
“What on earth?” She blinks. Her left ankle. Only when she sees the blush of purple spread over her foot does she realize it’s throbbing painfully.
On her second attempt to stand, she’s ready. Wincing, she shuffles down the hallway to the kitchen and puts on coffee.
She lasts until lunchtime before even considering a phone call to Dr. Remy.
By late afternoon, she’s convinced herself to retrieve the booklet of phone numbers she keeps stashed in the console in the den. She sits in Will’s old spot on the davenport, her leg propped on the coffee table with a sack of frozen peas balanced on her ankle, and flips through the pages. Then she sets the book down next to her on the cushion and turns on the television.
It’s nearly five when she finally places the call. Dr.
Remy’s office closes at five.
“Snohomish Medical Associates.” The voice is tinged with annoyance. Tova pictures Gretchen, the receptionist, leaning over the desk, phone receiver cradled under her ear as she juggles the jacket and pocketbook she’s already gathered. Perhaps she ought not to have called. But her ankle has swollen to the size and color of a plum, and as much as she dislikes admitting it, she might need medical attention. She gives her name and date of birth, and briefly explains her predicament, omitting the part about the incident having occurred at work. And she definitely doesn’t mention it happened while talking to a giant Pacific octopus. She simply says she fell from a stool while cleaning, which is technically true.
“Mrs. Sullivan, how awful.” Gretchen’s tone softens. “Hang on, let me see if I can catch Dr. Remy.” The line clicks over to staticky music, some soft-jazzy number that Tova supposes is meant to be soothing.
When the receptionist returns, her voice is more clinical. “The doc says as long as the pain is manageable for now, he’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning. I’m booking you an appointment for eight o’clock. He says to keep it elevated. And stay off of it.”
“Certainly,” Tova says.
“Mrs. Sullivan, this means no mopping at the aquarium tonight.”
Tova opens her mouth to protest, then snaps it shut. What business is her employment to Gretchen? First Ethan lecturing her while ringing her groceries and now this. Does anyone in Sowell Bay know how to mind their business? “Of course not,” she finally answers.
“Great. See you in the morning.”
Tova hangs up, then dials another number.
She drums her fingers on the davenport cushion as she waits for Terry to pick up. Has he noticed the damaged stool in his pump room yet? She’d gotten the screw back in, but apparently it needed some other sort of doohickey to tighten it all the way, so the top rung was still crooked. She thought she might bring Will’s old bag of tools tonight so she could repair it fully. Now, who knows when that will happen?
And then there’s the matter of the floors. Who will mop them tonight? Anyone?
Will Marcellus wonder at her absence? He understood the importance of fetching that screw, after all. This fact still marvels Tova.
“Tova?” Terry answers. “What’s up?”
With a grave sigh, she relays the same technically true story to Terry that she told to Gretchen.
It’s the first time in her life she’s called out of work.
