The revelatory bits swimming around in her mind crash into one another, begging to be linked together.
There was a girl. Erik . . . and the girl. Erik fathered a child.
A child that grew up, away, unknown. She can’t believe she never saw it before in so many of Cameron’s mannerisms. In that heart-shaped dimple on his left cheek, the one she always admired, although she could never put her finger on why.
“You knew, didn’t you?” she says to Marcellus in the bucket. “Of course you did.” She leans down and touches his mantle again. “You’re so much more intelligent than we humans give you credit for.”
Marcellus lays the tip of one of his arms across the back of her hand.
Tova crumples to the ground again, this time propping her elbows on the rim of the bucket. Once the hot, fast tears start spilling, she’s powerless to stop them. Droplets pelt the surface as her thin shoulders heave, falling faster with each monstrous sob. No one is here. No one is looking. Throwing caution away, she allows the grief to course through her. Finally, the tears slow to a trickle, punctuated by hiccups. Her eyeballs feel hot and dry.
How long does she remain in this state of unmitigated grief? It might be minutes or an hour. When she lifts her head at last, her stooped shoulders ache.
“What am I going to do without you?” she says, dodging a hiccup, and he blinks his kaleidoscope eye, which is now more rheumy than ever. He might only have weeks or days left, Terry said. She sits up, swiping away the tears with the back of her hand. “For that matter, what am I going to do with you?”
She stands and squares her shoulders, shrugging the soreness out of her back. “Come on, my friend. Let’s take you home.”
IF THERE WERE any straggling fishermen or late-sunset walkers on the Sowell Bay waterfront that night, they would’ve been treated to quite a sight: a seventy-year-old woman, ninety pounds at best, pulling a sixty-pound giant Pacific octopus in a yellow bucket down the boardwalk toward the jetty. Tonight, though, the only witnesses are seagulls, and they scatter from the trash bin, lobbing indignant squawks at Tova as she wheels Marcellus by. It is not a fast journey by any means, but Marcellus trails an arm out each side of the bucket like he’s riding in a car with the windows down.
Tova laughs. “The breeze feels nice, doesn’t it?”
The tide is way out. Tova can barely hear the waves lapping on the rocks, it’s so far out, feels like it must be a mile away from the waterfront path. Moonlight gleams on a hundred shallow pools, scattered like huge silver coins across the naked beach.
“This is going to get bumpy,” Tova warns.
The jetty, an engineered break wall of rocks and boulders, reaches across the bare beach and eventually out to the water, curving gracefully like a ballerina’s arm. On a summer afternoon, it will teem with beachcombers and adventurous picnickers, those looking for the most picturesque spot to sit and lick ice cream cones. Now, it’s empty but for a lone seagull posted at the very tip.
Wheeling the bucket across the jetty’s flat but pebbly top is no small task. Later, her back will certainly hurt. But
finally, Tova and Marcellus make it nearly to the end, where the low-tide water is at least a couple feet deep below the rocks. From the tip of the jetty an arm’s length away, the lone seagull glares at them, then lets out an atrociously loud squawk.
“Oh, quiet, you,” Tova scolds, and the bird flaps off.
She lowers to sit on a rock slick with salt water. Trailing a hand in the bucket, she clears her throat before commencing the short speech she’s been rehearsing in her head during their journey down to the beach.
“I must thank you,” she begins, and he clasps her arm one last time. “Terry mentioned you were rescued. I suspect you might rather not have been saved, but I am glad you were.”
She blinks back tears. Not again!
“You led me to him. My grandson.” Her voice falters on these last two words, but a warmth seeps through her at the same time. Two words she never thought she’d say. If only Will had been here to meet him. And if only Modesto wasn’t a thousand-plus miles away.
“You stole his driver’s license! You naughty thing.” She chuckles, and his arm squeezes her hand as she shakes her head. “You tried to tell me, and I wasn’t listening.”
Somewhere high in the night sky, an airplane cruises by, the faraway roar of its engine echoing over the calm bay. “It’s unfair that you spent your life in a tank. And I promise, Marcellus, I’ll do everything I can to make sure your replacement is the most pampered, intellectually stimulated octopus . . .”
The weight of her own words hits her. She’s not going to Charter Village. She can’t.
After a deep breath, she goes on. “We must say goodbye, friend. But I’m glad Terry saved you, because you saved me.”
Slowly, she tips the bucket. It’s about three feet down to the water. For a moment that seems extended in time,
before gravity catches up, Marcellus’s arm remains wrapped around her hand as his strange otherworldly body hangs in midair, his eye fixed to hers. Just as she’s about to be pulled down with him, he releases, and lands with a heavy splash in the night-black water.
