Lily and the Octopus

by Steven Rowley

  “Fine. You want to sleep down there? Then you will suffocate. You will cease being able to breathe. And the last thought you will have in this life is that I was right and you were wrong and you will go to your grave regretting having a brain the size of a walnut.”

  I lifted the covers and stared down at her and I could just make her out staring at me. By then I had all but given up trying to outstubborn a dachshund, an exercise in futility if there ever was one. All I knew was that I was tired and I needed sleep. I would dig her corpse out of the bed in the morning.

  Of course when morning came she was fine. She trotted up to the covers’ edge to greet the daylight, stretching her front legs in some complex yoga pose and yawning the sleep away.

  Tonight it is me who wants to burrow to the foot of the bed, to find the safest spot under the covers, where I can feel small and protected and warm. A spot away from the nightmare of the octopus, away from the reach of his quivering arms, away from what I know is coming next.

  Sunday Night

  On Sundays we eat pizza, the one ritual Lily and I have that stems directly from my childhood. When I was a kid, Sunday night was always pizza night. My sister, Meredith, and I would take turns making pizzas with my dad and it was the one night we were allowed to drink soda. It was something we looked forward to even though the weekend was drawing to a close. My mother enjoyed it because it was the one break she got from overseeing our endless feedings, something we never fully appreciated. (It was not in her nature to put her feet up, however, and she spent the time doing other thankless tasks like ironing our bed sheets or using the odder vacuum attachments to clean under the fridge.) My sister and I enjoyed it as something we could do with our dad. Making the pizzas was half the delight, and we had to claim Sundays on the calendar in the kitchen to stake out whose turn it was to help assemble the pies. The event was scored by the game-ending plays of football or the familiar ticking that starts 60 Minutes. (I’m Mike Wallace. I’m Morley Safer. I’m Harry Reasoner. And I’m Ed Bradley. Those stories, plus Andy Rooney …)

  Lily and I continue the tradition, although we usually order pizza to be delivered so Lily can bark at the deliveryman like a crazed townsperson accusing Goody Proctor of being a witch. I think she looks forward to it, too, even though it’s the end of the weekend, the end of the concentrated time we spend together before the craziness of a new week begins.

  I’m asking Lily if that’s what she wants to do, order pizza, when the octopus tightens its foul grip and the first seizure begins. I can tell something is wrong almost immediately, as Lily gets a confused look on her face and starts to back away. And then without further warning she stumbles and falls on her side, just tips over, unable to catch herself, and her legs go rigid and she seems to stop breathing.

  “Lily!”

  Her legs jerk and her body shakes and she stares somewhere far off in the distance and I drop the pizza menu and run to her side.

  “Lily!” I shout again; if she hears me, she can’t respond. I kneel and stroke her neck and try to support her head so that it doesn’t slam against the linoleum. After a few beats of this, her legs start to run, stiffly, without bending, and she foams a bit at the mouth. The whole thing only lasts about thirty or forty seconds, but it feels like an eternity, and when it subsides I am hot with sweat.

  “Shh, shh, shh,” I manage, worried that she will try to come out of it too quickly. I pet her gently, in the way I do when she’s restless at night and I want to lull her to sleep. Eventually she is able to focus on me, and I do my best to smile so that she won’t be overly alarmed, but I oversell it, looking more than a little bit creepy.

  “You look weird,” she says.

  I help her to her feet, but I don’t let go in case she falls again. She tries to take a few steps and I feel like an anxious father teaching his child to ride a bicycle without training wheels, holding on to the seat as they wobble awkwardly into balance. Lily takes three steps into a wall and falls into a seated crouch.

  “Take it easy, will you?”

  She shakes her head and her ears flop. “That was … different.”

  “Yeah. It was.” Don’t do it again, I want to add, but I know she’s not the one who did it.

  It was the octopus.

  It’s a toss-up to say who’s more shaken by the whole experience, her or me. I fluff the paw-print blanket that lines her bed, get her settled, scratch her neck the way that she likes it scratched, and beg her to try to sleep.

  “What about pizza?” She seems exhausted, like a boxer who just went twelve rounds instead of getting knocked out in the first.

  “You take a nap and I’ll order the pizza and when you wake up you’ll smell it and it will be here.”

  She yawns and her jaw squeaks like a rusty hinge and the only protest she makes is to remind me that she likes sausage. As if I could ever forget.

  “I know. You’re a sausage dog.”

  She falls asleep quickly and soundly. Her chest and soft belly rise and fall with each subdued breath. I sit next to her on the floor, my legs tucked close and my arms wrapped around them, and I make some of the eye rain she likes, but not too much. I don’t know where the rage first takes root—my heart, my gut, my brain, my soul—but it has been metastasizing over the four days since the octopus first came calling. I look it directly in the eye.

  “You.” I surprise myself with how guttural it sounds.

  There is no reply.

  “YOU!” This time I intentionally snarl.

  The octopus stirs. Its arms swoosh around Lily’s sleeping head like they did late last night and sluggishly it opens an eye. Horrified, I feel myself digging into the linoleum so as not to retreat. Holy fuck. What is this thing? It blinks at me drowsily as I advance, slowly, as close as I dare, neither of us making any sudden moves.

  It speaks. “If you’re talking to her, she’s asleep.”

  I jump back. Did I expect an answer? I don’t know. I’m alarmed and disconcerted and yet not at all surprised that he can articulate. He? He is a he, I think, with that voice. I think I knew this was coming. That one chapter was ending with another about to begin, that a foe this formidable would make himself heard.

  “I’m talking to you.” Since this is the first time I’m openly addressing the octopus, I should have given more thought to what I want to say. But this is all gut, all emotion; whatever is going to come out is going to come.

  “What can I do for you?” His tone is bored, verging on annoyed.

  “Fuck you, that’s what you can do.” I stare at him to wait for a reaction.

  The octopus feigns offense. “There’s no need to be vulgar.”

  I stare the octopus down. “Leave.”

  The octopus looks for a moment like he’s considering my directive. His gaze swoops up to the ceiling, hangs there for a beat, then falls back down to me. “No.”

  I stand, drawing myself up to my full height of six feet two inches, and outstretch my arms, making myself as large and as intimidating as possible. You’re supposed to do this with bears, I think, and other frightening things. As a final sign of my physical dominance, I puff out my chest. “Leave. Go. Now.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “However you came, leave.” There is an icy coldness to the exchange that chills the room ten degrees.

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” he says. I hate his smug posturing. I’m sorry. I’m afraid. As if he wants to leave but can’t, and the reason he can’t is beyond his control.

  “I won’t let you win.”

  “Win what, exactly?”

  “You shall not pass!” If I could strangle him, if I could get my arms around his eight and wrench him from her skull, I would. I would eviscerate him and tear his flesh, rip his pieces into tinier pieces and lay his guts bare. But I don’t dare, not knowing how he’s attached.

  “Are we playing a game?” I hate that I’m not getting a rise out of him. His placid tone is making me more irate.

&n
bsp; “What do you want from me?” I yell.

  “Nothing.”

  I turn and I punch the cabinet where I keep the baking pans. Inside they rattle and clang. “What do you want from her?”

  Pause. “I’m not sure I’ve decided.”

  “I will do everything in my power to stop you.”

  “It would disappoint me if you did anything less.”

  The only words I have left are Cate Blanchett’s, and I say them with all the gusto of Elizabeth the First standing tall in the face of the advancing Spanish armada. “I have a hurricane in me that will strip Spain bare if you dare try me!”

  The octopus lethargically blinks again.

  “Do you hear me, octopus?” I gnash and growl and spit. My face is hot and my fists are clenched. “I have a hurricane in me!”

  “Do you?” The octopus is unconvinced, enraging me to full boil.

  “I’m serious, you prick. We’re going to the vet in the morning and I will do whatever it takes to stop you. I will max out every credit card at my disposal. I will beg, borrow, and steal. I will order every test, every pill, every measure, every treatment.”

  The octopus blinks, but doesn’t retreat. Skeptically: “Will you?”

  I would pull the walls of this house down on top of him if he weren’t attached to the fragile skull of my deepest love. In my whole life I’ve never been more angry.

  Mostly because he is right.

  The Invertebrate

  Five Years Earlier

  Stuck

  Come to San Francisco.” It’s my sister, Meredith.

  “When?” I ask.

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  I look across the chaotic airport terminal at Jeffrey, who is trying to trade our two tickets for seats on an earlier flight out of JFK. I’m sitting thirty yards away on the grimy airport floor, our phones plugged into the only available charging station. We have been on the East Coast for eight days; Christmas with his family, and then several days in the city, just the two of us, to wander and explore and eat. But now the snow that was so beautiful just days ago is falling harder and harder and people are trying to rebook their flights to get out ahead of the advancing storm. “I don’t know. We might be stuck.”

  “Then get unstuck!” Meredith is uncharacteristically emphatic.

  “What are you doing in San Francisco?” An announcement blares over the airport speakers, but I can’t make sense of it.

  “Where are you? I can barely hear you,” Meredith says.

  “New York. Trying to get a flight home. Why San Francisco?”

  Silence at the other end of the line.

  “Meredith?”

  “I’m getting married!”

  My mouth drops open and this kid sitting across from me, ignored by his own family, stares. Meredith explains how her boyfriend, Franklin, proposed on Christmas while they were visiting his parents in San Francisco. How they just decided to forego any period of engagement and tie the knot at city hall before returning home to D.C. Technically they’re eloping, but since his parents are local, they are coming to bear witness, and since I live in Los Angeles, she wants Jeffrey and me to be witnesses for her side. When she’s finished she asks, “How was New York?” as if nothing else has just happened.

  “Good. It was good,” I say, my voice swallowed by another announcement and a family pushing a mountainous pile of luggage on a cart with a rattling wheel. I can’t tell if I’m lying or telling the truth.

  “I can’t hear you,” Meredith exclaims.

  “You’re not inviting Mom?” I ask.

  “You know Mom.”

  “Yes, we’ve been introduced.” The boy across from me lifts up his nostrils and sticks out his tongue. I make a face in return.

  “She’s not one for ceremony. She probably didn’t even want to go to her own wedding.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s true.” Although I wonder which wedding my sister is referring to—the one to my father (which I can’t picture because there are no known photographs), or her second, the one to her current husband, which Meredith and I both attended.

  “Ted? Can we count on you?”

  More noise. “Sure.”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  I raise my voice. “I’ll see you in San Francisco.”

  A woman dressed like the Statue of Liberty stands in the middle of the terminal and I’m curious how she’ll get through security. I wonder if she’s the same Statue of Liberty we saw just yesterday handing out pamphlets when we impulsively hopped in line at the TKTS booth in Times Square. We refused whatever she was selling and were rewarded with front-row seats to the Broadway revival of Hair. At curtain they called up the front few rows to dance onstage to “Let the Sunshine In”—our Broadway debut. As someone who struggles at times not to be seen, it was exhilarating to stand onstage and feel the hot lights on my face, the audience still in darkness (but out there), waving my hands in the air.

  Life is around you and in you;

  Let the sunshine;

  Let the sunshine in.

  I could still feel the white heat of stage lights as we exited the Hirschfeld Theatre onto Forty-fifth Street, spilling into Times Square. I could see the sunshine, even though it was dark and had started to snow the lightest, most magical, movielike flakes. Street vendors selling chestnuts, buskers banging on pickle buckets, dancing tickers with holiday stock prices, workers preparing Times Square for New Year’s Eve—everything seemed touched by light. Everything, that is, except Jeffrey. Jeffrey stewed under his own cloud, worried by the snow and the forecast for more. I convinced him to grab a slice of pizza with me by agreeing that we would eat it back in our hotel room. I ate mine perched in the window watching the city receive its gentle dusting. Jeffrey paced and checked the weather. He tried to call the airline, but after forty-five minutes on hold he gave up. I finally got him to come to bed by agreeing we could head to JFK at the crack of dawn.

  Now that we’re here, I’m anxious to get home. I miss Lily. If we can get on this flight, we might even get home in time to collect her from the sitter’s and celebrate a little Christmas together. I have a stocking for her at home filled with chews, a stuffed squeaky toy, and a new red ball. Jeffrey is downright agitated. His desire is not to get back to Lily (although I’m sure he misses her, too). His desire is for certainty, for a plan we can execute; his growing need to control every situation is kicking into overdrive. It’s almost laughable, watching him scramble in the face of a storm—I mean, how do you control the weather? C’mon, Jeffrey. Life is all around you and in you. Let the sunshine in!

  My phone vibrates on the floor and I look down, thinking it’s Jeffrey texting me flight options. But there’s no message. Then I look over at Jeffrey’s phone. He has a text message from his friend Cliff.

  When are you back? I want to play.

  Cliff. Do I know a Cliff? I think he’s a friend of Jeffrey’s he met playing online poker. I look over at the airline counter, but Jeffrey is nowhere to be seen. I scan the terminal left and right. No sign of him. I feel almost panicked when a shadow falls over me. It’s Jeffrey holding two coffees and smiling. “Success.”

  When we’re in the air Jeffrey pulls earphones out of his backpack and plugs them into his laptop.

  “Are you going to watch TV?” I ask, knowing he always has a few episodes of something downloaded for a flight.

  I must say it with an accusatory tone because Jeffrey replies hesitantly. “I was going to.”

  We never used to watch much TV; we used to talk about our days—commiserate over the things that bothered us most and laugh about the happenings that struck us as odd—but lately it has become a crutch. Our upstairs neighbor pulled me aside at their holiday party to say how happy it made her that she could hear the sound of laughter from our bedroom late at night. How well suited for each other we must be. I bit my lower lip to keep myself from saying it was Jeffrey watching reruns of Frasier.

  Jeffrey closes his laptop to appease me a
nd rests his phone on top of it. “Would you rather talk?”

  I stare at his phone and think of the text message I saw and suddenly it doesn’t sit so well. When are you back? I want to play. I want to play means poker, surely. That much is innocent enough. But when are you back? Why does he have to be back to play a game that is played online?

  “When are you coming back?” Lily would ask me those words every time I had to leave her. The first time was four months or so after I first brought her home. She was fascinated when I pulled my luggage out of the deep closet in the second bedroom. As soon as I had the suitcase unzipped she climbed pluckily inside, and since she wasn’t yet fully grown, a few wrinkles of skin puddled around her seated butt.

  WHAT! IS! THIS! COZY! BOX! THIS! WOULD! MAKE! A! GREAT! BED! FOR! ME! I! LOVE! ITS! SIDES! AND! THIS! ELASTIC! STRAP!

  “That is a suitcase. I have to put my things in it so I can travel.”

  “Great. I’m already in it, so you’re ready to go!”

  “Sadly, I can’t have you in it. It’s for my clothes and shoes and shaving kit.”

  “Why can’t I be in it? I am one of your things!”

  I sat down beside the suitcase and scratched the back of her head, between her ears. “You are, in fact, my most treasured thing.” She raised her nose in the air and squinted her eyes. “But you’re going to stay nearby and have an adventure of your own.”

  Lily looked at me with her soulful, almond-shaped eyes. “We’re going on different adventures?” She was tugging my heartstrings the way she tugged at my shoelace at the puppy farm when we were introduced—slowly, but with purpose.

  “Your adventure will be fun. You’re going to play with other puppies, the way you used to play with your brother and sisters, Harry, Kelly, and Rita.”

  “Harry, Kelly, and Rita?”

  “That’s right. But other puppies whose names I don’t know, but I’m sure are just as nice.”

  The boarding facility I had selected was a ways outside the city and it was clean and welcoming and alive. Dogs roamed indoors and outdoors on their own whim, and there was a special place sectioned off for smaller and younger dogs. Inside, it smelled like pine.