Lily and the Octopus (27 page)

I catch Lily’s look of confusion just before the third and fourth red balls hit. A shadow falls over the boat, and we both look at the sky as hundreds of red balls blot out the sun. They
rain down upon us with increasing ferocity, making a deafening racket. Lily is frozen, terrified, as am I. She might have once dreamed of something like this, but the reality of it is
horrifying.

We scramble for the cover of the deckhouse, but the red balls come too fast and I quickly lose Lily in a heap of rubber. I claw and scrape to get to her, to unearth her from the sea of red, but
the balls pile up too fast. The ones that hit the water do so with a horrible splash and kick ocean spray into my face. I desperately wipe the salt from my eyes as the balls multiply around my
chest and there’s a tightness and I can’t breathe and the last thing I remember is screaming “
Lily!
” and then everything goes dark.

T
rent’s hand is on my shoulder and I look at him and there is no pain, just the presence of my friend, and for one brief second I feel okay
until everything comes rushing back and it’s like someone has their hands around my heart and is squeezing.

“You were screaming,” he says.

“I was?” I was.

“Yeah.”

The TV is still on and Trent has started watching
Friday Night Lights
, a favorite of mine that I’ve been trying to get him to watch for years since he’s from Texas and loves
football. I’m from Maine and I hate football, and I still love the show. We watch together silently. The show is so good, the drugs are still doing their thing, and part of me is transported
to west Texas—but only a small part. There is too much pain anchoring me to Trent’s couch.

At the end of the first episode, when quarterback Jason Street goes down, Coach Taylor gives the first of his trademark speeches. Something about life being so very fragile. Something about us
all being vulnerable. Something about how, at some point in our lives, we will fall. “We will all fall.”

I’ve never played football or any kind of team sport. I’ve never sat through a coach’s halftime pep talk. I’ve never been in the room with someone rallying the troops to
turn the tide of the fight. But hearing Coach Taylor speak, I prop myself up on my elbows. I am forty-two. This is the halftime of my life, and my team is losing. I’ve never been more in need
of this speech.

He continues about how what we have can be taken from us. Even what we have that is special. And when it is taken, we will be tested.

I’m captivated by this speech, and even though I’ve heard it before, even though I own it on Blu-ray, I’m also hearing it for the very first time. It is in this pain that we
are tested. Since I am in this pain, the pain of having what is special taken from me, I look inside myself and I don’t like what I see: a man who is broken and alone. I think of all the time
Lily and I spent together, just the two of us—the talks about boys, the Monopoly, the movies, the pizza nights—and I wonder how much of it was real. Dogs don’t eat pizza; dogs
don’t play Monopoly. I know this on some level, but everything feels so true. How much of it was an elaborate construct to mask my own loneliness? How much of it was built to convince myself
the attempts I made at real life—therapy, dating—were not just that: attempts?

Somewhere, sometime, I stopped really living. I stopped really trying. And I don’t understand why. I had done all the right things. I had Lily. I had Jeffrey. I had a family.

And then I didn’t.

I don’t understand how my life got so empty, or why the octopus came, or why everyone eventually goes away.

T
rent orders pizza, and when it comes I try to eat, but the first bite makes me retch and I think I’m going to throw up but I overcome it and
manage to keep it down. The red peppers and tomatoes and olives and cheese mix with the bile that rises in my throat and everything tastes awful. And yet I keep eating. Every bite delivers a
stomach pain so sharp that for one glorious nanosecond it overcomes the one in my heart. There are three empty Pacifico bottles in front of me on the coffee table, which I don’t remember
drinking. I look over at Trent and I can tell he’s happy that I’m eating. I guess the idea of someone overdosing on booze and pills on his couch (if one could overdose on a Valium, two
shots of vodka, and three Pacificos) is not one he relishes.

“Good pizza?” he asks.

I raise a slice to him like I’m offering a toast.

Why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I scoop Lily up in that blanket and take her home? If I had we would be there now, together. It’s the question I can’t get out of my head.
Why? Didn’t? I? Run?

Weezie sits expectantly, hungrily, in front of Trent and I forget again if dogs do or don’t eat pizza.

“I don’t know what I’ll do when it’s Weezie’s time,” Trent says. I know he says this because he’s experiencing some of my pain, coupling it with
imagined future pain of his own, trying to understand. Plus the not knowing what to say that all of us experience in the face of grief. And I appreciate it, I do. But it’s not Weezie’s
time. She is here. Unscathed. Alive. He also has Matt. What do I have?

The distribution of loss is inequitable. And I don’t want him not to have Weezie. And I don’t want him not to have Matt. I love my friend, and I want him to have every happiness. So
I say this as a realization only. Not as a desire to redistribute loss or to make it more equitable. The distribution of loss is inequitable. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the
way the world works. There’s no one handing it out. There’s no one making sure everyone gets a fair share.

So many adventures we had. And I loved every one.

Had.

Past tense.

Did Lily know this as her eyes grew heavy? That the adventures were over? Or did she feel the heaviness of sleep as the onset of a satisfying rest, one that would allow her to be fresh for new
adventures ahead? Was it exciting or terrifying? Or did she see nothing at all?

I think of Kal and rub the tattoo on my arm.
To die would be an awfully big adventure.
But it’s not true. Life is the real adventure. Having the hurricane inside you is the true
adventure. And then I think not of Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I, but of Mel Gibson as William Wallace. Everyone dies. Not everyone really lives. And then of Mel Gibson in the movie
Ransom
:
Give me back my son!

The pizza makes me listless, and I lie down again. I’m vaguely aware of Trent taking my plate so that Weezie won’t eat the crust I’ve left untouched. Pizza bones, my dad called
them.

Bones.

Remains.

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

I try to focus on getting back to
Fishful Thinking
, on getting back to Lily, on rescuing her from the meteor storm of red balls. I will try harder this time to get to her, to save her. I
will grab her and we will run. The fact that we are on a boat surrounded by water and there is no place to run to is of little consequence. This time we will run.

Except when sleep comes, I do not dream of Lily.

W
hat are these?” Trent is holding pamphlets.

“I don’t know.” I sit upright and lean on some throw pillows. I’ve never seen them before. The pamphlets. The room is vaguely spinning and the TV is still playing
Friday Night Lights
and this time I don’t need to be reminded what happened; I wake up already knowing.

Trent thumbs through them before saying, “Oh.” He places them on the coffee table.

“What?”

“Nothing. You can read these later.”

I reach forward and my abs hurt in the way they do when I’ve been working out a lot, except I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen the inside of a gym. Weeks ago, maybe. When
I pick up the pamphlets, I immediately regret it. Pet mortuary. Pet crematory. Pet burial grounds. Words jump out at me and assault my eyes. Respectful handling. Individual cremation. Selecting an
urn. Bereavement counseling. Fine products. Compassionate care. Each phrase is a new stab at my heart.

Trent takes them from me.

“Where did you get those?” I ask—I accuse.

“They were here on the table.”

Someone must have put them in my hands before I left the animal hospital, but I have no memory of it. Did I drive here with them clutched in my hands? I have no memory of that, either.

“I’ll put them over here with the letter.”

“There’s a letter?”

“You can read it later. You don’t need to read it now.”

“What does it say.” I don’t ask; this is an order for him to tell me. There is no reading it later. I need to know. I need to know what the letter says now.

Trent sighs. He opens the letter, which is folded in thirds. He scans it until he gets to the end. “You have until Monday to decide what you want to have done with Lily.” He reads me
the options. If I choose individual cremation, I can shop for an urn, bring her home. If I choose group cremation, they will dispose of the cremains for me. There are other packages for burial. One
includes a “precious clay paw-print keepsake.”

All of this tests my beliefs. I don’t believe in God; I don’t believe in an afterlife. I do believe you live and you die. I do believe death is eternal nothingness. I do believe the
body is just a shell. I do believe Lily is no longer there. There is no deciding what to do with Lily; there is no more Lily. There is deciding what to do with her body.

None of this frightens me.

Or does it?

I don’t need Lily’s remains to remember her by.

I don’t need an urn to remind me of her love.

I don’t need a precious clay paw-print keepsake to remind me that life is fragile, temporary, short.

Or do I? Do I need them so that I know I loved her? Do I need them to know that
she
loved me? Can I stomach the idea, years from now, of not knowing where her body is?

Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

It hits me.

Lily’s body is in some freezer, stacked with the bodies of other unfortunate dogs. That’s how they can still make a precious clay paw-print keepsake.

Trent puts the pamphlets with my keys on the dining room table.

I don’t have to read them now.

M
y phone is ringing and it’s Jeffrey and I don’t want to answer it. Before I got in the car I sent him a text:
Lily passed away. I
was with her at the end. I’m not able to talk about it yet, but I thought you should know.
And then a second text:
Thank you for being an important part of her life.

I’m not able to talk about it yet.

My phone is ringing.

It’s Jeffrey.

I grip the steering wheel with both hands and concentrate on the freeway and the lane ahead of me. I think back to our relationship and my saying explicitly,
these are the things that if you
do them they will hurt me
, and his uncanny ability to just do those things anyway.
I’m not able to talk about it yet.
Talking about it would hurt me. So what do you do if
you’re Jeffrey? You call to talk about it.

Just as I decide not to talk to him, to let the call go to voicemail knowing I may never listen to the message, my fingers betray me and answer.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” It’s been a long time since I’ve heard his voice. It sounds familiar, yet foreign. “You’re driving?”

“Home. From Trent’s.”

“I didn’t think you should have to drive home alone.”

It’s the Bluetooth feature on this car, new since our breakup. His voice spills from the stereo speakers, surrounding me on all sides. It’s . . . unnerving. There’s a long,
empty pause before I say, “Thank you.” And then, “Where are you?”

“I’m home.”

I laugh.

“Why is that funny?”

Why is it funny? “I don’t even know where home is for you now.” How could I not know where he lives? I can picture a few of his things, things that used to be ours. But I
can’t picture them in the context of any space.

“Do you want, like, an address?”

I’m suddenly panicked that he might invite me over. “That’s okay. I’m driving.”

Silence.

“She was a good girl.”

Another long pause.

“The best,” I agree.

I pass the exits for Vineland, Ventura, and Lankershim before we speak again.

“What happened to us?” Jeffrey asks.

Is this the right time to be honest? I don’t have anything left in me to be otherwise. “You weren’t as faithful as I needed you to be.”

Jeffrey swallows.

“You never seemed fully invested.” He says it without anger or retaliation. We are just stating facts.

Fireworks burst over the Universal Studios theme park, their last embers raining over the freeway, just as our statements now are the dwindling cinders of explosive arguments we had long
ago.

“I know.” That much is on me.

Another silence you could drive a truck through.

“We had a really good run for a while,” Jeffrey says.

“I think so, too.”

As I pull the car to the right to prepare to exit on Highland, I tell Jeffrey I have to go.

“Take care of yourself, Ted.” The way he says it, I can tell it’s the last time we’ll ever speak.

“You, too, Jeffrey.” It feels weird that we use our names—names are for people who are less acquainted than we are. My finger hovers, paralyzed for the briefest of seconds,
before I disconnect the call. Ted and Jeffrey. We are strangers again.

I open my sunroof and crank the radio. “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel is playing, but in my head
Cecilia
sounds too close to
Lily
and I change the station to
something else, something that means nothing, something I don’t recognize. Something angry at life.