Lily and the Octopus (6 page)

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.

Five Years Earlier

C
ome 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.

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 and 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.

A woman welcomed us and did her best to allay our fears; Lily and I were both apprehensive. “Is this Lily? Welcome, Lily. I think you’re going to love the other dachshunds here.
Their names are Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.”

Lily turned to me. “Are they the other puppies whose names you didn’t know?”

“That’s right. Except now I do know their names. They are Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.”

“They are not Harry and Kelly and Rita?”

“No, they are Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.”

Lily considered this for a moment before adding, “My mother’s name is Witchie-Poo.”

I scooped up Lily and balanced her on my arm. “They don’t need to know that.”

The woman took the canvas tote from my shoulder that held Lily’s blanket and food. I repositioned Lily so her paws were on my shoulder and I could whisper in her ear. “I’m
coming back for you. In a week. Don’t ever think I’m not coming back.”

“When are you coming back?”

“In seven sleeps. I am coming back for you.”

I kissed her on the top of her head and sat her on the ground. I handed her leash to the lady, so that she was now in control of my dog. “C’mon,” she said. “I’ll
introduce you to Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.” Then she turned to me. “She’ll be fine.”

I nodded. I knew this. But also not. Would she? Be fine? Lily stood and turned back to look at me and we both swallowed the lumps in our throats.

The lady opened the gate to the smaller dogs’ pen and I caught a glimpse of the other three dachshunds. Two of them were long-haired, and one was short-haired like Lily. I imagined the
short-haired dachshund to be Sadie because she had a dappled coat and looked most different from the other two, who just happened to look like Sophies. All three greeted Lily with wagging
tails.

HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! I’M! SADIE! I’M! SOPHIE! I’M! SOPHIE! DEE!

Lily paused before her tail started to wag and she entered the pen. Once inside she disappeared in a blur of paws and tails and ears as the gate closed behind her. The last thing I heard was her
distinctive bark.

I’M! LILY!

In my car I broke down in ridiculous sobs.

How does she know I’m coming back? How does she know I didn’t just give her away?

Because she trusts me.

Just as I should trust Jeffrey. There’s a perfectly rational explanation for that text.
I want to play
means poker. I turn to Jeffrey and his laptop is back open with his earphones
plugged in. I’ve drifted. I made a fuss about his watching TV and then promptly checked out.

I take a deep breath and try to reengage, tapping him on the shoulder, pulling the earbud out of his left ear. “We each have a few days before we have to be back to work. How would you
feel about going to San Francisco?”

I wait for him to react. I wait for his body to physically reject the spontaneity. I wait for him to keep the sunshine out, to make an excuse as to why he has to stay in Los Angeles, something
to cover this “playing” with Cliff.

But instead he simply smiles and says, “Okay.”

M
y cell phone rings in an ominous way, sounding almost flat, the way it does when you know something is wrong before you answer the phone. I fumble
to retrieve it from my pocket and the call almost goes to voicemail before I can answer. There’s no time for anything to be amiss; we leave for Meredith’s wedding in the morning.

It’s Jeffrey. “Something’s wrong with Lily. You need to come home.”

I look at my watch. It’s a little past three o’clock in the afternoon and I am more or less on my way home anyway. I’m just leaving the grocery store and the last thing on my
list is to pick up our suits for the wedding from the dry cleaners.

“Can it wait thirty more minutes?”

I think of all the things that might be wrong with Lily. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Neither pleasant, but neither the end of the world. Too many treats from her Christmas stocking. Limping? She once
had a thorn in her paw, like the old fable involving Androcles and the lion. It took some gentle prodding to get her to sit still long enough to remove the craggly thing. Bleeding? Bleeding is
easy—just apply pressure. Jeffrey can be an alarmist. Whatever it could be can probably wait.