The oven radiates a lot of heat on this already warm summer day, and Lily and I nap between bastings to escape from it. We don’t have a lot of other Thanksgiving activities, so I play my DVD of Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter. Halfway through the movie, I have to start peeling vegetables. I let the movie run for Lily while I get on with preparing the meal.
Trent arrives around five.
“Wow. It smells great in here. Did you make pumpkin bread?”
“No,” I reply, annoyed. What with the turkey, the stuffing, the potatoes, the squash, the gravy, and the green beans, I didn’t have time to make pumpkin bread.
“It’s not really Thanksgiving without pumpkin bread.” Trent pouts.
“It’s not really Thanksgiving at all.”
Trent uncovers the pot containing the mashed potatoes and sticks his finger in. He scoops up a mouthful with his index finger and tells me they need more butter. “What else am I tasting?”
“In the potatoes?”
He nods.
“Nutmeg.” It’s my secret ingredient.
Trent goes to the fridge and grabs himself a beer. “Can I see the octopus?”
“Lily’s in the living room. But, hey”—I grab Trent by the elbow—“let’s not mention him again tonight.”
I follow Trent because he’s my best friend and I know his reaction will tell me everything I need to know. He will cut through the bullshit and give it to me straight. Lily is asleep, octopus-side up, giving us both a good view.
“Oh, god.” His reaction confirms what I already know, that this is a big fucking deal and there’s no messing around. “Have you made a decision about what you’re going to do?”
“I’ve decided not to talk about it on Thanksgiving.”
When it’s time to sit down at the table, I produce three hats I purchased from a store that sells old movie costumes. Two tall pilgrim hats for Trent and myself, each with a smart buckle, and a pilgrim bonnet with chin straps for Lily. (What movie these were from, I have no idea.) Trent balks at wearing his hat but I say, without room for negotiation, “Put it on.”
When I affix Lily’s hat, the octopus, who has been eyeing the day’s activities with suspicion, says, “What are you doing? I might like turkey. Or Tofurky.” He rolls the one eye I can see.
“Unfortunately, you’re not invited.” I place the bonnet on Lily, covering the octopus completely. For once, she doesn’t protest the idea of wearing something. I lift her up to her chair and set her on a pillow that boosts her up to proper table height.
“Let’s begin by saying what we are thankful for while I carve the turkey.”
TOFURKY! Lily corrects, incorrectly.
The turkey looks so beautiful that I almost don’t want to carve it. It seems golden and crisp and juicy and delicious; whoever wrote “Roasting the Big One” knew what they were talking about. But once I make the first cut, to slice off a drumstick, the smell that fills the room produces such hunger pangs that I realize I haven’t eaten all day. It’s hard not to just tear into the thing with my teeth.
Trent starts. Despite the lack of pumpkin bread and his having to wear a hat, he’s getting into the spirit of the whole thing.
“I’m thankful for Matt and for Weezie,” he begins, listing his boyfriend and his bulldog. “I’m thankful for good friends, of course.” He raises his glass to Lily and me. “And for good food, continued success, and togetherness. And the Dallas Cowboys.”
I’m suddenly aware that the sounds of football and parades are missing from our makeshift holiday.
“Lily, how about you?”
I’M! THANKFUL! FOR! TOFURKY!
“What else?” I ask.
THAT’S! ALL! TOFURKY! ME! She licks her chops.
“Okay, I’ll go.” I slide a few slices of turkey into Lily’s supper dish, and a few more onto Trent’s plate and mine. “I, too, am thankful for friends and for Tofurky. And for leftover Tofurky sandwiches, and the adventure of Thanksgiving in June. I’m thankful for family. My sister, Meredith, called to say I am going to be an uncle again, and I love being an uncle.”
“Congratulations!” Trent says. I hold up a finger to say I’m not done.
“But most of all, I am thankful for Lily, who, since she entered my life, has taught me everything I know about patience and kindness and meeting adversity with quiet dignity and grace. No one makes me laugh harder, or want to hug them tighter. You have truly lived up to the promise of man’s best friend.”
Trent throws his fork at me, because he doesn’t like the idea of anyone but himself being called my best friend, but I toss the fork back, asking him to think in a larger context. Lily looks at me in annoyance, her shade made even cuter by her pilgrim bonnet; all this praise is just delaying our meal.
I finish plating (or bowling, in Lily’s case) our meals and drizzle our food with gravy. Between Trent and Lily, it’s hard to say who digs into the food more ferociously. I don’t touch mine. Instead, I watch Lily consume every bite, observing the strange faces she makes as she drags her bonnet straps through the gravy and then desperately tries to lick them once there is no more food in her bowl.
Dammit, Jenny.
I am in mourning. That much is clear to me now. There is a recognizable departure from the normal attitudes of life: An eighteen-pound turkey is an acceptable meal for three. A dog’s supper dish can be on the people table. Pilgrim hats are appropriate haberdashery in June. An octopus may take my dog.
There may not be a November.
Monday
The day after our impromptu Thanksgiving, it’s mid-afternoon before it occurs to me that it’s not Black Friday. It’s not even Friday at all—it’s Monday—but I’m already at The Grove wandering the sidewalks of the outdoor shopping mall aimlessly in search of a good sale. I pass a number of stores that usually interest me, but my mind is somewhere else. With every good memory comes the memory of a mistake. A parallel memory. A darker recollection. The memory of Lily as a puppy transporting all my shoes to the top of the stairs calls up the terrifying incident of her falling down those stairs because I hadn’t had the foresight to block them with a gate. The triumph of expressing her bladder after surgery ushers in another flashback, when I was frustrated that she wouldn’t pee and I yanked her leash so hard she squealed in pain. The memories of our longest talks couple with those of our longest silences, either when we were mad or when we weren’t, when maybe we just presumed the other was mad and we never bothered to ask if that was true.
If I remember all of the good things, isn’t it my responsibility to also remember the bad? If I remember the consumption of happiness at Thanksgiving, shouldn’t I also remember the downing of poison, the force-feeding of hydrogen peroxide? If I can feel her heartbeat through her chest as she sleeps nights snuggled next to me, shouldn’t I also hear her gasping for breath when that same peroxide went down wrong?
The bookends of these memories join to create a vise. My head is stuck between the moveable jaws, which also act as giant conch shells to create the white noise of the ocean, as someone cranking the vise handle makes everything tighter and louder and more unbearable until I struggle to remember why I’m even here. A sale, yes, but a sale on what? What am I shopping for? I search vainly for my bearings in a place that is not that big, not that overwhelming, and not at all unfamiliar. A trolley of tourists passes by with its deafening clang, a sound simultaneously muffled and piercing. I think of the trolley bench in the veterinarian’s waiting room; does the trolley make its last stop there? People exit shops like they’re coming right at me. A man walks two dachshunds on leashes; they cut through the crowds, laser-focused.
Just as they pass me, I start to dry heave.
Everything is a blur, and the only thing that registers in my brain is that I’ve got to get out. My car is on the sixth level of a parking garage that I suddenly feel incapable of navigating. Escaping it would require a tight series of right turns down a central vertigo-inducing ramp that would be the end
of whatever shreds of equilibrium I have left—never mind driving home. I stagger past two restaurants, both so unappealing and bland that even on my best days I wonder who dines in them. I know these restaurants mark the exit from the mall, the way to the garage, but I can’t bring myself to walk the narrow path between them. My brain fills with thoughts of the man who jumped off the roof of the parking garage and landed with a splat at the base of the escalator some months ago. Not thoughts about the man, exactly; I know nothing about the man except what they reported on the news. But of death.
Of bones crunching.
Of finality.
Of strangulation.
Of the octopus.
I stumble forward, knowing this commits me to another lap around the eastern end of the mall. Out of the corner of my eye a sign registers, announcing a J. Crew Men’s store that is “coming soon.” I think to myself that I would like that, if I ever get out of here alive. If I ever have the nerve to come back.
Somehow a table presents itself near the grassy area where they erect the skyscraperlike Christmas tree each November, the one that would be here now if it were actually Black Friday. I slump into a chair and put my head down. The tabletop is sticky, but I don’t care. I don’t even know who this table belongs to. I’m probably supposed to purchase a Häagen-Dazs ice cream or a Wetzel’s soft pretzel to sit here. And maybe I will, but for now I just need the spinning to stop. I need thoughts that don’t squeeze me. I need good feelings that don’t bring bad ones; I need the deafening roar in the conch shells to subside.
I need to not be rankled by self-doubt.
My head continues pounding, and the air is thick, like trying to breathe custard. I’ve sweated through my shirt; it sticks to my back like Saran Wrap. I think of pills, little candies of pleasure and relief. I can’t remember if I have any at home. Goddamned Jenny, not prescribing me more. I try to imagine the calming whoosh of a Valium. The mounting clumsiness as the brain’s messages are transmitted more slowly. The calming happiness. The warming embrace. Maybe I can will myself into a more placid state just with the idea, the memory, of pills.
A piece of fuzz lands near my feet. Then another. I wonder if it’s snowing. Not actually snowing—it never snows in Los Angeles, except at The Grove at Christmastime when they launch fake snow from the roof of the movie theater with these cannonlike machines. Have two flakes coasted on a gentle breeze for six months, only now coming in for a landing? No. A mother chases a toddler blowing dandelion fluff. I should have known. Nothing floats effortlessly in limbo—not for six months.
From underneath my armpit I can see the dachshunds pass by again. I can just see their little feet, their short legs, eight of them in total, like the octopus’s, but they move at such speeds they look like more, like million-legged millipedes out for an afternoon stroll. Seeing how they deftly maneuver around huge obstacles and through loud noises, coupled with the idea of pills, slowly brings me some calm.
Lily would never tolerate The Grove. Not anymore. Not in old age. She would not have the wherewithal to navigate such a crowd. She would cower, with her head down, until I found a safe place for us to sit. She would be like me now: helpless, spinning, afraid.
As Lily aged and her reactions slowed and her eyesight became less crisp, Doogie’s predecessor warned me that she might develop something he called Enclosed World Syndrome. I told him I hadn’t heard of Enclosed World Syndrome, only New World Syndrome (the introduction of a modern, sedentary lifestyle to indigenous peoples, along with obesity, diabetes, and heart disease—you’re welcome, Native Americans). I don’t know if Enclosed World Syndrome is an official syndrome or something this vet made up, or who is even in charge of anointing syndromes officially. But Lily did rather quickly come to find comfort only in smaller and smaller concentric circles with our house at the center and, coincidentally, so did I. Or maybe Lily’s aging coincided with the end of my relationship with Jeffrey and the stalling of my writing career. “How’s Jeffrey?” “How’s the writing going?” These were questions that had irritated me to my core. Not because of their illegitimacy, but because I had no response. How was Jeffrey? We can’t go two days without fighting. How was the writing? I haven’t written anything in months. It became easier to avoid people than to have to explain that I was struggling. My Enclosed World Syndrome got a little better, partly out of necessity, when I became single again. Lily’s never did.
Since the arrival of the octopus, I find myself spinning a familiar cocoon. It’s impossible to talk about what I can’t bring myself to say. If I were to join friends at a noisy bar or in a crowded restaurant and anyone were to ask, “How’s Lily?” what on Earth would I say?
“Well, there’s an octopus on her head.”
“There’s an ostrich in her bed?”
Any conversation would only unravel from there.
Slowly I lift my head and take in my surroundings. There’s a shirtless model outside of Abercrombie & Fitch. Nordstrom is undergoing some sort of storefront remodel. Crate & Barrel is pushing patio umbrellas in bold, striped fabrics. Someone who may or may not be Mark Ruffalo is making a beeline toward Kiehl’s. Slowly, the pounding in my head stops. Slowly, my body temperature lowers, my normal heartbeat returns.
I wish there was a way I could see from my phone if the octopus was gone. Some sort of app connected to a series of nanny cams to spy on every room in my house. Something that would allow me to look at Lily asleep in her bed, her head unencumbered by that beast, her mind deep in the sweetest dream. Or maybe I’m glad that there’s not. Maybe it would just be one more thing on my phone for me to check obsessively, taking me out of the moment, taking me away from life. Maybe I would use it as permission to stay clear of Lily in my magical thinking that that’s when the octopus will leave, even though I know deep down it’s going to take a lot more than a trip to the mall for him to go.
When I get home the octopus is still there. My heart sinks, despite my brain telling it not to. I saddle Lily in her harness and grab her leash and we head out on a walk. Our old walk, the one up the quieter street with the hill. The one we used to take daily before our syndrome made us hermits and our outdoor excursions became limited to the shorter route that looped us quickly back home.
As we walk two blocks and round the corner and climb the hill that gives us a distant view of the Hollywood sign, Lily catches the scent of something on the grass between the sidewalk and the street. I let her sniff. There will be no yanking her by the neck. She can have all the time in the world. And I will forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made. For the times I got so angry. For the times I’ve acted hatefully.
The afternoon air is cool, the haze is soft. The last few petals of the jacaranda trees color the sidewalk. The streets are empty. People are not yet home from work to walk their dogs. We don’t get any strange looks or sideways glances. No one stops to ask why there’s an octopus hitching a ride on my dog. In the distance, soft mountains and rolling hills mark the edge of the Los Angeles basin. There’s the slightest hint of salt in the air—you’d have to really want to smell it, but it’s there.
“Oh, look! The Hollywood sign.” It’s the octopus. Lily has finished sniffing and has turned to look back at me.
I roll my eyes.
“It’s smaller than I imagined.”
“You’re smaller than I imagined.” It’s not much of a comeback and I’m not even sure what I mean by it, but it’s all I have. Smaller as in petty, I guess.
For the briefest of moments, I think maybe the octopus just wants to see some sights. The Hollywood sign. Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Venice Beach. The building where they filmed Die Hard. That maybe he mistook Lily for a small, four-legged tour bus, and he’s riding up top on a double-decker waiting for the next photo op.
But I know this isn’t true.
Still, it’s important for us to get out more, I think, while looking out at the expanse. Not so the octopus can leave, but because maybe the octopus is here to stay.
; Wednesday Night
I wake to find the bed shaking and immediately think it’s an earthquake. We haven’t had one, a memorable one, for years, and in the back of my mind I’ve been preparing.
Expecting.
Waiting.
I prop myself up on my elbows and stare into the darkness. Something’s different; something’s not right. There’s not the usual rolling sensation of surfing tectonic waves. My stomach isn’t sinking in the way it does when you reach the top of a roller coaster, in the split seconds before the first drop. There isn’t the usual calmness that overtakes me, the antithesis of how you think you’d react in an earthquake—the ability to think where flashlight batteries are, to count the ounces of bottled drinking water in the house, to remember how a transistor radio works, to wonder if you’re wearing something acceptably dignified for when your body is found.
I place my hand on Lily and the source of this seismic activity becomes clear—she is in the throes of another seizure. I roll onto my side and pull her tightly to my chest. My lips are right behind her ear, behind the octopus, and I whisper angrily, “Let go of her. Let go of her. Let go!” And then to Lily, “I’ve got you. I’m here. Shhh.”
My mind drifts and I think of us in a tented war hospital, somewhere not far from the battlefield. The air is hot and thick, and Lily, the wounded veteran, is shaking in a morphine haze, deep in jarring flashbacks of the horrific events of war. I am the loving nurse trying to calm the soldier, telling her to ignore the blasts of distant shells, ignore the moans of her fellow wounded, ignore the stench of charred flesh and destroyed lives, ignore the cawing of spiteful magpies singing gleefully of impending death, all while calmly wiping her forehead.
Lily continues to convulse with her eyes rolled back and my terror metastasizes into helplessness, paralysis, as I wait for the convulsions to stop. I hold my hand under her chin to keep her from thrashing her neck. It occurs to me that she may bite, involuntarily or out of fear, but I don’t care. Let her bite me. I would welcome the pain. I would rather something awake me from my utter uselessness. My tears start as I begin to feel like the octopus is squeezing my own head, his eight arms suctioned to my skin, compressing like the vise of my panic attacks. I almost remove my hand from under Lily’s jaw to see if the octopus has not in fact jumped from her head to mine. Almost. Because I know he hasn’t. I can see him still, his tentacles gripped firmly around her.
Lily and the Octopus Page 10