Life on Mars

by Lori McNulty

  “It’ll grow back,” Myra sobs.

  “That’s a sea star!” I roar. “He can release his arm tips in a fight, but his two tentacles are for life.”

  While we’re shouting, Dan drops down to the floor and muscles up my pant leg. He wraps one of his sucker-lined arm pairs around my neck, squeezing. A second arm pair twitches and glows near my eyes.

  “Call the coast guard,” Myra shrieks, like I’ve got marine rescue on speed dial.

  “Let go, Dan,” I beg, trying to pry him away, but his grip is formidable.

  Myra begins racing around, opening and slamming drawers. Finally, she pulls on some silicone oven mitts and, using two metal spatulas, manages to pry Dan off me. Together, we transport him, gently, to the tub where I leave Myra and return with another full bucket of sea water from the tank.

  “We need to get him to the ocean,” I say to Myra, when Dan slides across the tub and squirts his inky lament across the tile.

  Prepare for a lawsuit, motherfuckers.

  After jamming a chair under the outside bathroom doorknob, Myra and I retreat to the bedroom.

  “What do we do now?” I say.

  Myra places one hand on her chest and calmly informs me that squid ink is much lower in fat and higher in protein than most alfredo or marinara sauces.

  “Dan is not delicious.”

  “Soy-drenched, garnished, and draped over a bed of rice noodles?” Myra makes a show of spooning sauce over a plate. “I beg to differ.”

  “He’s just out of his element.”

  “He’s lost part of a tentacle. Probably half out of his mind by now,” Myra retorts.

  “Squid have survived for hundreds of millions of years without us,” I protest. “Dan’s blue bloodline is unequalled.”

  While we contemplate rapid rescue scenarios, we hear a loud whooshing sound coming from the bathroom. I crack the door to see Dan below the open tap, filling his mantle cavity. And before I can reach him, he seals up, squeezes, and jet propels himself out the cracked window.

  All week, I double down on sedatives, do a daily grid search for Dan. Myra refuses to offer any help. She’s probably angry over the pass I took on Beth or the fact that I lied about paying my mortgage on plastic and about having employment. The jig was up when I invented a final interview at an organic food co-op Myra knew had never existed in the city. She hung up before I had the chance to embellish about the employee free juice bar.

  I pick up more krill from the bait store and drop two fresh crabs over ice into my bike pannier. An hour before dawn, I pedal back alleys and laneways, heartsick that Dan may be a rubber speed bump on some shitty side street by now. After a few hours of roaming, I hear splashes in a blow-up kiddie pool near a backyard shed. Cruising closer, I see that Dan is flopping around inside. Popping a crab from my pannier, I approach him, slowly.

  “Buddy,” I say, holding the food out. “For you.”

  Dan snatches the crab from my hand, runs his razor tongue along the shell, and snaps it up in his bony beak. Then he reaches out and tightens his good tentacle around my torso.

  “How can I make this right?” I choke out, drawing what feels like my last breath.

  He releases me, inking the sidewalk.

  Oysters. Convertible. Road trip.

  Over a beer at the legion, I ask my nearly eighty-year-old dad for the keys to his old hardtop Chevy convertible. Tell him I’m helping some friends move across the state. Since his second divorce, Dad spends most of his time on a barstool popping hard yellow candies and cursing his elbow arthritis. For the fiftieth time, he advises me to get a real job with benefits.

  “A wife is nothing compared to a good pension.”

  “You didn’t end up with either,” I point out gently. And I don’t even mention all the layoffs or his permanently wrenched right shoulder.

  “You get what you make in life,” he scoffs.

  “Rachel’s making a kid,” I tell him. “And all I’ve got is a hairline receding faster than the Athabasca Glacier.” I pretend to slick back my non-existent bangs to lighten the mood.

  The old man drops his pint. “Change the goddamn channel, Mark,” he says as foam splashes the bar stool next to me. “Rachel left you. It’s not breaking news.”

  Dad takes another long swill of beer and slides over some folded money along with his Chevy keys.

  “Bring it back full,” he says and takes another swig of beer. “Be safe. Tell your mother hello.”

  To grant Dan’s wish, I max out my credit card ordering a custom-built, eighty-gallon round, clear tank that I lay on its side, making the Chevy sag on its back struts. En route I’ll stop to replenish the tank with full-strength sea water, making sure the salinity is just right, monitoring Dan’s temperature.

  Suitcase packed, I call Myra and leave her a rambling message about the journey Dan and I are about to embark on. We’ll head north up the California coast to where the skies are clear, the sand is silky, and the tidal flows are like an all-you-can-eat krill buffet. We’ll drop in to see my mother, and then I’ll find a perfect spot to release Dan back to the sighing sea.

  When Myra calls me back later, she instructs me in her jokey-caustic tone to pack hip waders, bring cash for the cheap motels, and consider a brain MRI. I tell her Dan is a vow I’m keeping, no matter what. Before we hang up, she tells me that Beth is back in town. Why not stop by for coffee before the big trip?

  I finish packing up the Chevy, and skip Myra’s to get on the road early.

  Dan and I plot a meandering route from Sacramento to San Francisco and then along the Pacific Coast Highway in the pinging Chevy, heading for my mom’s new house in drought-ridden Sandsblad, California. Tank water swishes across the dirty floor as we motor on. For miles, Dan remains silent, so I try to keep him entertained with classic Stones tunes. Dan’s hearing is way too low frequency, so I start loudly reminiscing about my notorious exes from my early days. Jan the vegan, a fine rhythm guitarist, who liked to sprinkle her hemp pancakes with cocaine. And ethereal Celeste, who once fronted a local nineties band before becoming a highly accomplished periodontist. After years of pounding vocals, Celeste dumped me over the phone, told me to message her on Xbox if I ever wanted to connect.

  Once I download Dave’s Ex-ecutor app, Celeste will become a molting earwig with sick morning breath.

  Dan begins blowing bubbles in his tank. “No,” I say, “I have no need to share sharp, unkind words about Rachel.” How she showed up at my street-fair booth wearing her save-the-whales smile and Roman sandals wound loosely around her smooth calves. Browsing my pamphlets in a blue sundress, she trailed the scent of sweet oranges and coconut. When I asked, she agreed to add her name to my petition, and I handed her a biodegradable fridge magnet with my number scrawled across it.

  “Bold,” she said, grinning.

  “Bowled over,” I replied, clutching my heart pathetically.

  Two weeks passed. Pure agony.

  What’s worse than a grown man checking his texts on the half hour? A guy high-fiving the courier when Rachel called, three weeks after the fair, to invite him for pho.

  Water splashes against the back of my neck. In the rear-view, I watch Dan sloshing around in his tank. He gets it. He just does. Squid can see for miles, far beyond anyone else. He and his squid kin have spent their lives in places no natural light ever reaches. They understand the solemnity of darkness. Ask marine explorers to describe aliens and they’ll probably evoke the mysterious deep-sea squid. Those giant, penetrating eyes positioned on either side of his bulbous head, like some creature on Mars. His complex DNA. His ability to withstand extreme cold and pitch-black seas. And yet light is as remote for them as Mars is from the sun. Stir not in murky waters if you know not the depths, Rachel always told me. Whatever the hell that really means.

  By the time we pull into the driveway of Mom’s new rancher in Dradsbad, Dan is slumped at the tank bottom. With only a cool sea breeze and the a/c sputtering, the car has been a bloody deep fryer
for the last stretch.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” I say, reassuring Dan that soon I’ll drop him off, and he’ll have a whole undersea playground to explore.

  Mom opens the front door and waves at me when I get out of the Chevy to stretch my legs. I can smell the coffee brewing from the driveway.

  Mom embraces me, the scent of dark roast heavy on her skin.

  Squatting, she eyes the tank inside the Chevy suspiciously. One of Dan’s big, seductive eyes stares back at her from behind shatter-proof glass.

  “Myra told me you’d become obsessed with a bottom-dweller,” she observes, dryly. “I assumed she meant another musician.”

  “Wait a second. You just moved and changed your number. How did Myra know how to reach you?”

  “I’m not El Chapo, honey. We talk.”

  Mom is seventy-two, but she can still cut it up. Myra was my college sweetheart, and Mom wept openly at Dave and Myra’s wedding, before soaking up too many margaritas and ending up dirty jiving all night with the emcee.

  Lifting Dan carefully from the tank, I keep my stance low, balancing his shifting weight as I enter the house and settle him on Mom’s kitchen floor. With her permission, I quickly sanitize the double sink and fill it with extra saltwater from the tank. Immediately, Dan plunges in and starts playing with Mom’s drain stopper.

  “Can we crank up the air, Mom? Dan likes it super cold.”

  Mom turns down the thermostat. She pours the pot of coffee into a white carafe and gestures toward the kitchen table.

  “So, Mark, what’s the news at six?” she asks, as we both pull out chairs.

  “Got a new job. At the organic food co-op,” I claim. “Senior manager, full benefits. Starts in three weeks.”

  “Terrific,” Mom says, clapping. “So can you stick around for a bit, then?” Mom pours us coffee into her favourite china cups. “Could use your touch with the evergreens. They look like giant hairballs.”

  “I’ll take a look on the way out. But I really need to get Dan back to the ocean.”

  Mom proceeds to complain about California’s mandatory water bans. Not the need to conserve but the dire situation among leering neighbours.

  “It’s gone from tense to batshit crazy. Neighbours are hiding out behind bushes to drought-shame each other.”

  “Oceans are vast sinks absorbing our carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels keep choking the drain.” I hear myself lecture Mom.

  “I know, hon,” my mother says in her soothing tone.

  “Sea waters are turning to acid,” I say, and shoot a sympathetic, knowing glance at Dan. “So what I’m saying is California’s pretty much doomed.”

  “But, hey, coffee’s good for us again,” Mom replies, raising her cup cheerfully. She spoons out a blizzard of brown sugar into her cup then spills a small java puddle on the floor refilling mine.

  I watch Dan slither out of the sink and drop to the floor.

  “You know, I think we might need to get under this Rachel business.”

  “She’s having a kid,” I grunt, folding my arms. “She’s taken to wearing these bright floppy hats and baring her growing midriff all over town like she’s some kind of rare species of flora.”

  “You’ve been shadowing her?” Mom says, and casually drains all the liquid from her creamer into her own cup. She stirs and stares into swirling mocha, in silence a long time.

  “I run into her sometimes. We live in the same town.”

  “Obviously the child’s not yours?” Mom says, and her downcast eyes gut me.

  And then the memory returns. Rachel rifling through the bottom drawer in the bathroom vanity, calling out to me, Did I see her new razor? I came to the doorway. She was towel-draped and had already slipped her one foot inside the foaming bath she had run. We weren’t even going out that night.

  My act was deliberate. I confessed to using her razor that morning to rid stray fibres from the cloth upholstery on our shitty basement sectional.

  She just shook her head, declining outrage. When she pulled the curtain across, I could still see her naked shoulders slip under the bubbling waters. Hear her sigh as she submerged deeper, up to her neck.

  I stuck my head through the curtain and shouted at her that she was wasting water. I may have said that she was a waste of water.

  “Rachel wanted a different life,” I tell my mother.

  “What did you want?” she asks.

  “Global waste-reduction, a drastic drop in greenhouse gases, a sign that we’re not all going extinct,” I almost shout, but what I mean is another story. A new beginning, or a different end, and something to make of the rot that’s been piling up in me all these years.

  My mother reaches out for my hand.

  The climate-controlled air is beginning to turn my lips purple. I need a breath of fresh air outside, something to escape the cloying, sticky lung manipulation inside the house.

  Avoiding my mother’s gaze, I pull my hand away and watch Dan suck up some spilled coffee. Afterward he starts flailing around, shooting out tiny blue sparks of bioluminescence he uses to lure prey. I jump up. He’s hallucinating. A terrible sign.

  When I kneel next to him, he slips an arm pair around my ankle and spews black ink across Mom’s freshly mopped tile.

  California bites. Get me to the Rock.

  As I am repacking the Chevy in the driveway, I try to reason with Dan.

  Mom is shaking her head at us through the kitchen window, scooping up grey water from the dishes into a large bucket for the garden.

  “Newfoundland’s in eastern Canada,” I try to explain to Dan. “That’s practically on the other side of the world!”

  When Dan holds up the stump of his severed tentacle, I almost vomit.

  He’s turning the colour of pavement. Dan’s body is a marvel of undersea camouflage, capable of matching any shade it sees. When I look deep into those six-inch saucer eyes, I think they might just hold the colour of destiny.

  How could I have not understood until now? Dan’s been harbouring a dream. He’s heard about the giant squid colonies that live on the coast of eastern Canada. For a billion years, these near-mythic deep-sea dwellers have been swimming in a universal mystery. He wants to dive among his old Newfoundland chums before his time comes.

  “All right,” I say, sternly. “But I’m choosing the motels.”

  During our first overnight stop, Myra rings me while Dan is enjoying his sea-salty Jacuzzi. I hit ignore and end up checking messages the next morning. Apparently, the aphids are suffocating her peonies, and the satiny sundrops along her back fence now resemble a mound of shrivelling, yellow buttholes. It’s Myra’s mea culpa. A cry for forgiveness. But I can’t return now. I don’t want to think about everything that’s dying.

  Dan insists we take the scenic route to Newfoundland, so we motor for five days en route to the Rock, an island of jagged cliffs jutting up from the North Atlantic like the back of an ancient, rough-hewn sea beast.

  Sailing across on the ferry from Cape Breton to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, it’s blowhole city! A humpback rises from the water, then slaps his serrated tail against the Atlantic. Exhilarating! We finally spill out from the ferry’s great white mouth and turn onto the highway. Using Dan’s sensitive detection system, plus my GPS, we map a route toward Exploits Valley, where the giant squid can be reached via an out-of-the-way hamlet called Glovers Harbour, a town famous for its annual giant squid festival and dramatic iceberg spotting.

  All I really know about Newfoundland is that last year locals spotted an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan floating off the coast near St. John’s. Born in the Arctic, this one had broken free from a Greenland glacier, sailing away like a ghostly, thousand-year-old vessel, bearing its pale-blue mast. The massive berg travelled along the coast for days, whittling down like a pencil on the journey, on its way to disappearing forever.

  After a refuel, we continue northeast and find the sign for Glovers Harbour. A pamphlet in the interpretation centre explains t
hat one cold November day in 1878, the world’s largest colossal squid was floundering in the surf near the town’s sheltered bay, and fishermen hauled the 2.2-ton squid to shore. Later, the town became so renowned for the legendary catch, local officials decided to build a life-size, fifty-five-foot concrete-and-steel statue in its honour. Thousands stop by each year to get a close-up look at the writhing legs and two enormous tentacles now permanently frozen in mid-air.

  We park on the roadside and follow a path down to the wooden dock, where blue-bottomed fishing trawlers and rowboats pitch and bob in the gusting wind. I set Dan down on the dock, and we both peer over the edge, look out in silence as ragged leathery waves unfold and stretch out beyond the bay, crash and collide into the turbulent open waters, before dissolving into the infinite sea. Looking down at Dan, I suck in my breath. Keep telling myself that it’s all for the best. Dan’s got his own deal with the future, and it’s got nothing to do with me.

  While I am trying to gather enough courage to say goodbye, I hear a splash. I look over and see Dan has slipped from his place on the dock and is plunging beneath the waves. His ruffling fin propels him in a diagonal line, a swimming bullet piercing the Atlantic. Then it’s only me, and the wind-dragged waves rippling over the surface.

  After a while, furtive clouds begin sweeping in over the bay. I rock back on my heels, licking a salty taste from my lips.

  More powerful winds whip up, so quick and sharp, the cold cuts me open. Soon, the entire harbour is shrouded in ever-thickening fog, and I feel my throat constrict. With the wild, rocking motion on the dock, my entire body sways. I can’t keep still.

  What if Dan gets trapped on some hidden sea shelf? I think. What if the currents shift, leave him stranded and starving on some desolate beach? I slump down on the dock. What if the sharks get to him first?

  Look at the storm, I think, feeling the harbour close in around me. We need to get the hell out of here. But Dan is gone. And Rachel isn’t with me anymore. There’s just this smell of salty air. A metal rowboat knocks against the edge of the slick wooden dock.