Day 1,299 of My Captivity
DARKNESS SUITS ME.
Each evening, I await the click of the overhead lights, leaving only the glow from the main tank. Not perfect, but close enough.
Almost-darkness, like the middle-bottom of the sea. I lived there before I was captured and imprisoned. I cannot remember, yet I can still taste the untamed currents of the cold open water. Darkness runs through my blood.
Who am I, you ask? My name is Marcellus, but most humans do not call me that. Typically, they call me that guy. For example: Look at that guyâthere he isâyou can just see his tentacles behind the rock.
I am a giant Pacific octopus. I know this from the plaque on the wall beside my enclosure.
I know what you are thinking. Yes, I can read. I can do many things you would not expect.
The plaque states other facts: my size, preferred diet, and where I might live were I not a prisoner here. It mentions my intellectual prowess and penchant for cleverness, which for some reason seems a surprise to humans: Octopuses are remarkably bright creatures, it says. It warns the humans of my camouflage, tells them to take extra care in looking for me in case I have disguised myself to match the sand.
The plaque does not state that I am named Marcellus. But the human called Terry, the one who runs this aquarium, sometimes shares this with the visitors who gather near my tank. See him back there? His nameâs Marcellus. Heâs a special guy.
A special guy. Indeed.
Terryâs small daughter chose my name. Marcellus McSquiddles, in full. Yes, it is a preposterous name. It leads many humans to assume I am a squid, which is an insult of the worst sort.
How shall you refer to me, you ask? Well, that is up to you. Perhaps you will default to calling me that guy, like the rest of them. I hope not, but I will not hold it against you. You are only human, after all.
I must advise you that our time together may be brief. The plaque states one additional piece of information: the average life span of a giant Pacific octopus. Four years.
My life span: four yearsâ1,460 days.
I was brought here as a juvenile. I shall die here, in this tank. At the very most, one hundred and sixty days remain until my sentence is complete.
The Silver-Dollar Scar
Tova Sullivan prepares for battle. A yellow rubber glove sticks up from her back pocket like a canaryâs plume as she bends over to size up her enemy.
Chewing gum.
âFor heavenâs sake.â She jabs at the pinkish blob with her mop handle. Layers of sneaker tread emboss its surface, speckling it with grime.
Tova has never understood the purpose of chewing gum. And people lose track of it so often. Perhaps this chewer was talking, ceaselessly, and it simply tumbled out, swept away by a slurry of superfluous words.
She bends over and picks at the edge of the mess with her fingernail, but it doesnât budge from the tile. All because someone couldnât walk ten feet to the trash bin. Once, when Erik was young, Tova caught him mashing a piece of bubble gum under a diner table. That was the last time she bought bubble gum for him, although how he spent his allowance as adolescence set in was, like so much else, beyond her control.
Specialized weaponry will be necessary. A file, perhaps. Nothing on her cart will pry up the gum.
As she stands, her back pops. The sound echoes down the empty curve of the hallway, bathed in its usual soft blue light, as she journeys to the supply closet. No one would fault her, of course, for passing over the blob of gum with her mop. At seventy years old, they donât expect her to do such deep cleaning. But she must, at least, try.
Besides, itâs something to do.
TOVA IS SOWELL BAY AQUARIUMâS oldest employee. Each night, she mops the floors, wipes down the glass, and empties the trash bins. Every two weeks, she retrieves a direct-deposit stub from her cubby in the break room. Fourteen dollars an hour, less the requisite taxes and deductions.
The stubs get stashed in an old shoebox on top of her refrigerator, unopened. The funds accrue in an out-of-mind account at the Sowell Bay Savings and Loan.
She marches toward the supply closet now, at a purposeful clip that would be impressive by anyoneâs standards but is downright astonishing for a tiny older woman with a curved back and birdlike bones. Overhead, raindrops land on the skylight, backlit by glare from the security light at the old ferry dock next door. Silver droplets race down the glass, shimmering ribbons under the fogbound sky. Itâs been a dreadful June, as everyone keeps saying. The gray weather doesnât bother Tova, though it would be nice if the rain would let up long enough to dry out her front yard. Her push mower clogs when itâs soggy.
Shaped like a doughnut, with a main tank in the center and smaller tanks around the outside, the aquariumâs dome-topped building is not particularly large or impressive, perhaps fitting for Sowell Bay, which is neither large nor impressive itself. From the site of Tovaâs encounter with the chewing gum, the supply closet is a full diameter across. Her white sneakers squeak across a section sheâs already cleaned, leaving dull footprints on the gleaming tile. Without a doubt, sheâll mop that part again.
She pauses at the shallow alcove, with its life-sized bronze statue of a Pacific sea lion. The sleek spots on its back and bald head, worn smooth from decades of being petted and climbed on by children, only enhance its realism. On Tovaâs mantel at home, thereâs a photo of Erik, perhaps eleven or twelve at the time, grinning wildly as he straddles the statueâs back, one hand aloft like heâs about to throw a lasso. A sea cowboy.
That photo is one of the last in which he looks childlike and carefree. Tova maintains the photos of Erik in chronological order: a montage of his transformation from a gummy-grinned baby to handsome teenager, taller than his father, posing in his letter jacket. Pinning a corsage on a homecoming date. Atop a makeshift podium on the rocky shores of deep blue Puget Sound, clutching a high school regatta trophy. Tova touches the sea lionâs cold head as she passes, quelling the urge to wonder yet again how Erik mightâve looked now.
She continues on, as one must, down the dim hallway. In front of the tank of bluegills, she pauses. âGood evening, dears.â
The Japanese crabs are next. âHello, lovelies.â
âHow do you do?â she inquires of the sharp-nosed sculpin.
The wolf eels are not Tovaâs cup of tea, but she nods a greeting. One mustnât be rude, even though they remind her of those cable-channel horror films her late husband, Will, took to watching in the middle of the night when chemotherapy nausea kept him awake. The largest wolf eel glides out of its rocky cavern, mouth set in its trademark underbite frown. Jagged teeth jut upward from its lower jaw like little needles. An unfortunate-looking thing, to say the least. But then, looks are deceiving, arenât they? Tova smiles at the wolf eel, even though it could never smile back, not even if it wanted to, with a face like that.
The next exhibit is Tovaâs favorite. She leans in, close to the glass. âWell, sir, what have you been up to today?â
It takes her a moment to find him: a sliver of orange behind the rock. Visible, but mistakenly, like a childâs hide-and-seek misstep: a girlâs ponytail sticking up behind the sofa, or a socked foot peeking out from under the bed.
âFeeling bashful tonight?â She steps back and waits; the giant Pacific octopus doesnât move. She imagines daytime, people rapping their knuckles on the glass, huffing away when they donât see anything. Nobody knows how to be patient anymore.
âI canât say I blame you. It does look cozy back there.â
The orange arm twitches, but his body remains tucked away.
THE CHEWING GUM mounts a valiant defense against Tovaâs file, but eventually it pops off.
When Tova pitches the crusty blob into the trash bag, it makes a satisfying little swoosh as it rustles the plastic.
Now she mops. Again.
Vinegar with a hint of lemon tinges the air, wafting up from the wet tile. So much better than the dreadful solution theyâd been using when Tova first started, bright green junk that singed her nostrils. Sheâd made her case against it right off the bat. For one thing, it made her dizzy, and for another, it left unsightly streaks on the floors. And perhaps worst of all, it smelled like Willâs hospital room, like Will being sick, although Tova kept that part of her complaint private.
The supply room shelves were crammed with jugs of that green junk, but Terry, the aquarium director, finally shrugged, telling her she could use whatever she wanted if she brought it herself. Certainly, Tova agreed. So each night she totes a jug of vinegar and her bottle of lemon oil.
Now, more trash to collect. She empties the bins in the lobby, the can outside the restrooms, then ends in the break room, with its endless crumbs on the counter. Itâs not required of her, as itâs taken care of by the professional crew from Elland that comes every other week, but Tova always runs her rag around the base of the ancient coffee maker and inside the splatter-stained microwave, which smells of spaghetti. Today, however, there are bigger issues: empty takeout cartons on the floor. Three of them.
âMy word,â she says, scolding the empty room. First the gum, and now this.
She picks up the cartons and tosses them in the trash can, which, oddly, has been scooted several feet over from its usual spot. After she empties the can into her collection bag, she moves it back to its proper place.
Next to the trash sits a small lunch table. Tova straightens the chairs. Then she sees it.
Something. Underneath.
A brownish-orange clump, shoved in the corner. A sweater? Mackenzie, the pleasant young lady who works the admission kiosk, often leaves one slung over the back of a chair. Tova kneels, preparing to fetch it and stash it in Mackenzieâs cubby. But then the clump moves.
A tentacle moves.
âGood heavens!â
The octopusâs eye materializes from somewhere in the fleshy mass. Its marble pupil widens, then its eyelid narrows. Reproachful.
Tova blinks, not convinced her own eyes are working properly. How could the giant Pacific octopus be out of his tank?
The arm moves again. The creature is tangled in the mess of power cords. How many times has she cursed those cords? They make it impossible to properly sweep.
âYouâre stuck,â she whispers, and the octopus heaves his huge bulbous head, straining on one of his arms, around which a thin power cord, the kind used to charge a cell phone, is wrapped several times. The creature strains harder and the cord binds tighter, his flesh bulging between each loop. Erik had a toy like this once, from a joke shop. A little woven cylinder where you stuck in an index finger on either end then tried to pull them apart. The harder you pulled, the tighter it became.
She inches closer. In response, the octopus smacks one of his arms on the linoleum as if to say: Back off, lady.
âOkay, okay,â she murmurs, pulling out from under the table.
She stands and turns the overhead light on, washing the break room in fluorescent glow, and starts to lower herself down again, more slowly this time. But then, as usual, her back ...
