Remarkably Bright Creatures(32)

The octopus blinks again.

“Oh, how upset I was at the time! But I’ll tell you what, when Will and I finally got rid of that davenport, years and years later . . .” Tova just nods, as if the sentence ought to have the decency to finish itself. And she doesn’t add that she hid in the bathroom as the furniture men made their way down the gravel driveway. Every piece of Erik was a fresh loss, even his ill-gotten artwork.

“He died when he was eighteen. Here, actually. Well, out there.” She tilts her head at the far end of the room, toward the tiny window overlooking Puget Sound, now darkened by night. Has Marcellus ever hoisted himself up there and peered out? Would the sight of the sea be a comfort to him? Or would it be a slap in the face, seeing his natural habitat, so close, yet so far? It reminds Tova of when her old neighbor Mrs. Sorenson would sometimes put her cage of parakeets on her porch when the weather was pleasant. They liked to listen to the wild birds sing, Mrs. Sorenson explained. It always made Tova feel oddly sad.

But Marcellus doesn’t follow her gaze to the dark little window. Maybe he doesn’t even know it exists. His eye is still fixed on Tova.

She continues. “He drowned one night. Out on a little boat. All by himself.” She shifts on the stool, chasing the ache away from her bad hip. “It took weeks of searching, but they finally found the anchor. Its line was cut.” She swallows. “They continued to look for the body, but Erik was already picked apart by then, I’m sure. Nothing lasts long at the bottom of the ocean.”

The octopus averts his eye for a moment, as if accepting some measure of culpability for his brethren, for their position in the food chain.

“They said he must have done it himself. No other explanation.” Tova draws in a ragged breath. “It’s always been so peculiar, though. Erik was happy. Well, he was eighteen, so who knows what was going on in his brain? And yes, we had that argument . . . oh, it was silly. He and his friends were kicking a soccer ball in the house and they knocked over one of my Dala Horses. My favorite one. It was old, brittle . . . My mother brought it over from Sweden . . . Its leg broke off.”

She straightens on the stool. “In any case, he was also upset with me for forcing him to take that job working the ticket booth. But what was I to do, let a teenager loaf around all summer?”

The loafing was a trait Erik had inherited from Will. The two of them would lounge for hours in the den, watching football or baseball or whatever sort of ball was in season. Afterward, Tova would come through with the vacuum and suck up the potato chip crumbs from the seams of the davenport and take a rag to the water stains their sweating soda cans left behind on the coffee table. Even after Erik was gone, Will would do the same thing every time there was a game on: sit on his same cushion while Erik’s sat empty. Loafing as usual, as if nothing had changed. It always irritated Tova.

Keeping busy was much healthier.

“Any reasonable parent would have insisted their child get a summer job,” she continues with a tiny tremor in her voice. “Of course, if I’d have known what would happen . . .” Without thinking much about it, she reaches her free hand into her apron pocket, finds her rag, and begins to scrub at the crusty white calcifications lining the black rubberized rim of the tank. Stubborn, but eventually the gunk relents. The octopus maintains his grip on her other arm, although his eye shimmers in a quizzical manner that Tova interprets as: What on earth are you doing, lady?

She chuckles softly. “I can’t help myself, can I?”

On the far side of the tank, the grimy rim is just out of reach. She shifts her weight, stretching her arm, then suddenly the stool starts to wobble beneath her feet. In a flash, the octopus’s tentacles slip through her fingertips. She lands in a painful crumple on the hard tile.

“Goodness gracious!” she mutters, taking mental inventory of her various parts. Her left ankle feels tender, but when she stands, it bears weight. She plucks up her rag from where it landed beneath the tank. The octopus peers from behind his rock, where he must’ve retreated with all of the clatter. “I’m fine,” she says with a relieved sigh. Everything intact.

Except for the step stool.

It lies on its side, jammed against a pile of clutter next to the tank pump. It must’ve shot out from underneath her when she moved. Now its upper rung dangles, one end detached. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she grumbles, limping across the room to retrieve it. She tries to jam the rung back into place, but it’s missing some doohickey. She scans the tile for a screwlike object, squinting in the pale blue light, then retrieves her glasses from her apron pocket and looks again. Nothing.

She tries again, more urgently this time, to fit the rung back on, but it’s no use. How will she explain this to Terry? She is not supposed to be climbing on stools, and certainly not pump room stools. For a fleeting moment she considers disposing of the evidence. Pitching the broken stool into the dumpster along with the night’s trash. Or better yet, removing it from the scene of the crime altogether. Taking it home with her and setting it out on her curb on trash day. But what if Terry were to drive by her house and see it there? Her heart hammers at the thought.

“No, I can’t do that,” she says firmly. And she can’t. Tova Sullivan is no liar. She’ll have to tell him.

Perhaps Terry will relieve her of her duties. At her age, he’ll conclude, the risk is too great. She won’t blame him.