The Technically True Story
A baking-soda scrub takes most of the rust off the key. To Tova’s surprise, in spite of what it must have been through, it fits smoothly in her front door. She restores the original to its rightful place on her keyring, then unthreads the spare, which never did overcome the fact that it hitched in the lock on occasion. She tosses the spare in the kitchen junk drawer.
She’s only just returned to her morning coffee and crossword when a soft scraping on the front porch interrupts her. Her lumbar region pops as she rises from the kitchen chair, and with one palm bracing the small of her back, she shuffles toward the door, arriving in time to watch Cat shimmy through a loose flap in the screen door. When did that flap come loose? Another minor repair needed. They accumulate so quickly now that Will’s gone. It might be fixable with superglue.
She could go to the hardware store for superglue. It would be the same hardware store where Terry had gone to get a bit of wood to make that clamp work. The same clamp that had landed with a heavy thump in the trash collection bin when she’d thrown it away.
Cat sits down in the center of her foyer, tail wrapped neatly around the base of his slender body, and blinks at her, as if asking her what she is doing here, rather than the other way around.
What is it with creatures and small gaps lately? “Well, come along. We eat breakfast in the kitchen. I’m afraid porch service has been discontinued.”
AT THE AQUARIUM that evening, her footsteps echo in the empty foyer. She begins her usual preparations. “Hello, dears,” she says to the angelfish on her way to the supply closet, then gives an efficient greeting to the bluegills, the Japanese crabs, the sharp-nosed sculpin, the ghastly wolf eels. She mixes the lemon and vinegar and props the mop and bucket in the hallway. It will be ready for her when she returns.
As usual, Marcellus is tucked behind his rock. She ducks through the door to the pump room, immediately relieved to see no clamps on his tank. A wave of guilt washes over her. Does Terry assume he misplaced it?
The image of Cat where she’d left him on her way out, curled up on her davenport, flashes through her mind. Without really intending it, she arrived at a decision not to repair the screen, at least for now.
Let the creatures have their gaps, then. She laughs aloud. The pumps gurgle their agreement.
She pulls out an old step stool and carefully climbs, then slides off the cover over the back rim of the tank. Looking down at a bird’s-eye view, she sets her jaw through a wave of dizziness brought on by the mechanical rippling of the water below. Then she pushes up the sleeve of her sweater and hovers a finger over the surface, wondering if her arm would be long enough to reach if she tried to poke him in his hiding spot. Not that she would ever try. Hiding spots ought to be sacred.
But she needn’t have considered such drastic measures, because he floats out and drifts upward, his eye trained on her. One of his arms wafts back and forth, and Tova imagines he is waving. She lets her hand drop in, and her breath catches, either from the cold water or the absurdity of what she is doing or perhaps both. Almost instantly, the octopus reciprocates, winding two of its tentacles around her wrist and forearm in his particular way that makes her hand feel heavy and peculiar.
“Good evening, Marcellus,” she says formally. “How has your day been?”
The octopus tightens his grip, but in a genteel manner Tova interprets as a pleasantry. The equivalent of Very well, thanks for asking.
“You’ve been staying out of trouble, then,” Tova says with an affirming nod. His color is good. No more dustups with the pile of cords in the break room. “Good boy,” she adds, then immediately regrets it. Good boy is what Mary Ann says to Rolo when he sits for a biscuit.
If Marcellus takes offense, he doesn’t show it. The tip of his arm attaches to the crook of Tova’s elbow, then reaches around the other side and taps the knob of her funny bone, as if trying to understand the mechanics of the joint. How strange her anatomy must seem to him, all sockets and brittle bones. He pokes at the flap of skin sagging from her tricep, pulled by gravity’s hand, which grows more insistent each year.
“Skin and bones. That’s what the Knit-Wits say, when they think I’m out of earshot.” She shakes her head. “We’ve been friends for decades, you see. Used to meet for lunch every Tuesday, but now it’s every other. When Will was alive, he’d chuckle at me as I went out the door. ‘Don’t know how you stand that old pack of hens,’ he’d say.”
The octopus blinks.