The following afternoon, Tova sits next to Barbara Vanderhoof under a hair dryer at Colette’s Beauty Shop, which has occupied the same storefront with a painted-pink door in downtown Sowell Bay for nearly fifty years. Colette herself is in her seventies, same as the Knit-Wits, but she refuses to retire and fully cede the salon to the younger stylists she’s hired over the years.
Thankfully. Although Tova is hardly a vain woman, she allows herself this indulgence. And there’s no one else she’d trust to do her hair in just the right way. A few minutes earlier, she watched Colette trim Barb with her deft and careful hand. Colette really is the best hairdresser around.
“Tova, dear. How are you doing?” Barb leans over as far as the helmetlike dryer will allow, putting undue emphasis on the word “doing.” As if preemptively cutting off any attempt Tova might make to feign her own okay-ness. Barbara has always been efficient about slicing away other people’s nonsense, a quality Tova can’t help but admire.
But Tova also prides herself on maintaining no such veneer. She answers, truthfully, “Quite all right.”
“Lars was a good man.” Barb removes her glasses, letting them dangle from the beaded chain around her neck, and dots her seeping eyes with the corner of a handkerchief. Tova bites back the urge to scoff. It isn’t the first time she’s watched Barbara insert herself into another person’s tragedy like this. Barb and Lars couldn’t have met more than a handful of times, back in those early years, before Tova and Lars began to fall out of one another’s lives.
“He went peacefully,” Tova says with an air of authority, not adding that this is thirdhand knowledge. But the woman at Charter Village had clasped her arm intently while assuring her that Lars would’ve felt no pain at the end.
“It’s a blessing to go peacefully,” Barb says, clasping her bosom.
“And the facility was quite nice.”
“Oh?” Barb cocks her head. This is new information to her. Tova hadn’t mentioned her trip to Bellingham to the Knit-Wits, and it seems, for once, Ethan Mack has kept mum about something while ringing up groceries at the Shop-Way.
“Yes, I went to fetch his personal effects. Mind you, there wasn’t much. But the home was clean and well-run.”
“Where was he?”
“Charter Village. Up in Bellingham.”
“Oh!” Barb jams her glasses back on and thumbs through the magazine on her lap. “This place here?” She holds up a full-spread advertisement featuring a photo of the stately Charter Village campus, its lawn unnaturally green under a cloudless sky.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
Barb moves the page inches from her nose, squinting at the small print. “Look! It says they have a saltwater pool. A movie theater.”
Tova doesn’t look. “Do they really?”
“And a spa!”
“It was certainly fancier than expected,” Tova agrees.
With a dismissive exhale, Barb shuts the magazine. “Still. My Andie would never put me in a home . . .”
“Of course not.” Tova nods, her lips not quite a smile, not quite a grimace.
Barb fans herself with the magazine. It gets hot under the helmet dryers.
“Yes, well.” Tova picks up a well-worn copy of Reader’s Digest from the low table next to the dryer and pretends to read the table of contents. Naturally, she knows about the saltwater pool and the movie theater and the spa. The packet she’d taken from Charter Village is sitting on her coffee table at home. She’s read through it three times, at least.
“Ready, Tova?” Colette’s chipper voice calls from across the salon. Tova pushes the space-age helmet up and gathers her pocketbook, bidding Barbara Vanderhoof a polite farewell before going to get her hair finished.
THAT EVENING AT the aquarium, Terry’s office light is on. Tova pokes her head through the door to say hello.
“Hey, Tova!” Terry waves her in. A white takeout carton sits atop of a pile of papers on his desk, a pair of chopsticks sticking up like antennae, propped in what Tova knows is vegetable fried rice from the one Chinese restaurant in the area, down in Elland. The same sort of carton that lured the octopus from his enclosure that night.
“Good evening, Terry.” Tova inclines her head.
“Take a load off,” he says, nodding at the chair across from his desk. He holds up a fortune cookie in a plastic wrapper. “You want one? They always give me at least two, sometimes three or four. I don’t know how many people they think I could be feeding with this one pint of fried rice.”
Tova smiles, but doesn’t sit, remaining in the doorway. “That’s kind, but no thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugs, tossing it onto the clutter. The state of Terry’s desk, with its haphazard piles and scattered papers, always makes Tova’s palms itch. When she comes through later with her cleaning cart, she’ll empty the trash, dust the trio of frames behind the desk. Terry’s toddler daughter on a playground swing. Terry with his arm draped around an older woman’s shoulder—his mother, with deep brown skin, a crown of dark curls, and Terry’s same broad smile. An unseen breeze lifts the sleeve of Terry’s gown, a purple-and-gold tassel dangling from the his mortarboard cap. Next to the photo is the related degree: bachelor of science, summa cum laude, in marine biology, awarded to Terrance Bailey from the University of Washington.
This sort of photo is missing from Tova’s mantel at home. Erik would’ve started at that university in the fall if that summer night had never happened.
Terry picks up the chopsticks and scoops up a bite of rice in a smooth, expert manner that strikes her as impressively natural for a boy who, Tova knows, was raised on a fishing boat in Jamaica. Young people pick things up so easily. After chewing and swallowing, he says, “Sorry to hear about your brother.”
“Thank you,” Tova says quietly.
Terry wipes his fingers on a thin takeout napkin. “Ethan mentioned it.”
“It’s quite all right,” Tova says. It must be a challenge for Ethan, drumming up things to converse about while ringing groceries. Heaven knows she would detest such a job, having to chitchat all day long.
“Anyway, I’m glad I caught you, Tova. I have a favor to ask.”
“Yes?” Tova looks up, grateful for the speedy switch of topics. Finally, someone who doesn’t insist on nattering on for hours about her loss.
“Any chance you could wipe down the front windows tonight? Just the inside.”
“Certainly,” she replies, then adds, “I would be pleased to.” She means it. The broad windowpanes in the lobby are always collecting grime, and right now nothing would make her happier than to spray them down and work her cloth over the glass until every last smudge and streak is banished.
“I’d like the front to look nice for the crowds this weekend.” Terry runs a hand down his face, which looks exhausted. “If you can’t get to all the floors, don’t worry about it, okay? We can catch up next week.”
Fourth of July is always the aquarium’s busiest weekend. Back in Sowell Bay’s heyday, the town used to put on a big waterfront festival. These days, it’s just busier than average.
Tova pulls on her rubber gloves. The pump rooms will get done, and the front windows as well. It will be a late night, but she has never minded staying up late.
“You’re a lifesaver, Tova.” Terry flashes her a grateful grin.
“It’s something to do.” She smiles back.
Terry shuffles around the papers and mess on his desk, and something silver catches Tova’s eye. A heavy-looking clamp, its bar at least as thick as Terry’s index finger. He lifts it absently, then puts it back down again, like a paperweight.
But Tova has the distinct feeling it’s not a paperweight.
“May I ask what that’s for?” Tova leans on the doorway, a sick feeling settling in her stomach.
Terry lets out a sigh. “I think Marcellus has been going rogue again.”
“Marcellus?”
“The GPO.” It takes a moment for Tova to parse the acronym. Giant Pacific octopus. And he has a name. How did she not know?
“I see,” Tova says quietly.
“I don’t know how he does it. But I’m down eight sea cucumbers this month.” Terry picks up the clamp again and holds it in his cupped palm like he’s weighing it. “I think he’s slipping through that little gap. I need to pick up a piece of wood to go over the back of his tank before I can put this thing on.”
Tova hesitates. Should she bring up the fried rice cartons in the break room? Her eyes fall to the clamp, which is now resting on top of the paperwork mess on Terry’s desk again. Finally, she says, “I don’t know how an octopus could leave a closed tank.”
And this is true, technically. She does not know how he does it.
“Well, something fishy is going on, pardon the pun.” Terry glances at his watch. “Hey, I can probably make it to the hardware store tonight if I leave now.” He closes his laptop computer and begins to gather his things. “Careful on the wet floors, okay, Tova?”
Terry is always reminding her to be careful. He’s anxious she’ll fall and break a hip and sue the pants off of the aquarium, or so the Knit-Wits say. Tova can’t imagine she would ever sue anyone, least of all this place, but she doesn’t bother correcting her friends anymore. And besides, she is always careful. Will used to joke that “caution” ought to be her middle name.
She replies, truthfully, “I always am.”
“HELLO, FRIEND,” SHE says to the octopus. At the sound of her voice, the octopus unfurls from behind a rock, a starburst of orange and yellow and white. He blinks at her as he drifts toward the glass. His color looks better tonight, Tova notes. Brighter.
She smiles. “Not feeling so adventurous tonight, are you?”
He sucks a tentacle to the glass, his bulbous mantle briefly heaving as if he’s letting out a sigh, even though that’s impossible. Then in a shockingly swift motion he jets toward the back of his tank, his eye still trained on her, and traces the edge of the tiny gap with the tip of a tentacle.
“No, you don’t, Mister. Terry’s on to you,” Tova scolds, and she scoots off toward the door that leads around back to the rear access for all of the tanks along this section of the outside wall. When she comes into the tiny, humid room, she expects to find the creature in the midst of escape, but to her surprise he’s still there in his tank.
“Then again, perhaps you should have one last night of freedom,” she says, thinking of the heavy clamp on Terry’s desk.
The octopus presses his face against the back glass and extends his arms upward, like a child’s plea to be carried.
“You want to shake hands,” she says, guessing.
The octopus’s arms swirl in the water.
“Well, I suppose so.” She drags over one of the chairs tucked under the long metal table and steadies herself as she climbs up, tall enough now to remove the cover on the back of the tank. As she’s unfastening the latch, she realizes the octopus might be taking advantage of her. Getting her to remove the lid so he can escape.
She takes the gamble. Lifts the lid.
He floats below, languid now, all eight arms spread out around him like an alien star. Then he lifts one out of the water. Tova extends her hand, still covered in faint round bruises from last time, and he winds around it again, as if smelling her. The tip of his tentacle reaches neck-high and pokes at her chin.
Hesitantly, she touches the top of his mantle, as one might pet a dog. “Hello, Marcellus. That’s what they call you, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, with the arm still wrapped around hers, he gives a sharp tug. Tova’s balance falters on the chair and for a moment she fears he’s trying to pull her into his tank.
She leans over until her nose nearly touches the water, her own eyes now inches from his, his otherworldly pupil so dark blue it’s almost black, an iridescent marble. They study each other for what seems like an eternity, and Tova realizes an additional octopus arm has wound its way over her other shoulder, prodding her freshly done hair.
Tova laughs. “Don’t muss it. I was just at the beauty shop this morning.”
Then he releases her and vanishes behind his rock. Stunned, Tova looks around. Had he heard something? She touches her neck, the cold wetness where his tentacle was.
He reappears, drifting back upward. A small gray object is looped on the tip of one of his arms. He extends it to her. An offering.
Her house key. The one she lost last year.