Lily And The Octopus Part 11

"Let's just continue with the second card." Jenny hands me a card similar to the first one, but with the addition of four red splotches. "What do you see?"

This time I don't have to study it. I see it right away. "That's the octopus. Four of his arms dripping in blood."

Jenny purses her lips. "Where is the blood coming from?"

I refuse to answer this. Instead, I just shrug and brush excess cinnamon off my cookie and it gets on my shirt and I have a sudden sympathy for Candy Crowley. I can see peripherally that Jenny is scratching more notes on her pad. Maybe she's deciding whether to press me for more. If she does, she won't get anything.

"Try this one." She hands me a third card; this one also has splotches of red.

"c.o.c.kroach."

"Not octopus?"

"You can't ask me leading questions like that. That's tester projection."

"I'm just making sure," Jenny says.

"What I see is a c.o.c.kroach." I pause for a bite of cookie before adding, "Known in some circles as the octopus of the land."

Jenny tosses her pad down in frustration and leans forward in her chair. She rests her chin in her hands and her pen makes a small blue mark on her cheek. "What circles would those be?"

"Some circles." I really don't know the answer. "Among entomologists, perhaps."

Jenny sighs.

"Look. Let me save you some time." I pick up the stack of remaining cards. "This is the octopus hang gliding. This is the octopus after I pry it free from Lily and sizzle its brains with an electric cattle prod. This is two Tinker Bells kissing." I pause for a moment and pull the card close to my face, but sure enough, that's what I see. This time it's me who makes a mental note. That's of some concern. The rest of the cards are in color. "That's the octopus in the ocean pouncing on some unlucky prey, that's the coral reef where I imagine the octopus lives, and that's two seahorses holding up the Eiffel Tower." I toss the cards down onto the table. "I may have missed one."

Jenny doesn't like it when I'm such a smarta.s.s, so I open my bag and hold it out for her. "Cookie?"

She glares at me for a moment, and then I see her face soften and she reaches into the bag and pulls out a chocolate chocolate chip. "What the h.e.l.l."

"C'mon, Jenny. You know as well as I do that this is pseudoscience."

Jenny takes a bite of her cookie, then rests it in her lap. "These are good." She reaches for the discarded stack of cards and puts them back in order. "Rorschach testing has been widely criticized for certain purposes, but it's still a pretty good indicator of anxiety." She looks me straight in the eyes. "And hostility."

"He blinded her." I just blurt it out. What I want to say is, Of course I'm anxious, of course I'm hostile, but when I open my mouth, that's what comes out instead.

"Lily? Who did?"

I tap my finger pointedly on the first card, which is sitting on the top of the stack. "I have to act, and I have to act now, and I have no viable options, medically at least, and every hour that pa.s.ses I hate myself more and more for being so incapable, so helpless, so trapped in a coc.o.o.n of the octopus's spinning."

"Do you have nonmedical options?"

I shrug. I know I set myself up for that question, but I don't like any of the possible answers. Love? Scented oils? Prayer?

"a.n.a.lytically speaking," Jenny continues, "coc.o.o.ns aren't necessarily about entrapment. They can be symbols of growth, of transformation, of metamorphosis."

I think of my double reflection, the one I saw outside in Trent's backyard. I reach into my bag of cookies for another but withdraw empty-handed, and instead I crumple the bag, smashing the remaining cookies to crumbs in my fist, and throw the whole mess on the floor.

To Jenny's credit, she remains unfazed. "Why don't we run through these cards again. This time you can give me real answers, and we can maybe determine something about your emotional functioning and response tendencies."

She reaches for the deck without breaking eye contact. We stare at each other resolutely.

I will give Jenny the answers she wants; I don't have any more time to waste arguing with her. I'm really using this hour for something else. I'm using all my hours for another purpose. For letting the anger take root in my coc.o.o.n.

It's perhaps the oldest trope there is, but in this moment there's no denying its core truth: To defeat my enemy, I must become him.

I look at the bag of cookies, burst and spilling crumbs on the rug.

A sea change is coming.

I visit four different pool stores before I find inflatable sharks that will suffice. I purchase six of them even though they're not exactly as I pictured. They have two handles on either side of the dorsal fin-I guess to make it easier for children to ride them. Also, their mouth openings are painted red where gnashing teeth should be, which should suggest they're hungry for blood but instead make them look like they're wearing lipstick (if sharks even have lips in the first place). They are the right size, though, and should fulfill their intended purpose nicely.

Lily is asleep when I get home, so I decide to inflate the sharks in the backyard. Blowing them up takes some effort in the heat, and after inflating one, and half of another, I feel light-headed and unsure of my plan and need to sit down. I look at the sharks, one at full attention, the other slumped at half-mast, as if it were suffering from some sort of palsy, and it occurs to me that Lily would have enjoyed these in her youth. Enjoyed destroying them, as she destroyed all of her toys except red ball. When she was a puppy, my dad's wife had given her a stuffed monkey toy with these oversized orange arms. One day I noticed one of those arms was missing. I searched the house high and low, but it was nowhere to be found. It wasn't until the next day while walking her with a friend that the arm made a dramatic return.

"Oh my G.o.d, what's wrong with your dog?"

I turned to find Lily crouched as she does, an orange monkey hand, then arm, making its way out of her like some sort of hernia exam in reverse.

"Oh. That happens," I said, lying, crouching with a plastic bag to pull the rest of it out of her, a magician doing the most disgusting magic handkerchief trick.

In the little storage s.p.a.ce under the house I find an old bicycle pump that belongs to my landlord, and after a few false starts I use that to inflate the remaining sharks. Finished, I sit in a semicircle with my new menacing friends like we're at the oddest tea party this side of Wonderland. "No room! No room!" cries one of the sharks, playing both the Hatter and the March Hare. Of course, he's wrong. There's plenty of room, as we're sitting in the empty yard.

"We're a team, you and I," I tell the sharks. "Normally we have only each other as enemies, but today we are hunting octopus. Together."

"Octopus?" another of the sharks exclaims, before they all start talking over one another, making it difficult to hear.

"Guys, guys, guys! Only one of you talk." I look around the circle to see who they will elect to speak. It's the one sitting next to me on my right.

"Sure. We could eat some octopus."

"Here's the thing. Now, this is important, so listen up." I look around the circle to see if any of the sharks have ears, which they don't, at least not that I can see. "Do you guys have ears?"

"We have endolymphatic pores." It's the shark across from me now. "They are like ears."

"Where?"

The sharks kind of bow down. "Here," one says. "On top of our heads." It makes me feel powerful to have all these sharks bowing in front of me. I can just make out these so-called pores near where the plastic handles are attached.

"Good. Now, listen up. The octopus is stuck to a small dog."

"Dog?" they exclaim, and start talking over each other again. "Canine." "Mongrel?" "Pooch!"

"Guys!"

The shark next to me remembers his role as elected speaker. "Sure, we could eat some pooch." Murmurs of agreement and consensus.

"Do not eat the pooch!" I clap my hands together loudly and repeatedly to grab their attention. One of them covers his hearing pores, or whatever, with his fins. I wait until I have their attention again. "Do not eat the dog. That is what I'm saying. You may eat the octopus. But I am trusting you to not eat the dog. Does everyone understand?"

I survey the circle and the sharks nod their agreement.

I repeat. "Does everyone understand?"

"Yeah!"

"Yeah!"

"Sure!"

"Yeah!"

"Octopus!"

"Dog."

"No dog!"

"No dog."

"Good!"

I wonder what I've gotten myself into.

I tiptoe inside, carrying the sharks two at a time, and I place them around Lily's bed so they'll be the first thing the octopus sees when he wakes up. It's a horrific sight. Imagine waking up to a shiver of red-lipped sharks grinning from ear to . . . well, not ear. Endolymph . . . whatever . . . pores. Never mind, that's a bad example, but you get the picture. I hope it literally scares the octopus to death.

When everything is set up, I call for Lily with a quick whistle. She lifts her head and shakes her ears and when she stops she stares through the sharks, unfazed. She can't see them. The octopus, however, screams.

"Aaaaauuuuugggghhhhh!"

He covers his eyes with two of his arms.

I bite my lip with antic.i.p.ation. Will he have a heart attack? Will he just die of shock? Will his eyes turn to Xs like in a cartoon while his mouth goes slack?

"Just kidding, governor," the octopus says, dropping his arms back down to their resting place on Lily's head. "Nice pool toys."

"Those aren't pool toys, they're sharks. Real sharks! Right, guys?"

Instead of murmuring their agreement, this time they all lie silent. In fact, one tips over on its side. Not very menacing. The jig, sadly, is up. "How did you know?"

The octopus shakes his head. He can't believe how pathetic I am. "They smell like condoms."

"How do you know what condoms smell like?"

"Oh. Lily and I got in your goodie drawer. I tried a few on." I look down at Lily, wondering how she could be such an unwitting accomplice. How she could possibly ever team up with this monster. But she's blind and trusting and sweet, and he may be steering her in ways beyond her control. As if to underscore this new reality, Lily stares blankly into the void. "By the way, there were only nine left in the box and I used eight, so . . ."

"And you smelled them?" I'm incredulous.

"Our smell sensors are at the ends of our arms. Kind of hard not to."

I look down at the sharks lying limply at my feet. "I, too, can command the sharks, sir!" I wonder if Cate Blanchett ever said that. To the sharks I yell, "Get him!" I point at the octopus, but nothing. I'm so enraged that I pick up one of the sharks by the dorsal handles and throw it right at the octopus. I yell again. "Get him!"

The shark bops Lily in the nose, and she mistakes the command as being for her. She springs to life, running in circles, b.u.mping into inflatable sharks at every turn. She wrangles one by the caudal fin and swings it around like a wrestler slamming a mismatched opponent. The other sharks make a safety b.u.mper for her mania, and she can run every which way in her hunt to bring the one unlucky shark to its demise and I don't have to worry about her running headfirst into the stove. This is a first since the octopus blinded her, her having this much fun and my allowing her to have it without constantly interfering to redirect her away from injury.

Finally her teeth puncture the luckless fish, and it slowly starts to deflate. Lily lies in wait until just enough air has been expelled from its tail, then pounces. She lands between the dorsal handles and her weight slowly presses the air out of her prey, the shark's creepy red smile melting into a grimace. It occurs to me that to Lily, the inflatable sharks do not smell like condoms. They smell like red ball did when it was new. They smell like adventure. They smell like fun.

The octopus laughs, and I'm still angry. But I also can't help but feel joy at watching Lily prance and play. There is still vitality inside of her. There is still grace and jubilation and puppyness and wonder.

I take a seat in order to fully appreciate her frivolity, her silliness. This may be the last time I see it in her. The last time I appreciate it myself.

We are both transforming.

Lily yawns and stretches awake from her afternoon snooze and struggles to get down from my lap. I place her gently on the floor by my feet; she looks bothered by something, and I'm about to carry her to home base ("Home base!") to reorient her when she scrambles up my leg and starts humping. This hasn't really happened before-maybe once or twice in the manic hysteria of puppyhood, but that seemed less s.e.xual and more a function of uncontainable joie de vivre. This, however, is uncomfortable in its single-mindedness of reproductive purpose.

"Lily, stop that."

I'M! HUMPING! YOUR! LEG!

She grabs my leg tighter with her front paws, doubling down on her thrusting.

"Lily. No! You're female!" Meredith would murder me for bringing gender into this. Why can't girls-dammit-women be s.e.xual thrusters? I have to shake my sister's voice from my head as I pry Lily off my leg. It's hard at this angle to pull her free, but I get my hands around her chest and yank. Finally Lily's front paws release like Velcro and I lift her back up in my lap.

"What was that about?" I ask.

Lily shakes her head and her ears flap and she licks her chops. "What was what about?" She is as bewildered as I am.

The octopus opens an eye and says, "That was embarra.s.sing."

"No one is talking to you." I say it as dismissively as possible, hoping he'll go dormant again.

Lily turns three times and then plunks down in my lap with a sigh.

Puppies sighing.

"She can't help herself anymore. It's Freudian."

"Freudian?"

"Sigmund Freud? He was known as the founding father of . . ."

"I know who Sigmund Freud is!" I realize now how obnoxious I sounded when I tried to explain to Jenny who Hermann Rorschach was. "We share the same birthday." I don't know why I say that last part, why I engage the octopus in further conversation, but it's true and I just blurt it out.

"Tauruses," the octopus says with a shrug.

My phone rings. I can hear it but I can't see it. "Why do you know who he is, is a better question."

I spot my phone peeking out from under an accent pillow on the couch and I answer it just as the octopus says, "It's true that most octopuses are Jungians."

I can't take it anymore. "You're so full of s.h.i.t!" And then, into the phone, "h.e.l.lo?"