“Can the octopus hear us now?” I ask.
“No.”
“You can tell?”
“Sometimes. He gets bored with us a lot and tunes out.”
“If he’s so bored, then he should leave.” I scratch the back of Lily’s neck while trying to choke down my offense. Bored with us? Really? He’s not exactly a master of witticisms and repartee. Who the hell does he think he is?
Lily does this thing where she lifts her snout in the air, and I can tell that the backrub feels good, so I continue. I’m more comfortable snuggling with her when I know the octopus isn’t going to interfere. “We have some decisions to make, Goose. Hard ones. About how to get rid of . . .” Instead of saying the octopus, I point at it. I don’t want his curiosity piqued by his mention. “And to be blunt about it, all of the options suck.”
I continue stroking Lily’s back. I’m not sure how much of this she grasps. Sucks for the octopus? Sucks for her? Sucks for us. I think of what Doogie has told me, as well as what I’ve read in my own research, although my own research is limited—if you Google “octopus on dogs,” most results you get are about making an octopus out of a hot dog by cutting the bottom two-thirds the long way into eight sections to look like arms and leaving the head of the hot dog intact. Apparently the Japanese add these to bento-type lunch boxes for children. This makes me think less of the Japanese.
“There’s surgery, where they’ll try to cut him off. That’s perhaps the most obvious thing to do. But the doctors won’t know if they can get all of him until they put you under and see what kind of grip he holds.” Lily looks confused, so I remind her, “You had surgery once on your spine.”
Lily recoils and I feel her tremble. “I don’t like surgery.”
“I don’t think anyone does.” Maybe only surgeons.
“What else?”
Her reaction confirms what I already know, but surgery in many ways would be the most satisfying. The idea of stabbing a scalpel into the octopus and starting to cut is so appealing, I almost want to do it myself. To bring about his demise at the violent end of a knife. But there’s no way for even the most decorated surgeon to do this without also stabbing a knife into Lily. Neither of us can abide by this, if it’s even a worthwhile option at all.
“There’s chemotherapy and radiation.”
“What do those things do?”
“They would try to shrink the octo—him, I suppose.” It’s a funny visual, like a cartoon. The octopus getting smaller and smaller in front of our eyes until he has only a high squeaky voice and croaks something along the lines of “I’m mellllt-t-t-ting,” like the Wicked Witch of the West.
“Do those hurt like surgery?”
I try to imagine putting Lily through either. What they would both do to her already subdued spirit. Her voice would be lost. I can’t imagine ever hearing her exclaim I! JUST! CAME! BACK! FROM! CHEMOTHERAPY! AND! IT! WAS! SO! MUCH! FUN! LET’S! ALL! STICK! PEANUT! BUTTER! TO! THE! ROOFS! OF! OUR! MOUTHS! AND! LICK! FRANTICALLY! UNTIL! IT’S! GONE!
I can’t imagine ever hearing her exclaim anything again.
“Neither is pleasant,” I say.
“Next,” she says dismissively.
“They can put you on steroids to try to reduce the octopus that way—reduce the swelling he’s causing on your brain—and start you on anticonvulsants to lessen the frequency of seizures. But those do a lot of damage to your kidneys.”
Lily has already had several courses of steroids on occasions when swelling returned to her spine. I used to find the idea of her on steroids funny—that I might come home and find a dachshund-shaped hole in the wall and half the cars on the block overturned in a Hulk-like rage. But only funny because I was so scared. I needed to think of the steroids as superhuman, supercanine. There could be no surgery for her again on her spine. The steroids had to be powerful. They had to work.
“Harrumph,” Lily scoffs, summing up her feelings on all the choices.
She’s not going to help me make this decision. She’s a dog and has other concerns, and what about any of this can she really understand? Or maybe she’s made her decision, and what I need to do is listen. Maybe she knows what the vet says, what may seem obvious to anyone who thinks about it. That there is no true cure for canine octopus. Not any that has been discovered yet.
Lily stands on my lap and raises one of her front paws in her best guard-dog stance.
LOOK! THE! DOLPHINS! ARE! BACK! AND! THEY’RE! JUMPING! I! WANT! TO! JUMP! IN! THE! WAVES! LIKE! THAT!
I look up and the pod has returned, and sure enough, they are jumping and twisting and flipping and flopping playfully in the rising tide.
And yet even more enchanting is Lily’s voice. The one I can’t bear to dim or silence. It’s older, and her exclamations are fewer and farther between. Her puppyish enthusiasm is gone. But it is still her voice. It is still her.
“You don’t like to get wet,” I say.
“Oh, yeah,” Lily says. She settles back down in my lap.
“It’s a fun idea, though, Mouse. Splashing in the waves.”
After a pause Lily looks up at me. “Sometimes I think of you as Dad.”
My heart rises in my throat.
That’s the only term of endearment I need.
Ink
1.
It’s late, past the time I usually go searching for Lily to bring her to bed, except tonight I don’t have to search for her because she’s creating such a ruckus in the hallway, barking and growling and carrying on. When I catch up to her, she’s staring into the corner between the bedroom
