Lily and the Octopus (4 page)

“Tell me again about my mother.” This is something Lily likes to hear from time to time. It used to bother me, her curiosity about where she came from. I guess maybe I was feeling
some remorse about tearing her away from her dachshund family when she was only twelve weeks old, away from her mother and father and brother and sisters who later came to be called Harry and Kelly
and Rita. But now it’s a story I like to tell. It’s a story about beginnings, and heritage, and our place in the greater world.

“Your mother’s name was Ebony Flyer, but people called her Witchie-Poo. Your father’s name was Caesar, after a great Roman general. I only met your mother once, on the day that
you and I were introduced.”

“My mother’s name was Witchie-Poo?”

“It was a beautiful day, the first week of May. Spring. I drove hours into the country to this old white farmhouse with clapboard siding and peeling paint, my heart in my throat the whole
way. I was so nervous! I wanted you to like me. The place sat a ways back from the road and the lawn was almost yellow; we hadn’t had much rain that spring, which was good for you and bad for
just about everyone else.”

“I hate the rain.”

“Yes, you and every other dog. Anyhow, there was a little wire pen on the front lawn and inside were you and Harry and Kelly and Rita tumbling all over one another like noodles in a pot of
boiling water. It was hard to even tell where one of you ended and the next one began, you were just a pile of paws and tails, so the lady who lived there picked you up and set you gently on the
grass. The four of you ambled and tumbled and stumbled and bumbled, and I stood there thinking,
How on earth am I ever going to choose?
”

“But you did. You chose me!” Lily picks up a little red wooden hotel and chews it enough to put a few teeth marks on it before spitting it out onto a railroad. Normally this is not
behavior I would allow, but she does it quite gently, sort of nonchalantly.

“No. No, that’s not true, exactly,” I say, and she looks up at me, startled.

Like any good adoptive parent, I have always fed her that line of horseshit: A mommy and daddy who have a baby get stuck with whatever baby they get. But adoptive parents
choose
their
baby, and so they love them that much more. Of course, in most cases, it’s blatantly untrue. Adoptive parents are lucky to get the call whenever and wherever they do, and so they get the baby
they get just the same as parents who actually give birth.

“No?” Lily sounds offended.

“No,” I repeat, because it’s the truth. Then I pause for dramatic effect. “
You
, in fact, chose
me
.”

And she did. While Harry and Kelly and Rita carried on in a game that involved rolling and somersaulting, Lily broke free from the group and wandered over to where I was standing talking to the
lady who bred them.

“I was thinking of keeping the boy one myself, unless you have particular use for him. He’s high-spirited, but I think he can be trained to show.”

I hadn’t given much thought to whether I wanted a boy or a girl. Not wanting to appear sexist and get on the wrong side of the woman who had the sole say in whether I’d be taking one
of her puppies home, I said, “No, I’d be glad to choose from among the girls.”

I studied the pups, looking for the girls, and was at a loss to tell which one was male. I would have to pick each one up and make a subtle determination; worse than appearing sexist would be to
come off as a pervert.

It was then that I noticed the puppy who became Lily gnawing on my shoelace. She clamped down and put herself in reverse until the lace had been gently untied.

“Hello, you adorable . . .” I crouched down and made my inspection. “Girl.”

“That’s the runt, that one there,” the lady replied, just this side of dismissively.

I picked up the runt and she snuggled under my chin, tail wagging like the pendulum of the smallest, most fragile grandfather clock.

“I’m Edward. People call me Ted,” I whispered into her ear before lowering my own ear to the top of her head. I heard her speak for the first time.

THIS! IS! MY! HOME! NOW!

And so it was.

“I choose this one,” I told the lady.

“You can have your pick of any one. The male, even, if you really want. I’m not sure this one will show all that well.”

“All the same, I’m not really interested in showing her. So I choose this one.”

I worried for a second she was going to try to discourage me further from choosing this puppy. She studied us both for a moment as I held the runt protectively, and eventually her face softened
and relented. I wondered if she wasn’t just relieved to have someone take the runt so she could charge more for the rest of her flawless litter.

“Seems like she kind of chose you.” And then, after a beat, “I suppose that’s how it works.” She finished with the off-center smile of a car salesman who’s
just sold a lemon for nearly full price.

I tell Lily this story over the Monopoly board and she seems satisfied. Touched, even. I smile at her, but sideways so I don’t have to acknowledge the octopus. She shakes her head and her
ears flop back and forth and the familiar chime of her collar and dog tags jingle the room alive. It’s only after she stops that I realize I’ve been gripping my chair so tightly my
fingers are white. I suppose I was hoping she would shake her head so violently that the octopus would lose its grip, sail across the room, and splat against the wall, dying instantly.

For the first time tonight I look at her head-on, and the octopus is still there, still holding on tight, only now (and I kid you not) the son of a bitch is smiling at me.

You motherfucker.

Lily looks at me, confused. “What?”

I compose myself as quickly as I can. “It’s your turn,” I say, hoping to reengage her in the game.

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. You rolled double fours so you get to roll again. Do you want me to roll for you?”

“Does it look like I’ve suddenly grown hands?” She’s learned that sarcasm from me, something I used to be proud of but now find abrasive.

I roll the dice. Double twos. Lily and I look at each other for a few long seconds—both of us know what it means. I reluctantly pick up her battleship and move it directly to Jail.

T
here are times when Los Angeles is the most magical city on Earth. When the Santa Ana winds sweep through and the air is warm and so, so clear.
When the jacaranda trees bloom in the most brilliant lilac-violet. When the ocean sparkles on a warm February day and you’re pushing fine grains of sand through your bare toes while the rest
of the country is hunkered down under blankets slurping soup. But other times—like when the jacaranda trees drop their blossoms in an eerie purple rain—Los Angeles feels like only a
half-formed dream. Like perhaps the city was founded as a strip mall in the early 1970s and has no real reason to exist. An afterthought from the designer of some other, better city. A playground
made only for attractive people to eat expensive salads.

I’m flipping through a menu of such salads, overwhelmed with the ridiculousness of it all. Do I want a dressed array of greens with pickled yardlong beans? Perhaps I am more in the mood
for sautéed beetroot and chicory. Or do I go all in with the fifty-ingredient Guatemalan salad? This is the city I live in. Can I even name fifty salad ingredients? I purse my lips with
indecision. They feel dry.

“I think I’m addicted to ChapStick.” I look up. Did I just say that out loud?

“How can you be addicted to ChapStick?” he asks, tossing back the last of his drink. His forehead is dripping sweat, but I don’t think it’s nerves. I think he’s
just the kind of guy who sweats a lot.

“Someone once told me they put trace amounts of ground-up glass in ChapStick. That’s how they get you addicted to it. The little shards of glass give you hundreds of microscopic cuts
that dry out your lips, making you need . . . more ChapStick. I seriously looked at the label one time, as if in addition to 44 percent petrolatums, 1.5 percent padimate, 1 percent lanolin, and .5
percent cetyl alcohol it was going to say 4.5 percent broken glass. It doesn’t.” He looks at me, stunned. Not knowing what else to do, I continue. “It’s a cover-up. The
Whitehall-Robins Healthcare Company of Madison, New Jersey, which distributes ChapStick, is probably owned by The Altria Group, which is a made-up name for what used to be Philip Morris to make
people associate them less with tobacco.” And then, to punctuate the sentence: “They own a lot of stuff.”

I reach for the last piece of our jicama appetizer and shrug. Everything inside me told me I should have canceled this date, and now that I’m on it, I’m furious at myself for not
listening. I should have held out for another date with the handsome hugger. But instead this is me living in the not knowing, and I hate it. This is a waste of our time. I know it. He knows it.
He’s not saying it (or anything, really), so I’m babbling to fill the silence. But seriously, I’m coming off like an idiot. And a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Not even the fun
kind who believes in little green men—the other kind, the kind who writes manifestos and Priority Mails them with explosive devices. I wouldn’t date me and neither should he.

We had decent email chemistry, this new guy and I. But that happens sometimes in online dating. A few zippy emails, some decent back-and-forth, and then in person? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. I should
be better at detecting when that’s going to happen by now, but I’m not. It’s still a roll of the dice. That’s why I don’t get excited anymore by a few zippy emails and
some decent back-and-forth. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have any real desire to see that person naked. Something like profuse sweating doesn’t usually show up in
pictures—especially if the pictures are of them being active. You think, oh, he’s sweating because he’s hiking Runyon Canyon, or tossing a Frisbee at the beach. You don’t
imagine them sweating like this sitting at a table reading a menu of salads.

“Are you addicted to anything?” I realize I’d better bring him into the conversation before I launch into my monologue about Robitussin.

“Sex.”

I have no idea if this is a joke or not. If it is, it’s kind of funny. If it’s not, I might get raped. I play it off like it’s a joke and move on.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a flight attendant, but I’m quitting that to become a professional dog walker.”

Fucking L.A.
Professional
dog walker. Is that a thing? Are most dog walkers maintaining their amateur status to compete in the Dog Walking Olympics? I guess that’s what I am. An
amateur dog walker. It’s where I should be now. Enjoying a walk with Lily in the early evening. The gloom has parted just enough by five o’clock that there’s some soft light
streaming through that would make a walk with her seem nice. It could be the only sunlight we see for days. Suddenly I want to be here even less.

“That sounds like a . . .”—how do I phrase this politely?—“lateral move.”

“It’s kind of a step up, actually.”

“That makes me feel bad for flight attendants.” I cringe, imagining him handing me a ginger ale with his sweaty mitts.

“Well, here it’s a step up. In L.A., people will pay anything for their dogs. Do you have any pets?”

“No.” I try to remember my dating profile (how much is on there about Lily?) and weigh the chances that he actually
read
my profile and would remember it well enough to know
that I’m lying, or if he just flipped through my photos to find the one shirtless one. I shouldn’t have written that thing a bottle deep in one of New Zealand’s finer white wines
and I certainly shouldn’t have posted a shirtless photo. That was the wine’s fault.

“Me, neither. I want to, though. Have a pet.”

This (aside from the maybe sex joke) is the most interesting thing about him. I don’t even know what he means by a pet—dog, cat, reptile, bird, one of those chirping key chains that
Japanese children used to carry, hamster, fish, rock—but he wants one.

I try to think of how to tactfully cut this short. If it’s not going anywhere (there’s so little connection here there’s not even interest in sex), there should be a socially
acceptable way to just get up and walk out. I mean, if there’s nothing obviously wrong with the other person—they are “as advertised,” but you’re just not, for
whatever reason, feeling it—there should be a way to get up and leave. If there
is
something obviously wrong with them, you can say so right up front. Maybe not in those exact words,
but you can say something like, “I’m sorry, I don’t think this is going to be a match.” Once I got a particularly creepy vibe from a guy just from his handshake, and we
weren’t meeting in a sufficiently public place, so I said just that and left. Another time, I wish I had said that up front but instead suffered through dim sum while having to answer
questions like, “Do you think you’re the kind of person who could perform an emergency tracheotomy?” (For the record, no, I do not.) But once you’re in the middle of a date,
you’re kind of committed to seeing it through to its natural conclusion. My first date with Jeffrey lasted two days—there was just so much to say! I suppose that sets a very high
bar.

Lily was asleep when I left, and I felt like one of those new parents who wanted to wake their sleeping baby to see if it was still alive. But while she normally sleeps on her left side, this
afternoon she was on her right, octopus side down. Good. Maybe it will suffocate in her paw-print blanket. Otherwise she was curled up in her usual way, the way that made me call her Bean.
I’m already looking forward to whatever movie she and I may watch together when this interminable date is over. On Saturday nights we watch movies. I hope she’s well rested. Maybe
we’ll order Indian; the place up the street has these chickpeas in a tomato and ginger sauce that are really something. I think again about how to end this ordeal.
Well, since you’re
not really that interesting in person, I think I’ll head out
. If only it were that easy. I should just go ahead and make a third date with the hugging guy. At least I was interested
enough in him to want to know if he was interested in me. Why did I break the hug first?