"Remarkably Bright Creatures"

A harmless comfort read, an updated "Charlotte's Web" for today's older adults. I wonder if Shelby Van Pelt ever considered making Cameron into a female. 

• Terry’s small daughter chose my name. Marcellus McSquiddles, in full. Yes, it is a preposterous name. It leads many humans to assume I am a squid, which is an insult of the worst sort.
• She continues on, as one must, down the dim hallway. In front of the tank of bluegills, she pauses. “Good evening, dears.”
  The Japanese crabs are next. “Hello, lovelies.”
  “How do you do?” she inquires of the sharp-nosed sculpin.
• Good night, bluegills, eels, Japanese crabs, sharp-nosed sculpin. Good night, anemones, seahorses, starfish.
  Around the bend she continues. Good night, tuna and flounder and stingrays. Good night, jellies, sea cucumbers. Good night, sharks, you poor things. Tova has always felt more than a bit of empathy for the sharks, with their never-ending laps around the tank. She understands what it means to never be able to stop moving, lest you find yourself unable to breathe.
• The sharks in the main tank are rewarded for their dullness with fresh grouper, and I am given defrosted herring. Sometimes still partially frozen, even. This is why I must take matters into my own arms when I desire the sublime texture of fresh oyster, when I yearn to feel the sharp crack of my beak crushing a crab in its shell, when I crave the sweet, firm flesh of a sea cucumber. <> Sometimes my captors will drop me a pity scallop if they are attempting to lure me into cooperation
• Eventually, it became a refuge for them to escape empty homes, bittersweet voids left by children grown and moved on. For this reason, among others, Tova had initially resisted joining. Her void held no sweetness, only bitterness; at the time, Erik had been gone five years. How delicate those wounds were back then, how little it took to nudge the scabs out of place and start the bleeding anew.
• These women have always worn motherhood big and loud on their chests, but Tova keeps hers inside, sunk deep in her guts like an old bullet. Private. <> A few days before Erik disappeared, Tova had made an almond cake for his eighteenth birthday. The house carried that marzipan smell for days after. She still remembers how it lingered in her kitchen like a clueless houseguest who didn’t know when to leave.
• Tova wonders sometimes if it’s better that way, to have one’s tragedies clustered together, to make good use of the existing rawness. Get it over with in one shot. Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked though with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday-morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it himself.
• Last year, Terry threw a little “baby shower” for the entire staff, all eight of them, when the seahorses spawned. Mackenzie had stayed after her admissions shift to blow up balloons and paint a banner that read GIDDY-UP, LITTLE COWBOYS! Dr. Santiago, the veterinarian, had dropped by with a cake that read, in cursive icing: HIP-HIP-HOORAY FOR HIPPOCAMPUS BABIES!
• Smart cookie.
  I am smart, but I am not a snack object dispensed from a packaged food machine.
  What a preposterous thing to say.
• IF THERE IS ONE TOPIC OF CONVERSATION HUMANS never exhaust, it is the status of their outdoor environment. And for as much as they discuss it, their incredulity is . . . well, incredible.
• What sort of treasures comprise my Collection, you ask? Well, where to begin? Three glass marbles, two plastic superheroes, one emerald solitaire ring. Four credit cards and a driver’s license. One jeweled barrette. One human tooth. Why that look of disgust? I did not remove it myself. The former owner wiggled it out on a school field trip then proceeded to lose track of it.
• Such are the secrets the sea holds. What I would not give to explore them again. If I could go back in time, I would collect all of it—the sneaker sole, the shoelace, the buttons, and the twin key. I would give it all to her. <> I am sorry for her loss. Returning this key is the least I can do.
• “Mind you, he also decorated the davenport with that pen. The marks never did come out.”
  The octopus blinks again.
  “Oh, how upset I was at the time! But I’ll tell you what, when Will and I finally got rid of that davenport, years and years later . . .” Tova just nods, as if the sentence ought to have the decency to finish itself.
• “Anyway, I guess she’s at peace now.” A sad smile spreads over Elliot’s face. Cameron drops his gaze, feeling yet again like an intruder spying on the typical human experience, an outsider looking in on the normal, which is always just out of his grasp. Losing grandparents, worrying about valuables in your suitcase: these experiences belong to other people.
• “No, Sowell Bay. My dad.” The word feels dry and sticky on Cameron’s tongue, like one of those old-man candies.
• And Janice? She and Peter already live in the basement suite of Timothy’s house, tucked away neatly under her son and daughter-in-law’s busy lives above.
• You know I have three hearts, yes? This must seem strange, considering that humans, and most other species, have only one. I wish I could claim a higher level of spiritual being on account of my multiple vascular chambers, but alas, two of my hearts basically control my lungs and gills. The other is called my organ heart, and it powers everything else. <> I am accustomed to my organ heart stopping. It shuts down while I am swimming.
• The agent narrows her eyes, her face crinkling into a sour shape, her papery skin finding the creases far too easily, like his old baseball glove.
• She passes the sea lion statue and, as always, pauses to stroke its head, reveling in the fleeting illusion of her son flickering within her when she touches something he so adored.
• “Conscience does make cowards of us all.” He feels himself start to redden. How does he always manage to drop this nerdy shit into conversation?
• Ah, to be a human, for whom bliss can be achieved by mere ignorance! Here, in the kingdom of animals, ignorance is dangerous. The poor herring dropped into the tank lacks any awareness of the shark lurking below. Ask the herring whether what he doesn’t know can hurt him.
• But the former cleaning woman and her replacement. They walk alike.
• CAMERON STILL CAN’T seem to wrap his head around the shape of the sea here. It’s like a monster with hundreds of long fingers is gripping the edge of the continent, tendrils of deep blue cutting channels through the dark green countryside in every unexpected way.
• Took a lady friend once. We saw orcas frolicking around like wee kittens. Quite a sight. Ah, the love we made that night was—”
  “Uh, thanks.” Cameron cuts him off. What is with old people in love? “I’ll keep that in mind.”
• Humans are the only species who subvert truth for their own entertainment. They call them jokes. Sometimes puns. Say one thing when you mean another.
• But I do not like the hole in her heart. She only has one, not three, like me.
  Tova’s heart.
  I will do everything I can to help her fill it.
• Tova frowns, suddenly feeling like a rosebud under a cold dark sky. Pinched shut. “It was nothing.”
• on occasion, she or Will had revisited the yearbook in the decades between, whenever some small spring leak of nostalgia broke through their hardened dyke.
• “Letting go,” Aunt Jeanne says softly, “can be the hardest thing.” <> Cameron feels his face twist into an involuntary scowl. It’s basically the same thing Avery said when they were paddleboarding under the pier, but somehow hearing it from Aunt Jeanne makes him want to kick right through the concrete.
• His mouth falls open as he allows the shirt to unroll. <> “Where on earth did you . . . ?” His voice sounds like it’s caught in a net. “I mean, how did you find . . . ?”
• IF THERE WERE any straggling fishermen or late-sunset walkers on the Sowell Bay waterfront that night, they would’ve been treated to quite a sight: a seventy-year-old woman, ninety pounds at best, pulling a sixty-pound giant Pacific octopus in a yellow bucket down the boardwalk toward the jetty.
• He grins, and the heart-shaped dimple on his cheek indents, and for a moment he looks every part the impish grandson. Tova glances down, checking to make sure her slippers are still contacting the floor, because it feels like she’s aloft, floating, unfurling toward the ceiling with unwitting elegance, like Marcellus in his old tank. Her heart is full of helium, lifting her skyward.