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?
“Analytically speaking,” Jenny continues, “cocoons 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 cocoon.
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.
4.
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 god, 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 space 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!”