Otter duet

If there was anything you needed to know at SeaCity Aquarium, Irene was the one to ask. What was the upper temperature for the Windows on Washington tank? Where were the extra petri dishes for the Plankton Lab? Which computer is the server for backing up the sea otter live cams? She knew everything and would gladly help.

Still, the other keepers didn't care much for Irene. She was weird. Not fun weird like the college interns - no, there was something off about her, like her way of fixating on some random thing and muttering to herself. She genuinely liked to work closing, and lately the last thing she would do before locking up was to sit and read an entire children's book to the sea otters, which was for damn sure not an approved Environmental Enrichment. Although Terry in security said he swears there's one that sits right there and listens, so maybe there's something to it.

***

The glass against Oliver’s forehead formed a cool connection, a flowing current from boy to underwater world. He cupped his hands around his eyes to block all but the wavering blue light on the bright fish and corals below. If he touched the back of his tongue to the roof of his mouth on every inhale and exhale and it sounded just like he was a SCUBA diver drifting over the reef. He grinned as he swam with a dogfish over a scowling rockfish. Rockfish - such grouches, every one.

A shoulder jostled him off the aquarium glass. His older sister, Lisa. “Are you Darth Vader?” she asked, her face so close he could not escape the fumes from hot dogs they had eaten an hour before. “Looking for rebels in there? No, wait, looking for that bubble city with all the Jar Jars?”

“That was diving sounds, idiot.”

She straightened and looked down at him, her already pinched features tightening further in disdain. His eyes flickered away and noted her pink bra strap and bare left shoulder. He lifted an eyebrow then shot a look past her at a trio of teenaged boys engaged in an animated conversation. “Oh, hi, Susan!”

Lisa yanked her sweater back over her shoulder and spun around. He felt kind of bad about the flash of real fear he had seen on her face. Their stepmother would absolutely have given her hell if she saw her “flaunting it” like that. He had done her a favor, really.

Somehow Lisa didn’t see it that way. Especially now that the boys appeared to be snickering at her.

“You little shit!” she hissed, delivering a solid whack to his head with her purse.

“Christ, Lisa! That metal buckle thing hurt!” He rubbed his stinging temple. “You can kill someone hitting them too hard there.”

“Don’t I wish,” Lisa mumbled as she filtered off through an incoming school group. “Hey, I found your people!” she called as she waded upstream through them. Oliver snorted. The children looked to be a kindergarten class - 4 years younger than him.

Lisa made her way out the far exit as Oliver scanned around the dimly lit Underwater Dome for the rest of his family. He checked each shadowy form and face over and over, but they weren’t here - they had all left.

He knew there was no need for panic as he threaded his way free of the school group crush and jogged for the door Lisa had left through, but that was just how he was. It was just like him to have a panic attack every time he felt the least bit lost, and the city around them was so huge and busy and loud that the mad fluttering in his chest was on hair trigger. The suburb they had moved to was a little smaller, but still too big and ugly and cold and lonely. It was nothing like home. And it was getting hard to know if now “normal” was a pounding head and chest or the breaks between.

***

The sea otter with the palest face was the star of the show today, as usual. Most of the otters lounged on the rocks in the back of the exhibit or dove down just to slip right around a corner, but the pale-faced one seemed as fascinated with the people as they were with him. He flowed and twirled, leaving an expanding spiral of bubbles in his wake. He shot fast by the smallest children leaning on the underwater window, making them scream. He popped his head up and bobbed to and fro, watching the people walk by.

The lead marine mammal keeper worried about that one, that new addition, Watson. Watson was so preoccupied with people that he wasn’t eating well and had started losing weight. Sometimes he got himself wedged up between the fake rocks and the low curved glass wall under the upper railing and just stared out while people called employees over to save him. He wasn’t stuck, though. Just strange. Not in the same way the female that liked to listen to Irene’s stories was strange. No, other than that one peculiarity, that little sow swam and played just fine, with little interest at all in the visitors passing by.

Oliver’s father was standing against the rail of the sea otter tank holding little Sandy so she could see the pale-faced otter when Oliver finally found him. “Jesus, boy, where you been? Quit running around - you’ll knock somebody over!”

“I was looking for everyone,” Oliver panted, wiping a sleeve across his sweaty forehead.

“Well Susan and the girls are in the gift shop waiting for us. Hustle up - we’ve got to get Krissy to dance practice!”

“What? I haven’t seen the puffins or the otters!” Oliver yelled.

“Violà, otters!” his father announced with a sweeping gesture over the enclosure. “Now hustle your butt!” Sandy was wriggling in his arms and starting to cry for her mother. “Gift shop!” he barked, wrestling the girl into her stroller and rolling off.

Oliver started to follow, then hesitated. He had been looking forward to seeing the otters all month. His family - and his dad's new family - could wait a few more minutes.

Two big otters flopped along the far shelf then dove into the water together, rising and falling in a lively chase. It gave him a little light bubble inside, watching them. Then he looked up at an outburst of happy squealing to his right and a man was growling at a little girl as he swept her up and launched a fake attack on her neck, making the child hiccup with laughter.

Suddenly Oliver's face was wet and he leaned up against the rail and stared hard down at the water. There was no damn way he was going to let anyone see he was crying. What a stupid baby.

But he was awkwardly staring at nothing, because a keeper was tossing some kind of really choice food in to the far corner of the shelf across the exhibit and all the otters were clambering over each other there.

The keeper looked like she was talking to the animals, her lips moving continuously as she looked at them. Her eyes kept darting up to him - to Oliver. It was starting to creep him out. He thought he'd better get going, but he couldn't quite motivate to move. He felt very warm and comfortable, actually.

The boy suddenly dropped, shaking. The man standing nearby set his daughter down and called for help. He took off his flannel shirt and quickly rolled it and tucked it under the convulsing boy's head. A small crowd formed. The little girl pointed and yelled something about something wrong with one of the otters, but everyone was focused on the boy.

An aquarium worker was kneeling by the boy with a first aid kit, asking if he had had seizures before to the shrugs of bystanders, when Oliver fell still then slowly sat up. He looked around, he looked at his hands, he tried to stand up but fell.

The employee told him to take a moment to recover and tried to hold him calmly on the ground, but the boy struggled again and again to rise to his feet. He finally succeeded and stood laughing and swaying slightly.

“Look… look at me!” he shouted, then laughed again. “Look, look, looook” he said, low, then high, then warbling back and forth.

A man jogged up and grabbed the boy’s arm and started to yell at him, but the employee pressed him back and explained what had happened while the other visitors muttered and glared. The boy just chuckled on. “Hey Dad, hi Dad, hey Dad!” He took a few uncertain steps then ran off, weaving and spinning between the visitors. Oliver’s father asked the worker what the hell he had given his son and chose to disbelieve the answer as he trotted off to catch the boy.

In the otter pool the pale-faced otter and the little sow touched noses and made their way carefully to the edge of the shelf. They slipped into the water together, swimming slowly at first then accelerating into a spiraling, undulating double blur.

That evening, in the hushed stillness that follows the last roaring outflow of the families and teachers herding their students, Terry paused as he checked the lock on the gate between the marine mammals exhibits and the shore promenade. Irene was reading to the otters again. Most napped or swam, but damned if there weren’t two of them sitting right there, side by side, like they were listening to every word.