Marcellus’s final escape and return to the sea

Marcellus’s final escape and return to the sea brings his long confinement to an end not through another rescue, but through a deliberate release. As his body fails, he works his way out of his tank; Tova, believing he may be gone, discovers him outside and carries him to the water. The journey gives them a last moment together, and Marcellus’s departure prompts Tova to abandon her planned move to Charter Village.

The escape as time runs short

Marcellus waits patiently for Tova to leave before attempting his escape. Removing the pump housing has become harder than it once was, but he persists until he has worked halfway through the small gap. The effort makes the cost of his age unmistakable: what he calls The Consequences arrive more quickly now, and he knows he does not have much time left. His escape is therefore not a return to youthful strength. It is an act undertaken in the knowledge that his body is failing.

After squeezing through, Marcellus enters the wolf eels’ enclosure and addresses its two occupants in soft, soothing platitudes. The large male watches from the mouth of the den; his female mate joins him. Marcellus hugs the glass on the opposite side of their tank, and the eels blink back at him as his heart pounds. The encounter sets his escape against the aquarium’s other confined lives: he can reach the neighboring creatures, but their glass still separates them. His final attempt to leave begins inside the same world of enclosures that has defined his captivity.

Tova searches and finds him

When Tova returns, Marcellus’s enclosure appears calm and still. She leans toward the rocky den, then checks the tank from the rear and from above in the pump room, looking for any sign of him. She finds none. Through the screen, the new lady octopus is curled at the bottom of a barrel among scattered mussel shells. Tova asks whether he is gone, but grief breaks her off before she can finish the question. She goes back to Marcellus’s tank and touches its cool glass; without him, she sees only rocks and water. A tear falls onto the freshly mopped floor.

On her way out, Tova notices a crumpled brown object on the ground by the door. A tentacle flickers, and she recognizes Marcellus. He is pale, sticky, and dry, and his brilliant eye has dimmed. Tova touches his mantle gently; he reaches up and winds an arm around her wrist, over the silver-dollar scar that has faded to a ghostly ring. His weak squeeze answers her touch. She tries to lift him, but pain shoots through her lower back, so she fetches the yellow mop bucket instead. Using a milk jug kept in the supply closet, she brings several gallons of water from his tank and wets his skin with a cloth. His sigh brings relief: he is still alive.

The journey to the water

Tova knows from Terry Bailey that Marcellus may have only weeks or days left. She asks what she will do without him, then turns the question around: what will she do with him? Rather than leave him behind, she decides to take him home. The scale of the journey makes the tenderness of that decision plain: the seventy-year-old woman, about ninety pounds, pulls the roughly sixty-pound Giant Pacific octopus in a yellow bucket along the Sowell Bay waterfront toward the jetty. Seagulls scatter from a trash bin, their squawks the only accompaniment; there are no late walkers or fishermen to witness them.

The trip is slow. Marcellus trails one arm on either side of the bucket as if riding with the windows down, and Tova remarks that the breeze feels nice. The tide is far out, leaving shallow pools across the exposed beach that catch the moonlight. These details hold the farewell in suspension: the water is close, yet the pair must still travel toward it, and Marcellus’s arm remains in contact with Tova as they go.

Release and consequence

At the water’s edge, Tova tells Marcellus that he led her to her grandson. The recognition carries both warmth and regret: she had never expected to call Cameron her grandson, and she wishes Will could have met him. She also understands that Marcellus’s earlier act of taking Cameron’s driver’s license had been an attempt to tell her something she was not ready to hear. His escape and their shared history have thus altered more than his own fate.

Tova tells him that she will make sure his replacement is a pampered, intellectually stimulated octopus. As she says it, she realizes she cannot move to Charter Village. She then accepts that they must part, while naming what their companionship has meant: “We must say goodbye, friend. But I’m glad Terry saved you, because you saved me.” Slowly, she tips the bucket toward the water, about three feet below. For a moment, Marcellus’s arm stays wrapped around her hand as his body hangs between them and the sea. Just before his weight could pull her down, he lets go and lands with a heavy splash in the dark water. His release ends his captivity; Tova’s decision not to leave marks the lasting consequence of the bond between them.