When he is small enough to fit under your chin you squeeze him so tight Daisy tells you to stop or he’ll turn blue. Give him some air, she says, laughing. Let him breathe for God’s sake.

You keep hugging him. Just like they say to. Even when the air isn’t hardly worth breathing. When after four years of whispered prayers and six months of blasphemous rage you realise the almighty doesn’t give two shits whether you worship or curse. The hugs don’t stop when he refuses to bathe. Or when he refuses to take his head out of that fucking Spiderman hoodie. You keep hugging him until he is strong enough to push you away and you are weak enough to stop trying.

At the aquarium, he is fascinated with the octopus. You look for sharks. Turtles. The creatures that make sense. He wants to see the one with eight tentacles. OK, arms, he says, after the curator throws her hands in the air and says just for a second, and please don’t grip it so hard, they’re very gentle creatures. Definitely arms, he confirms, and they won’t ever let go, but he is the one who has to be dragged off the octopus.

Later, after he clears out the library of their octopus books, he tells you about the mothers. They only reproduce once. After that, they guard their eggs until they hatch or until starvation finishes them. You think about Daisy and the tiny slices of tiramisu she allowed herself on birthdays. You think about arms so thin they defy holding, else you risk snapping them like a water cracker. You think about the padlock she attached to the inside of the bathroom door, the feel of closing it for yourself, and the way you could hear each other holding your breath from opposite ends of the house.

They say you need more joy. More laughter. You don’t know much about that, but you let him watch South Park. That lasts until father-son day at school, when he introduces you to his class by your occupation of motherfucker.

When you tell them laughter didn’t work, that the only Joy you can find works in a linoleum-floored massage joint and says nothing can replace a mother’s love, they recommend the outdoors. Technically the aquarium doesn’t qualify, so you try fishing. Live worms from the bait shop are five bucks a tub and you hesitate—not because of the price or because you care about their suffering, but because you have always been terrified of the way they will continue to wriggle against your skin, even when they’re ripped right in two—but he insists that’s the only way to catch an octopus. After five hours freezing your balls off in the Pacific southerly, the first bite hits you like a 2am phone call from the hospital. As you stumble to pass him the rod, you drop it in the icy waves slapping your ankles. By the time he picks it up the line is slack. On his way to the carpark, he kicks over the bucket meant to hold your catch and the overpriced hot chips you buy are too cold and too vinegary.

He never fishes again. Neither do you. Thank Christ. Catch and release sounds fine in theory but if you hook something worth keeping, how could you ever let it go?

The morning after his final high school exam he is gone. This time there are no faltering speeches. No ill-fitting suits. No getting drunk enough to pass out in a puddle of vomit outside his door. He calls a few days later so you won’t alert the authorities and says he forgot to pack the octopus food for his aquarium and could you post it because he’s not sure if they have the right earth or the right worms where he’s moved to and he’s hardly going to feed her beans on toast for three years straight now, is he?

When he lets you visit—birthdays and one holiday per year—he dutifully eats the food you bring. Even if baked bean casserole is not a traditional Christmas dish. Later, he gets a house with a swimming pool. He is not so good at the maintenance, and the water is cloudy. Full of floating leaves he refuses to let you scoop. They’ll only come back again, he says. Still, he swims in it every day. When you sit on the patio chair, resting your aching knee, you hold your breath and stare at the ripples in the water as you wait for him to surface from the deep. You release the air you hold tight in your lungs at the same time he opens his mouth, and he gasps. Eventually, you learn to let go of your breath slowly through your nose and watch him only from the corners of your eyes. Even on the coldest days, his pale face never shows a hint of blue.

Image: Kaya Patel