After the funeral Cora had tidied the house, sequestering the remnants of her husband’s illness in a single room. She filled the study with documents from the insurance company that remained to be sorted, and cards, blankets, and books from the hospital room where he had lived out his final days in a haze of morphine. All of this was relegated to the indefinite purgatory of things she couldn’t bear to look at, but hadn’t the heart to throw away.
Then the mourners had come, heaping their grief upon hers in the form of bouquets and baked hams. The kitchen quickly sank beneath piles of leftover containers and casserole dishes, crumpled pleats of tinfoil rising like the sails of a great flotilla. With no room left in the fridge the food began to spoil. The kitchen reeked of congealed lasagna and days-old potato salad.
The living room was no better. A field of flowers sprang from the carpet, the coffee table, the fireplace mantle. Cora had never seen so many lilies before. She realized she didn’t care for these lilies, which lacked the elegance of irises, the sweet smell of hyacinths. They were overly perfumed and their orange pollen left stains where it brushed against her clothes.
The only flowers Cora cared for bloomed on the potted orchid the nursing staff from the oncology ward sent. Their ornately structured petals were a startling fuchsia, the only burst of color in a house awash in funereal tones. Unlike the cut bouquets that had already begun to wilt and waft the cloying scent of syrupy rot, the orchid was rooted in soil, smelling of damp earth—alive.
The orchid was the only artifact of her husband’s death that Cora allowed into the bedroom when the mourners left and she finally succumbed to exhaustion. She stared aimlessly at the flowers, liking the way the blooms bobbed in quiet agreement like a mute Greek chorus. She savored the pungent scent of the loam in which they were rooted, noticed how the petals blurred to a haze of color under her weary gaze. It wasn’t until a faint movement caught her attention that Cora’s eyes drew slowly into focus.
One lobe of the decorative moss that carpeted the plant’s soil was rising in a wave of green, its dark underbelly unfurling. Cora inched across the mattress, eyes level with the table, and watched as one tentacle, then another, worked its way out from beneath the moss. A head appeared, gelatinous, yellow-green, and faintly translucent. At last the body of a small slug slunk into the dim light of the room. He probed the air curiously with its tentacles and bellied up against the cool porcelain of the pot.
“Hello,” Cora said. It was the first word she had spoken in days that came unbidden and without effort. She cleared her throat, raspy with disuse, “Who are you?”
***
After a week the stench of rotten food from the kitchen began to filter into the bedroom where Cora had whiled away her days absorbed in the miniature world of Seymour the slug. His world was simple and self-contained, and she was endlessly enthralled by Seymour’s small wanderings. She admired the dutiful patience with which he charted the mossy terrain of the orchid pot. But no amount of rapt observation could distract her from the miasma now emanating from downstairs.
Cora crawled grudgingly from bed, shaking her limbs to dispel the creep of pins-and-needles, and wondered why no one thought to bring consolation gifts that were more useful—bottle of liquor, certificate for a cleaning service, year’s supply of sleeping pills. She cast a longing glance toward Seymour, reluctant to leave his company, before staggering downstairs.
In the kitchen Cora pulled a trash bag from beneath the sink and began indiscriminately shoving dishes into the thick plastic, which bulged and threatened to tear. She didn’t concern herself with emptying food from the glass dishes so that she might return them to their owners—had they never heard of Tupperware? She filled bag after bag, stopping every so often to thrust her head through the back door and gasp for fresh air.
After the kitchen she moved on to the living room where the reek of decomposing flowers was worse than that of the food. She swept loose petals, crumpled like used tissues, from the tops of tables and chairs and scrubbed their gummy residue with the hem of her sleeve. She emptied scum-laced water from the vases down the kitchen sink where it eddied and clogged. Gagging, she was forced to clear the drain with her finger.
Cora thought she would feel relieved once the cleaning was over, but instead her stomach lurched at the sight of the empty rooms. Without refuse obscuring her view, her home took on the unnerving quality of being at once familiar, yet irrevocably altered by what was no longer there. The counter was clear of prescription bottles and Mark’s coffee mug was missing from its hook, having made the move to the hospital where it met its end on the vinyl floor. The calendar tacked to the side of the cupboard was scribbled with hospital visits, appointments, and funeral arrangements, but halfway through August the ink stopped abruptly and the rest of the page was a blinding sheet of white. The chalkboard on the fridge still held the ghostly residue of messages wiped clean—she traced her finger over a faint loop of chalk that had once been a hastily scrawled heart.
Turning away from the fridge, Cora gathered the trash bags and heaped them on the patio outside the back door. She knew she ought to haul them to the curb, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so, already shying away from the door where she could just glimpse her neighbor lounging in his yard. Later, she thought. She’d done enough work for one day. Before closing the door, she plucked a fistful of dandelion leaves from between the patio stones and carried them upstairs to a waiting Seymour.
***
Cora’s mother, Lydia, arrived unannounced one morning. She let herself in through the front door using the spare key. Cora heard a shout of greeting then the clink of the coffee pot as Lydia busied herself at the stove. She was grateful her mother hadn’t come through the back where the sacks of garbage were still piled on the patio.
Cora eased from bed, running her fingers through the snarled mop of her hair, and hid her unwashed sweatpants beneath a clean robe. She carried the orchid downstairs and set it on the breakfast table where a shaft of watery light ignited the satin sheen of its petals. It caught Seymour in silhouette and Cora watched the shadow of his organs pulsing in their halo of translucent flesh. Lydia followed Cora’s gaze.
“That’s a lovely plant. Where did it come from?”
“I’m not sure,” Cora replied. Absentmindedly, she unfurled a finger toward Seymour’s tentacles which were wavering at the rim of the pot, sensing his new surroundings. “Aren’t orchids tropical?”
“No, I mean who sent it?”
“Oh, it was the nursing staff,” Cora answered, distractedly. It had just dawned on her that she didn’t know where the orchid had come from, and thus where Seymour had come from—or even what species of slug he was. Was he even a he? She made a mental note to do research.
“Well that was nice of them.” Lydia smiled feebly. Several moments passed in silence before she cleared her throat. “Listen, honey,” she began, then added quickly, “—and I want you to know I say this without an ounce of judgement!” She held a hand to her chest as if to demonstrate her sincerity, then continued, “I’m really worried about you. Have you been getting out at all?”
Cora’s eyes were trained on the edge of the pot as she tracked the slow ascension of a lettuce leaf into the mysterious cavity of Seymour’s mouth. Do slugs have teeth? Tongues? She would have to look this up, too. She had been placing a new variety of leaves in the pot each morning, pilfered from the plastic bins of salad greens still stacked in her fridge, hoping to figure out what Seymour preferred. He seemed particularly fond of spinach.
When Cora didn’t respond Lydia continued, “Maybe you’d like to join me for yoga—Aunt Mary says the two of you used to attend a weekly class when you spent the summer with her during college.”
Inadvertently, Cora flexed and pointed her feet beneath the table. Her calves cramped and she thought longingly of the weightless ease of bed.
When Cora still hadn’t responded, Lydia prompted, “What do you think?”
“I suppose,” Cora acquiesced. She had no intention of following through on these plans, but she knew her mother would persist until Cora agreed to some activity beyond the confines of her bed. As if sensing this imminent alteration to the cozy life the two of them shared, Seymour retreated beneath the shadowy tent of an orchid leaf. Cora wished she could join him.
***
Weeks passed with Cora and Seymour ensconced in her bedroom—no yoga class, but continued visits from her mother who lingered long enough to fix her with a pitying, maternal stare and stock the fridge with fresh food. Cora never tired of watching the quiet antics of Seymour, the reliable rounds he made through the small forest of the orchid. Though he slid over the same ground each day—no more than thirty square inches—the intentness with which he swept his tentacles over each leaf, combed each strand of moss, never waned. His world was made large by the heed he paid it.
She and Mark had taken camping trips before—backpacking along the Hoh River and trekking through the Grand Canyon—but those adventures seemed distant, now. If she could go back she would have paid more attention, spent hours watching the whirl of carrion birds, tracking ants marching through the maze of tree bark, peering beneath lichen-crusted rocks to seek the creatures that dwelt there. She would have shared these discoveries with Mark. Why had she never paused to revel in the small wonders that filled each moment? What she wouldn’t give just to study the soft, precise movements of Mark’s hand as he shaved each morning, the way the light from the bathroom mirror sparked in his eyes.
***
Cora spent hours combing the internet, starting with the Wikipedia page on slugs—gastropod mollusks. She held a diagram of slug anatomy next to Seymour and located the plump mantle of his body, the pneumostome through which he respired, the eyespots on his optical tentacles that allowed him to sense the bleak lighting of her bedroom. She delighted in the way his foot undulated over the slight hills and valleys of the moss. She learned that slugs are hermaphrodites, not he or she, and that they feed on a variety of flora, from leafy greens and lichens to lilies, irises, even strawberries.
Cora gathered the hardiest petals and leaves from the bouquets still languishing in the trash bags on her patio. She plucked shreds of apple, cabbage, and carrot from the dishes her mother brought and held them out one by one for Seymour’s inspection. She watched keenly as they examined the offerings with their sensory tentacles. She loved the delicate way their mouth rippled over the morsels they liked best, slowly tugging them inward with their raspula.
As best she could tell, Seymour was not some tropical species, but your average garden slug—likely hitching a ride from the nearby orchid farm whose label she found affixed to the bottom of the pot. After learning this, she often wondered if she ought to release them outside. But the idea pained her, so she would shoo it to the back of her mind, promising to consider it later. Now with winter approaching, her window for returning Seymour to nature was swiftly closing. Already she feared she had kept them too long. And though she told herself it was for Seymour’s sake, she knew it was really for her own. Still, she waited.
***
Cora awoke one morning to an empty pot. It wasn’t uncommon for Seymour to hide under the orchid leaves or beneath a shelf of moss, but no amount of gentle prodding revealed their hiding spot. She switched on the bedside lamp and peered closer. In the harsh glare of the bulb, she caught the gleam of a mucosal trail breaching the rim of the pot. It wandered down the pot’s side and along each groove of the night stand’s turned leg before petering out at the carpet.
“Shit!”
She scrambled from bed, mindful of each step, and dropped to her knees, wrenching the lamp from the table and holding it down by the floor. The trail there was faint, but by twisting her head this way and that she could just catch its shimmer on the carpet as it meandered from the table to the wall, then along the baseboard toward the windows.
She found Seymour hiding in the folds of the drapes, lost amid a pattern of twining leaves. She scooped them from the fabric and carried them back to the orchid where they slumped at the edge of the pot, nudging aside an ort of withered strawberry with disinterest.
“You don’t belong inside, do you,” she sighed.
In the countless hours and days she had studied Seymour, she never once saw them seek out the world beyond their pot. She wanted to believe they were content with what they had, but she knew they were only clinging to the familiarity of that scant ecosystem. Now, their trek across the wilds of her bedroom proved it was time she introduced them to all they’d been missing.
Cora pulled her laptop from the nightstand drawer and propped it against her knees. Her browser’s history was filled with an endless list of searches: what do slugs prefer to eat, natural habitat of slugs, best temperature for slugs. Now she opened a new tab and set her cursor in the search-bar: What do slugs do during winter?
She passed the morning searching for information on the overwintering of slugs. Many of them, she discovered, hibernated underground or beneath loose tree bark. She opened another tab and pulled up the forecast, eyeing it with trepidation. Soon the ground would harden with frost and Seymour would be unable to do all the things that slugs ought to do in autumn—find a mate, reproduce, take shelter.
“Tomorrow,” she promised.
***
Cora lingered in bed the next morning, not bothering to fetch breakfast, simply watching as Seymour probed their little patch of earth. Every so often they paused in their morning meal and their tentacles flickered toward her. She waved in return.
She rose reluctantly at noon and carried the orchid down to the kitchen, clutching it to her chest as she pulled open the backdoor. The sudden burst of fresh air felt foreign, the sunlight too harsh on her pallid skin. She plucked an uneaten spinach leaf from the pot and held it out before Seymour, waiting patiently as they climbed aboard. With shaking hands, she lowered the leaf outside and lay it gently on the patio.
For a moment Seymour was motionless, tentacles pert with attention. Then, as if sensing what lay beyond in the green reaches of the yard, they slithered forward, their foot coursing across the patio stones. When at last they reached the lawn, they slipped between the blades of grass, a dense carpet of leaves swelling above their movements, then growing still. Now a trail of viscous slime glistening like spider silk was all that Cora could see.
She stood brushing dust from the knees of her sweatpants. Behind her the kitchen sink drummed its familiar, staccato drip and the scrubbed counters gleamed dully. She moved to shut the door, but instead found herself seized by a sudden panic. She bounded outside and across the patio where she knelt at the edge of the lawn, her slender hands probing the ground. With each leaf and twig swept aside she imagined she would find Seymour’s body wriggling bright and green against the dark soil. But they had already disappeared into the earth
Cora rocked back on her heels wiping a muddied hand across her brow. Her bare feet grew numb against the cold stones and her calves ached from crouching, but she didn’t move. A bracing wind swept over the grass lifting knots of hair from her temple, sending clouds like cotton batting scudding across a pale autumn sky. The air smelled of clover and wood-smoke, fallen pine needles and the coming of an early frost. An ant crawled unhurriedly across her toe like it was just another stone. She heard the chittering of a squirrel overhead and watched as she clambered along a narrow branch and leapt to the roof, the soft white of her underbelly exposed.