The Owl and the Seahorse
SONIA CHIEN

My boyfriend is a seahorse. I realize it as I am reading to Ava from a book of ocean facts. Seahorses mate for life, says a bright yellow textbox. 

Translation: they are serial monogamists. 

They have strong tails that can anchor onto coral reefs, catch rides from passing animals, and snatch up shrimp and other slow-moving prey. 

Translation: they’re terrible swimmers, they’re clingy, and they coast through life on the coattails of stronger animals. 

When a female seahorse lays eggs, she deposits them into the male seahorse’s pouch, where they incubate until the male gives birth. 

I have to admit, this one does not bear a resemblance. I laugh out loud at the thought of my boyfriend performing an act as profound and selfless as creating life. 

“What’s so funny?” demands Ava. 

​

Ava is the girl I nanny. She is ten, eleven next week. She has a goal this year to memorize every moon in the solar system, and is currently in the 70-somethings of the moons of Saturn. She is a picky eater—the only vegetable-based foods she will touch are cream of leek soup and cooked baby carrots with a side of ranch dressing. She was suspended from school last week, after smacking her classmate Jaxon across the face during a game of kickball. He was cheating, Ava says. He tripped another classmate, Jada, as she ran to second base.

On one of Ava’s suspension days I take her out for ice cream. The weather is aggressively humid. We sit on a bench underneath a tree in the Commons, licking at the soft serve dripping down our cones with a vengeance. I decide to gently break the news I have been keeping to myself since this morning. 

“I saw an article earlier today. Big picture, it’s cool. But right now, you probably won’t feel that way.” 

“Tell me,” Ava mumbles, still attending to her melting ice cream with a rogue tongue. 

“There was a new space discovery yesterday. They just found 62 more moons in Saturn’s orbit.” 

“Ugh!” Ava presses a hand to her forehead exaggeratedly. “C’mon, Saturn. As if 83 wasn’t enough?” 

“It’s alright, bean,” I say, tilting her other hand back upright to keep the remainder of her ice cream scoop from falling into the grass. “I’ll help you make more flashcards.” 

Ava’s mom Sabrine comes from a wealthy Belgian family. Her father is a diplomat and her late mother was a vintage collector for the stars—Donna Summer, Julie Andrews and Grace Kelly were oft-thumbed pages in the family Rolodex, as Sabrine once disclosed to me over a glass of wine. Sabrine wears silver rings and bracelets, long silk dresses, motorcycle boots and designer sunglasses. She and Ava’s dad have been separated for years. I don’t know his name, where he is now, if they were ever married, or how much Ava knows. But I don’t think about it much. With their winding, curly hair, flair for the dramatic, and penchant for scathing sarcasm, it’s easy to believe that Sabrine simply reproduced Ava like an amoeba, splitting herself into two identical copies.

Sabrine and Ava own an apartment in Beacon Hill. I rent my own studio in Jamaica Plain, but I often stay in their guest bedroom with Ava during Sabrine’s regular vacations to Ibiza and Berlin. When I look after her while Sabrine is away, Ava and I sleep in the same bed together. 

My boyfriend isn’t a fan of the co-sleeping arrangement. “Isn’t she a little old for that?”

“What do you mean?” I reply flatly, as we play Super Smash Bros. at his apartment in Dorchester. I’m Toon Link this round. He is always Bowser. 

“I don’t know.” He makes a short exhale out of his nose. “I’m pretty sure you sleep in the same bed with her more often than me, though.” 

I proceed to Triforce-Slash Bowser, destroying him and ending the round. I set down my controller and get up from the couch, heading to the kitchen. 

My keys are on the counter, which jingle as I pick them up. “Babe, come on,” I hear from the other room. “Where are you going?” 

“Grocery shopping for Ava. Sabrine is leaving for Brussels tomorrow to visit her dad.” 

“Whatever,” he mumbles faintly. 

The hurt in his voice makes me feel a little guilty, but not enough to muster up a whole show of reassurance. As I close the front door, I hear the sounds of the main menu as he starts a solo game.

On the way to Whole Foods I duck into the boutique toy shop to see if I can find a gift for Ava, whose birthday is on Friday of next week. She is hard to shop for considering that her mom already buys her everything she wants. An entire room of their apartment is dedicated solely to her Lego collection. 

The store clerk is an older man with stark white hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a crisp blue and yellow-striped bow tie. He is so meticulously groomed that I take a second look to confirm that he is not a mannequin. He beams back at me with pearly white teeth, garish in their perfection. Still bristling from the encounter with my boyfriend, I ignore him. 

I make a quick zig-zag of the isles, immediately skipping past the puzzle section—I have no desire for a repeat of last year’s drama. For her last birthday Ava received a 1,000-piece holographic extinct animal puzzle as a gift from her uncle, only to be thoroughly devastated when after a week of hard labor putting it together, the discovery was made that there was a missing piece. After scouring the entire house with no luck, Sabrine and I were left to weather several days of Ava’s bad attitude. 

I make my way past the sections of board games, books, and dolls before arriving among the stuffed animals. Ava loves stuffed animals but she is picky, so I begin to scan the shelves with some skepticism. My line of vision reaches the second highest shelf when I see something white and fluffy that calls to me, nestled between a lanky orangutan and a purple hippo. I use the length of a nearby foam baseball bat to retrieve it. 

It’s an owl. She is stunning and soft, covered with speckled white and brown tufts. She looks up at me with her big plastic yellow eyes, full of wisdom of the infinite universe. Whatever you’d call star quality in a toy, she has it. I head to the register to purchase her from the mannequin store clerk, despite the abhorrent price tag of 75 dollars.

I endure a rush hour-sized checkout line at Whole Foods before arriving at the girls’ apartment, arms full of groceries for the weekend purchased with a credit card of Sabrine’s. She had offered it to me two years prior. 

“Here, take this. For whatever you guys need while I’m away. Just keep it.” And, in an overly-dramatic whisper with one hand cupping her lip gloss-frosted mouth, “The pin is 6969.” 

As I unlock the front door, I can already hear the bass from Sabrine’s house playlist and imagine her sauntering around the house, scattering heaps of designer clothes, makeup and toiletries across all available services while she leisurely packs her enormous leather suitcase. 

“Zoe!” Sabrine calls from the other room, somehow aware of my presence despite the blasting music. Her miraculous sense of hearing, apparently unaffected by decades of loud concerts sans earplugs, never ceases to amaze me.

“Hey Sabrine,” I reply, out of breath. I haul the groceries through the enormous living room, into the kitchen and begin to put things away. 

As I am restocking the oat milk Ava emerges in her Hello Kitty pajamas, clutching her tablet an inch from her face. She bestows me with a wordless side-hug before padding over to the counter, and using one forearm to clear a space among the various bottles of perfume and face cream, hops up on the stool. 

“Care to use any of that fat vocabulary of yours?” 

“Hello, hi, salutations, what’s up,” Ava says in monotone, still hunched over her tablet.

“Always charmed by your manners, Ava.” 

“And I by your compliments.” 

“What are you doing?” 

“Playing Minecraft.” 

Sabrine walks in then, sporting a messy updo, no makeup, a lacy bralette and a pair of sweatpants. One strap of an orange thong rides up above her waistline. 

“You went shopping! Thank you. You’re a lifesaver,” She exclaims, giving me a peck on the cheek as she checks the chunky mod lime green watch on her wrist. 

“Shit! My flight is at 9.” 

It’s 6:45. 

Ava sighs, pauses her game and sets down her tablet. We know the drill. The three of us dash into the master bedroom. As Sabrine pulls on an over-sized festival t-shirt over her head, Ava takes the bathroom and I take the closet.

“Socks and underwear?” 

“Already packed!”

“Bathing suit?” 

“I couldn’t decide which one…what do you think?” Sabrine pulls open a drawer in her closet, presenting in one hand a black one-piece with so many cut-outs that its category could easily be debated. In the other hand she dangles a pastel blue bikini with the red letters HOT MAMA across the bottoms. 

“Just take both.” 

Ava whips out of the bathroom clutching Sabrine’s toothbrush, travel shampoo, soap and conditioner, which she stuffs into the open toiletry bag on the bed. 

A few minutes of havoc later, Ava sits on top of the suitcase as I pull the zipper closed. We roll it into the entrance just as Sabrine is pulling on her boots. 

“My darlings! My heroes!” she cries, pinning us both into a tight hug. “Have fun this weekend, girls. I’ll video call you when I get there, so you can say hi to Papi.” 

Ava and I spend the weekend reading—her Lemony Snicket, myself Zadie Smith—napping, watching episodes of Survivor, and devouring ice cream sundaes loaded with questionable toppings. We go on walks around the neighborhood as I quiz her on the moons. I paint her nails electric blue and teach her how to do French braids. 

On the last night before Sabrine returns, I ask the driver to take us to Crane Beach for a swim. We shriek as our spines hit the water, and shiver in our damp towels as we marvel at how well we can see the stars just a few miles from the city.
 

There are a few times over the weekend that I get close to spilling the beans to Ava about her birthday gift, and scold myself for being so impatient. It’s silly, really, how excited I am to give a stuffed owl to an eleven-year-old. I have to tell myself to relax and wait for her birthday. 

When Sabrine comes back on Monday morning we share a light lunch of a green salad and some pastries Sabrine brought back from Brussels—rather, Sabrine and I share the salad and croissants while Ava gobbles up the pains au chocolat. 

“How was the week?” Sabrine asks through a mouthful. Her arms look tan and she has bags under her eyes, suggesting that she was up to more than a family visit. 

“Good,” says Ava. Sabrine catches my gaze with a small grin and an eye roll. 

“Ok then. What did you do?” 

“Made sundaes. Went to Crane Beach.” 

“Crane Beach?” says Sabrine, and her face falls. I recall then that last summer, all three of us had planned to take a trip there that got rained out, and how disappointed Sabine was. Shoot. 

“Sorry, Sabrine,” I interject. “I totally forgot that you had wanted to go.” 

“Please, it’s fine,” she says, flipping her hand in dismissal. But as Ava goes into a spiel about a new Nintendo game she wants, I watch Sabine fidget with the silver bracelets on her wrist.

On the subway ride back to my apartment in JP, I answer a text from my boyfriend asking to hang out. I tell him to come over. I’m kind of in the mood, anyways. 

We get as far as the kitchen before he yanks off my denim shorts and underwear over my sandals. I only manage to slip off one of them before he turns me over, pulling my knee onto the table and grasping a hand around my hip. He murmurs mostly indecipherable things into my ear as he fucks me from behind. 

“You dirty slut,” I hear clearly, seconds before we both finish. 

We pull our clothes back on and venture to the back patio, where I roll us a joint with the weed he has with him. Feeling relaxed and emboldened, I decide to share something about Ava. 

“I found a birthday gift for her,” I tell him as I exhale a puff of smoke. 

“Cool,” he says, with a sincerity that surprises me. “What is it?” 

I put out the joint and we head to my bedroom to escape the heat, where I turn on the air conditioner and show him the owl. 

“It’s really cute,” he says. “Almost as cute as you.” He kisses me on the cheek, from which I recoil. “What? You just want me to fuck you and fuck off, then?” 

“No,” I sigh. “I’m just tired. I want you to stay. Really.”

He walks to the other side of the room and collapses on the bed. His wrists hang over the side, his long fingers limp like old spaghetti. 

“If you say so,” he mumbles emptily into the comforter. 

He rolls onto his back, and looks at me with a pitiful look on his face. I avert my eyes from his and instead study the different parts of his face, like a scientist observing a new species. His jaw, covered in tiny bristles. The pores on his cheeks. The two thin lines on his forehead, joining together into one of the right side of his face. I continue to avert my eyes as I move to join him on the bed, lift the comforter and nudge his side with my hip. 

“What are you looking at?” 

“Nothing. Let me in.” 

As we watch a highlight video of Kitchen Nightmares on my phone, I feel him getting hard against my thigh under the covers. I sense that I am the only one watching. 

“Hey, what do you think about…” he trails off. 

“What do I think about what?” I mumble, as Gordon Ramsay yells at the head chef. 

“Would you maybe wanna make like…” he trails off. 

“Make what?”

“Make…a little video sometime?” 

“What kind of video? An exposé on the filthy underbelly of the American restaurant?” 

“Nah. C’mon, I’m being serious.” 

“Ok. Of what?” 

“Of us.” 

“Of us doing what?” I say, illogically hoping that my dumb questions will somehow lead us away from this subject. 

“You know. Like a sex tape.” 

“For what?” 

“For me,” he says before an awkward silence, which he tries to laugh off. “Sorry. I’m high. Not just for me, for you too. It’d just be for when we’re apart for a while.” He blushes. “I already got a little excited about the idea, to be honest. I even got a camera, you know, to do it properly.” 

I try to take a breath but it feels shallow, like there is not enough air in the room. “Mm. I dunno. Can I think about it?” 

“Sure.” I can see in his eyes that he is hungry to say more. “Can I just say though, what if we—”

“I said I want to think about it.” 

With the mood thoroughly dampened, I retreat to my phone and he falls asleep. While he is still curled up in my bed, I leave the house to buy sponges and a new razor. 

When I get back he’s at the kitchen table on his phone, elbows resting on the same spot where we had sex earlier. He is fully dressed and his backpack is beside him. 

“All set to go?” I ask. 

He shifts in the chair. 

“Yeah. I have work in an hour. But I wanted to say goodbye first.” 

I say nothing. He stares at me before standing up to kiss my forehead, and as he does so I look down at the strap of his backpack, hanging on his palm between his thumb and forefinger. It twists his skin unappealingly. 

I walk him to the entrance and as I am closing the door, he puts his hand against it. “It’s ok if you don’t want to do the video. You don’t have to. For real.” 

Ava’s birthday rolls around. She is having a party in the afternoon with a gaggle of her friends, the size of which has considerably increased since her suspension. Everyone at school knows that Jaxon is a bully, and Ava is lapping up her newfound popularity as the playground hero.

I make an entrance several hours before the party starts. One eleven-year-old is enough excitement for me, and I’d rather not spend the afternoon making small talk with a bunch of bougie helicopter parents. 

As per Ava’s request for an alien theme, I hold paper plates out of the window one by one as Ava spray paints them with silver to look like UFOs. As the paint dries, we cluster green streamers together with masking tape to attach as light beams. 

When Ava is back in her room getting her party outfit on, I hear the keys in the door. Sabrine enters the kitchen, balancing a big box on her arm and sniffing the air. 

“Jeez, what have you two been up to, huffing paint?” 

“Nothing so exciting. Making decorations.” 

Ava emerges from her room just then, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. She is wearing a lacy purple crop top, a green ballet skirt and a fresh pair of Air Jordans. Her hair is up in space buns and star-shaped hair clips, and she has sparkly makeup over her eyes. 

“Ava, let’s not use spray paint in the house, honey,” says Sabrine flatly, avoiding my gaze. 

I feel a knot in my stomach. If Sabrine has a problem, she is usually straightforward with me. But I push my hurt feelings aside. It’s Ava’s day. 

“Wow cutie! You look awesome,” I say, but my voice comes out high and strained. I seize the opportunity for a mood change. “Do you want to open your gift?”

“Yeah!” Ava promptly rips through the layers of tissue paper, pulling out the contents with vigor. 

“Oh my God! She is…” She scrunches her face up, projecting it into the owl’s fluff before emerging to finish her sentence. “So cute!” 

Ava names the owl Calypso, after one of Saturn’s moons that is “shaped like an owl, kinda sorta.” 

Sabrine is taking Ava on a mother-daughter trip to the Maldives for her birthday, so they will be gone for the next week. I give Ava a birthday hug and wish them a good trip, while making a mental note to have a chat with Sabrine when they get back. 

There is a text from my boyfriend. “hey wanna come over to mine?” 

I am not very interested in seeing him. We haven’t hung out since he made his proposition for the video. But my favorite hoodie is still at his house from the last time I was over, so I decide to stop by. 

His roommate Stevie lets me in. She is tall with a boyish crewcut and dimples that often make me wish it was her room I was heading to, instead of one with a floor densely populated by lone sweat socks and oversized dust bunnies. 

I arrive outside my boyfriend’s door on the right side of the hall, and open it without knocking. He does not hear. He is sitting in his computer chair with his back to me, wearing noise-cancelling headphones. I decide to scare him. 

I circle around, treading lightly until I am close enough to see his computer screen, the sight of which distracts me from my original plan. I can tell that he is in some kind of editing software, scrolling through footage of someone in night vision. At first it is hard to make out who it is, but it is someone in bed, someone sleeping. There is a frame where the person moves in their sleep, and their face tilts forward, towards the camera. At that point I can tell it is Ava. 

I take a step forward so I am in my boyfriend’s line of vision, and he just about jumps out of his skin before slamming his laptop closed. 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, holding his hand to his chest and wearing a phony grin. “Was that Ava?” 

He puts his hands out as if to begin to explain himself, as if what he is about to say will make what I saw make sense. 

“It’s not what you think. I was just testing it. I don’t care about her. It was for you, it was supposed to be—” 

“Testing what?” 

“The camera.” 

I realize then. “It’s in the owl.” 

He is silent. 

“Open your laptop,” I say. “I’m going to stand here while you delete everything.”

Suddenly I am back outside, holding the handle of my backpack in one hand and my bunched up hoodie in the other. The sun has gone down and it’s gotten cold, so I start to put one wrist through the hoodie sleeve before I catch a whiff of it, the strong scent of stale cigarettes with an undertone of sandalwood cologne. I am delivered to the memory of our first date at a Mexican place, where as I looked over his shoulder as we hugged in greeting, I saw a cockroach scuttling out of a hole in the drywall. 

I throw the hoodie into a nearby open trash bin and sprint one block, trying to rid my skin of the smell, before feeling so light headed that I have to stop on a stoop and rest my forehead on my knees. 

When I get home I make myself a bowl of cornflakes, and sit down to stare at Sabine’s contact info on my phone. I take slow spoonfuls until the flakes feel soft and mealy on my tongue, then press the call icon. 

It rings twice before she picks up. “Hey darling, how are you? Can’t chat long, we’re at the beach.” Her voice is raised over the sound of wind and some indecipherable pop music. “Ava met some boy who wants to teach her how to skimboard.” 

“Hey Sabrine. I’m sorry, but it’s actually something kind of serious.” 

I tell her about going to my (ex) boyfriend’s place, about the footage of Ava and the hidden camera inside the owl. 

“He did it to watch me, I guess. It’s so horrible and creepy, I know. But I made him delete all of the footage.” I pause before adding for good measure, “We’re broken up now.”

She doesn’t reply for a long while. I only hear the loud wind and background music, now identifiable as Despacito. 

“Sabrine? Are you there?” 

“Yes.” 

“What are you thinking?” 

I hear what I think is a sigh, but it’s hard to tell with all the noise. “I don’t know, babe. I’m thinking…I’m thinking that maybe this is a sign.” 

“A sign? Of what?” 

“A sign that maybe it’s time for all of us to move on,” says Sabrine. As she says this I imagine her doing what she always does during uncomfortable moments, fiddling with her bracelets, or maybe since she is at the beach, setting her sunglasses atop her head amongst her dark curls. “But it also comes from me. I’ve been feeling recently like Ava and I don’t spend enough time together. That maybe I could be a better mom.” 

“A better mom?” 

She ignores my inane question. “But maybe it’s a good opportunity for you, too. I mean, you don’t want to be taking care of someone else’s kid forever, right?” Her voice is soft and high, aloof, a tone I recognize from her trying to fend off flirtatious men and spam callers.

I know I should feel angry at her callousness, this is so her to suddenly cut something long-standing from her life because of a ‘sign.’ But I thought I was immune to her impulsive streak. I feel deflated. Something tender inside me has been punctured. “Please, Sabrine. Don’t do this. I love you two. I love Ava.” 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I really am. But I’m sure you’ll find something better,” she says, her voice almost inaudible. “Next time you’re in the neighborhood, just leave the keys and my credit card in the mailbox.” 

“You’re not serious? Can I at least say goodbye to Ava?” 

“Take care of yourself, sweetheart,” says Sabrine, before I hear a beep as the phone hangs up. 

I spend the next two weeks divorced from personal hygiene, scampering out of bed solely to meet the food delivery guy, relieve myself, or check my phone for a text from Sabrine. Only the combination of the negative balance in my checking account and a harrowing UTI proved dire enough to force me back into the world. 

Now I’m walking dogs for a few clients in Newton. I would have preferred to stay around Beacon Hill, but it’s possible the word spread about what happened with Sabrine. I didn’t hear back from any of the Beacon Hill contacts I tried. 

Today I’m walking Belinda. She’s a spoiled little poof of a dog, always pulling at the leash, begging for food and barking at every living soul that walks by. Her owner is equally terrible—the other day in the foyer of her mansion she tried to skimp me on ten dollars, and she always smells like stale sweat and rosé.

After pulling Belinda away from several other dogs, wrestling the gristle from an old chicken wing out of her mouth, and narrowly preventing her from running directly into traffic, I manage to get us to the dog park. It had rained the day before, and today is foggy with a warm wind. 

Letting Belinda off leash, I sit on a bench nearby where she is still visible through the mist. 

A few moments after I sit down, I notice something yellow lying on the ground under the bench, just next to my foot. I pick it up. It’s a dog toy. It’s so beat up from being abandoned outside, I have to look for a moment before I recognize its likeness. I laugh bitterly when I realize. It’s a seahorse. 

I call to the dog. “Belinda!” I watch as her little goofy head pokes up out of the fog. “Catch,” I holler, hurling the seahorse in her direction. 

She jumps, snatching it out of the air and taking it to the ground in her jaws. I hear the squeaky friction of her teeth against the rubber, and the growl of her pleasure as she gnaws on its neck.