I Have Never Stopped Believing in The Incredible Mr. Limpet
by Kip Knott
My therapist says I have hemorrhoids because I sit too long on the toilet in the downstairs water closet. I call it the water closet because the sign above the door reads, “Water Closet, Kansas.” My British ex-wife had the sign made as a way to claim a bit of Jolly Old England for herself here in the heartland of America. The reason I sit on the toilet too long has to do with the image of Don Knotts that I see in the swirls of the ocean-blue linoleum floor at my feet. Well, it’s not exactly Don Knotts. It’s actually the fishy face of his most famous film character, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, that I see staring up at me.
When I was a kid, the notion of falling into the ocean and turning into a fish that could live and breathe forever underwater became my most fervent desire, especially on those days when the tidal wave of expletives my parents poured upon each other threatened to drown me. I remember how I used to plug my ears with my fingers and sing, “I wish, I wish, I wish I were a fish, 'cuz fishes have a better life than people.” The sound of those words resonating through my head reminded me of the sound of the surf I heard on the one family vacation we ever took to Cocoa Beach before Mom finally had had enough and ran off with our next-door neighbor and newly-widowed Mr. Pfaffman.
I can’t help but think that my ex-wife is responsible for the reappearance of Mr. Limpet in my life now. Afterall, she’s the one who decorated the water closet in a seaside motif to remind her of her childhood home—St. Ives, Cornwall, the most scenic and romantic coastal village in all of England. The last time an ocean’s waves lapped a sandy beach here in landlocked Kansas was during the Mesozoic Era when no humans even existed to make love in its surf.
In addition to the ocean-blue linoleum floor, the sink is a giant inverted scallop shell, the faucet handles are made of pink coral, the mirror is framed in driftwood with mother-of-pearl inlay, the twin lights on either side of the mirror are converted conch shells, the hand towels are seafoam green with embroidered seagulls, and the soaps are shaped like tiny seahorses.
I have to admit that I never once saw Mr. Limpet when my ex-wife still called our house home. It wasn’t until the morning after she left that I saw his face staring up at me. At first, I wasn’t certain what I was seeing. I knew it was something more than random swirls, but it took a long time starring into the depths of the ocean-blue floor before I could clearly see his trout-pout lips and pince nez spectacles. And once the whole image of Mr. Limpet came into focus, I could never look down between my feet without seeing him staring up at me. That was six months ago. And every day of every week of every one of those six months, Mr. Limpet has never looked away, no matter how long I sit there.
And these days I sit there well beyond my physical need to stay, mostly because of the look on his wise and kindly face. There’s a glint in his all-knowing eyes that holds me in place until my sciatic nerve goes numb and I have no choice but to stand and restore feeling to my lower body. Every day I am more certain than the day before that Mr. Limpet has something important to tell me. Perhaps something wonderful, like tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers that could make me wealthy enough to draw my ex-wife back to me. Or maybe something that could save my life, like telling me I have an undiagnosed aortic aneurism, and I should be careful not to strain so much while sitting on the toilet. Or maybe information about a hopeful future, like the name of someone new who will arrive in my life like Venus rising out of the sea and strengthen the romantic weakness of my heart that my ex-wife diagnosed before she slammed the door on her way out of my life and back to England. Perhaps, even, the name of someone who will love me despite my hemorrhoids. Whatever wisdom it is that Mr. Limpet has to impart to me, I can’t afford to miss that moment when his booming thrum will change my life forever in the time (and overtime) it takes for me to flush away the remains of yesterday and step out of the water closet, transformed.
Kip Knott is a writer, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Delaware, Ohio. His work has appeared in Barren, Bending Genres, Best Microfiction, Ghost Parachute, Ink in Thirds, Maudlin House, Milk Candy Review, The Sun, trampset, Vestal Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Wigleaf Top 50. His most recent book of stories, Family Haunts, is available from Louisiana Literature Press.
