An Inconvenient Elephant (17 page)

“Hey!” Richie was walking toward me carrying several large bags of apples and carrots. “I plan to look in on the horses after I finish with the other animals,” he said. “How's that mare doing?”

I shrugged. “I guess we won't know for a while.” We walked silently together until we reached the elephant barn. “I have to talk to Tom again,” I said to Richie. He only nodded.

Richie rolled open the doors to the barn, and we were
greeted with a happy duet of trumpeting from Margo and Abbie. We stepped inside, and Margo lifted her trunk expectantly. Richie tossed a bunch of carrots into her open mouth, then caressed her face as she ate them.

“She's a lucky girl,” he said.

“I'm thinking of all the ones we can't save,” I said miserably. “Please help me convince Tom to save Tusker.”

Richie's mouth tilted into a sad line. “You may have to accept that you can't,” he said. “And the terrible thing is, after Tusker, there will be more. It's something Tom knows but you haven't learned yet. There are always more elephants.”

“HE WHO WANTS WHAT IS UNDER THE BED, MUST
bend over to get it,” Diamond announced over dinner.

I was about to drop a slice of pizza onto a paper plate, which we were using now that I was down to one real dinner plate. “The only things under my bed are dust bunnies,” I said.

“What I mean is, you have to work hard to get what you want.”

“So?”

“So, we made the money to hold the fund-raiser. Now our job is to get people to come to it.” She stabbed a slice with her safari knife and ate it as it dangled from the tip.

“I don't know any people,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” Diamond said between bites, “and stop staring at me. You'd think you'd never seen anyone eat pizza
before. You promised you would call Tom when we finished raising the money.”

“I can't,” I said. “I can't stop staring, and I can't make the call. And besides, we don't have enough money for a big party.”

“No, not one of those fancy things that you see given by the queen of England. We'll have a barbecue.”

“No barbecues!” I jumped from my chair in protest, dropping my pizza. “I hate barbecues! They're smoky and smelly, and I always had to clean the grill.”

“It's the most practical way to do things.”

“No barbecue and no Tom,” I insisted, then sat down again. “Besides, Tom hates me.”

“You have to call him,” Diamond said. “He's the key to our success.”

“You're wrongly assuming he wants us to succeed.” I reached for more pizza.

Diamond flipped her knife across the table, pinning my slice to the cardboard box, then reached behind her head, grabbed the kitchen phone, and tossed it to me. “Call Tom.”

I shook my head. “The last time I spoke to him we were in his car and were barely civil to each other, and I'm positive he hates me now.”

“Call him and tell him that you're sorry and that you love him,” she said, “and that you need him. And maybe his mother, too.”

“Are you crazy?” I eyed the knife. It had penetrated the pizza and the box, pinning both to my wooden kitchen table underneath. “I don't love him, I don't love his mother, and I don't want to talk to either one of them.”

Diamond folded her arms and gave me a disgusted look. “You know,” she said, “he is a fool whose sheep get away twice.”

“Would those sheep be under my bed?” I asked sarcastically. “Owned by the man who's bending over?”

“It means you've already made one mistake letting Tom go,” Diamond snapped. “How many times do you think that you're going to find true love? Do you know what I'd give—” She stopped herself and plucked her knife from my dinner. “So call him before we run out of time, or I will.” She flipped the knife into the air and caught it neatly by the handle. “And I can be very convincing.”

 

“Neelie?” Tom's voice was a mixture of surprise and icy curiosity. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” Though it was a small victory that Tom even answered my call, I thought I detected a note of sarcasm in his last word.

“I need to talk to you?” I said, trying to control my voice, though my nerves were getting the best of me. “I—that is, we—Diamond and I—are holding a fund-raiser? You know? To be able to save that elephant I told you about?” Why was I talking like a fourteen-year-old Valley girl and ending my sentences with interrogatives? “And we need people to attend?”

“Is this a joke?”

“I'm serious?” I had to stop, I had to stop—why was I talking like this? “It's our only chance to save Tusker?”

There was a long pause. “Tom?” I asked miserably.

“I warned you about Tusker, and do you really think I would help you defeat my own plans?”

I mounted my argument. “You didn't have any plans, except to wait until he got shot? We want to
save
him, not stuff him.”

“I'm not discussing that elephant with you again. I'm just advising, no, I'm demanding that you not get involved,” he said. “And if you weren't so pigheaded, I would—”

“‘
Demanding
'?” I shouted. “What makes you think you can demand anything? And how dare you call me pigheaded, when I'm trying to save—”

“I'm not in the mood to argue with you.” His tone was that of a parent talking to a recalcitrant child. “In fact, I think you'd—”

“I don't need you!” I interrupted him angrily. “I'll bet your mother would help. In fact, I know her name and her address, and I know she loves animals, and I'm going to call her. I just wanted to give you another chance. I was just hoping you'd have a change of heart.”

“My heart never changes,” he said quietly.

That caught me off guard. “Yes it does,” I said. “Because now you hate me.”

“I don't hate you,” he said. “I could never hate you.”

“Maybe you don't hate me now, but you will after I go ahead with my plans.” I stopped myself. I didn't want to bicker—it was so old stuff. “I wish things were different.”

Suddenly he laughed. “I have to give you this, you are the most determined woman I have ever met. I forgot how single-minded you can be.”

“Then you'll attend? Or ask your mother if she'd be interested?”

“No, I won't,” he said firmly. “First of all, I have plans
for the sanctuary, and someday, if you would let me finish a sentence, I'll tell you about them. In the meantime, I am strongly advising you, no,
ordering
you to stay out of
g
the Tusker thing. It's going to create a disaster in ways you can't begin to imagine. Secondly, I don't want my mother involved. She's got too many charities on her plate already.”

 

“Of course I remember you,” Mrs. Pennington said after I nervously introduced myself over the phone. “You're the young woman who went to Africa with Tom.”

“To rescue Margo,” I added. “You know, the elephant that shares her name with you.”

“Actually, I share
my
name with her, dear,” she corrected me. “And didn't you break things off with my son?”

“I was saving more elephants,” I replied.

“How perfectly thoughtful of you,” she said. “But I'm wondering why you called.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself. “Well, I'm the president of ELLI. It's the Elephant Liberation League Internationale, and we're holding a fund-raiser so we can save another elephant,” I explained, helpfully leaving out the part that we were doing it even though her son had explicitly ordered me not to.

“I'm sorry,” Mrs. Pennington apologized. “I don't think I can help. I don't know anything about elephants. And besides, I've been donating my time and money to victims of the raging tornadoes they've had in the South.”

“Raging tomatoes?”

“Oh my goodness!” exclaimed Margo Pennington. “Who mentioned tomatoes?”

“I thought you did. In any case, we're both trying to save lives,” I said. “And it's a good thing to save lives.”

“I appreciate what you're doing, my dear,” she said, “but the only other charities I care about are the ones that deal with horses.”

“Well, we did just rescue a starved race mare.”

Margo Pennington sounded surprised. “A race mare?” she repeated. “A
thoroughbred
?”

“Yep. Well bred, too,” I replied. “But you know how breeders are. Some of them just don't care what happens after they're done running their horses. I don't know where she'll go if we close down.”

“Oh, poo! A good breeder always keeps a spot open for old horses,” she countered.

“The
good
breeders do,”
d
I agreed. “But they're few and far between. If we run out of funds, we might have to euthanize her.”

There was a silence. “You say the sanctuary has been taking in old racehorses?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, thinking that somewhere out in the pasture of fifty-seven fat, homely, short-strided, lumpy mongrel horses there had to be at least one more thoroughbred.

“But didn't you say your organization was called ELLI—for elephants?”

I thought for a moment. “Did I say ‘elephant'?” I gasped. “I must have Margo on my mind. ELLI stands for
Equine
Liberation League Internationale. For the horses. They come from everywhere, you know.”

“Well, that certainly sounds like a worthy cause,” Mrs. Pennington reflected. “Horses.”

“Yes, ma'am. Horses,” I agreed, suddenly realizing I was onto a good thing. “Ex-racehorses.”

“Well, I'm certain Tom probably won't agree with what I'm doing, and I don't like to contradict his plans,” Mrs. Pennington said. “So you'll have to promise me we won't breathe a word of this to him.”

“He's not speaking to me,” I cheerfully reassured her. “But it's a worthy cause. You have to think of all those horses.” I waited for her while she thought of them.

“Okay, I'll come,” Margo Pennington announced. “For the horses.”

“And an elephant or two,” I added quickly. “And we would love for you to bring any friends along.”

“I suppose I could,” she agreed.

“That's so kind of you,” I gushed. “So very kind, and we would be so very grateful. And the ex-racehorses would be so very grateful, all those ex-racehorses just waiting to be rescued would be very grateful. And the elephants, of course. Hugely grateful. Bring everyone you can.”

“Thank you, dear,” Margo Pennington replied. “If you don't mind, I might even be able to convince Victoria to come. She knows an awful lot of horse lovers in her circle of friends.”

“Victoria?”

Yes, Victoria Cremwell, of the Boston Cremwells,” Margo Pennington replied. “She's the woman Tom's going to marry.”

I SAT WITH THE PHONE CRADLED IN MY LAP.

“I don't suppose you have a proverb for a fool who never saw this coming,” I said to Diamond.

“Only this,” said Diamond. “You have to invite the bees to get honey.”

I stood up and placed the phone back into its cradle. “Well, I've certainly been stung in the butt.”

Diamond gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “Bees bring honey, people bring money. It doesn't matter who they are.”

“It does matter,” I protested. “I have a strong impulse to call Margo Pennington back and tell her to forget it. I don't think I can stand to meet Tom's fiancée.”

“Well, then,” said Diamond. “Here's another proverb for you: cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

I looked at her in surprise. “Is that Kenyan?”

“No, you idiot,” said Diamond. “That's just common sense.”

 

Mrs. Elisabeth Wycliff had a wonderful barbecue planned.

After overhearing me and Diamond arguing over the type of fund-raiser to hold, she made copious lists and hand-wrote the invitations herself, in a fine calligraphy, which stated that Mr. and Mrs. Harold Wycliff were requesting the honor of the presence of their many friends. She had even issued a special invitation to one of Harold's more influential business acquaintances, the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. There were three major problems, though. One was that the host himself and most of their friends were deceased and wouldn't be able to make it. Secondly, Mrs. W. preempted us by getting the date wrong by several weeks earlier than we had planned, and thirdly, she decided that her living room was the perfect intimate venue, which meant that supplemental guests eventually included several members of the local fire department as well as a few individuals from law enforcement.

Luckily, Richie spotted the smoke early on and pulled Mrs. Wycliff, dressed in her flannel nightgown and pith helmet, to safety before calling the fire department. They had just arrived, sirens wailing and lights flashing, when Diamond and I pulled into the driveway to start our day. We both jumped from the car and raced to Mrs. Wycliff's side.

“There's plenty for everybody,” announced a delighted Mrs. Wycliff as the firefighters quickly clambered from their fire trucks and began pulling hoses from the back. “No need to rush.”

“Oh, thank heaven! The cats!” Diamond shouted as a man came out of the back door, two cats under each arm. Another fireman led the black Labs.

“They're fine,” he reassured her. “I got them all.”

“What on earth are those?” I asked the fire chief as his men carried out several lumpy, smoldering objects.

“I believe she was roasting the pillows to her kitchen chairs,” he replied. “Luckily there wasn't much actual fire because of the fire retardant in the material, but there's an awful lot of smoke.”

“Glad there was no other damage,” Richie replied. “Pillows are easy enough to replace.”

“I'm afraid you'll have to replace her whole kitchen set,” said the fire chief. “She used the chairs for kindling.”

Mrs. Wycliff stood on the front lawn, wrapped in a blanket, and watched the proceedings. “I had such a wonderful dessert planned, too,” she mourned. “Pity these bush parties break up so early.” She coughed hard several times, and a concerned-looking Richie took her hand to lead her to the ambulance.

“I couldn't possibly leave my guests,” she protested as they gently lifted her onto a gurney. “I was planning to entertain them with a song. Everyone loves my voice.”

“You can sing later,” Richie reassured her. “As soon as we know you're okay and they let you come back home.”

“But I'm fine,” she insisted. “Listen.” She cleared her throat and started on a shaky rendition of “Meet Me in St. Louis.” As the men lifted her into the ambulance and pulled away, Richie turned to me. “This is just what I've been warning you about. She can't run this place. We could have had a catastrophe. She has no family, you know, and the hospital may not even release her unless there's someone here to
watch over her.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I'll have to call Tom to see what we can figure out.”

“No! Not Tom!” I grabbed his arm. “Maybe we can help.”

“She needs constant supervision,” Richie said, running his fingers distractedly through his hair again. “How could you do that?”

“I can watch her,” Diamond volunteered. “I don't mind.”

“You'd have to move in with her,” Richie countered. “She can't be left alone anymore.”

Diamond shrugged. “She's like a mum to me, anyway.”

Richie considered this. “You'd have to move in right away. How long will it take you to pack?”

“I'm packed,” Diamond replied. “I live packed.”

 

The house was empty without Diamond-Rose. There was no one to wake me up at the first light of dawn with a loud rap on my bedroom door followed by a barrage of gorilla hoots. My morning coffee didn't accelerate my heart rate to supersonic speeds. There was no one paring her toenails at the table because the light was better in the kitchen. Or flinging a safari knife across the room to secure the last lamb chop.

And no one to sit with on the back porch during lonely evenings to talk of things wild and domestic, and ponder what it really meant to be civilized.

 

The day had barely started when my phone rang. I peered out from under my pillow, trying to make sense of the clock on the nightstand. It was almost five.

“You'd better have a good reason for calling me in the middle of the night,” I said, annoyed.

“You're wasting the day!” Diamond exclaimed into my ear.
“You know, a person cannot pick up a pebble with one finger.”

“Why are you picking up pebbles this early in the morning?”

“It's an old saying,” Diamond answered. “It means I need your help.”

“Sorry, help doesn't start until after seven a.m.,” I said. “Call back later.”

“It's about the fund-raiser,” Diamond said. “Come for breakfast, and I'll tell you what I came up with.”

“I'm not leaving my bed this early.”

“Oh, don't be such a baby,” Diamond scolded. “I'll make the coffee. Mum is already barbecuing eggs, and you can bring the usual.”

There was a bloodcurdling scream in the background.

“Elisabeth just have some of your coffee?” I asked.

“Oh, that's Samantha,” Diamond explained. “She's a cockatoo. Brought in late last night. Her owner died and left her to the sanctuary.”

“Cup you!” the bird yelled. “Cup you!”

“What?” I asked.

“I'm not sure,” Diamond said, “but I think she wants a cup of orange juice.”

“Cup you!” the bird repeated. “Cup you! Cup you!”

“It sounds awfully like cursing.” I yawned and sat up.

“Yeah,” Diamond agreed. “But the poor thing isn't quite getting it.” She turned away from the phone. “You're saying it wrong,” she corrected the bird. “Listen carefully. It's
fuck
you. Fuck you.”

“Don't say another word,” I yelled at her. “I'll be right there.”

 

They were sitting at the kitchen table in Elisabeth's new folding chairs, Diamond and Elisabeth Wycliff, along with
a large pale pink cockatoo, who sat on the back of a chair, shredding a paper cup. She quickly dropped the cup and turned to me with shining onyx eyes.

“Meet Samantha,” Diamond said. “She's very friendly.”

I reached over to stroke the soft pink feathers. “Wow,” I said, “she's beautiful.”

“Cup you!” The orange crest on Samantha's head stood straight up as she opened an amazingly large beak and clamped down on the tip of my finger. “Cup you!” she squawked. “Cup you!”

“I see she's a carnivore,” I said, pulling my throbbing finger from the bird's grip.

“Oh, no,” said Elisabeth, holding her hand out to the bird, who stepped lightly onto it and cooed. “She's very gentle and sweet. Wouldn't hurt a fly. Isn't that right, Sammy?”

“I love you,” Samantha murmured to her, then squinted in my direction. “Cup you.”

“Sit down and enjoy breakfast,” Diamond said to me, pulling out a folding chair and serving me two char-grilled eggs. “Mum cooked.” Diamond had set up a small barbecue in the kitchen to channel Mrs. Wycliff's proclivity toward arson into a more useful skill. A saucepan filled with thick black coffee sat on the coals next to a small frying pan. Diamond gave me a significant raise of the eyebrows. “We want to keep Mum happy,” she said, “
don't we
?”

“So what plans have you made for the fund-raiser?” I asked, taking a small taste of blackened eggs before surreptitiously slipping them downward to the black Labs. Diamond poured me a cup of coffee.

“We're going to have food-on-a-stick,” she declared.

“Did you say ‘
food-on-a-stick
'?” I repeated. “That's just
a sneaky way of saying barbecue! I hate barbecues! They're…cheesy.”

“Food-on-a-stick is not barbecue, it's a theme,” Diamond said, picking up the list she had made. “And themes are fun.”

“Food-on-a-stick is not a theme, it's a
barbecue
,” I argued. “It's where you cook it.”

“It doesn't matter
where
,” Diamond said, “it's the spirit. Food-on-a-stick has a fun spirit that will hook people in.”

“It's stupid,” I said, picturing Tom's elegant mother waving a barbecue-sauced drumstick between her dainty fingers and slugging from a can of beer. And I could imagine Tom's fiancée—
Victoria
—laughing herself silly over our attempts to appear sophisticated. “And besides, how do you get everything on a stick? Like drinks, for instance? How do you put drinks on a stick?”

“You make margaritas and piña coladas”—Diamond smiled triumphantly—“and freeze them with a stick in the middle.”

“That solves only drinks,” I protested. “The rest is still just barbecue.”

“No, the trick is to have the unusual,” Diamond answered. “And since Mum and I figured out the theme, your contribution is to figure out how to do the soup and salad.”

“I even thought of dessert on a stick,” Mrs. Wycliff put in modestly. “Ice cream cake! And I invited a very special guest, an old friend of mine, and I'm going to donate all my old ball gowns, just like they do at the Smithsonian. Oh, it's going to be a grand party.”