Nature of Jade (8 page)

Or, for the Spanish among you, Santo Glorioso Anthony, mi amigo y protector especial, Vengo a usted con confianza completa en mi actual necesidad. En su generosidad . . . You get the idea.

The grammar isn't always the best, but who cares. It's like Cliffs Notes for praying. You light one up, and if anyone is listening and in need of a lot of flattery, voila.

It's tricky to choose, because I don't really have any candles for Intrusive Mothers Who Can't Live Their Own Lives. So I pick Saint Philomena, Patron Saint of Lost and Desperate 65

Causes. Anyway, her picture is one of my favorites. She seems like a really nice person.

I move a few other saints over on my dresser (saints wouldn't mind) and put Philomena front and center and light her up. Hopefully, the match won't set off the fire alarm, causing Mom to come running in with her hair just done from the hairdresser's, and her nails all long and glossy. That, I do not want.

I wave my hand around to dissipate the small poof of smoke. And then I have this realization, and that is, I just don't want to be here at all as Mom is getting ready to go. I know she has to leave early to help set up, but I still have a good hour and a half or more where she is bound to come out and want me to take her picture and admire her and be excited for the fun she's going to have at my senior-year homecoming. I know I should be a bigger person about this, but that knowing and what I feel are in enemy camps. Maybe I'm just an awful person, but I'm not in the mood to be one of the mice that helps Cinderella before the ball. Abe says I have to stop trying to please everyone, so fine.

I watch Philomena burn for a while as I figure out what I want to do. I know there's a little piece of me already working on the possibility of going back to the zoo in the hope that the red-jacket guy just missed one day and isn't really gone after all. It isn't like stalking or something if I go back again, is it? My brain starts negotiations. If I go, I can't torture myself with humiliation and embarrassment if he isn't there. If I go, I can't get all invested in the idea of seeing him. Besides, I do want to go to the zoo, just because I admire and appreciate the zoo.

Something about this still seems obsessed-fan like, so I cut

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and-paste the plan. I won't exactly go to the zoo again, I decide. I'll just take Milo for a walk.

Past the zoo entrance. Past the zoo entrance he'd have to go through, right around the time he'd have to go through it. I check the clock. I'll have to hurry if there's going to be a coincidence.

Milo is so thrilled when he sees his leash that he leaps around and starts barking, tripping over himself with excitement. It makes me feel a little guilty because, honestly, he's just being used.

His little black lips are smiling. His pudgy rear end is waddling back and forth, back and forth with joy.

I clip Milo to his leash and escape out the door. I don't even check to see how I look before I leave, so I'm really not even expecting to cross paths with the boy in the red jacket, and that way I'll hardly be disappointed when we don't. I've discovered this about things you look forward to or dread. Fate likes the surprising detour, the trick ending. When you're really excited and looking forward to something is when it turns out ho-hum or completely and devastatingly horrible. And when you think you are about to have the worst day of your life, things generally turn out okay. So I play this trick, and when I'm excited about something, I tell myself it's going to be lousy, and I think of all that might go wrong. Which is what I didn't do last time when I was going to meet the boy in the red jacket. Stupid me, I let myself get all excited, and look what happened.

Milo is walking me, instead of me walking him. For a small dog, he's really strong. Since he's a beagle, he's basically a nose on legs. Supposedly, he can pick up a jillion more scents than we can. He puts his nose to the ground and just goes. It's like he's reading a bunch of stories, following timelines in history. If you are in a car and reading a map, tracing a path with your 67

finger, you are doing exactly what Milo does with his nose--he even takes these little sudden turns and then veers back again. He stops for a while when the story gets a little longer or more interesting. Or else it's just where another dog peed.

I have to really yank on Milo's leash to get him to break focus and go where I want him to go, and then he gets settled on a new trail and I have to yank him again. Walking him is a whole lot of work, a constant battle of forcing someone to stop doing what they're really into. Like those poor mothers trying to get their kid out of the McDonald's play tubes.

We arrive at the zoo, and the same round woman with the ASK ME ABOUT BECOMING A ZOO PAL button is at the window, and she smiles at me this time. I feel kind of funny hanging around there with her watching, as if I've done something wrong already. Even though she's smiling, it's the same feeling you get in some stores when the saleswoman follows you around as if you are about to shoplift at any moment. So I decide on another plan, which is to walk Milo around the zoo's rose garden, where dogs are allowed and where there's a clear view of the zoo entrance.

I haul Milo into the garden, which turns out to be a huge mistake because there are a couple of squirrels jetting around, which drives Milo into a frenzy of pulling and barking and straining at the leash and straining at my patience. I can barely hang on to him, he is yanking so hard, and I get worried he might win the tug-of-war and break the metal clip that connects him to his leash.

Let me just tell you in case you don't know-- letting a beagle off his leash can have disastrous consequences. They are at the mercy of their nose and this screaming drive to follow the scent to wherever some animal might be. They will

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follow it into eternity or into a busy intersection or into the wilds or into the path of a truck or a ferocious dog simply because they can't help themselves. Beagles have to be protected from their own instinct. One time Milo got off his leash and flew his fat self like a speeding train through the Chens' yard, across the street, past the center fountain. Mom was chasing him in her robe.

Luckily, he got pinned in the corner of the front gate, his face bent down in captured shame. He could easily have been Squashed Milo in morning traffic.

Anyway, he is behaving atrociously. He really needs more practice getting out. It has to be right around three thirty now. It'd be just great if the boy in the red jacket came now. Milo is straining and barking and bulgy eyed and practically frothing at the mouth. He starts making that horrible heck-heck sound, that dying cough he gets when he practically strangles himself. He's so loud, Mom can probably hear him from home. I lean down and pick him up, cart his heavy, squirming self out of the garden, away from the squirrels who make that creepy semi-squeak at him as they cling vertically to the tree trunks.

Now I am sweaty and covered in dog hair and drool. Milo is not generally a drooler, but get him near an animal and he's a Saint Bernard. I set him down back near the zoo entrance. I decide to handle the whole ticket-saleslady-worry with authority. I give my face that look of determined searching, check my cell phone clock with annoyance as if I'm waiting for someone who hasn't shown, which I guess I am. Milo sits politely and stares off in the distance as if waiting for his bus, as if that crazed, frenzied fiend back there was someone he didn't know and wouldn't care to.

I look around and fold my arms, pissed at the faux friend

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who hasn't shown, but actually searching for the red-jacket boy. I'm half-hoping he really won't show, because I'm sure I smell of sour underarms and a situation out of control. Me looking like shit, and smelling bad--I am giving him his best shot to appear. Milo and I stare toward the parking lot, at an assortment of minivans with baby seats, Fords and Subarus and who knows what; I'm not so good at car identification. A big RV with a license plate that reads CAPTAIN

ED and a bumper sticker HOME OF THE BIG REDWOODS takes up two spots.

Three forty-five. Three fifty. Jake Gillette shows up with his skateboard under his arm, sets it down carefully on a large, empty patch of parking spaces. He whips around with exaggerated style, showing off. I see our neighbor, Ken Nicholsen, go into Total Vid and come out a few moments later carrying a copy of Riding Giants, the big white wave on the cover obvious even from across the street. Milo starts to pant, which isn't too surprising after all the barking he'd done back at the squirrels.

Four ten.

He isn't coming.

In spite of my resolve, I feel an avalanche of disappointment. God, it's been a shitty day. And Mom is still home, no doubt, putting on her nylons and more mascara.

I decide to leave, but before I do, I notice the elephant keeper in his green shirt and pants, coming out toward the parking lot, carrying what looks to be a file box out to a truck parked in a front space. He sets the box on the hood, fishes for his keys in his pocket and unlocks the door.

He puts the box inside, then looks up suddenly and catches me staring at him for the second time in two days.

"Elephant girl," he says. His voice is deep, almost musical 70

from his accent. I smile. "He's a fat one," the keeper says, and nods his chin toward Milo. It might have been not nice, except he then pats his own stomach and smiles. "Like me. Like my wife at home. Too many treats."

Ordinarily, I'd have felt a little more wary--adult man, unknown. But I don't get any creepy vibes, and I'd seen him so many times with the elephants. He's all right, I can tell. He has smiley crinkles by his eyes, a kindly brown face, black beard and mustache turning gray. "Have to watch those treats," I say.

"Ah, such a shame," he says with a sigh. "So, you like the elephants? I've seen you come and stay."

I'm embarrassed. The kind of embarrassed you feel when you've been watched and didn't know it.

"Chai, Hansa, Bamboo, Flora, Tombi ..." I count on my fingers. "Who'd I forget?"

"Onyx," he fills in.

"Oops."

"Onyx hates to be forgotten."

Milo's manners are impeccable. Or maybe he's just exhausted. He doesn't strain toward the man with his usual desire to sniff pant legs. He just sits nicely and smiles. "Next time you come," the man says, "you work instead of sit. We always need the volunteers."

"Okay," I say. I'm not sure if I mean it. As nice as he seems, I don't know this man, and as much as I love the elephants, being right near their actual selves with their huge, stomping legs and powerful bodies is another matter. I'd have to think that over. For a long time. Maybe such a long time that I'd never come back. Or maybe just long enough that if I did come back, he'd have forgotten he'd mentioned it.

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"There's plenty of elephant dung to always shovel," he says, grinning. "I'm sure."

The elephant keeper locks his car door again, waves a good-bye. I wave back.

I walk Milo out of the zoo parking lot and around the nearby neighborhood. I let him lead, because wherever he goes, there are no red jackets, and no mothers in prom dresses. Finally, it is time to go home. The house is empty, and I reward Milo for that fact with a huge glass mixing bowl of the coldest water. He gulps and slurps happily, making a mess all over the floor. Then he looks up at me with water droplets glistening on his beard. He smiles gratefully, which I guess means that one of us, at least, is satisfied.

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Chapter Five

Male elephants live in a warm, loving family of females until they are ten to fifteen years old.

When the male is of age, he is slowly but strongly forced out of the herd. He continues to follow the herd at increasing distances, until he is finally living alone. He lives alone for the rest of his life, except for siring children. When he is with the herd, his interactions with family are gentle and courteous, but little else. Male elephants are viewed by the females as dangerous to their children, and are not welcome after the baby is born. Their lives are solitary ones . . .

--Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

I go to the movies with Michael and Akello and have a pretty good time, and then we head over to Smooth Juice and buy a fruit drink and a pretzel. B-plus fun, but better than pretending the school gym is some tropical paradise with basketball hoops.

When I get home, Oliver is back from football practice and is asleep in front of the television, and an exhausted Milo is curled up with his blankie and doing his dog-dream flinching. The basement is quiet, but Dad's car is parked on the street, so he's probably down there. It seems only polite to say hello, since we haven't seen each other all day, so I tromp down the stairs and open the door.

"Dad?"

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The train set is built on a platform that Dad has put on top of our old dining room table to make it easier for him to reach. Each week, it grows more elaborate. There is a little town with brick streets and tiny plastic people. A general store, a church with a steeple, a train station. A perfect little place. Now, the train is pointing out of town, which is the area of the platform Dad is working on lately. He is building the road out. It aims toward a tunnel that goes up and over a mountain to another place altogether. You can't tell what that place is yet. So far, it's just an empty area that only Dad sees in his imagination.

I don't see Dad at first. He isn't standing by the platform as he usually is, bent over it, painting or gluing or sanding or sawing. But then I realize he's just sitting in the corner in this chair from our old house that we put down here because it didn't go with any of our new furniture. That's what's mostly in the basement--all the stuff that doesn't fit us anymore, from the dining room table and the recliner to a shelf of Dad's college textbooks, and my and Oliver's old clothes that Mom's packed in boxes and labeled with our ages in black marker. There's no decorating, really, except for a framed picture of a castle Dad got on a trip to France he took after he graduated, and a tacky advertisement for Rainier Beer painted on a mirror.