Still Life with Elephant (20 page)

A
WEEK
became two weeks, and Abbie remained very sick. Her fever rose, and her breathing became labored. She coughed deeply, her sides heaving from the effort, and then she would drop down into her nest of hay, exhausted.

Tom called me every few days, always preceding his request for a progress report with apologies for not being able to get away. He had business all over the world, and called me from his jet, from his hotel room, from restaurants, from every continent, before and after meetings, at the oddest hours.

“Richie tells me you've been working day and night on her,” he said as I spoke to him on my cell phone, early one morning. I had just left Abbie half an hour earlier, and I was pulling into my driveway. “I want you to know that I appreciate it. You've gone above and beyond the call.”

“I don't want to lose her,” I said.

“And how's it going with Matt?”

“We're both being very professional,” I said. Loosely translated, that meant that we'd gotten into one major blowout and several minor fender-benders.

“I just got into New York late last night,” Tom said, to my surprise. “Do you need a break? I could fly Faye up from Tennessee and we could spend a few days together. I have a little cottage in Bretagne. It's beautiful this time of year.”

“I have to pack up my own little cottage,” I said. “I'm selling it.” I had avoided telling him about the house because I didn't want his pity.

“Why?” he asked.

“It's a Matt thing,” I said.

“Don't do anything until we talk,” he replied. “How about if I take you to dinner tonight?”

“I'll be sitting on elephant duty,” I said, then realized it wasn't quite what I meant. “Sorry—I didn't mean ‘dooty.' I meant ‘shift,' ‘shift of duty.' Does that sound better, or am I getting delirious?”

“I'll bring dinner and come to the barn,” he said. “You sound like you need a good meal.”

 

I grabbed the next phone call without checking the caller ID.

“Wow—you're actually answering your phone now?” Matt said.

“I didn't know it was you,” I said nastily. “I have to be available if Richie needs me.”

“Well, I was wondering if you'd have dinner with me before you head up to the sanctuary,” he said. “I have to go there tonight, to check on Abbie. Maybe we could have an early dinner and sit down and talk. Please?”

“No.”

“How about if we get together sometime this week?”

“Not interested,” I said. “For some odd reason, I'll be very busy packing up the home that I lost.”

“That's one of the things I want to talk about,” he said. “I want to talk about doing something—to make it up to you.”

“Oh, I just couldn't accept one more thing,” I said in extra-saccharine tones. “Not after all you've done for me so far.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “I'm being hateful and angry.”

 

He called back five more times that day, begging me to talk to him. After the sixth call, I managed to hone my hang-up skills to where it took me less than a second to disconnect, by pressing the phone's on and off buttons nearly simultaneously.

“Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me.” He left several desperate,
pathetic messages on my answering machine. I pressed “delete all,” wishing it could somehow include both him and Holly. Then I got myself ready for my night shift with Abbie.

But Matt took things a step further.

I was about to leave for the sanctuary, later that afternoon, and opened my front door to find Matt standing there, his finger just about to press the doorbell. He looked awful. There were black circles under his eyes, and an expression of profound sadness on his face.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Please, let's talk.” He held both hands up as if to fend off my anger. “Can I come in?” He leaned forward to peek inside. There was a one-hundred-decibel rendition of “Graceland” playing in the background.

“Wow,” he said. “You still blast music!”

“It's no longer any of your business what I do.” I yanked the door closed behind me and pulled out my keys, ready to lock it.

Matt cupped his hand over the keys. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “And I can't talk in front of the elephants.”

“They don't speak English,” I said. “They won't care.”

“It's just that we can't seem to talk without arguing, and I don't want us to get into it in front of them and get them all agitated.”

“We have nothing to talk about,” I said, yanking the keys out from under his hand and locking the door with a crisp snap.

“There are some things you have to know,” he began, but I started down the porch steps. He tried to block my path.

“Go away,” I said, angrily pushing him aside.

“I still love you,” he said. “You used to be a therapist. You have to know—things sometimes aren't what they appear—”

A flash of fury tore through me like the white bolts of light that had torn across the African skies, so overwhelming that it burned everything inside of me. I hated Matt. I hated what he had done. I hated his deception, his carelessness, his declarations of love. I hated the look of him.

I had to turn away from him. So searing was my anger, it could
have ignited the house behind me, it could have turned my tears to puffs of steam.

“I never want to see you again,” I said through clenched teeth. “I wish there was another vet Richie could call. I hate working with you.” I stamped off to my car. He stood there on the porch, his shoulders drooping.

“I hope she was worth it,” I called back to him while getting into my truck. “I hope losing me, losing the house, losing everything—I hope it was all worth it.”

“It wasn't,” I heard him say, as I was pulling the truck door shut. “If you care to know—it absolutely wasn't.”

 

Matt followed me to the sanctuary, wordlessly checked on the baby, and left just as Tom was turning into the driveway. It was like an English comedy, with doors opening and closing and people sailing in and out with perfect timing.

“How's our baby?” Tom asked. He had come into the enclosure with me. I turned to explain Abbie's treatment, but he put his arms around me. There was no one to witness his sweet kiss except Margo, and she was busy eating her dinner. Abbie was asleep, on a big pile of hay, under her favorite yellow-and-blue plaid blanket.

Tom held me close, smelling of mint and wild grasses, and I buried my face in his shoulder and closed my eyes.

“I wish our schedules gave us more leeway,” he said into my hair. “I think about you all the time.”

“You do?” I looked up into a face filled with kindness and concern. “Thank you.” I traced his scar with the tip of my finger and then leaned toward him and kissed it. I ran my fingers through his silver hair, and thought how sweet it felt to be near him again.

“I miss you,” he whispered, and kissed me again. Margo looked over her shoulder at us and rumbled. We broke apart. Tom knelt down next to Abbie.

“She's still sick,” I said. “Still has a fever.”

He took a gentle pinch of skin from her ear. “Not dehydrated,”
he said. “So the IVs are doing their job. But I know how touch-and-go these things can be.”

I knelt next to him. “We're trying so hard.”

“You're doing great, Neelie.”

I started to cry.

“Hey.” He stood up. “Wait till you see what I brought.”

He left the barn for a moment and returned, producing a shopping bag filled with covered aluminum containers, a bottle of wine, a linen tablecloth, and real knives and forks. We opened the tablecloth over several bales of hay and set the food out. Shrimp scampi and salad and good bread. He had even brought china plates.

“So—what's going on?” he asked, pouring us wine as though we were sitting in a very fine restaurant. “Why are you moving?”

I told him about Matt and the house. He looked very grave.

“Do you have a good lawyer?” he asked.

I shrugged. “How do you know until the shooting stops and you see who's left standing?”

He leaned back against the bars. “Let me get you a lawyer,” he said. “And let me buy the house.”

I grimaced. “I can't.”

He folded his arms and scowled. I'd never seen him look like that, fierce, his features seeming to sharpen. “It's a good business decision. The market's strong for these little houses, it would be nothing for me—just another investment.”

These little houses.
I had to remember who was speaking. He caught my look.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“What happens if I can never afford to buy it back?” I asked. “Then you become not only my employer, you become my landlord. I can't have all that between us. It makes things too complicated.”

“Don't be so stubborn,” he replied. “We can cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“No,” I said. “I like to cross my bridges now.”

He reached out and caressed my face. “Neelie, you can pay me back when you get on your feet.” he asked. “What's the rush?”

I shrugged. “I guess it's because I want to make sure I can put up a bridge when I need it.”

 

It was time to take care of Abbie. Tom watched me heat the coconut milk and stir in the oatmeal and puréed fruit. I poured it all into a bottle and gently pushed it between Abbie's lips, coaxing her to take a sip, singing my song to her.

“Looks like you're an enamel server yourself,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, “I'm very flattered to be considered one.”

“And you know what, Neelie?” he said, giving me another kiss, this one on the top of my head.

“What?” I asked, balancing the bottle against Abbie's lips.

“I think you would have made a very good mother.”

I
WAS
in a quantum state of mind. Quantum superposition, it's called, when matter is neither here nor there, when it is neither alive nor dead, neither a particle nor energy, perpetually fluctuating between two conditions of existence, its very essence called into question.

I was a horse trainer who didn't train horses. A therapist who offered no therapy. I wasn't homeless, but I would soon have no house, no barn, no money. I spent my nights awake, and my days in a blurred state of half-light, dozing and working, and napping and dreaming.

I had a lover who never said he loved me, and an ex-husband who swore he did but treated me otherwise. I heard things that were never spoken, and seldom heard the things that were.

It was all going to come to no good, I thought miserably. Like the flame from a match, everything I worked for was going to disappear in a flash and a wisp of smoke, leaving nothing behind but the smell of defeat. If Tom only knew how far his words carried.

I dreaded the days, filled with strangers poking about my beloved house, opening closets, checking the state of hygiene in my bathroom, standing next to my bed and mentally measuring the room for drapes, and always, always finding the tiny pee spot that stained the corner of the living-room rug, where Grace had once had an accident as a puppy. I hated their glancing at the nursery with my lovely painted ponies and sparkly halters, and then growing suddenly quiet and sympathetic when they saw how empty the room was. I hated their peering through the kitchen window, out at the barn, and wondering what another house was doing in the back.

“It's a barn,” my helpful agent would explain. “But of course you can always turn it into a cabana and backfill the riding ring and put a swimming pool in.”

Sometimes she suggested they turn my barn into a little cottage for their mother-in-law. I would smile inwardly at that, wondering whose mother was going to get the nice stall on the end, the one conveniently located near the cement wash-area.

“Bring
horse
people,” I told her more than once. “Bring people who can appreciate the barn and the riding ring.”

“I will bring whoever comes into my office and can meet your price,” she said arrogantly. “You don't have a lot of room for bargaining.”

 

I may have dreaded the days, but I looked forward to my nights with Abbie. She was my anchor. When I rubbed the black fur that sprouted though her wrinkly gray skin, making her resemble a moth-eaten toy, she rumbled with appreciation. I massaged her ears and sang to her, and I felt real. I felt grounded.

And I would think, This is why I would like to rescue elephants. Because I can become their oasis in the great tangle of pain and cruelty that circumstance tied to their lives. I could unravel some of it. And, in what was quickly becoming my own tetherless, free-falling state of nothingness, they gave me a place to land.

 

Though I had turned down his generous offer to buy my house, Tom was persistent. He was waiting for me a few days later, sitting on my front porch, when I got home from the sanctuary.

“Shouldn't you be merging and conquering?” I asked him as I led him through a living room stacked with cartons.

“Listen,” he said. “I have a proposition.”

Grace lunged for the cuff of his pants.

“Let's sit down and talk business,” he said, taking my arm and marching me over to the table, dragging along Grace, who was still
hanging off one leg. He sat down and folded his hands like he was at a board meeting, and gestured for me to sit down. I removed Grace, popped her into the bathroom, and returned.

“I appreciate your offer,” I said. “But I'm just barely making ends meet. I don't have any horses to train, and only the income from my students and what I make at the sanctuary is keeping me from stealing Margo's fruit—”

He held his hand up. “I wasn't planning to ask you for rent.”

“I don't take charity.”

“How about if you consider it part of a housing package I give you for working for me,” he said. “Just until you get on your feet.”

“That wouldn't be fair to you,” I said. “You already pay me a salary.”

“Consider it a bonus,” he said, “for your extra hours. Or I can raise your pay.”

“Don't,” I said, embarrassed.

“Consider it a birthday gift. Consider it a—”

“I consider it out of the question,” I said quietly, standing up. “Please don't ever mention it again.”

 

“What is wrong with you?” Alana shrieked at me. “How could you say no to someone like Tom?” We were leading Tony the Pony back to his stall after another afternoon of lessons. He and the girls had graduated to a walk that was just barely faster than funereal, while Alana had graduated to peeking through the fingers of only one hand to watch them. Tony jumped at the sound of Alana's voice.

“I don't know,” I said miserably. “I don't want to be dependent on him.” Tony stood patiently as I took off his bridle and put his halter on him. “I can't be a kept woman.”

“He wasn't going to keep
you
, you idiot,” she said. “He was going to keep the house.
For
you.”

“But what happens when we break up?” I said, now removing Tony's saddle from his back.

“I thought you said you weren't even officially together,” Alana
pointed out. She removed his fleece-wool saddle pad and held it aloft. “Where do you put Tony's sweater?”

“That's a saddle pad,” I said, taking it from her and draping it over the saddle to be put away. “It's only every once in a while that Tom and I are together. I don't want to take advantage of him.”

“You aren't taking advantage if he's
offering
it to you,” Alana said with her usual run of logic. “Allowing him to be kind will make him feel good, so, in a way, you're doing it for him. Just say thank you and graciously accept.”

“I can't,” I said. “I'm too cranky to be gracious.”

“Do it for poor Tony,” Alana said, petting his neck. “Or he won't have a place to hang his hat.”

“Tony doesn't have a hat to hang,” I said. I put Tony in his stall and gave Alana a little hug. “Thanks for caring, but I don't want Tom to think of me as this needy person that he has to rescue. It's not a good basis for any kind of relationship. You, as a therapist, ought to know that.”

“I, as a therapist, know that you are denying him the pleasure of being kind,” she said. “Of doing a good deed. Don't be so stubborn. Things could turn into downhill fish sticks if you don't get a fluffer.”

 

She was wrong about the fish sticks. I did get another offer. Actually, two.

The first one was from my mother.

“Your father and I have talked it over, and we are ready to buy the house and turn it over to you,” she said.

“Thank you, Mom,” I said, “that is the sweetest thing, but I can't let you do that.”

“I'm your mother,” she said. “I can't bear the idea of you sleeping in the street.”

“I won't sleep in the street,” I said. “I promise.”

“Then where will you go?” she asked. “We already turned your room into my craft studio.”

I laughed. “Don't worry, I won't come home. I don't ever plan on being one of those kid returnees.”

“I wasn't worried about that,” she said. “You could always have the basement. Your father could move the washer and dryer over a few feet for a bed. That's what parents are—”

“Your laundry is safe from invasion,” I said. “But I love you for offering.”

 

The second offer was from Reese.

“Marielle and I are planning to get married this year,” he said over the phone. “I was thinking how your house would be perfect.” He paused, then asked gently, “Do you mind if I bring her over to see it?”

“Not at all,” I said.

He came over with her that same afternoon. Marielle really wasn't so bad, I decided. She was pretty, with a straightforward manner, warm brown eyes, high cheekbones, and an ever-present smile. I could see she was very much in love with my brother, and actually reduced his goofy factor by at least one-half. And, like a true horseperson, she wanted to see the barn first of all.

She examined the construction of the stall doors, and the quality of the latches. She closed the shutters to see how tight they fit over the windows to keep out the cold winter chill. She exclaimed over the triple insulation in the ceiling and the extra-strong flooring in the hayloft. She marched around the riding ring to check out the footing.

After an hour or two, we returned to the house.

“Look.” Reese showed her around the kitchen. “Viking range. Neelie always cooked great meals for family get-togethers.”

“That's when we were all happy,” I muttered.

“We're still happy,” Reese said, and gave Marielle a peck on the cheek. “At least I am.”

He stepped over to my refrigerator. “And look here,” he said, “huge new refrigerator, side-by-side doors.” He swung the doors open
to reveal a jar of mayonnaise and a can of tuna. “And a big freezer,” he added, swinging the freezer door open. Inside was a neat stack of the foil-wrapped leftovers my mother had sent home with me.

Marielle gave him a little nod, then turned to me. “I hope you don't mind us.”

“No,” I said. “I'd rather it be you and Reese than anybody else.”

“I do love your barn,” she said. “Those stalls looked so roomy. Twelve by twelve?”

“Yep.”

“Awesome,” she said.

“And granite counters,” Reese interjected, rubbing his hands over their smooth surface.

“I love the way you have the tack room reachable from the middle of the barn, and the hayloft with the double-wide pull-down staircase,” Marielle continued. “Great design.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“So,” Reese said, “what do you think?”

“And the shelves outside each stall for brushes and stuff—so convenient,” Marielle enthused. “It's a terrific barn.”

“The house,” Reese said. “I meant the house.”

“Great,” she answered him, then turned back to me. “You know, I wouldn't mind if you kept your horses here with us after we moved in,” she said shyly. “You could even give lessons, if you wanted.”

“Thank you.”

Reese put his arm around my shoulder. “I could talk to my landlord. You could probably have my apartment. And he loves dogs, so it would be okay for Grace.”

I stared at them. They were trying so hard. I didn't want to sell my house at all, but somehow selling it to Reese didn't seem as painful. And Reese did have a very nice apartment. Five large, comfortable rooms—I could just consider it a kind of swap.

Marielle touched my arm. “I was even thinking maybe you could find me a horse to ride again.”

“I don't know anything about gymkhana horses,” I said.

“I didn't mean for gymkhana.” Marielle's eyes were sparkling
with an idea. “I still have my old horse, if I wanted to do that. I was thinking I might learn some of that fancy-pants riding that you do. I mean, if that's okay with you.”

I looked at both of them as they fluctuated between states of happiness and love-struck wonder, thrilled at their future together. How could I possibly say no? I didn't want to move, I didn't want to leave my house. But quantum states are like that. You can only stay suspended in the ether for so long before you have to form a bond with something in order to continue existing. I couldn't be a one-dimensional particle for the rest of my life; I needed to find a home.

“I'll call my agent first thing in the morning,” I said to them. “And tell her the house is sold.”