Still Life with Elephant (26 page)

F
ROM THE
distance, a great rumbling rose through the air and rolled toward us. The sound of elephants. My stomach lurched with excitement, and I held my breath and pressed my hand to my mouth and waited. A long line of squealing, trumpeting baby ellies, marching single-file, little trunks grasping the tails in front, ears flapping, were trammeling toward us. A long line of gray, dusty little bodies, of little heads nodding in rhythm with their thumping steps, dozens of them, with all the crazy grace and lumpy good humor they could muster, marching through great puffs of dust that floated above them, giving the impression that they were stepping out of a dream. Some wore blankets—their small bodies draped in pink and green and yellow cloths to protect them from the heat and sun. Since they had no mother to stand under, a blanket would have to do. Suddenly we were surrounded by elephants. All sizes. Some tiny and fragile, and anxiously pressing close to their keepers, nervous about us. Some half grown. They were friendly, examining our faces, going into our pockets, opening our hands, touching our bodies with their trunks, sniffing, rubbing, grasping, grunting with curiosity. Pushing against me. Batting their caramel-brown eyes and thick black eyelashes, trumpeting and squealing and sighing.

“Oh!” I gasped. My heart was full. My heart was breaking. These were all orphans. Babies left by a storm of ivory poaching, of culling, of their mothers' getting caught in wire snares and dying slowly and horribly, victims of human greed and callousness. Babies left behind, ruptured from their family, left to die. Babies rescued in the barest nick of time. But because of this place, they would live. They would live.

Satisfied they had examined us thoroughly, they picked up a trot, urged and guided by their keepers, to move along, not to push, to stay in line, to behave themselves. Like rambunctious grade-school kids at recess, they were herded, one by one, the larger ones into roomy wooden stockade pens to spend their night, two or three together, and the very young and fragile, the newly rescued infants, each put into their individual huts, just small enough for them and one keeper, to get ready for bed. Until they were much older, they would have a keeper always by their side, to feed them and to sleep with them, to be their family.

I would have stayed there forever, watching them. I could have. I felt nothing of the heat, of the dust. I saw nothing but elephants. Tom pulled on my elbow. The red sun was sinking into a cerulean sky, its aching brightness relenting into night.

“Let's go,” he said. “It's time for them to sleep. And I could use some sleep myself.”

 

We spent the night in a small hut on the edge of the sanctuary. We lay in bed together, on a single mattress, under a slow, ineffective ceiling fan that barely moved the thick air. Our bodies clung together from the humidity, slick with wetness, sharing secret intimacies, bare skin to bare skin. Tom ran his fingers through my hair, letting the strands fall back against the pillow.

“Are you happy?” he asked me.

“Oh yes,” I said, and pulled him close and kissed him, losing myself in his scent and his warmth and the feel of his arms wrapping around me. We made love, his body melting into mine, the heat of the air now no match for his touch.

We fell apart and held hands.

“I'm glad I can make you happy,” he said. Then he paused, turning to face me. “I have, haven't I?”

“Yes.” I smiled back at him. “I have never felt this way.”

His eyes searched my face. “I want you to know that I love you,” he said simply.

I caught my breath. A thousand things raced through my mind. I had gotten a glimpse of what I wanted in life. I had dug into the depths of my own heart and knew where I wanted to be, where the pieces of the puzzle lay for me; I just had to pick them up and put them into place.

“Oh, Tom,” I said, putting my hand on his arm.

His face fell. “What's wrong?” he said. He pulled his arm away from me and sat up, clearly frustrated.

I sat up, too. “I think I want to stay here,” I said.

“To do what?” he asked. He reached over and turned on the battery-operated lamp. His hair was tousled; his eyes squinted against the light. He looked so handsome that I ached to pull him close again. Yet I could almost feel little gray trunks sniffing again at my face, pulling at my pockets. I belonged with them.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe I could be a keeper?”

Tom laughed. “You have to commit yourself to living with them for ten or twelve years,” he said. “You can't do it on a whim and then leave them. You have to be their family. Do you think you could sleep here for ten years?”

“No,” I said, feeling stupid.

“But I can offer you something else,” he said, his voice quiet. He turned my face to him, gently cupping it with his hands, and looked deep into my eyes.

“What?” I asked.

He grew solemn. “Isn't there anything you want from me, Neelie?” he whispered. “I can give you anything.”

I was afraid to answer him. I loved him, I loved him so much, but I couldn't get the words out. He was part of my puzzle. He was the main piece, he fit under my heart, and I couldn't tell him, because I was afraid that fitting him in would not leave room for the other pieces.

““Don't you want to marry me?” he asked softly. “I asked you when we were in Bretagne, but you refused me.”

“You asked me to share,” I said. “You never said you loved me.”

“Ah!” He thought about that. “You're right. I was trying to be so
careful with you. You withdraw so easily.” He pushed my shoulders down gently on the mattress. “Listen to me,” he said, lying down again, next to me, and turning on his side to face me. “I love you. I love you. I can't picture my life without you. I am asking you to marry me.”

“Tom,” I said.

“But you have to know this,” he continued, a shadow crossing his face. “I can give you anything except children. I don't want children at this stage in my life. You understand? I don't want children.”

Children. A daughter. If I married him, they would never be mine. I studied the length of his arm for a moment, tracing the hair with the tip of my finger. There was a man waiting for me in New York who could give me at least that. An ellie trumpeted outside.

“Do you mind so much?” he asked.

I reached over and stroked his face, then dropped my arm back to my side. Why did the universe feel so compelled to give and take away with the same hand? I tried to throw the gears in my mind into forward, to picture myself in the future, without children. Every year that I spent with Tom, my clock would tick on, every minute, every day, ticking away the chance of a child, until it was too late. I could hear Tom next to me, his breath catching, then letting go in a soft puff. I loved him. We fit, I knew that. I would love him for the rest of my life. An ellie trumpeted again.

“I'm sorry,” he said very softly. I could barely hear him. “I have a son—but it was a different stage in my life then. I just wouldn't make a good father now.” He lay back against his pillow.

It was a crossroads, I thought. I was standing at a crossroads, with arrows pointing in two different directions at the same time, like in
The Wizard of Oz
. Here and there. Babies and ellies. I laid myself down and rolled close to him. He put his arms around me.

“You don't have to make a decision right now,” he said past my ear, into the dark.

“Tom,” I said softly. “Oh, Tom, I love you so much. I don't know what to do.”

T
OM MADE
a second proposal over breakfast the next morning. Someone had brought us a tray with hot coffee and fried sweet dough, and fruit, and we were washing up and dressing and eating all at the same time.

“How would you like to help me set up the new sanctuary?” Tom suddenly asked me. “You'll be working with Grisha, maybe Maryse and Gérard, maybe a few others from my organizations.”

I gasped. “Do you mean it?”

He nodded and took a great gulp of coffee. “Of course I do,” he said. “But it'll mean lots of travel and very hard work. That's why I haven't mentioned it before. You see the conditions. I didn't know if it was something—”

“Yes!” I interrupted him.

“You'll be working with my charities. We'll be sending food and stealing eleph—”

“Yes!” I fairly shouted. “Yes! Yes!”

He pulled me close to him. I pulled away.

“I can do it,” I said earnestly, looking up into his face. “I don't care how hard it is.”

“Have I finally made you happy?” he said, grinning.

“Yes,” I said. “I have everything I want.”

 

We bade good-bye to Mrs. Pontwynne, and I stood by the nursery with her and Tom to watch dozens of ellies, their breakfasts finished, their little trunks wrapped around little tails, marching along, squealing and grunting excitedly, ready for another day of play.

Mrs. Pontwynne hugged us both and wished us Godspeed. We got back into the Rover with Grisha and the security men and started our journey once again.

Tom was looking for large parcels of land that would be suitable for a new sanctuary, and now we made our way east toward the Rift Valley, Grisha driving, the four Maasai tribesmen sitting, one in each corner of the Rover, holding rifles, like the corners on a four-poster bed.

We followed the road east from Masai Mara, then north along the Great Rift on the “Italian Highway,” locally nicknamed for the Italian POWs who built it during World War II. It obviously hadn't seen much repair since. We continued north for three or four hours, through the valley, getting jolted along red dirt roads, bouncing in and out of craters, swerving around boulders that had fallen on the wayside. The valley itself was filled with grasses just turning green from the rains, hazes of pink wildflowers and yellow buttercups rimmed the sides, contrasting sharply with clusters of small tin shacks. To the west was a ridge of brown-red mountains. As we drove along the crest, the huge, majestic sweep of the valley dipped below us, enormous and breathtaking. The Rift cuts across the whole of Kenya, through Africa from Syria to Mozambique, and one very poor road more or less follows it. Our Rover scrabbled up steep ascents, bounced along precipitous plateaux, then hurtled again into the wide valley below.

As we drew toward Lake Turkana, the land became desolate, arid, and far too inhospitable for Tom's purposes. Tom stood on the barren rock-dry soil and shook his head. Though the parcel he had been directed to was very large and relatively inexpensive, it wasn't suitable at all. We would make camp that night and turn around first thing in the morning for the long drive back.

“I didn't want to go south again,” Tom said, as I helped him set up the tent for sleeping, “because it makes it hard to get the elephants there, but we may have to consider settling somewhere near Mount Kenya or Kilimanjaro. Maybe even Tanzania.” He stopped
driving a stake into the ground to look at me. “Are you up for it? It means going back to Nairobi for supplies and then another week or two of driving.”

“I need to go home first and make some…arrangements,” I said. I couldn't be away so long. There were Grace and Alley Cat, being babysat by my mother and no doubt being fed huge amounts of steak by my father. And Conversano to sell. And I had to find another instructor for my riding students.

“Do you mean make decisions?” Tom asked me.

“I already made some,” I said.

 

It was a beautiful drive down through the Great Rift the next morning. Mist hung along the rocks; the green vegetation looked smoky; the small river that ran alongside the road gave the impression that it ended in a cloud. The Rover jounced and jolted us nearly senseless; Grisha had to stop several times so that rocks could be cleared away from our path, or the wheels dug out of deep ruts that defeated them every few miles. After two days of hard driving, we were back in Nairobi, driving through the bustling, scrambling city, back to the airport.

“I'll leave you in New York,” Tom said as we boarded his plane. “I have some business to take care of in London, and then I will be returning. I can bring you back here with me.” Then he added meaningfully, “Only if it's what you want.”

I stood in the doorway of the jet, just before the doors were shut, to take a long look at Africa, to take a lingering breath. In the distance were mist and grasses and drought and heartbreak and challenges. In the distance were baby ellies that would need me. But I had to leave. For now.

“
Asante
,” I said softly. “
Asante
.”

T
HE PROBLEM
with yellow brick roads is that they not only take you forward to Oz, they can take you backward, to where you have just been. There are no signposts. Nothing to tell you that if you go one way or the other you are making a big mistake. You just have to make your decision and then follow the road to your destiny. I had Matt standing on one side of the road, asking me to resume a life with him that had a house and children, and Tom standing on the other side, asking me to give that all up for dust and heartbreak and big gray animals.

I felt very sorry for Matt and his new baby. It was going to be very difficult for him to raise a daughter alone and run a busy practice. Not that single moms haven't been doing it for years, but it's always a heroic struggle. I realized that, though I cared about him, I had stopped loving him. There are outer bounds to love; he had stretched ours beyond its limitations. The baby, Holly, the vet practice—this was Matt's life, and I didn't want to share it. I didn't want to raise his child. Perhaps someday he would find a wonderful woman; I hoped so, and hoped that they would make promises to each other, and start a home together, and that he would be happy. I wished that for him. I would be happy for him.

And there was Tom. I was so very much in love with him, but I hadn't wanted to come to him needy and broken. I wanted to repair myself. Make myself strong and whole, come to him with my heart filled with peace, my roadmaps in order. My ducks in a row.

Tom had offered me a great position in his rescue operation, and I accepted it. I would be able to help run a big organization and feed people and rescue animals. That much was settled. As for the
marriage part, it would come. I didn't want it right away, and I think Tom understood that. He promised to be patient with me, and I loved him for that, too.

In the meantime, I would be making enough money to support my own home. It was important to me that I have something of wood and brick to call my own. A door to open, walls to touch, a piece of land to stand on. It had to belong to me and me alone. I made a mental note to call Mrs. Hammock, former loving owner of Tony the Pony, and find out if her house and barn were still for sale. I would buy the property, and no matter what happened between Tom and me, it would always be there.

We had gotten back from Kenya early in the morning, and I had declined Tom's offer of a ride home. I needed to think and sort it all out, and be alone for a while.

 

I will have all the elephants I want, I thought, driving back from the airport to my apartment. My life will be filled with ellies. I will never stop riding, of course. Even now, holding the steering wheel, I could still feel the reins in my hands; the motion of a horse was still part of my body. The way I made small adjustments to the curve of the road as I passed a slow car in front of me, a little tweak to the left, an acceleration, a small swerve back to the right—the feel was always there, so vivid that I actually caught myself pressing my calf muscles against the seat to keep the car moving forward. The rest of the traffic raced past me like a wolf pack, and I pushed the car forward, to ride through it.

A car behind me honked, and I found myself stretching my shoulders upright in response. I sat deeply in the saddle, waiting for my car to spook at the sudden blast of sound. Then I caught myself and laughed out loud.

What Matt had offered me wasn't enough. Maybe it had never been enough, and maybe he knew it, and that's why he reached out when Holly called to him. Maybe I had always been restless and in pieces. An incomplete puzzle. Maybe he sensed that, too.

And I was hungry to rescue. This is why I rescue, I thought. And because there would always be elephants waiting for me, needing to be rescued.

A lot of elephants.

I wouldn't have to listen to words. I knew I would never be good with words, but that was all right. I was putting the pieces back together, and I knew where I was going and where I had to be and who would be by my side.

In the end, in the end, the call was very clear.