Still Life with Elephant (6 page)

W
ELL
, I knew there was at least one elephant I had to face. Matt. I didn't want to, but I absolutely had to talk to him and see if there was some way I could keep the house.

I debated between calling his cell phone and calling his office, then thought better of doing the latter. I didn't want the sympathy or curiosity of Crystal, the dyslexic secretary that had come with the practice.

I put it off for almost a week. My lawyer left a few messages to ask how things were coming along. Working things out between us before the divorce would save money, he said. I didn't care about saving Matt money, but I did care about saving my barn. My lawyer also said something about licorice puppy cups, but I didn't have the patience to listen a second time to figure it out. A quick hit of the delete key solved the problem.

I waited a few more days, but I just couldn't make the call.

“Call him,” Alana advised. “It'll get Holly all worried that you're in touch. Right now, she has the upper hand. Give her a little
agita.
”

I paced away the whole afternoon until, in the early evening, I couldn't stand the thought of going through the torture all over again the next day, and finally called his cell phone.

“Neelie?” He sounded happy. I could have sworn he sounded happy. “I'm so glad to hear from you.”

“We have to talk,” I said. “About the house and stuff.”

He readily agreed and asked if I'd had dinner yet. I said no. Then he asked me to dinner.

We were going to meet at the diner. It was the only place that
had no special memories for us. And I decided to dress a bit for the occasion.

Form-fitting jeans, my tightest, since I knew Holly-Belly would be showing by now. And a nice little sweater with a scooped neckline that showed just a little cleavage, not enough to make the other patrons drop their forks, just enough to show Matt what he had given up. Matt used to love my hair, so I feathered it with a pair of cuticle scissors, because it had gotten a bit wild around the edges, then bent over and straightened up fast, which in theory was supposed to make it fall around my shoulders in carefree, voluminous waves. I dabbed on some makeup. Dark moss-green to bring out the color of my eyes. A light-rose blush across my cheekbones to heighten their angles. I stood back and looked in the mirror. The effect was what I wanted. Revenge dressing.

He noticed.

“God, you look incredible,” he whispered to me as the waitress led us to a booth in the back. We sat down on opposite sides of the table and I flashed him a sexy smile. “I missed you,” he added, then looked at me again with
that
look. “God,” he said again. “How I missed you.”

He ordered the hamburger platter, and I ordered the diner version of Caesar salad.

“The house,” I said, in my most businesslike manner. “We need to work out your portion of the house versus my portion of your practice. Plus you have to pay back the DVDs you cashed in.”

“CDs,” he said. “DVDs are music.”

“CDs used to be music,” I said. “Whatever is money, I want half of it back.”

He stared down at his side of fries. “I don't want to sell the house.”

I didn't understand. “You don't want to sell it to me? Or you don't want to sell the house, period?”

“Neither one,” he said. “I want you to keep the house.”

I leaned back in my chair and stared at him. He had lost weight, his love handles were gone, and he looked like he did when we got
married. Sexy hollows in his face, longish sandy hair. If I wasn't so broke and angry about being broke, I could have pushed aside the condiments and jumped his bones right on the table.

“What do you mean, keep the house?” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “My lawyer said that I would have to give up the house. Which means I have to give up the training business. So I decided I could saddle-break Conversano and sell him for money to live on until we work out all our assets.”

“I thought you loved that horse.” He poured ketchup on his burger. Predictable, I thought. I knew he was going to use a lot of ketchup, followed by a big splash of hot sauce. Then heavily salt his fries. He shook the hot sauce on his burger. Here comes the salt, I thought, but he ate his fries without it. I must have been staring at them with some surprise.

“No salt,” he said, grimacing. “My blood pressure is sky-high. Jeff said to cut out the salt.” Jeff is our family doctor and friend. I made a mental note to change doctors, too.

“I think Conversano is very talented,” I said. “He's got a trot to die for. With some schooling, he should bring in big money, which, I might remind you, I desperately need. He's got good breeding and he's still a stallion.”

“Don't sell him,” Matt said.

“I need the money,” I said. “You closed the joint account and left me with two hundred and twenty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents in my personal account, which, after the past month and tonight's meal, will be down to twenty-one dollars and—”

He held his hand up to silence me. “I'll give you some money,” he said, reaching into his pocket and putting his wallet on the table. “And I want you to keep the house. We can still keep both our names on the mortgage.” He pulled out some money and pressed it into my hand. I stuffed it into my handbag without looking at how much, because looking would have made me feel so…
mercenary
. Then he took a bite of his burger, and I waited patiently for him to finish chewing and explain. “We have plenty of time to worry about what we're going to do with the house.”

I was puzzled. “I don't even know if I can carry the whole thing myself. I might have to open my practice again anyway.”

“I'll keep up the payments and the bills.”

I smiled a little. “Should I have brought a tape recorder to get this down? Because it sounds awfully generous.” He was being the usual Matt, hard to fathom, hard to figure out. “Or is this because you don't want me to claim part of your practice? Which my lawyer says might even cancel my part of the house.”

He shook his head. “My practice is tied up in knots right now,” he said. “I bought some fancy equipment last year, modernized the whole operating suite. I have more equipment coming in.” Then he put down his burger and stared me right in the eye. “I wasn't trying to hurt you, Neelie. Honest. I thought—things got so crazy—” He fished around for the words. “I'll make it up to you. I swear. Don't give up the bus.”

“What bus?”

He furrowed his brow. “Bus?”

“You said ‘bus,'” I said.

“I said, Don't give up on us.” he said. “I messed up. I was a total jerk.” Then, before I could protest, he took my hand into his. I pulled it away.

“No,” I said. “It's like cheating on your future wife.”

“Holly and I—” He stopped and gave a weary sigh. “Never mind for now. Listen, did you throw out my passport?”

“Passport?” I mentally sifted through all the stuff that Alana and I had carried to the curb. “Where was it?”

“In the attic. In the blue suitcase. The front zipper compartment.”

I hadn't. Because we jointly owned the suitcases, and because I didn't think there'd be anything Matt-ish in them.

“Can I come by and get it?”

I fiddled around with the salad. It was really just romaine lettuce and some goopy dressing with a few croutons, trying hard to resemble the real thing. Maybe Matt's repentance was like the diner salad, also trying hard to resemble the real thing. Maybe there was
some fiendish plan behind Matt's offer to help with the house, and it wasn't as obvious as bad food—maybe he was trying hard to resemble caring and contrite, and then would drop another bomb, like how much Holly-Baby-Hatcher wanted to live in the house. After all, she had seen the bedroom we had once optimistically fixed up for a nursery. The gray ponies I had stenciled all around the walls, with pink and blue halters and sparkles. How could I know what his motives were?

“What do you need your passport for?” I asked. “Quickie divorce somewhere, followed by a long honeymoon?” I didn't want him to know I had spoken to Richie, because Matt's a very private person. If he thought I was talking to Richie about him, I knew he would shut down and I would totally lose any chance to talk things over with him. Or maybe I had already lost all my chances. Diner food is sometimes hard to figure out.

“Neelie, don't.” He finished his burger, then took a long drink of his diet soda. “Richie Chiger asked me to help him with something,” he said. “Out of the country. It'll pay me a lot of money if I go, so I'm going.”

“And you can't tell me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He leaned over the table, accidentally catching his shirt pocket in his ketchup. I dipped my napkin into my water glass and offered it to him. “Why not?” I asked again.

“Because,” he said, looking down at his pocket and swiping hard at it, like a little boy who had just gotten his party clothes dirty, “the trip could be very dangerous.”

 

He followed me back to the house in his car. As soon as he walked into the house, Grace went crazy, jumping in the air, yelping like a puppy, racing circles through the rooms. I followed him up to the attic, where he found his passport, and was still behind him when he stopped at our bedroom door.

“Nothing left?” he asked, peeking inside. “I'm going to need the rest of my jeans. And my heavy stable-boots.”

“No,” I answered. “It's all gone.”

“Oh,” he said sadly. “Oh.”

He said nothing else. And I felt terrible.

I followed him downstairs. He stood at the front door a long time, looking at me, then down at his shoes, then back at me. I knew he wanted to kiss me. I knew it. The truth was, I wanted to kiss him, too—wanted him to hold me and put everything back the way it was—but it was too late. There was, as Reese put it, an elephant in the room. This time it was Holly and the baby. Matt put his hand on the doorknob.

“Let's talk some more,” he said. “When I get back.”

“Back from where?”

“I can't discuss it yet,” he said. “I was kind of sworn to secrecy.”

“That shouldn't be a problem.” I opened the front door and smiled brightly. “You're so good with secrets.”

I
HAD
to know.

I had to know where Matt was going and why it was dangerous.

And the only person who could fill me in was Richie. So I broke my self-imposed vow of silence toward the entire rest of the free world and called him.

“Neelie! Great to hear from you! Matt did a terrific job on the bear. Claw's almost healed.”

“Great,” I said. “How are the new draft horses?”

“Matt wormed them, did their teeth, routine stuff.” He paused. “Didn't he tell you?”

“He's been so busy lately,” I said, “we practically never get around to talking. You know how it is.”

“I guess so,” he said, but it sounded more like a question. Then the conversation ground to a halt.

“Maybe I'll drop by this week,” I ventured.

“Would you mind bringing a few more syringes? Matt forgot to leave extras,” Richie replied. “Turns out, one of the lions needed antibiotics—”

“Sure,” I said.

Things were getting complicated. Syringes were not usually at the top of my pantry-supply list. I wanted Richie to think that Matt and I were still together, and now I had to come up with syringes. Lies always do that—pile up on one another like a game of pickup sticks, and you can't touch one without upsetting the whole heap. Of course I wasn't going to bring anything but a box of peanut-butter cookies for the horses. I would just pretend that I had forgotten the syringes.

 

The Wycliff-Pennington Animal Sanctuary sits on 750 acres off a secluded road, ten miles from us. It was founded twenty years ago by Elisabeth Wycliff, a recluse and an animal-lover, who rescued two badly treated lions from a roadside zoo. Over the years she added to her collection, never turning away an animal, paying for everything out of her own pocket. It was an enormous expense, but she persevered. With some publicity, she secured a sponsor, Thomas Princeton Pennington, who supported the sanctuary without a lot of fanfare. He had inherited a family fortune and increased it with legendary business acumen. He was always on television and in the papers, and I would read about him from time to time as he dated starlets or attended Greenpeace rallies or argued before Senate hearings about the environment.

Even with Thomas Pennington's full support, the sanctuary that bore his name wasn't a glamorous place. Just a farm, really, with a few large barns and lots of strong fencing, but the animals were fed and treated well. For the past nine years, I had frequently accompanied Matt when he was called to work there.

Now I drove up the long gravel driveway, past the big house where Mrs. Wycliff lived, then past the more modest house where Richie and Jackie lived, past the isolation barn for newly acquired animals, to Richie's office. I got out of my truck. Richie was loading a battered black farm truck with hay and plastic bins of raw chicken legs and bags of frozen bluefish. He waved hello as soon as he spotted me. I waved back.

“Peanut-butter cookies,” I said, holding up the boxes as I walked toward him. “Coffee and jelly donuts for us.” I smiled, hoping he had forgotten about the damn syringes.

“Good to see you,” he said, taking his coffee and donut. “Come with me, it's feeding time at the zoo.” He opened the passenger door, and I climbed in. We bumped down a gravel path, and I watched the farm roll past. It was peaceful; only an occasional loud grunt or call broke the silence. The only humans to be seen were a handful of
volunteers, who were now busy cleaning out the barns or filling water tubs.

Richie parked the truck in front of a large pen, and I followed him out of the cab, carefully trying to avoid the deep, slick mud. He threw several squares of hay over the fence, and a herd of imperious-looking camels walked over and began eating. We got back into the truck, and he drove up to a grassy enclosure where two old lions were batting a basketball back and forth. They were the happy recipients of the raw chicken legs. A grizzly bear sat contentedly in the middle of a pond next door and watched Richie fling two or three fish at him before he was motivated enough to wade over and check out his lunch. We drove on to still another fenced field, where we got out of the truck again so Richie could toss more hay over the fence.

“I'll call the girls,” he said, then whistled through his fingers. Two sorrel draft horses trotted up to us. They were carefully groomed, but their ribs and spines stood out in bas-relief, and their hip bones looked like coat hangers.

“Wow,” I said. “Thin.”

“Believe it or not, they've put on about two hundred pounds apiece,” Richie said. “You had to see them when they came in.”

Richie watched them snuffle the cookies from my hand for a few minutes. I was just starting to relax about his request when he brightened. “Oh, hey,” he said, “did you bring the syringes?”

“Oh no!” I gasped, doing an Oscar-worthy performance of embarrassed incompetence. “I
totally
forgot!” But I felt very guilty about the infected lion.

He nodded, not looking very surprised. “That's okay. I'll ask Jackie to stop by Matt's office. I can boil the ones I have until she picks up new ones.”

“I'm really sorry,” I said, relieved he was able to come up with a solution, but not able to look him in the eye. I fed a few more cookies to the horses, wondering how to bring up the subject of Matt's traveling off to somewhere dangerous without sounding like I was prying. As Matt's wife, I really shouldn't have had to ask where he was going.

Richie watched me quietly. The horses finished the box of cookies. I gave them a final pat.

“So what's going on, Neelie?” Richie asked. “Matt looks like hell, and, frankly, so do you. He hasn't said anything, but I can tell something's very wrong.”

“Maybe I need some time at a sanctuary,” I joked. “You got any room here?” The two horses were pushing each other out of the way to beg for more cookies.

“You didn't come to feed the horses,” Richie said.

I looked down at the mud oozing over my shoes. “No.”

“So—what's the deal?”

I stared out at the fields. Seven hundred and fifty acres of generosity Of kindness. They even had a hippo somewhere back there, and bison, and a big monkey house with an outdoor pen where rescued lab chimps lived in comfort.

“Come on,” Richie said. “Spill.”

“I'll tell you a secret if you tell me a secret,” I finally said.

“Deal,” said Richie.

I took a deep breath. “Matt and I are divorcing.”

“Shit,” said Richie. “Jackie and I kind of suspected as much. But why? I thought you two guys really had a good thing.”

“Dr. Holly-Slutkins is having Matt's baby.”

His head snapped back with surprise. “Double shit!” he exclaimed. “I didn't know
that.
”

“Not one of his proudest moments,” I said. “Now it's your turn. Why does Matt need a passport?”

Richie looked around quickly, as though the draft-horse girls were planning to spy on us. He didn't answer for a moment, then he spoke, his voice both hushed and straining with excitement. “You can't tell anyone.” I shook my head a definite no.

“We have to keep it confidential because—you know—first of all, it's very, very dangerous, and, secondly, there could be diplomatic problems if it leaks out to the press.”

“Diplomatic? Like international?”

“Like an international incident if it doesn't go off.”

“I promise.”

He continued. “Okay, then.” He stopped, started again. “Okay. We're going to Zimbabwe. We're…we
have
to…steal an elephant.”

I stared at him, speechless, then giggled a little with embarrassment. “You know, I have this hearing thing,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of it. “So—I thought you said ‘steal an elephant.'”

He laughed, too. Then he said, “I did.”

I had to think about that for a minute. He had said “steal an elephant.” I looked him in the eye and said, “Really?”

“Really.”

And I thought about Matt and how much I loved him and wanted to be with him, and that maybe I should fight for him, danger or not, and then I said, “I'm in.”