Still Life with Elephant (7 page)

“Z
IMBABWE?” ALANA
repeated, her voice rising with incredulity. “Are you sure you didn't hear Richie say you're in a bad way? Because you are.”

Of course the first thing I had done when I got home was call Alana and tell her all about it.

“I'm positive,” I said. “They're rescuing an elephant from Zimbabwe. And I volunteered to help.”

“You have to admit, it's not your everyday activity,” she said, “like could you please get my dry cleaning, and, oh, it just might be a little out of your way, but could you also pick up an elephant from Zimbabwe?”

“Well, what do I do now?” I asked her frantically. “There's a meeting Friday night for everyone. Richie's counting on me to come.”

Alana had no sympathy. “You've been hoist with your own petard,” she said. “And, yes, you heard me right.”

“What happens if Matt's there?” I asked. “And what if he brings Holly-Folly?”

“Of course Matt's going to be there,” she said. “So withdraw your offer to go. You have no business rescuing elephants anyway. Besides, I think you're just doing it to stay in Matt's life. And if you want to do that, then just spare yourself more
agita
and find a way to work things out with him in your own country.” She paused. “Are you listening?”

“No.”

“I didn't think so. So—go get yourself an elephant.”

 

Of course Alana's suggestion was sensible. I should just tell Matt I still loved him, and I would work on forgiveness, and in the meantime, he could come back to me. I didn't have to go to Zimbabwe to do that.

Except I could never bring myself to tell him that I forgave him and wanted him back. It was the equivalent of saying it was okay to cheat on me.

And that would never be okay. Never.

 

“I've been hoist with my own petard,” I said to Isis while asking her to halt in the riding ring. “And I did it to myself, and I don't even know what a petard is.”

She flicked an ear back and forth and stood motionless at the halt. I patted her neck and praised her lavishly, and then asked her to move forward into an energetic trot.

“I have a meeting Friday night to learn how to rescue an elephant,” I said as we trotted around the ring. “I don't know anything about elephants.” Then I asked her to slow her trot into half-steps, half the length of her normal trot stride. “What happens if Matt doesn't show up?” Isis slowed her trot, slow, slow, until she gave me one prancelike step, which is exactly what I wanted. I praised her again, and asked her to trot a few more times before another half-step. It was just the beginnings of a piaffe, this half-step, half-prance that she offered me, and I dismounted right away and fed her handfuls of sugar cubes, marveling at how she was beginning to understand.

“Richie says they're leaving for Africa in a week,” I told her as I groomed her in her stall. “I have enough problems understanding my own language. What am I going to do in a foreign country?”

Isis had no answer for me, and I finally had to swear her to secrecy like I did with Alana.

 

The meeting was at seven o'clock in Mrs. Wycliff 's living room. I came late, deciding that I could slip out the door if I spotted Matt with Holly-Breeder. He wasn't there when I arrived, but I still took a chair near the door.

The living room was spacious but plain. Two sofas were covered with afghan throws and several cats of various colors, there was a practical-looking Berber rug on the floor, and a carved mahogany table by the bay window with violets in little ceramic elephant planters.

In all the years I had accompanied Matt to the sanctuary, this was only the fourth or fifth time I had seen Mrs. Wycliff, and she hadn't changed one bit. She still looked like she was in her mid-seventies, still wore no makeup, still kept her gray hair pulled back in a hastily made bun, and, as far as I could determine, was still dressed in the same jeans and white Irish knit sweater that she was wearing the day I first met her. She poured us all tea and passed around lumpy homemade cupcakes, which told me she was more interested in spending money on her animals than in lavishly entertaining. Richie and Jackie were already sitting in the two upholstered chairs by the window. They gave me sympathetic smiles when they saw me walk in. I did not want sympathetic, because the second part of that word is “pathetic,” but I smiled back anyway before glancing discreetly around. There were about six other people seated, and I didn't know any of them.

I sat in a chair at the edge of the room and waited for Matt. It was getting late, and I was trying not to jump every time I thought I heard something near the door. Several times it turned out to be Mrs. Wycliff's two apparently weak-bladdered black Labs that had to be let out, then in, then out, only to come back in. Conversation buzzed all around me—everyone seemed to know each other—and I overheard words like “poaching” and “hostile environment” and “dangerous.” I just sipped my tea and let the voices jumble on. Richie's cell phone rang and he jumped, checking his watch, before taking the call in another room.

“That was Tom,” he announced, coming back. “He should be here in an hour. He got stuck in some traffic coming up from the city.”

Thomas Princeton Pennington. The man with the money.

Richie's phone rang again. He answered it, and I saw him glance quickly in my direction. I knew this time it was Matt.

Richie made his second announcement. “Well, Dr. Sterling—the vet who will be helping us—just called. He can't make it tonight. He's doing an emergency surgery.”

Oh, those late-night emergency surgeries, I thought, but kept my face parked in neutral, wondering if it would look bad for me to get up and leave now. Too obvious, I realized, and stayed put and studied my cupcake.

It was vanilla-frosted, and I chastised myself for not taking a chocolate one. Atop the frosting was a blue sugar-wafer elephant, and I spent some time sucking its head off, followed by each individual foot. One hour and two more cupcakes later, both chocolate, Thomas Princeton Pennington arrived.

He wasn't what I expected at all. I expected a fifty-two-year-old polished tycoon wearing a custom-made suit and crisp shirt and custom-designed tie, like the images I had seen in the media, but Thomas Pennington was dressed in jeans and an old sweater and heavy construction boots. He looked to be just a little taller than me, with longish, neatly trimmed white hair, and an open, intelligent face saved from being preternaturally handsome by a jagged scar down one cheek. His presence was mesmerizing, the way he took instant command of the room, radiating energy, charging the air around him like an electron accelerator. I couldn't take my eyes off him.
Don't stare,
I scolded myself, but I couldn't help it. He was that compelling.
He's used to being gawked at,
I defended myself, but did try to be more discreet, forcing myself into occasional glances at the half-eaten cupcake on my napkin, as if it provided worthy competition for my attention.

Richie jumped up to shake his hand. Mrs. Wycliff bustled over to give him a quick peck on his cheek and hand him a mug of tea,
which he took, and a cupcake, which he turned down and I instantly coveted. Richie introduced him to us simply as Tom. He greeted us with a quick smile, then strode across the room and, in one motion, grabbed a folding chair, gracefully swinging it around so it faced backward, and sat down. He braced his arms across the back of it and leaned into the room, a contained volcano, anxious to get started, anxious not to waste a minute, ready to erupt with commands and action. Our eyes caught for a moment, and I felt my heart stutter and the color rise in my cheeks. Then he shifted his gaze toward the rest of the group.

“We leave for Zimbabwe in exactly one week,” he said in an accent that was a fusion of American and European. “Richie will hand out a list of shots that you need. We will be splitting into teams. One team will come with me northwest to Makuti, and one will work here to ready things for when we get back.” He glanced around. “Where's the vet?”

“In surgery,” said Richie. “But his wife can give him all the information.” He pointed me out. Thomas Pennington looked at me again. I didn't want to meet his eyes this time. I didn't want to see the shutting-down look that men get when they find out you are married, even if I was doing this whole thing to get Matt back and shouldn't have cared.

“He needs to come and work with our vet in Africa, and learn everything he can. Elephants can be tricky to treat,” he said. I looked up at him and nodded. He gave me a quick smile and then addressed the rest of the room. “Okay, first I have to start off with a few warnings about the dangers involved.”

When Richie mentioned “dangerous” to me, I assumed that the danger would come from getting squashed by an excited elephant, and that I would just stay vigilant and jump out of its way, should things come to that. Like a horse, I figured. If you stand at a horse's shoulder, you are pretty much out of range of flying hooves and in a good position to pivot away from spooks or rears. I would just make sure I stood to the side of the elephant. It seemed intuitively simple.
Or I would just run very fast. I was on a sugar high now and was actually picturing myself outrunning a rampaging elephant.

But Thomas Pennington went on to list dangers I hadn't even heard of. Trypanosomiasis, rickettsial infection, dengue fever, filaria-sis, not to mention a very hostile political climate, with renegade soldiers running loose, and armed poachers roaming the bush. Then he enumerated the vaccines we needed so that we wouldn't contract additional diseases. Typhoid, hepatitis, polio booster. Getting squashed under an elephant was never mentioned.

I tried to give Richie my best “you've got to be kidding” look by raising my eyebrows up and down a few times, but he was busy nodding in agreement with Thomas Pennington's suicide list.

Then Thomas reached over, swooped up his briefcase, and opened it. “Everything's been printed out, so make sure you take a packet of information back with you,” he said, pulling out a ream of paper. “Destroy it when you are through with it. I guess we can go right into the interviews.”

I looked at Richie again and now tried to signal my panic by opening my eyes very, very wide. He came over to me. “Don't worry,” he whispered. “Let me do the talking.”

I wondered how Thomas Princeton Pennington, obviously no fool, was going to interview me if Richie planned to do the talking, but it looked like it could be a win-win situation. If I didn't pass, I could get out of my promise to Richie without losing face or my health. If I passed, I would be with Matt.

One by one, Thomas Pennington summoned each person in the room to sit next to him and answer some questions. He spoke to them all in a quiet voice. Some left smiling, some not. And then it was my turn.

Richie took me by the arm and introduced me. “Tom,” he said, “Neelie Sterling here is trained to handle all sorts of animals.”

“Mostly horses,” I mumbled shyly.

Thomas Pennington studied me carefully. Dark gray-green eyes met mine, and I felt a stir, an exchange of some sort, a recognition
of something happening between us.
He probably has this effect on every woman he meets,
I thought.

“Ever work with elephants?” he asked, sounding amused at my awkwardness. “Because the trainer I was planning to use can't get away.”

“Neelie's the best animal-trainer around here,” Richie said.

“Well, mostly horses,” I mumbled again, suddenly anxious that he would find me lacking and trying to spare myself the embarrassment of rejection. Horses are not elephants.

“She's a quick study and has all the right instincts,” Richie added. “Her husband is the vet, and she's used to assisting him. You won't get better. I can vouch for her skills.”

“Mostly hor—” I started, but Richie pinched me. Thomas Pennington nodded. “Okay,” he said. “It sounds like you'll be the one working with the elephant when we get her back here. I trust Richie's judgment. See you next Friday. Give Richie your name tonight, as it legally appears on your passport, so I can arrange for plane tickets. I need to do that right away. Every day we waste is a day we could lose her. I'll put you on my payroll starting from the time you leave New York.”

I was in. In for what, remained to be seen.

Thomas Pennington took a few more questions from some of the group and then apologized that his driver was waiting, and left. The room deflated like an old balloon when the door shut behind him. I took another cupcake. The meeting was over.

I turned to Richie, as people filed out the door. “I don't know anything about elephants,” I said.

“You're a quick study,” he replied. “So start studying. I want you to go. I love elephants more than anything, and I want this elephant. Tom's always promised me an elephant to care for.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but why is it so important to you that I go?”

He gave me a quick hug. “You and Matt are really good friends,” he said, “and Jackie and I love you both. So I figure you'll be helping us save an elephant, I'll be helping you save your marriage.”

C
HAOS WAS
not only a theory, it was the current definition of my life. I still had Delaney to ride, and Isis to retrain, lessons to give my eight students, the daily running of my barn, clothes to pack, elephants to study, Matt to cry over late at night, and a week to get it all done.

The next two people I swore to secrecy were my mother and Reese. They were both appalled. No, Reese was appalled, my mother was just horrified. Again. But I needed my mother for moral support and maternal advice, and my brother to take care of the horses while I was gone.

“Running away from your problems is not the way to solve them,” my mother lectured me. We were in her kitchen again, and she had decided to make several batches of sticky buns for me to take on the plane. You know how well sticky buns travel.

“I'm actually running away
with
my problems,” I said. “Matt will be going, too.”

“And his girlfriend?” my mother pursued. “Is she—”

“Don't call her his girlfriend,” I interrupted her.

“What, then?” my mother asked, pouring lots of syrup and pecans into the pan, the way I like it. “Fiancée? Intended?”

“‘Whore' Whore' works for me,” I replied.

“So you are going on this crazy trip just to be the other woman?” My mother stopped her work to look up.

“I'm Matt's wife,” I said. “I can't be the other woman. I'm the original woman.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, popping the pans in the oven. “Penguins are not as sweet as you think.”

“You are so wrong,” I disagreed. Revenge can be very sweet.

 

After Reese got over his initial dismay at the dangers involved, he actually approved of my trip to Africa, even volunteering to house-sit for me, which relieved me of the burden of begging him to. He brought a bag of Liver YumYums to ingratiate himself to Grace, and fed them to her handful by handful until she forgave him on the spot. We were sitting in my kitchen and drinking coffee one afternoon.

“She can't live on snacks, you know,” I commented as he opened a second bag. “Make sure she gets dog food, too.”

“The lady will get what she desires,” he said. “So I don't wind up with holes in my ankles. When exactly do you leave?”

“In four days,” I replied.

“Africa or bust!” he cheered while slipping more Liver YumYums between Grace's delicate lips. “Bag a big one for me.”

He's the brother that hunts.

“We're not going to shoot it,” I reminded him. “We're bringing it back alive.”

“Even better,” he said. “We can shoot it in the comfort of our own backyard.”

I made a face at him, and we finished our coffee and the banana muffins my mother had sent over with him.

“Let me show you how I run the barn,” I said, opening the back door.

“I like Matt,” he said to me encouragingly as we walked to the barn together. “I think it's great that you're willing to fight for him. Don't let him slip through your fingers.”

“He didn't slip through my fingers,” I said. “He sneaked through. And I'm going more because I'm really interested in rescuing an elephant from terrible circumstances.”

“Right,” he said, looking sideways at me. “Look, Neelie, when I
said there was an elephant in the room I didn't mean it literally, that you should go get one.”

“It's too late, Reese,” I said. “I already made the arrangements.”

 

I showed him what the horses ate and how to clean stalls, and how to bring all the horses out to their paddocks without killing either them or himself. He used to ride as a kid, so he wasn't too intimidated.

“I'll just get up early and feed them, and turn them out, and then clean stalls when I get home from teaching,” he said. “Piece of cake.”

I led out the first piece. Delaney. He raced out of his stall, nearly knocking me and Reese over. I yelled and backed him up into his stall again, and asked for a rerun. This time he came out with manners.

“Okay,” said Reese. “I get the routine. Lead 'em out, scream, slap 'em on the chest with the lead line, scream, jump out of the way, scream some more, and put 'em in their paddocks. If you can do it, I can do it. Still a piece of cake.”

I love sibling rivalry.

 

I called my students and told them that I would be away for a week or two and that their riding lessons were going to be put on the back burner for just a bit. I swore them to secrecy.

I called the woman who owned Isis and told her how wonderfully her horse was doing, and how I didn't want to rush things, and that, by the way, I was leaving for Africa for a while, but when I came back, she would be the first person to actually see her horse halt, which seemed to mollify her. It's not every day you can have a special, private showcasing of your horse standing still.

Then I called Delaney's owner.

“But you promised to have my horse fixed in a month,” she said.

“Your horse is a nut job,” I said. “I said I would
try
and fix him.
And if I can't do it, nobody can, but you're welcome to take him somewhere else.”

She didn't miss a beat. “I'll leave him with you.”

“Fine,” I said, and swore her to secrecy, too.

 

I had to give Richie all my information right away, so that Thomas Pennington could get our tickets. I read the packet of information that Thomas Pennington had given me. I had checked and rechecked my passport, and had gotten cholera and typhoid shots and a polio booster, all of which gave me a fever and a bad headache and made my muscles ache for three days. The trip was becoming more scarily real, I thought, as I swallowed another handful of Tylenol. And if the shots were this bad, how awful was I going to feel after I got trampled by an elephant?

 

I was packing my jeans and sweaters and pairing off my socks when the phone rang. I grabbed it.

“I know what you're trying to do.” It was Holly-Hotcrotch. Apparently, Matt was doing some swearing to secrecy himself. I caught my breath and sat down on my bed.

“Your plan won't work,” she announced.

“Plan?”

“You think if you run off to Africa with Matt he'll fall in love with you again.” She paused for effect, which, I had to admit, was pretty effective. “It's over. He's not in love with you anymore.”

“He's still my husband,” I said. Hardly a snappy remark, but my head was spinning.

“They say if something is truly meant to be yours it comes back when you set it free,” she said, now coolly morphing into Holly-Hallmark. “So I guess we can leave that up to Matt.”

“For your information,” I said acidly, “he told me he
does
want to come back.”

“Only until the divorce,” she replied. “He's just trying to spay your feather brain.”

I could barely listen. What was she saying? What was she saying? I think she said Matt was sparing me further pain, but it really didn't matter. All I could think of was that we used to be friends, and she had gone behind my back and pushed the war button.

“We'll just see how things go,” I managed to choke out, but my feather brain did catch her last words.

“Oh,” she said, very clearly, “did Matt tell you the baby is kicking now?”

 

Alana was furious. “What a bitch,” she said. “I think she wants to keep you here because she's obviously insecure about Matt's feelings for her.”

“Should I go?”

“Oh, Neelie, it's so dangerous there. Don't you watch CNN?”

“Should I
go
?”

“What are you trying to prove?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” I replied. “Maybe make him love me again? Or maybe just be with him without distractions, so I'll know what to do about us?”

“I would call an elephant a major distraction,” Alana said.

“Yes,” I agreed, “but it's not a
romantic
distraction. I picture the two of us sitting around a campfire, and baring our souls and drinking champagne and singing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and finally snuggling together under a leopard-print bedspread in the hotel room.”

“Is that before or after you bag the elephant?”

“After. When we're celebrating.”

She thought it over for a long time. “Bring sunscreen,” she said. “I would say about six hundred SPF.”

 

By the end of the week, I had read so much about elephants I had a nightmare that an elephant was sitting on my chest and I was suffocating, and I woke up panicking and gasping for air. Alana said it was just a manifestation of my anxiety and I should try her lucid-dreaming technique. Manipulate the situation, she said. Tell yourself it's all a dream and make it go the way you desire. In my next dream I was drinking buddies with Jumbo and Babar. Saggy Baggy couldn't make it.

 

The morning of departure, Matt knocked at my front door. Richie, who was driving the three of us to the airport, waited in the car. As soon as I saw Matt through the storm door, my fury rose. He looked so unconcerned, an expectant smile on his face. He didn't look apologetic and repentant that Holly had upset me.

I opened the door in high dudgeon. “How tacky can you get to have your…girlfriend call me,” I yelled angrily. “
Again!
” He said nothing, and just picked up my suitcase, which was near the door. I snatched it away from him, juggling it with the big bag of jelly donuts and sticky buns I had packed for the trip.

“I can carry my own suitcase!” I screamed. “You tell her not to call me! Ever! Tell her I do not wish to listen to her bullshit! How dare she actually think she can insult me on my own phone!”

“Holly isn't like that,” he said. “I rather doubt she said anything to hurt you. She's not what you think. You probably don't know that she—”

“Prays for world peace every night?” I finished for him. “Oh, dang, did I miss her canonization?”

“Neelie.” His shoulders sagged. “You probably just misunderstood what she meant. I know she would nev—”

I jerked up to my full height. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“I just think…” He searched for the right words. “Maybe she said something out of concern for your safety, and—and, well, we all know how you are.”

“We all know what? That I'm so stupid you can screw around
and get away with it, and take all our savings, and then you and your—your—lover can have a good laugh at my expense? Well, I—”

“Now, now, kids.” Richie was behind Matt. He took my suitcase from me and guided Matt firmly by the arm, down the porch steps to the car. “This is not the time,” he said. “You guys can straighten everything out when we all get back home.”

 

Matt and Richie sat in the front seat. I sat in the back, angrily eating my donuts. When we had to talk, Matt spoke to Richie, who spoke to me. I answered Richie, who passed it along to Matt. It was a bit circuitous but certainly kept the conversation flowing.

“Wow, next stop, I guess we'll be in Zimbabwe,” I said to Richie as we neared the airport.

Richie glanced quickly at me in the back seat. “Didn't Matt tell you our itinerary?”

“She didn't give me a chance,” said Matt.

“He was busy defending his pregnant lover,” I said.

“She was busy attacking—”

“We've got two long flights ahead,” Richie interrupted us. “Normally Tom uses his private jet, but since he can't have this mission be affiliated with his companies, we're flying—”

“A private jet?” I said. “Wow.”

“No. Lufthansa. Also,” Richie continued. “We're not going straight to Harare Airport in Zimbabwe, because we have to eat frankfurters first, then pick up escargots.”

“Escargots?” I repeated.

“Listen to me,” Richie said impatiently. “I said we first have to meet Tom in Frankfurt, to pick up the cargo plane. You'd better start listening carefully, because things could get hairy if you don't pay attention.”

And I could see Matt smirking next to him.