chapter 18
After work that day—the day before Thanksgiving—Truman found a message from Winslow on the answering machine. Winslow said that he and Rhonda were going to have Thanksgiving dinner at the Ramada Inn, and asked if he could come home right afterwards. The boy had been whispering, as though he hadn’t wanted his mother to hear him. The original plan had been for Winslow to stay with Rhonda until sometime Friday afternoon. Truman called her cell phone with a sinking heart.
“He says he wants homemade pies,” Rhonda said grimly when Truman reached her. “I can’t imagine what he’s thinking. I am not Betty Crocker.”
“He knows you’re not Betty Crocker.”
“Have I ever baked a pie—have I ever even once expressed an interest in baking a pie?”
“I bake. He’s probably just forgetting.”
“That child has never forgotten a thing in his life. He’s unnatural. We were in a Walgreen’s and he remembered the brand of moisturizing cream I use. It’s not normal for a child, a boy child, to commit his mother’s toiletries to memory.”
“Is he there? Can he hear you?”
“No. He’s in the tub,” Rhonda said ominously. “He’s bathing.”
“Bathing is okay.”
“It’s the second bath he’s taken.”
“Well, he’s been with you for a couple of days,” Truman pointed out. “You’ve showered, haven’t you?”
“That’s different. I’m forty-five. I’m supposed to care about being clean. He’s eleven. He’s supposed to like dirty socks and his hair sticking up.”
“Well, he never has before, so I can’t think why he’d start now.”
Rhonda blew out a breath, and said, “Let it be on your head.”
“What?”
“His emasculation. Let it be on your head.”
“Yes, all right. Would you ask him to call me when he’s out of the tub? He left me a message saying he’d like me to pick him up tomorrow after your Thanksgiving dinner. That’s fine with me, if it’s all right with you.”
Rhonda’s tone was frosty. “He gets more like you every day.”
“Like me?”
“Stuck. Rooted. He has no sense of adventure or spontaneity. I can’t image what he’ll be like at twenty-five. Planning his retirement, no doubt.”
“I don’t think that’s true. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Please ask him to call me when he’s out of the tub.”
Almost as soon as he hung up, the phone rang again. It was Neva, calling to say that she, Sam, and Corinna would be at the elephant barn for Thanksgiving dinner, and they’d like him to come, too. “I guess they spend every Thanksgiving and Christmas there,” Neva told him. “Hannah gets two of her own pumpkin pies, plus one banana cream. Anyway, they’ve asked us and your mom and dad to join them. Bring mashed potatoes, if you can. They’re bringing the turkey, stuffing, and green beans.”
“God,” Truman said. “I wouldn’t miss it. What did my folks say?”
“Exactly the same thing.”
Corinna had dressed for the occasion with a Thanksgiving holiday apron and Indian corn fingernail decals. Sam wore a sweater, khaki wash pants, and suspenders. Matthew, predictably, had dressed down in a sport coat and tie; Lavinia, elegant as ever, wore her pearls, a cashmere twin set, and a Pendleton wool skirt. Neva had on jeans because she always wore jeans, plus a thick, soft chenille sweater the color of tangerines; she wore her hair down, falling softly around her face. Truman’s heart ached when he looked at her. Truman himself had chosen a tie with embroidered turkeys all over it that Winslow had given him as a gift the year before. Winslow, fresh from Rhonda’s loving arms, had chosen to dress in his sweater vest, oxford cloth button-down shirt, and sharp-creased slacks. Truman could only imagine—and with a wicked little smile—the wrath his clothes had probably incurred at Rhonda’s. All in all, they were a festive group, perched around the inside of the barn on lawn chairs, sharing TV tables. Hannah stood in their midst, rolling several round pebbles in the crook of her trunk while she watched Corinna take foil off the tops of several pies.
“Baby sure loves these,” Corinna said. “The first year we tried mincemeat, too, but she didn’t take to that one so much. Whipped cream, though, that’s a whole other thing.” She turned to Sam. “Remember, baby, when we gave her that plate full of nothing but a quart of heavy whipped cream? Hannah blew half of it across the barn before she figured out what it was. We were wiping old whipped cream off those walls for days, but ever since, she’s been a whipped cream kind of girl—whipped cream and banana cream pie.”
Lavinia stretched out her hand toward Hannah, but hesitated. “May I touch her, Sam? Will I startle her?”
“Naw, she likes being touched, as long as she isn’t afraid of you. She’s real physical that way. Just give her a good, firm pat—or you can just leave your hand on her, let her know you’re friendly. She likes that, too.”
Lavinia reached up and thumped Hannah smartly on her side. Hannah stretched her trunk toward the older woman, zeroing in on her pearls and twin set en route to her face and neck. Lavinia held very still as the questing trunk made its way around her.
“She’s telling you she likes you, putting her trunk by your ear like that,” Sam said. “Baby always was one for bath powder and perfume. If you’ve got either of those on, she’ll be stuck to you like glue.”
Matthew smiled, watching. Truman thought that much of his life had been spent just this way, watching Matthew watch Lavinia, or watching Lavinia watch Matthew. Theirs seemed to be the perfect union, two people who not only respected but delighted in one another, and always had. Matthew was saying, “Your elephant has good taste, then, Sam. Lavinia wears nothing but Chanel Number Five.”
Sam went over to Hannah’s probing trunk and headed her away. “It isn’t good manners to smell a lady for too long, shug, even when you’re doing it out of admiration.” Corinna passed him a large baked yam with marshmallow melted inside. Sam brought the yam to Matthew and placed it in his hand. “Hold it out flat, just like that.”
Hannah rolled her eyes and stretched her trunk in Matthew’s direction, scooping up the yam in one fluid movement of her trunk and popping it in her mouth like a bonbon. Matthew laughed. “She reminds me of a goat my father used to have, Sam. Gloria Lee, that was her name. That goat couldn’t get enough biscuits with honey, just loved ’em. My mother used to make a double batch on Sundays just for her.”
Truman suspected the story was apocryphal; he’d seen his father spin more incredible yarns to put a man at his ease.
“My father had a farm,” Sam said. “Just outside Yakima. Poor kind of hardscrabble place, took every bit of will he had to pull a living out of that dirt, but he was proud of it just the same.”
“Yes? Then you must remember farm animals from over the years, too. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but to this day I find myself matching our animals up with people. My son, for instance, reminds me of a cocker spaniel my mother had, a good, gentle dog called Fanny, always very sensitive to the moods of her family. If she thought you were upset or sad, she would lie beside you day or night, until you’d convinced her that the worst had passed.”
“How about Harriet Saul, Dad?” Truman said, coloring. “Who does she remind you of?”
“Well, now that’s a hard one. Most animals don’t have that kind of temper.” Matthew frowned, thinking. “I’d have to say Caesar. You remember him? No? Caesar was a very large Black Angus bull with a legendary temper. He tended to charge first, look later. Nobody went into the pasture with Caesar, neither man nor cow.”
Sam laughed hardest. “You got her just right,” he said. “Just right. Now, Neva here, she reminds me of an old lop-eared rabbit I had once, a girl by the name of Shirley. That rabbit had the busiest nose you ever saw, working working working all the time. Pretty thing, too.”
Neva gave Sam a one-armed hug and returned to her chair with a second piece of pumpkin pie. Corinna made the rounds with what was left. “
Come on, now, we’ve got food to spare,” she cried amidst groans and cries of overindulgence. “Hannah doesn’t like to see food wasted.”
There was a knock at the barn door. Everyone else looked concerned, but Neva said, “It’s okay,” and jumped up as though she’d expected it. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, pushing the door open. “Come on in.” Behind her Johnson Johnson dipped his head self-consciously and worked the hem of his coat between a thumb and forefinger. His hair was plastered down with something, and he wore a strange, nubbly brown sports coat over a brilliant tie-dyed T-shirt.
“Matthew, Lavinia, this is Johnson Johnson,” Neva said. “He’s my landlord, Hannah’s patron, and folk artist extraordinaire. Johnson, I think you know everyone else here.”
“He’s the one who made those drums for the girl? I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. You just come on in, sugar,” Corinna said, taking Johnson Johnson’s arm and leading him to a chair beside her own. “We got pumpkin and banana cream. Which one do you want to start with?”
Johnson Johnson looked up at her. “Pumpkin,” he said and then, flushing, “Pumpkin, please.”
Matthew stood and held up his paper cup of cider. “A toast,” he said, and everyone turned to him. “To Hannah, to her trustee, and, most of all, to safe journeys.”
No one made a sound; no one even breathed.
Matthew grinned and raised his cup high. “The trust is fully transferable.”
Across the zoo property, Harriet Saul sat in her office in the dark, sipping her fourth plastic cup of wine. It was a cheap bottle of Merlot from an unknown Argentinean vineyard, something she had found in the grocery store close-out bin. Outside her office, in the now-deserted reception area, an electric Christmas wreath blinked red, green, red, endlessly like a conflicted heart. Stop! Go! Stop!
Harriet had seen lights on at the elephant barn when she came in, heard faint laughter as she crossed the parking lot to her office. They had betrayed her, all of them, and she couldn’t understand it, knew she’d never understand it, except to realize that once again she had misplaced her trust. In the end, the mistake had been hers.
She stared into the darkness of her office and allowed her mind to drift to other Thanksgivings. Maude had never cared for the holiday, celebrating with an indifferent succession of dry turkeys and packaged gravy. Harriet had eventually taken over the holiday cooking, but even so it had been a cheerless affair. She recalled a Thanksgiving table, and her mother and father arguing until her father slammed a wine glass down on the table so hard it had shattered. That had been the end of the holiday. He’d needed nine stitches, and within two months he was gone.
Harriet tapped out the last drop of wine, hid the bottle among others in her office closet, and re-enabled the security system. As she pulled the outside door to, a fresh volley of laughter rang out from the elephant barn, mocking her; mocking everything she was and ever would be.
After they came home from the elephant barn, Winslow practiced at the piano and the pig lay insensible beneath it, eyes tiny slits, mouth lifted in a stuporous porcine smile. He had just polished off the half a pumpkin pie that Winslow had brought back for him, as well as four yams and a drumstick.
“He missed you,” Truman said, sitting on the sofa in the den, when Winslow was finished. “I missed you.”
“Nah, he only missed my music,” Winslow said. “Why do you think he likes it so much?”
“Perhaps he is Mozart,” Truman said. “Reborn as a pig.”
Winslow looked at his father to see if he was serious. “Do you think he could be?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“I like that,” Winslow said.
Truman made room for him on the sofa. “So tell me about your visit with your mother.”
Winslow shrugged. “She kept saying things made her mad, like how I probably kept my crayons in order from dark to light.”
“Well, you do.”
“I know, but what’s wrong with that?”
Truman shook his head. “There’s no accounting for a mother’s ways, Winslow. Yours has a low threshold for tidiness.”
“Did she yell at you for being neat, too?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, the inside of her car was full of old half-empty water bottles and potato chip bags and old napkins and stuff with her lipstick all over it.” Winslow shuddered faintly. “Plus she had an air freshener hanging up. How come she’d need an air freshener in her car? I think she might”—he lowered his voice—“smoke.”
“Really?”
“Well, I could definitely smell something.”
“Ah.” Rhonda had smoked pot when they’d first met. Artists, she believed, did. She had quit only in deference to Winslow’s allergies; perhaps she’d started again, now that Winslow was away from her. Truman didn’t think the boy needed to know that, though. “I think it’s safe to say your mother has always done things a little differently than most people. She’s a strong-willed woman, and she’s always had a lot on her mind. More than most people do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, Art, with a capital ‘A.’ Beauty, with a capital ‘B.’ Creativity, with—”
“A capital ‘C.’”
“You get the point, I think.”
“Design, with a ‘D,’ Excellence, with an ‘E,’” Winslow said.
“So you see, your mother is full up a lot of the time dealing with all these things, especially when they’re important enough to be capitalized.”
“Fantasy, Greatness—”
“Yes, Winnie, I think we’ve beaten this particular horse.”
“Happiness,” Winslow said, subsiding. “Don’t forget happiness.”
“Oh, no,” Truman said. “I would never forget happiness.”
For Martin Choi, Friday morning came late and brought with it one hell of a hangover. That’s what he got for spending Thanksgiving at No Place Special, the Bladenham News-Gazette’s bar of choice. He had won nearly fifty dollars at darts, but after that things got fuzzy. He woke up in his clothes, lying on top of his bed with one shoe on.
The phone on his desk rang. Closing his eyes so that the assault would be limited to just one of his senses, he lifted the receiver and mumbled something that was meant to resemble his name.
“Yes, good morning,” a well-modulated male voice said. “Are you the reporter who has written several features about the Biedelman Zoo recently? If you are, I believe I have a story for you.”
Martin straightened up: Hell yes, he was that reporter. He cleared his throat several times, desperately re-assembling himself into a soon-to-be-award-winning Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter.
The caller identified himself as Matthew Levy. Martin knew the name—Matthew Levy was something of a legend around Bladenham, one of the youngest judges ever appointed. Martin straightened his shirt collar.
“You may be interested to know that a forty-one-year-old document has surfaced at the City of Bladenham archives that establishes that Hannah—of course you are familiar with Hannah, the elephant—has a trustee, a guardian, if you will; and that he, not the zoo, has the responsibility of overseeing her care and monitoring her health. Would this story be of interest to you?”
“Hell, yes!”
On his way to the judge’s house Martin dry-shaved and picked up and bolted a desperately needed double shot of espresso from the Java Hut. It was a good thing he did, too, because the Levy sun porch was glaringly, even agonizingly, white, with white walls, floral chintz, and white wicker. Martin ran his palms down his own wrinkled rugby shirt, which since its last laundering might or might not have been worn.
“Please sit down, Martin,” Matthew said, gesturing to a chair. “You’ve already met my wife Lavinia, of course.” Indeed he had: Lavinia had met him at the door, scaring the shit out of him by calling him Mr. Choi and showing him to the sun porch through airy rooms filled with antiques and art. “Lavinia will join us if that’s all right with you. She’s als
o an attorney. She’s been assisting me in looking into this matter.”
“Sure, yeah, okay.” Unfortunately, Martin’s journalistic acuity was masked somewhat by a coughing fit that sent Lavinia into the kitchen for a crystal pitcher of ice water and a glass.
“Whew, whoa,” Martin said when he was able to speak again. “Hey, sorry. Big night last night, you know, Thanksgiving and all.”
“Yes, of course,” Lavinia said. Could she possibly be wearing as much solid gold as it looked like? If so—and he had no reason to think otherwise—her net worth, just sitting there beside him, was probably twice the value of Martin’s car. He struggled to focus on Matthew.
“—could require that her facilities be altered or upgraded, if he felt the current conditions warranted it,” Matthew was saying.
That got his attention. “What? Could what?”
Matthew smiled and nodded to Lavinia, who poured a cup of coffee from a carafe and handed it to Martin.
Matthew started over. “Have you met Samson Brown? Good. Well, as it turns out—and this knowledge is brand-new, Martin, fresh news—that Mr. Brown is Hannah’s legal guardian, and has been since 1958, though no one informed him of that until now. I was simply explaining that with the power Max Biedelman vested in him, Mr. Brown could—indeed, is obligated to—require that the Biedelman Zoo make modifications to Hannah’s accommodations.”
“That right?” Martin said, squinting at his notepad.
“Yes, that’s right.” The old man handed off to Lavinia, who lifted a thin china cup to her lips. Then she talked about some trust fund that the old woman had set up before she died; and about how some money flowed into the zoo’s operating budget each year, and what formula determined the exact amount. And how, now that there was a trustee involved—that would be Samson Brown, Martin was pretty sure—the zoo would spend the trust money at the trustee’s behest—possibly even reallocating it, “if he finds that the zoo’s facilities are inadequate. Theoretically, of course,” Lavinia set her teacup neatly in its saucer. “If he deems that there are inadequacies. Isn’t that right, my dear?”
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