An Inconvenient Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  Steaming water, fragrant soap, real shampoo. If manna from heaven could be transmuted into water, I was luxuriating in it. Lavender body wash that my mother had once given to me as a birthday gift insinuated itself into my pores, melting fragrantly as I lathered and lathered and lathered some more. Then I stood, shoulders slumped forward, to let it all run off. It was an exorcism of my sharp longing for Africa and my beloved little ellies. Of Tom, though I wouldn’t let myself think of Tom right now. It had been my decision to leave him for Africa, and I was living with the consequences. It was okay, I said to myself, I was strong enough to do that.

  I was home. It didn’t feel like home yet. I knew I would have to give it time. But it was home. I at least had that.

  Dried and fluffed, I passed the office on my way to bed. The light was off, and I could hear Diamond-Rose snoring loudly. At least she managed to fall asleep, I thought jealously, without the comforting sway of trees and the night calls of animals in the bush. I wondered if I would be able to do the same. If I would be able to sleep without the deep, gentle rumbling breath of a baby ellie by my side. If I would even be able to sleep alone since it would be the first time in a very long time. Over the years, I’d had my husband, and then we added Grace, our Boston terrier. After the divorce, it was just me and Grace sharing pillows together. And then there was, well, Tom, and then me and the ellies, their wheezes filling the night. Now an empty pillow was waiting.

  There was another long, resonating breath from the little room, and I cracked the door open to peek in. The acrid odor of B.O. wafted into the hallway. The blanket I had given Diamond-Rose was rolled under her head, and still dressed in her khakis, she was curled up in a ball, sleeping peacefully on the floor.

  Chapter 12

  DIAMOND-ROSE HAD BEER FOR BREAKFAST.

  She had awakened at first light and found a six-pack in the fridge, a welcome-home gift from my brother. She halved its number before eight in the morning and greeted me with a salutary burp as I walked into the kitchen.

  “I couldn’t find breakfast sadza,” she said, holding up a beer can, “but this goes down way better.” She flashed me a beatific smile.

  I grunted and eyed my houseguest. Jet lag had left me feeling disheveled and out of sorts, but Diamond looked strikingly pretty even this early in the morning, even without makeup, even with her hair tangling luxuriously around her shoulders and her green eyes dreamy from heavy sleep and three beers. She was still wearing her safari clothes, and her rucksack sat on the floor next to her, like a chaperone.

  “It’s for you,” Diamond said, handing me the note that had been taped to the beer. “It’s another elephant joke from your brother, but I didn’t look at the answer. I didn’t want to pry.”

  I scanned the paper. “‘How do elephants call each other?’” I read aloud.

  Diamond shrugged and snapped the cap off another beer.

  I turned the paper over. “‘They use the elephone.’”

  Diamond giggled. “He sounds like a great kid. How old is he?”

  I had to do a quick mental calculation. “Thirty-four?”

  “Perfect,” Diamond said. “Just perfect.”

  I scanned the kitchen. It was tidy, almost exactly the way I had left it one year earlier, but vacant looking, which meant my mother had been in to clean it as well. My potted herbs were gone, the outdated cow calendar had been discarded, along with the old sponges for the sink. I take pride in my fastidiousness, but my mother could embarrass Mr. Clean for his lapse in standards. I opened a cabinet and eyed its lack of contents. And not only were the cupboards bare, but the refrigerator was empty as well. Everything perishable, crunchy, or soft had been cleaned away.

  “You might want to shower and change your clothes before we shop for supplies,” I suggested to Diamond. The reality of being home was slowly returning. Food shopping. Laundry. Cleaning. Even a new cell phone. “You can use my washer for what you’re wearing.”

  Diamond looked down at her outfit. “Already changed my clothes,” she said, and crushed the can in one hand. “And you know my policy on showering.”

  We left by the back door because I was anxious to show Diamond-Rose the five acres of pasture and the horse barn that I owned. I was so inordinately proud of it all, my house, my farm, my every twig and leaf, pebble, blade of grass, because it was something I had given to myself. Getting a divorce had been a little like standing in a tornado. When it was over, everything I owned or believed in had been blown away, my pockets emptied, my shoes sucked off my feet. I think I may have lost my dental fillings as well.

  We stepped outside. “This is it!” I announced, making a grand gesture with my arms. I turned to Diamond, eagerly waiting for her reaction.

  She studied it all carefully. My azaleas were nearly covering the windows, and the lawn could have been used for hula skirts. She took in the expanse of knee-high grass and weeds that had grown totally out of control, her face betraying her bafflement over what exactly she was supposed to be admiring. She looked at the fences, and there were fences everywhere. She looked at the houses behind us, the houses on the side of us, the houses across the street, their roofs cluttering the horizon like nesting chickens.

  “Is that grass?” she asked. “Or are you growing wheat for the hungry?”

  “Let’s just get some breakfast,” I muttered, embarrassed, suddenly seeing what she saw. Compared to the sweeping landscapes of Kenya, I had a small plot of land overgrown with useless vegetation. I led her to the rental car. Once behind the wheel, I explained my plans for the day. “First we’ll have breakfast, then we’re going to visit my ex-horse, and then I’ll take you to see the love of my life.”

  Diamond’s eyes widened with surprise. “Tom? I thought you said it was over.”

  “Margo. She’s an elephant.” I pulled into our first stop of the day. “And she’s the only reason I’m glad I came home.”

  McDonald’s is not the place to be eating breakfast in safari clothes. Diamond-Rose was asked for her autograph seven times before she took her first bite of food, by people expecting her to be accompanied by a crocodile.

  “Next one that stares, I’m going to mash him in the beak,” she complained as we opened the wrappings for our egg sandwiches. “You’d think they never saw anyone dressed for work before.”

  I scanned her appearance. “Maybe you need to reconsider your business outfit, because you should know, the first rule of the jungle is blending in.”

  Diamond just shrugged and looked around the room at the various customers. “I’d blend in better if I put on about fifty pounds.” But she wolfed down two egg sandwiches, then sniffed disdainfully at her coffee before draining her cup. “Is American coffee always this weak?”

  I sniffed at my own coffee. “I thought it was too strong.”

  She got up and returned with two more cups. “Quantity over quality,” she said ruefully before settling into her chair. “So why don’t you just start things up again?”

  “You mean with Tom?” I shook my head and stared into my coffee. “It ended badly. We weren’t even talking. There’d be no reason for me to contact him again.”

  “Of course you have a reason,” Diamond said. “Grisha will have told him by now that you were in Zim. Even a small seed can grow a whole cotton tree, you know.”

  I gave her a blank look. “Meaning?”

  “You may not need more than that to get him interested in you again.” She leaned forward and cupped her chin in her hands. “I’m good at fixing things. I would call him straightaway and tell him that you’re home and you need to speak to him.”

  I laughed at the idea of anyone fixing what was broken between Tom and me. I rolled up the wrappings from her breakfast and then mine, then wiped the crumbs away with my napkin, then my little area of the table, then wiped my fingers. I am obsessively neat. When I was growing up, Reese used to call me a neat freak, though after a while, he dropped the word “neat.” I made sure everything was in order before I answe
red Diamond.

  “What would I say?” I asked.

  “Tell him we’re sorry about the planes not working out, but that we’ve pretty much solved the problem with Tusker all by ourselves.”

  “But we haven’t solved the problem. We’ve only created another problem—now we need a lot of money.” It occurred to me that this was a recurring theme with Diamond, solving problems by creating new ones.

  “But he’s rich,” she said. “Rich men know how to make money. He can give you advice. Rich men love to give advice on making money. Most of it is useless, but you’ll have him back in your life before you know it.”

  I looked up at her. “You really think so?”

  “Of course! A man does not wander far from where his corn is roasting!” she said triumphantly. “Once he finds out that all we need to do is raise money to bring the elephants here, he won’t be able to resist getting involved!”

  I didn’t tell Diamond that I was positive Tom wouldn’t even take a phone call from me since his last words were “You’ve made your choice and picked the elephants. Now I make my choice. I pick a life without you.”

  Thereby adding himself to my ever-increasing collection of exes.

  I sighed. There is nothing so pathetic as owning the Complete Anthology of Exes. It might even be a winning poker hand.

  Definitely a royal flush.

  Of the toilet.

  I was driving us to my next stop, when Diamond brought it up again.

  “Call him and ask him for advice,” she said. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  “Let me think it over,” I said. “Maybe there’s some way I can get a message to him without actually calling him directly.”

  “Well, do it straightaway,” she urged. “We have less than two months.”

  “I will,” I promised. “But right now, I need to see my ex-horse.”

  “Ex-horse?”

  “He’s not mine anymore,” I said. “I gave him to Reese’s wife. He’s living in my ex-barn, which is the same old barn he’s always lived in. I just don’t own it anymore.”

  “Let me get this straight,” she said. “Your ex-horse is living in your ex-barn?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Behind my ex-house.”

  Diamond laughed. “You like to keep things simple, don’t you.”

  A few minutes later I was pulling into the driveway of my old house. I’d had to sell it for the divorce, and luckily my brother was newly married and looking for a place to live, so it sort of stayed in the family. Now it stood, a paragon of suburban tidiness, a product of the painstaking care and attention lavished upon it by Reese and Marielle. There were new shrubs, a new mailbox, a newly blacktopped driveway. Reese’s and Marielle’s cars were gone. They were obviously both at work, and I was actually relieved that I didn’t have to put up with Reese’s teasing before I got over my jet lag.

  The barn in back had been repainted to match the house, and I could see that the two small back paddocks had been joined to make one comfortably large arena, enclosed with new post-and-rail fencing. In the middle stood Mousi, his face buried in a large pile of hay.

  “Wait till Mousi hears me call his name,” I predicted as we drew closer to the paddock. “He’ll race right over for a kiss. Then he’ll put his head on my shoulder. He and I had a special bond, you know? A mystical bond.”

  “Lovely,” Diamond murmured. “I’ve had dozens of horses over the years. I loved them all well enough, in my own way, but in the end, they were just transportation.”

  “Ha,” I said. “Not Mousi. Mousi is my soul mate.”

  Mousi was horse nobility. He was a Lipizzaner, descended from a long line of pure white steeds, and his real name was Maestoso Ariela. He was my first rescue, my surrogate child, my confidant, my past and my future, but then the divorce tsunami struck, and he needed a loving owner and a good home. Marielle, a horsewoman herself, happily provided both. But it was like giving your son to the gypsies. At some point you need to peek through the woods to see if he’s thriving, if he misses you, or worse, if he is getting along perfectly fine without you. I wasn’t sure which I wanted to see.

  I stood by the back fence and scrutinized Mousi from ears to tail. The gypsies had done very well by my child. He was in good weight, his coat was brushed, his long mane didn’t have one tangle, and though Marielle taught at a nearby university, I could see that she took time in the morning to feed him, clean his stall, and turn him out with fresh hay and water.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and called his name. Mousi picked up his head and gave me a vacant glance before returning to his hay. I called his name again.

  “A bond, you say,” Diamond said, leaning on the fence next to me.

  I rapped on the fence with my knuckles. Mousi took another mouthful of hay. “How long do you think it takes them to forget you?” I finally asked.

  “What makes you think they do?” Diamond replied.

  “He always came to me before.”

  “He just needs you to ride him,” Diamond said. “Horses remember the way you ride them.”

  I slipped through the fence and walked over to Mousi. He stopped chewing his hay to sniff my outstretched hand, then dropped his head for another bite. I ran my hands along his neck and over his back, and then, with Diamond giving me a thumbs-up, pulled myself astride, gently easing onto his bare back. Mousi lifted his head and pricked his ears. I touched him with my legs and he walked forward, then halted with just the pressure of my seat. I pushed my left hip forward, and he arched his neck as though he had a bit in his mouth and swung left. My right hip turned him right. Then I sat up and asked for the canter, and in one elegant departure, his body thrust forward into its familiar rolling cadence that took me around the entire pasture. I lifted my face to the sky and closed my eyes. It was here that I knew he remembered me, this giving of his body for me to make use of. Diamond was right: Horses remember the way you ride. The way you sit on them. How you hold your shoulders, the ease that releases your back into theirs. He remembered me, and I was exultant. He remembered my body, how I moved and breathed and placed my weight. I tightened my back against his movement, and he dropped to the walk, moving in measured steps, then halted, square and proud.

  “You’re lovely together,” Diamond called out. “Now I can see it. In both of you. The bond, I mean.”

  I jumped off and gratefully threw my arms around Mousi’s neck. He nuzzled me for a moment, then pressed his head against my shoulder just the way he always had.

  I held on to him for a long time. My sudden tears mixed into his white mane, wetting the coarse, curly ends. I rubbed my face against his neck and breathed in the smell of hay and warm horse, and I didn’t care that Diamond was watching. Mousi remembered me. Somewhere in his spirit and mind and body he was still mine. He would always remember me because my riding had left something of me with him.

  And, I thought with some satisfaction, maybe, unlike other exes, you never really end it with a horse.

  Chapter 13

  SOMETIMES YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN.

  But you might have to make some adjustments.

  I pulled into the driveway of the house I had grown up in, the house of my childhood, the gathering place for sentimental holidays, Sunday dinners, and even Reese’s wedding to Marielle, two falls ago.

  At first, it looked disconcertingly unfamiliar, so properly suburban, with its new pale gray siding and freshly painted burgundy shutters, sculpted box hedges, and disciplined rows of white and pink mums presiding over a well-trimmed lawn. Diamond and I got out of the car, and I stayed at the curb for a moment, forcing myself to belong here, to this house and its memories. I had just come in from sweeping, unfiltered blue skies and beckoning openness. It was all still part of my internal landscape—the acacia trees laden with gnarled, thorny brown branches and white star flowers, the red-brown dust and rolling moonscape savannahs covered with rocks and ragged yellow weed, clouds the color of a snow stork in an uncannily lit blue
sky. I couldn’t yet make peace with suburbia, if I ever had.

  “Well, this is where I grew up,” I said to Diamond, giving her a self-conscious shrug over the perfectly square stone walls and orderly flowers in military formation. My car stood polished and waiting in the driveway. My father had kept it running for me.

  “Civilized,” Diamond sniffed, but a look of envy crossed her face. “I’m surprised you didn’t come here first. Family completes all the fingers on your hand.”

  “I suppose,” I said vaguely.

  “It’s perfect,” she said, flushing. “I was raised by an alcoholic aunt. I never had anything this nice. I’ll wager it’s lovely inside, all thick carpeting and fat sofas and gold chandeliers. And none of it held together by duct tape.”

  The front door swung ajar, and suddenly I was spun back to my childhood. There was my mother, dressed in pristine white slacks and a pale pink sweater, tiny rose quartz earrings, and perfectly lacquered hair still the exact honey color it was when I was growing up. I was home, like the many times I had come in from a day of playing in the yard, or returning from a friend’s house, or back from a date. Home. It was comforting.

  It was suffocating.

  My mother held her arms open, and I stepped forward for a hug and a kiss while she murmured how sunburned I had gotten, how thin, how I needed a good haircut, and oh my goodness, my eyebrows needed to be tamed immediately.

  Suffocating.

  “Mom, this is Diamond-Rose Tremaine,” I introduced them, studying my mother’s face for signs of culture shock. “We met on the bus to Nairobi airport.”

  Always unfailingly polite, my mother took in Diamond’s soiled wardrobe and raised her eyebrows only half a millimeter.

  “So glad to meet you,” she murmured, offering a manicured hand, then stiffening when she saw the state of Diamond’s fingernails.