An Inconvenient Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  There was an irony about our lives that I was acutely aware of.

  Diamond had come from New York, and so had I, though our backgrounds were entirely different. I had been a child of the suburbs, of swimming pools in the backyard, the cozy nestle of lemonade and snacks on the patio, riding lessons twice a week, and barbecues, oh God, too many barbecues.

  The expectations were that I would follow in my mother’s footsteps and settle down, live in a nice big house with a neat lawn that sat back on some graciously suburban street somewhere. Expectations that eventually sat on my shoulders like cement blocks.

  Diamond had been city bred. A child of subways and fire engine sirens and cramped apartments, of shops on the corner that stayed open until almost morning and an aunt too drunk to notice if her niece ever came home.

  Which, I suppose, gave Diamond a certain freedom—the freedom from expectations.

  We never would have met in New York. I was towed to the city for ballet performances, semiannual visits to museums, plays, and authentic Chinese food in Chinatown, while Diamond would never have even dreamed of taking an hour’s drive to the country just to look at trees. And yet we met. We met on the other side of the world, with the same goals and dreams. I supposed the universe does things in its own convoluted, complicated way.

  And I watched her sip her coffee, this woman who was completely opposite of me, who had total confidence in herself that she could, definitely would fix all our problems. She was footloose and unencumbered and free to make any kind of decision for her life that she wanted, and I thought she had to be the luckiest person in the world.

  Chapter 18

  “HOW DO YOU PAY A FOR AN ELEPHANT?” IT WAS SOUNDING more and more like one of Reese’s elephant jokes. Except that I didn’t have the answer. What kind of job in an uncertain economy would support me and in addition pay for Tusker and Shamwari?

  “‘Electrician, engineer, energetic salesperson.’” I read the want ads aloud over breakfast, picking from a box of donuts and once again drinking a cup of deadly cowboy coffee brewed by Diamond-Rose. We had been home almost a week now and looking, first, for ways to support ourselves, and second, to make some inroads toward our future giant purchase.

  “Nothing listed for elephant trainer,” I joked, trying not to listen to the crunching of coffee grinds under Diamond’s boots. Diamond’s casual approach to housekeeping was beginning to grate on my nerves.

  “There must be a lot of openings for your type of work, at least,” Diamond said, accidentally knocking over the sugar bowl while ladling heaping soupspoons of sugar into her coffee. “I mean, you’re a licensed psycho?”

  “Psychotherapist.” I gave an awkward laugh. “You know, couples counseling, life strategies—everything that didn’t work for me. But I was always happier training horses. In fact, I always suspected that horse training and psychotherapy are kind of the same thing.”

  Diamond nodded knowingly. “I’d definitely go with the horses.” She paused to brush the spilled sugar from the table onto the floor. “Don’t get me wrong—all that brain stuff is good, too. A lot of people are, you know”—she tapped the side of her head—“mental.”

  I thought about it. I used to love retraining naughty horses, but my growing reluctance to land on my head as a career choice took that option off the table. I sighed and took a big bite of my jelly donut just as Diamond-Rose speared a chocolate cream-filled with a flip of her new safari knife.

  I jumped as the knife gleamed past me. “Good God!” I declared. “Do you have to eat everything off a knife?”

  Diamond flashed me a grin. “Habit I picked up in the bush,” she replied. “My hands were never clean enough to touch food. I have some standards, you know.” She bit into the donut and noisily sucked out its innards, then rattled her section of the newspaper. “I’m not having any luck either. ‘Sanitary engineer, secretary, sewer maintenance.’” She flipped the paper closed in disgust. “Nothing for safari leader.”

  “I’m shocked,” I replied, taking another sip of bitter coffee. “Given how much call there is for safaris in this region.”

  “If I can’t find something soon, we may not be able to save Tusker,” Diamond said. “I have some money saved up, but it won’t be enough. And if I know Joshua, he’ll want every cent of it.” She leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know what else I can do. Safaris were my whole life.” She put her hands behind her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Except, of course, when I was with the circus.”

  “You were with the circus?” I looked at her in surprise.

  “Ran off with some clown when I was sixteen.” She rolled her eyes at the memory. “It was after my aunt died. I had no other family. Spent six weeks selling popcorn, then three months cleaning up after the elephants until I graduated to riding them.”

  “Wow,” I said, impressed. “I’ve always wanted to ride an elephant.”

  Diamond speared another donut. “Did a little trapeze work, too,” she said, delicately chewing it off the tip of her knife blade. “Was asked to leave, though, because I slept with both guys from the trapeze act and they started fighting over me.”

  “So, why did you have to leave?” I asked.

  Diamond finished her donut and licked the tip of her knife. “It became a trust issue, when, you know, one guy had to jump from his trapeze and have the other guy catch him? They were never quite sure.”

  “Good thing you didn’t sleep with the knife-throwers,” I said, scanning the paper again. “Nevertheless, we have to come up with something creative to make enough money. Thirty-five thousand is not peanuts.” I laughed at my inadvertent joke, then realized that having no money was not exactly funny. “We might have to give up eating,” I added ominously.

  Diamond shrugged and got up to wash out her coffee cup with a swish of cold water and two fingers, apparently ignorant of the existence of dish detergent. “We’ll do okay,” she said. “I still have that loaf of your mother’s bread in my rucksack.”

  Mothers are a good source of protein.

  And sometimes advice.

  My mother was brimming with the first two during the welcome-home dinner she had prepared for me and Diamond. The whole family was in attendance, and I wondered how they would react to Diamond’s appearance and social graces. Especially my mother, who was meticulous down to the arrangements of the particles in the air, and especially double for my brother Jerome, who was a bit of a stuffed shirt. I had always dreaded Jerome’s little flashes of disapproval. In addition, his wife, Kate, had once been a fashion model and always eyed my casual jeans and tees with obvious distaste. I gave my father and Reese and Marielle a free pass, since my father liked anyone who ate his barbecue, Reese was Reese, and Marielle, well, she was married to Reese.

  My mother gave me a hug when we arrived, then took a half step back when Diamond, still in her safari clothes, rushed to give her a big embrace as well.

  “Now, aren’t you just…darling,” my mother gasped, giving Diamond a little squeeze with the tips of her fingers. “And still dressed in…jungle clothes!”

  Grace just growled, then spent an inordinately long time sniffing Diamond’s boots.

  “Haven’t had much time to unpack,” I offered, not sure if I was embarrassed more by Diamond’s hygiene or my mother’s thinly disguised repulsion. “We’re still a bit jet-lagged.”

  “I always thought jet lag canceled out when you got back home,” my mother replied. She brushed off her sweater as she led us into the kitchen. “I know I never had a problem with it.”

  “Mom, the farthest you’ve been from home is Maine,” I said. “Same time zone.”

  She flapped a hand at me. “Travel is travel, and besides, it’s not the journey, it’s the destination, and the destination should always end at home.” She introduced Diamond to Jerome and Kate’s five-year-old twins, then peeked into the oven. “Well, I hope you’re both good and hungry.”

  “Oh yes, ma’am,” Diamond cheerfully declared in front
of my wide-eyed nieces. “I could eat a warthog, balls and all.”

  My father was next to greet us, leaving his usual post at the backyard barbecue, but not before reverentially checking each steak and turning it over with delicate precision. If char-grilling could be a religion, my father would be the high priest and the barbecue pit his altar. Wearing an apron that declared “007—Licensed to Grill,” he stepped through the back door to give us both generous hugs.

  “Welcome home, Neelie, it’s great to have you back,” he said, then glanced into the backyard. “But we’ll talk later—I’ve got steaks to watch. Diamond-Rose is it?”

  Diamond nodded, entranced with the sight of inch-high meat, aromatically grilling away.

  “Well then, Diamond-Rose, prepare yourself for a real treat.” He stepped outside again, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll bet you two haven’t had a dinner cooked over a real open fire in ages.”

  The house was overflowing with food and family. Not the family that I was longing for, of dusty gray baby ellies tugging at my arms with small, grasping trunks, but my human family of parents, two brothers and their wives, and twin nieces, all tugging at me in a different way. Tugging at me to join them, to fit back in, to remember the old jokes and routines, to fall in line, nose to tail, and walk the path with them. It was disorienting, all the chatting, the jostling, the high trills of conversation between the women cooking food in the kitchen, their voices playing counterpoint to the rumbling bass of the men outside as my father held forth on his favorite topic. “You know, barbecue was the original dinner of early man.” He was giving his usual lecture to my two brothers. “That’s how they prepared the dinosaurs when they caught them.”

  I watched from the back door. “I hate barbecues,” I said to Diamond. “I grew up smelling like mesquite. I think my lungs have smoke damage.” I grimaced. “I don’t know why my father couldn’t find another hobby. Like making ice cream.”

  “Then you’d be complaining about your weight,” Diamond teased. “A barbecuing father is just perfect! You’re so lucky you have family!” I shot her the squint-eye. Friends were supposed to commiserate.

  My mother brought over a plate of hors d’oeuvres, and we each took one.

  “Well, one thing, you can’t get these in Kenya,” I said, savoring a warm cheese straw.

  “Civilized,” Diamond-Rose remarked, but not until after she’d crammed three more into her mouth.

  “Steaks are ready,” my father announced, proudly bearing a huge platter stacked with sizzling meat and plopping it down on the virginal white tablecloth in the dining room. My mother brought out half a dozen side dishes and a large tray of dinner rolls from the oven, while Reese, who considers himself the Beethoven of raw vegetables since he loves to prepare them but never eats them, carried in an ambitious salad. The wine was decanted, Grace stopped growling and took a spot under the table near Diamond’s boots so she could lick them clean, and dinner was served.

  “You know, Neelie,” my mother started right in dispensing advice while putting shoe-size baked potatoes on each plate, “I think the sooner you get back to work, the better. There’s nothing like a job to keep you at home.”

  “It has to be the right job,” I said. “Diamond and I have been checking the papers.”

  “Have you checked the Times?” my sister-in-law Kate suggested. “Everything’s listed online.” She eyed Diamond. “Of course, you’d have to dress a bit less…rustically.”

  “What about professional journals?” Jerome added. “I certainly hope you’re going to resume your profession, instead of wasting all those years you spent in school. Check the university listings, too.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea for me, too,” Diamond said. “Schools do go on safaris.” Jerome smiled his approval.

  “You know, I was downsized from my university job,” Marielle joined in. “But there’s always tutoring. That’s what I’m hoping to do.”

  “Darling,” Kate said to Marielle, “you teach math, so you can tutor math. Neelie is a psychotherapist. You can’t tutor therapy. You either do it or you”—she searched for a word—“you go crazy.”

  “Try the zoo papers,” Reese added, then looked around with a certain grin that meant he was going to regale us with one of his specialties, an elephant joke. “So, you guys—why did the elephant cross the road?”

  “I have been checking the papers,” I replied testily to Jerome. “Along with the want ads in the back of the professional journals.”

  “It was the chicken’s day off,” Reese triumphantly answered. Diamond hooted with laughter, and he gave her an appreciative grin. I just rolled my eyes at him.

  “What about bulletin boards in the drugstores?” my mother asked. “Lots of people who take medication might want a therapist.”

  “Checked everything,” I announced, then sighed. “I even called Alana to see if she had spillover. But no one is going to commute from Florida to see me.” It certainly wasn’t the right time to ask if anyone felt like helping me buy an elephant. I turned to Jerome. “You know, I can do all the job searching in the world, but finding something is just going to take time.”

  “That’s right,” Diamond agreed. “As they say in Swahili, It can rain on your head all day but it won’t grow a banana tree.”

  Dinner went on as it always had, with my father insisting everyone take seconds on meat and my mother insisting we finish all seven different vegetables along with the bread. Kate, who counted the calories in a glass of water, helped pass the food around and as usual, raved how delicious it looked but didn’t actually take any. And though I had hoped that no one would notice, I caught my family absolutely engrossed as Diamond-Rose plunged her knife into the heart of her baked potato and held it aloft while eating it.

  “That’s what I like.” My father beamed at Diamond, who had by now finished her baked potato and immediately filled the vacancy at the tip of her knife with a piece of steak. “You have a great appetite,” he said approvingly, and dropped another steak on her plate. Then he gestured to her uniform. “So, how long you been in the Girl Scouts?”

  “Diamond was a safari leader,” I explained.

  “With a level three license and advanced weapons certificate,” Diamond added proudly.

  “Better a leader than a follower,” my mother chirped, passing Diamond a tray of bread. “Have another dinner roll, and then I hope I can tempt everyone with dessert. It’s a coconut cake, with fruit filling, in honor of the jungle!”

  “Cauliflower filling would be more appropriate,” I muttered.

  “It sounds absolutely lovely,” Diamond said, grabbing several rolls and dropping them into her lap. “And I’ll just pop these into my rucksack for later.”

  “Neelie, I have a question,” Marielle said, while my mother was serving her special jungle cake. “We’re on a tight budget now because of my job, so I was wondering if you wanted your horse back?” But I was barely listening. I had been foolish to think my family could help me with Tusker. Maybe it was foolish to think that anyone could. If we were going to buy Tusker and Shamwari, we would need to come up with something quick and practical. Every day was bringing us closer to our deadline.

  “Neelie?” Marielle called my name. I tried to remember what she had asked. Something about the safari? Something about horseback? Did she want to know if I had done a lot of horseback riding in Kenya? Yes, that was it.

  “No,” I replied to Marielle. “Not really. Just no time.”

  After dessert, Diamond raised her glass for a toast. “You have been very kind to take me into your home,” she said in a quavering voice. “You have made me feel like I’m family, and I can’t thank you enough for that. I always wished I had family. You know, the word safari is Swahili for ‘journey.’” She looked around. “So I wish your safari through life may always be a happy and successful one.” She held her glass out to me, and I lifted mine and clicked it against hers.

  “And a good safari to you, too,” I said, then
added, “shamwari.”

  Chapter 19

  DIAMOND-ROSE AND I GOT HOME LATE FROM MY parents’ dinner party, and I opened the front door to the sound of the phone ringing. It was Richie.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know it’s late, but I just spoke to Tom. He’s driving up to the farm tomorrow morning, so if you want to talk to him about Margo and Abbie, you should come by.”

  I tried to sound calm. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “You’re right—I have to talk to him.” Tom! I would be seeing Tom again. All I had to do was drive to the farm.

  “Are you going to be all right with it?” Richie asked.

  “Yes, of course,” I lied.

  “Great,” Richie replied. “So, you forgot to tell me about Zimbabwe.”

  “I’m trying to rescue an elephant,” I said. “You have thirty-five thousand dollars lying around?”

  “Oh yeah,” he replied. “I keep it in a big trunk.” He stopped in surprise and gave a sudden laugh. “Hey, get it? Get it? That was my first elephant joke!”

  I was going to see Tom tomorrow, and I was determined to repair our relationship. I would be calm and professional and tell him that I understood why he couldn’t help us when we were in Zimbabwe and how Diamond had worked things out to save Tusker. That I did know what I was doing. And I would ask him if he would be willing to help us raise money for the purchase. I would be strong and dignified. I rethought that. Can you beg for thirty-five thousand dollars and still be dignified?

  “Tom is coming up to the sanctuary tomorrow,” I announced to Diamond.

  “Great,” she said. “See? The universe marched him practically to our front door.”