An Inconvenient Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  “You don’t mind?” he asked, with real surprise in his voice. “I’d need to go back to the city first and pick up a few changes of clothes, but I can be back before it gets too late.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” I said, thinking of his mother’s dinner party. “You just probably need to cancel plans and stuff. Death is certainly a good cause—I mean, to cancel things and stuff.”

  “I’d better leave now, so I can get everything done,” he said, stepping over the old burned hole in the floor as he walked through the mudroom. “Thank you. It’ll make things a lot easier.”

  For me, too, I exulted inwardly. I walked him out to his car. He got in and started the motor, then threw me a kiss. I threw one back, and another one, for his mother. And then a refined one for Miss Victoria Crèmepuff.

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” I called to him. “Hurry back.”

  Diamond was right. Sometimes you have to grab your karma by the buds.

  Chapter 38

  EINSTEIN’S THEORY OF RELATIVITY WAS PROBABLY not meant to be a personal philosophy, but I was putting it to good use. How odd, I thought, that my year in Kenya had flown by in what felt like a nanosecond, while waiting four hours for Tom to return from the city took an eternity. The whole afternoon seemed filled with opposites that defined each other. Everything was relative to something else.

  I went through Mrs. Wycliff’s address book to advise those of her friends who were still alive when the service would be held in a local church. There were few phone calls to be made—next to most of the names was a sad notation in Mrs. Wycliff’s wavery handwriting: “Deceased.” I closed the book and put it back on the desk, and thought of how time had fled from every one of them. Unnoticed and unfelt, one minute just piled itself atop the next, until the day ended, a week rotated, a month, a year dissolved into nothing. And yet, the result of all Mrs. Wycliff’s hard work surrounded us. Time leaves us nothing, we leave everything.

  I found Jungle Johnny’s cell phone number in the back of the book and called him, leaving a message before finally closing the little blue leather book, grateful that there would be enough of us to remember and commemorate Mrs. Wycliff’s life.

  Diamond-Rose was burning something in the kitchen for a late snack when I sat down at the table to talk with her.

  “I’m glad that you’ll have a place to stay,” I said, waving away the still smoldering cheese sandwich she offered me.

  “You really need to develop your palate,” she said, taking the sandwich back. “I noticed you’re quite the picky eater.” She took a big bite. “I’m planning to write something for Elisabeth. From a daughter’s perspective.”

  I smiled at her as she wolfed down her food. “I guess you are the closest relative she had,” I said. “And you took good care of her.”

  “I want it to be the perfect eulogy,” Diamond agreed. “To make up for the one I never got to say for my own mother.”

  She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and got up to retrieve a pad and pencil, and I reflected on how odd it was that Diamond’s aunt had treated her so miserably and Elisabeth Wycliff, a perfect stranger, had taken to her. Relatives are where you find them.

  Tom arrived carrying boxes of pizza for an early dinner. The Labs immediately perked up and waddled over to sit by the kitchen table and monitor every bite we took.

  “I’ll pick up Richie and Jackie from the airport tomorrow,” he said as we ate. He took a knife from a drawer and cut a slice, feeding little pieces to the Labs. “She loved these two dogs. Now I don’t know what we’ll do with them.”

  “They’ll stay here, of course,” Diamond interjected. “They’ll be mine.” She paused and gave him a quiet smile. “That is, if it’s okay with you.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “And I think Elisabeth would be pleased.”

  We spent the rest of the day taking care of the animals. Diamond left an announcement on the bulletin board and told the construction men to halt work for a few days. It was growing dark by the time we finished. Diamond left for the house to finish writing the eulogy, and I was closing the hay barn when a light breeze came up from the elephant paddock carrying the familiar smell of elephant with it. I got a sudden lump in my throat. What was Margo doing right now? I could picture her rumbling, purring, and eating hay, maybe tossing a few strands over Abbie to settle her down for the night. The ache was so acute that I sat down on a bank of grass and buried my face in my hands.

  There were footsteps behind me. “Come on in, Neelie,” Tom called out. “There’s a lot to do. Tomorrow I pick up Richie and Jackie, and then we have to meet with the pastor. After that we have to pick out flowers. It’s going to be a busy day.”

  “Give me a minute,” I said.

  He sat down next to me. “This isn’t the right time,” he said, “but when things settle down again, I will ask you properly to marry me, and you can say yes, and we can go on and have a great life together.”

  I looked out over the sanctuary—the grassy fields, the dirt road that led to the paddocks, the nearly completed barn—and didn’t reply. “Have you broken things off with Victoria?”

  “I haven’t had time to talk to her,” he said, “but there really is nothing to break off. It was mostly my mother’s dreams for me. You didn’t give me an answer about my proposing. Would you say yes?”

  “I don’t know what I want,” I said, and it was true. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know how I would answer him. “I don’t want what my mother has. You know, the house and the lawn, the barbecue…”

  “Do you want me?” His voice sounded plaintive.

  “I do love you,” I said softly. “But it’s all the rest of the stuff that comes with it. Do you understand?”

  He sighed. “I’m trying to, Neelie,” he said. “I’m really trying to understand what you want. I know how I feel and I thought you wanted to marry me, and it’s something I want very much. I love you.” He waited another minute or so for me to answer him, but I didn’t know what to say.

  He stood up and turned to the house, and I followed him, feeling miserable.

  We were standing in Mrs. Wycliff’s kitchen. Tom took a piece of paper from his pocket. “I spoke with Elisabeth’s attorneys and told them to begin probating her will.” He looked immutably saddened, and I put my hand on his arm, hoping it was from grief and not my indecision. “Her estate will probably go to Diamond, if there’s no objection. I think Diamond was the closest thing to family she’s had in the last thirty years of her life. I know she was happy to have Diamond in her life.”

  “I think that’s wonderful,” I said.

  He nodded and checked his watch. “There’s nothing more to be done here. Let’s all get some sleep, we have an early day tomorrow.”

  I gave Diamond a good-bye hug before we left. “Will you be all right?” I asked her.

  “I have Baako and Dafi. I’ll be fine,” she said, pointing to the dogs. “It’s not the first time I’ve lost someone.” I kissed her cheek. It was wet with tears.

  “You’ll never really be alone,” I said. “You have me.”

  She glanced around the kitchen. “I know,” she said drolly. “I have you, and I have a life filled with ghosts.”

  The hunter green Bentley was parked next to my nine-year-old Subaru, and Tom was leaning against it when I came out of the house.

  “Do you still want me to come home with you?” he asked me as I approached him.

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course I do.”

  “Should we take my car or yours?”

  “Hard choice there,” I said, laughing and opening the door to his car to get in. There was a brown leather garment bag in the back, and it looked full—packed with what must have been enough clothes for a few days.

  “So, was it very hard to get away?” I asked, hoping my curiosity wasn’t too obvious. “I know you said you had some kind of important appointment or something?”

  “It was nothing pressing,” he said. He was concentrating on the road
, his green eyes deepened with the setting sun, his silver gray hair contrasting against the darkening car.

  We had been given another chance, it seemed. We could love each other, or we could wound each other. It was entirely up to us.

  I knew I loved him—that part was easy. It was getting the rest of it right that was so complicated.

  Chapter 39

  MY HOUSE WAS WAITING FOR US. AND IT WAS WITH some pride that I unlocked the front door to let us inside. My house. If I had nothing else in the world, I had a place to come home to. Even if things with Tom didn’t work out, I wouldn’t need him, and that gave me a certain independence d from my own love for him. Which was very important to me.

  Tom pulled the garment bag from his car and draped it over his shoulder to follow me, but stopped at the threshold as though waiting for something. “The last time I was at your house,” he said, “I seem to remember being attacked by a four-legged piranha.”

  “That was at my ex-house with my ex-dog,” I said, moving across the living room to turn on a lamp. “They’re both gone. Put your stuff down, and I’ll make us some tea.”

  He dropped the garment bag on a sofa and obediently sat down in the kitchen. His eyes were half closed with fatigue.

  “Why don’t you just get some sleep?” I offered. “My office upstairs has a daybed, and there’s also a sofa in the den. It’s up to you.”

  He looked up at me. “I didn’t come here to sleep on a sofa,” he said flatly, then stood up and held his hands out to me. “Come on, Neelie. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” I said, and put my hands into his and let him draw me to him. He wrapped his arms around me, and I fell against his body. It was all sweetness, the warmth and pull of him, the fullness of his shoulder against my face, the sound of his breathing against my ear. He bent his head down to find my lips, and we kissed. We were alone now, no horses, no parties, no hard feelings, no interruptions to stop us. It was what I wanted. I knew with certainty that this was what I wanted. It had been so wrong for both of us to give up on each other, a terrible mistake.

  He knew it, too. I felt him against me, felt him urgent and hard, and knew he wanted me.

  “Why don’t we go upstairs,” he whispered. “I don’t want to waste another minute.”

  Einstein knew, the movement of bodies is special, that time has no meaning, that energy is all light. That naked singularities create a universe filled with their own heat, and once released, it expands and envelops everything in its path. And I was learning that love could be like that, too.

  We were in the bedroom, moving slowly to each other, touching, caressing, erasing time, minute by minute, erasing a year. What is a year? It disappeared when Tom lay down on my bed and held his arms out to me, and I went to him, and he kissed me. Time became irrelevant. There was nothing left but light, the soft glint of touching. He pressed into me, and there was light without the space and time that had driven us apart. It was all undone, redone, completed.

  I slept in his arms and heard him breathing. He touched my face a dozen times overnight, asking if that was really me beside him again. We whispered yes to everything, and suddenly time became dawn, and we had more time in front of us than we could ever use up. He finally fell asleep for the last time, and I slipped out of bed and went down into the kitchen to sit at the table and sort it all out.

  He had said he loved me—I’d heard it clearly—and I had said I loved him. Everything else needed to be let go. It was serving us no purpose except to anchor us to old wounds.

  I made coffee first thing, and he came down into the kitchen and held me and said, “We’ll start over again. We can do it,” and I gave him a cup of coffee and we kissed.

  The rest of the morning was spent with Mrs. Wycliff’s pastor, discussing the service for the funeral. Tom picked up Richie and Jackie, and all of us sat together to plan a funeral that was special. Elisabeth Wycliff had been so vital, had spent her life accomplishing so many things, and we wanted that reflected in the service.

  It came as no surprise to us that she wanted to be cremated. It seemed a fitting end, considering her latest hobby, but her pith helmet and red wellies were rejected by the mortician. Diamond, insisting that they were an integral part of Mrs. Wycliff, decided they would be put on display next to the flowers we chose for the altar. Diamond picked out sprays of yellow and purple and red, the colors of Kenyan wildflowers. Richie and Jackie chose an elephant made of orchids, its trunk upright, to say good-bye. Jackie wanted nine white doves released to commemorate each decade of Elisabeth’s life. Richie wanted a twenty-gun salute.

  “That sounds pretty tricky,” I commented. “Especially if the guns are fired while the doves are flying around, but maybe we could release Samantha.”

  This was quickly vetoed, and we moved on to our next task, picking the right music. The pastor suggested “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” and we liked that, until Diamond suggested “Yesu Klisto, Mwiaii,” which was “Rock of Ages” sung in Swahili. She sang a few words in a wavery soprano, and it was perfect. Everyone decided it would be the last song in the service.

  On the morning of the funeral, the sky was blue and clear and bright, and the sun gave off a welcoming warmth. We were a motley family come together by circumstance but devoted nevertheless, Tom and me and Richie and Jackie and Diamond and Ignacio. Even Mrs. Pennington, Tom’s mother, joined us and sat in the back row, dabbing her eyes.

  “This was very bad timing when I had an important dinner planned,” she whispered to me before the solemnities.

  “You think Mrs. W. died just to keep Tom from getting engaged?” I whispered back, shocked.

  “Well, I know how tight you all are,” she replied. “Friends do things for each other.”

  To my surprise, the church was filled. Mrs. W.’s friends had come from all over. Volunteers who had worked at the sanctuary through the years, people who had supported her work, vendors who sold her supplies, people who loved animals and appreciated that someone had stepped forward to do the things they couldn’t do.

  Jungle Johnny arrived early, a rucksack flipped over his shoulder, and I made sure he was seated next to Diamond. I was pleased and surprised to see how crowded the pews were, and what good words everyone had to say.

  Richie and Tom and Jackie all gave beautiful eulogies, praising Mrs. Wycliff’s bravery, her convictions, her loving heart, her passions for all things living, and her generosity. I briefly thanked her for the opportunity of helping save Margo and Abbie, for inspiring me to do better by the animals, and then just as quickly I sat down.

  Diamond was the last to speak. She stood at the altar and fought back tears as she spoke.

  She spoke of how loved she felt, how good it had been to have found a mother so late in life, how secure and wanted Mrs. Wycliff had made her feel. She spoke of her admiration for Mrs. Wycliff’s life, how she never tired of hearing about the many rescues Mrs. Wycliff had made, how much foresight she had starting the sanctuary, how proud Diamond was to have become her family.

  “Elisabeth Wycliff,” she ended, “I will never forget you, and I will forever honor you. Fika salama, mama yangu. Arrive safely in God’s arms.”

  The organist played a few old gospel songs, but they were quickly overshadowed by the haunting and sweet hymn sung in Swahili that played over the PA system, courtesy of a quick computer download. We each bid her good-bye. I placed a tiny china statue of a baby elephant on the altar, Richie and Jackie placed a small silver Noah’s ark, Tom’s gift was a white rose, Diamond left a half dozen cheroots tied in a white silk ribbon because she knew Elisabeth would have appreciated them, and Samantha sat on Diamond’s shoulder and whispered a tender and heartfelt Fuckyou.

  Finally, as the autumn sun rose full into the sky, taking the chill from the air and replacing it with warmth and golden light, Mrs. Elisabeth Jane Hauptmann Wycliff’s brave and lovely soul was sent on its ultimate and eternal safari as Diamond and Jungle Johnny gave a duet impression of the farewell
call of the white-bellied go-away bird.

  Chapter 40

  MRS. WYCLIFF WAS QUICKLY CREMATED AND PLACED in a lovely silver-and-maroon urn, which was presented to Diamond for safekeeping.

  She moved the ashes from room to room, never quite comfortable with their ultimate placement. She felt the kitchen was too warm—although it was nice for breakfast—the living room too drafty, Mrs. W.’s old bedroom too isolated. It wasn’t unusual to see Diamond taking Mrs. W. along on truck rides while she completed her farm chores or accompanied by her as she ran errands into town, Mrs. W. safely ensconced in the front seat, her urn wrapped in the seat belt.

  “I feel so responsible for her,” Diamond said to me. “At first, I thought it would bother me, but I find her presence comforting. She took me in and gave me a home, and I want to do what’s best for her.”

  “I’m sure she’d be happy just sitting next to her red wellies on the mantelpiece,” I replied. “That’s kind of traditional, isn’t it?”

  “But she wasn’t a traditional woman,” Diamond worried. “Plus, I think getting her outdoors cheers her up. She can’t stay cooped up all day in the house.”

  “I think she needs her rest,” I pointed out. “You know, eternal rest? She can’t be bouncing all over town like this at her age.”

  But Diamond was insistent. Mrs. W. shared the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; sat on the hood of the truck when we worked the horses; and in general, spent more time actively outdoors than she had in the last twenty years of her previous life.

  Mrs. W. apparently was sharing Diamond’s special moments with Rocco, the construction manager, too. By the time I would arrive at the farm every morning, Diamond was already aboard one of the heavy machines, shrieking with delight as she practiced driving the caterpillar or operating the large claw of the backhoe, lifting beams and huge metal gates, her red hair blowing carefree across her face, with Rocco, always next to her, laughing, his preternaturally white teeth providing a vivid contrast to his florid skin. It would seem they made a perfect pair, each decked out in dark pants, thick boots, yellow helmets, and significant amounts of dust.