An Inconvenient Elephant
Page 30
We toasted one another with beer and ate fiery beef brisket and coleslaw sandwiches, and wished one another happiness and good luck. Grisha announced he was planning for a much-needed vacation before buying a small second home for himself in Rwanda.
“Grisha is thinking, he needs vacationment. Grisha cannot romp the world forever,” he declared.
“Rwanda is quite a beautiful country now,” Tom agreed. “It has found peace.” He saluted Grisha with a glass of beer. “And I wish you peace as well.”
“Rwanda,” I mused. “I guess a wild heart needs a wild home.” Grisha bowed his head to me.
Diamond and I were planning to fly back to New York together, sans the corporeal Mrs. W., though Diamond reverentially wrapped up the urn and packed it into her suitcase.
“I’m glad she came with us,” she declared. “Though I’m sorry I have to leave her in Texas. It was her very last rescue, you know.”
“But not yours,” said JJ, “I’m hoping.”
Diamond laughed. “Probably not,” she said. “I will always be ready. Just give me enough time to buy the oranges.”
Tom stood up and took my hand. I looked up at him, puzzled. I was still holding part of my sandwich in it.
“I would like to make an announcement!” he proclaimed.
“No, you don’t,” I said, pulling my hand away. “We have to talk first.”
“Excuse us,” he said, giving a little bow to the group around the table, then helping me from my chair. He led me behind the restaurant, where there were huge pits smoldering with charcoal and half steers spinning on skewers the size of ski poles. I had brought my sandwich with me and took a bite.
“This isn’t the most romantic of places,” Tom started, “but I’m asking you to marry me.”
I looked at him and took a bite of sandwich. His green eyes were dark and earnest, his silver hair curled just a bit over his ears, his shirt was rumpled, his jeans were tight.
“I have to divorce my Russian husband,” I joked.
“I’m serious, Neelie,” he said. “I love you and I want to marry you.”
The men tending the barbecue pit suddenly stood at attention to earnestly eavesdrop.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t think I’m what you want,” I started. “I mean, I’m not…normal.”
He gave me a bemused look. “I sort of figured that out.”
But I was thinking of how I felt as I stood at the thundering falls watching the water trying to reach heaven, how uncontained it was. How free from encumbrances and expectations. And then I thought of Grisha’s words about having a wild heart.
“I can’t be home,” I said. “I don’t want to…live…in a house…all the time.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“And I may need to leave from time to time,” I added.
He nodded. “I know.”
“Even if I don’t quite know where I’m going,” I added. “And I might have to sleep with an elephant once in a while.” I took another bite of my sandwich.
He took the sandwich from me and threw it away, then took my hand in his. “I know all that.”
“I suffer from…a wild heart,” I said.
“I have a place just for it,” he said, and kissed me to the sound of barbecue forks clacking approvingly in the background. “Next to mine.”
We drank the local brew the whole day, toasting and saluting one another, and celebrating a successful rescue and our engagement.
“To the happy couple,” said Jungle Johnny.
“To your happiness, always,” said Diamond-Rose.
Grisha stood up and gestured with his beer. “Grisha is never so happy to make divorcement,” he announced. “Grisha is filled with joyness to give wife away to best friend.”
Chapter 47
OF COURSE, MY MOTHER MADE THE WEDDING CAKE.
It was in the shape of a huge peanut because she couldn’t find a pan that resembled an elephant. It was five layers and covered in chocolate frosting because she thought gray frosting would give it the appearance of being a big boulder. Too impatient to wait for our reception, she proudly showed it off to the family as soon as she and my father arrived. We crowded around the center table for the big reveal.
“That’s the oddest-looking cake you ever made!” my father exclaimed when he saw it. “It looks like a big pile of elephant poo.”
“Dung,” I corrected him.
“Speaking of elephants,” Reese interrupted, “why don’t elephants like to play cards in the jungle?”
I turned to him. “You know, a nice wedding gift would be a day without stupid jokes.”
“Because of all the cheetahs,” he finished triumphantly, and kissed me on the cheek. “And that’ll be it for the day.” I gave him a grateful hug in return.
“You never did appreciate my baking,” my mother said.
“Mom, I love your baking!” I protested. “I don’t think anyone in the world has a wedding cake that looks like this!”
“I must admit,” my mother modestly replied, “I was inspired.”
“We can cover it in ice cream,” said Marielle. “Ice cream fixes everything.”
Tom and I got married at the sanctuary under a big white tent with heaters blasting and a million flowers hanging from everywhere. A flutist, a guitarist, and someone playing the thumb piano performed softly in the background.
I didn’t want a big wedding or a fancy wedding or a domesticated wedding of any kind. I wore a simple yellow dress, for spite; Tom wore jeans because I love the way he looks in jeans; and we invited only family, if you follow Diamond-Rose’s reasoning that everyone you love is family. My parents attended, along with Jerome and Kate; the twins, Reese and Marielle; Tom’s mother, who dressed in enough black lace to look like a Goya painting, but I got the point; Tom’s son and his two sisters; Grisha and Richie and Ignacio and Alana, who flew up from Florida; and Jackie and Diamond-Rose and Jungle Johnny and Mrs. W.’s urn, to which Diamond festively attached a sprig of lilies of the valley. I rode down the aisle on Mousi, sitting sideways on his bare back. He was scrubbed white and braided up with yellow roses, and seemed to understand the importance of the occasion, because he did a dignified march right up to Tom and the minister, and held his bowels the whole time.
We had a barbecue, which made my father very happy. And we made sure there were plenty of barbecued porta-bello mushrooms, which made Richie and Jackie very happy.
“JJ and I are going to travel a bit together,” Diamond confided to me while we ate. She had apparently showered for the occasion, the second time in my recent memory, and looked beautiful in a deep green pants suit and a large yellow flower tucked into her flaming hair. She glanced adoringly over at Jungle Johnny. “We leave tomorrow morning for Johannesburg.”
“I thought you’d had it with men like that,” I teased her. “You know—the jungle takes them?”
“Well, I think this time, the jungle will take both of us,” she said, then pulled a cheroot from her pocket. I tried not to choke as the familiar putrefied scent filled the air.
“I just hate to leave you with all the work,” she added.
“No problem,” I reassured her. “Tom is hiring professional animal caretakers to help run things. And we’ll be fixing up the main house so that you’ll always have a place to come back to.”
She gave me a hug along with another whiff of her cheroot.
There was a sudden barrage of spoons tapping glasses, and Tom leaned over to kiss me.
“I am the happiest man in the world,” he whispered.
“Me, too,” I whispered back. “I mean, I would be if I were a man, but since I’m a woman, I’m definitely the—”
“Oh, Neelie.” He sighed. “Shut up.”
My parents strolled over to chat.
“So, where are you going for a honeymoon?” my father asked.
“That’s up to Neelie,” Tom replied, putting his arm around my waist and pulling me close.
“Well, I hope i
t’s not anyplace exotic,” my mother interjected. “I’m certainly glad that her last trip with you was only to Texas. You can’t get much safer than the good old U.S.A.”
Jerome came over to give me a hug and kiss and advice on prenups, though it was about two hours after the fact, while Kate helpfully whispered, “Don’t eat too much wedding cake if you want to wear this dress again.”
“I have a question for the new bride and groom,” Reese announced. “Why were the elephants thrown out of the hotel swimming pool?”
“Oh, Reese,” I said. “You promised!”
“Okay, this is really the last one. Because they couldn’t keep their trunks up.”
We ate the elephant peanut dung cake with chocolate ice cream, which only made it look worse, and I drank more champagne than I thought I could hold.
The sun was melting away, leaving traces of rose and gold in the sky. Our guests were murmuring with contentment, and I took Tom’s hand and led him down to the elephant barn, where our special guests, two elephants from Zimbabwe, were recuperating nicely in their big new stalls.
Brass nameplates on the front of their stalls read, “Tusker” and “Shamwari.”
Still brightly marked with huge red spray paint stains in the middle of their foreheads, the elephants were very timid around people. Shamwari comforted himself every night by rocking, and Tusker still hadn’t regained his outgoing good nature. His eyes looked haunted, saddened with a new knowledge of humans he’d never had before, but I knew we would fix that.
We stood in front of them, and I pulled Tom close to me. “This is the best wedding gift you could have given me,” I said.
“I’m glad you sort of forced me into saving them,” he replied.
And it was, as Diamond liked to say, perfect.
We had all done good. We had saved a world.
Actually, two worlds, because it has been said that those who save a life, save a world, and I guess my karma knew a thing or two about what I needed to complete, because I hadn’t been allowed to come home from Africa until I put it all together. I’d had things taken from me and given back to me, and I had been given a wild heart so that my unrest would drive me to do what my destiny required.
Tom and I and Grisha and Diamond and JJ, and even Mrs. W. in her own peculiar, deceased way, had all helped restore some balance to what was maybe not such a good world, maybe a sad and broken world, but as I watched the two noble elephants in front of me, I thought, to do anything less was unimaginable.
And I learned something about being civilized. When someone aspires to make the world better for another creature—any creature—then that is truly being civilized.
And that’s what it’s really all about.
Tom pulled me close. “We’d better get back to our guests, Ms. Neelie Davison-who-won’t-take-a-married-name-ever-again,” he whispered into my ear. “Or they’ll be wondering where we got off to.”
I looked up at him. “No, they won’t,” I said, laughing. “No, they’ll know exactly where we are.”
Author’s Note
THE MOST VULNERABLE CREATURES ON THE PLANET are animals. Routinely hunted, tortured, maimed, and made victim to mankind’s most despicable behavior, they have no real power to defend themselves.
On the other hand, the most blessed of humans are those who spend their lives rescuing animals from desperate circumstances. Neelie and Diamond-Rose would want me to dedicate this book to all those people who have carried dogs and cats out of filthy hoarder homes or puppy mills, from floods and catastrophes or abandonment. To those who have picked animals off the streets, taken them from dungeons, removed their chains, given them their first taste of food or water in far too long. To my friends who rescue birds from cramped cages in dark and cold garages and basements. From boxes, where chickens are warehoused for cockfighting.
Thank you to my horse-rescue friends who literally risk life and limb bringing horses and donkeys and mules to safety, and then spend countless hours and money from their own pockets to bring them back from starvation and heal their bodies and hearts.
And to my dear elephants-rescue friends.
There are good, wonderful elephant sanctuaries in the world—I mention them on my website—and they have my total support, gratitude, and admiration for the difficult, grueling, never-ending work they are committed to.
I hope you will find it in your heart to help any one of these creatures. In any way you can. The motivation is to be found in your soul, the reward is to be found in the eyes of your rescue.
Look deep.
Acknowledgments
IT’S TRUE THAT WRITERS ARE THE MOST SOLITARY OF people, sitting alone in front of their computer screens waiting for that perfect sentence to put in an appearance, but we do have the never-ending support of wonderful people. I want to thank Jane Gelfman, my agent extraordinaire, who is always encouraging and kind and caring and smart and who always understands what I mean, even when I don’t. To my editor, Wendy Lee, excruciatingly thorough and brilliant and always on the money with her great suggestions and exquisite sense of character and plot and timing, and whose requests and suggestions have made me a better writer.
I am really grateful that they have my back.
And thanks, as always, to the Gang of Four, who sit with me every Thursday afternoon to listen and laugh or cry as I read, before we attack some memorable lunches.
About the Author
JUDY REENE SINGER is a dressage competitor, horse trainer, and all-around animal lover. She has written about the equestrian world for more than a decade and was named top feature writer of the year by The Chronicle of the Horse. She is the author of Horseplay and Still Life with Elephant.
www.judyreenesinger.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Also by Judy Reene Singer
Still Life with Elephant
Horseplay
Credits
Cover photographs © iStockphoto
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AN INCONVENIENT ELEPHANT. Copyright © 2010 by Judy Reene Singer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST HARPER PAPERBACK PUBLISHED 2010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Singer, Judy Reene.
An inconvenient elephant / Judy Reene Singer.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Still life with elephant.
ISBN 978-0-06-171377-4
1. Americans—Africa—Fiction. 2. Safaris—Africa—Fiction. 3. Elephants—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.I5724I63 2010
813'.6—dc22
2009030671
EPub Edition © July 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200533-5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
> P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com