by Jodi Picoult
“She was overtired,” I said.
“She was terrified,” Gideon corrected, sitting down beside me again. “After the fact.”
“Well.” I looked up at him. “Thank you.”
He stared off into the trees, where Maura had vanished. “Did she run off?”
I nodded. “She was terrified after the fact, too,” I said. “Do you know that in all the years I’ve been doing research I’ve never seen an elephant mother lose her temper with a baby? No matter how annoying or whiny or difficult the baby’s being?” I reached out to pull a ribbon out of Jenna’s hair, which was trailing like an afterthought in the wake of her outburst. “Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have the same skill set in my parenting.”
“Jenna’s lucky to have you.”
I smirked. “Considering I’m all she’s got.”
“No,” Gideon said. “I watch you, when you’re with her. You’re a good mother.”
I shrugged, waiting for the self-deprecating joke to come, but the words—the validation—meant too much to me. Instead, I heard myself say, “You’d be a good father, too.”
He picked up one of the dandelions Jenna had yanked out of the ground and stockpiled before she wandered over toward Maura. He carved a slit in its stem with his thumb and threaded a second through the first. “I sort of thought I would be one, by now.”
I pressed my lips together, because Grace’s secret wasn’t mine to give.
Gideon continued to string the weeds together. “Do you ever wonder if you fall for a person … or just the idea of her?”
What I think is that there is no perspective in grief, or in love. How can there be, when one person becomes the center of the universe—either because he has been lost or because he has been found?
Gideon took the crown of daisies and slipped it over Jenna’s head. It tipped sideways on the knob of one pigtail, falling over her brow. In her sleep, she stirred.
“Sometimes I think there’s no such thing as falling in love. It’s just the fear of losing someone.”
There was a breeze, carrying the scent of wild apples and timothy grass; the earthy smell of elephant hide and manure; the juice of the peach that Jenna had eaten earlier, and that had dripped onto her sundress. “Do you worry?” Gideon asked. “About what will happen if he doesn’t come back?”
It was the first time, really, that we had talked about Thomas leaving. Although we had shared stories of how we met our spouses, that was where the conversation had stayed: at the highest peak of potential, at the moment in those relationships when everything still seemed possible.
Lifting my chin, I looked squarely at Gideon. “I worry about what will happen if he does,” I said.
It was colic. It was not uncommon in elephants, especially ones who had been given bad hay, or whose diet had been radically and quickly changed. Neither of those was the case for Syrah, but still she lay on her side, drowsy, bloated. She wouldn’t eat or drink. Her stomach growled. Gertie, the dog who was her constant companion, sat at her side and howled.
Grace was at my cottage, babysitting for Jenna. She’d stay there all night, so that we could watch over the elephant. Gideon had volunteered, but I was in charge now. There was no way I couldn’t be there, too.
We stood in the barn with our arms crossed, watching the vet examine the elephant. “He’s just going to tell us what we already know,” Gideon whispered to me.
“Yeah, and then he’s going to give her drugs to make her better.”
He shook his head. “What do you plan to pawn to pay his bill?”
Gideon was right about that. Money was so tight right now that we had to borrow from our operating expenses if we were going to cover the cost of emergencies, like this one. “I’ll figure it out,” I said, scowling.
We watched the vet give Syrah an anti-inflammatory—flunixin—and a muscle relaxant. Gertie curled up beside her in the hay, whimpering. “All we can really do is wait and hope she starts passing boluses,” he said. “In the meantime, get her to drink some water.”
But Syrah didn’t want to drink. Every time we came near her with a bucket, whether it was heated or cooled, she huffed and tried to turn her head away. After several hours of this, Gideon and I were both emotionally wrecked. Whatever the vet had administered did not seem to be working.
It is a pitiful thing, seeing such a strong and majestic animal laid low. It made me think of the elephants in the bush I’d seen who had been shot by villagers, or injured by snares. I knew, too, that colic wasn’t something to be taken lightly. It could lead to impaction, and that could lead to death. I knelt beside Syrah, palpating her, feeling the tightness of her abdomen. “Has this happened before?”
“Not to Syrah,” he said. “But it’s not the first time I’ve seen it.” He seemed to be chewing on a thought, equivocating. Then he looked at me. “Do you use baby oil on Jenna’s skin?”
“I used to put it in the bath,” I said. “Why?”
“Where is it?”
“If I still have any, it would be under the sink in the bathroom—”
He stood up and walked out of the barn. “Where are you going?” I called, but I couldn’t follow him. I wouldn’t leave Syrah.
Ten minutes later, Gideon returned. He was holding two bottles of baby oil and a Sara Lee pound cake I recognized from my own refrigerator. I followed him into the kitchen of the Asian barn, where we prepared meals for the elephants. He started to unwrap the cake’s packaging. “I’m not hungry,” I told him.
“This isn’t for you.” Gideon set the cake on the counter and began to stab it with a knife, repeatedly.
“I think it’s dead,” I said.
He opened a bottle of baby oil and poured it over the cake. The fluid began to sink into the sponge, settling into the puncture marks he’d made. “At the circus, the elephants colicked sometimes. The vet used to tell us to get them to drink oil. I guess it gets things moving.”
“The vet didn’t say—”
“Alice.” Gideon hesitated, his hands stilling over the cake. “Do you trust me?”
I looked at this man, who had worked by my side for weeks now to create the illusion that this sanctuary could survive. Who had saved me once. And my daughter.
I read once, in a silly women’s magazine at the dentist, that when we like someone, our pupils dilate. And that we tend to like people whose pupils are dilated when they look at us. It’s an endless cycle: We want the people who want us. Gideon’s irises were nearly the same color as his pupils, which created an optical illusion: a black hole, an endless fall. I wondered what mine looked like, in response. “Yes,” I said.
He instructed me to get a bucket of water, and I followed him into the stall where Syrah still lay on her side, her belly rising and falling with effort. Gertie sat up, suddenly alert. “Hey, beautiful,” Gideon said, kneeling in front of the elephant. He held out the cake. “Syrah, she’s got a real sweet tooth,” he told me.
She sniffed the cake with her trunk. She touched it gingerly. Gideon broke off a small piece and tossed it into Syrah’s mouth while Gertie sniffed at his fingers.
A moment later Syrah took the entire cake and swallowed it whole.
“Water,” Gideon said.
I settled the bucket where Syrah could reach and watched her siphon out a trunkful. Gideon leaned in, his strong hands stroking her flank, telling her what a good girl she was.
I wished he would touch me like that.
The thought came so fast that I fell back on my heels. “I have to—I have to go check on Jenna,” I stammered.
Gideon glanced up. “I’m sure she and Grace are both asleep.”
“I have to …” My voice trailed off. My face was hot; I pressed my palms against my cheeks. Turning, I hurried out of the barn.
Gideon was right; when I reached the cottage, Grace and Jenna were curled together on the couch. Jenna’s hand was caught in Grace’s. It made me feel sick, to know that while Grace had been taking care of someone I loved
, I had been wishing I could do the same with someone she loved.
She stirred, careful to sit up without waking Jenna. “Is it Syrah? What happened?”
I gathered Jenna into my arms. She woke up briefly before her eyes drifted shut again. I didn’t want to disturb her, but it was more important, in that moment, to remember who I was. What I was.
A mother. A wife.
“You should tell him,” I said to Grace. “About not being able to have a baby.”
She narrowed her eyes. We had not discussed this since first broaching the topic weeks ago. I knew she was worried that maybe I had already said something to Gideon, but that wasn’t it at all. I wanted them to have that conversation so Gideon would know Grace trusted him, wholly. I wanted them to have that conversation so they could make plans for a future that included surrogacy or adoption. I wanted the bond between them to be so strong that I could not, even accidentally, find a chink in the wall of their marriage through which I could peek.
“You should tell him,” I repeated. “Because he deserves to know.”
The next morning, two wonderful things happened. Syrah got up, seemingly over her colic, and wandered with a bouncing Gertie into the Asian enclosure. And the fire department dropped off a gift: a used fire hose that they wanted to donate, since they’d recently upgraded their equipment.
Gideon, who had gotten even less sleep than I had, seemed to be in a terrific mood. If Grace had taken my advice and spoken to him about her secret, he either had taken it well or was too happy about Syrah’s recovery to let the news affect him. At any rate, he certainly didn’t seem to be thinking twice about my awkward exit the night before. He hefted the hose over his shoulder. “The girls are going to love this,” he said, grinning. “Let’s test it out.”
“I have a million things to do,” I replied. “And so do you.”
I was being a bitch. But if that created a wall between us, that was safer.
The vet returned to examine Syrah and gave her a clean bill of health. I buried myself in the office, checking accounts, trying to figure out where I could borrow from Peter to pay Paul, so that the vet’s bill would be covered. Jenna sat at my feet, coloring the photos in old newspapers with her crayons. Nevvie had taken one of the trucks into town for a tune-up, and Grace was cleaning out the African barn.
It wasn’t until Jenna tugged on my shorts and told me she was hungry that I realized hours had passed. I made her peanut butter and jelly, cutting the sandwich into squares just the right size for her hands. I took off the crusts, saving them in my pocket for Maura. And then I heard the sound of someone dying.
Grabbing Jenna, I started to run toward the African barn—where the sounds were coming from. I had a series of concussive, thunderous thoughts: Maura and Hester are fighting. Maura is injured. One of the elephants has hurt Grace.
One of the elephants has hurt Gideon.
I threw open the barn door to find Hester and Maura in their stalls, with the retractable bars that separated the two wide open. In this big expanse, they were frolicking, dancing, chortling in the artificial rain of the fire hose. As Gideon sprayed them, they turned in circles and squealed.
They weren’t dying. They were having the time of their lives.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, as Jenna kicked to get out of my arms. I set her on the ground, and she immediately began to jump in puddles on the cement.
Gideon grinned, waving the fire hose through the bars, back and forth. “Enrichment,” he said. “Look at Maura. Have you ever seen her acting crazy like this?”
He was right; Maura seemed to have lost all vestiges of grief. She was shaking her head and stomping in the spray, throwing her trunk up every time she sang out.
“Is the furnace fixed?” I asked. “And the oil changed in the ATV? Have you taken down the fence in the African enclosure or stumped the northwest field? Did you regrade the slope of the pond in the Asian enclosure?” It was a laundry list of all the things we needed to do.
Gideon twisted the nozzle of the hose, so that the water slowed to a trickle. The elephants trumpeted and turned, waiting for more. Hoping.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Jenna, honey, come on.” I started toward her, but she ran away from me, splashing in another puddle.
Gideon’s mouth flattened. “Hey, boss,” he said, and he waited for me to turn.
As soon as I did, he twisted the nozzle so that the spray hit me square in the chest.
It was frigid and shocking, so forceful that I staggered backward, pushing my sopping hair out of my face and looking down at my drenched clothing. Gideon angled the hose so that it struck the elephants instead. He grinned. “You need to chill out,” he said.
I lunged for the hose. He was bigger than me, but I was faster. I turned the spray on Gideon until he held his hands up in front of his face. “Okay!” He laughed, choking on the stream. “Okay! I give up!”
“You started it,” I reminded him, as his hands tried to wrestle the nozzle away from me. The hose wriggled like a snake between us, and we were faith healers, fighting for a moment of the divine. Slippery, soaked, Gideon finally managed to wrap his arms around me, trapping my hands between us so that the spray hit our feet and I couldn’t hold the nozzle anymore. It fell to the ground, swiveling in a semicircle before it came to rest, spraying a fountain toward the elephants.
I was laughing so hard I was out of breath. “Okay, you win. Let me go,” I gasped.
I was temporarily blinded; my hair was plastered to my face. Gideon pushed it away, so that I could see him smiling. His teeth, they were impossibly white. I couldn’t take my eyes off his mouth. “I don’t think so,” he said, and he kissed me.
The shock was even more intense than that first blast of the hose. I froze, for only a heartbeat. And then my arms were around his waist, my palms hot against the damp skin of his back. I ran my hands over the landscape of his arms, the valleys where the muscles joined together. I drank from him like I’d never seen a well this deep.
“Wet,” Jenna said. “Mama wet.”
She stood beneath us, one hand patting each of our legs. Until that moment, I had completely forgotten about her.
As if I didn’t have enough to be ashamed of.
For the second time, I ran away from Gideon as if my life were being threatened. Which, I guess, was the truth.
For the next two weeks I avoided Gideon, relaying messages instead through Grace or Nevvie, making sure I was not alone with him in a barn or enclosure at any time. I left him notes in the kitchens of the barns, lists of what needed to be done. Instead of meeting up with Gideon at the end of the day, I sat with Jenna on the floor of the cottage, playing with puzzles and blocks and stuffed animals.
One night, Gideon radioed from the hay barn. “Dr. Metcalf,” he said. “We have a situation.”
I could not remember the last time he had referred to me as Dr. Metcalf. Either this was a reaction to the coldness I’d been sending out in waves or there was a true and urgent problem. I settled Jenna between my legs on the ATV and drove past the Asian barn, where I knew Grace would be preparing the evening meals. “Can you watch her?” I asked. “Gideon said it was urgent.”
Grace reached for a bucket, turning it over to make a step stool. “Come on up here, pumpkin,” she said. “See those apples? Can you hand them to me one at a time?” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “We’re fine,” she said.
I drove up to the hay barn to find Gideon in a standoff with Clyde, who supplied our bales. Clyde was a guy we trusted; too often farmers tried to unload their moldy hay on us because they figured it was just elephants, so what was the difference? He had his arms folded across his chest. Gideon stood with one foot braced on a hay bale. Only half the load had been moved into storage from Clyde’s truck.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Clyde says that he won’t take a check, because the last one bounced. But I can’t seem to find any of the spare cash, and until I do, Cl
yde isn’t inclined to let me unload the rest of the bales,” Gideon said. “So maybe you’ve got a solution.”
The reason the last check bounced was that we didn’t have any money. The reason there was no spare cash was that I’d used it to pay for produce this week. If I wrote another check, this one would bounce, too—I had used the last of the funds in our account to pay the vet’s bill.
I didn’t know how I was going to pay for groceries for my daughter next week, much less hay for the elephants.
“Clyde,” I said. “We’re going through a rough patch.”
“So’s the whole country.”
“But we have a relationship,” I replied. “You and my husband have been in business together for years, right?”
“Yeah, and he always managed to pay me.” He frowned. “I can’t let you have the hay for nothing.”
“I know. And I can’t let the elephants starve.”
I felt like I was in quicksand. Slowly, but surely, I was bound to drown. What I needed to do was fund-raise, but I barely had time for it. My research had been long forgotten; I hadn’t touched it in weeks. I could barely stay ahead of operations without trying to gauge the interest of new donors.
Interest.
I looked at Clyde. “I’ll pay you ten percent more if you give me the hay now and let me settle with you next month.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because whether or not you want to admit it, Clyde, we have a history, and you owe us the benefit of the doubt.”
He didn’t owe us anything. But I was hoping the guilt of being the straw that broke the sanctuary’s back would be enough to make him pretend otherwise.
“Twenty percent,” Clyde bargained.
I shook his hand. Then I climbed into the truck and began to haul the hay bales.
An hour later, Clyde drove away, and I sat down on the edge of a bale. Gideon was still working, his back flexing as he stacked the bales for more efficient storage, lifting them higher than I physically could manage.
“So,” I said. “You’re just going to pretend I’m not here?”
Gideon didn’t turn around. “Guess I learned from a master.”
