Still Life with Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  I hadn’t. Because we jointly owned the suitcases, and because I didn’t think there’d be anything Matt-ish in them.

  “Can I come by and get it?”

  I fiddled around with the salad. It was really just romaine lettuce and some goopy dressing with a few croutons, trying hard to resemble the real thing. Maybe Matt’s repentance was like the diner salad, also trying hard to resemble the real thing. Maybe there was some fiendish plan behind Matt’s offer to help with the house, and it wasn’t as obvious as bad food—maybe he was trying hard to resemble caring and contrite, and then would drop another bomb, like how much Holly-Baby-Hatcher wanted to live in the house. After all, she had seen the bedroom we had once optimistically fixed up for a nursery. The gray ponies I had stenciled all around the walls, with pink and blue halters and sparkles. How could I know what his motives were?

  “What do you need your passport for?” I asked. “Quickie divorce somewhere, followed by a long honeymoon?” I didn’t want him to know I had spoken to Richie, because Matt’s a very private person. If he thought I was talking to Richie about him, I knew he would shut down and I would totally lose any chance to talk things over with him. Or maybe I had already lost all my chances. Diner food is sometimes hard to figure out.

  “Neelie, don’t.” He finished his burger, then took a long drink of his diet soda. “Richie Chiger asked me to help him with something,” he said. “Out of the country. It’ll pay me a lot of money if I go, so I’m going.”

  “And you can’t tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He leaned over the table, accidentally catching his shirt pocket in his ketchup. I dipped my napkin into my water glass and offered it to him. “Why not?” I asked again.

  “Because,” he said, looking down at his pocket and swiping hard at it, like a little boy who had just gotten his party clothes dirty, “the trip could be very dangerous.”

  He followed me back to the house in his car. As soon as he walked into the house, Grace went crazy, jumping in the air, yelping like a puppy, racing circles through the rooms. I followed him up to the attic, where he found his passport, and was still behind him when he stopped at our bedroom door.

  “Nothing left?” he asked, peeking inside. “I’m going to need the rest of my jeans. And my heavy stable-boots.”

  “No,” I answered. “It’s all gone.”

  “Oh,” he said sadly. “Oh.”

  He said nothing else. And I felt terrible.

  I followed him downstairs. He stood at the front door a long time, looking at me, then down at his shoes, then back at me. I knew he wanted to kiss me. I knew it. The truth was, I wanted to kiss him, too—wanted him to hold me and put everything back the way it was—but it was too late. There was, as Reese put it, an elephant in the room. This time it was Holly and the baby. Matt put his hand on the doorknob.

  “Let’s talk some more,” he said. “When I get back.”

  “Back from where?”

  “I can’t discuss it yet,” he said. “I was kind of sworn to secrecy.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” I opened the front door and smiled brightly. “You’re so good with secrets.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I HAD to know.

  I had to know where Matt was going and why it was dangerous.

  And the only person who could fill me in was Richie. So I broke my self-imposed vow of silence toward the entire rest of the free world and called him.

  “Neelie! Great to hear from you! Matt did a terrific job on the bear. Claw’s almost healed.”

  “Great,” I said. “How are the new draft horses?”

  “Matt wormed them, did their teeth, routine stuff.” He paused. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “He’s been so busy lately,” I said, “we practically never get around to talking. You know how it is.”

  “I guess so,” he said, but it sounded more like a question. Then the conversation ground to a halt.

  “Maybe I’ll drop by this week,” I ventured.

  “Would you mind bringing a few more syringes? Matt forgot to leave extras,” Richie replied. “Turns out, one of the lions needed antibiotics—”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Things were getting complicated. Syringes were not usually at the top of my pantry-supply list. I wanted Richie to think that Matt and I were still together, and now I had to come up with syringes. Lies always do that—pile up on one another like a game of pickup sticks, and you can’t touch one without upsetting the whole heap. Of course I wasn’t going to bring anything but a box of peanut-butter cookies for the horses. I would just pretend that I had forgotten the syringes.

  The Wycliff-Pennington Animal Sanctuary sits on 750 acres off a secluded road, ten miles from us. It was founded twenty years ago by Elisabeth Wycliff, a recluse and an animal-lover, who rescued two badly treated lions from a roadside zoo. Over the years she added to her collection, never turning away an animal, paying for everything out of her own pocket. It was an enormous expense, but she persevered. With some publicity, she secured a sponsor, Thomas Princeton Pennington, who supported the sanctuary without a lot of fanfare. He had inherited a family fortune and increased it with legendary business acumen. He was always on television and in the papers, and I would read about him from time to time as he dated starlets or attended Greenpeace rallies or argued before Senate hearings about the environment.

  Even with Thomas Pennington’s full support, the sanctuary that bore his name wasn’t a glamorous place. Just a farm, really, with a few large barns and lots of strong fencing, but the animals were fed and treated well. For the past nine years, I had frequently accompanied Matt when he was called to work there.

  Now I drove up the long gravel driveway, past the big house where Mrs. Wycliff lived, then past the more modest house where Richie and Jackie lived, past the isolation barn for newly acquired animals, to Richie’s office. I got out of my truck. Richie was loading a battered black farm truck with hay and plastic bins of raw chicken legs and bags of frozen bluefish. He waved hello as soon as he spotted me. I waved back.

  “Peanut-butter cookies,” I said, holding up the boxes as I walked toward him. “Coffee and jelly donuts for us.” I smiled, hoping he had forgotten about the damn syringes.

  “Good to see you,” he said, taking his coffee and donut. “Come with me, it’s feeding time at the zoo.” He opened the passenger door, and I climbed in. We bumped down a gravel path, and I watched the farm roll past. It was peaceful; only an occasional loud grunt or call broke the silence. The only humans to be seen were a handful of volunteers, who were now busy cleaning out the barns or filling water tubs.

  Richie parked the truck in front of a large pen, and I followed him out of the cab, carefully trying to avoid the deep, slick mud. He threw several squares of hay over the fence, and a herd of imperious-looking camels walked over and began eating. We got back into the truck, and he drove up to a grassy enclosure where two old lions were batting a basketball back and forth. They were the happy recipients of the raw chicken legs. A grizzly bear sat contentedly in the middle of a pond next door and watched Richie fling two or three fish at him before he was motivated enough to wade over and check out his lunch. We drove on to still another fenced field, where we got out of the truck again so Richie could toss more hay over the fence.

  “I’ll call the girls,” he said, then whistled through his fingers. Two sorrel draft horses trotted up to us. They were carefully groomed, but their ribs and spines stood out in bas-relief, and their hip bones looked like coat hangers.

  “Wow,” I said. “Thin.”

  “Believe it or not, they’ve put on about two hundred pounds apiece,” Richie said. “You had to see them when they came in.”

  Richie watched them snuffle the cookies from my hand for a few minutes. I was just starting to relax about his request when he brightened. “Oh, hey,” he said, “did you bring the syringes?”

  “Oh no!” I gasped, doing
an Oscar-worthy performance of embarrassed incompetence. “I totally forgot!” But I felt very guilty about the infected lion.

  He nodded, not looking very surprised. “That’s okay. I’ll ask Jackie to stop by Matt’s office. I can boil the ones I have until she picks up new ones.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, relieved he was able to come up with a solution, but not able to look him in the eye. I fed a few more cookies to the horses, wondering how to bring up the subject of Matt’s traveling off to somewhere dangerous without sounding like I was prying. As Matt’s wife, I really shouldn’t have had to ask where he was going.

  Richie watched me quietly. The horses finished the box of cookies. I gave them a final pat.

  “So what’s going on, Neelie?” Richie asked. “Matt looks like hell, and, frankly, so do you. He hasn’t said anything, but I can tell something’s very wrong.”

  “Maybe I need some time at a sanctuary,” I joked. “You got any room here?” The two horses were pushing each other out of the way to beg for more cookies.

  “You didn’t come to feed the horses,” Richie said.

  I looked down at the mud oozing over my shoes. “No.”

  “So—what’s the deal?”

  I stared out at the fields. Seven hundred and fifty acres of generosity Of kindness. They even had a hippo somewhere back there, and bison, and a big monkey house with an outdoor pen where rescued lab chimps lived in comfort.

  “Come on,” Richie said. “Spill.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret if you tell me a secret,” I finally said.

  “Deal,” said Richie.

  I took a deep breath. “Matt and I are divorcing.”

  “Shit,” said Richie. “Jackie and I kind of suspected as much. But why? I thought you two guys really had a good thing.”

  “Dr. Holly-Slutkins is having Matt’s baby.”

  His head snapped back with surprise. “Double shit!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Not one of his proudest moments,” I said. “Now it’s your turn. Why does Matt need a passport?”

  Richie looked around quickly, as though the draft-horse girls were planning to spy on us. He didn’t answer for a moment, then he spoke, his voice both hushed and straining with excitement. “You can’t tell anyone.” I shook my head a definite no.

  “We have to keep it confidential because—you know—first of all, it’s very, very dangerous, and, secondly, there could be diplomatic problems if it leaks out to the press.”

  “Diplomatic? Like international?”

  “Like an international incident if it doesn’t go off.”

  “I promise.”

  He continued. “Okay, then.” He stopped, started again. “Okay. We’re going to Zimbabwe. We’re…we have to…steal an elephant.”

  I stared at him, speechless, then giggled a little with embarrassment. “You know, I have this hearing thing,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of it. “So—I thought you said ‘steal an elephant.’”

  He laughed, too. Then he said, “I did.”

  I had to think about that for a minute. He had said “steal an elephant.” I looked him in the eye and said, “Really?”

  “Really.”

  And I thought about Matt and how much I loved him and wanted to be with him, and that maybe I should fight for him, danger or not, and then I said, “I’m in.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “ZIMBABWE?” ALANA repeated, her voice rising with incredulity. “Are you sure you didn’t hear Richie say you’re in a bad way? Because you are.”

  Of course the first thing I had done when I got home was call Alana and tell her all about it.

  “I’m positive,” I said. “They’re rescuing an elephant from Zimbabwe. And I volunteered to help.”

  “You have to admit, it’s not your everyday activity,” she said, “like could you please get my dry cleaning, and, oh, it just might be a little out of your way, but could you also pick up an elephant from Zimbabwe?”

  “Well, what do I do now?” I asked her frantically. “There’s a meeting Friday night for everyone. Richie’s counting on me to come.”

  Alana had no sympathy. “You’ve been hoist with your own petard,” she said. “And, yes, you heard me right.”

  “What happens if Matt’s there?” I asked. “And what if he brings Holly-Folly?”

  “Of course Matt’s going to be there,” she said. “So withdraw your offer to go. You have no business rescuing elephants anyway. Besides, I think you’re just doing it to stay in Matt’s life. And if you want to do that, then just spare yourself more agita and find a way to work things out with him in your own country.” She paused. “Are you listening?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. So—go get yourself an elephant.”

  Of course Alana’s suggestion was sensible. I should just tell Matt I still loved him, and I would work on forgiveness, and in the meantime, he could come back to me. I didn’t have to go to Zimbabwe to do that.

  Except I could never bring myself to tell him that I forgave him and wanted him back. It was the equivalent of saying it was okay to cheat on me.

  And that would never be okay. Never.

  “I’ve been hoist with my own petard,” I said to Isis while asking her to halt in the riding ring. “And I did it to myself, and I don’t even know what a petard is.”

  She flicked an ear back and forth and stood motionless at the halt. I patted her neck and praised her lavishly, and then asked her to move forward into an energetic trot.

  “I have a meeting Friday night to learn how to rescue an elephant,” I said as we trotted around the ring. “I don’t know anything about elephants.” Then I asked her to slow her trot into half-steps, half the length of her normal trot stride. “What happens if Matt doesn’t show up?” Isis slowed her trot, slow, slow, until she gave me one prancelike step, which is exactly what I wanted. I praised her again, and asked her to trot a few more times before another half-step. It was just the beginnings of a piaffe, this half-step, half-prance that she offered me, and I dismounted right away and fed her handfuls of sugar cubes, marveling at how she was beginning to understand.

  “Richie says they’re leaving for Africa in a week,” I told her as I groomed her in her stall. “I have enough problems understanding my own language. What am I going to do in a foreign country?”

  Isis had no answer for me, and I finally had to swear her to secrecy like I did with Alana.

  The meeting was at seven o’clock in Mrs. Wycliff ’s living room. I came late, deciding that I could slip out the door if I spotted Matt with Holly-Breeder. He wasn’t there when I arrived, but I still took a chair near the door.

  The living room was spacious but plain. Two sofas were covered with afghan throws and several cats of various colors, there was a practical-looking Berber rug on the floor, and a carved mahogany table by the bay window with violets in little ceramic elephant planters.

  In all the years I had accompanied Matt to the sanctuary, this was only the fourth or fifth time I had seen Mrs. Wycliff, and she hadn’t changed one bit. She still looked like she was in her mid-seventies, still wore no makeup, still kept her gray hair pulled back in a hastily made bun, and, as far as I could determine, was still dressed in the same jeans and white Irish knit sweater that she was wearing the day I first met her. She poured us all tea and passed around lumpy homemade cupcakes, which told me she was more interested in spending money on her animals than in lavishly entertaining. Richie and Jackie were already sitting in the two upholstered chairs by the window. They gave me sympathetic smiles when they saw me walk in. I did not want sympathetic, because the second part of that word is “pathetic,” but I smiled back anyway before glancing discreetly around. There were about six other people seated, and I didn’t know any of them.

  I sat in a chair at the edge of the room and waited for Matt. It was getting late, and I was trying not to jump every time I thought I heard something near the door. Several tim
es it turned out to be Mrs. Wycliff’s two apparently weak-bladdered black Labs that had to be let out, then in, then out, only to come back in. Conversation buzzed all around me—everyone seemed to know each other—and I overheard words like “poaching” and “hostile environment” and “dangerous.” I just sipped my tea and let the voices jumble on. Richie’s cell phone rang and he jumped, checking his watch, before taking the call in another room.

  “That was Tom,” he announced, coming back. “He should be here in an hour. He got stuck in some traffic coming up from the city.”

  Thomas Princeton Pennington. The man with the money.

  Richie’s phone rang again. He answered it, and I saw him glance quickly in my direction. I knew this time it was Matt.

  Richie made his second announcement. “Well, Dr. Sterling—the vet who will be helping us—just called. He can’t make it tonight. He’s doing an emergency surgery.”

  Oh, those late-night emergency surgeries, I thought, but kept my face parked in neutral, wondering if it would look bad for me to get up and leave now. Too obvious, I realized, and stayed put and studied my cupcake.

  It was vanilla-frosted, and I chastised myself for not taking a chocolate one. Atop the frosting was a blue sugar-wafer elephant, and I spent some time sucking its head off, followed by each individual foot. One hour and two more cupcakes later, both chocolate, Thomas Princeton Pennington arrived.

  He wasn’t what I expected at all. I expected a fifty-two-year-old polished tycoon wearing a custom-made suit and crisp shirt and custom-designed tie, like the images I had seen in the media, but Thomas Pennington was dressed in jeans and an old sweater and heavy construction boots. He looked to be just a little taller than me, with longish, neatly trimmed white hair, and an open, intelligent face saved from being preternaturally handsome by a jagged scar down one cheek. His presence was mesmerizing, the way he took instant command of the room, radiating energy, charging the air around him like an electron accelerator. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Don’t stare, I scolded myself, but I couldn’t help it. He was that compelling. He’s used to being gawked at, I defended myself, but did try to be more discreet, forcing myself into occasional glances at the half-eaten cupcake on my napkin, as if it provided worthy competition for my attention.