Still Life with Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  I heard an ambulance siren. And someone came into the office to tell my mother to take me home.

  I felt something in my pocket. Abbie had managed to put her little trunk through the bars and take out a tissue. I pulled it gently from her grasp, and she gave an indignant squeal. Margo pressed instantly at the bars, giving me a warning bark, ready to protect her baby.

  “Look,” I said to her, “I would never hurt your baby. She’s my baby, too, you know.”

  She shook her head up and down as if to tell me that she was just doing her job, and that this was what you did when you were grown up. You became responsible. The world no longer revolved around you, it had to revolve around the things you most cared about.

  And I realized I was all grown up, too. It was time to rethink that afternoon. With the filter of Zimbabwe to look through, the filter of people dying for nothing, of animals dying for nothing, I grew ashamed that I hadn’t cared that Captain Chandelle-Meiers had died. For me. A man just doing his job. A man who had been trying to help me. I had felt no compassion for him, and now I was filled with shame.

  I felt a push at my arm and, before I could react, Margo had pulled the jelly donut out of my hand. I jumped to my feet in time to see her pop the donut into her mouth. Then she reached toward me with her trunk again, swinging it up and down, pressing it along my arm, searching.

  “Hey,” I complained. “That was my breakfast.” She barked at me.

  I may as well get some work done, I thought, since this was the rare occasion when she was actually paying attention to me. I picked up a few pieces of fruit I had left and grabbed the target stick that was propped nearby. I touched her ankle.

  “Margo, lift foot,” I said. She eyed me up and down. I could see she was calculating the cost-to-benefit ratio of obeying me and possibly getting another banana.

  “Come on, Margo,” I said. “Please. Please.” I knew there was nothing in the elephant-training manual about the effectiveness of begging, but I was getting desperate. Tennessee wasn’t very far off.

  “Margo, lift foot.” I tickled her foot with the flag. She swung her trunk through the bars and examined my hands. I could feel her warm breath, feel the moist, muscular tip roving over my fingers. Then she turned around, indifferent.

  I stood there wondering what to do. Like with horses, there had to be a key to winning her trust. I was overlooking something. Maybe I needed to listen harder, needed to pay more attention to the things that mattered to her. She rumbled at her baby, then looked at me and lifted her tail to deposit her usual end-of-training commentary, a big, steaming pile of dung.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I promised. “We will definitely finish this conversation tomorrow.”

  I was at loose ends once I got back to my barn. With Delaney out of training, and Isis now on the road to achieving karmic one-ness with her rider, I had nothing much to do. I needed to earn some more money. I felt bored, lonely, restless. Vacant. Thinking about my last afternoon with Homer had left me with an odd, disoriented feeling.

  Conversano nickered to me, and I thought maybe I would throw a saddle on his back and edge him a little further along in his training. Though he was good enough for competition, I didn’t care about that. Mousi reached over his fence and pursed his lips together, stretching them out like they were made of rubber, begging for a treat, and I absentmindedly ran my fingers over his face.

  I needed more horses to train, I thought. More rearers, buckers, bolters, nappers. More horses that fell over when you tightened their girth, ran backward when you mounted them. More wheezers, head-shakers, man-haters, lady-killers, child-maimers, more biters, kickers, balkers, stoppers, rollers, stall-walkers…

  No, I didn’t.

  I ran my fingers along the bruised patch of ribs that was still tender on my right side, courtesy of Delaney, and wondered why we don’t get nine lives like cats. Maybe we do—the Buddhists believe we do, except they believe it’s sequential and after death, and we have to come back to life again and again. And then I thought, Someday, if I keep riding problem horses, I could wind up like Captain Chandelle-Meiers, trying to fix a training problem and dying for it. And then I’ll have to come back in my next life and learn to ride all over again.

  It wasn’t worth it.

  I went back into the house and called Reese. He was relieved to hear from me.

  “Hey,” he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think she would bring it up. It was just—”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “And I’m sorry, too. You were right, and I’m going to try and grow up.”

  We talked for a while. He really loved this girl, he said. She was an associate math professor in the same college, and she was a good person, and she liked horses. I was happy for Reese and listened to everything he said. Really listened. After we hung up, I thought about our conversation. I thought about his girlfriend and how happy he sounded. I knew that she was probably going to be my new sister-in-law. I was happy for Reese. I was happy for her. I was happy that she was going to be part of my family.

  Marielle. Her name was Marielle.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “YOU CAN’T unring a bell,” Alana was saying.

  I had just finished giving her two little girls their first riding lesson on Tony the Pony, and it had gone very well. The girls were too intimidated to ask Tony to do much, and Tony was too lazy to volunteer anything but a very slow walk. Each girl spent ten minutes on a lunge line, a sort of long dog leash, attached to Tony’s bridle, which allowed him to walk a big circle around me while I controlled him. Alana spent the entire lesson alternating between peeking through her fingers and beaming with pride.

  We were now relaxing over hot chocolate; the girls were planted in front of a video, and I was telling Alana how awful I felt about Captain Chandelle-Meiers.

  “You can’t unring a bell,” she repeated. “What’s done is done. It wasn’t your fault, and it’s over. You need to move on.”

  “But how?” I asked. “How do I do it?”

  “Do that lucid-dreaming thing I taught you,” she suggested. “Put yourself back into that afternoon, and give him a proper good-bye. Tell Homer good-bye. Then move on with your life.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know if I can face losing him again,” I said. “I don’t know if I can go through all that by myself.”

  “You don’t have to be alone.” She touched my hand. “Take the Captain with you.”

  I went to bed that night filled with trepidation, wondering if I really wanted to relive that afternoon. Then I thought how I would hug Homer’s neck and kiss him one million times before I let him go.

  If I could let him go.

  I needed a game plan. I would try to reconstruct him, I thought, refabricate him. Start by remembering what he looked like, felt like to ride. I knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as reconstituting orange juice, and, despite a few pre-launch suggestions from Alana, I hadn’t a clue on how to begin.

  I put on a CD of Wagner—Tannhäuser, which I thought was appropriate, because it was about someone who was safe and comfortable and left it all to find answers that would settle his heart and spirit. I lay in bed and listened to the music, the soaring notes, the soft bells tolling, and clutched Grace to my chest and let myself drift back to the day I lost Homer. It was sunny; I remembered a strong breeze, and being afraid that the wind would make him nervous. I wore a sweater over my white competition shirt, and a tiny gold pin of a horse doing a piaffe, pinned to the white stock tie around my throat. My mother had given me the pin as a birthday gift. I wondered where it had gone over the years.

  I felt sleepy now, my eyes started closing of their own accord, and I found myself at Gladstone. The riding ring was ahead of me, and the grass turned into a velvet crush under my boots as I walked slowly toward it, afraid of what I would find there, afraid that Homer would be there, and afraid that he wouldn’t.

  Suddenly I saw him, in the ring, on the ground, lying very still. His big
bay eggplant-shaped body was still wearing my saddle. I drew nearer. His legs were frozen in a trot that was never to be executed. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly open, showing a set of teeth that met in a triangle of age.

  I climbed into the ring and hesitated, before walking to him very carefully, just in case he was sleeping, just in case he would spring to his feet and kick out, like he did after a good roll in the dirt. But he lay very still, and I sat down next to his head and picked it up and put it on my lap. It weighed nothing. My fingers brushed the soft nap of his face, brushed away the flies that were buzzing in disrespect around his mouth and eyes.

  “Homer?” I whispered his name. He didn’t move. I clucked to him, like I always did when I was astride and wanted him to pick up the pace. He still didn’t move.

  This isn’t right, I thought. My brilliant Homer, the largeness of him humbled onto the ground; it wasn’t fitting that he should be so still.

  “What should I do?” I called out.

  “The horse must respect his rider!” I turned my head to see Captain Chandelle-Meiers standing next to the fence rail, his arms folded. “Make him rise,” he commanded.

  “You’re dead,” I said to him.

  He agreed. “But you must still ask your horse to listen to you. A good horse obeys his rider.”

  I laid my head down on Homer’s neck and twirled his forelock with my fingers, twisting the black hair into a stiff curl, rubbing his long, noble face. He had been a very good horse.

  “I don’t want to remember him like this,” I announced, my tears making wet splotches on his neck.

  “Of course not,” said Captain Chandelle-Meiers. “You must get him up.”

  I rose to my feet and stared down at the expanse of his brown body, his black legs, his black tail fanned over the dusty ring like the fringe on a shawl.

  “Homer,” I said to him. “Up.”

  He didn’t move. Somehow I had to get him to his feet.

  I willed myself to think of the horseness of him, his smell, his warmth, the feel of his rolling gaits beneath me. “Please, get up,” I said, but to no avail. I turned to the Captain. “I can’t do it.”

  “Come again, come again,” Captain Chandelle-Meiers urged impatiently. “We don’t have so much time to waste.”

  I concentrated harder. “Homer,” I called. “Up!” I clapped my hands.

  I felt something in the air next to me. A stir, a thickening of molecules. Then nothing.

  “Homer!”

  I tried to remember the way he felt underneath me, the slippery hair, the roundness of his back, the sharpness of his withers. “Homer!” I called out his name again and again.

  I turned to Captain Chandelle-Meiers. “He’s not listening,” I said.

  He threw me a pair of roweled spurs. I ran my thumb over the tiny teeth. “I can’t use these,” I said.

  “They will not harm him,” he said, “if you use them with the lightest leg. They are made just to tickle his side. To keep him light and sensitive.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I never knew that.” I bent down and buckled them over my shoes. I took a step toward him.

  Something nudged my shoulder and I turned around.

  “Homer,” I shrieked, and threw my arms around his neck. He felt solid and soft, familiar and strangely different, all at once. His eyes shone with life. I pressed my face against his neck and held it there for a long time.

  I took the saddle from his back and removed his bridle, then looked around for a halter and lead line. It was such a simple plan—why hadn’t I thought of it before? I could have him back! I would lead him straight out of my dream and into my backyard, and put him in the empty stall I had in my barn. And this time I would be very careful about who was riding him.

  Captain Chandelle-Meiers was beside me now, crisp and military. “You can’t do that, you know,” he said. “The horse must remain here.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m taking him home.”

  “You must do what’s right,” he said. “He doesn’t belong with you anymore. You must always do what is right for the animal.”

  I dropped my hands from Homer.

  The Captain nodded his head in approval.

  “Good,” he said. “Good.”

  “You can’t stay, either, you know,” I said. “You’ve been with me for too long.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I belong with the horse.” He placed his hands on Homer’s neck and swung himself up onto Homer’s bare back.

  “He doesn’t have to obey anyone anymore,” I reminded him. “He doesn’t have to perform anymore.”

  “He will be as free as he wants,” he promised me. “He is a wonderful horse. We will ride the clouds.”

  “Okay,” I said, and stepped away. I let him go. Reluctantly, I let him go. They circled me in a beautiful rolling canter, then rose up into a blue sky that made my eyes ache, Homer’s essence, his soul, cantering until he was out of sight.

  I felt something happening inside of me. A flutter, the barest feeling that I had taken a first step toward something, but I didn’t know what. I just knew that I was finally free to take it.

  And then I suddenly saw Africa laid out before my eyes, a quilt of gold and rose and dust, of the savanna with its tall, wispy pale-yellow paintbrush grasses, of gray-green bush, and red flowers, and lavender birds. There was a trumpeting of elephants bidding Homer good-bye. A glorious trumpeting. Here. It was here where my first step had to take me. Somehow I knew that it was here.

  I awoke to a drenched pillow and the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” welcoming me home.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  DELANEY STAYED with me for another two weeks, until his owner decided to have him put to sleep. He got more dangerous to handle with each passing day, and I knew she was making the right choice.

  I felt bad, and told her what Dr. Reston had said about how sometimes it’s not the problem that’s the problem, so much as one’s reaction to it. I suggested that she might even want to try a different trainer, perhaps someone who could train him to understand what was happening to him and teach him not to react so violently. Someone who owned a suit of armor and had the reflexes of, say, an Olympic speed-skater. But she had already purchased another horse for her daughter and really couldn’t afford to board one that was going to need a course in Braille in order to find his oats. She was doing the right thing, of course. His life would have been misery.

  In the end, she came to my barn with the vet while I waited inside my house, hiding in the bathroom with a box of jelly donuts and a box of tissues, trying not to cry. I couldn’t bear to see another dead horse, but you always have to do the right thing.

  Tom was right when he said he smelled defeat. He didn’t even have to sniff that hard.

  There wasn’t much left for me to do that afternoon besides starting to pack. My lawyer had informed me a week before that Matt was eating cheap tarantula steaks, which doesn’t sound all that improbable after you’ve spent a night eating worm appetizers, but he was really saying that Matt was in deep financial straits and couldn’t make payments on both the mortgage and the huge equity loan. The bottom line was that the house would need to be sold or we would lose it and have less than nothing. He went on to inform me that it was imperative that I connect it to red pig snorts. Maybe he meant protect my credit report, but what difference did it make? I didn’t care about listening. The house had to be sold. He finished by saying I needed a radical integration of chicken bulbs.

  I’m still working on that one.

  I filled a few cartons with stuff from my bedroom, thinking I would work my way downstairs. I put a small carton aside for Grace, and sent her off to fetch her toys and put them in her box. After an hour or two, I was restless. Grace was sleeping in a carton of my winter clothes, her toys heaped all around her, and Alley Cat was hiding under the bed, nervous about the disarray. A quick check of my watch told me that Richie would be putting Margo in for the day, and I thought I would help him. Matt
didn’t go to the sanctuary in the afternoons anymore, since Margo was healed enough to be reduced to a once-a-week checkup, so I was safe.

  My cell phone rang as I was driving to the sanctuary. I flipped on the car microphone. Matt was on the other end.

  “Don’t hang up,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “You are really pathetic,” I said. “Don’t call me anymore.”

  “Give me a chance,” he said.

  I snort-laughed into the microphone. “Let me guess. Does Holly need my underwear now? Because she got just about everything else.”

  “Please let me see you,” he said. “I can explain everything.”

  “I would need about a million explanations,” I yelled back into the mike. “One for every dollar that you—”

  “NO! Wait! I—” He sounded flustered, desperate. “Please let me talk to you in person.”

  “Talk to the hand,” I said, then realized that he couldn’t see me holding my hand up in front of the microphone.

  “Neelie, please,” he said in a pitiful voice. “Snogfest wimple doom. Lariat pencil hats. I really mean it.”

  I pulled the mike from the phone and threw it out the window.

  Margo and her baby were just going back into the barn from their afternoon play date outside when I arrived. Margo marched along, with great dignity even though she was caked with mud, and her daughter was holding on to her tail, like a child holding on to her mother’s hand. A procession of elephants, comical yet stately, marching into the barn, blaring their trumpets to herald their arrival.