Still Life with Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  I helped Richie swing the heavy doors shut behind them, and Margo dug immediately into her chow. She swept up a trunkful of pellets with a graceful scoop, dropped them into her mouth, and was about to go back for another helping when she stopped and turned her head toward me, as if she had just thought of something.

  “Hello, Margo,” I greeted her.

  She took a few steps toward me and pressed her trunk through the bars and swept it along my arm. Up to my shoulder. Down to my hand. She sniffed me thoroughly, as though searching for something. I picked up a banana from her basket and handed it to her. She took it and then dropped it. Apparently that wasn’t what she was looking for. I tried again with an apple. No. I tried to understand what she wanted. She touched my hand again, and I took a gentle hold of the tip of her trunk. She rumbled at me.

  “What, Margo?” I asked softly. She rumbled again and ran her trunk down my arm, then down my leg. It’s an odd sensation, to get felt up by an elephant, but I remained immobile. Another trumpet, and she slammed her trunk into me in a fit of pique, knocking me across the room. I landed sitting, much to Richie’s amusement.

  “You know, I thought about giving up horse training,” I said, checking myself over for injuries, “so that I wouldn’t get dumped anymore.”

  “You have to admit,” he said, giving me a hand up, “this is a more exotic way to get dumped.”

  “After Matt, this is amateur stuff,” I said.

  He made a face. “Yes, well,” he said, “Matt. There is something very wrong going on with Matt.”

  “You just noticed?” I said. “You know what they say about making your bed and lying in it.”

  “Actually, from what he’s told me, I think he’s lying alone.”

  We were interrupted by Margo, who had reached through the bars again toward my hands, rumbling with impatience. There was something she wanted from me, and I wished I knew what it was.

  “The lady is definitely trying to tell you something,” Richie said.

  She touched me again, pressing her trunk up and down my arm, snuffling hard like the hose on a vacuum. Suddenly I understood her. It was so obvious now.

  Then I laughed out loud.

  “What?” Richie asked.

  “You’ll see,” I said to Richie. “I know exactly what she wants.”

  Chapter Forty

  “I’LL TAKE two dozen jelly donuts, please,” I told the donut man the next morning.

  “How you stay so skinny?” he asked in a Pakistani accent. “Every day you eat donut! Donut! Donut! Donut! Now more donut!”

  “It’s the new donut diet,” I said.

  A very overweight woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder. “Can you please tell me how it works?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Just take one bite and feed the rest to your elephant,” I said. “Works like a charm.”

  I couldn’t wait to show Margo the donuts. First, like a conscientious mother, I let her finish her breakfast of hay and vegetables mixed with her elephant chow. Good nutrition should always come before junk food.

  Then I opened a donut box and showed her its contents.

  “Margo,” I commanded. “Look here.”

  She looked. I bounced the donuts around a bit in an effort to tantalize her. She responded immediately with an excited earsplitting trumpet.

  I held out a donut. She stuck her trunk through the bars and took it gently from my hand, grunting with appreciation.

  “Margo, look here.” I tickled her foot with the target stick. “Lift foot.” She didn’t hesitate. She lifted her foot like a Radio City Music Hall Rockette. I held out her reward, a second donut. After that, I had her. A few jellies and she was obeying my every command, and literally eating out of the palm of my hand.

  Within a few days, I had a standing order for three dozen jelly donuts and two large coffees, just waiting for me to pick up every morning. The fat lady from earlier in the week was sitting at a table with a big pile of donuts on a paper plate. She gave me a wave as I passed by.

  “It’s not working yet,” she called out, “but I have to say, this is the best diet I’ve ever been on.”

  Every morning now, Margo greeted me with her trunk held aloft through the bars, waiting for her fix. I was handing donuts out like the Red Cross as I put her through her repertoire. She lifted her feet, opened her mouth, and moved sideways, all with a tap of the stick.

  Though Faye would have been proud of me, I had yet to show our progress to Richie. I had just finished working when Richie emerged from the cool morning outside, greeting us with a cheery salute.

  “Did Margo finish her breakfast?” he called over. “It’s time to play.”

  “She ate every bit,” I said proudly.

  He grabbed his coffee, then noticed the three empty donut boxes. He lifted their lids. “Wow, aren’t you getting quite a sweet tooth,” he said. “Three dozen donuts and not one left for me.”

  “Margo ate them,” I explained. “I’ve been using them to train her. She loves donuts.”

  “Ah yes,” he said, laughing. “They must remind her of all those donut trees in Africa!”

  “All I know is, I’ve developed a new respect for the power of sugar.”

  “Well, if donuts work, donuts it is.” Then his face took on a very serious expression. “There’s just one thing you need to remember from now on,” he said, sternly shaking his finger at me.

  My heart skipped a beat. “What?”

  “My commission is one raspberry jelly every morning.

  We opened the gates to her enclosure and gently prodded Margo outside. She marched through the barn doors, little Abbie attached to her tail. Richie and I followed them. Suddenly Margo became animated and swung around, letting out a rackety trumpet. It took me a split second to realize that she was heading directly at me.

  “Watch out!” Richie yelled.

  I ducked out of her way as fast as I could, but not before she swung her trunk and knocked me over. Then she stood over me and patted me down like a police detective. No donuts. Satisfied, she marched to her mud pond.

  “Jesus,” said Richie, helping me up, “that could have had a bad ending. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just practicing for my next career as a bowling pin.” I made a joke of it, but I had been scared down to the soles of my feet.

  We watched Margo blow mud all over her baby. The baby, who normally sprayed water back, accepted her mud bath quietly, then closed her eyes to doze.

  “Do you think she’s been acting a little funny lately?” Richie asked.

  “I noticed she’s sleeping a lot,” I said, “but I’m not sure what normal is for such a baby.”

  “I’m not sure, either,” he said, looking worried. “I think I’ll call Matt. I don’t like taking chances.” Then he stopped himself. “You’ll probably have to be here to help, you know.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “What happens if he starts talking about how happy he is about his baby, and—”

  He put his hand on my arm. “We’ll just starting talking about ours,” he said gently. “And ours is bigger.”

  By the next day, it was obvious that Abbie was very sick. She had a cough and a green runny nose and was lying down in the hay, her trunk stretched limply in front of her, her eyes half closed. She lost interest in nursing. Matt was summoned immediately, and Richie asked me to help Matt as he did the necessary tests. Margo was put into leg bracelets, though even when wearing them she could be protective and dangerous. I had several emergency boxes of donuts at the ready.

  Richie helped support the baby’s head while Matt conducted a thorough examination, taking samples of her blood and a culture from her trunk. He handled her so tenderly that I suddenly pictured him holding his baby, holding Holly, caressing her. I bit my lip and looked away.

  “You can hand me my instruments,” Matt instructed me. His face and voice were very neutral. We both knew that the welfare of our charges came first and, without any discussion, h
ad independently decided that we were going to be very professional about things.

  “Please pass me the culture tube,” he asked politely, as he steadied Abbie’s head and swabbed the inside of her trunk.

  I handed him the bottle of culture medium so that he could put the swab back inside for the lab. He missed the opening and the swab fell to the ground. “Come on, come on,” he said impatiently. “Another one.”

  I tried to slip a second one from its case, but it was stuck.

  “Another tube,” he thundered. “I can’t keep holding her head up forever.”

  “I’m hurrying,” I said, trying to slide the lid off. Now the tube flew from my hand and fell to the floor. Matt snatched it off the floor and efficiently snapped it open with one hand. The swab popped right out.

  “How was I supposed to know there was a secret way to open it?” I defended myself.

  “Maybe if you watched what I was doing a little more closely you might have picked up on it,” he said in a nasty voice.

  “If I were the type to watch everything you were doing, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in,” I retorted.

  “Touché,” he said. “Big, fucking touché.”

  We had a diagnosis within two days. It was pneumonia, most likely due to her weakened immune system. She couldn’t have nursed much in her first few days of life, because of Margo’s dehydration and terrible injuries, and so hadn’t receive the necessary antibodies. She was a very sick little elephant, and we were fighting for her life. Matt came to check on her condition almost round the clock. He spent hours consulting with Billy DuPreez on the phone, as well as with the vet from a renowned baby-elephant rescue in Kenya, and even got Tom to buy a very expensive state-of-the-art special triple antibiotic and fly it up from Texas in his private jet.

  It was decided that Richie would take care of Abbie during the day, since he was at the sanctuary anyway, and I would take care of Abbie at night. Margo was kept in bracelets to protect us—now I understood their importance—while we worked on her baby.

  Every night I sat on a hay bale, close to Abbie’s head, to feed her a gruel made from warm oatmeal mixed with puréed fruits and coconut milk.

  And though it was awkward to work within a foot of each other, Matt and I persevered. Except for giving him some physical assistance, I just ignored him. I sang songs to Abbie, and massaged her ears, and made sure she was kept covered.

  “Music, always music,” Matt muttered to me only once, but more of a statement of fact than criticism. I didn’t answer him, I just continued singing “Bridge over Troubled Water,” which I thought she might especially like.

  Matt kept her hydrated with saline solution, and gave her strong antibiotics, but other than daily medical reports we still barely spoke. We worked side by side, sometimes elbow to elbow, without letting our eyes meet or speaking one word more than necessary, though a few times he paused and cleared his throat and turned around to look at me as though he wanted very much to say something. And I wanted very much to hear something. I didn’t know what—another apology? his profound regrets? We just left a stiff, polite silence between us.

  Sometimes it’s what you don’t say that counts.

  Chapter Forty-one

  A WEEK became two weeks, and Abbie remained very sick. Her fever rose, and her breathing became labored. She coughed deeply, her sides heaving from the effort, and then she would drop down into her nest of hay, exhausted.

  Tom called me every few days, always preceding his request for a progress report with apologies for not being able to get away. He had business all over the world, and called me from his jet, from his hotel room, from restaurants, from every continent, before and after meetings, at the oddest hours.

  “Richie tells me you’ve been working day and night on her,” he said as I spoke to him on my cell phone, early one morning. I had just left Abbie half an hour earlier, and I was pulling into my driveway. “I want you to know that I appreciate it. You’ve gone above and beyond the call.”

  “I don’t want to lose her,” I said.

  “And how’s it going with Matt?”

  “We’re both being very professional,” I said. Loosely translated, that meant that we’d gotten into one major blowout and several minor fender-benders.

  “I just got into New York late last night,” Tom said, to my surprise. “Do you need a break? I could fly Faye up from Tennessee and we could spend a few days together. I have a little cottage in Bretagne. It’s beautiful this time of year.”

  “I have to pack up my own little cottage,” I said. “I’m selling it.” I had avoided telling him about the house because I didn’t want his pity.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “It’s a Matt thing,” I said.

  “Don’t do anything until we talk,” he replied. “How about if I take you to dinner tonight?”

  “I’ll be sitting on elephant duty,” I said, then realized it wasn’t quite what I meant. “Sorry—I didn’t mean ‘dooty.’ I meant ‘shift,’ ‘shift of duty.’ Does that sound better, or am I getting delirious?”

  “I’ll bring dinner and come to the barn,” he said. “You sound like you need a good meal.”

  I grabbed the next phone call without checking the caller ID.

  “Wow—you’re actually answering your phone now?” Matt said.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” I said nastily. “I have to be available if Richie needs me.”

  “Well, I was wondering if you’d have dinner with me before you head up to the sanctuary,” he said. “I have to go there tonight, to check on Abbie. Maybe we could have an early dinner and sit down and talk. Please?”

  “No.”

  “How about if we get together sometime this week?”

  “Not interested,” I said. “For some odd reason, I’ll be very busy packing up the home that I lost.”

  “That’s one of the things I want to talk about,” he said. “I want to talk about doing something—to make it up to you.”

  “Oh, I just couldn’t accept one more thing,” I said in extra-saccharine tones. “Not after all you’ve done for me so far.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied. “I’m being hateful and angry.”

  He called back five more times that day, begging me to talk to him. After the sixth call, I managed to hone my hang-up skills to where it took me less than a second to disconnect, by pressing the phone’s on and off buttons nearly simultaneously.

  “Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me.” He left several desperate, pathetic messages on my answering machine. I pressed “delete all,” wishing it could somehow include both him and Holly. Then I got myself ready for my night shift with Abbie.

  But Matt took things a step further.

  I was about to leave for the sanctuary, later that afternoon, and opened my front door to find Matt standing there, his finger just about to press the doorbell. He looked awful. There were black circles under his eyes, and an expression of profound sadness on his face.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Please, let’s talk.” He held both hands up as if to fend off my anger. “Can I come in?” He leaned forward to peek inside. There was a one-hundred-decibel rendition of “Graceland” playing in the background.

  “Wow,” he said. “You still blast music!”

  “It’s no longer any of your business what I do.” I yanked the door closed behind me and pulled out my keys, ready to lock it.

  Matt cupped his hand over the keys. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “And I can’t talk in front of the elephants.”

  “They don’t speak English,” I said. “They won’t care.”

  “It’s just that we can’t seem to talk without arguing, and I don’t want us to get into it in front of them and get them all agitated.”

  “We have nothing to talk about,” I said, yanking the keys out from under his hand and locking the door with a crisp snap.

  “There are
some things you have to know,” he began, but I started down the porch steps. He tried to block my path.

  “Go away,” I said, angrily pushing him aside.

  “I still love you,” he said. “You used to be a therapist. You have to know—things sometimes aren’t what they appear—”

  A flash of fury tore through me like the white bolts of light that had torn across the African skies, so overwhelming that it burned everything inside of me. I hated Matt. I hated what he had done. I hated his deception, his carelessness, his declarations of love. I hated the look of him.

  I had to turn away from him. So searing was my anger, it could have ignited the house behind me, it could have turned my tears to puffs of steam.

  “I never want to see you again,” I said through clenched teeth. “I wish there was another vet Richie could call. I hate working with you.” I stamped off to my car. He stood there on the porch, his shoulders drooping.

  “I hope she was worth it,” I called back to him while getting into my truck. “I hope losing me, losing the house, losing everything—I hope it was all worth it.”

  “It wasn’t,” I heard him say, as I was pulling the truck door shut. “If you care to know—it absolutely wasn’t.”

  Matt followed me to the sanctuary, wordlessly checked on the baby, and left just as Tom was turning into the driveway. It was like an English comedy, with doors opening and closing and people sailing in and out with perfect timing.

  “How’s our baby?” Tom asked. He had come into the enclosure with me. I turned to explain Abbie’s treatment, but he put his arms around me. There was no one to witness his sweet kiss except Margo, and she was busy eating her dinner. Abbie was asleep, on a big pile of hay, under her favorite yellow-and-blue plaid blanket.