A few months earlier, I would have immediately dismissed her offer, but she was right. “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” I said. “I mean, to have a backup plan.”
“Get one started,” Alana agreed. “And don’t back out of it.”
I had always considered myself genetically an outdoor person. I loved the feeling of sun and wind and fresh air on my skin, had always chafed at the restrictions of sitting in an office, watching the sky through a window. But if I was thinking of reopening my practice, I knew I would have to find space indoors. It’s hard to counsel clients with the rain in your face and the wind blowing the papers off your desk. I needed to find an office.
I spent the week before we left for France combing through the rental section of the local newspaper to look for office space. It seemed that all of them were located in neat tan boxes that sat next to run-down shopping centers. Sometimes the boxes were gray.
I finally found one that was different. It was located in a quaint old Victorian house that had been converted into offices. And it was two doors down from a shoe store and an ice-cream store. I asked Alana to meet me in the parking lot and give me her opinion.
She eyed the stores. “Good location,” she said. “I see there are several additional treatment centers available, from those great leaders in psychotherapy, Ferragamo and Baskin-Robbins.”
“I like my clients to have a choice,” I said.
A few minutes later, the landlord parked his car and led us into the house, and to a small first-floor office. It had one narrow window, which revealed only the dark-red brick of the building next door.
“This should work,” said Alana, looking around. “You could get back on your feet in no time.”
No sky, I thought, not even a glimpse of one. “Uh-huh,” I said, vaguely.
She put her hands on her hips. “Maybe it’s time to cut back on the elephants?”
“Elephants?” repeated the building owner.
“Elephant families stay together for their lifetime,” I said to Alana. “Mother and daughters, and aunts. They keep family bonds. I can’t just up and leave; family is very important to them.”
“I know,” she said, exasperated. “But you can fit the elephants into your evenings.”
True, I could spend a few nights a week working with Abbie. And it was a very nice office, clean and freshly painted, with polished wooden floors. The owner watched me nervously.
“And don’t forget,” Alana added, “you can still do the horses. On the weekends. Elephants at night, horses on the weekends. Your life will be very full.”
Now the building owner looked worried. “What kind of counseling did you say you did?”
“Yes, I think this office will do very nicely.” Alana started pacing off the floor space to see if my desk and file cabinets would fit.
Suddenly I felt like elephant bracelets were closing around my ankles. I had to escape. I said nothing and walked quickly to the carpeted hallway outside the office. Alana followed me. So did the building owner. I thanked him and headed for my car in the parking lot.
“Just remember,” the owner called after me. “No animals. I don’t care how you counsel them. I ain’t runnin’ a circus.”
I watched as Abbie kicked the soccer ball across the grass, squealed with delight, and ran after it. Margo was resting in the shade, a picture of contentment and peace. Peace. I studied Margo’s face. The drawn brow was gone, she was in good weight, she didn’t seem threatened by us anymore. She had her eyes half closed now, and flapped her ears every so often to move the flies away from her face. Though we had taken her away from her home and brought her to one that was alien to her, she looked content. So was Abbie. Richie would take good care of them both while I was away. I would miss them all, but, truthfully, I was a little afraid that they wouldn’t miss me. That my job here was finished. That it was time I called the building owner and rented the office space. I still had the ad in my jacket pocket.
Abbie trotted over to me and wrapped her trunk around my body. She stood past my waist now, and I put my arms around her knobby little head, and rested my face on the top, and pressed a dozen kisses onto her gray wrinkles. She grunted in my ear and pressed against me. How could I give this up? I had never known such peace.
I put my hand in my pocket and crumpled the piece of paper.
Chapter Fifty
THERE IS nothing like a wedding to put you in a cautiously festive frame of mind. I mean, your whole family is standing around looking more attractive than you’ve seen them in years, wearing their best clothes, and on their best behavior. Laughter is tinkling like crystal, faces are radiant, and everyone is kissing and hugging. They are a study in domestic high spirits.
I had made my grand entrance to Reese’s wedding with Tom on my arm, and though I was enjoying myself, I couldn’t help feeling that disaster was just one comment away, that someone in my family would mortify me in front of him. That Aunt Lily was going to pat my stomach as usual and say, “Well?,” that Uncle Ray was going ask me again why I gave up my “medical practice” to play the horses, that ninety-five-year-old Great-Aunt Hattie was going to drink too much champagne punch and stand on a chair and sing her signature party song, “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” that all my relatives were going to start openly speculating on where Matt was and why.
Everything you would expect from such a happy, happy family.
Tom’s appearance created a small stir. Jerome the Gnome recognized him right away from the cover of Forbes magazine and apparently put his concerns about my traumatizing the twins by divorce on the back burner. Tom bestowed upon me a respectability that Jerome thought I had previously lost when I closed my practice. Uncle Phil asked Tom to autograph his cocktail napkin and then mentioned selling it on eBay; my gorgeous twenty-two-year-old cousin, Jessica, got flirty and tried to sashay past Tom and fell out of her four-inch-high Jimmy Choos into the guacamole; Marielle’s parents were struck bashful and just stood there, their mouths agape, until Marielle brought them something strong to drink.
We made our way over to the groom.
“Here’s a question I’ve been dying to ask you,” Reese announced, jovially pumping Tom’s hand. “What do elephant use for tampons?”
“What?” Tom asked, momentarily taken aback.
“Sheep,” said Reese, and then laughed loudly.
I grabbed Tom away and introduced him to the rest of my family.
“Matt, you sure got gray.” Great-Aunt Hattie’s twin, Great-Aunt Ethel, poked Tom in the chest with her forefinger. “You been worrying too much?”
Kate shook Tom’s hand and immediately introduced the twins, who needed no prodding to launch into a prolonged demonstration of their newly honed spelling skills.
“Give us a word, Aunt Neelie,” they begged, hanging on me like the baby baboons I had seen in Zimbabwe. “Any word.” I spent the rest of the cocktail hour giving them words and sentences and paragraphs, all of which they dispatched with ease.
“Give us a word,” they begged again and again. “Give us a word.”
“Sound this one out,” I finally said, and spelled “G-i-v-e m-e a b-r-e-a-k.” They decoded it and obeyed.
I finally found my mother, fussing over the food and getting in the caterer’s way. Now that she had gotten over not being asked to make the wedding cake, she felt compelled to monitor the freshness of the dinner rolls. I introduced her to Tom.
“It’s my pleasure to meet the original Abbie,” Tom said, kissing my mother’s hand and doing a courtly little bow with his upper body.
She looked puzzled. “The original Abbie?”
I still hadn’t told her.
Suddenly the light went on and she turned to me. “Neelie?” she began in measured tones. “Is there another Abbie?” She gave me the squint eye, waiting for an answer.
“It’s an honor to have an elephant named for you,” I said. “Tom even named one after his mother, and she was thrilled and flattered. Right, Tom
?”
“Really?” my mother asked Tom.
“Oh yes. It’s the latest society trend,” Tom said. “Everyone is going to want it.”
“Oh,” said my mother, suddenly beaming. “Wait till I tell Evelyn Slater.”
It was to be a simple ceremony held under a big white tent that had been erected especially for the occasion, in my parents’ backyard. The weather was magnificently warm, Marielle looked radiant, and Reese couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had chosen an elegant white off-the-shoulder Spanish-lace dress for herself, and a layered, ruffled purple dress for her pregnant sister, who was her maid of honor, and who unfortunately, when she wasn’t blending in with the purple tablecloths, resembled an eggplant. There were festoons of white roses and lavender sprigs pinned to everything that was stationary, and corsages of white roses and purple lilies worn by everyone who wasn’t.
We were now gathered outside the tent for the beginning of the ceremony. I was in the lead, as the official and only bridesmaid.
Marielle’s mother was behind my parents. She cast a jaundiced eye over the backyard. “I wish Marielle had listened to me,” she said to no one in particular. “A church ceremony and a nice sit-down dinner would have been more civilized.”
“My rose garden is civilized,” my mother responded.
“But where are the roses?” Marielle’s mother looked around.
“They’re dormant, but they’re here in spirit,” my mother replied.
“Getting married in a backyard is just a step up from getting married in the street,” Marielle’s father interjected.
“What difference does it make where?” asked my father, taking my mother’s arm. “Married is married. It’s still a big day.”
“That’s right,” agreed my mother. “Their next big day will be their first child.”
“Marielle’s just a baby herself,” Marielle’s father retorted as he stepped into place next to his wife. “She has plenty of time.”
My mother turned to him. “She isn’t a baby at thirty,” she stage-whispered. “Her clock is ticking, you know.”
Marielle’s mother leaned toward my mother. “It’s her wedding day, Abbie, for goodness’ sake,” she hissed. “Clocks don’t tick on your wedding day.”
“Clocks don’t take time off,” my mother whispered back. The chamber quartet struck up the first chords of Lohengrin.
“Mother, the music is starting,” I said, suddenly understanding why the bride’s and groom’s families are seated separately.
The music swelled across the lawn. Tom turned around expectantly in his seat and winked at me. The twins threw petals, and I led the march down the aisle.
Marielle and Reese recited their vows, their tremulous voices accompanied by soft music and the ominous buzzing from several varieties of stinging insects, who left their hibernation especially for the occasion.
Marielle’s mother wept out loud; her father nervously told everyone sitting within ten feet how hard it was to lose their baby. My parents beamed with pride, and not without a little relief that Reese was finally settling down.
“At least she doesn’t have to share her name with some elephant,” my mother muttered during their first married kiss. “I’ll bet she saves her mother’s name for her children.”
“I thought you’d be flattered that I named an elephant after you,” I replied, sotto voce.
“Well, high society or not, elephants should have elephant names,” she replied. “Like…” She paused to think.
“See what I mean?” I said. “It isn’t easy to name an elephant.”
“Well, I’d know one if I heard it,” she said.
Uncle Ray tapped her from behind. “Abbie? What’s this about elephants?”
“Neelie has an elephant,” my mother answered.
“Well, this is what you get when you let your daughter quit medicine and gamble on horses,” Uncle Ray said. “They always start small and then get addicted to the bigger stuff. Pity.”
I knew they were going to be happy. They were so much in love. And all their words boiled down to one thing: That they were offering each other the traditional gifts of marriage. Promising to become a universe of two. Promising each other holidays and dinners together, and someone to worry if they got home too late on a rainy night, and 2.6 children in the garage. Promising to enhance each other’s lives. Lives very similar to the one I once had—a hundred years ago, it seemed.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I had been on that merry-go-round ride once, and I had been forced to get off when the horses stopped short. True, Matt was offering me a second ride. All I had to do was say yes and grab the brass ring, and everything would be restored. I would have a nice house, maybe a barn in the back. Definitely a swing set. And maybe someday Matt and I would even have a child of our own. I would be a therapist again. Look how the ride comes around and goes around, I thought. A ride without a beginning or end, just an endlessly repeating pattern of love and hurting and love and hurting. And then there was Tom, who was just asking me to enjoy the music.
I touched Tom’s arm, and he smiled over at me. A new life, an old life. A new career made out of an old career. There was so much to consider. I closed my eyes.
It seems sometimes you don’t have to get back on the merry-go-round for everything to go spinning around you.
Chapter Fifty-one
“WHAT DO you want, Neelie?” Tom asked me. “What do you want? How can I make you happy?”
We were in France, at Tom’s château, on the outskirts of Vannes, in the northwestern region of Bretagne. We had flown to Charles de Gaulle Airport, just north of Paris, in Tom’s corporate jet, a few days after Reese’s wedding. We were met there by a driver and whisked away to Tom’s estate, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive.
Vannes was a beautiful medieval town with the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre at its heart and a picturesque old harbor as its soul. High walls surrounded the old city, and small colorful shops and outdoor cafés invited hundreds of visitors. We drove through the town’s tangle of streets and roadways that wove around dozens of gardens in glorious fall colors, and I had to close my eyes more than once, when it seemed we were on a collision course with indifferent pedestrians dashing in front of us, or other vehicles furiously speeding in and out of the traffic circles like a carnival ride.
“Eh, touriste,” said our driver with distaste.
Tom called it his country cottage, but as with his apartment, the name suffered from grave understatement. An ancient château, three stories of rose-granite walls covered in dark-green ivy, it sat high, overlooking the red stone cliffs that lined the coast of the Golfe du Morbihan. It sat like an elegant dowager, awaiting our arrival. We drove through great black iron gates, past meadows so thick you wanted to run barefoot, and dark, brooding woods that hovered beyond like protective parents. Blue thistle and lavender were still blooming everywhere, and their fragrance followed us around the circular gravel path. The scent of gardenia hung in the air like vapor.
To the side of the house stood a small stone barn, and I found myself drawn to it as soon as we got out of the car.
“Horses?” I asked, hopefully.
“Chickens,” Tom said. “And, I think, one cow.”
I opened a little wooden gate, stepped into a small tiled courtyard, and waded among a dozen or so small red-and-brown chickens, who clucked noisily at my intrusion and pecked at my shoes. I peeked over a blue wooden half-door into the dim barn. There was fresh hay strewn across the floor, and a large brown cow lying down in the middle of it. She stopped chewing her cud long enough to greet me with a low moo.
Tom came up behind me and rubbed his hands across my back.
“What’s her name?” I asked him.
“I’ll find out,” he said. “She belongs to my caretaker.”
She dropped her head to take in more hay.
“She has the right idea,” said Tom. “Why don’t we get something to eat as well?”
I fol
lowed him out of the courtyard to the house. Across the gravel path, onto a wide white-columned porch, and through a heavy, arched wooden front door. He led me through a large foyer of ancient plaster walls and hand-cut stone floors into a big cheerful kitchen, with black pots hanging from dark beams, and braided rugs, and chickens painted on the furniture. Estelle, the caretaker’s wife and Tom’s housekeeper, gave me a small curtsy and immediately set out platters of cheese and bread and fresh tomatoes and glasses of pastis and fussed over me until she was certain that I was beyond satiation. Then she said something to Tom, who nodded and translated.
“Estelle says you might want to wash up and rest a bit.”
“That would be great.” I thanked her, then followed him through enormous, bright rooms with soaring ceilings and tiled fireplaces and thick colorful rugs and overstuffed furniture covered with soft shawls. I felt very much at home right away.
Our suitcases had already been brought upstairs, to a sunny bedroom with tall leaded-pane windows lining one wall. I could see the gulf, iridescent green-blue, just beyond the gates.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathed.
“We’ll be sharing this room,” Tom said. “Unless you mind. There are thirty rooms, fourteen bedrooms—you can have your pick.”
Before I could answer, he had taken me into his arms and was covering my face and neck with a dozen kisses. I pulled him close to me. The scent of mint and wild grass and gardenia filled the room, and he slowly removed my clothes.
We napped the afternoon away, rolled against each other. I awoke to find him sitting on the bed, next to me, stroking my face and looking lost in thought. I reached up and touched his hand. Our eyes locked, and I saw him struggle to say something.
“Neelie,” he said, then suddenly stood up. “I’ll check on dinner.”
I washed up in an old-fashioned bathroom with sunflower wallpaper, in the whitest, whitest porcelain claw-foot tub, after generously sprinkling the lavender salts that had been left for me into the steaming water. I slid down into the fragrant bubbles, up to my nose, in a reverie of comfort and wonder. This is what life with Tom could be like. Comfortable, endlessly carefree, full of flowers and color and peace. Peace? No, not peace. Love? Tom had never said he loved me. And this beauty, this luxury wasn’t really my life.
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