An Inconvenient Elephant (10 page)

“What about
him
—Tom?” I said. “He can hire just about anybody to help her keep this place running. Even if it's not, you know, me.”

Richie ran his hand through his hair. “Last I heard, he was talking about buying Elisabeth out and as I told you, knocking down the elephant barn. You know Tom—he always has some kind of plan going. And you see what the barns and fencing look like. Elisabeth never wanted anything changed, and now things are just falling apart.” His voice took on a powerless tone. “It's not up to me. He wants to buy her out, and then her estate could use the money to take care of her. It's really a good idea, Neelie. She has no one.” He gave me a final shrug signifying our discussion was closed and got up to return to the kitchen, but I stepped in front of him.

“There must be something I can do,” I said urgently. “Maybe Mrs. W. is elderly, but she conceived this whole place and she has to be respected. She's got to have a voice in any decision he makes.”

“She can't live alone anymore.” Richie was getting impatient. “And she has no one. Jackie's been the one watching over her. After we leave, the power of attorney goes to Tom or her lawyer, and they'll have to hire someone to care for her. That's what today's meeting was about. After Tom buys her out, what happens to this place will be up to him.” He dropped his voice because Mrs. Wycliff and Diamond-Rose were just coming in to join us. “You can't fight it, Neelie. Everything's pretty much set.”

“But I don't see why she can't oversee her own farm,” I insisted. “I'll help. I promise I'll do anything it takes—”

“That's enough blathering,” Mrs. Wycliff declared impatiently as she entered the room. “You two have had more than enough time to organize this safari. Summon the dogs. We'll go after that injured rhino first thing in the morning.”

Richie gave me a meaningful look as Mrs. Wycliff clapped her hands and turned to Diamond-Rose. “Jackie, get the fire going,” she commanded. “We'll be making camp here tonight.”

“WE'RE GOING TO RUN OUT OF TIME,” DIAMOND WAS
saying. It was her turn to cook breakfast, and she was leaving her usual mess of coffee grinds scattered across the stove and countertops, a puddle of water on the floor, which she was tromping through to set out the coffee and milk and mugs, or whatever mugs I had left, as she had a habit of tossing the dirty dishes into the sink with such force that they usually shattered. A jet of flame rose behind her as the grease from the bacon she was frying spattered onto the burner. “I spoke to Charlotte again,” she said, casually flipping a lid over the blazing pan. “I told her that Joshua promised us a few months, but she says you can't totally trust anyone. You
have
to call your man. There's an old saying: You have to get up before the chickens to gather their eggs.”

“He's not my man,” I said, watching her nervously. “And
if you get up before the chickens, they wouldn't have had time to lay their eggs.”

“Well, the ones that laid these apparently did,” she said. “Here's breakfast.” She placed two perfectly fried eggs and three strips of crispy bacon in front of me.

I looked at my plate. “How do you do that?” I said. “I mean, you practically burn my kitchen down, but the food comes out great.”

“I'm not used to kitchens,” Diamond apologized, sitting down with her own plate, “but I am used to cooking over an open flame.” She dug into her breakfast, then looked up at me. “So, will you call him?”

“I want to,” I began slowly. “It's just that it's going to be so hard after not being in touch with him for a whole year. I don't even know if he'll answer the phone if he sees it's me.”

“Did you mention Tusker to your friend Richie? Maybe he could sort of break the ice for you.”

I shook my head guiltily. “We got so caught up talking about Margo and Abbie. Besides, we'll just raise the money ourselves. You said you would think of something.”

“I did,” she said. “I thought of Tom. He has the planes and the expertise.”

“That's not a solution,” I said testily. “Besides, I can't call.”

“Well, it's your pride versus Tusker's life,” Diamond pointed out.

My heart sank. “You're right,” I agreed glumly, and peered into my coffee cup. “I just wish this was a cup of courage.”

 

It took me four days.

Two days of rehearsing what I was going to say. Two days
of procrastinating, until Diamond took the plastic bulletin board from my office and hung it on the refrigerator, using its red erasable marker to cross off the days left before Tusker was going to be shot. If I were still a practicing therapist, I would have chided my client that not calling was classic avoidance behavior, but I had only me to chide.

“Call Tom,” I urged myself. “Tusker needs you.”

“
You
call Tom,” I argued back. “He's not talking to me.”

Another red
X
from Diamond increased my guilt. I finally dialed Tom's cell number with trembling fingers, then hung up, dialed again, rinsed and repeated. Diamond stood over me until I let it ring.

“I'm probably getting upset for nothing,” I whispered to Diamond. “We may have had some issues between us, but when it comes to elephants, I know we'll always have a special bond.”

“Great,” she whispered back. “I
love
your special bonds.”

He answered right away, his voice sounding like concern. “
Neelie
?”

“It's me,” I said, then thought how presumptuous that sounded. Everyone refers to themselves as “me.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice taking on a worried tone. “Where are you calling from?”

“I'm home,” I said, and couldn't think of anything else to say. “I'm okay,” I finally added, straining to make small talk. “What about you?” I eyed Diamond, who was giving me a thumbs-up.

“Very busy.” He sounded mystified that I would care. “I'm very surprised you would call me.”

“Well, actually, I called about Tusker,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

“Oh yes,” he said, the frost definitely setting in. “I was
waiting for that. Grisha told me you were part of the team in Zim. I am furious that you took such risks. What the hell possessed you to do something stupid like that?”

“What do you mean, ‘something stupid'?” I snapped.

There was silence, then, “Did you call me to argue?”

He was right. I changed tactics. “Tom,” I said, “Tusker's running out of time.”

“Don't you think I know that?” he interrupted me impatiently. “I did everything I could to get a plane in there, but I'm a marked man in Zimbabwe right now. You wouldn't believe the politics involved—”

“What about the sanctuary you were building near Kilimanjaro?”

“There's a problem with the land,” he said, getting impatient. “We're still negotiating. Things take time.”

“Well, Charara's north,” I said. “Can we move him across the border to Zambia or someplace? Maybe they'll let us fly him out of Zambia.”

“Us?”

“Us.”

He snorted. “Neelie, it's dangerous. You have no clue how dangerous it is. You just need to wait so I can—”

“Are you waiting for the
deadline
?” I snapped.

“I'm trying to get a plane in without causing an international incident,” he yelled at me. “Then we have to get him back to Chizarira. I recently spoke to Billy Pope, and he said the elephant has returned to his old haunts. Actually, elephants, since Billy mentioned that you brought two. Did you hear me say that it was dangerous? Stay the hell out of things you don't know anything about—”

“I
do
know!” I returned angrily, but my heart was filling with bitter disappointment. All the work, all the oranges, all the danger. For nothing. “We couldn't separate them,” I shouted. “I was there and you weren't! How dare—” But I was talking into a dead phone. He had hung up.

Diamond had been leaning against the kitchen wall, listening. “Shall I cross that special bond off the list, as well?” she asked dryly.

“He didn't even let me finish talking,” I said, still quaking with anger.

“I'll call Joshua again,” she said. “I'll see if we can get a delay. And maybe someone else with a plane.”

“How many people have planes to fly elephants around?” I said glumly.

“I have some ideas,” Diamond said. “Don't forget that I'm good at fixing things.”

She poured herself yet another cup of coffee and went out on my back porch to think. I peeked through the window and watched as she sat in my old rocking chair, rocking back and forth, sipping her coffee and staring off at my barn, calm and contemplative while I was still boiling over my conversation with Tom.

 

There was an irony about our lives that I was acutely aware of.

Diamond had come from New York, and so had I, though our backgrounds were entirely different. I had been a child of the suburbs, of swimming pools in the backyard, the cozy nestle of lemonade and snacks on the patio, riding lessons twice a week, and barbecues, oh God, too many barbecues.

The expectations were that I would follow in my mother's footsteps and settle down, live in a nice big house with a neat lawn that sat back on some graciously suburban street somewhere. Expectations that eventually sat on my shoulders like cement blocks.

Diamond had been city bred. A child of subways and fire engine sirens and cramped apartments, of shops on the corner that stayed open until almost morning and an aunt too drunk to notice if her niece ever came home.

Which, I suppose, gave Diamond a certain freedom—the freedom from expectations.

We never would have met in New York. I was towed to the city for ballet performances, semiannual visits to museums, plays, and authentic Chinese food in Chinatown, while Diamond would never have even dreamed of taking an hour's drive to the country just to look at trees. And yet we met. We met on the other side of the world, with the same goals and dreams. I supposed the universe does things in its own convoluted, complicated way.

And I watched her sip her coffee, this woman who was completely opposite of me, who had total confidence in herself that she could, definitely would fix all our problems. She was footloose and unencumbered and free to make any kind of decision for her life that she wanted, and I thought she had to be the luckiest person in the world.

“HOW DO YOU PAY A FOR AN ELEPHANT?” IT WAS SOUNDING
more and more like one of Reese's elephant jokes. Except that I didn't have the answer. What kind of job in an uncertain economy would support me and in addition pay for Tusker and Shamwari?

“‘Electrician, engineer, energetic salesperson.'” I read the want ads aloud over breakfast, picking from a box of donuts and once again drinking a cup of deadly cowboy coffee brewed by Diamond-Rose. We had been home almost a week now and looking, first, for ways to support ourselves, and second, to make some inroads toward our future giant purchase.

“Nothing listed for elephant trainer,” I joked, trying not to listen to the crunching of coffee grinds under Diamond's boots. Diamond's casual approach to housekeeping was beginning to grate on my nerves.

“There must be a lot of openings for your type of work, at least,” Diamond said, accidentally knocking over the sugar bowl while ladling heaping soupspoons of sugar into her coffee. “I mean, you're a licensed psycho?”

“Psychotherapist.” I gave an awkward laugh. “You know, couples counseling, life strategies—everything that didn't work for me. But I was always happier training horses. In fact, I always suspected that horse training and psychotherapy are kind of the same thing.”

Diamond nodded knowingly. “I'd definitely go with the horses.” She paused to brush the spilled sugar from the table onto the floor. “Don't get me wrong—all that brain stuff is good, too. A lot of people are, you know”—she tapped the side of her head—“mental.”

I thought about it. I used to love retraining naughty horses, but my growing reluctance to land on my head as a career choice took that option off the table. I sighed and took a big bite of my jelly donut just as Diamond-Rose speared a chocolate cream-filled with a flip of her new safari knife.

I jumped as the knife gleamed past me. “Good God!” I declared. “Do you have to eat everything off a knife?”

Diamond flashed me a grin. “Habit I picked up in the bush,” she replied. “My hands were never clean enough to touch food. I have
some
standards, you know.” She bit into the donut and noisily sucked out its innards, then rattled her section of the newspaper. “I'm not having any luck either. ‘Sanitary engineer, secretary, sewer maintenance.'” She flipped the paper closed in disgust. “Nothing for safari leader.”

“I'm shocked,” I replied, taking another sip of bitter coffee. “Given how much call there is for safaris in this region.”

“If I can't find something soon, we may not be able to save Tusker,” Diamond said. “I have some money saved up, but it won't be enough. And if I know Joshua, he'll want every cent of it.” She leaned back in her chair. “I don't know what else I can do. Safaris were my whole life.” She put her hands behind her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Except, of course, when I was with the circus.”

“You were with the circus?” I looked at her in surprise.

“Ran off with some clown when I was sixteen.” She rolled her eyes at the memory. “It was after my aunt died. I had no other family. Spent six weeks selling popcorn, then three months cleaning up after the elephants until I graduated to riding them.”

“Wow,” I said, impressed. “I've always wanted to ride an elephant.”

Diamond speared another donut. “Did a little trapeze work, too,” she said, delicately chewing it off the tip of her knife blade. “Was asked to leave, though, because I slept with both guys from the trapeze act and they started fighting over me.”

“So, why did
you
have to leave?” I asked.

Diamond finished her donut and licked the tip of her knife. “It became a trust issue, when, you know, one guy had to jump from his trapeze and have the other guy catch him? They were never quite sure.”

“Good thing you didn't sleep with the knife-throwers,” I said, scanning the paper again. “Nevertheless, we have to come up with something creative to make enough money. Thirty-five thousand is not peanuts.” I laughed at my inadvertent joke, then realized that having no money was not exactly funny. “We might have to give up eating,” I added ominously.

Diamond shrugged and got up to wash out her coffee cup with a swish of cold water and two fingers, apparently ignorant of the existence of dish detergent. “We'll do okay,” she said. “I still have that loaf of your mother's bread in my rucksack.”

 

Mothers are a good source of protein.

And sometimes advice.

My mother was brimming with the first two during the welcome-home dinner she had prepared for me and Diamond. The whole family was in attendance, and I wondered how they would react to Diamond's appearance and social graces. Especially my mother, who was meticulous down to the arrangements of the particles in the air, and especially double for my brother Jerome, who was a bit of a stuffed shirt. I had always dreaded Jerome's little flashes of disapproval. In addition, his wife, Kate, had once been a fashion model and always eyed my casual jeans and tees with obvious distaste. I gave my father and Reese and Marielle a free pass, since my father liked anyone who ate his barbecue, Reese was Reese, and Marielle, well, she was married to Reese.

 

My mother gave me a hug when we arrived, then took a half step back when Diamond, still in her safari clothes, rushed to give her a big embrace as well.

“Now, aren't you just…darling,” my mother gasped, giving Diamond a little squeeze with the tips of her fingers. “And still dressed in…jungle clothes!”

Grace just growled, then spent an inordinately long time sniffing Diamond's boots.

“Haven't had much time to unpack,” I offered, not sure if I was embarrassed more by Diamond's hygiene or my mother's thinly disguised repulsion. “We're still a bit jet-lagged.”

“I always thought jet lag canceled out when you got back home,” my mother replied. She brushed off her sweater as she led us into the kitchen. “I know
I
never had a problem with it.”

“Mom, the farthest you've been from home is Maine,” I said. “Same time zone.”

She flapped a hand at me. “Travel is travel, and besides, it's not the journey, it's the destination, and the destination should always end at home.” She introduced Diamond to Jerome and Kate's five-year-old twins, then peeked into the oven. “Well, I hope you're both good and hungry.”

“Oh yes, ma'am,” Diamond cheerfully declared in front of my wide-eyed nieces. “I could eat a warthog, balls and all.”

 

My father was next to greet us, leaving his usual post at the backyard barbecue, but not before reverentially checking each steak and turning it over with delicate precision. If char-grilling could be a religion, my father would be the high priest and the barbecue pit his altar. Wearing an apron that declared “007—Licensed to Grill,” he stepped through the back door to give us both generous hugs.

“Welcome home, Neelie, it's great to have you back,” he said, then glanced into the backyard. “But we'll talk later—I've got steaks to watch. Diamond-Rose is it?”

Diamond nodded, entranced with the sight of inch-high meat, aromatically grilling away.

“Well then, Diamond-Rose, prepare yourself for a real treat.” He stepped outside again, calling over his shoulder, “I'll bet you two haven't had a dinner cooked over a real open fire in ages.”

 

The house was overflowing with food and family. Not the family that I was longing for, of dusty gray baby ellies tugging at my arms with small, grasping trunks, but my human family of parents, two brothers and their wives, and twin nieces, all tugging at me in a different way. Tugging at me to join them, to fit back in, to remember the old jokes and routines, to fall in line, nose to tail, and walk the path with them. It was disorienting, all the chatting, the jostling, the high trills of conversation between the women cooking food in the kitchen, their voices playing counterpoint to the rumbling bass of the men outside as my father held forth on his favorite topic. “You know, barbecue was the original dinner of early man.” He was giving his usual lecture to my two brothers. “That's how they prepared the dinosaurs when they caught them.”

I watched from the back door. “I hate barbecues,” I said to Diamond. “I grew up smelling like mesquite. I think my lungs have smoke damage.” I grimaced. “I don't know why my father couldn't find another hobby. Like making ice cream.”

“Then you'd be complaining about your weight,” Diamond teased. “A barbecuing father is just perfect! You're so lucky you have family!” I shot her the squint-eye. Friends were supposed to commiserate.

My mother brought over a plate of hors d'oeuvres, and we each took one.

“Well, one thing, you can't get these in Kenya,” I said, savoring a warm cheese straw.

“Civilized,” Diamond-Rose remarked, but not until after she'd crammed three more into her mouth.

 

“Steaks are ready,” my father announced, proudly bearing a huge platter stacked with sizzling meat and plopping it down on the virginal white tablecloth in the dining room. My mother brought out half a dozen side dishes and a large tray of dinner rolls from the oven, while Reese, who considers himself the Beethoven of raw vegetables since he loves to prepare them but never eats them, carried in an ambitious salad. The wine was decanted, Grace stopped growling and took a spot under the table near Diamond's boots so she could lick them clean, and dinner was served.

“You know, Neelie,” my mother started right in dispensing advice while putting shoe-size baked potatoes on each plate, “I think the sooner you get back to work, the better. There's nothing like a job to keep you at home.”

“It has to be the right job,” I said. “Diamond and I have been checking the papers.”

“Have you checked the
Times
?” my sister-in-law Kate suggested. “Everything's listed online.” She eyed Diamond. “Of course, you'd have to dress a bit less…rustically.”

“What about professional journals?” Jerome added. “I certainly hope you're going to resume your profession, instead of wasting all those years you spent in school. Check the university listings, too.”

“That's a wonderful idea for me, too,” Diamond said. “Schools do go on safaris.” Jerome smiled his approval.

“You know, I was downsized from my university job,” Marielle joined in. “But there's always tutoring. That's what I'm hoping to do.”

“Darling,” Kate said to Marielle, “you teach math, so you can tutor math. Neelie is a psychotherapist. You can't
tutor
therapy. You either do it or you”—she searched for a word—“you go crazy.”

“Try the zoo papers,” Reese added, then looked around with a certain grin that meant he was going to regale us with one of his specialties, an elephant joke. “So, you guys—why did the elephant cross the road?”

“I
have
been checking the papers,” I replied testily to Jerome. “Along with the want ads in the back of the professional journals.”

“It was the chicken's day off,” Reese triumphantly answered. Diamond hooted with laughter, and he gave her an appreciative grin. I just rolled my eyes at him.

“What about bulletin boards in the drugstores?” my mother asked. “Lots of people who take medication might want a therapist.”

“Checked everything,” I announced, then sighed. “I even called Alana to see if she had spillover. But no one is going to commute from Florida to see me.” It certainly wasn't the right time to ask if anyone felt like helping me buy an elephant. I turned to Jerome. “You know, I can do all the job searching in the world, but finding something is just going to take time.”

“That's right,” Diamond agreed. “As they say in Swahili, It can rain on your head all day but it won't grow a banana tree.”

 

Dinner went on as it always had, with my father insisting everyone take seconds on meat and my mother insisting we finish all seven different vegetables along with the bread. Kate, who counted the calories in a glass of water, helped pass the food around and as usual, raved how delicious it looked but didn't actually take any. And though I had hoped that no one would notice, I caught my family absolutely engrossed as Diamond-Rose plunged her knife into the heart of her baked potato and held it aloft while eating it.

“That's what I like.” My father beamed at Diamond, who had by now finished her baked potato and immediately filled the vacancy at the tip of her knife with a piece of steak. “You have a great appetite,” he said approvingly, and dropped another steak on her plate. Then he gestured to her uniform. “So, how long you been in the Girl Scouts?”

“Diamond was a safari leader,” I explained.

“With a level three license and advanced weapons certificate,” Diamond added proudly.

“Better a leader than a follower,” my mother chirped, passing Diamond a tray of bread. “Have another dinner roll, and then I hope I can tempt everyone with dessert. It's a coconut cake, with fruit filling, in honor of the jungle!”

“Cauliflower filling would be more appropriate,” I muttered.

“It sounds absolutely lovely,” Diamond said, grabbing several rolls and dropping them into her lap. “And I'll just pop these into my rucksack for later.”

 

“Neelie, I have a question,” Marielle said, while my mother was serving her special jungle cake. “We're on a tight budget
now because of my job, so I was wondering if you wanted your horse back?” But I was barely listening. I had been foolish to think my family could help me with Tusker. Maybe it was foolish to think that anyone could. If we were going to buy Tusker and Shamwari, we would need to come up with something quick and practical. Every day was bringing us closer to our deadline.

“Neelie?” Marielle called my name. I tried to remember what she had asked. Something about the safari? Something about horseback? Did she want to know if I had done a lot of horseback riding in Kenya? Yes, that was it.