My Gentle Barn (16 page)

“Do you have a website?” Jay asked one day as he was washing potatoes and carrots in the sink.

“Sure we do,” I said, proud that at least I’d known enough to have a website made. I took him to my computer and brought up the site.

“May I?” he asked, pointing to my desk chair.

“Of course.”

He was a big guy and he dwarfed my little chair. He had to lower the seat to see the monitor properly. “Hmm,” he said as he scrolled around the site. “I don’t see a Donate button.”

“There isn’t one,” I said, and I could feel myself blushing. I hadn’t even realized I could receive donations through my website.

He clicked on some links and poked around the site, then said, “I could make this website a lot more dynamic.” He turned to me and added, “If you’d like me to.”

Wow, free fruits and veggies and now free tech support? “I’d be incredibly grateful,” I said, and I was surprised by the tears that sprang into my eyes.

Over the next few weeks, Jay worked to bring our website up to a whole new level. He also designed a brochure for us to put out in vegan restaurants and health-food markets, and to hand out at playgrounds. It was a full-color tri-fold that invited people to come meet the animals on Sundays, visit our website to learn more about us, or to make a donation.

Sometimes Jay came to the Gentle Barn straight from picking up his younger daughter, Molli, from preschool. Molli looked like the girl on the poster for
Les Misérables
. She had huge eyes that took in everything around her, but she never said a word, not one peep. Although she was a year older than Jesse (who was two and a half at the time), she was smaller than he was, with the tiniest little fingers and the most delicate features. While Jay worked at the computer I would take the two kids out to the barnyard to play. But as hard as I tried I couldn’t get Molli to speak or even to laugh. Sometimes, when Jay had a date night with his wife, I would babysit Molli, and although she didn’t talk she let me brush her hair and she would lean into me when we watched TV.

By fall of our second year, I had groups of kids coming out three to five days a week. I had a handful and a half of volunteers, and more inquiring every Sunday. And I had the press coming out every couple of months. And yet, even surrounded by all these people, I was filled with a profound sense of loneliness. I felt it only in the rare moments when I wasn’t up to my armpits in the responsibilities of raising a growing child and the duties of running a growing organization. But it was always there in the background. I was all alone in this expanding endeavor. And even while the numbers of visitors increased, I saw people in my intimate circle falling away. Girlfriends I’d gone out with for drinks or a movie, other moms I’d done playdates with at the park or at each other’s houses. I’d said “Sorry, I can’t” so many times, they had simply stopped calling.

At least it was a consolation prize to have such a gung-ho volunteer as Jay. His enthusiasm for the Gentle Barn gave me hope.

“What would you think about coming to our next board meeting?” I asked him one day as he helped me fill water buckets in the barn. It had occurred to me that, with his corporate background, Jay might have some insight or suggestions to offer. He came to the next meeting and listened attentively to everything that was said, and then he proposed some thoughts of his own—half a dozen great fund-raising ideas. He even offered to write grants for us. By the end of the meeting he was advising us in business matters none of us had even considered. It wasn’t long before we asked him to join the board, and I moved forward feeling a little bit lighter.

Like everyone who spent any time at the Gentle Barn, Jay developed a fondness for particular animals. The first was Olaf the rooster. Olaf and his brother Elvis were Polish Bantam chickens someone had rescued from a little shop in Chinatown and brought to the Gentle Barn.
Olaf and Elvis offered constant comic relief, though they seemed to take themselves very seriously. They were white and smaller than the average rooster and their heads were topped with fluffy pom-poms. Always together, they strutted around the barnyard as if they were leading a massive parade. They’d lift their feather-adorned feet high, as though stepping in time to music. Perhaps in their fluffy white heads, they were even seeing fireworks and large, adoring crowds. Yet, despite this seeming self-importance, the Chinatown brothers were very affectionate with humans. Kids could pet their soft feathers, kiss them, and carry them around. The brothers adored the attention and were a fan favorite from the moment they walked into the barnyard on their red carpet.

I was never quite sure why Jay fell for Olaf over Elvis. To be honest, I found it difficult to tell the two apart. True, Olaf’s pom-pom was a tad larger, making him look like a Russian tsar with one of those huge fuzzy hats. Sometimes when he walked he even looked like he was doing that squatting Russian dance with arms crossed and legs kicking out in front of him. Elvis had more of a
cool
thing going on, with his particularly wide “bellbottoms.” But these were subtle differences. I’m sure Jay had his reasons; love wasn’t always logical. What drew someone to a particular animal was as mysterious as the chemistry between humans.

Jay’s other barnyard love affair was with Kaylee the dog. Kaylee was one of my eight and was a smooth-coated Australian cattle dog, with white-and-fawn mottled fur. She was a very gentle soul, still a bit skittish from her rough start of neglect and surviving being hit by a car. Jay always visited Kaylee first when he arrived, and if he got to the Barn early in the day he would help me walk the eight dogs, always making sure Kaylee was in his set of four.

During these walks, Jay and I talked about fund-raising ideas and how to attract more people. But over time, our talks turned to more personal topics—his concerns about his marriage, and my guilty feelings about putting Jesse into day care. We enjoyed each other’s company,
and the more we talked the more we realized we had in common. I was amazed to find out that his sister had been in my class in high school and one of my brothers had been in Jay’s class in elementary school. Our families had belonged to the same congregation, and yet the two of us had never met.

Just like me, Jay had grown up in a household that had hardly noticed his existence. His bedroom had been in the basement, which afforded him the opportunity to sneak out whenever he wanted and to smuggle stray dogs back in. The only regular attention he got was beatings and bloody noses from his stepfather, until one day after he’d turned eighteen and he’d simply had enough and started fighting back.

Throughout his childhood, animals had been the only ones he’d truly trusted. Just like me he spoke better Animal than Human; his human relationships suffered for it, and his marriage was disintegrating fast. In many ways, it seemed, we had lived parallel lives, and I was grateful for this new friend—a true brother.

One day, after we’d returned from walking the dogs he said, “I’m going to take Kaylee home, OK?”

What?
Sure, we’d all taken a liking to this man, and clearly he was feeling quite comfortable at the Gentle Barn. But take my dog? “Um,” I said. “You’re going to what?”

“Just for the day. I want to take her home and give her a bath.”

“You can give her a bath here,” I suggested.

“I miss having a dog at home,” he said. “And I want her to hang out with my kids.”

Kaylee was my dog; she belonged with me at the Gentle Barn. But Jay had a way of presenting ideas that was so full of confidence and so full of charisma that I couldn’t figure out how, or even why, to say no. “Uh,” I said, stalling. “Well, if Kaylee wants to go …” But I knew Kaylee wouldn’t want to go. She’d come a long way, but she still got nervous around cars. “Do you want to go, Kaylee?” I asked her as Jay walked to his van. He opened the door and Kaylee jumped right in.

I stood there in front of the house as they drove off, feeling like I’d just been jilted.

Two hours passed and I hadn’t heard from Jay, so I called to see what was happening. When he picked up the phone, I heard kids laughing in the background.

“I think it’s time for Kaylee to come home now,” I said. I sounded like the mom of a teenage girl.

“We’re just blow-drying her,” Jay said. “We’ll bring her home soon.”

When they got back, Kaylee jumped out of the car, clean and fluffy and wagging from nose to stumpy little tail. Kaylee didn’t walk; she pranced—all around the living room—swinging her head from side to side, which in Kaylee-speak was a big, huge smile.

I had to admit, I was touched by how much Jay loved my dog. And Kaylee obviously loved him right back.

Fall arrived, but in the San Fernando Valley, that didn’t necessarily put an end to summer. With shorts weather as the backdrop, I began to plan the second annual Thanksgiving celebration. I had come up with the idea the year before when someone had brought a turkey to the Gentle Barn. Tommy the turkey had been raised for the Thanksgiving table, but the man who had raised him could not bring himself to slaughter the bird and brought him to me instead. With Tommy as the guest of honor, I had invited bunches of people to participate in a potluck feast, asking people to bring only vegan dishes so no animals would be harmed in the making of the celebration. Two hundred people had shown up, and I’d decided that this would be a yearly tradition—
rescuing
a turkey rather than feasting on one.

When Jay heard about this tradition, he jumped on board to help put on the second annual celebration.

“We won’t do a potluck this time,” he said with his trademark self-confidence.

“We’ll cook instead and ask Whole Foods to donate all the ingredients.”

“Who’s going to cook all that food?” I said. Jay didn’t know yet that I was not a good candidate for the chef crew; I had a repertoire of about two dishes, and one of them was halfway decent.

“I’ll head the team. We can get volunteers to help.”

Jay rolled out the rest of his plan. We would hire acrobats to entertain, as well as get someone to sing, maybe jazz—with a good sound system. We’d have table linens in fall colors and real china—none of those cheap paper products; that wasn’t environmentally friendly. And on each table, we’d have a cornucopia as a centerpiece. I was gaining more understanding every day as to why Jay had been a vice president of marketing.

Preparing the barnyard would be my domain, as well as rounding up the contact info for our guest list. Jay and I worked together for the next few weeks in preparation for our gala event. We also went to rescue our honored guest from a place that sold live turkeys for Thanksgiving. I was surprised and delighted when Scott said he’d help out the day of the event, not only by watching Jesse but with whatever else needed to be done.

We were expecting about 250 people, 50 more than the previous year, and our kitchen crew had prepared a little extra, just in case. We had finished putting up the last of the decorations and had begun laying out the food on the long tables at the side of the yard when the first guests arrived. We had a volunteer at a table at the gate, taking the suggested donation of $25 and making sure we had everyone’s e-mail address. I couldn’t believe how well this whole thing was set up. I’d never had such a high-class, well-organized event at the Gentle Barn.