Still Life with Elephant Read online

  Still Life with Elephant

  A Novel

  Judy Reene Singer

  Neelie, of this book, wanted a daughter more than

  anything, while I was twice blessed to have had the best

  daughters ever. I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

  This book is dedicated to my heart and my soul,

  Jamie Elisabeth and Robin Laurie.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  WHEN MATT first mentioned her, two years ago, I thought…

  Chapter Two

  “SO–HE didn’t come home last night?” Alana asked me. She…

  Chapter Three

  WE ARE all somebody’s rescues. Grace, my Boston terrier. Alley,…

  Chapter Four

  SECRETS ARE like plants. They can stay buried deep in…

  Chapter Five

  IT GAVE me great satisfaction to tell Matt that there…

  Chapter Six

  I SEEM to horrify my mother on a regular basis.

  Chapter Seven

  WHO INVENTED night anyway? It’s just day, slowly losing consciousness.

  Chapter Eight

  PREDICTIONS ARE the hubs that turn the wheels of life.

  Chapter Nine

  DELANEY WAS a bastard to work with. He was sneaky…

  Chapter Ten

  THE PHONE rang, and I grabbed it without checking the…

  Chapter Eleven

  HOW LONG can you sleepwalk through your life? A few…

  Chapter Twelve

  WELL, I knew there was at least one elephant I…

  Chapter Thirteen

  I HAD to know.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “ZIMBABWE?” ALANA repeated, her voice rising with incredulity. “Are you…

  Chapter Fifteen

  CHAOS WAS not only a theory, it was the current…

  Chapter Sixteen

  WE LANDED in Frankfurt after a seven-hour flight, tired, sticky—courtesy…

  Chapter Seventeen

  I WAS meant to ride. I always knew it. Why…

  Chapter Eighteen

  THERE ARE elephants, and there are elephants, and as we…

  Chapter Nineteen

  MATT AND I had managed to avoid speaking to each…

  Chapter Twenty

  BE CAREFUL what you wish for, my mother always said.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THERE IS a distinct difference between implosion and explosion: one…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I FELT her even before I heard her, a soft…

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  BABY ON board, I repeated to myself, baby on board.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  PLATE TECTONICS. It’s when the plates that make up the…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  SHE WAS ten feet at the shoulder, a wall of…

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  AT SOME point I must have fallen asleep, because Richie…

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “WHAT DO you think of ‘Dorothea’?” I asked my mother.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE NEXT day proved to be very ecclesiastical, because I…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  SOMEONE UP there was listening, because Reese was gone by…

  Chapter Thirty

  IM NOT really a big weeper. Really, I’m not. I…

  Chapter Thirty-One

  FAYE THE Elephant Girl was short and to the point.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  TELEGRAPH, TELEPHONE, tell a horseman. All I had to do…

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  WHEN YOU’VE seen one dawn, you’ve seen them all.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  PATIENCE IS one of my better qualities. I will hang…

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  DR. KARL SIMMONS couldn’t have behaved more awkwardly. He got out…

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “REESE SAYS you have a young man to bring to…

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  THE TRUTH was, I really had never forgotten that Captain…

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

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

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  DELANEY STAYED with me for another two weeks, until his…

  Chapter Forty

  “I’LL TAKE two dozen jelly donuts, please,” I told the…

  Chapter Forty-One

  A WEEK became two weeks, and Abbie remained very sick.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I WAS in a quantum state of mind. Quantum superposition,…

  Chapter Forty-Three

  IT IS an ironic universe that creates both the tiniest…

  Chapter Forty-Four

  DINERS MAKE the best confessionals. The food is never good…

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I DON’T know why I did it, slept with Matt…

  Chapter Forty-Six

  LIKE IT was a patient in the ICU, I managed…

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  THE ORIGINAL Margo was almost as imposing as the elephant…

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  TOLSTOY WAS right when he said that happy families are…

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  I WAS so proud of Abbie. She was my baby.

  Chapter Fifty

  THERE IS nothing like a wedding to put you in…

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “WHAT DO you want, Neelie?” Tom asked me. “What do…

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  AFRICA IS a state of mind as well as a…

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  FROM THE distance, a great rumbling rose through the air…

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  TOM MADE a second proposal over breakfast the next morning.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  THE PROBLEM with yellow brick roads is that they not…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Judy Reene Singer

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  WHEN MATT first mentioned her, two years ago, I thought he said he was getting a collie. And I thought, Great, I love dogs.

  I get like that—a little vacant, listening with half an ear. I hear a snatch of conversation and convert it into something else. I misunderstand things. Sometimes I’m not listening at all. I can’t help myself. I have a chronic preoccupation with an inner dialogue that leaves little room for the outside world. I practically go deaf when I get nervous. I’ve been this way for a long time, and maybe that was some of our problem.

  “The frog is woebegone,” he would say.

  “Frog?” I would ask.

  And he would put his hands on his hips and give me that look, before repeating himself. “I said, I won’t be gone for long.”

  So she called me, my husband’s colleague—that’s what the collie turned out to be. She called to tell me she was pregnant.

  Even though I had a radio blasting—I always keep a radio playing nearby—I heard that well enough. There is no mistaking when someone tells you that she and your husband are pregnant.

  “Neelie?” she started, then continued in musical tones. “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you, but Matt couldn’t bring himself to do it and you need to know. Matt and I are pregnant. About three months now.”

  Isn’t that just too cute? Matt and I are pregnant, the way couples announce it nowadays. When I was a kid, the wife got pregnant and the husband got a big pat on the back. Now they are pregnant together. So inclusive. Except for me, of course. Matt’s wife.

  They had been in love for about a year and a half, she said. Maybe two
, she couldn’t be sure. Which meant it started just a few months after he told me he was taking in a collie to help him with his lions. Lions. I seem to remember that I heard “lions.” Which is not so far-fetched; Matt, after all, is a veterinarian, and he sometimes helps out at a wild-animal sanctuary about ten miles from us.

  He was taking in a colleague to help him with his clients.

  And his love life. She apparently was taking care of his love life as well.

  Her name was Holly, and she was a small-animal specialist, and she was recuperating from a divorce, looking to relocate from Colorado, and wanting to join a practice in New York, in the small town where her parents lived. Where we lived. I found all of that out at the welcoming dinner I cooked for her in our home. She looked like she had just breezed in from a day on the Aspen slopes. Blond hair, lean workout body, crisp blue eyes. Big-Sky blue eyes, although I know Big-Sky is really Montana. She mentioned that she liked crafting. I was surprised, because she looked so outdoorsy.

  “I’d never take you to do crafting,” I said.

  “Rafting,” Matt said, exchanging glances with her.

  “White-water rafting,” she said, tossing her blonde, Colorado-outdoor-sun-bleached hair, her Big-Sky eyes now looking vastly amused at me. Of course. Who does white-water crafting? In my defense, I was whipping the cream for a lovely chocolate-cream pie, which is my signature dessert. Which she declined, because she DIDN’T LIKE CHOCOLATE.

  I mean, come on.

  I guess she wanted to keep that lean, sinewy-cat, predatory figure, because she was certainly still on the prowl. I just didn’t know it.

  I had a slice of pie, and Matt asked for a very thin slice, which he never did, he loves my pie, and maybe I should have sniffed out something suspicious right then and there.

  They worked well together. Matt always said that. She just seemed to anticipate what needed to be done next, and had it finished before he asked. She was full of energy and great ideas. She was a good surgeon, she was a good diagnostician, she was good with the clients.

  She was very good with Matt.

  I love horses, and that’s how Matt and I met. It was ten years ago. I was twenty-eight and had a decent private practice as a therapist with a master’s in social work. I owned a horse, though I rarely rode him. I was in one of those stupid circular dilemmas that horsepeople get into. I needed to work to pay for my horse’s upkeep, but couldn’t ride him much because I was working such long hours to pay for his upkeep. So he was more of a pasture potato.

  His name was Mousi, which was short for Maestoso Ariela, which, I must admit, is a weird name for a male horse, but he was a Lipizzaner, and they are named for both their mothers and fathers. It’s a very egalitarian way to do things, like the Norwegians, who do it with “sen” and “datter” tacked onto their surnames. No one gets left out that way.

  Mousi was colicking. He was sixteen, and he was my whole world, and now he was nipping at his sides and rolling back his upper lip like a wine connoisseur at a tasting. I knew right away it was the sign of a belly ache. My old veterinarian had just retired, and I needed to find someone new. Matt had been practicing in the area for a while, and I had heard from horse friends that he was good and cute. I mean, a good vet and cute. But he was also good and cute. He came out to the barn right away, which is very important for a colic, and quickly got Mousi comfortable. I liked the way he worked. Quiet and sure of himself, gentle with Mousi, and very skillful when he had to pass the nasogastric tube to pump warm water and mineral oil into Mousi’s belly.

  “I guess he was a quart low,” he joked, as Mousi’s colic eased.

  I liked his sense of humor.

  When we were finished, I grabbed my wallet to pay him.

  He said, “Doodle gate?”

  “Is that like Watergate?” I asked. “With cartoons?”

  “Watergate?” He gave me a puzzled look. One of those puzzled looks that tip me off that I haven’t really heard things right.

  “Date,” he said. “Do you date?”

  “Yes,” I said, embarrassed, busying myself with something crucial, like arranging the bills in my wallet in denominational order.

  We liked each other right away. I didn’t demand much from our relationship, and he was distracted most of the time anyway, busy building the equine part of the practice. I wasn’t quite there, he wasn’t quite there, and it was a good fit. We fell in love. We got married.

  Six years later, he bought the practice out from the retiring senior partner. It was a large practice by now, and getting larger. Things were going great. And then we tried to have children. It didn’t happen for us, and we even went to a fertility specialist, who tested everything from the hair inside our nostrils to the carpeting in our bedroom. After several long months, we found ourselves sitting in his office, facing him at his desk, while he sat with our papers in front of him, a potentate holding court, handing out the grave pronouncement of infertility. Matt had sperm clowns, he announced. I immediately pictured Matt’s testicles hosting a kind of Comedy Central, and giggled a little. Matt and the fertility doctor both looked at me. There is nothing funny about a low sperm count.

  But I guess those clowns came through when he needed them.

  After Holly and I spoke, I hung up the phone. Actually, I didn’t hang up, I just put the phone down on the kitchen table and walked away from it, walked out of the house and straight to the barn, like one of the zombie people in Dawn of the Dead. Grace, my Boston terrier, followed, looking worried.

  I tacked up Mousi and walked him around the ring, and asked him if he thought Matt was going to come home that night. Mousi is pretty wise for a horse. How do you start a divorce? I asked him. Because there was no question now, that was what I was going to do. How will I get through it? How do I wake up every morning knowing Matt is gone? And what happens afterward? Do I move to Colorado and break up someone else’s marriage, sort of like a reciprocal trade agreement?

  I rode Mousi around the riding ring on a loose rein and continued to talk to him. Horses are terrific to talk to, because you don’t have to strain to listen for answers. They never lie. Mousi just listened, flicking his white ears back and forth like semaphores, and I knew he was being very sympathetic.

  We had a long conversation.

  How many times had I invited Holly over for dinner? I asked Mousi. Dozens! How many times had I sent my best Tupperware containers to the office, filled with extra food for her, because the poor thing never had time to cook? Dozens! How many times did we include her in our plans because Matt said she was lonely? How many times had I helped Matt pick out just the right Christmas, birthday, thank-you-for-working-late gift? Ha! And all the while, I told Mousi, all the while, behind my back—all the while—she and Matt—well—

  Those collies, you can never trust them.

  Chapter Two

  “SO–HE didn’t come home last night?” Alana asked me. She is my dearest, closest friend, and I had called her early the following morning.

  I was holding my breath to stop the hiccupping that was the result of too much crying, which was how I had spent the whole night.

  “Nooo,” I answered, releasing a cascade of pent-up hiccups. “He never came home.”

  “What a bastard!” she proclaimed. “You’d think he would have done the right thing and called you himself.”

  “The right thing would have been not to screw her.”

  “What a snake,” she said. “And a coward,” she added. “You’ll never be able to dust his chicken.”

  “Dust his chicken?”

  “Trust him again,” she said.

  “The thing is”—I hiccupped—“I trusted her, too. She came into my home. She ate my food.” Hiccup. “I even trusted her with my mother’s secret recipe for fruit stollen.” Hiccup, hiccup.

  “I would think you’d be more upset that you trusted her with Matt,” Alana said dryly.

  “Well, I trusted Matt first, of course,” I said. “I trusted him to uphol
d his end of our marriage. If I trusted him, I shouldn’t have to worry about trusting anyone who’s with him.” I then excused myself to grab my third box of tissues in twenty-four hours.

  “So now what?” Alana asked when I got back to the phone.

  I didn’t know.

  I kept thinking about when I finally did get pregnant. Last year. It was after four in-vitros. And it wound up being ectopic. I went through an emergency operation and lost an ovary and a fallopian tube, after which the surgeon came in, and said very matter-of-factly, “Sorry, but we lost your ovary and a tube,” like, Oops, where did I put those damn things, anyway?

  I thought how very ectopic this all was getting now. So ectopic that now Matt’s baby was in someone else’s uterus.

  “You want me to come over and spend a few days?” Alana asked.

  “No,” I said, “you have your own family to worry about. And I need to be by myself.”

  “You should have someone around you,” she said. “You should be able to walk a shoe in some gum.”

  I didn’t ask her what she meant. I reheard it later in my head: she had said, Talk it through with someone.

  I spent the next three days alone with my stack of CDs, playing mostly stuff by Black Sabbath. I was angry. Sad. Angry. Sad. Furious. I didn’t do my usual morning jelly-donut-and-coffee run, which I even managed to do two years ago after I had broken my right leg. At the time, I just used my left leg for both pedals, on a manual-shift truck, because I have to have my jelly donuts.