The Best of Friends

by Sara James

  “I’m sorry.”

  She said more than that, of course, a babble of appropriate maybes and qualifiers, let’s do a high-resolution scan, et cetera et cetera, but it was all just a wash of words so I could have time to comprehend that the porthole was underwater, the waves lapping over the grave, that tender light extinguished. Ten-week-old Baby was gone.

  I was shivering in my white office gown when I called Andrew.

  “G’day. How’d it go?”

  “Not well at all. Andrew, the baby’s dead.” I think now how terrible that was, delivering such a cold truth without warning, but I didn’t have the grace to prepare him. I was shocked and scared and sad, and only in telling him did the terrible burden seem any smaller.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “The heartbeat. It’s gone. And that means the baby died. Oh, Andrew.”

  He was quiet for a moment and only now do I picture him then, at work in the new job he’d only recently taken as vice president for News Corporation, wearing a suit and a tie instead of his Tazzie devil shirt, coworkers wandering by as he got sucker-punched by his wife. Not that he ever shamed me for the barbarity of what I’d done. Instead, when he spoke, his voice was calm and kind.

  “Sara, it’ll be okay.” I took the tissue the doctor handed me as he continued, “We’ll try again. Lots of people have miscarriages.” Then, with gentle humor he added, “Look, we knew it couldn’t be this easy. We’ll have fun trying.”

  A few minutes later I hung up and I blew my nose and I put on my suit, and as I walked home all I could think was how dirty the street was, how much the city stank in June, how I hated signs like “Don’t Block the Box,” how the buses stank, too, how stupid everything was, most especially me, for waiting so long, for putting off the most important thing for things that were more immediate, for thinking I could fool God, fool fate, fool the calendar. I was thirty-eight, after all.

  And what about Andrew? Nine years younger, a man who’d made no secret of the fact that what he wanted most in life was to get married and have children. Had I asked for too much—a fascinating job, a man to love, and children? In my greed had I lost my chance? And what about his?

  The perfect run down the slope had ended. It was a mountain, after all. It was a glacier. And I had crashed.

  25

  GINGER (2000)

  ARE YOU READY?™ Nad asked, peering through the screen of our front door in Okaukuejo. “If you want to get back to camp tonight, you’d better hurry.” The thought of elephants beckoned, but I had one thing left to do.

  “Just a sec. I want to get this e-mail off to Sara before we go.” As I hit the send button and imagined my message flying across the world, I thought about how quickly life could change. In an instant. A car tumbles down a ravine. Someone says “I do.” A soldier steps on a land mine. A baby cries, those first lusty cries, while another one’s heart beats for the last time. And the instant evil takes shape, when two heavily armed boys walked into a library and changed a country forever.

  The tragedy at Columbine High School had made headlines around the world, including Namibia. In the weeks following the shooting, I knew that Sara and her friend and producer, Andi Gitow, had been going back and forth to Colorado, spending time with a family who’d been tragically affected by the shooting.

  Sharing heartache, putting your own in perspective by helping others deal with far greater sorrow, was one way to move beyond tragedy. Perhaps this was Sara’s way. I couldn’t know. For the first time since that long-ago dinner in New York during which we’d reconnected, sharing stories of old and new loves as well as our evolving dreams, I felt a distance between Sara and me. After twenty years of having lives which were entirely intertwined, despite the thousands of miles which separated us, it felt as if our braided lives had come undone and were beginning to fray.

  I couldn’t forget our phone call just a few weeks before.

  “Hey, we just got back,” Sara had laughed.

  I’d instantly felt off-balance. “I didn’t know you were going away.”

  “Yeah, it was a spur-of-the-moment trip. Andrew and I went to Paris for a long weekend with Andi. We all needed a break after Columbine, plus Andi had lived in Paris for a few years, so she gave us an insider’s tour. We went to the Louvre, checked out the street markets, and I ate so much yummy food I’m going to have to diet for a year.” I’d listened quietly while Sara continued, breathlessly listing the shops, the galleries, the fashions, the wonderful restaurants, filling a void with excitement, with places, with things. It was so unlike her that I knew then, without her having to say another word, that she’d lost the baby.

  “It sounds wonderful, but, Sara?”

  I could almost feel the intake of air across the line.

  I paused, then asked as gently as possible, “Did you lose the baby?”

  And then I heard the tears I couldn’t see. “I wanted to call you, but I just couldn’t talk about it.”

  Since her miscarriage, Sara was at once stronger and weaker, depending on the moment and what she chose to reveal. I could scarcely imagine her pain. I remembered when I had been pregnant with Kimber, feeling him kick and hiccup, how months of joy had crystallized at the moment of his birth. But for Sara, ten lovely weeks of anticipation had ended in shock and sorrow. And while I knew she was thrilled for Nad and me and our son, I wondered if her loss made it hard for her to witness my joy. Or perhaps she thought that by avoiding me, she could keep the shadow of grief from clouding my happiness. But I couldn’t help but worry that the presence of my precious child was beginning to drive a wedge between us. After we’d shared so much over the years, it was hard not to be the one she confided in.

  It was also incredibly selfish. When she needed a hug or a big, messy cry, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t take her out for a stiff drink or drag her out to a silly movie; we couldn’t stand together and shake our fists at the heavens, ranting and raging about life, fate, and timing. Not only did I live thousands of miles away, but we’d recently left our house with its precious telephone and reliable e-mail for a remote base camp in eastern Etosha, one that didn’t even have a radio telephone.

  “Gin, come on.” After spending the afternoon back at the research station at Okaukuejo, Nad was impatient. “Kimber is about to fall asleep. Let’s go.”

  I typed a breezy note—Off to camp, wish us luck—and hit send. I didn’t add that I was worried that this latest heartbreaking assignment, taking on the trust and the pain of a lovely, wounded family, would add too much to her personal grief. That instead of giving herself time to heal after her miscarriage, she was willfully making choices to prove that she hadn’t been shaken to the core, that she was still tough and work was still important. I knew it wasn’t the time to question my friend’s motives.

  The computer connection closed. Nothing. Sara must be in the air.

  Turning out of the gate at Okaukuejo, taking the dusty road east, I thought about the many times Nad and I had made this drive across the park when I was pregnant. Each time we’d loaded our Land Rover with tents, electric wiring, a basin, shade netting, anything we could beg, buy, or borrow to make life at our soon-to-be-constructed camp more comfortable. Along the way, we’d talked about names for our baby, wondered if he’d sleep well, and if he’d be able to tolerate the heat. With each trip the camp had taken shape. Nad had finished digging the trenches for water pipes, attaching them to a cold-water shower in an abandoned horse stable and to a double basin—one side for washing dishes, the other for washing our baby—under a large acacia tree. Near the fence Nad and a few friends had dug a twenty-foot pit for our long-drop toilet, and then our two tents had been raised. But with camp looking increasingly like home, more questions emerged. I’d begun to feel the isolation, and had brooded over what we’d do and where we’d go if our child got sick. Then I’d put worries aside and simply longed to finally see him, wondering what on earth he’d look like. Now I glanced at the sleeping baby beside me, light brown hair, blue-gr
een eyes, and lashes as long as a giraffe’s. His arrival had answered some of our questions, but there was still so much more I longed to know about my son. It would take a lifetime, and I looked forward to every minute of it.

  I reached out and stroked his chubby pink cheek. After we’d celebrated his birthday back in Virginia with my family, Kimber was now a year old. Walking and chatting in a combination of languages uniquely his own, he’d changed so much since the first time my parents had seen him. They’d flown to Namibia the week after Kimber was born. For three weeks they’d strolled, rocked, and cradled their first grandson. At sunset they’d carried him to the fence to watch elephant herds descend upon the water hole. When Dad had had to return to the U.S., Mom had stayed on, hanging out countless loads of laundry, filling the kitchen with the aroma of bacon and brownies, wiping tears from my tired face, and beaming at the sound of her grandson’s first delightful coos.

  Mom had always laughed that she’d been a young mother, but that her girls had made her an old grandmother. She had been half my age when her first child was born. Three more daughters followed in quick succession, including Tish, with her very special needs. With Dad on the road Monday to Friday, working hard to support us all, Mom found her joy, made her mistakes, and raised her kids largely alone. Just a kid herself.

  I couldn’t remember my mom—now a grandmother, a self-taught and serious antiques collector and dealer, and a wicked tennis player—ever wishing that she’d had a career first and then children, that somehow order and timing had deprived her of a more interesting life. My parents weren’t kids pretending to be grown up, they’d had to grow up fast, and they’d always put their children first. Once, when we were young and Tish had been very sick, I remembered asking my mom if she wanted to get rid of all of us. It was a child’s question, asked with a child’s innocence and raw intuition. She had laughed and then said very seriously, “Never, ever.” I’d believed her then, and when I watched her playing with my baby boy, I believed her still.

  But just six weeks after Mom had arrived, we’d been back at the airport. Through tears, I’d made a promise to bring Kimber to the U.S. to meet his American family before he turned a year old. Then she was gone and I was on my own.

  The next few months passed quickly. Kimber’s demands to be fed at night became less frequent, and he breezed past milestone after milestone. With such a healthy, bright son, I slowly began to gain confidence in my new role as mother. Problem was, I missed my old role as wildlife filmmaker.

  Filmmaking had become a vital part of my life, a part I wanted to share with Kimber. I had imagined turning the Land Rover into a traveling nursery, our very own four-by-four stroller. With the camera mount on one door and the box of camera gear on the seat beside me, Kimber would have the back of the vehicle all to himself. I’d pictured bold blue, yellow, and red blocks of cloth strung across the windows for curtains, an elephant mobile hanging from the ceiling, baby books, and a quiet, restful child. I would film, read, write, all the things I’d always done while out in the bush. Kimber would grab his toes and learn his ABCs. Right. Obviously I’d pictured all of this before I ever had a laughing, crying, rolling, eating, grabbing, delightful, into-everything precious baby.

  Fortunately, our move to camp helped to make my life as a working mom work. With all the comforts of home, camp was also within easy commuting distance of a dense population of elephants. But that was not all. We had something my mom had never had while raising four children—a wonderful nanny. Selinda. A sturdy woman quick to smile and equally quick to discipline, Selinda was a Heikom bushman who had been born in Etosha long before the land had been proclaimed a national park. She and her husband, Ou Jan Tsumeb, a colleague of Nad’s, had raised their four children here and were helping to raise their grandchildren. Fortunately for us, Selinda had agreed to help us with Kimber.

  It had been eleven years since I set out alone for Africa, embracing an adventure that had turned into a way of life. From filming headless warthogs to becoming a filmmaker with an expanding résumé, from protecting my broken heart to risking the thrill and the pain of falling in love again, I knew that my next adventure would be wonderfully different: it would be shared with my family.

  Beginning a new project with elephants, exploring the mysteries of their movements and their long-distance, infrasonic communication, was in many aspects reminiscent of the old way of life we had cherished in the desert, but this project also reminded us of how far we had come. Our marriage and our child were thriving, and this time our film wasn’t being shot in the vague hope that it would sell. This film, Giants of Etosha, was for National Geographic.

  FOR THE FIRST time since we’d left the baboons, I found myself completely immersed in a wild world. While the baboons’ environment had completely destroyed their society, Etosha’s elephants lived in a world that allowed their caring, complex, intelligent social groups to flourish. Although Etosha had more than two thousand elephants, we primarily followed one herd, getting to know their preferred feeding grounds, the water holes they frequented, the babies born to them, and the males who shadowed them in search of a female in estrus. But most of all, we got to know Knob Nose, their matriarch.

  Whether I was peering through a lens or absorbing a scene with all my senses, I learned a lot about motherhood from watching Knob Nose and her breeding herd. Bonded by females with an extended family of aunts, sisters, cousins, and an assortment of their young, their breeding herd reminded me of my own extended family back in the States. Growing up under many watchful eyes, young elephants explore their world and test themselves in a warm, secure, and protective environment. Thinking of our Elee and Kimber, I watched the little ones as they walked along game paths, casually brushing up against their mother’s body. At water holes they’d play, chasing smaller animals or each other, and later, in a contest of strength, the males would push their growing bulk against one another, testing themselves and challenging one another, all within the safety of the herd.

  At camp, Kimber was taking similar steps, from helping his dad stack firewood, to forming a tender bond with Selinda’s bright grandson Rian, to trusting his mom to return after sunset. And, perhaps most of all, learning to trust his own instincts.

  This was never truer than one afternoon when Nad, Kimber, and I had been alone at camp. In the shaded area outside our tent, Nad had cut slices from a thick slab of rye bread. I’d walked back and forth from the other tent, bringing tomatoes, tuna, mayonnaise, a few basics for lunch. Kimber had moved around us, walking between our legs, under the table, helping pick up his toys, and then suddenly, at the edge of the tent where a huge steel beam held down the canvas material, he’d stopped and stood dead still.

  In the next instant Nad had gripped the knife while I’d grabbed the tent pole. Kimber, my bouncing eighteen-month-old son, remained perfectly still and focused on the ground. Gliding over his feet, slowly, until the tail touched his toes, was a long, iridescent green snake, a boomslang, one of the deadliest snakes in Africa. Kimber had felt the grip of its scales, the coolness of its body, and yet he hadn’t moved a muscle. When the snake disappeared around the corner of the tent, he’d picked up a ball and started playing again.

  Instinct—what an awesome power, what a truly amazing blessing. When all the adrenaline in your body begs you to run, instinct tells you it is safer to stand still. Nature or nurture, thank God Kimber had it.

  My friendship with Sara began as an act of instinct, knowing innately that she was someone I could trust. Our bond and my intuition were gifts I’ve tapped into many times since we were twelve. And my time in the bush had definitely helped to hone my senses, keeping me alert to danger, to opportunities, and knowing instinctively when not to cross certain natural lines. As a filmmaker, I’d responded by knowing when to move in close and when to pull out quickly. I’d also known when to walk away. In Etosha, the same voice I’d heard in the Kuiseb, the one that said, Enough is enough, still resonated.

  About a year
into our study, I drove out late one afternoon. I’d given up finding the matriarch, Knob Nose, and her herd that day, and simply planned to enjoy the soothing bird sounds and the cool air while watching zebra and wildebeest trek across the plains and disappear into the bushes for the night. Suddenly the sounds of trumpeting, branches breaking, and another female elephant’s huge feet pounding on the road just twenty feet away broke any semblance of peace.

  I threw the Land Rover into reverse, pulling away, giving my heart a chance to steady and the elephant time to relax. Then I began inching the car forward. I knew there had to be something wrong, and there it was. Lying on top of a mound of red earth was the elephant’s baby. Surrounding his body were elephant footprints and thin trunk lines in the sand, signs that his mother had tried desperately to lift him. His trunk was still; his chest had risen and fallen for the last time. I looked for wounds, for some sign of struggle with a lion or hyena, but his body wasn’t scarred, there was no blood splattered on the ground, only the sad signs of a natural, tragic death.

  I looked at his mother, standing guard over her dead baby, gently touching him with her trunk while keeping a wary eye on me. Clearly these images were dramatic, but this poor elephant had been through enough drama for a lifetime. She deserved to be left alone. Another filmmaker had once told me, “If you don’t capture it on film, it never happened.” If only that were true. My breasts ached and I decided that no amount of footage, no matter how potentially riveting for our film, was worth putting her through more agony. I left my camera in its case and went back to camp, back to nurse Kimber.

  OVER THE NEXT months I left camp early, wanting to spend more time with Knob Nose and her herd. Then one morning I couldn’t find them anywhere. Fifty tons of elephant had simply disappeared. Fortunately, since Nad was an accomplished pilot, we had the option of radio-tracking the herd from the air.