Leaving Time

by Jodi Picoult

  “Serenity Jones,” I hear her say, and then I throw open the door to my dad’s room.

  He is fighting against the grip of two burly orderlies. “For the love of God, let me go,” he yells, and then he spies me. “Alice! Tell them who I am!”

  There’s a broken radio that looks like it’s been hurled across the room, its wires and transistors draped across the floor like a robot autopsy. The trash can has been overturned, and there are crumpled paper pill cups and tangles of masking tape and the peel of an orange scattered around. In my father’s hand is a box of breakfast cereal. He’s holding on to it like it’s a vital organ.

  Virgil stares at my dad. I can only imagine what he’s seeing: a man with wild snowy hair and pretty lousy personal grooming habits, who’s skinny and fierce and completely off his rocker. “He thinks you’re Alice?” Virgil says under his breath.

  “Thomas,” I soothe, stepping forward. “I’m sure the gentlemen will understand if you calm down.”

  “How can I calm down when they’re trying to steal my research?”

  By now, Serenity has come through the doorway, too, stopping dead at the struggle. “What’s going on?”

  The orderly with a blond buzz cut glances up. “He got a little agitated when we tried to throw out the empty cereal box.”

  “If you stop fighting, Thomas, I’m sure they’ll let you keep your … your research,” I say.

  To my surprise, that’s all it takes for my dad to go limp. Immediately the orderlies release him, and he sinks back in the chair, clutching that stupid box to his chest. “I’m all right now,” he mutters.

  “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” Virgil murmurs.

  Serenity shoots him a sharp glare. “Thank you so much,” she says pointedly to the orderlies, as they pick up the trash that’s all over the floor.

  “No problem, ma’am,” one replies, as the other pats my dad on the shoulder.

  “You take it easy, bro,” he says.

  My dad waits until they leave and then stands and grabs my arm. “Alice, you cannot imagine what I’ve just discovered!” His eyes focus suddenly past me, on Virgil and Serenity. “Who are they?”

  “Friends of mine,” I say.

  That seems to be good enough. “Look at this.” He points to the box. There is a bright cartoon of something that might be a turtle and might be a cucumber with legs, saying in a thought bubble: DID YOU KNOW …

  … that crocodiles can’t stick out their tongues?

  … that honeybees have hair on their eyes to help them collect pollen?

  … Anjana, a chimp at a rescue facility in South Carolina, has raised white tiger cubs, leopard, and lion cubs—bottle-feeding and playing with the babies?

  … Koshik, an elephant, can accurately speak six Korean words?

  “Of course he’s not speaking six words,” my father says. “He’s imitating the keepers. I Googled the scientific paper this morning after that imbecile Louise finally got off the computer because she’d reached the next level of Candy Crush. What’s fascinating is that he apparently learned to communicate for social reasons. He was kept apart from other elephants, and the only interaction he had socially was with human caregivers. You know what this means?”

  I glance at Serenity and shrug. “No, what?”

  “Well, if there’s documented proof that an elephant learned to imitate human speech, can you imagine the implications for how we think about elephants’ theory of mind?”

  “Speaking of theories,” Virgil says.

  “What’s your field of study?” my father asks him.

  “Virgil does … retrieval work,” I improvise. “Serenity’s interested in communication.”

  He brightens. “Through what medium?”

  “Yes,” Serenity says.

  My father looks baffled for a moment but then forges on. “Theory of mind covers two critical ideas: that you have an awareness of being a unique being, with your own thoughts and feelings and intentions … and that this is true for other beings, and that they don’t know what you’re thinking or vice versa until these things are communicated. The evolutionary benefit, of course, of being able to predict the behavior of others based on that is enormous. For example, you can pretend to be injured, and if someone doesn’t know you’re faking, they will bring you food and take care of you and you don’t have to do any work. Humans aren’t born with this ability—we develop it. Now, we know that for theory of mind to exist, humans have to use mirror neurons in the brain. And we know that mirror neurons fire when the task involves understanding others through imitation—and when acquiring language. If Koshik the elephant is doing that, doesn’t it also stand to reason that the other things mirror neurons signify in humans—like empathy—are also present in elephants?”

  When I hear him talk, I realize how incredibly smart he must have been, before. I realize what made my mother fall in love with him.

  That reminds me why we’re here.

  My father turns to me. “We need to get in touch with the authors of the paper,” he muses. “Alice, can you imagine the implications for my research?” He reaches for me—I feel Virgil tense up—and hugs me, swinging me in a circle.

  I know he thinks I’m my mother. And I know it’s totally creepy. But you know, sometimes it’s just nice to be hugged by my dad, even if the reasons are all wrong.

  He puts me down, and I have to admit, I haven’t seen him look this fired up in a while.

  “Dr. Metcalf,” Virgil says, “I know this is really important to you, but I wonder if you might have time to answer a few questions about the night your wife disappeared.”

  My father’s jaw tightens. “What are you talking about? She’s right here.”

  “That’s not Alice,” Virgil replies. “That’s your daughter, Jenna.”

  He shakes his head. “My daughter is a child. Look, I don’t know what you’re playing at, but—”

  “Stop agitating him,” Serenity interjects. “You’re not going to get anything out of him if he’s upset.”

  “Out of me?” my father’s voice rises. “You’re here to steal my research, too?” He advances on Virgil, but Virgil grabs my hand and pulls me between them, so that my father cannot help but see me.

  “Look at her face,” he urges. “Look at her.”

  It takes five seconds for my dad to respond. And let me tell you, five seconds is a really long time. I stand there, watching his nostrils flare with every breath and his Adam’s apple climb up and down the ladder of his throat.

  “Jenna?” my father whispers.

  For just a fraction of a second, when he looks at me, I know that he’s not seeing my mother. That I’m—what did he say?—a unique being, with my own thoughts and feelings and intentions. That I exist.

  And then he’s crushing me against him again, but this is different—protective and amazed and tender, as if he could shield me from the rest of the world, which is ironically all I’ve ever done for him. His hands span my back like wings.

  “Dr. Metcalf,” Virgil says, “about your wife—”

  My father holds me at arm’s length and glances in the direction of Virgil’s voice. That’s all it takes to break whatever glass thread has been spun between us. When he turns to me again, I know he’s not seeing me at all. In fact, he’s not even looking at my face.

  His gaze is fixated on the tiny pebble hanging from a chain around my neck.

  Slowly, he lifts the pendant with his fingers. He turns it over so that the mica glitters. “My wife,” he repeats.

  His fist tightens on the chain, snapping it off my neck. The necklace falls to the floor between us as my father slaps me so hard that I go flying across the room.

  “You fucking bitch,” he says.

  ALICE

  I have a story that is not one of my own but was told to me by Owen the bush vet. A few years ago, researchers were darting in a communal area. They had targeted one specific female, and shot the M99 dart from a vehicle. She dropped, as expected. But the
herd bunched very tightly around the female, preventing the other rangers from driving them away. They couldn’t get to her to put on the collar, so they waited a bit to see what would happen.

  Two concentric circles formed around the fallen female. The outer circle stood with their backsides to her, facing out at the vehicles, impassive. But there was an inner circle behind them that the researchers could not quite see, blocked as they were by the bulky bodies on the front line. They could hear rustling, and movement, and the snapping of branches. Suddenly, as if on cue, the herd stepped away. The elephant that had been darted lay on her side, covered with broken branches and a huge pile of soil.

  After birth, a calf is dusted by its mother to cover the smell of blood, which is a huge attraction for predators. But there was no blood on this female elephant. I’ve heard, too, that the reason elephants might cover a corpse is to mask the death smell—but again, I don’t believe it. Elephant noses are so incredibly sensitive, there is no way they would have mistaken an elephant that had been darted for one that was no longer alive.

  I have of course seen elephants dust and cover dead companions or calves that did not survive. It often seems to be a behavior reserved for deaths that are unexpected or somehow aggressive. And the deceased does not necessarily have to be an elephant. A researcher who came to the reserve via Thailand told a story of an Asian bull that was part of an elephant-back safari company. He had killed the mahout who had trained him and cared for him for fifteen years. Now, the bull was in musth—which in Hindi means “madness.” In musth, brainpower takes a backseat to hormones. Yet after the attack the bull got very still and backed away, as if he knew he had done something wrong. Even more interesting were the female elephants, which covered the mahout with dirt and branches.

  The week before I left Botswana forever, I had been putting in long hours. I observed Kagiso with her dead calf; I was writing up notes from the death of Mmaabo. One hot day, I got out of the jeep to stretch my legs, and I lay down beneath the baobab tree where I had last been with Thomas.

  I am not a light sleeper. I do not do stupid things, like get out of the Land Rover in spots that are heavily trafficked by elephants. I do not even remember closing my eyes. But when I awakened, my pad and pencil were somewhere on the ground and my mouth and eyes were gritty with dirt. There were leaves in my hair and branches piled on top of me.

  The elephants that had covered me were nowhere to be found when I awakened, which was probably a good thing. I could just as easily have been killed as partially buried alive. I had no explanation for my deep, comatose nap, for my lapse of judgment, except that I was not myself. I was more than myself.

  I’ve always found it ironic that the elephants which found me sleeping assumed I was dead, when in reality I was full of life. Approximately ten weeks along, to be exact.

  SERENITY

  Once, on my TV show, I had on a doctor who talked about hysterical strength—the life-and-death moments when people do extraordinary things, like lifting a car off a loved one. The common denominator was a high-stress situation that triggered adrenaline, which in turn led to someone transcending the limits of what his or her muscles should be capable of doing.

  I had seven guests that day. Angela Cavallo, who had lifted a 1964 Chevy Impala off her son Tony; Lydia Angyiou, who had wrestled a polar bear in Quebec when it was coming after her seven-year-old son during a game of pond hockey; and DeeDee and Dominique Proulx, twelve-year-old twins who had pushed a tractor off their grandfather when it toppled over on a steep slope. “It was, like, crazy,” DeeDee told me. “We went back and tried to move the tractor, after. We couldn’t budge it an inch.”

  It’s what I’m thinking about when Thomas Metcalf smacks Jenna across the face. One minute, I’m watching like a spectator, and the next, I’m shoving him away and diving against all principles of space and gravity so that Jenna lands in my arms. She looks up at me, as surprised as I am to find herself in my embrace. “I’ve got you,” I tell her fiercely, and I realize I mean it, in every interpretation.

  I am not a mother, but maybe that’s what I’m supposed to be right now for this girl.

  Virgil, for his part, smacks Thomas so hard that he falls back into the chair. A nurse and one of the orderlies burst into the room, having heard the crash. “Grab him,” the nurse says, and Virgil moves aside as the orderly restrains Thomas. She glances at us, on the floor. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” I say, as Jenna and I stand.

  The truth is, I’m not all right, and neither is she. She’s gingerly touching the spot where she was slapped, and me, I feel like I’m going to throw up. Have you ever felt like the air was too heavy or gotten an inexplicable chill? That’s somatic intuition. I used to be a pretty good empath—I could walk into a room as if I were dipping my toe into bathwater to test it for energy, and know if it was good or bad, if a murder had gone down there or if there was sadness coating the walls like layers of paint. For whatever it’s worth, there’s some weird shit swirling around Thomas Metcalf.

  Jenna is trying hard to hold it together, but I can see the sheen of tears in her eyes. From across the room, Virgil pushes off the wall, clearly agitated. His jaw is so tight I can tell he’s fighting to not unleash a stream of curses at Thomas Metcalf. He blows out of the room, a tornado.

  I look at Jenna. She stares at her father as if she has never seen him before; and maybe that’s true, in a way. “What do you want to do?” I murmur.

  The nurse glances at us. “I think we’ll sedate him, for a while. Might be best if you come back later.”

  I wasn’t asking her, but that’s all right. Maybe it even makes it easier for Jenna to leave her father, who still hasn’t apologized. I slip my arm through hers and pull her tight against me, tugging her out of the room. As soon as I cross the threshold, it’s easier to breathe.

  There’s no sign of Virgil in the hallway, or even in the front foyer. I lead Jenna past other patients, who stare at her as we pass. At least their caregivers have the grace to pretend they don’t see her fighting back her sobs, her cheek red and swollen.

  Virgil paces in front of my car. He looks up when he sees us. “We shouldn’t have come here.” He grasps Jenna’s chin and turns her face so that he can see the damage. “You’re going to have a hell of a shiner.”

  “Great,” she says, glum. “Should be fun explaining that to my grandma.”

  “Tell her the truth,” I suggest. “Your dad’s not stable. If he decked you, it wouldn’t be out of character—”

  “I already knew that before we came,” Virgil blurts out. “I knew Metcalf was violent.”

  Jenna and I face him. “What?” she asks. “My dad isn’t violent.”

  Virgil just raises an eyebrow. “Was,” he repeats. “Some of the most psychopathic guys I’ve ever met are domestic abusers. They’re charming as all get-out when they’re in public; in private, they’re animals. There was some indication during the investigation that your dad was abusive to your mother. Another employee mentioned it. Clearly your father thought you were Alice, back there. Which means—”

  “That my mom might have run away to protect herself,” Jenna says. “She might have had absolutely nothing to do with Nevvie Ruehl’s death.”

  Virgil’s cell phone starts to ring. He answers it, hunching forward so that he can hear the call. He nods and walks a few feet away.

  Jenna looks up. “But that still doesn’t explain where my mom went or why she didn’t try to come for me.”

  Out of the blue, I think: She’s stuck.

  I still don’t know if Alice Metcalf is dead, but she is certainly acting the way an earthbound spirit would—like a ghost who’s afraid of being judged for her behavior while living.

  I’m saved from answering Jenna by the return of Virgil. “My parents were happily married,” Jenna tells him.

  “You don’t call the love of your life a fucking bitch,” Virgil says frankly. “That was Tallulah at the lab. The mitochondrial D
NA from your cheek swab was a match to the hair from the evidence bag. Your mother was the redhead in close proximity to Nevvie Ruehl before she died.”

  To my surprise, Jenna seems annoyed by this information, rather than upset. “Look, could you make up your mind? Is it my mother who’s the crazed killer, or is it my father? Because I’m getting whiplash bouncing back and forth between your theories.”

  Virgil looks at Jenna’s injured eye. “Maybe Thomas went after Alice, and she ran into the enclosure to escape. Nevvie was there doing whatever she was supposed to be doing that night for her job. She got in the way, and was killed in the process by Thomas. Feeling guilty about a murder is a pretty good trigger to lose your grasp on reality and wind up in an institution …”

  “Yeah,” Jenna says sarcastically. “And then he cued the elephant to come walk back and forth on top of Nevvie so it would look like she was trampled. Because, you know, they’re trained to do that.”

  “It was dark. The elephant could have stepped on the body accidentally—”

  “Twenty or thirty times? I read the autopsy report, too. Plus, you don’t have any evidence of my father being inside those enclosures.”

  “Yet,” Virgil says.

  If Thomas Metcalf’s room made me queasy, then being between these two makes me feel like my head is going to explode. “Too bad Nevvie’s gone,” I say cheerfully. “She’d be a great resource.”

  Jenna takes a step toward Virgil. “You know what I think?”

  “Does it matter? Because you and I both know you’re going to tell me anyway …”

  “I think that you’re so busy accusing everyone else that night so you don’t have to admit that you’re the one to blame for a crappy investigation.”

  “And I think you’re a spoiled little shit who isn’t actually brave enough to open Pandora’s box and see what’s inside.”

  “You know what?” Jenna yells. “You’re fired.”

  “You know what?” Virgil shouts back. “I quit.”