Still Life with Elephant

by Judy Reene Singer

  “Thomas Pennington himself?” Thomas Princeton Pennington was a multimillionaire who lived part-time in New York City and part-time all around the rest of the world, and funded animal rescues with his pocket change. He was a major supporter of the sanctuary. His name was always in the news.

  “Yep—he even came up here, to check the big barn and get some work started on it. We have to bring in heating and reinforce the walls.”

  “Reinforce the walls?” I exclaimed. “What on earth are you getting in?”

  “Didn’t Matt tell you?” Richie sounded puzzled.

  “Matt hasn’t discussed it with me yet,” I said. “He’s—been so busy.”

  “Oh?” He paused. “Are you guys okay? Matt seemed—distracted.”

  “We have some things going on here,” I said. “What’s the passport for?”

  “I don’t want to talk over the phone. Ask Matt,” Richie replied. “By the way, did he tell you we rescued two draft horses? Sisters. You’re gonna love them—so bring peanut-butter cookies. Jackie says they like peanut-butter cookies.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s been too long since we’ve seen you,” he said affectionately, “and we miss you, so drop by soon.”

  I hung up and decided I would go to the sanctuary and visit Richie and Jackie. Some things just can’t be unraveled.

  And then I worried. What if I ran into Matt up there? I couldn’t bear the thought of running into Matt, and falling apart in front of him. Or him and Holly, because, in my mind’s eye now, they were joined at the hip.

  I decided I would have to change banks, change supermarkets, change gas stations, change everything. I was going to have to be more careful about where I put in appearances.

  I would withdraw from the world and become a recluse and speak to no one and go nowhere, except out to my barn every day to ride, and then I’d return immediately to the house. I would allow myself nothing else. No contact with the outside world. Nothing.

  I was, by turns, heartsick and angry and morose and angry and filled with despair. And angry.

  And the stupid thing was, I couldn’t see that I was doing most of it to myself.

  Chapter Eleven

  HOW LONG can you sleepwalk through your life? A few weeks? A few years? Ten or twenty years, if you’re not paying attention?

  I had lost track of time. Were it not for the calendar hanging in the barn where I notate every ride, I wouldn’t know what day of the week it was. I just didn’t care.

  I didn’t open my mail. I avoided the phone. I deleted the answering-machine messages without listening to them.

  My lawyer called half a dozen times, until, finally, I picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Neelie,” he started. “I have to talk to you, bubbee.”

  I took a deep breath, turned down my radio, and forced myself to listen. Bubbees could be breasts or Jewish grandmothers, and I knew I had to concentrate on the rest of the conversation, because context was going to make a big difference.

  “Matt got a lawyer,” he said. “I have the papers on my desk. Matt said that he’ll pay all the court costs. My fee, too.”

  I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach by a horse.

  “Neelie?”

  “Yes.”

  “You guys just have to come to an agreement over the house. Probably you’ll have to sell it to straighten out all the finances. Matt’s attorney says that Matt’s still paying off his practice, so that money will be tied up for years.”

  “I can’t sell the house,” I said. “I need the barn. How am I going to be able to afford another place with a barn?”

  “You live in an equitable-distribution state.”

  “But he took all the money. The accounts, the DVDs—”

  “That’s music,” he said. “You mean the CDs. And selling the house is the only fair way to work things out.”

  “As fair as him having a baby with his girlfriend?” I was shouting now. “Why am I the one who has to play fair?”

  “I don’t think Matt will pay if you start getting difficult,” he said. “A fight could get you buggy spandex.”

  “Spandex?”

  He sighed loudly. “Maybe you need a hearing aid? I said a fight could get ugly and expensive.”

  He was right, but giving up the barn meant I had to give up my riding business, because I didn’t make enough to pay for everything on my own. And it would kill me to give up the barn. It would be the coup de grâce.

  I lay awake all that night and moped around the house all the next day. I would have to open my practice again. Rent an office. Fight over how many therapy sessions some insurance clerk felt my clients needed. I would have to listen to problems and suggest life-management strategies. And, of course, long hours of work meant there would be no time for a horse, so what was the purpose of keeping a house with a barn? Good old Matt had managed to screw two women at the same time.

  I put on my boots and headed for the barn to ride Isis. Mousi watched me from over his paddock fence, his dark eyes following me and Isis as we trotted and halted and halted some more. Mousi didn’t appear jealous—just curious. He was probably wondering why I would bother saddling up a horse if I spent the whole time just sitting on it, doing nothing. The good thing, though, was that Isis was actually halting. And the time we spent at it had been trimming down over the past few weeks, to ten minutes, then seven, then five, until this morning, when she finally just glided to an immediate soft halt and stood there quietly. Gloriously calm. And for that moment, I forgot everything that had been eating away at me. Isis was standing perfectly still in the middle of the ring, trusting me, waiting for me to cue her, perfectly quiet and submissive. The sun fell on my shoulders like a warm hand, and splashed a bright patch across her neck. Time stopped. I held my breath, thinking I had become part of something greater, some odd place that connected the energy of people and animals, and somehow Isis and I had both found each other there. I hated to ask her to trot again, but I had to. I asked her to trot and then halt again, and each time she came to a full and quiet stop. It was a moment of exquisite joy.

  Of course, that meant my next challenge would be to teach her to piaffe, which was going to be tricky, but that was a problem for another day.

  I had stopped riding Delaney. My plan was to let him observe me from his paddock. Let him watch me riding Isis. I think horses can sometimes learn from other horses—modeling, it’s called in psychology—and I was hoping that he would learn from Isis that I was someone who was okay. Plus it gave me the advantage of being able to observe him without a rider.

  He browsed through his hay like a normal horse. Every once in a while he would lift his head and grunt before bolting across his paddock, like demons were on his tail. It struck me as curious that this behavior seemed to have little to do with anyone’s riding him, and I made a mental note of this. I put Isis away, pleased with her progress, and I decided to do a quick donut run before I rode Delaney later that afternoon. I headed for my car. My brother’s car was parked behind it in the driveway.

  Reese, my kid brother, was in the kitchen, his head in my refrigerator. He’s really not a kid—he’s thirty-three and has his own apartment near my parents. We share the same genes for height and brown hair and green eyes. He’s good-looking. For a brother.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked. I had taken to locking the door while I was in the barn now, in an effort to Matt-proof the house, just in case he and Holly-Sneaky wanted the furniture.

  “I took the screen out of your kitchen window and climbed in, over the sink,” he said. Sure enough, there was a sneaker print in the middle of the sink. Also a few across the floor. Luckily for him, Grace was with me in the barn, or he would have been dabbing at micro-bite wounds by now.

  “I did knock,” he said, “but I thought you probably couldn’t hear me over Metallica. Why do you keep music playing so loud when you’re not home?”

  “Because I will be coming home at some point, and it has to
be there,” I said, watching him shuffle my one egg to another shelf. “If you’re looking for food, I have none.”

  “I saw.” He straightened up and shut the refrigerator door. “Actually, I was putting food in. Mom sent it over with me. She’s worried.”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  He sat himself down at the table. “Make coffee,” he said. “She also sent over some corn bread.”

  I put up coffee. “How’s teaching?” I asked. Reese teaches math in a junior college.

  He shrugged. “Same old same-old.”

  Grace came into the kitchen and raced over to him and, thinking it was Matt, almost wagged her tail loose from her back end. When she realized it was Reese, she lowered her head and growled.

  “NO BITE,” I yelled at Grace. She looked disappointed.

  “So—how’s it going?” Reese asked, picking Grace up and plopping her onto his lap to rub her ears. She liked ear rubs more than she liked biting, and was admirably restraining herself. “Have you heard from Matt?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “Hey,” he said. “Don’t tune me out.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said defensively. “If you have to know, everything sucks.”

  “It may not be too late for you guys. Maybe you should talk things over with him. You know, find out what he wants and needs.”

  “Like a layette?”

  “Maybe it’s not all his fault.”

  “Oh?” I asked, my voice heavy with sarcasm. “Like, I used his penis to get her pregnant?”

  “Maybe he was looking for someone to talk to, someone who could listen to him,” Reese said. “For a change.”

  “I was always there for him!” I said, slamming his mug of coffee down onto the table. I turned my back on him on the pretense of getting a sponge to clean up the spill, but really to dab at the sudden tears in my eyes. “There’s no milk,” I said hoarsely.

  “Black is fine.” Reese took the mug. “Maybe if he didn’t feel like he was married to a stone wall, things wouldn’t have happened.”

  I spun around. “Reese!”

  “Oh, come on, Neelie.” His voice was soft, tentative. “It’s time someone brought this up with you. So there was this big horrible accident,” he said. “You were sixteen, and you couldn’t have done anything, for God’s sake. So get over yourself already.”

  I could hardly breathe. “Shut up,” I said, and put my hands over my ears. Reese got up and walked over to me and pulled my hands away and then put his arms around me.

  “Everyone tiptoes around you,” he said, patting me on the back like he was burping a baby. “Come on. How long can you play the elephant card?”

  I pulled away, tears running down my face now. “What are you talking about, elephant card?”

  “You know,” he said. “You know. You carry it with you. All the time. It’s like there’s always an elephant in the room with you. It’s time you let it go.”

  Chapter Twelve

  WELL, I knew there was at least one elephant I had to face. Matt. I didn’t want to, but I absolutely had to talk to him and see if there was some way I could keep the house.

  I debated between calling his cell phone and calling his office, then thought better of doing the latter. I didn’t want the sympathy or curiosity of Crystal, the dyslexic secretary that had come with the practice.

  I put it off for almost a week. My lawyer left a few messages to ask how things were coming along. Working things out between us before the divorce would save money, he said. I didn’t care about saving Matt money, but I did care about saving my barn. My lawyer also said something about licorice puppy cups, but I didn’t have the patience to listen a second time to figure it out. A quick hit of the delete key solved the problem.

  I waited a few more days, but I just couldn’t make the call.

  “Call him,” Alana advised. “It’ll get Holly all worried that you’re in touch. Right now, she has the upper hand. Give her a little agita.”

  I paced away the whole afternoon until, in the early evening, I couldn’t stand the thought of going through the torture all over again the next day, and finally called his cell phone.

  “Neelie?” He sounded happy. I could have sworn he sounded happy. “I’m so glad to hear from you.”

  “We have to talk,” I said. “About the house and stuff.”

  He readily agreed and asked if I’d had dinner yet. I said no. Then he asked me to dinner.

  We were going to meet at the diner. It was the only place that had no special memories for us. And I decided to dress a bit for the occasion.

  Form-fitting jeans, my tightest, since I knew Holly-Belly would be showing by now. And a nice little sweater with a scooped neckline that showed just a little cleavage, not enough to make the other patrons drop their forks, just enough to show Matt what he had given up. Matt used to love my hair, so I feathered it with a pair of cuticle scissors, because it had gotten a bit wild around the edges, then bent over and straightened up fast, which in theory was supposed to make it fall around my shoulders in carefree, voluminous waves. I dabbed on some makeup. Dark moss-green to bring out the color of my eyes. A light-rose blush across my cheekbones to heighten their angles. I stood back and looked in the mirror. The effect was what I wanted. Revenge dressing.

  He noticed.

  “God, you look incredible,” he whispered to me as the waitress led us to a booth in the back. We sat down on opposite sides of the table and I flashed him a sexy smile. “I missed you,” he added, then looked at me again with that look. “God,” he said again. “How I missed you.”

  He ordered the hamburger platter, and I ordered the diner version of Caesar salad.

  “The house,” I said, in my most businesslike manner. “We need to work out your portion of the house versus my portion of your practice. Plus you have to pay back the DVDs you cashed in.”

  “CDs,” he said. “DVDs are music.”

  “CDs used to be music,” I said. “Whatever is money, I want half of it back.”

  He stared down at his side of fries. “I don’t want to sell the house.”

  I didn’t understand. “You don’t want to sell it to me? Or you don’t want to sell the house, period?”

  “Neither one,” he said. “I want you to keep the house.”

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at him. He had lost weight, his love handles were gone, and he looked like he did when we got married. Sexy hollows in his face, longish sandy hair. If I wasn’t so broke and angry about being broke, I could have pushed aside the condiments and jumped his bones right on the table.

  “What do you mean, keep the house?” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “My lawyer said that I would have to give up the house. Which means I have to give up the training business. So I decided I could saddle-break Conversano and sell him for money to live on until we work out all our assets.”

  “I thought you loved that horse.” He poured ketchup on his burger. Predictable, I thought. I knew he was going to use a lot of ketchup, followed by a big splash of hot sauce. Then heavily salt his fries. He shook the hot sauce on his burger. Here comes the salt, I thought, but he ate his fries without it. I must have been staring at them with some surprise.

  “No salt,” he said, grimacing. “My blood pressure is sky-high. Jeff said to cut out the salt.” Jeff is our family doctor and friend. I made a mental note to change doctors, too.

  “I think Conversano is very talented,” I said. “He’s got a trot to die for. With some schooling, he should bring in big money, which, I might remind you, I desperately need. He’s got good breeding and he’s still a stallion.”

  “Don’t sell him,” Matt said.

  “I need the money,” I said. “You closed the joint account and left me with two hundred and twenty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents in my personal account, which, after the past month and tonight’s meal, will be down to twenty-one dollars and—”

  He held his hand up to silence me. “I’ll give you som
e money,” he said, reaching into his pocket and putting his wallet on the table. “And I want you to keep the house. We can still keep both our names on the mortgage.” He pulled out some money and pressed it into my hand. I stuffed it into my handbag without looking at how much, because looking would have made me feel so…mercenary. Then he took a bite of his burger, and I waited patiently for him to finish chewing and explain. “We have plenty of time to worry about what we’re going to do with the house.”

  I was puzzled. “I don’t even know if I can carry the whole thing myself. I might have to open my practice again anyway.”

  “I’ll keep up the payments and the bills.”

  I smiled a little. “Should I have brought a tape recorder to get this down? Because it sounds awfully generous.” He was being the usual Matt, hard to fathom, hard to figure out. “Or is this because you don’t want me to claim part of your practice? Which my lawyer says might even cancel my part of the house.”

  He shook his head. “My practice is tied up in knots right now,” he said. “I bought some fancy equipment last year, modernized the whole operating suite. I have more equipment coming in.” Then he put down his burger and stared me right in the eye. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Neelie. Honest. I thought—things got so crazy—” He fished around for the words. “I’ll make it up to you. I swear. Don’t give up the bus.”

  “What bus?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Bus?”

  “You said ‘bus,’” I said.

  “I said, Don’t give up on us.” he said. “I messed up. I was a total jerk.” Then, before I could protest, he took my hand into his. I pulled it away.

  “No,” I said. “It’s like cheating on your future wife.”

  “Holly and I—” He stopped and gave a weary sigh. “Never mind for now. Listen, did you throw out my passport?”

  “Passport?” I mentally sifted through all the stuff that Alana and I had carried to the curb. “Where was it?”

  “In the attic. In the blue suitcase. The front zipper compartment.”