The Life Before Her Eyes

by Laura Kasischke

  The mother monkey smacked her lips, narrowed her eyes, shook her head...

  "Emma!"

  Diana yelled it loud enough that everyone within hearing range turned and looked at her—everyone except the blond girl in the pink windbreaker who might have been her daughter running far ahead up a hill toward the African safari.

  Diana hurried after that flash of golden light as fast as she could without appearing, she hoped, to the other zoo goers to be a panicked woman, and as fast as she could in her flimsy sandals with their short but narrow heels.

  Running, again, she had to pass the man who'd clicked his tongue at her. He was at another garbage can this time. He was fishing through it, lifting a magazine out of the debris. Diana could run only so fast, her heels catching in the sticky tar, and over his shoulder she could see what it was.

  A dirty magazine. A glossy picture of a naked girl. She had blond hair, and she was leaning backward into a couch that had been draped with a black satin sheet.

  "Don't I know you, baby?" he growled as she hurried past.

  Breath

  WHEN SHE GOT TO THE PLACE WHERE SHE THOUGHT she'd seen Emma, Diana was out of breath, and the little girl she'd thought was hers had disappeared again. "Shit!" she said to herself, but out loud, then looked around to see if anyone had heard.

  Sister Beatrice was standing beside her, looking as if she, too, had been running. Perhaps all this time she'd been running right behind, or directly beside, Diana.

  The idea made Diana's heart race even harder.

  She tried to smile at Sister Beatrice. But Sister Beatrice looked angry. Her tight cheeks were red, and her chin trembled as she spoke. She was carrying an armload of manila folders full of papers, as if she hadn't been able to bear the idea of leaving schoolwork behind in the classroom even for an afternoon, even on the last day of school.

  "Is there some problem?" Sister Beatrice asked impatiently, shifting the weight of the folders and papers in her arms. "We've been trying to stay together as a group, but we couldn't find you or your girls—"

  "I thought," Diana said, pointing up the path toward the lion's den, "that I saw Emma running in this direction."

  "You mean you don't know where the girls are?" Sister Beatrice said, making no effort whatsoever to hide her exasperation.

  "I know they went in this direction," Diana said, suddenly and absurdly worried that she might begin to cry, "but they got ahead of me."

  Sister Beatrice looked full of energy and rage. Her face was like those Diana had seen on medieval beings—gryphons, gargoyles. It was stone gray, frozen, full of meaning.

  Diana turned from Sister Beatrice's terrible gaze to the direction of the African safari, and she said, "I'll go get the girls, and we'll join you—"

  "Immediately," Sister Beatrice finished the sentence for her.

  A breeze stirred the nun's black robes, and they flapped around her arms like wings, even making the sound of wings beating at still air. Diana walked away from her as quickly as she could, and when she turned at the entrance to the African safari and looked back, Sister Beatrice was gone.

  The winter of their senior year passes like a strange white dream...

  Snow falling on snow. The sky, like a heavy gray lid over Briar Hill. Their down jackets become so much a part of them, it's how they recognize each other ... one of the girls in her silver down jacket, the other in black, and Nate Witt in olive green.

  The cafeteria smells like steam, pasta, boiled carrots. The three of them sit together at a table near the vending machines. One of the girls has her hand on his knee. He has his arm around her. Between bites of their lunches, they kiss.

  Now it's always the three of them.

  The three of them in Nate Witt's black Buick in the morning on the way to school, in the afternoon on the way home from school. The three of them in the cafeteria. The three of them on the weekends ... at a movie, or eating pizza, or watching MTV in the living room of Nate Witt's parents' house.

  For Valentine's Day he gives them both boxes of candy, and he gives one of them, the one with whom he is in love, a silver ring and a card he's made himself with Be mine, I love you written on it in his own sloppy hand.

  The floor of the cafeteria is muddy from melted slush.

  One of the girls kisses Nate Witt, slipping her arms around his waist, then running her hand over the top of his head, smoothly shaved.

  The other girl sits across from them, smiling. She eats an ice-cream sandwich, which leaves chocolate cake on her fingertips.

  "Yuck," her friend says. "Here, you can have my napkin."

  She reaches across the table and hands her friend the napkin.

  "Thanks," she says, wiping the sticky sweetness off her fingertips with the napkin given to her. Her friend kisses Nate Witt deep and long.

  Family...

  The word floats through her slowly.

  All around her the student body makes a mumbled roar. They, too, are a kind of family. And the teachers, and the janitors. She sees them every day and they see her. There's a something that rises from them and buzzes around the fluorescent lights—although they've all been together so long they no longer hear the background noise of their strange love for one another. Just once in a while, when it surges, or when it's cut through with sudden hate....

  AFEW KITSCHY THINGS HAD BEEN ADDED TO THE AFRICAN safari since Diana had last been there.

  Some plaster palm trees with some plaster natives under them, painted a deep and shilling black and carrying spears...

  An old jeep with two dummies in it—a white man and woman wearing khaki vests and shorts and big wide-brimmed hats.

  Diana hurried past them, but not before she passed close enough to the jeep to see the man behind the wheel. He was staring straight ahead, hands on the steering wheel, with an expression of total absence. He must have been, once, a department store mannequin—he had the Ken-doll features for it—and been retired to the zoo. The sun was shining brightly through the windshield into his eyes, but he didn't blink.

  "Diana."

  She turned around fast, but there was no one.

  It had been a man's voice ... a familiar voice.

  Paul?

  But behind her there was nothing except the path leading out of the African safari, past the jeep and the natives staring into the future blankly, their painted skin glistening as if with sweat. Ahead of her was a flight of stairs that led up a small hill, where Diana knew the lions were—but there was no one, either, on those stairs.

  "Diana."

  This time she jumped when she heard it. She turned around fast and put a hand to her forehead to block the sun from her eyes, which stung. Her heart was beating hard. She was scared, though she didn't know why...

  Scared that the dummy would speak to her from the jeep?

  Or one of the natives?

  She considered, briefly, running in the direction of the lions, when she saw him standing in the shade of the plaster palm trees.

  Could it be?

  Diana took a step closer. She squinted and blinked and saw that it was.

  "Mr. McCleod?" she said.

  "Yes," he said, nodding.

  Diana laughed out loud and took a few quick steps toward him.

  "I can't believe it!" she said.

  "Did you think I would be dead?" he asked. It had to have been a joke, but he sounded serious.

  "No," Diana said, laughing and shaking her head. "Of course not. It's just ... been so long!"

  Mr. McCleod took a step toward her and out of the shade, into the sun, where she could see him better. He looked old....

  Ancient.

  The skin on his face and hands was covered with dark spots, and he was stooped, leaning on a cane.

  But of course. How old must he have been by now? And still he looked like Mr. McCleod. He was wearing a short-sleeved yellow shirt, and there were pens in his pockets. He'd grown sideburns, which struck Diana as odd. It seemed like the kind of thing a man would
have had when he was young, then abandoned when he got older, instead of the other way around. Diana reached out her hand, and he put his in hers. It felt light but warm. She squeezed it, and Mr. McCleod smiled, but he also pulled the hand away from hers quickly as if she'd been a bit too forward, as if he weren't merely shy but was trying to let her know that her squeeze had been inappropriate.

  Diana felt herself blush.

  Mr. McCleod said, "You're looking well."

  "Thank you," she said. "So are you. I—I can't believe you would remember me, you had so many students."

  "How could I forget you?" Mr. McCleod asked. "You were our Mayqueen."

  "Oh," Diana said, touching her neck and feeling the blood beating faster under the thin skin there. Mayqueen...

  She'd almost forgotten.

  "Are you still teaching?" she asked him.

  Mr. McCleod snorted. "Of course not. I retired years ago—"

  "Oh," Diana said, embarrassed. "I wouldn't have guessed—"

  "That I was so old?"

  "No," Diana said quickly, perhaps too brightly. "You just seemed to love teaching so much that—"

  Again Mr. McCleod snorted.

  "Jim!" a voice called from behind Diana, who turned to see a large old woman hobbling down the steps from the lion's den. She was gesturing (angrily?) at Mr. McCleod. Diana had never known his name was Jim ... or if she had she'd long since forgotten.

  "Jim!" the old woman shouted again and made a swooping gesture with her arm, calling Mr. McCleod to her.

  "You'll have to excuse me," he said to Diana. "I have to go."

  "Of course," Diana said. "I'm so glad I saw you. I always remember—"

  Again Mr. McCleod snorted. It was dismissive and, Diana thought, full of contempt. She'd been about to tell him that she'd never forgotten his telling them that the brain contained more nerve cells than the universe contained stars. She'd always, after learning that simple fact in Mr. McCleod's biology class, thought of her mind as a darkness full of stars.

  She'd been listening, she wanted him to know.

  She'd understood what he was trying to impress them with—the enormity, the complexity, of themselves. Even today she could have mapped the parts of the brain if he'd given her the quiz: Medulla, hypothalamus, corpus callosum, cerebellum...

  Mr. McCleod didn't say good-bye. He and the old woman climbed the stairs to the lion's den together, and Diana watched them go. It had been the direction she'd planned to go in, but now she thought she'd wait until they were well ahead of her, until they had gone far enough that she wouldn't run into them again.

  Nate Witt has left to visit his grandmother for the weekend.

  So, even though it's Friday afternoon, the girls are alone together. They're eating microwave popcorn and drinking diet Coke. One of their mothers comes home and tosses her black shoulder bag onto the couch, kicks off her flat shoes.

  "Hi, Deb," one of the girls says, the one who isn't her daughter.

  There's nothing to call one another's mothers except their first names. Both of them had changed back to their maiden names when they'd divorced, so they have different names than their daughters. It's impossible to remember those names, or to know whether to call someone's divorced mother Mrs?...Miss?...Ms?

  "Hi, Mom," the other girls says.

  Her mother pulls out one of the kitchen table chairs and sits down with the girls. She takes a handful of popcorn out of the Tupperware bowl and inhales. She says, "I'm taking you two girls to a lecture tonight. It'll be good for you."

  The girls look at each other, each one makes an expression of fake horror.

  "A lecture?" one of them asks, leaving her mouth open for emphasis.

  "A lecture," her mother says. "Like I said, it'll be good for you. Maybe you'll learn something."

  "I don't want to learn something. It's Friday night. We're going—"

  "Come on," her mother says. "Please? This professor in our department has been asked to give this lecture, and it's a big deal, and I have to go, and he's a nice man, who—He's brilliant, really. And cute."

  "I'll go," says the one who's not her daughter, the one who can think of nothing she'd want to do tonight without Nate Witt, anyway.

  Her friend gives her a dirty look. "Thanks a lot, girlfriend," she says.

  DIANA FOLLOWED AN ARROW THAT SAID ELLA THE ELEPHANT, thinking she'd turn back toward the lion's den after she'd given Mr. McCleod and the old woman a good head start.

  The path to Ella the elephant was scattered with peanut shells. A bit more kitsch. Diana imagined someone out there every morning emptying a bag of empty shells onto the dirt.

  The sign and the path and the elephant were new since Diana had last been to the zoo. For decades there'd been no elephant at Briar Hill Park and Zoo, not since Diana had been a child. That elephant had also been named Ella, and she'd died under mysterious circumstances. One summer afternoon she'd simply collapsed under her own enormous weight, having never displayed a single symptom of disease.

  Articles were written about Ella in the newspaper. There were photographs of her, dead, on the front page for days. Her legs and trunk were under her body, and she'd had her forehead pressed to the ground. She looked as if she'd fallen out of the sky.

  Why had she died?

  An investigation was ordered. The government got involved. Elephant experts were flown in from all over the world to study Ella's terrible carcass.

  Not a heart attack. Not a blood clot Poisoning was suspected.

  But who would have poisoned the elephant?

  Someone who worked at the zoo?

  Someone who visited the zoo?

  A rumor sprang up that children—teenagers—had poisoned Ella, and whether there was any truth to it or not, Diana never knew, having been only nine or ten years old at the time. But the idea of it caught fire in Briar Hill, and the town, as if to punish its young, refused to replace the elephant. The signs pointing the way to the elephant pit were taken down, and that part of the zoo was closed off completely.

  But now the elephant apparently was back. Diana could smell her. A sweetly acidic smell mixed with wet straw, foliage, shit. And she could feel the dirt path vibrate through the flimsy soles of her sandals, as if kettle drums were being played underground.

  The elephant was stomping in the pit.

  They'd planted tropical trees along the edge of the path since Diana had last walked it (how did they manage it in this climate?), and the leaves made a lush tunnel that bent lower and lower over the path until Diana could feel the fronds brushing the top of her head as she hurried along. A thick humidity was rising from the earth beneath the peanut shells, and there was a small swarm—a small gray cloud, like a brain—of gnats hovering in midair along the path.

  Diana had to run through them with her hands covering her eyes.

  When she was through the cloud and had uncovered her eyes, Ella was closer than she'd expected. She hadn't even planned to see the elephant. She'd wanted simply to walk to the end of the path, then hurry back toward the lion's den.

  But there Ella was, only a few feet away from Diana, alone in the elephant pit.

  She was standing in a shallow puddle of urine, and there was a steel ting around one of her ankles. A rusty chain was attached to one end of the ring, and the other end was attached to a steel post.

  Diana stood sweating and still at the end of the tropical tunnel from which she'd emerged more quickly than she'd expected, staring at Ella.

  Ella stared back.

  Diana could still feel the earth vibrating dully under her feet, but the elephant wasn't stomping. The elephant was only standing, looking as though she hadn't moved in years.

  Ella blinked, then turned her face away from Diana, then swooped her huge head back to look at Diana again.

  There was no one else around.

  Diana felt ashamed and as though she ought to speak if she were going to stand there and stare....

  Ella's eyes were enormous, and glassy, and
as full of suffering and hope as anything Diana had ever seen.

  Diana cleared her throat. With no one but Ella to hear, what difference did it make if she spoke?

  Ella shifted a bit, and the chain at her ankle scraped against the cement floor of the elephant pit.

  Diana took a step forward and said, "How could I have forgotten you?"

  Rumbling

  HER DAUGHTER...

  Diana had almost forgotten what she was doing, why she was at the zoo. She took a last look at Ella, who didn't move and didn't blink, whose eyes were full of loneliness and longing. Still, that vibration under the ground.

  Diana lifted her hand to say good-bye, then turned and hurried back toward the jungle tunnel that had led her there.

  When she was beneath the greenness of it again, the rumbling became even louder, and Diana stopped for a moment and turned to look back toward the pit, to the place from which the rumbling seemed to come.

  It had to be some kind of underground machine. A generator that powered the whole zoo. Some kind of enormous furnace being stoked. Ella was still watching her, still hadn't moved—but coming from her direction, there was the sound of a herd of elephants running through a jungle.

  Neither girl has ever been to a lecture.

  It takes place in the auditorium on campus where they were each taken, as little girls, to see the Nutcracker ballet.

  The carpet is a rich aqua blue, and the ceiling above them is inlaid with gold. They sit with one of the girl's mothers, in a row not far from the front, a row of seats that has been roped off for those who work in the philosophy department.

  The heavy velvet curtains have already been opened, revealing a stage with nothing but a podium on it. Beside the podium there is a small table with a pitcher of water and a single glass.

  Tonight the auditorium is completely full. People who've come to hear the lecture have to stand along the walls because there are no seats left. The mumbling of the audience sounds like locomotion. It doesn't grow louder or quieter until the lights flash—off, on—and then the whole auditorium goes suddenly and obediently silent.