Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  That’s when we thought about elephant memory.

  The trainer who’d worked with these two females more than a decade ago had not seen them since they were released into the reserve. Randall was happy to come to Pilanesberg to help. We tracked the two herds, which at this point had merged because of the injury of the older female.

  “There are my girls,” Randall said, delighted, as the jeep shuddered to a halt in front of the herd. “Owala,” he called. “Durga!”

  To us, these elephants were Felicia and Notch. But both of the stately ladies turned at the sound of Randall’s voice, and he did what no one did with the fragile, skittish Pilanesberg herd: He got out of the jeep and started walking toward them.

  Now, look, I’ve worked in the wild with elephants for twelve years. There are some herds you can approach on foot, because they’re used to researchers and their vehicles and they trust us; and even so, it’s not something I would do without carefully thinking it through. But this was not a herd that was familiar with humans; this was not even a stable herd. In fact, the younger elephants immediately stampeded away from Randall, identifying him as one of those two-legged beasts that had killed their own mothers. The two matriarchs, however, came closer. Durga—Notch—approached Randall. She stuck her trunk out and gently snaked it around his arm. Then she glanced back at her nervous young adoptive charges, still snorting and huffing on the ridge of the hill. She turned to Randall again, trumpeted once, and ran off with her babies.

  Randall let her go, then turned to the other matriarch and said softly, “Owala … kneel.”

  The elephant we called Felicia walked forward, knelt down, and let Randall climb on her back. Although she’d had no direct contact with people in twelve years, she remembered not only this individual man as her trainer but all the commands he had taught her. Without being given any anesthetic, she allowed Randall to direct her to stay, lift her leg, turn—commands that made it possible for the bush vet to scrape away the pus from the infected area, clean the wound, and give her an injection of antibiotics.

  Long after her infection healed, long after Randall had returned to training circus animals, Felicia went back to leading her patchwork family in Pilanesberg. To any researcher, to anyone at all, she was a wild elephant.

  But somewhere, somehow, she remembered who she used to be, too.

  JENNA

  There is another recollection I have of my mother that ties to a conversation scrawled in her journal. It’s a single handwritten page, scraps of dialogue that for some reason she didn’t ever want to forget. Maybe that’s why I remember it so clearly, too, why I can flesh out what she has written as if it is a movie playing out before me.

  She is lying on the ground, her head in my father’s lap. They are talking as I yank the heads off wild daisies. I’m not paying attention, but part of my brain must be, recording everything, so that even now I can hear the gossip of mosquitoes and the words my parents toss back and forth. Their voices rise and fall and swoop like the tail of a kite.

  HIM: You have to admit, Alice, there are certain animals that know there’s one perfect mate.

  HER: Crap. Complete and utter crap. Prove to me that monogamy exists in the natural world, without an environmental influence.

  HIM: Swans.

  HER: Too easy. And not true! A quarter of black swans cheat on their mates.

  HIM: Wolves.

  HER: They’ve been known to mate with another wolf if their mate is kicked out of the pack or isn’t able to breed. That’s circumstance, not true love.

  HIM: I should have known better than to fall for a scientist. Your idea of a Valentine’s heart probably has an aorta.

  HER: Is it a crime to be biologically relevant?

  She sits up and pins him onto the ground, so that now he is lying beneath her and her hair swings over his face. It looks like they’re fighting, but they are both smiling.

  HER: Do you know a vulture caught cheating on his mate will be attacked by others?

  HIM: Is that supposed to scare me?

  HER: I’m just saying.

  HIM: Gibbons.

  HER: Oh, come on. Everyone knows gibbons are unfaithful.

  He rolls, so that now he is on top, looking down at her.

  HIM: Prairie voles.

  HER: Only because of the oxytocin and vasopressin released in their brains. It’s not love. It’s chemical commitment.

  Slowly, she grins.

  HER: You know, now that I think about it … there is one species that’s completely monogamous. The male anglerfish, which is a tenth the size of the girl of his dreams, follows her scent, bites her, and hangs on until his skin fuses into hers and her body absorbs his. They mate for life. But it’s a really short life, if you’re the guy in the relationship.

  HIM: I’d fuse to you.

  He kisses her.

  HIM: Right at the lips.

  When they laugh, it sounds like confetti.

  HER: Fine. If it shuts you up about this once and for all.

  They stop talking for a little while. I hold my palm over the ground. I have seen Maura lift her rear foot inches above the dirt, moving it slowly back and forth like she is rolling it over an invisible stone. My mother says that she can hear the other elephants when she does that; that they talk even when we don’t hear them. I wonder if that’s what my parents are doing now: speaking without sound.

  When my father’s voice comes again, it sounds like the string on a guitar that is pulled so tight, you can’t tell if it is music or crying.

  HIM: Do you know how a penguin picks his mate? He finds a perfect pebble, and gives it to the female he has his eye on.

  He hands my mother a small stone. Her hand closes around it.

  Most of my mother’s journals from her time in Botswana are stuffed chock-full of data: the names and movements of elephant families trekking across the Tuli Block; dates when males came into musth and females calved; hourly logs of the behavior of animals who do not care or do not know they are being watched. I read each entry, but instead of seeing elephants, I picture the hand that wrote the notes. Was there a cramp in her fingers? A callus where the pencil pressed too hard against the skin? I put together the clues of my mother the same way she shuffled and reshuffled the observations of her elephants, trying to make a bigger picture from the smallest details. I wonder if it was just as frustrating for her, to get glimpses but never the whole mystery revealed. I guess a scientist’s job is to fill in the gaps. Me, though, I look at a puzzle and can only see the single missing piece.

  I am starting to think Virgil feels the same way, and I have to admit, I don’t exactly know what that says about either of us.

  When he says he’ll take the job, I don’t quite trust him. It’s hard to believe a guy who is so hungover that he looks like he’s having a stroke when he tries to put on his jacket. I figure my best bet is to make sure that he remembers this conversation, which means getting him out of his office and sober. “Why don’t we talk over some coffee?” I suggest. “I passed a diner on my way here.”

  He grabs his car keys, but that’s not happening. “You’re drunk,” I say. “I’m driving.”

  He shrugs, going along with it until we walk out the entryway of the building, and he sees me unlock my bike.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “If you don’t know, you’re drunker than I thought,” I say, and I climb on the seat.

  “When you said you’d drive,” Virgil mutters, “I assumed you had a car.”

  “I’m thirteen,” I point out and gesture at the handlebars.

  “Are you kidding? What is this, 1972?”

  “You can run alongside instead if you want,” I say, “but with the headache I’m guessing you have, I’d take Door Number One instead.”

  Which is how we wind up arriving at the diner with Virgil Stanhope sitting on my mountain bike, his legs spread, while I stand up between them and pedal.

  We seat ourselves at a booth. “How come there