Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  Was I right to keep this from him? No. Blame it on the fact that I immersed myself in a matriarchal society every day, or blame it on cowardice: I just wanted to take a careful, closer look at Thomas before I let him claim partial ownership of this child. I didn’t know, at that point, if I would even keep the baby. And if I did, clearly I was going to raise it in Africa by myself. I simply didn’t feel that one night under a baobab tree meant Thomas necessarily deserved a vote.

  In Boston I stumbled off the airplane, rumpled and tired, stood in line at passport control, collected my luggage. When the doors belched me into the arrivals lounge, I saw Thomas immediately. He was standing behind the railing, sandwiched between two black-suited chauffeurs. In his fist, he was holding an uprooted plant upside down, like a witch’s bouquet.

  I wheeled my bag around the barrier. “Do you bring dead flowers to all the girls you pick up at airports?” I asked.

  He shook the plant so that a little dirt rained down on the floor, over my sneakers. “It’s the closest I could get to a baobab tree,” Thomas said. “The florist was no help, so I had to improvise.”

  I tried not to let myself see this as a sign that he, too, was hoping we could pick up where we had left off, that what we’d had was more than a flirtation. In spite of the carbonation of hope inside me, I was determined to play dumb. “Why would you want to bring me a baobab?”

  “Because an elephant wouldn’t fit in the car,” Thomas said, and he smiled at me.

  Doctors will tell you that it wasn’t medically possible, that it was too early in the pregnancy. But at that moment, I felt the butterfly flutter of our baby, as if the electricity between us was all she needed to combust into life.

  • • •

  On the long drive to New Hampshire, we talked about my research: how Mmaabo’s herd was coping after her death; how heartbreaking it had been to see Kagiso mourning her dead calf. Thomas told me, with great excitement, that I would be there for the arrival of his seventh sanctuary elephant—an African named Maura.

  We did not talk about what had happened between us under that baobab tree.

  We also did not talk about how I had found myself missing Thomas at odd moments, such as when I saw two young bulls kicking around a dung ball as if they were soccer stars, and I wanted to share it with someone who would appreciate it. Or how I woke up sometimes with the feel of him on my skin, as if his fingerprints had left a scar.

  In fact, with the exception of the plant he’d brought to the arrivals lounge, Thomas had made no mention of anything except our relationship as scientific colleagues. So much so that I was beginning to wonder if I had dreamed the night between us; if this baby was a figment of my imagination.

  By the time we arrived at the sanctuary, it was night, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I sat in the car as Thomas opened an electronic gate and then a second, internal one. “The elephants are really good at showing us how strong they are. Half the time when we put up a fence, an elephant will take it down just to let us know that she can.” He glanced at me. “We had a rash of phone calls when we first opened the sanctuary … neighbors saying that there was an elephant in the backyard.”

  “So what happens when they get out?”

  “Well, we get them back in,” Thomas said. “The whole point of living here is that they won’t get beaten or hurt for escaping, like they would have been in a zoo or circus. It’s like a toddler. Just because a kid pushes your buttons doesn’t mean you don’t love him.”

  The mention of a toddler made me cross my arms over my abdomen. “Do you ever think about that?” I asked. “Having a family?”

  “I have one,” Thomas replied. “Nevvie and Gideon and Grace. You’ll meet them tomorrow.”

  I felt as if I’d been run through the chest with a spear. Had I never even asked Thomas if he was married? How could I have been so stupid?

  “I couldn’t run this place without them,” Thomas continued, oblivious to the total internal breakdown happening in the passenger seat. “Nevvie worked for twenty years at a circus down South as an elephant trainer. Gideon was her apprentice. He’s married to Grace.”

  Slowly, I began to puzzle out the relationships. And the fact that none of those three people seemed to be his wife or offspring.

  “Do they have children?”

  “No, thank God,” Thomas said. “My insurance rates are already sky-high; I can’t imagine the liability of having a kid wandering around.”

  That, of course, was the right response. It would have been ludicrous to raise a child on a game reserve, just as it would be crazy to raise one on the grounds of a sanctuary. By definition, the animals Thomas took in were “problem” elephants—ones that had killed trainers or acted out in some way that made the zoo or circus want to get rid of them. But his answer made me feel like he had failed an exam, one that he didn’t even know was being administered.

  It was too dark to see anything in the enclosures, but as we passed another high fence, I unrolled the window of the car so that I could smell that familiar dusty, sweetgrass scent of elephants. In the distance, I heard a low rumble that sounded like thunder. “That would be Syrah,” Thomas said. “She’s our welcome committee.”

  He pulled up to his cottage and took my luggage out of the car. His home was tiny—a living room, a kitchenette, a bedroom, an office no bigger than a closet. There was no guest room, but Thomas didn’t put my battered suitcase in his bedroom, either. He stood awkwardly in the middle of his own house, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Home sweet home,” he said.

  Suddenly I wondered what I was doing here. I barely knew Thomas Metcalf. He could have been a psychopath. He could have been a serial killer.

  He could have been a lot of things, but he was the father of this baby.

  “Well,” I said, uncomfortable. “Long day. Would it be okay if I took a shower?”

  Thomas’s bathroom was, to my surprise, pathologically neat. His toothbrush was in a drawer, parallel to the tube of toothpaste. His vanity was scrubbed spotless. The pill bottles in his medicine cabinet were organized alphabetically. I ran the shower until the small room filled with steam, until I stood like a ghost in front of the mirror, trying to see into my future. I showered beneath the hottest water until my skin was pink and raw, until I had worked out the best way to cut my visit short, because clearly coming here had been a mistake. I don’t know what I had been thinking: that Thomas had been eight thousand miles away, pining for me? That he had been secretly wishing I would travel halfway across the globe to pick up where we had left off? Clearly, the hormones swimming through my system were making me delusional.

  When I stepped out in a towel, my hair combed through and my heels leaving damp footprints on the wooden floor, Thomas was fitting sheets and blankets on the couch. If I had needed any clearer proof that what had transpired in Africa had been a rogue mistake, rather than a beginning, here it was staring me in the face. “Oh,” I said, as something broke inside me. “Thanks.”

  “This is for me,” he said, averting his eyes. “You can take the bed.”

  I felt heat rising to my face. “If that’s what you want.”

  You have to understand—there is a romance to Africa. You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the hand of God. You watch the slow lope of a lioness and forget to breathe. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see anywhere else in nature. In Africa, in the midday heat, you can see blisters in the atmosphere. When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world. Given that sort of setting, is it any wonder that recollections might be rose-colored?

  “You’re the guest,” Thomas said politely. “It’s whatever you want.”

  What did I want?

  I could have taken the bedding and slept alone on the couch. Or I could have told Thomas about the baby. Instead, I walked toward him, and let the towel I was holding around me fall t