Leaving Time(61)

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 f*cking 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.