Leaving Time(68)

“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 to the floor.

For a moment, Thomas just stared. He reached out one finger and traced the curve from my neck to my shoulder.

Once, as a college student, I had gone swimming at night in a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico. Every time I moved my arms or my legs, there was a fresh shower of iridescent sparks, as if I were creating falling stars. This is how it felt when Thomas touched me—as if I had swallowed light. We ricocheted against furniture and walls; we did not make it to the couch. Afterward, I lay in his arms on the rough wooden floor. “You told me Syrah was the welcome committee.”

He laughed. “I can go get her if you want.”

“That’s okay. I’m good.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re fabulous.”

I turned in his arms. “I didn’t think you wanted to do this.”

“I didn’t think you wanted to do this,” Thomas said. “I didn’t want to make any assumptions, you know, that what had happened before would happen again.” He tangled his hand in my hair. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Here’s what I was thinking: that gorillas will lie to deflect blame from themselves. That chimps deceive. And monkeys will sit high in a tree and pretend there’s danger, even when there isn’t. But not elephants. An elephant will never pretend to be something she’s not.

Here’s what I said: “I was just wondering if we’re ever going to get to do this in a bed.”

A white lie. What was one more?


The land in South Africa often looks parched, its heels and elbows cracked with drought, its valleys baked red by the sun. This sanctuary, by comparison, was a lush Garden of Eden: verdant hills and damp fields, flowering, muscled oak trees with their arms bent in fourth position. And, of course, there were the elephants.

There were five Asian elephants, one African, and another African on the way. Unlike in the wild, the social bonds here were not formed by genetics. Herds were limited to two or three elephants, which had chosen to roam the property together of their own accord. There were some elephants, Thomas told me, who just did not get along; there were some who preferred to be on their own; there were others who didn’t move four feet away from their chosen companion.

It surprised me, how much the philosophy of the sanctuary was like ours in the field. Just like we might want to rush in and save a gravely injured elephant, we wouldn’t, because it would disrupt nature. We took our lead from the elephants, and considered ourselves lucky to be able to watch unobtrusively. Likewise, Thomas and his staff wanted to give his retired elephants as much freedom as possible, instead of micromanaging their existence. They might not be released into the wild in their dotage, but this would be the next best thing. The elephants here had spent most of their lives being hooked and chained and beaten to force behavior. Thomas believed in free contact—he and his staff still went into the enclosures to feed the elephants and to medically treat them if necessary—but behavior modification was done only with reward and positive reinforcement.

Thomas took me around the sanctuary on an ATV so that I could get my bearings. I rode behind him, my arms wrapped around his waist and my cheek pressed into the warmth of his back. The gates were designed with openings small enough for the vehicles to pass through, but too small for an elephant to escape. There were separate enclosures for the Asian elephants and the African elephants, and each had its own barn—although right now, Hester was the only African elephant in hers. The barns themselves were giant hangars, so clean that you could practically eat off the floors. Heaters ran through the concrete to keep the elephants’ feet warm in the winter, and heavy straps hung on the doors, like the long fabric tongues of a car wash, so that heat could be retained in the winter but the elephants could choose to go in and out. There were automatic watering mechanisms in each stall. “It must cost a fortune to run this place,” I murmured.