Leaving Time(85)

When a musth male is vocalizing, the whole herd of females will start to chorus. Those sounds attract not just the male who started the conversation but all the eligible bachelors, so that the females in estrus now have the chance to choose the most attractive mate—and by this I don’t mean the one with the best comb-over but rather the male who is most likely to survive—a healthy, older elephant. A female that doesn’t like a particular male might run away from him, even if he has already mounted her, to find someone better. But, of course, that presumes there’s someone better to be found.

For this reason, several days before she comes into estrus, a female gives an estrus roar—a powerful call that brings even more boys to the yard, and thus a greater range of mates from which to select. Finally, when she allows herself to be mated, she sings an estrus song. Unlike the musth rumbles of males, these songs are lyrical and repetitive, throaty purrs that rise quickly and then trail off. The female flaps her ears loudly and secretes from her temporal glands. After the mating, the other females in her family join in, a symphony of roars and rumbles and trumpets like those they’d make at any other socially exciting moment—a birth, or a reunion.

We know that when male whales sing, those who have the most complex songs are the ones who get the females. On the contrary, in the elephant world, a musth male will mate with anyone he can; it’s the female who sings, and it’s out of biological necessity. A female elephant is in estrus for only six days, and the only available males may be miles away. Pheromones don’t work at those distances, so she has to do something else to attract potential mates.

It has been proven that whale songs are passed down from generation to generation, that they exist in all the oceans of the world. I have always wondered if the same holds true for elephants. If the calves of elephants learn the estrus song from their older female relatives during mating season, so that when it’s their own turn, they know how to sing to attract the strongest, fiercest males. If, by doing this, the daughters learn from their mothers’ mistakes.





SERENITY




Here’s what I haven’t told you: Once before, in my heyday as a psychic, I lost the ability to communicate with spirits.

I was doing a reading for a young college girl who wanted me to reach out to her deceased dad. She brought along her mother, and they had their own tape recorders, so that each could replay whatever happened at our session. For an hour and a half, I put his name out there; I struggled to connect. And the only thought that came into my head was that this man had killed himself with a gun.

Other than that: silence.

Exactly like what I get now, when I try to connect with the dead. Anyway, I felt horrible. I was charging these women for ninety minutes of nothing. And although I didn’t offer a money-back guarantee, I had never in my life as a psychic come up so dry before. So I apologized.

Upset about the outcome, the girl burst into tears and asked to use the restroom. As soon as she left, her mother—who had been largely silent during this entire experience—told me about her husband, and the secret she had not confided to her daughter.

He had indeed committed suicide, using a shotgun. He’d been a very well-known college basketball coach in North Carolina who’d had an affair with one of the boys on his team. When his wife discovered this, she told him she wanted a divorce, and that she would ruin his professional career unless he paid her to keep quiet. He refused and said he truly cared about the boy. So she told her husband he could have his new paramour, but she would sue him for every cent he had, and would still go public with what he’d done to her. That was the cost of love, she said.

He walked downstairs into their basement and blew his brains out.

At his funeral, as she was saying her last good-bye in private, she said, You son of a bitch. Don’t think I’ll forgive you now that you’re dead. Good riddance.

Two days later the daughter called me to say that the strangest thing had happened. The recording she had made was completely blank. Although there had been dialogue between us during the session, all you could hear on the playback was a hissing sound. And even stranger: The same thing was true of the recording that had been made by her mother.

It was clear to me that the dead husband had heard his wife loud and clear at the funeral, and had taken her at her word. She didn’t want anything to do with him, and so he stayed away from us all. Permanently.

Talking to spirits is a dialogue. It takes two. If you’re trying hard and coming up empty, it’s either because of a spirit who won’t communicate or because of a medium who can’t.


“It does not work like a faucet,” I snap, trying to put some distance between myself and Virgil. “I can’t turn it on and off.”

We are in the parking lot outside of Gordon’s Wholesale, processing the information we just received about Grace Cartwright’s suicide. I have to admit, it wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, but Virgil is convinced that this is an integral piece of the puzzle. “Let me get this straight,” he says soberly. “I’m saying to you that I’m willing to actually admit that psychic powers aren’t a load of bullshit. I’m saying to you that I’m willing to give your … talent … a chance. And you won’t even try?”

“Fine,” I say, frustrated. I lean against the front bumper of my car, shaking out my shoulders and arms the way a swimmer does at the starting block. Then I close my eyes.