“I may not remember a lot about my mom, but I know she wasn’t five thousand pounds,” I say. “So let me toss out a different scenario. What if Nevvie went after her? And one of the elephants saw the whole thing and retaliated?”
“They do that?”
I wasn’t sure. But I remembered reading in my mother’s journals about elephants that held grudges, that might wait years to even the score against someone who’d harmed them or someone they cared about.
“Besides,” Virgil said, “you just told me that your mother left you in Nevvie Ruehl’s care. I doubt she would have let Nevvie babysit if she thought the woman was dangerous.”
“I doubt my mom would have let Nevvie babysit if she also wanted to murder her,” I point out. “My mom didn’t kill her. It just doesn’t add up. There were a dozen cops swarming around that night; based on pure probability, chances are one of them was a redhead. You don’t know if that hair belongs to my mother.”
Virgil nods. “But I know how to find out.”
Here’s one more thing I remember: Inside, my parents are fighting. How can you do that? my father accuses. Make this all about you.
I am sitting on the floor, crying, but no one seems to hear me. I won’t move, because moving is what led to all the shouting. Instead of staying on the blanket and playing with the toys my mother had brought into the elephant enclosure, I had chased a yellow butterfly as it flew a dotted line across the sky. My mother had had her back to me; she was recording her observations. And just then, my father had driven by, and had seen me heading downhill, where the butterfly went … and where elephants happened to be standing.
This is the sanctuary, not the wild, my mother says. It’s not like she got between a mother and a calf. They’re used to people.
My father yells back: They are not used to toddlers!
Suddenly a pair of warm arms closes around me. She smells of powder and limes, and her lap is the softest place I know. “They’re mad,” I whisper.
“They’re scared,” she corrects. “It sounds the same.”
Then she starts to sing, close to my ear, so that her voice is the only one I hear.
Virgil has a plan, but the place he wants to go is too far away for me to bike, and I’m still not getting in a car with him. As we walk out of the diner, I agree to meet him at his office the next morning. The sun’s swinging low, using a cloud as a hammock. “How do I know you won’t be blitzed tomorrow, too?” I ask.
“Bring a Breathalyzer,” Virgil suggests drily. “I’ll see you at eleven.”
“Eleven’s not the morning.”
“It is for me,” he replies, and he starts walking down the road toward his office.
By the time I get back home, my grandmother is draining carrots in a colander. Gertie, curled up in front of the refrigerator, beats her tail twice on the floor, but that’s all the hello I’m getting. When I was little, my dog used to practically knock me down if I came back after a trip to the bathroom; that’s how happy she was to see me again. I wonder if, as you get older, you stop missing people so fiercely. Maybe growing up is just focusing on what you’ve got, instead of what you don’t.
There’s a sound like footsteps overhead. When I was little I was sure my grandmother’s house was haunted; I was always hearing stuff like that. My grandmother assured me it was rusty pipes or the house settling. I used to wonder how something made of brick and mortar could settle, when I seemed incapable of doing just that.
“So,” my grandmother says, “how was he?”
For a second I freeze, wondering if she’s been having me followed. How ironic would that be—my grandma tracking me as I’m tracking down my mom with a private investigator? “Um,” I reply. “A little under the weather.”
“I hope you don’t catch whatever he has.”
Unlikely, I think, unless being a drunk is contagious.
“I know you think the sun rises and sets on Chad Allen, but even if he’s a good teacher, he’s an irresponsible parent. Who leaves their baby alone for two days?” my grandmother mutters.
Who leaves their baby alone for ten years?
I’m so wrapped up in thinking about my mom that it takes me an extra beat to remember that my grandmother still believes I have been sitting for Carter, Mr. Allen’s freaky, alien-headed kid, who she now thinks has a cold. And he’s going to be my excuse tomorrow, too, when I go back to see Virgil. “Well, he wasn’t alone. He had me.”
I follow my grandmother into the dining room, taking the time to snag two clean glasses and the carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. I force down a few bites of fish sticks, chewing methodically, before I hide the rest of my meal under the mashed potatoes. I’m just not hungry.