The Elephant in the Room Read online

  As Gio shouted “No” while waving a frying pan and then a mop, Mr. Pickles found a jar of pickles. He dropped the glass container to the kitchen floor, where it smashed. He then picked out six large pickles from the broken shards and ate them in a frenzy as Gio exclaimed, “Mr. Pickles really does eat pickles!”

  The bear was a destruction derby. The mop and the frying pan were clearly doing nothing to stop him, so Gio ran to the hall closet. He pushed aside a wooden yardstick and a folding stepladder to grab a broom, then he hurried back into the kitchen waving the sweeper overhead just as Mr. Pickles downed eight eggs (whole in the shell). All Gio could do was swing the broom and shout “NO! NO! NO!!!”

  Mr. Pickles gave zero indication that he cared about the broom. Or the elderly man shouting. The bear stuck his entire head back into the refrigerator. He had no use for a bag of pre-washed lettuce, a container of cranberry juice, or a bunch of celery. But with growls of happiness he ate a package of salami and a brick of cheddar cheese. Gio could see Veda outside the kitchen window, consuming apples as if they were popcorn kernels. It was as if he and the bear were some kind of television show.

  Gio fired a can of Lysol and tossed boxes of Kleenex in an attempt to force Mr. Pickles out of the kitchen.

  Nothing worked.

  The bear continued to eat or break anything that came into his line of sight. But luck finally swung in Gio’s direction when the animal picked up a portable radio. His paw hit the on button, which was set to the local classical music station. An opera was playing. The sound of a female singer hitting a high note sent Mr. Pickles running from the room and out the front door. Gio shouted after him, “So you like pickles, but you don’t like sopranos?!”

  The sun was going down as Gio surveyed the mess. It was catastrophic. He had no idea how to begin the cleanup, but that thought left his mind when he realized he had a large bear loose on his property and an elephant staring at him through the kitchen window.

  When Gio came out onto the front porch, Mr. Pickles was nowhere to be seen. It was truly shocking how fast the bear could run. Veda turned her body to the right and swung her trunk. Was she trying to tell him something? Was she indicating the direction in which the scoundrel had gone?

  Veda followed behind Gio as he wandered around for an hour in the fading light, looking for the bear. Finally, admitting defeat, he returned to the barn. His only comfort was the thought that the stone wall was too high for Mr. Pickles to get over. At least he hoped that was the case. Gio put an old blanket in the bear cage and left the metal door open. Then despite being exhausted, he turned his attention back to his elephant. Gio took a hose and topped off one of the metal tubs with cold water. He then used a wheelbarrow to move one of the bales of hay into the barn. Lowering himself down into a folding chair, he watched as Veda ate the straw.

  And ate.

  And ate.

  Veda finished what he would later find out was almost one hundred pounds of hay. Gio gathered together all the cushions from his outdoor furniture and carried them up a ladder to the barn’s loft area. He got a pillow, two blankets, and a flashlight from the house, and settled in with a great view of the enormous animal below. He didn’t want to leave her alone. He figured if Veda woke up and started wandering, he could at least follow her.

  Once the food and most of the water was gone, Veda stopped moving. Her eyes fluttered shut and her breathing slowed down. And from high above, Gio understood that she had fallen asleep. The stillness of an animal that size, on her feet, filling her lungs in a slow, deep way, made Gio start to cry. He realized he hadn’t wept since Lillian died. But now tears streamed down his face. He couldn’t wait for Sila to see her. Even with all that had happened on this day—the longest day he remembered in his whole life—Gio knew he’d made the right decision when he bought Veda.

  Because he knew at that moment that he already loved her.

  It was after midnight when Gio, who hadn’t eaten anything since the two donuts that morning so many hours before, climbed down the loft ladder and went into his wrecked kitchen. He stepped around the enormous mess and found a jar of peanut butter in a cupboard that Mr. Pickles had somehow missed. The bear also hadn’t opened the bread box that Gio kept in the oven, where there was half a loaf of wheat bread. He got a knife and plate, and took his supplies back to the barn. He was grateful for the jars of grape jelly that the circus people had left. Gio headed back up the ladder to the loft and made three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  They tasted as great as any meal he’d ever eaten.

  He had just started to doze off when he heard something down below. He turned on his flashlight to see Mr. Pickles. The bear was moving like he’d just attended the world’s wildest New Year’s Eve party. He had twigs and leaves in his fur, and mud caked on his paws. He did a slow turn to stare up at the harsh glare shining down from the loft.

  Maybe he thought it was a spotlight, because he rose up on his hind legs and did a twirl that was surprisingly graceful. He clapped his paws together twice and then returned to all fours. Did the bear suddenly believe he was back performing in the circus? Or, having been born in captivity, was this his way of showing gratitude for the bounty of the day?

  After a few rolls on the hard ground, the bear headed to his old cage. He reached in and pulled out the blanket that Gio had left, and then curled up next to the metal siding, wrapping a big part of his body in Lillian’s mother’s Depression-era cotton quilt. The bear was fast asleep in what felt to Gio like only a few seconds.

  He snored loudly.

  14.

  Veda had nothing to say to the bear. And the bear had nothing to say to her. They were never friends. Just because they were both locked up in metal boxes didn’t make that so.

  He was a bear.

  She was an elephant.

  Veda had heard him come into the barn and was now half awake, her thoughts flowing in an uncontrollable way. She was exhausted and afraid. Would the sun appear in the morning, and would she find herself back inside the metal box, moving on the road to nowhere?

  She stared through her dark eyelashes to the dirt floor of the barn. The past flooded all of her senses: She was born to a family of four. But five elephants were too many elephants. She was still drinking her mother’s warm milk when she was loaded into the moving box and taken away.

  She had learned to step up. And to step down. She learned to turn to the left. And to the right. She could lift her trunk high. And then higher. And she could hold it. She could lower to her front knees and let a man climb up her face and onto her back. She could make her ears go wide. She could put all her weight on her back feet and rise up until it felt like she was crushing her own spine. She could steady herself in this position of agony as white-hot pain shot through her entire body. But she would do it. She had no choice. They had a hook. And they had the electric shock stinger. They used them.

  The circus people could teach her to do many things. But they could not teach her to trust them. Or to ever forget her past. It had been twenty-one years. Veda shut her eyes and saw her mother. This happened every night. When you miss someone that deeply, the feeling can last for your own forever.

  15.

  Mr. Pickles was always in the moment. All day. Every day. He could stare at the hot ball of bright light in the sky until he could see nothing else. He could gaze at the moon and feel no distance. He could listen to the buzzing of a bee and hear the fluttering wings.

  But his nose was what drove him.

  The smells of the world were his language of love. He lived for every inhalation that entered his hot nostrils on the way to his enormous lungs. He could sniff a scent from miles and miles away. The smell could be sweet. Or rotting. He knew the odor of decay. The pungent pollen of a blooming flower. He understood mold. Fungus. The stink of the end. But he also knew birth. Renewal. The fragrance of a single tree blossom.

  Mr. Pickle
s could smell the rain before the first drop hit. He could make out a single blade of grass pushing up through distant wet soil. He could grasp the savory. The unsavory. He lived for the smoke of meat curling skyward from an unseen barbeque. The sweet tingle of caramelized sugar from cookies baking in a far-off oven was a game-changer. He smelled popcorn as it was poured fresh into a bowl, and a torn candy wrapper tossed into an open trash can.

  And he wanted it all.

  Was it any wonder he felt half out of his mind locked in a cage? Because Mr. Pickles’s world was channeled through his nose, the slightest change of air direction brought new horizons. He had no past. He saw no future. There was only the now. The smell of this world. He was in it.

  He was it.

  And being set free from a traveling circus was heaven on earth.

  16.

  Lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, Sila thought about the day, almost a year ago, when her world changed. Everything that had happened since then was her fault. That’s why she had trouble sleeping. And that’s why she wanted to be alone at school. She had brought all of this onto her family the last time she wore the horribly unlucky shirt.

  Her mother had come home early from work that long-ago Friday and sunk into the sofa, saying, “I was too tired to go to the bank to deposit my paycheck.”

  “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to have a real job,” Sila said, plopping down next to her mother.

  She saw an envelope sticking out of Oya’s purse, and since she liked looking at her mom’s paychecks she pulled it out.

  “Mom, this says Miguel Mendoza.”

  Before her mother could stop her, Sila had her fingers in the unsealed envelope and Miguel’s check in her hand.

  “Sila, don’t do that,” Oya said. “It doesn’t belong to us!”

  “I’m not spending it, I’m just looking. Hey, he gets more money than you.”

  Sila passed the check to her mother, who stared at the stub where the details of the payment were shown. Oya looked confused.

  “He worked the exact same hours as me. But he got paid more.”

  “Does he do the same job?”

  “He’s a janitor. I’m a housekeeper. So yes. He cleans. Just like me.”

  “Has he been there longer than you?”

  “No. He only started last year.”

  “So why does he get paid more?”

  Oya didn’t answer for a long time, but when she did her voice was hard.

  “I think because he’s a man.”

  That was the beginning of the end. Oya went to the Grand Hotel the following Monday and returned Miguel’s check to accounting. Then she spoke to the general manager, where she made her case that the women in housekeeping did the same work as the men in janitorial and she wanted to know why the men were paid more. The general manager said he’d look into it, and the next Friday, Oya was told that the hotel was cutting back on staff. She was let go that day, even though she’d been Employee of the Month only two months earlier.

  Minutes later, holding the coffee mug she kept in the workers lounge, she was waiting in shock in the parking lot for Alp to come get her. A woman approached looking for the service entrance. She told Oya she was interviewing for a position in the housekeeping department.

  So the hotel clearly wasn’t cutting back on staff. Oya had been fired for questioning the system that saw a janitor as different from a housekeeper. The janitors pushed vacuums and brooms. There was nothing they did that the women didn’t do.

  What happened was bad and then it got worse. The following month a certified letter arrived in the mail saying Oya’s immigration paperwork was under review. A summons ordered Oya to immigration court. Her right to be in the country was being challenged based on a “tip” that her documents were incomplete. Further investigation revealed that Oya needed to return to the country where she was born and get new signatures on new documents.

  It seemed simple when she left, but while she was overseas the rules changed for entrance to the United States. Oya Tekin was stuck. She was now waiting abroad, uncertain when she’d be able to come back to her husband and daughter.

  Sila turned on the light and opened her bedroom door. It was so quiet. Living in an apartment building meant that there were always sounds. Other people flushing toilets in rooms above and below. Doors opening and closing. Strains of a television show played too loud or music from someone’s unit. And the street had its own set of noises. And then of course there was the scheduled sound of the trains.

  But right now everything had closed down. The world Sila knew seemed to be entirely asleep. Standing in the hallway she could see that her father had left a light on and the small living room was awash in purple shadows. Sila headed silently to a cabinet there and opened the bottom drawer. Inside was a shoebox tied with a ribbon. She removed the box and returned to her room.

  Sila lifted the cardboard lid. She knew what was inside: all of her report cards. It didn’t take long before Sila had what she was looking for. She unfolded the two pages and stared down. There were letters written in boxes, mostly G’s and E’s, which stood for good and excellent. But those notations didn’t interest her. She flipped the second page over and read:

  Sila is a wonderful addition to the classroom. She shows great promise.—Lillian Gardino.

  There it was. Her signature. Her handwriting. She was gone now, but she had once been in Sila’s world.

  Mrs. Gardino.

  Gio’s wife.

  The next morning, after waking up late and staring out the window at a few passing trains, Sila thought about pretending to be sick. The last thing she wanted to do was go to school. She came out of her room, still in pajamas, doing her best to cough and look sweaty.

  “I don’t feel well.”

  Alp motioned for her to come over, and he put his hand to her forehead.

  “You don’t have a fever.”

  “My stomach doesn’t feel right.”

  “Eat some toast. And get dressed. You don’t want to be late for school.” He went back to reading.

  Sila coughed some more but it sounded forced. Her father might fix cars for a living, but he could have been a doctor. It was hard to fake an illness with him.

  She’d have to go to school, and she’d have to spend twenty minutes in the library with Mateo Lopez. It was hard to think of anything that was more awkward.

  17.

  Gio woke up in the barn loft and looked down to see a gray cargo van and a mound of brown leaves. He put on his eyeglasses and realized he was looking at a motionless elephant and a snoring bear. Like winning the lottery, this felt like a crazy dream, and he was deep into it.

  He climbed down the ladder and tiptoed back to the house. With bright sunlight flooding through the windows of the kitchen, Mr. Pickles’s mess looked even bigger. Gio could never allow Mr. Pickles to spend his life in a cage. He would never use an electric prod to get the bear to stay away from the farmhouse. He wished that he could just drive up to the state park in the mountains and let the big brown bear go free. But Mr. Pickles didn’t have claws or any training to find food. He didn’t understand he should stay clear of people.

  Gio needed to find a home for the bear that his conscience could live with. He had no idea what he would have done without the Internet, because soon he’d located a woman only three hours away who made rescued bears her life. Kimmie Bouttier already had seven bears, but Gio offered to pay for ten years of Mr. Pickles’s food in advance, and Kimmie agreed to come get the bear.

  Just after lunch she arrived with two workers and a big truck. Kimmie clearly had a way with bears. She was fearless as she approached, a thick wedge of raw salmon extended in her gloved hand. Mr. Pickles seemed to take an instant liking to the woman. And to her fish fillet.

  In a matter of minutes Mr. Pickles was in his cage and heading for the Bouttier Bear Sanctua
ry. Gio stood on the road in front of the high stone wall long after they’d gone. He wouldn’t miss the bear. He just wanted to be certain they weren’t coming back.

  Later that day Kimmie Bouttier sent Gio a photo of Mr. Pickles in his new habitat. He was (as could be predicted) eating. Behind him were seven other bears. Gio had read that most bears are solitary in the wild, but he knew they did form friendships and even alliances when in close proximity.

  “Mr. Pickles,” Kimmie Bouttier wrote in her email, “is destined to be the leader of the pack.”

  This made Gio feel that he’d done the right thing.

  * * *

  Once the big bear was gone Gio could focus his attention entirely on Veda. A change happens when someone takes on the responsibility for an animal. And this was on the biggest scale of disruption. All the elephant wanted to do was follow Gio around the property. But her meandering was also her way of eating and drinking, which Gio came to realize was a description of a free elephant’s life. Elephants consume at least a whole bathtub’s worth of water every day. And they need a huge amount of food. Veda right away started eating bushes and tree branches. Soon she went after entire trees.

  Elephants are a lot like goats, Gio decided. They can and will eat almost anything. Veda pushed over a birch tree and chewed up the leaves, twigs, bark, and branches until finally even the tree’s trunk made it into her stomach. Gio was at first shocked, then amused, and finally concerned. The elephant was some kind of bulldozer. He had to find a way for her to get enough food without eating everything in her path.

  Veda took care of the water herself. While Gio was in the house making calls to arrange for a secure way to close the barn, she went down to the lowest area on Gio’s land, which is where the big oak trees tower. A bed of thick grass and weeds grew there year-round. When Gio arrived, half out of his mind after looking for Veda for over an hour, he found her standing in a pool of water. She had eaten everything and dug her own drinking hole.