Hannah's Dream (7 page)

Corinna had loved being pregnant. She’d been thinner in those days and she’d started showing early. She never had a day’s sickness, never felt tired until the very end. Sam had been proud enough to pop; sometimes when she’d looked up in the evening he would be watching her with tears in his eyes. He never would say anything, just those looks and a little extra blinking when he knew he’d been caught. How many nights she’d lain in the dark, her hands on her belly, and marveled at how much the Lord must love her, to bring such good fortune her way. There were no special vitamins in those days, no ultrasound or amniocentesis. Mostly Corinna had just let nature take her where she wanted, whether it was to a big plate of meat loaf or to fried chicken every night. The body took care of its own.

And the baby had been a dancer all through Corinna’s waking hours, or at least it had seemed that way. Sam could feel
the baby just about any time he wanted to, just put his hand on Corinna’s big belly and wait a minute or two for her to swim over. Corinna saw a doctor two or three times, and every visit, the baby was just fine—good heartbeat, good weight gain.

Corinna’s mother had come to be with her at the end; showed up with a suitcase full of crochet hooks and a rainbow of yarn, never having been one for idle hands. The night Corinna went into labor, Corinna, Sam, and her mama were laughing at some fool radio program when her water broke, making a spot on their brand-new sofa. You could still see its outlines like a ghost if you knew where to look.

Sam had called a taxi—they were still too poor to own a car—and helped her in. She had never known a short ride could take so long. Her contractions started hard and stayed that way. At the hospital Sam held her hand and told her that he loved her and then they made him go sit in the waiting room like hired help. Of course, that’s the way they did it in those days. It didn’t seem fair, though, not even back then.

Corinna had labored in silence so she could feel her body working, feel the baby working, too. And it was all fine for a long time, until all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she heard a soft beating of wings and a small, sweet whisper like a soul might make when it passed. She cried out, but the attending nurse said no, everything was fine. Then the baby came, and she was perfect in every way, except, of course, she was dead.

Corinna had spit on God that day; told Him she was turning her face away forever. She wanted nothing to do with a God who’d trick her like that, get her and Sam all saturated with love and then change His mind without so much as an explanation why. From then on, for Corinna, her life was just her and Sam and a little bit of luck thrown in from time to time.

Neva Wilson spent nearly
her entire day off chasing down necessities: paper towels, Kleenex, and toilet paper; dishwashing detergent, sponges, canned goods, and soda; a new shower caddy, shampoo, conditioner, and soap. This was the part she hated most about moving. You went to make a sandwich and, damn it, you’d left your mustard in New York. Or you knew exactly which cupboard had the honey, but that was in San Diego. She’d be the first to admit she wasn’t a homemaker. By six o’clock in the evening she was in a foul mood. Grabbing a baseball cap off the top of her TV set she stuffed her not-quite-clean hair underneath, got back in the car, and headed for the zoo.

To her surprise, she saw flickering lights in the elephant barn when she pulled up. She looked in the window as she approached and, of all things, she saw Hannah watching
Star Wars
on the barn’s wide-screen TV with Sam and Corinna. Sam was sitting in one of the armchairs with his foot up on an overturned steel bucket, while a big, beautiful woman removed a gauze dressing. As she pulled the barn door open, Neva overheard Sam saying, “I know, Mama.” Both of them jumped when she appeared in the doorway, which made her jump.

“I’m sorry—am I interrupting?” she said.

The wound on Sam’s foot looked old and serious. The woman moved to block Neva’s view, quickly finished applying ointment and a fresh dressing. “Mama was just fixing up a cut I got the other day,” Sam said, pulling his sock up over the bandage. “Just me being clumsy, miss. How come you’re here so late?”

“I didn’t want to be at my apartment anymore, and I’m sick of running errands, so I thought I’d come down here and keep Hannah company for a little while.”

“Well, pull up a chair,” Sam said. “This is my wife Corinna. Sugar, this is Miss Wilson.” To Neva he said, “Course, she knows all about you.”

“Uh oh.” Neva smiled as Corinna held out a warm, soft hand.

“Sam’s told me all the good things you’ve done for the baby.”

“We’re just getting started,” Neva said.

Hannah wandered over, stood behind Corinna’s chair and put her trunk over Corinna’s shoulder, sniffed beneath Corinna’s ear. When Corinna held up her hand, Hannah blew a soft breath or two into her palm. “Aren’t you the sweetest thing,” Corinna crooned.

Neva smiled. It was unusual to find a zookeeper’s spouse who wanted to be included in an animal’s care, never mind develop a relationship. More often, they became resentful. “Do you do this often?” She indicated the television.

“Two, three times a week, maybe,” Sam said. “We’ve been doing it for years now. Down at the video store they’ve got a little display, ‘Hannah’s Pick.’ She gets new releases, whatever she wants, for free. She likes action pictures.
Independence Day
’s one of her all-time favorites. She likes all the
Star Wars
pictures, too.”

“She has an eye for men, too,” Corinna said. “Danny Glover and Mel Gibson—she’s seen all the
Lethal Weapon
movies four, five times now.”

Hannah shuffled and made low rumbles in her throat. Sam said to Neva, “You’re sure welcome to join us, if you want to.”

So Neva rolled out the office desk chair and settled in. Corinna took Sam’s hand while Hannah watched the screen with her good eye, her trunk draped gently over Corinna’s shoul
der, chuffing now and then. Neva thought there was something surreal about the scene, if soothing.

“My father was diabetic, too,” Neva said when the movie was over. “He lost a foot from an ulcer like yours.”

Sam and Corinna exchanged a look. “Anyways, it doesn’t hurt,” Sam said.

“Doesn’t mean it can’t kill him, just the same,” Corinna said to Neva. “He can’t even feel that foot anymore. That’s why it doesn’t hurt.”

“Neuropathy,” Neva said.

“Uh huh,” Corinna said.

“Me and shug,” Sam said. “We’ve got our bad feet in common.”

“Doctor’s told him he could lose that foot if it doesn’t start getting better,” Corinna told Neva. “And it’s not going to get better as long as he’s got it rubbing around inside a shoe. Man’s a mule, though.”

“You find me someone for Hannah and I’ll be done tomorrow,” Sam said to Neva, then jerked his head toward Corinna. “She knows that.”

“When’s the last time Hannah saw another elephant?” Neva asked.

“Forty-one years ago this November. November 24,” Sam said. “That’s the day Reyna died—Miss Biedelman’s other elephant. Reyna and shug were real close. Shug started rocking right after she passed, and she’s been doing it ever since. Truth is, I believe she’s afraid of the dark—that, and being alone.”

After that, there was nothing left to say. Neva helped Corinna shut off the TV and roll it back to its place along the wall, while Sam led Hannah to the back of the barn and the windowless stall where she spent the night. She could hear
the clanking of the chain and shackle as Sam secured her, turned on a nightlight, gave her one last yam, and tuned a radio to an easy-listening station.

“You be good now, sugar,” he said in the gloom. “Morning’ll come soon.”

It was the one thing she’d ever heard him say that wasn’t true.

B
y Tuesday morning
Harriet had almost finished assembling her kit. She’d ordered a safari hat, safari boots, four pairs of khaki pants, four big-game-hunter shirts, a whistle, and a lanyard from a safari outfitter. She’d even found Max’s riding crop and shooting stick in a huge armoire in one of the bedrooms. She was so excited she was trembling. Every couple of minutes she paused, thinking she heard Truman’s feet outside her office door. When he did finally arrive she leapt out of her chair and pulled him into her office by the arm.

“Truman, I’ve had the most brilliant idea!” she cried, solicitously pushing a pile of papers from the visitor’s chair onto the floor to make room for him. “I want to show you something.”

Truman nodded in bleary agreement. It had been another long night with Miles, and Winslow had woken up with an ominous cough.

Harriet took in the wreckage and asked, “Coffee—do you need coffee?”

“That would be merciful.”

Harriet trotted to the little coffee station near Brenda’s desk, poured Truman a cup, and set it before him on her desk. She was trembling with excitement as she circled around to her side of the desk and handed him a stack of Max Biedelman’s photographs, which he looked through with faint enthusiasm. “They’re very striking. Thank you for showing them to me.” Truman rose, clutching his coffee cup.

“No, no!” she said. “I haven’t even started yet. Sit!”

Truman sat.

“I got the preliminary marketing report on Saturday, and of course Hannah’s the big draw, no surprise there. I’d already decided to have an agency do a big ad campaign featuring her. But—
but!
—I came up with something else.” She paused for dramatic effect. “I will
be
Maxine Biedelman.”

“What?”

Harriet unveiled her plan: she would incorporate living history into the zoo by impersonating Max Biedelman and re-enacting her experience with elephants—Hannah, in particular. She would give lectures, make informal appearances around the facility, the works. And the program would be supported by an exhibit of the pictures and maps she’d found upstairs. “You can just imagine the merchandising opportunities!” she said. “Those pictures can go on coffee cups, refrigerator magnets, notebooks, a line of greeting cards, T-shirts, sweatshirts, postcards, you name it! Don’t you think it’s brilliant?”

“You don’t think it’ll look like we’re exploiting her?” Truman asked.

“Who?”

“Hannah.”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t like it?”

“No, no, I didn’t say that,” Truman said. “It certainly has merit. The educational possibilities—”

“You don’t like it,” Harriet said flatly.

“Yes, I do, Harriet. I do.”

Brenda knocked on the door jamb and said, “Truman, Winslow just called from school. He says he doesn’t feel well, and can you pick him up. He says he’ll be waiting for you in the nurse’s office.”

“Did he say exactly how he didn’t feel well?”

“No, but he was coughing.”

“Go,” Harriet said coolly, dismissing him.

As Truman drove to Winslow’s school,
he found himself wondering if there were such a thing as anti-luck, because if there was, he was suffering a string of it. Not only was Harriet preparing to launch a megalomaniacal marketing campaign balanced on the back of an ailing elephant, but last night had been Truman’s third night in a row of pig-sitting, fueled by dire warnings in the
Guide to Love and Happiness
. From what Truman could gather, he and Winslow had only a matter of weeks to cement the lifelong bond that was their only insurance against ruined upholstery, splintered woodwork, shattered dreams, and porcine misery.
Pigs that are poorly bonded with their owners are too often turned into pork,
the
Guide
intoned,
and who is at fault? Surely not Piggy.
He took the most limited comfort from the fact that the pig appeared to be in fine fettle, perky and bright-eyed and hellishly busy. Miles loved his pen in the yard and during
his first two days in residence had rooted up a whole section of lawn to form a shallow, pig-shaped pit in which to snooze. Teenage boys ate less. Worse, whenever he caught sight of Truman, the animal trotted toward him with piggish declarations of love. And then there was the grim prospect of Porcine Stress Syndrome, a potentially fatal condition brought on by restraint, predation, medical attention, or pique. Truman had found this in the
Guide
as a follow-up to the section on
Screaming
. As a result, neither Truman nor Winslow had had the courage to pick up the animal even once. He slept at Truman’s feet—
when
he slept—pressed up hard against his calves and snoring like a wino.

Truman found Winslow sitting forlornly on a cot in the school nurse’s office, coughing dryly and staring at his shoes.

“Hey, buddy,” Truman said. “Feeling crummy, huh?”

“Kind of.”

Truman signed him out and walked him to the car with a sorrowful hand on his back. Winslow rarely got sick. He put his hand on the boy’s forehead. Winslow felt hot, but Truman’s hand was cold with fatigue and cold weather, so who knew?

“So how bad do you feel, exactly?”

Winslow shrugged.

“On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst?” He often asked about things on a scale of one to ten. He’d found it clarified things, but it had driven Rhonda crazy.

“I don’t know. Six.”

If the boy had a severed arm, he’d probably give it a seven. Kids were supposed to complain, but Winslow rarely did, even when he would have been justified. Truman brought him back to the zoo and kept him in his cubicle for an hour, but when Winslow got restless and asked if he could take a walk, Truman said yes. A little fresh air wouldn’t do the boy any harm; in fact
might do him good, and he wasn’t coughing all that much. Truman was working on letting go.
You smother him,
Rhonda had said the last time he saw her.
He’s not disabled, you know
.

“All right,” he told Winslow. “But wear my sweatshirt, and keep the hood up. And be back in an hour, please.”

Winslow wandered down the path
to the elephant barn. A lot of the kids said he was lucky having a dad who worked at the zoo because he probably got to do neat stuff no one else did, like feed bugs to the aardvark. They also thought it was cool that he had a pig, but the only cool thing Miles had done so far was suck a piece of Kleenex up his nose, and Winslow was pretty sure that hadn’t been on purpose.

When he reached the elephant yard he stood outside the fence, watching Hannah fling mud over her back. A woman he didn’t recognize was with her, hosing the wallow to keep the mud gloppy. Winslow admired the elephant’s ability to shape and then pinch up a precise gob of mud in a bend in her trunk. It was like watching someone knit using only their elbows—it didn’t look like it should work.

The woman noticed him. “Hi. Can I help you?”

“No, thank you,” Winslow said. “I just like to watch her sometimes.”

“Really? Do you come here a lot?”

Winslow nodded solemnly. “I like her trunk.”

“One hundred thousand muscles, all perfectly coordinated. She can shell a peanut. A single peanut.”

“Yeah,” Winslow said appreciatively.

She looked him over. “Do you work here?” She indicated the zoo sweatshirt he was wearing.

“No, just my dad. His name’s Truman Levy.”

“So that’s why you looked familiar.” The woman turned off the water, came to the fence and stuck part of her hand through the chain links. “I’m Neva,” she said.

Winslow shook the fingers solemnly. “My name’s Winslow. My mom named me after Winslow Homer, the painter.”

“Are you an artist?”

“No,” Winslow said. “She wanted me to be, though.”

“Well, we can’t always be what other people want.” Neva turned the water back on, brought the hose around Hannah and blasted a jet of water straight into her open mouth.

“Does she like that?” Winslow asked. “It looks like it’d hurt.”

“I know, but it’s one of her favorite things. So how come you’re here on a school day?”

“I didn’t feel well, so I left early.”

“Well, that’s okay, right?” Neva said, training the hose at Hannah’s flanks. Hannah blinked with bliss. “Kind of like getting a snow day.”

“Yeah, but I was supposed to have a piano lesson this afternoon, and now I won’t.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

Winslow shrugged. “I wanted to play something for my teacher.”

“I took piano for years. Back before the flood. What were you going to play for her?”

“Mozart’s
Fantasia in D Minor
.”

“Whoa,” Neva said. “How long have you been playing?”

“I started when I was six. So”—he counted quickly on his fingers—“five years.”

“You must be good. Not so much with the math, though, huh?”

“Yeah. Music is easier. I hear it in my head.”

Hannah approached the fence carrying her tire. “How come she carries that around all the time?” Winslow asked.

“Do you know a little kid who sucks their thumb, maybe, or carries an old blanket around all the time? Same reason. It makes her feel safe.”

“She’s pretty big to be scared of anything.”

“You know that, and I know that, but Hannah doesn’t seem to, at least not in her heart.”

When Hannah got close enough, she set down her tire, extended her trunk straight at Winslow through the chain link fence, and blew a breath of air at him. He took a cautious step back.

Neva patted Hannah’s leg. “She’s just trying to get your attention. Here.” Neva fished around for something in her pants pocket. “Hold out your hand.”

Obediently Winslow held out his hand. Neva dropped in a red jellybean, a green jellybean, a white jellybean, and four raisins. “Get ready,” she said. Hannah’s trunk was already snaking through the fence. Winslow trembled slightly but held his ground as Hannah daintily picked off the jellybeans and then the raisins, popping them into her mouth one by one. When she was done she reclaimed her tire and moved off, blowing bits of hay around the yard.

“Good job,” Neva told Winslow. She began coiling the hose. “Well, at least you have the chance to goof off. By getting out of school early, I mean.”

“I don’t like to goof off that much,” Winslow said.

“No?”

Winslow shrugged. “I don’t really like kids my own age. There’s this one named Simon who’s okay. He used to come
here with me sometimes after school, but not so much anymore. He says he has a girlfriend. My dad says it’s just a phase.”

Neva manhandled the coiled hose over to the barn and hung it on a hook. “Your dad seems like a pretty nice guy.”

“Yeah,” Winslow said. “He worries a lot.”

“About you?” She wiped her hands on her pants and came back to the fence opposite Winslow.

“Uh huh. He wants me to have other interests besides music. He gave me a pig for my birthday.”

“A pig?”

Winslow nodded. “Miles.”

Neva grinned.
“Miles?”

“My dad named him. He’s a Vietnamese potbelly. He doesn’t sleep.”

“Ever?”

Winslow shrugged. “Not so far. We’ve had him for three days.”

“Is he a house pig?”

“Sort of. He stays inside with us until we go to school and work. Then he has to go outside so he doesn’t wreck the house.”

“Do you like him?”

Winslow shrugged. “He’s okay. He likes to listen when I practice piano. Kids just say they’re bored or cover their ears and stuff.”

“Well, they’ll regret it when you play Carnegie Hall.”

“Yeah.”

“Your mom must be proud of you.”

Winslow shrugged. “She used to get mad at me because I didn’t have play dates. She used to say if there was no one left in the whole world but me and one other kid, I still wouldn’t invite him over.”

Neva laughed. “Well, blessed are the self-reliant. Doesn’t she say it anymore?”

“Who?”

“Your mom.”

“No. She lives in Colorado now. There’s an artist colony there. She makes sculpture out of nails and rusty cans and barbed wire and stuff.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

Winslow watched Hannah across the yard, where she was methodically breaking up a pumpkin shell by hitting it on a rock. “Do you think she’s pretty?” he asked Neva doubtfully.

Neva smiled. “If I were another elephant, I’d think she was beautiful.”

“Because she’s kind of funny-looking. Her skin’s baggy.”

“Well, beauty’s in the eye of the beholder,” Neva said. “Look, can you keep a secret?”

“Usually.”

“Do you ever come here after school? If you’re not home sick, I mean?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, see if your dad can bring you here tomorrow at three-thirty. We’re going to try something with Hannah, but it’s a big secret.”

“Try what?”

Neva lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “We’re going to teach her to paint.”

“You mean like buildings and stuff?”

“No, like pictures.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s something new. We’re trying to find things to keep her from getting bored.”

“How are you going to teach her?”

“Come back tomorrow at three-thirty and see. You can tell your dad, but you can’t tell anybody else. And your dad can’t, either. Swear?”

“Swear,” Winslow said. “I probably better go.” He turned to leave, and then turned back. “It was nice to meet you and everything.”

“It was nice to meet you, too, Winslow. Come back tomorrow, but remember—
don’t tell anyone
besides your dad. Oh, and listen. Pigs are very smart, so don’t let yours boss you around.”

“I won’t,” Winslow said, and then he trotted up the path in the direction of the Biedelman house.

The next afternoon,
in thin, brilliant sunshine, Neva set up a sturdy wooden easel outside the barn and clamped a pre-stretched canvas to it, then squeezed blobs of acrylic paint in primary colors onto an oversized artist’s palette and took a big new brush out of its cellophane wrapper. Winslow and Truman stood outside the fence, watching as Neva gave Sam the go-ahead to bring Hannah over. The elephant brought her tire along, carefully setting it at her feet as Neva dipped the brush into red paint, made a bold swipe at the canvas, and then held out the brush.