Leaving Time

by Jodi Picoult

think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.”

He knew me better than I knew myself. What I was really researching was not how elephants deal with loss but how humans can’t.

“What’s your field of study?” my father asks him. “Virgil does … retrieval work,” I improvise. “Serenity’s interested in communication.” He brightens. “Through what medium?” “Yes,” Serenity says.

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?

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.

I wondered if these elephants, which had become accustomed to a cage, could recall the person who had first put them into it.

She inched her trunk toward Hester but still would not come fully down that ramp. Both elephants continued to rumble as Hester put her front two feet onto the ramp and turned her head until her torn ear was close enough for Maura to touch. Then Hester lifted her front left foot, presented it to Maura. It was as if she was telling her life story. Look at how I was hurt. Look at how I survived.

She threw words at me like handfuls of mud, and now that they’ve dried, I can brush them off.

“Nevvie’s been with me from the start,” he said, by way of explanation. As if it did not matter that I was supposed to be with him till the end.

I had not asked to be rescued, true, but that did not mean I didn’t need saving.

I had wanted. I had hoped.