Things You Won't Say (2 page)

“Any big plans for the weekend?” the keeper asked.

“Nope,” Lou said. She knew she was supposed to lob back the question, but she let it drop. Lou didn’t like chatting while she was working at the zoo—it interfered with her time with the animals, and small talk felt draining to her. Besides, she had to make enough of it at the coffee shop where she worked part-time as a barista to supplement her salary. She spent her mornings and early afternoons wiping down enclosures and weighing out food and making sure the elephants were happy. She spent three evenings a week wiping down counters and measuring out coffee grounds and making sure her customers were happy. She supposed there was a kind of symmetry to the services she provided.

Lou finished cleaning the pen, rinsing her boots last. They’d still stink badly enough that she’d have to leave them on the balcony of her apartment tonight, she knew from experience. She was immune to the smell, but she’d learned from the looks she’d received when she popped into CVS one day directly after work that not everyone was. Now she kept a spare pair of flip-flops in her car.

She’d been a full-time animal keeper for a few years, but it had been a long road to achieve her dream, inconveniently realized shortly after she’d graduated from college with a degree in accounting. She’d gone to night school to get another degree—this time in zoology—and had started volunteering on the side, knowing practical experience could be a deciding factor when her résumé was in the middle of a tall stack. First she’d worked for a local vet, then the ASPCA, and finally, she’d begun helping at the zoo. She’d given up her accounting job because the hours weren’t compatible with her volunteer work. Turning in her notice made a twenty-pound boulder she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying around drop off her shoulders. Lou wasn’t cut out to sit in a sterile office, willing the clock to hit 6:00 so she could feel alive. She had school loans she wouldn’t be able to repay for a couple of decades,
her muscles constantly ached from the hard labor that accompanied her job, and she’d been bitten by a zebra, peed on by a giraffe, and hit on by a horny llama, among other indignities.

She’d never been happier.

Lou leaned on the handle of her shovel, watching as Bailey filled his trunk with water from the pool. Lou preferred the company of animals to just about anyone else’s, except maybe that of her sister, Jamie, and her family. Elephants were gorgeous, complex creatures with rich emotional lives. They cherished their young, communicated in rumbles that could be understood a mile away, and had personality quirks to rival any human’s. Take Bailey—he acted like a tough guy, but he was terrified of squirrels and cowered in a corner while they snacked on his food. Sasha was a scamp who liked to squirt the others with water, and Martha would meticulously mix her meals together, like she was making a salad—a bit of hay, a carrot, a few apple slices. Then there was Lou’s favorite: big, sweet Tabitha, the most utterly lovable creature on the planet. She hoped the baby had Tabby’s temperament. Give that girl a few words of praise and she was in heaven.

In a little while, Lou would let the elephants out to explore the more than five miles of trails that constituted their habitat. Lou knew other keepers loved their elephants just as much as she did, but she couldn’t bear to visit zoos that had inadequate spaces for elephants. The gentle, intelligent creatures needed plenty of room to roam. Here, she could place hay and vegetables in different locations every day, scattering meals throughout the exhibit and hiding the food, so the mammals could forage for it as they did in the wild. There were two pools—one for wading, and a deep one for swimming—and shady areas to rest. But the best spot was the back-scratching tree. The elephants loved to rub themselves against the low-hanging branches, and Lou could practically hear them sighing in relief.

Lou’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she dug it out,
belatedly realizing she’d smeared traces of elephant poop on her cargo pants. Not the first time; most of her clothes sported faint green and brown stains.

“Sorry to call so early,” Jamie said. “But I knew you’d be up. Is it really only seven? I meant to phone you back yesterday but things got crazy. Emily ate too much pizza and had a stomachache, so I was up half the night, and I swear it feels like noon. At least I hope her stomachache was from too much pizza. This is the last week of school before summer break and if she has to miss a day I’m going to cry.”

“How much coffee have you had?” Lou asked when Jamie paused for breath.

“Don’t ask.” Jamie sighed. When she spoke again, Jamie’s voice was tremulous. “Mike’s going back to work today.”

“Is he okay with that?” Lou asked.

“You know Mike,” Jamie said. “If he isn’t, he’ll never let on.”

That was true: Mike was hardly the type to engage in long, emotional talks. Sometimes Lou felt like she had more in common with her sister’s husband than with her sister. Then again, she’d always felt more comfortable around guys. Maybe her father was the source of that. He’d insisted he didn’t miss having a son, but he’d nicknamed his daughters Jamie and Lou. Who did he think he was kidding?

“So what’s up with you?” Jamie asked.

“Donny has a new girlfriend,” Lou said.

“Hmm,” Jamie said. “What’s she like?”

“Okay, I guess,” Lou said. “I haven’t talked to her much. But she seems nice.”

“Does it feel weird?” Jamie asked. “I mean, you guys haven’t been broken up that long.”

“Long enough,” Lou said. “I think they’re getting serious. They’ve been together almost every night this week.”

“Do you think he’s going to ask her to move in?” Jamie asked.

Lou considered the possibility. She didn’t love Donny any
longer—in retrospect, she wasn’t sure if she ever had or if she’d been swept up in his desire for a relationship, like a swimmer in a fast-moving current—but she sure loved renting the extra bedroom in his apartment. It was close enough to the zoo that she could walk here in the mornings. If the new girlfriend moved in, would that mean Lou would need to move out?

“Let me know if you want to find a new place,” Jamie was saying. “I could help you look— Oh, honey, let me pour the syrup. No! Okay, fine, you can help. We’ll pour it together. Shi— shoot. Can you grab a paper towel? No, not the whole roll, just one.”

“Sure,” Lou said. “In all your spare time.” She didn’t think she’d had a conversation with Jamie in the past six years that hadn’t been interrupted by a child. She’d wanted to ask for advice on how to act around the new girlfriend—sometimes it was a little hard for Lou to read the social cues that other people instinctively grasped—but it was clear this wasn’t the time. “Is Sam around? Can I talk to him?”

“Sure, hang on.”

Lou heard heavy breathing a second later. Sam still hadn’t mastered the art of salutations.

“Do you know elephants are the only mammals that can’t jump?” Lou asked.

“What do you call an elephant that never takes a bath?” he responded.

“You got me,” Lou said.

“A smellephant.”

Lou laughed. “Have a good day at school,” she said. “Actually, forget I said that. That was just a stupid adult thing to say.”

“You want me to have a bad day at school?” Sam asked.

Lou adored this kid. “I’ll bring you to the zoo in a few weeks to see the cheetah babies,” she said. “They’re so fuzzy and cute.”

“Really?” Sam asked.

“Pinkie swear,” Lou said. She wished her conversations with Jamie could be like this—light and easy and fun. But Jamie was always fixing things—meals, messes, boo-boos—and sometimes Lou felt as if Jamie was eyeing her as another project. Little sister Lou, unmarried at thirty-one, with a bad haircut (even Lou had to admit it looked deliberately unflattering, but what could she expect when she’d paid $12.99 for it?) and an extra twenty pounds and a fondness for fart jokes. Maybe she
should’ve
been born a boy—guys could get away with all that stuff a lot more easily.

Lou supposed it wasn’t Jamie’s fault, though. Their mother had died of a staph infection when Jamie was fifteen and Lou was twelve, and Jamie had stepped into the role of maternal figure, cooking meals and explaining what it would be like when Lou got her period and teaching Lou how to shave her legs (a practice Lou stopped a few years later. Why bother?).

It was strange, Lou thought as she began rinsing off the shovel she’d used to clean Tabby’s enclosure. She had lots of memories of being with Jamie while growing up but virtually none of her mother. Once, when Lou had been leaving work, she’d passed a group of tourists who were viewing the small mammal exhibit. Without realizing it, Lou had stopped and edged closer to one of the women.
That perfume,
she’d thought. The floral scent had tugged at the edges of Lou’s consciousness, making her feel as if there was something she vitally needed, something just beyond her reach. Had her mother worn the same fragrance? She’d wanted to ask the woman the name of the brand so she could buy a bottle and uncork it and try to coax out the memories that had to be lingering in the recesses of her brain, but she hadn’t known how to explain her request. While she was still fumbling for the right words, the woman had taken her two young daughters by their hands and headed off. Lou had stared after her, an ache forming in the center of her chest.

Now Lou began to make notes on the elephants’ charts,
then set the paperwork back down. Jamie’s question hung in the air. Of course Lou couldn’t stay with Donny and his new girlfriend. Come to think of it, he’d mentioned the other day that there was a woman in his office who was looking for a roommate. Now she realized he hadn’t been making idle conversation. She wondered why he hadn’t simply asked her to move out. Had he and his girlfriend been talking about it, hoping she’d take the hint? It was a little embarrassing.

This was why Lou loved kids and animals best. They told you what they thought, in the most direct terms possible. If kids were mad at you, they yelled. If elephants were mad at you, they charged and stomped you to death. Simple and straightforward.

Maybe she should see if another keeper needed a roommate—after all, they couldn’t complain about the smell of her boots.

Lou walked over to the barrier that separated keepers from the elephants and pulled a red apple out of her pocket.

“Come, Tabitha,” she called, and the elephant lifted her massive head and ambled over. Lou tossed her the apple and watched it disappear. The elephant caught her eye, and Lou held her gaze for a long moment.

Sometimes she wished that she could just live here, where life was less complicated.

•••

Christie Simmons twirled the straw in her strawberry margarita, knowing without raising her eyes that the balding guy across the bar was staring at her. She fought the urge to check the time on her cell phone. Simon was late. Again.

“Excuse me.”

Baldie had made his move and now leaned against the bar beside her. He’d been there for only two seconds, and already he was crowding her.

Christie glanced up, putting a question in her eyes.

“Buy you a drink?” he offered.

She deliberately looked back down at her full glass.

“After that one, I mean,” he said.

He wore a nice suit—nothing custom-made, but a good-quality pinstripe—and his fingernails were clean. Those things were important to Christie. He took out his wallet and removed a gold AmEx card and waved it at the bartender. “I’ll start a tab,” he said.

Seven years ago—maybe five, on a good day—Christie would’ve drawn the eyes of the rowdy, younger guys playing pool in the corner. They would’ve put down their cue sticks and wandered over, loud and sloppy, flirting artlessly while she threw back her head and laughed, keeping her back perfectly straight so they could admire her curves.

But now she was thirty-seven, technically old enough to be their mother. So instead of being surrounded by muscles and hair flopping into eyes and offers of a slippery nipple shooter, she was left with this: a poseur trying to impress her with the color of his credit card. Which matched the color of his wedding ring.

“I’m meeting someone,” Christie said.

Mr. Married leaned in closer. His breath smelled sour, as if he’d been drinking whiskey all day. Maybe he had.

“Well, it doesn’t look like he’s meeting you,” Mr. Married said. His smile didn’t reach his small, flinty eyes. “You’ve been sitting here for half an hour.”

She hoped the stab of hurt she felt didn’t reveal itself. She didn’t want to give him that triumph. She knew this guy’s type: She’d flirted with him, dated him, hell, she’d even
married
him once in a spectacularly bad decision that she’d reversed six months later. He’d never made it to the top tier of his profession, and it rankled him. Maybe he had a decent house, and a 401(k), but every day, he had to answer to someone who held the job he coveted, the lifestyle he’d been denied. His anger and frustration mounted, and he released it in
passive-aggressive ways: Pretending he had to work late while his wife waited at home. Loudly joking with the barista who made his four-dollar latte to prove he was a good guy, then deliberately cutting off other drivers in traffic. Oh, yes, Christie knew his type intimately before he’d even spoken a word. In bed he’d be a little rough and a lot selfish.

Christie’s cell phone rang, but she made herself wait a few beats before picking it up. She angled herself so Baldie couldn’t see her face. If he shifted another step or two forward, they’d be spooning, she thought as she suppressed a shudder.

“Hey, gorgeous.” With those words, she knew Simon wasn’t going to show up. She’d gotten her hair highlighted—she’d been a little worried it was getting too blond, but her hairdresser had insisted no one could ever be too rich or too blond—and she’d splurged on a bikini wax. She’d applied her makeup carefully, using tricks she’d added to her arsenal over the past few years: a line of white on the inside of each eyelid, to make her eyes appear bigger and brighter, concealer that promised to hide fine lines as well as dark circles, a lip-plumping gloss that stung with the intensity of hot peppers but did seem to make her lips appear fuller. She’d even remade her bed with fresh linens.