October 25, 2009
The misty morning Addison selects to take her favorite Manolo Blahniks on a stroll (they were begging to be walked) also happens to be the day Benji learns to unlatch the gate of his bamboo pen. She encounters the grey bundle of wrinkles just past the outskirts of the village, trumpeting excitedly at his newfound freedom.
Four children trail behind, but they are too little, too late. Benji halts in front of her, eyeing the strange creature decorated in the foreign labels of clothes that cost more than he would himself. Addison rarely prays and would certainly never admit to doing so but as Benji turns large, sorrowful orbs on her she pleads for a serendipitous rescue.
It doesn't come.
Instead, the baby elephant lets forth a ringing trumpeting noise as he sprays Addison with muddy water. Moisture caressing every portion of her body, bathed in both liquid of an unpleasant brown color and the good-natured laughter of the villagers, she raises her trademark eyebrow and mourns the poor patented leather pumps.
She can hardly believe she is in the middle of nowhere soaking in second-hand elephant water. Addison Montgomery Shepherd wouldn't have been caught dead here, but Addison Montgomery has lost a third of her name and her life and half of what she used to use to define herself so she mostly just goes with it these days.
"Benji must like you, Aduhson!" someone yells, adding to the melodious, uncultivated peals of laughter that sound from the gathered crowd.
The four boys, three with shiny, swarthy bald heads and the fourth with ebon curls, proffer guilty grins as they tangle dirty fingers in the soaking fabric of her ruined clothes. She allows a good natured smile to shine through as she stumbles back through the village toward the communal showers, patting the clinging fingers as they sink into her skin, wondering how to relate to Derek this miraculous feeling of belonging.
Plus how to communicate the elephant disaster without sounding too ridiculous.
Dear Derek,
I think everything was easier the first time around, when all that mattered was love. Now there are so many other factors and so much baggage that … it's just hard. So hard, sometimes, that it doesn't even seem worth it to try. Except, well, I'm terrified of ending up alone so I try and just end up even more screwed up than I was in the first place.
But I hope things for you and Meredith are going well.
As for the marriage, kids, and happiness thing, well, we got two out of the three, didn't we? Not up to our usual standard, but you still have time. If I know you at all, you never settle for two out of three.
I wrote to Callie, but keep an eye on her for me, will you? From what I understand, she and Arizona are going through a rough patch and since I can't be there … well, I know you two aren't all that close but will you just … for me?
Tell everyone else – Mark, Richard, Miranda – that I say hi. Oh, and that they'll be amused to know that I got sprayed by an overexcited baby elephant on my walk this morning. Cooper almost had to do the Heimlich maneuver on Naomi because she was laughing so hard she choked on a piece of fruit. Don't laugh. I know you're laughing. Stop it, Derek. It brought back traumatic memories of that one Christmas when you tried to take me for a sleigh ride but the Clydesdale peed all over my nine hundred dollar shoes. You couldn't stop laughing long enough to help me wipe them off.
I'm sorry about the baby thing, it's just so hard seeing them die from an infection a few days after a C-section in an unclean atmosphere and being able to do nothing – absolutely nothing about it, while the mother and the relatives and all the people in the village are begging you for your 'American magic.' I'm not that strong, Derek. I cry every time I lose another one.
I refuse to give you even more incentive to laugh at me – so no pictures. And don't even think about asking Sam, or god forbid Cooper or Pete. They know better than to anger a woman with a scalpel.
We can be friends, but knowing us, we should probably have some rules. For instance, does your fiancée know that you're writing to me? I know how it feels to be kept in the dark, Derek, so don't repeat your mistakes. Also, we should only tell each other things that friends would say, not things that amicably divorced but still hopelessly complicated people would tell each other. Because there are some things, Derek, that I'm just not ready to hear.
I knew you wanted to ask me out for those eight months. I was going to take pity on you and just ask you to coffee myself, but Mark told me that I should wait for you to man up. Sorry, honey.
Addison
P.S. It was EXACTLY what we wrote it off as, Derek. Don't go there. And I thought we weren't talking about it!
Across a couple thousand miles of breaking azure waves under the golden Atlantic sun, Derek lets forth a hearty laugh upon reading his ex-wife's story of an unfortunate animal encounter. It was bound to happen sometime, because nature and Addison are perpetually incompatible, and he's actually surprised she lasted nearly two months in the savannah without any incidents with Mother Nature.
The four residents occupying his kitchen turn in surprise at the sounds of his merriment, because after recent layoffs, a tense atmosphere covers them like newly fallen snow, finding its way into the nooks and crannies of every interaction. Even two years after George's death, the resident makes his presence known by the gaping hole in the fabric of his friends. They orient themselves around the empty space as if he can appreciate the available spot from some high place above.
Then again, if it were someone he loved that had died … perhaps he would not be so cynical then. If Meredith … or Addison …
And then he wishes that she wasn't quite so far out of reach; that his paltry protection could stretch through palm frond huts and lush oases of Africa because she's been physically gone from his life for years, but emotionally? Emotionally she's never left. Losing his father as a child makes him resistant to loss; knowing that those he loves are safe is necessary even when he's a jerk and doesn't call or visit. As long as they're okay, he can pull air through his nose, down his windpipe, into the bronchi and finally into the tiny, spongy alveoli of his lungs, and breathe.
"Enough about work, dammit!" Alex snaps from the kitchen. "Iz, you're not getting fired, you just had cancer. Cristina, you are a freaking robot. They're not firing you even if you suck with kids. Meredith, you have your dead mommy trump card. Now can we please stop talking about this?"
"I know!" Izzie pipes up, enthusiasm lacing her voice. "We should talk about Halloween!" There is a simultaneous groan from the kitchen, but instead of contemplating how to avoid Izzie's Halloween schemes he instead wonders whether Halloween is celebrated in Sudan …
"If your version of Halloween involves copious amounts of alcohol, I'm in. Otherwise …" Cristina threatens. "I'm tying you to a chair. Especially if it involves another wig."
"Sorry, Iz, but I'm with her."
"Alex!" There was a loud thump at she presumably smacked his arm. "Hello, cancer?"
"That doesn't work anymore."
"Wife?"
"Doesn't that mean we literally have license to argue?"
"Ugh!" The sound of three people vacating a room meets his ears, and he waits for the fourth set but those steps draw closer instead of farther away.
"Derek?" Meredith asks hesitantly as she approaches his faraway countenance. "Where are you?" she jokes.
"Africa," he mutters and stands, leaving his confused fiancée in his wake.
