Marooned in Manhattan (13 page)

‘No, we can’t! There will be no substitutions. Maybe this will help you to realise that there are bad people out there. When I told you that you always have to tell me where you are going and who you are with, I was not kidding around.’

‘But Scott,’ I said, ‘Luna will be devastated when I don’t turn up.’

‘Well, you should have thought about Luna before you went wandering around Brooklyn by yourself,’ he said unsympathetically.

That was the end of it and it left me seething with rage. Adults are always saying stuff that doesn’t make any sense. Since it would never have occurred to me that Scott could be so cruel as to ban me from riding Luna, I couldn’t
possibly
have thought about that before going to Brooklyn.

Chapter 23

N
ot including stuff to do with Mum,
today was the saddest day of my life so far. It started off like a normal day: breakfast, a walk in the Park with Ben, some banter with Frank about which local deli has the best bagels. When I returned to the apartment, Joanna was making coffee and talking to Scott about a pug with
heartworm
disease as he threw items into his blue workbag.

‘Where are you going, Scott? Can I come?’

‘Not this one, Evie. I’m going to see a very sick cat at a shelter way uptown. Why don’t you help out in the clinic this morning?’

‘Tommy is coming in for a check-up. I could use an extra set of hands,’ Joanna chipped in.

I wavered. I was very fond of Tommy, an enormous, dignified Airedale, but I’d met him several times.

‘Karen could help Joanna. I’ve never been to an animal shelter. Please, Scott?’

He hesitated.

‘No point in over
sheltering
Evie,’ suggested Joanna with a wink at me.

Scott groaned.

‘You guys are killing me. Anything for a peaceful life. Jump to it, Evie!’

The shelter was located in a warehouse in a derelict section of Washington Heights, a residential neighbourhood above Harlem in Manhattan. Hundreds of wire-mesh crates and kennels lined almost every centimetre of space, many of them containing more than one dog or cat crammed in together. The normal luxuries I had come to associate with Manhattan pets – plush pet toys, customised blankets, doggie beds, tennis balls and exotic biscuit and cupcake treats – were nowhere to be seen. These animals had water and the cheapest kind of dry kibble; that was all.

I trailed Scott slowly through the warehouse. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to Miriam, the shelter supervisor, because of the terrific din caused by so many barking dogs. But it wasn’t the noisy dogs that caught my eye; it was the ones lying morosely at the very back of their crates without making a sound, not even a whimper. They didn’t care enough to lift their heads as we passed.

I stopped in front of a crate containing a medium-sized, shaggy dog with matted ginger and brown fur. I slipped my hand through the bars of the crate to encourage her to approach for a pat, but she strained back even further, pressing up against the bars at the back of the crate, looking at me with terribly sad, frightened and bewildered brown eyes.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ I said, horrified.

‘What’s this dog’s name?’ I called up to Miriam.

‘Two-Forty-Seven,’ she answered, consulting a clipboard
and shaking her head. ‘We got so many new dogs this past week that we haven’t had the time yet to clean them all, much less give them names.’

No loving owner, no toys, no treats, no name.

I fished in my pocket and pulled out a small handful of Ben’s bacon bits treats, wrapped in cling film. I pulled off the plastic, got down on my knees and pushed the bacon through the bars.

‘You look like a Lindsey, you just do. Here, Lindsey, treat for you, girl.’

Lindsey eyed the snack suspiciously, but after a few minutes, she roused herself, approached cautiously and sniffed at my outstretched hand. Soon she gobbled the treats down. I put my hand very slowly through the bars again to touch her, but she retreated to the back of the crate again.

‘Bye, Lindsey,’ I whispered, ‘you’re a
good
dog,’ and I rushed to catch up with Scott and Miriam. They were discussing a large, skeleton-skinny, striped black and white cat, which lay in Miriam’s arms. Scott rubbed the cat gently and spoke softly to Miriam.

‘It’s too late. I’m sorry. It will just be a few minutes,’ he said, as he gave the cat an injection.

‘At least she’s not dying alone, poor Sebbie,’ said Miriam and she lowered her large, bulky body onto the concrete floor, the cat still carefully cradled in her arms, and waited for death to come.

‘Did she say Sebbie?” I asked Scott.

‘No. Zebbie, for zebra,’ he answered, indicating the black
and white stripes.

Zebra’s breath, which had been a rasping sound, stopped and it fell silent in the shelter as if all the other dogs and cats were mourning for a moment. I turned and walked away quickly, past Lindsey, past the assorted abandoned dogs and cats and into sunlight so bright white that it hurt my eyes and made them water. I waited for Scott by his jeep. When he came out, he didn’t say anything. He just opened up the car door for me and we drove off down Frederick Douglass Boulevard towards home.

Scott switched the radio on. A presenter was interviewing a filmmaker about a documentary he had directed on the American civil war.

‘We had a civil war in Ireland a long time ago,’ I said to Scott, ‘and Michael Collins got shot dead.’

‘In the head,’ I added.

‘I saw the Liam Neeson film about it,’ Scott replied.

We stayed quiet for a while, but anger seethed through me.

‘How can people do it?’ I said, loudly. ‘How can they be so cruel to hurt and abandon helpless animals like that?’

‘I don’t know, Evie,’ said Scott. ‘But you have to think about the good guys, people like Miriam. She works
tirelessly
day and night for those animals; she tries to do as much as she can and that’s a lot. She lobbied relentlessly for a decade to get that warehouse donated for free and she has a whole army of volunteers who help. They feed the animals, clean them, exercise them, find them foster homes and forever homes too. Wait until you see, when we go back there
next month, Miriam and her helpers will have found forever homes for many of those dogs and cats, maybe even for your ginger dog friend.’

‘Lindsey,’ I said. ‘What will happen to her if they don’t find her a forever home? She won’t get put down, will she?’

‘No. Not at Miriam’s shelter, it’s a no-kill shelter. Eventually, she will find a good home for her. We can ask Miriam about Lindsey the next time we visit. You can bring some of Ben’s extra toys and help out.’

‘Yes, I can do that. I would love to help,’ I said, and then I remembered, ‘but I won’t be here. I’m going back to Ireland soon.’

Scott did not ignore this as he usually does.

‘Really?’ he said, in an exasperated voice.

I felt a lump in my throat.

‘Yes,’ I croaked.

‘Look, Evie, we did ok, didn’t we? I mean, you seem happy. I love you. Joanna loves you. Stay with us. We’re not a traditional family and I’m not saying we’re perfect, but we are a family – you, me, Ben, our patients, their owners.’

I didn’t know what to say, because I realised with as much certainty as I knew my own name that I wanted to stay. But there is no way I wanted to be a big,
money-sucking
leech.

‘I love you too, all of you, but I want to go home to Ireland,’ I whispered.

Scott sighed.

‘Why don’t you just go for a little vacation to see Janet and David and your friends and come back here before you miss too much school,’ he suggested.

He added, ‘Staying here with us does not mean giving up Ireland or being Irish. You can spend your holidays there in the summer.’

‘No!’ I said. ‘You promised I could go back to Ireland at the end of the summer. It’s nearly the end of the summer.’

‘I don’t want to stay here,’ I added forcefully.

I glanced at Scott’s profile. But he can be as good at masking feelings as I am.

‘Yes, I promised. You are as stubborn as your mother. You want to leave, leave. I’ll get your airline ticket tonight.’

‘Thank you,’ I said stiffly in a small voice, but he didn’t reply.

Neither of us said a single word the rest of the way home.

When we got back, Scott rushed off to shower and change because he and Leela were going to some fancy charity ball tonight in midtown.

I was hanging out in the living room, channel surfing, when Leela swept in, wearing a long, sleek, strapless,
red-orange
dress and satin slippers, with glittering jewels in her hair. She looked stunningly beautiful, like a character from
The Arabian Nights
. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of telling her that. I’ve been finding it very difficult even to look at her since I overheard her phone call to Kirsten.

‘How do I look?’ she asked me, twirling around.

‘Fine,’ I said begrudgingly.

She teetered off down the hallway to seek a more satisfactory answer from Scott, who, dressed in his tuxedo, looked very like James Bond.

Chapter 24

T
he man sitting next to an orange and
yellow snake in a crate was reading a comic book when I entered the waiting room. I stopped abruptly. I had no experience with snakes at all so this could be a good opportunity to learn something about them. The snake seemed to be sleeping. I took the seat on other side of the man, not beside the crate.

‘What’s your snake’s name?’ I asked politely.

‘Willie,’ he said, in a Scottish accent.

‘And what’s your name?’

‘Willie,’ he said, a little louder, in a defensive tone.

I noticed that Willie’s hair was almost exactly the same shade of orange as the markings on reptilian Willie.

‘What does he eat?’ I asked.

‘I buy him frozen mice every week.’

Uugh, I thought.

‘He loves them. He’s a corn snake. He doesn’t look it because he’s all curled up, but he is nearly as long as you are.’

‘What’s wrong with your snake?’ interrupted Mr Fannelli from three seats down, where he was waiting for Scott to finish with Spike.

‘Spike got into a gallon of pickles this time, Miss Evie,’ he added.

Willie, the man, said, ‘My snake has a respiratory problem.’

Mr Fannelli looked puzzled.

‘How can you tell if a snake has a respiratory problem?’ he wondered.

‘Because, normally, when he hisses it sounds like this,
sssssss, ssssssss
and now when he hisses, it sounds like this,
SHHHHHHHHH, SHHHHHHHHHH
and he makes little clicking noises and sometimes he coughs.’

On cue, Willie coughed.

Mr Fannelli regarded both Willies silently for a few moments.

Then he said, ‘Well, a lot of people would say only freaks keep pet snakes, but I say if snakes are your hobby, that’s your hobby and that’s fine so long as you don’t let it get out and poison someone or their dog.’

Willie looked like he would probably punch Mr Fannelli if he were not an old man.

‘He’s not a venomous snake,’ he said, through gritted teeth.

Mr Fannelli smiled, oblivious of having caused offence.

Karen called out, ‘Willie, Dr Brooks will see Willie now.’

‘Good luck!’ said Mr Fannelli.

Willie hissed at him, Willie the snake, that is, not Willie the man.

I slipped into the examining room right behind them and took up a position beside the door well behind Scott, but with a good view of the table.

‘He’s got very handsome markings,’ said Scott, and Willie blushed with pride.

Scott opened the lid of the crate and, taking the snake’s head between his thumb and fingers, eased him out onto the table. The snake didn’t seem to mind. I watched the snake as Scott examined him and talked to Willie about his symptoms.

‘Just a minor infection,’ he decided. ‘Raise the temperature in his enclosure and give me a call if you don’t see any signs of improvement in a few days.’

Willie leaned down and kissed Willie on his head. It was very cute in a have-to-be-there-to-believe-it kind of way.

Joanna was off the next day because she had swapped days with Scott. She said that she needed to have Tuesday off to do something. She didn’t tell Scott or me any more than that. But when I mentioned this to Kylie while we hung out in her bedroom, Kylie said that she knew what Joanna was doing.

‘She’s having laser surgery on her eyes, so she will have nearly perfect eyesight and won’t need to wear glasses anymore. My mom is picking her up at the doctor’s office at three o’clock because her eyes will be bandaged and she will be all doped up. She has to go straight to bed and sleep right through until tomorrow morning.’

‘Poor, poor Joanna,’ I said. ‘She should have told us.
Surgery
! And on her eyes! That sounds scary. I hope she’s going to be ok.’

Kylie nodded reassuringly.

‘People do laser surgery all the time. Mom’s sister, my aunt Odile, used to be practically blind without her glasses, and after her laser surgery, she had Superman vision,’ she said.

I still felt worried as I walked home through the Park. Later that afternoon, I helped Scott with a check-up for a Siamese cat whose owner was moving with him to
Singapore
and needed a veterinary export certificate. Just as Scott finished signing the certificate, his cell phone rang. It was Rachel in a state of panic.

‘Whoa!’ said Scott. ‘Calm down and tell me the problem.’

‘I was supposed to pick up Joanna at three. She’s having laser surgery. I’m not supposed to tell anyone. But now I have a huge problem at the gallery and I can’t get away.’

‘No problem,’ said Scott. ‘I’ll get Joanna, just give me the address.’

‘Tell Jo I am so sorry,’ said Rachel, and she called out the doctor’s Park Avenue address.

Scott left Karen and me in charge of the clinic, which was quite a big responsibility.

‘I don’t want you doing any operations without me unless they are necessary,’ he joked with us. ‘Reschedule all the appointments and send any walk-ins to Peter’s clinic on Sixty-Second.’

I wandered aimlessly back and forth between the waiting room and the examining room, hoping very hard that Joanna’s surgery was going ok. A fat man with a red-brown moustache came into the clinic carrying a bowl of tropical fish and asked Karen if he could see the vet.

‘The vets are all out,’ said Karen.

‘Can I help you?’ I asked in a professional tone, wishing that I was at the other side of Karen’s desk, because it was such a tall desk, only my head appeared at the top.

The man did a double take.

‘Who are you? Doogie Howser?’ he asked.

‘Em, no, I don’t know who that is,’ I said. ‘My uncle’s the vet here and I’ve been helping him all summer so maybe I could take a look at your fish, although I haven’t had a lot of experience with fish and even the two goldfish I had, they both died, but I could give it a go.’

The man shrank back, clutching his fish bowl as if I had proposed poisoning his pets.

‘I must have mixed up my meds again,’ he said, more to himself than to me and Karen and, with a flurry of apologies, he backed out the door.

‘We can’t help those who don’t want to be helped,’ said Karen.

About an hour later, I heard footsteps overhead and dashed upstairs to the apartment to see Scott leading Joanna by the hand around the furniture. She wore big goggles over her bandaged eyes.

‘Hi, Joanna, are you ok? Did it hurt?’ I asked, as I took her other hand.

‘Nope, I didn’t feel any pain and with the quantity of painkillers and sleeping pills in my system, I don’t expect to feel anything.’

She giggled a little.

Scott and I walked her into his bedroom. She began to protest. ‘I’m not taking your room, Scott. Really, I will be fine by myself in my own apartment.’

‘And how do you plan on getting there?’ he asked
sarcastically
.

‘Just bring me downstairs and hail me a cab,’ she said.

‘Stop talking, Joanna, or I will get into bed with you myself to make you stay there.’

‘Oh!’ said Joanna, and then, in a small voice, ‘I have a bag with my stuff.’

‘I’ll get it,’ I said, and quickly found it on the kitchen counter and brought it into Scott’s bedroom.

‘I can undress myself,’ Joanna insisted. ‘I want to sleep for a few centuries.’

‘I’ll stay with her until she gets into bed,’ I told Scott.

‘Has he gone?’ asked Joanna.

I nodded and then remembered that she couldn’t see me.

‘Yes,’ I spoke up. ‘You can get undressed now and into your PJs. Let me help you.’

After Joanna was in bed, Scott came in to check on her.

‘Good night. Sleep well!’ he said, ‘and in the morning, you will finally be able to appreciate how good looking I really am.’

‘Go away!’ she said in a very sleepy, but amused voice.

Ben jumped up on the bed and positioned himself comfortably by her feet.

‘Get down, Ben,’ said Scott.

‘No, leave him here,’ said Joanna, feeling around with her arms to find him for a pat.

Scott and I quietly left the room.