We Were the Mulvaneys (57 page)

In one of the examining rooms was Dr. West, Whittaker West as he introduced himself, an impatient-looking man of moderate height, just slightly stoop-shouldered, in a soiled white jacket and khaki trousers. He hardly glanced at Marianne and surely hadn't heard her name as in the first instant his practiced eyes moved upon poor skinny Muffin—examined, assessed, made a judgment. “Your cat is seriously ill, I'm afraid. How old is he?”

“How old? I—don't know,” Marianne stammered.

The vet muttered a skeptical reply. Brusquely he removed Muffin from Marianne's arms and set him upon the examination table, peered into his ears, his eyes, his mouth with a small lighted instrument; examined his teeth; palpated his abdomen, at some length. As he examined Muffin he spoke to him, not in words but in murmurs,
Hmmm? hmmm? hmmm? hmmm?
Marianne spoke of Muffin's gradual loss of appetite and his loss of weight, his recent, strange behavior in the woods—“He's never done anything like that before, he isn't an outdoor cat.” Dr. West grunted as if he'd heard it all before, or wasn't listening. Marianne saw with disapproval that he hadn't even troubled to put on rubber gloves, like any other vet; his fingers were covered in nicks and scratches, splashed with iodine. His nails were wide and blunt and edged with dirt. His hair, thinning at the crown, was thick, lank, rather greasy at the sides of his head, that dull dun color of a deer's winter coat. Marianne said, trying to be helpful, “I think he's somewhere beyond twelve years old. His fur is so clean and healthy, isn't it? So soft.” She spoke pleadingly. Dr. West did not respond. “It's hard to believe he's sick, except for losing weight. His eyes are clear. He still purrs.” “His eyes are possibly turning yellow,” the vet said almost carelessly. “Jaundice.” “Oh, no—they've always been golden-tawny. All his life.” Again Dr. West muttered a skeptical, not quite audible reply. Marianne seemed to hear
Be realistic. Realistic!

Through a haze of tears Marianne saw that the examination was over, unless it had been halted midway. The vet continued to stroke Muffin, with deft, practiced fingers, and Muffin, who for all his docility and shyness had sometimes panicked at the hands of other vets, lay unmoving, splay-legged, on the crinkly tissue paper covering the tabletop. Marianne too reached out to touch him—his bony head, the soft fur covering it. She wished that Muffin would glance up at her, in recognition of her, or simple acknowledgment; but he did not. Why, he seemed almost to be siding with this stranger, Whittaker West! There was some perverse stubborn maleness to it, a subtle repudiation of her. Marianne asked what seemed to be wrong with Muffin, and Dr. West said, shrugging, “He's old. Happens to us all.” Marianne said, with childlike tenacity, “But what, exactly? It has to be something!” Dr. West said, “I can do a blood test, a urinalysis, but it's almost certain your cat is suffering from kidney failure. His bloodstream is slowly filling up with toxins. It's been happening for months.” “Oh, but isn't there anything you can do?” Marianne asked. “Nothing
I
can do, at Stump Creek Hill,” Dr. West said. Marianne said quickly, “Somewhere else, then? Could he be helped somewhere else?” For the first time, Dr. West looked at Marianne. She could not meet his frank, searching gaze; she was blinking tears from her eyes, frightened she might break down. How ashamed she was of herself, begging for Muffin's life as she would never have begged for her own. How Corinne would wring her hands if she knew, scolding
Be realistic, Marianne. Haven't I told you and told you!
Whittaker West, this stranger so familiarly kneading Muffin's fur, stroking his ears and the underside of his chin as if they were old, old friends, was looking at her sternly, saying, “An animal knows when its time has come. That's why—is it Muffin?—has been slipping away into the woods. He prefers a quiet, dark, private place in which to die. Wouldn't you?
I
would. Of course he loves you, but the part of him that loves you, or even knows you, is fading. His cat-self, his instinct is emerging. Why not let him follow his instinct? You can't be bringing him back forever, can you?” Marianne stammered, ashamed of her desperation, but persisting, “Oh, forever is such a long time. Isn't there some way Muffin can be helped, for just now?” “At the most, he probably wouldn't live for more than another six months,” Dr. West said reluctantly. “And it's expensive.” “I have money saved,” Marianne said eagerly. She knew she didn't look exactly prosperous, in her rumpled T-shirt and denim cut-offs and sandals, summer wear for working at the farm market, but she'd brought along her wallet, thick with bills; her hands shook as she fumbled for it. “I could pay you ahead of time, Doctor. Oh, don't let him die!” “
I
can't do the procedure here, we don't have the facilities. There's a clinic in Pittsburgh that might do it—a kind of dialysis. Blood-cleansing,” Dr. West said. And Marianne said, her eyes shining with hope, “How soon can it be done, Dr. West? Today?”

There was a moment's silence. Marianne distinctly heard the vet grinding his teeth.

Finally he said, with a sigh, curtly, “You're in luck, miss. I happen to be driving to Pittsburgh later this morning with a van of ailing animals and I can take Muffin along. The procedure will involve not less than forty-eight hours and it isn't guaranteed, understand? You should be prepared for never seeing your cat alive again.”

Marianne tried a smile, wavering and uncertain. “Oh, I'm prepared,” she said brightly.

That lilting insincere brightness on the edge of despair: how like Corinne Mulvaney she was sounding!

So she said good-bye to Muffin, who scarcely responded, and hurried out. Thinking then that she should have left a deposit, a down payment, how would Dr. West know he could trust her?

 

In a daze then, vaguely smiling, Marianne wandered back through the parking lot, hoping for another glimpse of the peacock and his hen, and the herd of deer. There were chattering guinea hens and a high-stepping bantam rooster running loose, there was a scrawny black tomcat with two half-ears sunning himself on the hood of a battered Chevy pickup. Marianne petted him, daringly—you never can tell, with a strange cat—but he merely blinked at her, lazy and content. It was a heating-up sort of August morning, the kind that begins damp and almost cool and turns baking by noon. A happy, hopeful day. No ticket seller at the
ENTRANCE
gate, just an orange plastic container
STUMP CREEK HILL ANIMALS NEED ALL YOU CAN GIVE THEM
! so Marianne took a five-dollar bill from her wallet (yes, she'd saved plenty of money working as Penelope Hagström's assistant) and pushed it into the slot. The pungent smell of animals drew her. Manure and hay, that just-slightly-rancid-pleasurable smell. A sharper smell—what was it? the antiseptic spray they'd used, at the farm, when the cows calved?—but this was sweeter somehow. And someone had been mowing deep grass, a wet green pungent smell, laced with wild onion.

How much larger the Stump Creek Hill shelter was than Marianne had anticipated!—it must have covered acres. Visitors were starting to arrive, mothers with young children, retired-looking older couples. Not a very prosperous zoo, sort of shabby and blurred at the edges. Weeds poked through the sand paths, there were tall oaks badly in need of trimming. Droppings underfoot from the stray wandering tame deer, buzzing with flies. Marianne read a sun-faded poster:
Stump Creek Hill is the only federally and state-licensed zoo in the United States dedicated to the care of sick, injured, abandoned and elderly wildlife and domestic animals. Founded 1974 by Whittaker West. YOUR DONATIONS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
Marianne wandered from one animal compound to another, enthralled. She had never been in such a place before, nor had even heard of such a place. Her parents had taken them to zoos in Port Oriskany and Rochester, but those were very different—somehow so sad, you ended up wanting to leave early. But the Stump Creek Hill zoo was like home.

Each of the animals had not only a name but a story. There was King Sheba the mountain lion, mistreated as a cub in a Florida safari zoo and “retired” now to Stump Creek Hill—a huge-headed sand-colored cat with sleepy eyes, an enormous nose, matted mane. There were Masha, Irina and Olga, capuchin monkeys “abandoned by the roadside” in North Carolina, crowding against the wire fence, peering at Marianne as if they recognized her. There was Hickory the blind mule pony from New Jersey. There was Big Ben the Bengal tiger “rescued” from a traveling circus in New Mexico, there was Rocky the silver fox, three-legged since “misfortune in a hunter's trap” in Maine, there was Lena the llama, “donated” by a circus owner when he discovered she had cataracts in both eyes—a shy creature, handsome, the size of a mature deer, with white facial markings and the thick, nappy fur of a well-worn teddy bear. There was Joker the rhesus monkey, “sole survivor” of a shut-down research institute in New Mexico. There was Big Girl the Vietnamese potbellied pig who'd “outgrown her owner's affections” and was donated to the zoo, an enormous gray creature, no eyes that Marianne could see, creased like a satchel and stretched out luxuriantly in the shade. There was Princess the jaguar, a beautiful black-spotted big cat discovered “abandoned and starved” by a roadside in Minnesota. There was Sweetheart the Adirondacks bobcat missing a leg, there was Hickey the hyena, another mistreated former zoo resident, there were Cinderella and Svengali the “Thoroughbred ex-trotters from Saratoga Springs.” There were donkeys, sheep, goats in barnyard pens and free-ranging fowl of all sorts—chickens, ducks, geese. Shyly tame, there were loose deer. The zoo's main attraction, apart from the big cats and the playful chattering monkeys, were Delilah and Samson the African elephants who had been slated for “termination” by their Oregon zoo owner unless a new home could be found for them, fast—“As devoted a married pair as you'll ever meet, and just look at the size of those feet!” Marianne laughed—she wondered if Whittaker West had written that. She wondered if the entire zoo was his—his idea, his scheme.

All that day, and it was a hot, dry, baking August day, Marianne wandered about the zoo. She helped staff workers scatter seed for the fowl; she helped a harassed young woman, name tag
TRUDI
, hose down the elephants and pigs. She'd forgotten to eat that morning, so made a meal, salty and delicious, of peanuts and popcorn from the vending machines marked
BUY HERE TO FEED ANIMALS
! washed down with a lukewarm Royal Crown soda. More visitors came, more children. The zoo was a popular place, it seemed. Marianne sat for a while on a rickety bench in the shade of a big oak, watching Ezra, Smoke, ChaCha and Fleur the black bears being fed by their attendants—bare-chested teenaged boys who reminded her so much of her brothers, years ago, she had to shut her eyes finally. Moved to another rickety bench to watch Bo, Peep, Louie and LaLa, wild Barbary sheep in their compound, until she dozed off. Midafternoon, late afternoon. Sun-dappled shade. She had nowhere to go. She had found her way here, and had nowhere to go. But no—of course she did—she'd forgotten the little whitewashed wood-frame cabin in the Wayside Motor Court in—where was it? Not Spartansburg, she'd left Spartansburg weeks ago. The name would come to her in a minute, not that she needed a name to find her way back. Not that it mattered where she was exactly since she'd be moving on soon. When Muffin was returned to her she would know more clearly what her plans might be.

She thought of this strange zoo, this haven for animals. The abandoned, the mistreated, the sick, the injured. “Survivors.” What would Patrick think? It's ridiculous to be sentimental about animals, he'd said. The individual doesn't exist, only the species. And maybe not even the species, for long—every day, every hour, species are becoming extinct. Many of these species, animal, bird, reptile, amphibian, never known to Homo sapiens, at all.

Religion is a comforting fantasy, Patrick said. Christianity above all. Just another story people tell themselves so they're spared telling themselves the story they don't want to hear.

Marianne felt something nudge her elbow—“Oh, who are you? Are you hungry?” It was one of the tame deer. A young velvety-horned buck the size of a children's pony. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with the deer—it wasn't missing a leg, and didn't seem to be blind. Marianne laughed in delight, feeding it the remainder of her popcorn, which it ate quickly out of the palm of her hand. That damp ticklish sensation, so familiar.

Dr. West who'd seemed so impatient with her, begging for an aged cat's life, had told her to telephone next morning to hear how things had gone in Pittsburgh. Marianne fully intended to leave Stump Creek Hill and return to her dreary little rented cabin, and in the morning make that call, but somehow there she was lingering in the zoo; feeding more popcorn to the velvety-horned buck and a half dozen of his friends. Then she was feeding a bevy of long-necked white geese in a farther corner of the enclosure as an announcement came over a loudspeaker that the zoo was closing in five minutes. Then she was in a women's rest room not exactly hiding but hardly in view, either. Only at dusk did she emerge, feeling an immense sense of peace, tranquility. No Homo sapiens here now, except for her! She made a nighttime meal of more peanuts, popcorn, soda from the vending machines, climbed from a bench to the crotch of an oak tree and from the crotch of the tree to the roof of a shed behind Cinderella's and Svengali's compound where, very early the next morning, she was discovered just waking from a dazed, stuporous sleep—by Whittaker West himself, who stared at her in utter amazement. “Miss Mulvaney, what on earth are you doing
here
?”