by Sheila Agnew
As we strolled back to the clinic, I asked Scott, ‘did you get a new dog when Goldie died?’
‘No’ he said, ‘I missed Goldie so much that I guess I was too much of a coward to get a new pet.’
‘Until you got brave enough to get Ben,’ I pointed out.
‘Not exactly,’ he said.
‘I got Ben in a poker game. Texas hold ’em.’
‘Oh my God. You won Ben in a card game. That is sooo cool,’ I said.
‘Who said anything about winning? The loser had to take Ben.’
‘What?’
‘Ben was the youngest puppy in a litter of nine born to Sidney’s sister’s English cocker spaniel. They found good homes for all the puppies. But Ben’s new owners brought him back, claiming he was untrainable. Now, who could think that?’
Joanna started laughing and Scott did his pretending-to-be-offended face.
‘I still maintain that Sidney and her sister put something in my beers during that poker game,’ he moaned.
It was a very interesting morning.
Chapter 17
I called Kylie this morning to see if she wanted to come with me to my horse-riding lesson and meet Luna, the horse I always ride. My riding instructor assigned Luna to me because she is an Irish draught horse, which she thought would suit me. Kylie said she couldn’t make it.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘Because I have the adopted kids’ club today.’
‘Can orphans join as well?’ I asked.
‘No, I don’t think so. I think you have to be adopted.’
That didn’t feel fair.
‘Maybe I will text Greg to see if he can go,’ I said, thinking out loud.
‘Duh, no he can’t,’ said Kylie. ‘He’ll be with me.’
‘But you just told me that only adopted kids can go,’ I said huffily, wondering if she had invited Greg but not me.
‘Greg is adopted. Didn’t you know that?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘But I’ve met his parents.’
‘You met his adoptive parents,’ said Kylie. ‘Finn and Greg are from Wisconsin. Their dad abandoned them when Greg was a toddler. I think their mom was into alcohol or drugs, or both, and she couldn’t cope, so she gave them up for adoption. They were in a few foster homes. Greg doesn’t remember much. He was only four and a half when the Winters adopted them.’
I felt stunned.
‘They never said anything,’ I protested.
‘Do you go around announcing to people that you are an orphan?’ Kylie asked.
‘No, you know I don’t. Of course not.’
‘So adopted people don’t go around saying, “Hey, guess what? I’m adopted.”’
‘Okay, okay, I get it,’ I said. ‘Have fun today.’
‘You too. Enjoy the horseback riding and don’t fall off.’
‘I won’t,’ I promised, wondering why Americans say ‘horseback’ riding. Where else on a horse could you ride?
I very nearly did fall off when I was doing a posting trot around the indoor arena.
‘Concentrate, Evangeline,’ called out Danielle. ‘You are in dreamland. Luna is in charge of you and it should be the other way around.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
Danielle was right. I had been thinking about how Finn’s and Greg’s dad had abandoned them, just like my dad abandoned me and he hadn’t even met me. But I could never, ever, in a million years imagine my mother giving up on me. She would never have done that. I felt bad for Greg and Finn. I was still thinking about them when Scott drove us home.
‘You’re very quiet today, Evie,’ he said, questioningly. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘I feel sorry for Finn and Greg because their mother gave them up for adoption,’ I answered simply.
‘Don’t feel sorry for them; they wouldn’t like it and they are fine. More than fine. They have parents who love them and they have each other. Find another cause.’
Scott was right. The Wisconsin Winters did not need or want my pity.
‘I did my first jump today,’ I told Scott. ‘At least, I think it could be classified as a jump – the pole was so close to the ground that the jump was over before I could blink.’
‘Starting small is good,’ said Scott. ‘We should order you some riding breeches online. They’ll be more comfortable for you to ride in.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘My jeans are fine and I’m only going to be here a few more weeks anyway.’
‘So you still plan on going back to Ireland?’ said Scott.
I nodded, waiting for him to say something more, but he just turned on the radio and began singing along.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘That is the late, great Johnny Cash.’
‘Who’s he?’ I asked.
‘Who’s he?’ Scott stuttered. ‘We have a lot of work to do on your musical education.’
That evening, Scott dropped me off at Kylie’s place to hang out. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as usual because of another visitor; a thirteen-year old named Camille. When I first saw her, I thought she looked exquisitely pretty and sophisticated with her white-blonde hair tied up in intricate double Dutch braids.
‘Did your mom do your hair?’ I asked.
She laughed in a contemptuous way.
‘As if! I got it done yesterday in the braid bar at the salon on the ninth floor in Bergdorf Goodman. You really should try it.’
I had never heard of Bergdorf Goodman.
‘It’s a high end department store on Fifth Avenue,’ explained Kylie, seeing my mystified look.
Camille looked at me as if only someone who had lived her entire life on the moon would not know Bergdorf Goodman. A couple of hours later, I was wondering how I could possibly have thought Camille was pretty. She has tiny squinty eyes and a mean mouth.
When Camille went to the bathroom, Kylie gave me the lowdown on her. Her mom is American and her dad is French. Her parents are mega rich. Her father works at the same French investment bank as Tamara’s father. Tamara is her cousin.
‘Camille used to go to school at the Lycée Français de New York, but she is transferring to my school this year,’ said Kylie, grimacing.
Soon after Camille came back from the bathroom, Rachel came into Kylie’s bedroom with a tray of glasses of homemade lemonade and stopped to chitchat for a while. Camille kept showing off by speaking in French whenever Kylie or Rachel asked her something and then doing this annoying little shake of her head and saying, ‘Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting, you can’t speak French’. After about the third time she did this, I interrupted her rudely … in French, which gave her a very satisfying shock.
I learned French when Mum and I lived in Paris. Mum was dead proud. I didn’t have a word of French when we arrived, but after a few weeks, I realised that I could often understand what people were saying. By the time Mum’s play ended, I was gabbing away as if I had lived in France my whole life. When we moved to Dublin, Mum gave acting classes to Delphine, an au pair from Marseilles who worked for a family in Foxrock. In exchange, Delphine dropped around to our flat and chatted to me in French for an hour or so every week.
Camille said, ‘Oh, you speak French,’ in a disinterested voice and didn’t ask me any questions about it. But she quit speaking in French. Kylie and I exchanged glances. I could tell she was thrilled that I was able to take Camille down a peg or two. I don’t think I have met anyone as full of herself since Amy McCann, even including Leela.
By the time Camille’s mom came to pick her up, we were heartily fed up with her. Camille’s mom was so thin with such a large head that she looked like an illustration from a Roald Dahl book. It was sickening the way Rachel sucked up to her. To be honest, I lost some of my respect for Rachel and I couldn’t quite make eye contact with her. I excused myself and slipped back into Kylie’s bedroom.
Kylie followed me a few minutes later.
‘Mom does it for me,’ she said quietly.
I felt embarrassed th
at Kylie read my thoughts.
‘She needs Camille’s mom to buy paintings from the gallery so she can pay for my ice-skating lessons and my school fees and violin camp.’
I felt like I was buried up to my neck in an entire dirty garbage load of shame. I knew exactly what Kylie was talking about. I tried to explain it to her.
‘One time, when I was about seven, we were living in London and flat broke, Mum took a crappy job in which she had to dress up in a rooster costume and hang out on Tottenham Court Road, handing out leaflets for a fast food chicken burger chain. One cold, rainy afternoon, a crazy old man with some morbid hatred of chickens walked up to her and spat on her. Mum cried that night, and she hardly ever cried. Well, at least, she hardly ever let me see her cry. She said it was so disgusting and humiliating to be spat on that she wished the guy had beaten her up instead.’
Kylie and I tried to decide which was worse, being beaten up or spat on. We decided it would depend on how badly you got beaten up. We could very easily make up our minds about a choice between freezing to death and being burnt alive. Kylie chose death by fire. I thought that was totally mad. There is nothing I am more afraid of than being roasted alive, so I didn’t even need a second to think about it.
‘But anyway,’ I said to Kylie, ‘the point is that Mum got up the next day and put that stupid costume back on and went back out there because she needed the money to pay for rent and food and clothes for me and all that. If she didn’t have me, she could have just gone to stay with a friend or something.’
‘Does it make you sad to talk about your mom?’ Kylie asked.
‘No. Yes. I don’t know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.’
‘I wish I could have met her,’ Kylie said.
I smiled.
‘I’m sure she would have loved you. She liked people with what she called flair.’
I told Kylie I wanted to be a good friend and share the Camille burden this summer. She responded by enveloping me in a massive hug. There was never much hugging with my friends in Ireland. I don’t know why. It’s just not something we did. When we were very little kids, four and five years old, we used to hold hands when we went on school excursions, but that was it. All this hugging Americans do seemed really weird at first. But I’m getting used to it. I think I kind of like it.
Chapter 18
I am upset. ‘Upset’ doesn’t really cut it. I’m angry and super, super upset. I hate that slithering, sneaky, pig-ugly, thinks-she’s-a-princess Leela. What am I thinking, calling her a pig? Arnold, the potbellied pig, is a thousand times better looking than Leela. But let me back up, all the way to this morning. Indirectly, it was kind of Scott’s fault. He has this very irritating rule that I’m only allowed to use his iPad for an hour every day and I had already used up my hour by noon. That was a major problem because I have almost reached expert level on a new game app, which features a teenage, aboriginal girl who kills drug pushers and other bad guys with a boomerang while roaming the Australian outback. I just seem to have an enviable knack with a cyber boomerang.
Scott and Jake had decided on the spur of the moment to play squash. They had booked the court for only an hour and they were in such a rush that Scott dashed out without his phone. It seemed a perfect opportunity for some necessary extra iPad time, but I decided to take precautions in case he came home early. To avoid possible detection, I hid with the iPad behind the black sofa in the living room. It was quite comfortable on the floor there with my legs stretched out. I had some cushions and a bar of real Cadbury’s chocolate, my favourite, a golden crisp that Janet had sent to me in the post. I muted the sound on the iPad and was concentrating hard when I heard the key turn in the door and the impatient click-clacking sound of high heels on the wooden floorboards.
Peering under the sofa, I glimpsed Leela’s purple patent slingbacks. She called out in an antsy, peevish tone, ‘Scott, are you here?’
Silence.
‘Evangeline? Anyone?’
I briefly thought about answering but rejected the idea. I could get stuck with Leela for half an hour or more. Maybe she would just leave. No such luck. As Leela sat down, the sofa sagged in the middle, squeezing my knees painfully so that I nearly yelped. I heard her punching out a number on her BlackBerry.
She began speaking to her friend, Kirsten, about her usual woes, the pain-in-the-ass clients, the colleague who had bad-mouthed her to the senior partner, the mustard stain on her white blazer that the incompetent dry cleaners had failed to get out. I blocked her out, focusing on my boomerang until the sound of my own name caused me to lift my head.
‘Scott is driving himself into bankruptcy over Evie. First it was horseback riding lessons. That was just the beginning. Now, he is talking about private school.’
Pause.
‘He will probably want to provide her with her own car and driver next,’ she snapped.
I couldn’t hear Kirsten’s response.
‘Yes, she is supposed to go back to Britain, or Ireland, or wherever, in September, but Scott has given her the choice. I tried to get the contact details for the mother’s friend in Ireland from her but she blanked me out. I am TERRIFIED that she is going to stay here. You know, if freckled little orphan Annie hadn’t popped up, Scott and I would definitely be engaged by now.’
‘We never do fun things anymore,’ Leela complained. ‘I can’t remember the last time we ate at a half-way decent restaurant. We never went to the Hamptons once this summer. Scott always feels he has to be with that weird kid.’
Oh, I’m the weird one, I thought bitterly.
Leela continued to rant.
‘It’s all that bohemian, college drop-out, hippy-dippy, scattered sister’s fault, dying and dumping her kid on Scott like that. You will not believe this but, apparently, she didn’t even have a life insurance policy. Scott was her life insurance policy.’
For a few seconds, I just heard her say, ‘Mm, ok, mm’.
Then, she started up again.
‘The stupid, stinky dog and the constant stream of germridden animals was bad enough, but now a kid as well, and soon she’s going to turn into a moody teenager. It’s intolerable! Can you imagine having a teenage waif hanging around all the time, staring at me with that freaky stare she has?’
My mouth dropped open. I don’t have a ‘freaky stare’. I heard a mumbled voice from the other end of the phone.
Leela broke in, ‘I can’t believe I ended up in a relationship with a practically penniless vet, while someone like Joanna Barrett, who can barely walk in flat shoes without falling, lands a wealthy hedge fund guy. It doesn’t make sense.’
Again, there was a pause.
‘Yes,’ Leela conceded, ‘Scott is super hot. And, if he listened to me, with those looks, his charm, and his people skills, he could have it totally made. You remember that guy Donald, the one I represented in defending the paternity and child support case? The mother was so desperate I was able to settle it for almost nothing. Anyway, Donald is a producer at a new local cable channel and he is putting together a TV show about a veterinary surgeon based in Manhattan. Carefully selected hotties will bring in their pets to the studio for his advice. It’s bound to be a hit. You can barely walk half a block in this city without tripping over ten little hairy puffballs. Manhattan is teeming with animal lovers. And if the show is a hit, which it will be, then it will be syndicated nationally. Ker-ching.’
More silence.
My breathing seemed so loud. I clamped my hand over my mouth, but that seemed to make it worse as I struggled for air between my fingers.
But Leela didn’t notice.
‘Of course, I have suggested to Scott that he should audition for the show,’ she wailed. ‘I have been trying to get him interested for a month now, but he just won’t bite. It is sooooo frustrating.’
More mumbling.
‘Yes,’ said Leela, thoughtfully, ‘Scott does have a keen appreciation for the finer things in life. I think his reluctance is really because of th
e little leprechaun. I have to make sure she definitely returns to Leprechaun Land in September. Then, I am certain I could persuade Scott to do the show and we will be engaged by New Year’s Eve, maybe even on New Year’s Eve, which would be a nice touch. I want to have the wedding next May, it’s such a chic month to get married.’
I don’t know what Kirsten said in reply, but Leela cackled and said, ‘I’m hardly the wicked stepmom. The kid will be better off back there. She doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong with Scott. I’m really doing Scott a favour. He’ll be secretly relieved when his financial headache is gone and his conscience will be clear and he won’t have to work thousands of hours in the basement anymore.’
Oh no, I thought as I heard the familiar, soft, flip-flop patter of Ben’s snowshoe-like paws as he entered the living room. He paused right beside Leela and I saw his head duck down under the sofa. His large brown eyes met mine and he sniffed.
‘Oh no, please!’ I whispered. ‘Please Ben, not now, don’t give me away.’
I felt frantic. Ben doesn’t even understand the command ‘sit’. He’s never going to get this.
But, to my astonishment, he didn’t start barking. His head withdrew from under the sofa. A couple of minutes later, as Leela talked about her prospective bridesmaids, I got a waft of noxious, rotten egg fumes mixed with kitty litter smell. Ben had let loose one of his silent, most deadly brand of farts – The Mother of All Farts. The smell reached Leela’s nostrils a few seconds later.
‘Ewwww!’ I heard her exclaim. ‘It’s that gross, disgusting dog again. I have to get out of here. I have an appearance in Family Court downtown this afternoon. Talk later, sweetie.’
A few seconds later, the door slammed. I let out my breath in one big gasp and crawled out into the open, iPad forgotten. First things first – an enormous hug and some Scooby treats for Ben. Then, I had to think. I felt like throwing up. I felt like punching Leela in her silly face. No, I felt like decapitating her with a boomerang.