by Sheila Agnew
Chapter 19
I sat on the bottom branch of the perfect hanging-out tree, between Kylie and Greg. Kylie delicately licked an Emack & Bolio’s Swiss chocolate and mint ice-cream cone. Greg obsessively scratched a swollen mosquito bite on his left ankle. I had already told them the gist of Leela’s evil scheme to turn Scott into a puppet vet on TV and then marry him, but I left out everything she had said about Mum and me.
‘Leela de Vil MUST be stopped!’ Kylie announced melodramatically.
‘How do you always manage to eat ice cream without it dripping?’ Greg asked. ‘It’s like an exception to some laws of physics or something.’
‘Could we please focus?’ I said impatiently. ‘Hang on! How do you manage to eat ice cream without it dripping?’
‘I was born this way,’ said Kylie complacently.
‘Ok. Back to Leela. I can’t believe Scott cares enough about her to get tangled in her nasty little web. His practice means everything to him. He’s not going to abandon it and Joanna to go play at being the hot version of Cesar Millan on TV.’
‘I think Cesar Millan is cute,’ said Kylie.
I sighed in frustration.
Kylie finished her waffle cone without any crumbs or broken pieces falling on her. Straightening imaginary creases from the skirt of her floral print sundress, she said, in a wise sounding voice, ‘Scott’s a guy so he’s capable of doing very dumb things.’
‘Sorry. Nothing personal, Greg,’ she added.
‘And before you know it, Scott and Leela are married with a baby on the way,’ she continued darkly.
‘The thought of a mini-Leela is too horrible to consider,’ I said.
‘The baby would have Scott’s genes too,’ Greg pointed out reasonably, transferring his attention to the mosquito bites on his arms.
‘Is this what you guys meant when you talked about helping me?’ I asked, ‘because I’m not finding it super duper helpful.’
Greg laughed and Kylie put her arm around me.
‘Like I said, Leela has to be stopped.’
‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘But how? We need a plan.’
‘Why don’t you just tell Dr Brooks everything you heard Leela say?’ asked Greg.
Kylie immediately shook her head.
‘Leela’s a divorce attorney so she is an expert at twisting the facts. She’ll say how terrible she feels that Evie misunderstood her, yada yada. And she is the grownup. Scott will believe her and Evie is the one that will look bad for hiding behind the couch.’
‘I wasn’t exactly hiding behind the sofa!’ I exclaimed, indignantly. ‘I was minding my own business. Leela had no business being there. She doesn’t even live there.’
‘What about talking to Dr Barrett?’ asked Greg.
‘I’d like to tell Joanna,’ I admitted, ‘but that would mean putting her in the middle between Leela and Scott, and that doesn’t feel right.’
We sat without speaking for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the Little League players drifting on the breeze from the Great Lawn. A tall man wearing a camel overcoat despite the intense heat walked past us and then stopped and turned around.
‘Do you kids know where Strawberry Fields is? I think I’ve been walking around in circles.’
Another John Lennon fan. Kylie jumped up and gave him careful, precise directions.
‘By the way, there are no strawberry bushes there,’ she added, ‘just so you are not disappointed.’
He thanked her and went on his way.
‘We need a plan!’ I repeated.
‘A play,’ said Greg.
I stared at him.
‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘a plot, a cast of characters and a theme.’
‘Let’s go to my mom’s place to brainstorm,’ said Greg. ‘She has this play script software we can use. It’s fantastic! If you get stuck when you’re writing, you just hit a prompt key and it comes up with all kinds of possible turns the plot could take.’
I felt excited and the beginnings of something suspiciously like hope.
‘Sidney,’ I said, triumphantly.
‘Who is Sidney?’ asked Greg.
‘She’s Jake’s wife. She produces special effects for films. They live in Brooklyn and they have a very cute baby, Katie, who looks Korean, like Sidney. We went to brunch with them last Sunday and it was so obvious that Sidney and Leela hate each other and I heard Sidney tell Joanna that Scott only goes out with Leela because he is scared of love.’
‘That’s romantic,’ sighed Kylie.
‘I don’t get girls sometimes,’ said Greg. ‘That doesn’t sound romantic at all.’
‘The point is,’ I said, ‘I’m sure Sidney would be thrilled to help me rescue Scott.’
‘Help us,’ said Kylie and Greg together.
I was touched.
‘Thanks, guys.’
Chapter 20
The heat was intense in the city this evening, but I was utterly fed-up of being stuck inside in the air conditioning. I wandered over to the Park, hoping for a breeze. Ben put his head out the door with me but, recoiling from the heat, he sensibly changed his mind and returned indoors. Set among the small plot of pine trees north of the Delacorte Theatre are two sets of swings, one for toddlers and the other for bigger kids. I sat on a swing, tucked my skirt between my knees and pushed off. Higher and higher, I climbed. I leaned back into the air, my hair sweeping against the dusty, sandy ground.
‘Hi, Evie,’ said a familiar voice.
I instantly stuck out my feet to slow myself down and bring the swing to a stop.
Finn leaned his hockey stick up against the pole and sat on the swing next to mine. I wondered desperately if, despite the tucked-in skirt, my knickers had been showing. If they were plain white, it would not be a complete crisis, but I had a horrible feeling that they were the pair with the teddy bears holding birthday candles.
There was no possible way I could have a quick peep to check.
A hardback library book stuck out of Finn’s backpack.
‘What’s it about?’ I asked, indicating the book and trying to forget about my knickers.
‘It’s the biography of a professional ice-hockey player from Vancouver.’
‘Good?’ I asked.
‘Nope, the dude is a little smug.’
Into my mind floated questions I wanted to ask Finn, but I never seemed to have the right opportunity. I plunged in.
‘I was wondering if you were mad when you ran away… and when that person called the police?
‘Nooooo …’ he said slowly. ‘I wasn’t mad.’
I felt astounded.
‘But he turned you in and ruined everything. Maybe you would still be in Wisconsin if that nosey guy had minded his own business.’
Finn picked up his hockey stick and fiddled with it.
Without looking at me, he said, ‘Evie, I was “the nosey guy”, as you call it.’
‘What?’ I said, ‘I don’t get it.’
‘I was the nosey guy,’ he repeated. ‘I was the anonymous caller who tipped off the police. I told them there was an underage kid working at the gas station who looked like a runaway and they should check it out.’
‘But why?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘Because I wanted to be found. I wanted to come back to New York. I hadn’t planned on running away forever. I picked Wisconsin because I kept in touch with one of my foster brothers who I thought might be able to help us. Also, I figured since we came from there, it would be the first place they’d look. But adults can be so dumb sometimes. They kept the search for us focused on the tri-state area.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Finn continued, ‘It wasn’t my dream to spend my life pumping gas and eating ninety-nine cents tacos. I just wanted to try to shake up our parents, to make them realise that they were being played by the lawyers, that they should dump the whole stupid divorce litigation.’
‘And it worked,’ I said.
‘Yeah, eventually.’<
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‘Look around you, Evie,’ he said, waving in the direction of the Time Warner Building to the south.
‘This is NEW YORK CITY!’ he said in a radio presenter’s voice.
Then he switched back to his normal voice. ‘I would rather be a panhandler on the streets in New York than a king anywhere else. Well, unless I was on a professional hockey team. For that, I would go anywhere.’
I thought about what he said, idly tracing in the dusty sand with my left foot.
‘There’s a small fishing town, not much more than a village,’ I said, a little shyly, ‘where my godmother Janet’s parents live. It’s called An Daingean, that’s “Dingle” in English, and it’s right on the most western tip of Ireland and it’s the most beautiful place on the planet. I spent most of my summers there. You can stand on the cliffs jutting out over the Atlantic and feel the spray from the waves crashing against the cliffs and you can feel the wind. The wind is different there and it doesn’t matter whether you are a panhandler or a king or a queen or a sports star, you can just be.’
‘Profound,’ said Finn. ‘You think a lot,’ and then he added teasingly, ‘I bet they don’t have an ice-hockey team, The Dingle Icebreakers!’
‘No ice hockey,’ I admitted.
Suddenly, he jumped off his swing so swiftly that it flew into the air with a clanking sound. He stood directly in front of me, his fists clenched. I couldn’t understand his sudden anger.
‘I haven’t told anyone that I ratted myself out’, he said fiercely, looking me straight in the eye. You’d better not tell anyone, not Greg, not Dr Brooks, nobody.’
‘No, of course I won’t,’ I said indignantly. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist.’
‘What? Oh, knickers are underwear right?’
I nodded.
‘Ok,’ he said, visibly relaxing. ‘I don’t know why I even told you about the call.’
‘I don’t know why you told me either,’ I said honestly and he laughed.
‘Come on, Irish fishing village girl,’ he said, not in a mean way. ‘I’ll walk you home; I’m heading that way.’
Chapter 21
Chaos reigned in the clinic on Saturday morning. First, Karen called in sick, claiming she needed to go to the dentist due to severe pain in her wisdom teeth. Scott was sceptical. Karen had thrown a big, basketball-themed thirtieth birthday party the evening before for Jerry, her firefighter boyfriend from Staten Island. Scott had been on call, but Joanna had gone along.
‘How was the party?’ I asked her curiously.
Joanna shrugged in a non-committal way.
I persisted.
‘But what was it like? What does a basketball theme really mean? What kind of food did Karen have?’
Joanna took off her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes.
‘Buckets of chicken wings with blue cheese dip. Nearly everyone wore Knicks jerseys, and Knicks games played constantly on two enormous flat screen televisions and there were balloons and a blow-up, life-sized Jeremy Lin doll.’
‘He’s a player,’ she added.
I nodded.
‘I know. Greg and Kylie love him.’
Joanna groaned, ‘I haven’t seen so many kegs of beer since I was in college.’
She began to grind some white medical powder viciously with a pestle and mortar.
‘Did Stefan enjoy the party?’ I wondered.
The pestle stilled.
‘Funny you should ask that. No, he didn’t. He wanted to leave after about fifteen minutes.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because he didn’t want to get his hands dirty mixing with the rednecks,’ volunteered Scott, who had apparently been listening in.
Joanna’s face flushed an angry red colour, a shade darker than her hair. She opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it again, satisfied herself with throwing Scott a dirty look, and began to grind the cat medicine even more aggressively, as if Scott’s head was in the bowl.
Scott didn’t apologise. He very rarely does. He ran his hand quickly through his hair.
‘Evie, will you step up to the plate and be our receptionist today?’
I’m starting to understand the baseball metaphors they use here all the time.
‘Sure,’ I responded and headed out to the reception desk.
Four hours later, the backlog of dogs, cats, two guinea pigs, a ferret and a cockatoo had passed in to the examining room and out again. Just as I was considering a lunch run, the door opened and in stepped a woman, about forty-five years old, with dyed cotton candy pink hair, carrying a tiny monkey dressed in a red and white gingham dress and wearing a doll-sized, peroxide blonde wig.
The woman did not seem perturbed to find a child behind the desk. I liked her for that straight away.
‘Hi. I am Lorraine Horrocks and this is my monkey, Marilyn. She has completely gone off her food, the poor little angel. She just sits around the apartment, making little moaning sounds.’
On cue, Marilyn emitted a pitiful moaning sound. I reached out and stroked her tiny, soft, furry head.
‘You can go right through. Dr Brooks will see her straight away.’
‘Thank you,’ she said and she put Marilyn on the floor. Marilyn had a pink leash attached to a crystal-encrusted collar. Lorraine tugged on the leash and Marilyn scampered after her through the doors. I quickly placed a bell on the counter with a note saying, ‘Please ring for attention’ and followed Marilyn. I couldn’t miss this.
Scott was weighing Marilyn when I walked in.
‘Three pounds,’ he announced and took the opportunity to give me a brief lesson.
‘Marilyn is a capuchin monkey. They come from South America. They typically live in groups of between ten to thirty and spend most of their days hanging out, surfing trees and looking for food. They are highly intelligent.’
‘I got Marilyn a toy piano and I’m teaching her to play “Happy Birthday”,’ interjected Lorraine proudly, gazing fondly at Marilyn as if she were her little girl.
Scott glanced at me. I knew what he was thinking. He is vehemently opposed to humans owning wild animals as pets and treating them like children. But he smiled at Lorraine in a compassionate way and I could tell he wasn’t about to give her a lecture.
‘What are you feeding her?’ he asked.
‘Jars of baby food,’ replied Lorraine, ‘but she hasn’t touched a bite in twenty-four hours.’
‘Is she going to be alright?’ she asked, anxiously.
‘Let’s take a look at her,’ said Scott, carrying Marilyn from the scales to the examining table. Marilyn put her tiny left hand around his neck. I leaned in to get a better look and she reached out and grasped my little finger and looked up at me with her little brown pinkish eyes.
‘Conjunctivitis,’ announced Scott.
‘Oh, that doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Lorraine.
‘I think it might be a sign of a more serious underlying problem,’ answered Scott gently. ‘I think she might have measles.’
‘But she’s been vaccinated against measles,’ protested Lorraine.
‘Unfortunately, vaccination does not always work,’ replied Scott.
The bell from the waiting room rang so I peeled Marilyn’s tiny fingers away and ran to see who was waiting.
I was surprised to find Tamara, Finn’s girlfriend, carrying an adorable golden puppy in her arms. Finn stood behind her.
‘Hi Evie,’ she said and she smiled her beautiful smile at me.
I would love to say that it was a fake smile, but that would be untrue. Her blonde hair was tied in a fishtail braid. She wore high-waisted, neon blue shorts with a frilly, white, cami top. Blue eyeliner made her eyes seem even bluer and she wore pink lipstick that perfectly matched the mini handbag swinging off her shoulder. I don’t wear makeup yet. Mum said that I should wait until I am fourteen. I felt grubby and dull and babyish.
‘How’s Sam?’ asked Finn and it felt like we had never had that encounter on the swings.
; ‘Sam’s doing great,’ I said. ‘His leg is healing perfectly and it should be good as new by the end of the summer.’
‘This is Patrick,’ said Tamara, ‘a Goldendoodle puppy that Finn got me from an animal shelter for my birthday.’
‘The people at the shelter think that he is about seven months old,’ said Finn.
‘What kind of dog is a Goldendoodle?’ I asked.
‘A mix between a poodle and a golden retriever,’ answered Tamara. ‘Isn’t he the sweetest, cutest puppy you have ever seen?’
I looked at his tiny, pale gold curls and his sweet face.
‘Yes,’ I replied, although I know from photographs that Ben was even cuter than that as a puppy.
‘What kind of symptoms is he experiencing?’ I asked, adopting a professional tone.
‘Oh, none, he seems very healthy, but the shelter people recommended that we take him to get a check-up by a local vet and Finn told me your uncle is a great vet, worth the trip over to the west side.’
‘Right now he’s looking at a monkey that might have measles’, I said, ‘but if you guys want to sit down, he should be finished very soon.’
Tamara flashed her beautiful white teeth again and sat down.
Finn lingered by the desk.
‘Greg told me you’re going back to Ireland next month.’
I nodded. I hoped that maybe he would say something nice like he would miss me, but he didn’t.
Marilyn came scampering through the door with her leash trailing behind her and began to run in circles around the table with the magazines, occasionally making detours to send cans of dog food flying off the nearby shelves.
‘That monkey doesn’t seem too sick,’ said Finn, and he scooped her up as she passed by on her fourth lap and handed her to Lorraine, who was uselessly chasing her around the table and panting for breath.
‘The little monkey is so sweet,’ said Tamara.
‘In that Marilyn Monroe get-up, she seems more like the Bride of Chucky than sweet,’ Finn said to me in a low voice, so Lorraine would not hear him.
‘Dr Brooks can see Patrick now,’ I said.
Tamara stood up.