by Sheila Agnew
‘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
The 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.
&
nbsp; 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.
Chapter 25
I looked up from my Friday morning pancakes at the diner to see what had caught Scott’s attention outside. It was Joanna passing the window on the way to join us for breakfast. A minute later, she slipped into the booth beside me, said ‘good morning!’ without making eye contact, and buried herself in her menu. It was obvious why Scott had been staring. Joanna was dressed in a flirty, wispy, pale yellow summer dress with spaghetti straps.
‘What induced you to come out of regulation black?’ Scott asked. ‘We’ve just got used to seeing you without glasses.’
Joanna looked uncomfortable. She lowered her menu, raised her chin and sat up straighter insofar as you can sit up straight on the sagging, stained-red cushion covering on the booth bench.
‘I’m thirty-three. I have not worn anything but black in nearly fifteen years. I thought maybe it was time for a change.’
‘I like it,’ said Scott. ‘Colour suits you.’
‘You look fantastic,’ I added.
It was a slow morning at the clinic. Janet telephoned at lunchtime to find out what date I was heading back to Dublin.
‘I’ll check,’ I told her.
I hung around Scott all afternoon, waiting for, and dreading, the right opportunity. Finally, he got exasperated when he bumped into me because I was standing so close behind him.
‘That’s the third time I’ve nearly stood on your feet. What’s up, Evie? What are you doing following me around?’
I thought best just to come right out with it.
‘Janet wants to know when I am going back to Ireland.’
‘I bought your ticket,’ he said.
‘You did?’
‘Yes, it’s for September third,’ he said, curtly.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome. Could you go see if we have more Frontline on the second shelf in the waiting room, that’s the tick worm medication.’
‘Ok.’
We didn’t discuss my flight again. I sent a text to Kylie and Greg, explaining that I was leaving on September third, which left us just over a week to implement a plan to get rid of Leela.
As I was waiting for a response, I noticed an unpleasant, strong, musty urine smell in the waiting room and I looked around. A man with a little boy and a small, brown and white animal that looked a bit like a monkey wearing dark sunglasses, looked at me apologetically.
‘What is that?’ I asked.
‘A meerkat,’ the man said, ‘very smelly when they go to the bathroom.’
Scott came into the waiting room and shook hands with the man.
‘Hi Rob, how are you doing?’
‘How about those Mets?’ Rob answered and they launched into a baseball conversation.
I sat down beside the cute, curly haired little boy.
‘What’s
your name?’ I asked.
‘Harry,’ he said. ‘My teacher says I am “Handsome Harry”. I have a brother, Toby, but he is called “Tobes”. He can’t talk. He’s just a baby.’
‘How old are you?’
He held up four fingers.
‘What’s your meerkat called?’
‘Spiderman,’ he answered.
His dad turned and looked at him.
‘Harry, you know his name is Zak.’ He explained to Scott, ‘he’s going through a real Spiderman stage. It’s been going on for over a year now. My wife and I get down on our knees every night and pray he will switch to Batman, just for a change.’
‘Who is our President?’ Scott asked Harry.
‘Spiderman,’ he said, confidently.
‘See what I mean,’ said his dad.
When Scott lifted Zak out of his cage, I noticed he had only four toes on each foot, or would you call it a paw? I’m not sure.
‘Where do meerkats come from?’ I asked.
‘The Kalahari Desert in Africa,’ Rob answered.
Scott sat Zak on the scales.
‘One and a half pounds,’ he noted, writing it into his chart. Rob showed Scott photographs of the large, special enclosure he and his brother-in-law had built in his big backyard in Long Island for Zak.
‘What made you buy a meerkat?’ I wondered.
‘Harry drove me and his mom crazy after he saw the Lion King movie. There’s a meerkat character in the movie called Timon. I suppose we’re lucky he didn’t want a Simba.’
Scott sighed.
‘The Lion King producers have a lot to answer for. I’ve had so many Manhattan parents buying meerkats and trying to keep them in their pokey little apartments. Then, of course, they want to dump them when they realise meerkats are completely unsuited for apartment living.’
‘Zak loves digging,’ Harry announced, ‘and he likes lying around all day sunbathing like Mommy.’
Rob and Scott laughed.
‘I wouldn’t let your mom hear you say that, buddy,’ said Rob.