Marooned in Manhattan

by Sheila Agnew

  ‘Did Leela mention me or anything about this morning?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Scott. ‘What about this morning?’

  Now was the time to present the tape from the mini-recorder to Scott, but I hesitated. I didn’t need it anymore.

  I should give it to him anyway, I thought. I mean, I did go to quite a lot of trouble to get it.

  Know when to use your words, I thought.

  Know when words are not necessary, another voice echoed in my mind.

  ‘Mum,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Scott.

  I smiled at him.

  ‘I was just thinking about Mum,’ I said. ‘I think Janet was right. I think Mum watches over me sometimes.’

  ‘And is she happy about you going back to Ireland?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ I said, immediately, and I knew that was true.

  ‘So, your mum would want you to stay, and Leela is out of our lives for good. How about you reconsider and decide to stay?’ asked Scott.

  I stared down at my plate with one, lonely, half-eaten empanada left, and I had a horrible, panicky thought.

  ‘Scott, you didn’t break up with Leela because of me, did you?’

  Scott laughed.

  ‘No. I mean, I don’t think you and Leela were destined to be BFFs as Kylie would say, but that was only a small part of it. I have gone out with so many Leelas, I lose track. I thought maybe it was time for change. So, what do you say about staying?’

  He waited, but I said nothing.

  He sighed, got up and began clearing away the mess. As I got up to help, I felt a big, empty, hollow cave in my stomach like I hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  Chapter 30

  The next morning, my third last morning in America, I found Scott with Finn and his parrot, Kurt, in the examining room.

  ‘I don’t know what’s up with Kurt. He’s not himself,’ said Finn.

  ‘Birds often try to hide their illnesses, because in the wild a sick bird can get pushed out of the flock,’ said Scott. ‘Try to think about what you mean when you say he is not himself.’

  ‘Well,’ said Finn, thoughtfully, ‘he’s lethargic and he seems a little off balance. He has stopped being rude to people. It’s probably nothing but a big waste of your time.’

  ‘No,’ said Scott. ‘It’s never a waste of my time. You did the right thing bringing him in. Let’s take a look. Can you take him out of his cage for me?’

  The phone in the reception room rang and rang without Karen answering it.

  ‘Evie, can you get it?’ asked Scott.

  I galloped up the corridor to the reception area and picked up the phone. The caller wanted to make an appointment to get her cat spayed. I took down all the details impatiently, and scheduled the appointment. As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. It was a man with a hoarse voice, asking if we sold exotic fish.

  ‘Sorry, this is a veterinary practice,’ I told him. ‘Try a pet store,’ and I hung up.

  When I finally made it back to the examining room, Finn’s face was blank and his mouth was set in a hard, straight line. He thanked Scott and he left with Kurt, only barely saying goodbye to me.

  Scott began to scrub down the table.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong with Kurt?’

  Scott put the rag down.

  ‘Pacheco’s disease. It’s a virus.’

  ‘But he’s going to be okay, right?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘Pacheco’s disease is usually fatal, but there has been some success with a drug called acyclovir, so we are treating him with that. We’ll have to wait and see.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘but where there’s life, there’s hope, you know, like Joanna says.’

  ‘There’s always hope, Evie, but I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not likely that Kurt will survive. If he makes it through the night, I asked Finn to bring him back in the morning.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything more we can do? I asked. ‘Can I do something? Anything?’

  Scott shook his head.

  ‘I wish there was, Evie.’

  The rest of the day dragged. I ping-ponged between Scott and Joanna, pestering them with more and more questions and arguments like, ‘if Kurt is still alive now, does that mean he’s going to make it?’ and half an hour later, ‘if Kurt is still alive now, does that mean he’s going to make it?’

  Finally, Scott got exasperated.

  ‘Evie, I don’t know, I can’t know. We have to wait.’

  ‘I think he’s going to make it,’ I announced.

  ‘Kurt is a very, very sick parrot,’ Scott replied.

  Although Finn never talked much about Kurt, I knew he loved him. I remembered my first night in New York, how alone and unloved I felt and how Ben’s warm presence comforted me. It didn’t seem important anymore that Finn didn’t like girls like me who think too much. I shifted from pestering Scott and Joanna to bugging Greg.

  ‘Please text me an update every half an hour,’ I begged.

  I went to bed early to try to make the next morning come around faster, but I couldn’t sleep.

  At about nine-thirty, Scott knocked softly on my door.

  ‘Evie, are you awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ I called out, sitting up in bed and switching on the bedside lamp. As soon as I saw Scott’s face, I felt like putting my pillow over my head, because I didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

  ‘Finn called. Kurt died about half an hour ago.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said.

  But I could believe it. I punched my pillow.

  ‘I think Kurt is the only pet that Finn ever had. It’s not fair.’

  Scott sat down beside me on the bed, and for a few moments, we stayed in silence, each of us thinking our own thoughts.

  ‘Finn’s sure that Kurt is dead, right? I mean, he’s not just in a deep sleep.’

  ‘Kurt’s gone, Evie,’ said Scott.

  I hunched my knees up and wrapped my arms around them and rocked slightly back and forth, an old habit from when I was little.

  ‘Mum’s dead,’ I said loudly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Scott.

  ‘She’s not coming back, you know,’ I whispered.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘It’s so not fair,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ he agreed.

  ‘Evie, it’s not your fault.’

  I felt a wave, a giant tidal wave, a tsunami of grief welling up deep inside me and I hid my face on Scott’s new baby-blue cotton shirt. Soon I noticed it felt damp and no longer crisp, but sodden and wrinkled, but Scott didn’t mind. He hugged me until my tears stopped running, which was a very long time.

  And when I had finished and blew my nose and hiccupped a little and wiped my face with some tissues, he said, ‘Get some sleep,’ and I slept.

  Chapter 31

  The next morning was my second last day. Kylie came over to help me pack. I told her she didn’t have to, but she insisted.

  ‘I love a project,’ she told me.

  She arrived with highlighters, stickers, and squares of soft, tissue packing paper, which she laid out carefully on my bed. I thought of my pair of grubby runners.

  ‘I’m not sure I need all this,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘There’s an art to packing.’

  ‘I usually just open my suitcase, throw everything in, squeeze stuff in at the top and then sit on it to close it,’ I pointed out.

  Kylie looked horrified.

  ‘It’s a crime to treat clothes like that, even clothes like yours. Now, pass me all your shoes first; they should go at the bottom.’

  I complied listlessly.

  ‘This is the pile of the clothes that, trust me, you don’t want to keep. You can donate them to charity,’ she said, pointing at a heap on the bed at the top of which she had added my very scruffy denim shorts.

  I began to sort through the pile, taking items out.

&nb
sp; ‘Will all of your friends be in school with you?’ she asked, putting my denim shorts very firmly back into the donation pile.

  ‘No, we’ll be starting secondary school now, which is like your high school, except we start when we are twelve or thirteen. Most of my old friends are going to an all-Irish school on the north side of Dublin, but Janet has moved in with Brendan in Bray, which is too far away, so I will go to the local secondary school there and I won’t know anyone.’

  ‘Not knowing anyone stinks. If you stayed here, you could go to school with Greg and me!’ exclaimed Kylie.

  ‘I’m used to starting new schools,’ I assured her.

  ‘Are you taking Sam on the plane with you?’ she asked.

  I glanced over at Sam, happily sunning himself on the window ledge.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Scott doesn’t think that would be fair to him. We’re going to put him back in Turtle Pond in the Park in the morning.’

  ‘That’s so sad,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you have to leave?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I can’t bear being a money-sucking leech, driving the clinic out of business.’

  ‘You should talk to Scott about it,’ she urged. ‘You’re such a big fan of using words. Why don’t you use your words now?’

  ‘Sometimes, there are no words,’ I said, feeling very grown up.

  She looked doubtful.

  ‘Can I have the tape of Leela? Greg wants to hear it.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘We’re both coming with you and Scott to the airport tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, giving her a big hug.

  I ate lunch with Joanna on a bench in the Park, near the lake. We had sandwiches; a turkey club, easy on the mayo for me and a chicken salad wrap for her. We watched tourists clumsily rowing little boats on the lake. An old man and an old woman kissed and the man dropped one of the oars into the lake and the woman laughed.

  ‘I have an older sister and two older brothers. I always wanted a little sister,’ Joanna said. ‘And you are like a little sister to me.’

  I felt tears pricking at the back of my eyelids and I sniffed and dashed them back.

  ‘For a long time, I couldn’t cry at all. Now I cry all the time,’ I said.

  ‘It gets worse when you get older,’ Joanna replied, ‘and it happens at the oddest times. Back in April, a cat died on the operating table, during a routine operation. I was devastated, but not as devastated as the owner. Poor Mrs Allingham, that cat was all she had. But I didn’t cry. I had to be professional. And later that night, the man behind me in the line at the drugstore snapped at me and said, “Hurry up, lady,” when I was struggling to find my purse in my bag and I just started crying. I dumped my stuff on the counter and I left.’

  I nodded sympathetically.

  ‘You have to follow your heart, Evie,’ she said. ‘Is your heart telling you to go to Ireland?’

  I thought about that. I didn’t want to hurt Scott by having him waste all his money on me, so I think that was coming from my heart.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ I said.

  ‘We will miss you.’

  ‘And I’ll miss you, all of you. You have to take care of Scott. He falls asleep on the sofa watching TV and wakes up with a stiff neck if someone doesn’t wake him up and make him go to bed. And he never remembers to buy toilet paper so we are always running out and we have to use the cotton pads from the clinic, the ones for cleaning out the big dogs’ ears, so if you remind him about the toilet paper, that would help.’

  ‘Scott, get toilet paper? I can do that,’ said Joanna.

  We strolled back through the Park, around the Great Lawn and past Turtle Pond and out the West 77th Street entrance. As we waited to cross the street, we watched all the kids coming out of the Natural History Museum with their friends and their parents and they looked happy.

  Joanna headed straight in to the clinic and I went up to the apartment.

  ‘Tomorrow’s the big day,’ said Frank in the lobby.

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘We’re going to miss you, Beautiful, and your real nice manners.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ I said. I finished packing.

  Ben sat on the floor with his head in his paws and watched me intently, following my every move. I couldn’t quite look him directly in the eyes.

  At last, when everything was zipped up, I wandered out to the kitchen. Scott was sitting on one of the bar stools, tapping something small in his right fist against the glass table – clink, clink, clink.

  ‘Sit down, Evie,’ he said, patting the bar stool beside him.

  I sat.

  ‘It’s the money. You’re worried about money. Leela convinced you that you are bankrupting me and the clinic.’

  I looked up at him.

  ‘Well, em…’ I stuttered.

  ‘Evie,’ he said, looking excited, ‘you are being so dumb. The money is a non-issue. We’ll make it work. The clinic is getting busier all the time. Joanna and I want to expand it so we will have a bigger surgery and room for more surgical equipment. Then, we can carry out more operations. And I’m going to make Joanna a partner.’

  He continued in a rush, ‘Evie, you are the only family that Ben and I have. What would we do without you? Who will remember about buying toilet paper?’

  ‘Are you sure about the money?’ I said. ‘It seems to be a lot cheaper to be a kid in Ireland.’

  Scott laughed and grabbed my hands and pulled me up from my stool and swung me around.

  ‘Sure I’m sure,’ he said. ‘You’ll stay, won’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Come on, let’s go downstairs and tell Joanna the good news.’

  ‘How did you find out?’ I said.

  He waved the tape around and put it in his pocket.

  ‘Finn gave this to me today.’

  ‘Finn! Finn Winters!’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t believe it! I can’t believe Greg gave the tape to him. We had an agreement, me, Kylie, Greg, everything stayed with us and just us.’

  ‘Don’t blame Greg,’ said Scott. ‘Finn told me he overheard Greg playing it and he stole it.’

  ‘He’s a smart kid,’ added Scott, and then, as an afterthought, he said, ‘Not that stealing is right!’

  I didn’t know what to think, or to say.

  ‘I’m going over to see Leela tonight and she’s not going to be torturing any kids anymore. In fact, she will probably find herself out of a job,’ Scott added in his most serious voice, with the angriest look I have ever seen in his eyes.

  I almost felt sorry for Leela.

  I walked across the floor.

  ‘It’s such a huge thing that I’m staying, right, Scott?’

  ‘Huger than huge,’ he said.

  ‘So, it’s almost practically like an emergency situation,’ I said, looking longingly at the fireman’s pole.

  He laughed.

  ‘Just this once, come over here, we’ll slide down together.’

  I leaned forward in front of Scott and put both hands tightly on the pole. He put his arms around me and the pole.

  ‘Ready?’

  I nodded.

  WHOOOOSSSSSSSH. It was brilliant fun although we scared the hell out of a nervous looking cat when we crash-landed at the bottom.

  The noise drew Joanna out of the examining room and she observed Scott and me sprawled on the floor.

  ‘Hi, kids,’ she said, drily.

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ said Scott. ‘Evie, tell her the news!’

  After we celebrated with Joanna, and I had called Kylie and Greg, we called Janet about me staying on in America and, once reassured that this is what I wanted, she was tearful, but happy for me. She said that she and Brendan would come to New York on a holiday at Christmas and that I could go visit them next year and go down to Dingle with them for the summer.

  I called Deirdre and Cate as well and we agreed that we would always remain friends, no ma
tter what.

  Chapter 32

  Most of the rest of the week was taken up with doing interviews and placement tests for four different schools. It was nerve-racking and I hoped I got into the same school as Greg and Kylie. This morning, Scott got a letter from one of the schools offering me a place in the seventh grade, but still no word from St Sebastian’s.

  ‘You’re going to need tutoring to bring you up to speed on American history,’ Scott said, reading the letter from the first school.

  ‘Ok,’ I said.

  ‘And apparently you are way behind on social studies. How did that happen?’ he asked.

  ‘What are social studies?’ I asked.

  ‘And there is the answer,’ he said.

  Kylie came over and we took Ben for a walk in Riverside Park for a change. We bumped into Tamara walking Patrick.

  ‘He’s gotten so big!’ I said.

  She smiled.

  ‘He’s still not toilet trained. Last night, he did a big dump in one of my dad’s shoes and he had a fit.’

  ‘Evie sat the placement test for Sebs,’ announced Kylie.

  ‘Good luck!’ said Tamara. ‘Camille goes there too. She’s my cousin, but she can be such a brat sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kylie. ‘She told us that Finn said he doesn’t like Evie because she thinks too much.’

  ‘Kylie,’ I thundered, ‘that’s private; it’s nothing, Tamara.’

  ‘What are you guys talking about?’ Tamara said in a puzzled voice. ‘That’s not what Finn said. I remember it clearly because he got so mad; you guys know how he can lose it. We were hanging out at Aunt Joan’s pool in the Hamptons. Camille said something mean about Evie looking like a scrawny scarecrow… Oops, sorry, Evie, and Finn lashed out at her and said, “she’s a thinker”. Then Akono, who was Julius Caesar in his drama club last winter, said, “She has a lean and hungry look, she thinks too much, such women are dangerous …” or something like that. I’m not sure, but it was a quote, or he was paraphrasing, or something, and that was it. I guess Camille put her own, unique, dark twist on it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  Tamara smiled at me and said, ‘I’m sure Finn likes you, Evie. He thinks you are a sweet kid.’