The Animal Girl

by John Fulton

“Or her,” Leah interrupted.

  Max nodded and smiled. “Or her,” he said. “What are her best options for treatment? Hopefully, our work will suggest some answers.”

  Before they finished their discussion, Max took out a plastic model of a sheep heart from a deep drawer in his desk and started to disassemble it and lay its parts—the auricles and ventricles—on the desk next to his half-eaten sandwich in order to show Leah where thromboses typically occur and the different areas that would be affected by infarction and what they might learn about the resulting tissue damage. While he talked, Leah took him in: his chubby, unshaven cheeks, his thick, ruffled hair, the circles of sweat that had begun to form in the pits of his lab coat while he’d been inducing the heart attack just at the right time and in the right way; and again something about him—big, sloppy, soft-bodied Max, who had whole-wheat crumbs in his mustache and who cared passionately about things that were a mystery and just a little boring to Leah—kept pulling at her. “Necrosis,” she said, repeating the word he had just been using. “That means death in Latin, doesn’t it? I’m taking Latin right now.”

  “Actually, it’s Greek,” he said.

  And then, maybe to arrest his obsessive focus on science, maybe to prevent what might become a lengthy and unwanted lecture on a Greek word, maybe just to change the subject, maybe to shock him, to show him she wasn’t just his high-school helper, his inquisitive animal-keeper, maybe to get his attention, maybe for no reason at all, she said, “My mother died of leukemia. Aggressive leukemia. Three years ago. Really quickly. The doctors just thought it was anemia at first. They gave her iron, and she seemed to get better. Then she got sick again.” Leah almost snapped her fingers to show him how quickly it had happened. “It only took her three months to die.”

  Max put down the plastic pieces of the heart and folded his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I heard something about that. I heard it was awfully tough on your father, too.” He smiled as he had when he’d warned her in the interview that the job might not be for her. A heavy, soft, sympathetic smile, so sympathetic that Leah wondered what her father might have told Max about her: his brokenhearted, sullen daughter who needed to get out of the house more often, who needed all the pity and charity she could get. “As I remember, your mother was a very nice woman.”

  “I don’t know why I told you that. I shouldn’t have.” Leah shrugged. “Anyway, this work doesn’t bother me. Seeing that animal dying was just fine.”

  Max nodded and seemed, for a moment, slightly awkward before he said, “That’s good.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me what?”

  Leah felt that she’d just earned the right to ask the question now. “Why don’t you have pictures of your wife out? Your family? I remember you had a wife.” In fact, Leah was prying. She remembered her parents talking about Max’s divorce several years ago.

  “Oh,” he said. He took a big bite of his sandwich and chewed for a while. “Sharon, you mean.” He shook his head and looked a little annoyed. “That’s a bit personal.” But then he answered her: “That didn’t work so well. Sharon went her own way a few years back. She’s remarried. I’m good at science, but not …”

  “You’d be a good dad,” Leah said, hoping to cheer him up. But that statement was evidently too personal as well, and he let her know by looking at his watch and announcing the end of their lunch hour.

  On the way back to what she thought of as her animal basement, she passed through the operating room, where the sheep lay fatly on its side, heaving with life, and again she stood over it a moment, asking herself what she felt, which was, to be truthful, a little more than nothing—an oh-well, a what-can-be-done? kind of feeling.

  She spent the rest of her day with the animals in her windowless room down the hall. It had a blankness that she found quieting—off-white walls, a rectangular block of fluorescent lights on the ceiling, a concrete floor with a drain at its center, and a large tublike industrial sink in the far corner, next to which bags of feed—dog food and grain—were stacked. The one anomaly, and the thing she liked most, was a large clerk’s desk, which she tried to budge. It was as heavy and unmovable as a boulder, and made her animal basement feel oddly like an actual office, a place where things were to be written and thought about. The animals stayed at the back of her narrow room in cages, their floors covered with blond wood chips that gave off a musty, earthy odor tinted with urine and animal heat. There were a dozen cages, though on that first day she had only three animals (now only two, since one of these was dying slowly in the room down the hall). She had one sheep and one dog—a boy dog, she could see when she bent to look at its underside. Each animal had its own folder, filed in the left desk drawer under two categories, Canines and Sheep. The folders contained the age of the animal in months, its gender, its color, weight, and height, and an identity number; the canines had three digits, and the sheep had four. The dog she had that day was 013, an unlucky number. It wagged its tail and looked up at Leah with an oddly human and expressive gaze that said something like, “Hi, there.”

  “You’re going to die,” she said to it. But 013 just kept wagging its tail. Leah stuck her fingers through the grate of the cage, and the silly animal licked them.

  The beginning of that summer had been wet and cold. A colorless arctic gray began and ended each day until the first week of July, when the heat came all at once, only a few days after Noelle’s arrival, in a burst of sun and humidity that was almost tropical. This shift in seasons somehow gave Noelle more power and presence, as if she’d been there a very long time, through the short days of winter, the gradually lengthening days of spring, and then into summer. She came with her dishes and her shiny pots and pans, so much more numerous and better than the odd assemblage of dull stuff Leah’s mother, never much of a cook, had used for years, all of which Franklin put into boxes now and stored in the basement. She came with her fancy olive oils, fancy French and Italian cheeses, and a spice rack for which Franklin, who had never been handy, nonetheless got out his tools—a level, a power drill, and plaster screws. Finally, after drilling three sets of unnecessary holes, he attached it to the wall, and Noelle applauded. Noelle loved to cook, and judging from Franklin’s praise, Leah guessed she did so expertly, which was all the more reason to avoid the dinner table, Noelle’s dinner table, made of cherry wood and caressed with lemon oil at least once a week, and, yet again, so much better than the rustic, square table Leah’s family had once used, which also ended up in the basement. She kept her distance from Noelle and Franklin at the dinner hour—at all hours, really. She was busy, she told them. She had to work. Or she felt a little sick. She remained in her room listening to Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, early Miles. Or she practiced her clarinet, working through major and minor scales, through exercises, even flat-footedly improvising to a Jamey Aebersold CD turned up loud on her stereo. Though she listened to jazz, she couldn’t play it. She couldn’t swing. She was stiff, right on the beat, her every note brittle and staid against the laid-back drums and piano on the practice recording.

  Only once did Noelle and Franklin insist and force her to join them for a dinner of broiled salmon, dill potatoes, asparagus, and a sauce in a very hot dish, which Leah put down in the middle of the table, where it marred the wood. It had been an accident, she falsely argued. She hadn’t meant to. Noelle nearly screamed, “Did you do that on purpose? Did she do that on purpose, Franklin?” Leah worked herself into tears, denying this, and Franklin looked powerless, seated at the table and trapped between two angry women. Unbelievably, Noelle visited Leah’s room later to apologize, and for the shortest moment Leah felt guilty for her lie, though not guilty enough to do more than remove the headphones of her Walkman, hear Noelle out, and then, without conviction, say that she too was sorry for having gotten upset, when in fact she was wondering why Noelle had to be so damn conciliatory, so damn sweet and determined to get along. It made Leah feel all the more petty, childish, and, some
thing she hadn’t anticipated, helpless.

  Noelle was athletic, too. And so she came with her bright, souped-up mountain bike, her tennis rackets (the second one she’d bought for Franklin as a present), even her otherworldly scuba gear—a tank, face mask, and flippers. She was a healthy, attractive woman with a small waist and noticeable boobs, more noticeable than Leah’s mother’s, though her mother’s face, soft and expressive, was far more beautiful than Noelle’s, which was pretty but too lean, too harshly featured. Noelle had even inspired Franklin to buy his own mountain bike and spend every other weekend cycling with her through different areas of northern Michigan. They invited Leah along on every trip and Leah always gave the same answer: maybe next time.

  What bothered Leah much more than Noelle was what was happening to Franklin. He was changing. He was becoming another person, someone she didn’t know and maybe couldn’t know. It wasn’t just that he was no longer sad, that he had trimmed his beard and scheduled regular haircuts, that he dressed nicely, even on weekends, that he played tennis, hiked, cycled, took beginning scuba lessons at the Y, none of which the old sedentary Franklin, the man who’d been seemingly happy and in love with her mother, had done. It wasn’t just that he’d slimmed up and gotten in shape, which Leah first noticed the very day Noelle moved in, when Franklin—a little muscular in a tank top and shorts, his belly, if still there, more compact and shaped—carried in box after box of her stuff. Nor was it that he was rarely home, only in the mornings and evenings, always occupied, off doing something new, even at his age, forty-seven, and even though he had a grumpy daughter to worry about.

  It was all these things together that bothered Leah, and she let her father know it one afternoon, not long after she had damaged Noelle’s table and offered only her indifferent apology. He’d come down to her room prepared to accuse her of something, which was obvious to Leah by the way he announced his intention—“We need to talk,” he said—then took a book off her shelf and began flipping through its pages without looking at it because he hated conflict so much that he needed to distract himself when he saw it coming. At least, thank God, this had not changed. “I want to say a few things. Just a few things. And then I want a promise from you.”

  Franklin was wearing a button-up plaid shirt and new penny loafers. Leah knew that he had gotten these clothes with Noelle. Noelle liked plaid, she liked button-up shirts, and didn’t much care for middle-aged men who wore T-shirts and jeans all the time. “You’re different,” Leah said. “Totally different.”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’m just happy.”

  She smelled something astringent and good on him, and knew at once that this too had been Noelle’s influence. “You’re wearing cologne.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re different.”

  “I’m going to do the talking, Leah.” And even in his ability now to stand up to her, to say what he had just said calmly and with enough force to make Leah’s chest constrict and her stomach woozy, he was not the same.

  “I’m not different,” Leah said. She was sitting on the carpeted floor, her legs akimbo, the headphones of her Walkman resting on her neck, while Franklin stood against her dresser, still playing with the book. “I haven’t changed at all.” And she hadn’t. She was the same girl she’d been three years ago, when her mother had died so quickly it almost seemed that she’d wanted it, that she’d turned over in bed one day, seen the darkness, and chosen it. Never mind that she’d been happy, that she’d enjoyed being a third-grade teacher, enjoyed walking the five minutes down Fifth Street every day to her school, enjoyed going grocery shopping—where, to Leah’s embarrassment, she’d hum in the aisles—and enjoyed pulling into the driveway afterwards when, without fail and to Leah’s annoyance, she’d always intone, “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.” How simple and irrefutable it had been: Within months of learning of her illness, she was gone and had left Leah and Franklin alone and despairing. And Leah was still despairing while Franklin was not, while Franklin was leaving her behind, dumpy, sullen, unattractive Leah, all things she wanted to be, all things she cultivated by wearing the same pair of frayed, oversized Levi’s, the same extra-large white T-shirt for days in a row until they became a loose, unclean second skin, by not wearing makeup or perfume, by letting her long, flat hair remain long and flat, by staying locked inside even in July, when summer had finally come, by saying rudely, bitterly, “It’s okay. I like being a cave creature,” every time Noelle asked her to come out and do something.

  Her father put the book down and seemed about to speak. “She’s going to ask you to shave your beard next,” Leah said. “I know she is.”

  “Leah,” Franklin said.

  “Please don’t do it.”

  “Please stop being a brat,” he said with an anger that took her by surprise. Her father never got angry, never raised his voice to her. And now he continued in an overrehearsed, almost mechanical manner, though Leah still heard the most uncharacteristic, barely repressed frustration in his voice. “I came down here to tell you that I am tired of seeing you hurt Noelle every day. I love Noelle. You need to understand that. And so it makes me …” He struggled to come out with the word. “Mad, angry to see her get hurt.”

  “You hate me.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  Leah put her headphones on and pressed play, and Franklin came over and removed them from her ears. “I love you,” he said as the music continued to issue from the little foam-covered knobs at her neck. “And for your information, I still love your mother. But she’s …”

  “I know,” Leah said.

  “We know this is difficult for you. It would be difficult for anyone. We understand that. I’d like you to see a therapist.”

  “That’s her idea.”

  “That’s our idea, and it’s a good idea. I think it could really help you.”

  “No.”

  “It could help you, Leah. It could make you feel better.”

  “You mean,” Leah said, “that it could make you feel better.”

  “Yes,” Franklin said. “It might. It just might.”

  “No.”

  Franklin nodded and looked down at his new shoes, and remained silent for so long that Leah had to say something. “She’s got nicer boobs than Mom had. You must like that.” Leah hated the fact that she had more than a few times imagined them together: Noelle, athletic, strong in the hips, on top of the newly buff Franklin, and Franklin, made unrecognizable by sexual frenzy, turning her over, taking her anyway he wanted, sideways, from behind, against a wall.

  “I’d rather you not share that sort of thought with me,” Franklin said.

  “I have to tell someone.”

  “How about a therapist?”

  “Stop asking me that. And please … please don’t shave your beard off.” Because Franklin was clearly more upset now than he’d been since entering her room, Leah said, “I am a brat. I know I’m a brat. I don’t want to be.” And in the abstract, she didn’t. But she also knew that she would likely continue to be one.

  “I want you to promise me something,” Franklin said.

  “Maybe.”

  Franklin gave her a look then that she had seen from him only a few times in her life, a look that would not stand for defiance. “I want you to promise me that you will treat Noelle better. You will treat her with respect.”

  “Okay,” she said. But he didn’t leave her room until she said the words he wanted to hear. “I promise.”

  2

  Max had been right about the dogs. They were the real challenge, the harder to watch die. They were mutts and came in all sorts and sizes: small and large, long- and short-haired, spotted, mottled, fat and far too skinny, long-nosed, pug-nosed, beautiful and ugly. As soon as they arrived and settled in their cages, they treated Leah like a mother, a good and caring master. They whimpered and whined; they licked at the thin bars of their cages and at her hands and fingers. At mealtimes, they dove into their bow
ls, wagging their tails, wagging their entire bodies, until the food and the activity of eating calmed them. Afterwards, when she took the dishes away, they leapt on her, they squealed and yipped and looked into her eyes with something like recognition, something that approached gratitude, that was, in fact, more than gratitude. It took Leah some time to put a word to that look, that recognition, and when the word came to her, she was certain the dogs felt it: trust. As soon as they stepped into her cage, they gave themselves completely over to Leah. The sheep, on the other hand, were indifferent. They hardly made eye contact and remained in their animal world, a stinky dark void without language, without sensations beyond fear and hunger. But the dogs invaded the human realm, leapt over and into Leah’s world readily and with the assumption that they belonged there, that their home was with Leah. They trusted her. And what bothered Leah more than the dogs’ eventual fate was how terribly misplaced this trust was. “Stupid, stupid dogs,” she told them several times a day, and they didn’t hear. They continued to depend on her for everything and to seem more than happy to do so.

  Unlike the sheep, they didn’t resist the short trip from the cages to the operating room. They always competed to be the first out, lunging toward freedom and toward Leah, who delivered a dog to the operating room at least every other day. Leah never chose the animal. There were three to a cage. If she had more than three dogs, she always chose the cage closest to the front of the room, where the most senior dogs, those who had been at the lab longest, stayed. The first out of the cage was the dog she would deliver. In this way, they seemed to choose themselves. To make things worse, they enjoyed the brief trip down the hallway, licking Leah’s ankles, diving for her shoelaces, rearing up with excitement. A rubber ball in hand, Max usually made this trip with Leah. At the first sign of apprehension in the animal, he’d let the ball go and the dog would dive for it, focus entirely on the toy and forget everything else.

  Leah didn’t stay for the operations. Max had already told her more than she’d wanted to know. They were needed to test the utility of a new laser scalpel that might eventually be used on humans for common gallbladder operations. Their gallbladders were cut open, sewn up, and then the whole dog was disposed of. The scalpel cauterized vessels, staunching bleeding, as soon as it cut into the flesh. For certain tissues, such as the gallbladder, this sort of surgical instrument, if it worked, could be very useful. “And how do you know if it works?” Leah asked one afternoon when Max had stopped by her animal basement.