by Sheila Agnew
‘What’s going on?’ asked Kylie.
‘Bear,’ I said, but no actual sound came out of my mouth. I pointed out the window, where the bright porch light illuminated the great big shadow of the bear.
‘Aaaaaaaaggggggggggggggggggggggg,’ screamed Kylie.
We all jumped. The bear seemed irritated by the noise. It got down on all four paws and began to circle the cabin. We followed his progress through the windows, Ben still barking like crazy and Kylie, screaming like crazier.
Scott picked up his cell phone and called the local police.
A law enforcement clerk called Mary answered. I didn’t catch her last name. Scott gave our address and explained that there was a very large bear outside the cabin.
‘Nuffin’ we can do,’ said Mary in a bored voice as if he had reported that the toilet was leaking.
‘But I have kids here at the cabin,’ Scott said.
‘We can’t do anything,’ repeated Mary, ‘not unless the bear is actually attacking you. Is the bear attacking any of you right now?’
‘Is that a joke?’ asked Scott.
‘No,’ Mary said in an offended voice, ‘like I said, unless the bear is attacking, we can’t do anything. Has it got an orange tag because the bears that have been in trouble before, we tag them.’
‘No, no tag,’ said Scott.
‘Well that’s good,’ said Mary, ‘that means he ain’t been in no trouble before.’
‘Great,’ said Scott, ‘I hope the bear remembers that.’
‘You can’t shoot him,’ said Mary, ‘It’s illegal in the state of Connecticut.’
‘Of course I’m not going to shoot that magnificent animal,’ said Scott in an exasperated voice, ‘I thought that if you spotted a bear in a residential area, particularly where there are kids and dogs around, you need to report it to the local authorities, which is what I’m doing.’
‘The right thing to do,’ confirmed Mary sounding friendlier. After a final reminder to call her back if the bear attacked, she hung up. We continued to watch the bear through the window. Ben climbed up on the top of the couch to get a better look, still barking so loudly in a way that frayed on the nerves. His poor legs were trembling like jelly. I gave him a hug to thank him for warning me about the bear.
The bear lay down on the grass in front of the cabin and rolled around. He didn’t look so dangerous now. Then he got up, yawned, ambled up the hill and we could see the dark shadowy outline making his way slowly down the road towards the lake. After he had gone, we started to laugh. I don’t know who started it but it was pretty hard to stop.
Even though Scott told us we were perfectly safe inside, when we all went to bed, Lorcan took a knife from the kitchen with him for extra security. I couldn’t imagine plunging a knife into any animal. I selected a large frying pan and stowed it under my bed. Ben had ceased barking at last. I fell asleep to the comforting sound of his loud snores reverberating through the cabin.
It felt like only seconds later that Scott was shaking me awake, telling me to jump to it, that it was five in the morning. We needed to leave early to be at school in time. Everyone hustled around the cabin gathering up their stuff wordlessly. It was too early to speak. Right before we left, Scott picked up a framed photograph from the mantelpiece, stared at it for a few minutes before putting it back down. It was a photograph of his parents and him and Mum eating in the porch on a sunny day, back when Mum was about my age now. I never got to meet my grandparents. They died in a car crash the year I was born. They hadn’t even known they had a granddaughter. Everyone in that photograph was gone now except for Scott. That weekend for the first time in a long time, I hadn’t thought about anything to do with the custody case but suddenly I felt a surge of pure rage from deep in my belly at Michael for suing Scott for custody. Ben and me; we were all that Scott had left.
‘Evie,’ called Scott from the door, ‘what are you doing hanging around? Everyone else is in the car. Let’s go.’
‘Coming,’ I said, and I put the photograph down. I’m not going to let Michael separate Scott and me. Never. Not in a zillion years!
Chapter 18
My lawyer, Marcy, called a few days ago to tell me I had an appointment with a psychologist for a forensic evaluation. She kept referring to the forensics. The only forensics I know about are from TV cop shows. Marcy said that Michael’s lawyer, Mr Tully, had hired a ‘big gun,’ in the weird world of forensic child psychologists. His name, she said, was Dr Austin Blakely. Marcy sounded annoyed, but not surprised. She said that usually the court appoints one psychologist, called a ‘Neutral’, and that’s it. But the parties in the case have the right to each get their own psychologist. That’s what Michael’s lawyer had done by hiring Dr Blakely. Marcy sighed and said that now we would have to hire our own psychologist too.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘This whole thing keeps getting worse and worse.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Marcy.
Huh. That was easy for her to say. It wasn’t her family that had to face THREE shrinks.
‘I know someone we can get who is cheap,’ said Marcy. ‘Her name is MaryAnn. She’ll love Scott … oh, and you.’
I wish I had one of those lawyers on TV, the kind who inspire confidence.
The following day, Scott and I went round to the big Barnes and Noble on Broadway and flicked through a book, Co-Parenting Using the Austin Blakely Method.™ There was an enormous photograph of Dr Blakely on the back dust jacket of the book. In it, he is sitting in a beige leather armchair surrounded by a group of remarkably photogenic children. He is smiling confidently into the camera. He looked young and tanned, the type of person who does six marathons a year and always remembers to floss. He had a thick mane of tawny golden brown hair and a dimple in his chin.
Dr Blakely’s office is on a high floor in a very posh building on Park Avenue. All of the other doctors on his floor were cosmetic surgeons. Even though we arrived on time for the appointment, Scott and I had to wait nearly half an hour, which was particularly boring because the only reading materials in the waiting room were copies of Dr Blakely’s books. Finally, his administrative assistant announced that Dr Blakely was ready to see us. She said it like we were about to meet a President of the United States, one of the really good ones whose name everyone can remember.
There was only a faint resemblance between the man in the dust jacket photograph and the real live Dr Blakely. He looked about twenty years older and his hair was very thin with the faint greenish tinge of dubious highlights, nothing like the thick mane of tawny hair in the photo. He also looked a lot shorter, although to be fair, he was sitting down in the photo. There was no trace of a dimple. I suppose that had been photoshopped in.
Dr Blakely’s office was filled with beige leather furniture and paintings (not the kind you buy on eBay). In one corner, there was a montage of brightly-coloured ‘thank you’ letters from his clients. He stood up as we entered his office.
‘Evangeline, Jock, I’m so happy to be working with you,’ he said in a jovial but surprisingly reedy voice, ‘call me Dr Blakely.’
‘Call me Scott,’ said Scott as he shook hands. As Dr Blakely shook my hand, I noticed his perfectly-manicured square nails.
‘We’re not exactly working with you,’ Scott pointed out, ‘Evie’s biological dad hired you and we don’t have any choice but to go along with this crazy process.’
Dr Blakely immediately put on an expression of such sympathetic understanding and concern that I felt squeamish. He was a big phony. Even the average two-year-old would have been able to sense that.
Our meeting lasted exactly forty-three minutes. It was supposed to last an hour so Dr Blakely must be ripping Michael off. That didn’t bother me. Dr Blakely spent most of the time talking about himself and discreetly checking his large gold watch. He explained that he had started his career as a highly-successful executive in Boston. He was sketchy about what that actually involved. He told us that his life lacking meanin
g and purpose – he wanted to find some way to contribute to the world, to be a force for positive change and to make a difference in the lives of children of parents in conflict. He spent years devising the Austin Blakely Co-Parenting Method. Yawn. I’m just summing it up here. The method seems to involve ticking off checklists using special colour coded highlighters. You get a free pack of highlighters when you buy your first Dr Blakely book and a fifteen percent discount off the second book.
He didn’t ask Scott or me any questions. He emphasised that he mainly works with divorcing celebrities and sports stars and their children but that he made room in his hectic schedule to take on this case. He paused at that point as if expecting us to thank him. When we didn’t say anything, he looked a little disappointed.
‘Do you have any questions for me?’ he asked at last.
I could tell from Scott’s face that he was struggling to resist the temptation to slide in a snide comment. Marcy had told me that it is very important to be pleasant at all times with the forensics. To try and stall Scott from being sarcastic, I asked Dr Blakely,
‘Where is the loo?’ (It was the only question I could think of under pressure).
Dr Blakely looked faintly annoyed and suggested that I hang on because we were nearly finished – he had to catch the red-eye to LA to meet with a very dear friend of his, a famous actress, who was involved in a highly contentious divorce. He told us her name in a hushed reverent voice. She couldn’t be that famous because neither Scott nor I had ever heard of her.
As we were leaving, Dr Blakely insisted on presenting us with one of his books. Two days later, Scott received an invoice in the mail from Dr Blakely’s office, charging him for the book. I thought he was going to freak out but he didn’t say a single word. He picked up that invoice, crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the plastic basin I had converted into a toilet for Persie. It was a perfect shot.
Chapter 19
The next forensic psychologist on the list was Marcy’s MaryAnn Something. I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm about meeting another member of Team Marcy, but tried to have a good attitude about it. MaryAnn’s office was in the reddish Lipstick Building on 53rd Street and Third. From the outside, it looks like open tube of lipstick. Inside, it’s just an ordinary office building, and pretty shabby compared to Dr Blakely’s offices.
MaryAnn was a tall, skinny, black woman from New Jersey with a dark hairy mole to the right of her nose. It was incredibly difficult to avoid looking at the mole. She wore a tight-fitting suit with a pencil skirt in a tired shade of red. Having seen her knees, I will never complain about mine being knobby again.
MaryAnn didn’t shortchange us on time. Far from it. Escaping from her was no easy feat. Unlike Dr Blakely, she asked a ton of questions, but they were all addressed to Scott and they all concerned one thing – Scott’s romantic history. I might as well have been invisible. Poor Scott, the way he lightly dodged around her questions reminded me of an impala I’d seen on the Discovery Channel.
Scott tried to divert the conversation to me. He didn’t succeed but at least he got MaryAnn off the topic of his love life and on to her own. She told a long story about her divorce. It was funny in parts, but not that funny. I don’t think I was supposed to feel sorry for her ex-husband. When the story finished, she sighed and said to Scott in an embarrassing little girl voice, ‘It is extremely difficult for black professional women in New York to date.’
Scott replied nonchalantly that it was very difficult for everyone in New York to date.
I added (helpfully, I thought), ‘My friend Akono’s mom is black and she’s a doctor and she didn’t have any problem in dating his dad. They’re very happily married now. Well, I assume they’re happy. Akono never—’
MaryAnn cut me off with a snarl. Scott looked a little scared. I don’t know if that was because of the snarl or because by this time, MaryAnn had maneuvered herself so that she was practically sitting in his lap.
He was saved by Mr Fannelli who called to say that Spike had eaten a large tub of hot chili stuffed olives and was acting a little funny.
Scott answered, ‘If I ate a whole tub of hot chili stuffed olives, I’d be acting a little funny too. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘Emergency, I have to go,’ he said to MaryAnn.
She pouted, which seemed to magnify the size of her mole. She gave Scott her business card, on which she wrote her personal cell number and asked him to call her. I had a feeling that card would also make it to Persie’s pooping basin. As we struggled to get past her to the door, she handed me a questionnaire to fill out. It was very long, about thirty pages, and, asked loads of questions like, ‘What do I typically eat for breakfast?’ and ‘How many hours per week do I spend playing computer games?’
The following day, just as the Spanish teacher walked in, I passed the questionnaire to Greg. He loves a writing project. It took him the next three classes to fill it out. When school finished for the day, Kylie and I read his answers. Wow. Greg is an amazing writer with a fantastic imagination. He did a great job although I don’t think he should have written that Scott and I pray together every night and well, lots of other stuff as well. Greg can be a bit touchy about his writing. I tried to be sensitive in suggesting that he maybe change it a bit to stick much closer to the truth. He took that pretty well. He said he would take out all the blatant lies, leaving me wondering what kind of lies he was going to leave in. But I didn’t have much time to worry about it because I had yet another forensic psychologist to visit at five o’clock.
The third and final psychologist I had to see, Marcy called the ‘Neutral,’ because it was the psychologist appointed by the Court. She was a young, pretty Hispanic woman, named Rosita. She asked to meet me by myself in a Starbucks. She smiled at me in a warm, sincere way. Her eyes were infused with that fleck of intense light that let me know straight away that she had a sense of humour. She also looked like she hadn’t slept in several years. I suppose that’s why she needed the triple espresso. She asked me lots of questions, but not in an intrusive way, she seemed to just slip them in naturally as part of the conversation. Every now and then, she would scribble something in her lined, yellow legal pad. Mainly, she just listened and smiled or laughed now and again. When we talked about my mum dying, she was so genuinely sympathetic that I wondered if her own mom had died. Eventually, she closed her notebook and said,
‘Evie, you seem like a happy well-adjusted kid, especially given how short a time it has been since your mom’s death. The credit for how well you’re doing has to go to you and to your uncle Scott and that’s what I will tell the Judge in my report.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile and before we left, she bought herself another espresso to go.
Chapter 20
I love amusement parks (who doesn’t) and so on Saturday morning, when Lorcan suggested we take a trip out to Coney Island, I was totally up for it. I immediately said I would text Kylie and Greg, oh and better include Akono too, but Lorcan wasn’t enthusiastic.
‘I’m not in the mood for a crowd. Let’s go by ourselves … a bit of spontaneity.’
‘I’m up for some spontaneous spontaneity,’ I answered into the phone, unintentionally showering Ben’s head with saliva. He waggled his long floppy ears. It was impressive. Kylie can waggle her left ear. I can’t make either of my ears move even a centimeter. I appreciate this inability is unlikely to hamper my prospects in life but still, it would be nice to have that extra skill. Kylie said I should be grateful I have nice nail beds. Seriously. How useless is that? I didn’t even know nails had beds. And what do nasty nail beds look like anyway?
‘Evie, are you still there?’ asked Lorcan.
‘Yeah, sorry,’ I said, ‘just thinking. I’ll meet you at half-ten.’
I didn’t admit to Lorcan that there is absolutely no way Scott would let me go all the way out to Coney Island in Brooklyn without adult supervision. Lorcan wouldn
’t understand. He might even feel sorry for me. His dads are pretty fantastic about treating him like a grown-up. If they are thinking about doing something, they ask him very courteously, ‘does that fit in with your schedule, Lorcan?’ Nobody has ever asked me about consulting my ‘schedule.’
Happily, Scott was away all day, judging a dog agility competition somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Nobody offered to accompany him except me but Scott said I had to stay at home and concentrate on reading American books. It’s a long story – last week, when Scott came by school to pick me up, Mrs Billington, my very proper and boring English teacher, cornered us at the gate. She told Scott that I was being stubborn about using the Queen’s English instead of US English. She said that in a terrible, cringe-worthy fake British accent and then she laughed as if she had said something hysterically funny. After a split-second pause, Scott laughed politely along with her. I said, with a perfectly straight face, ‘I’m most awfully sorry Mrs Billington. I will try my jolly best to spiff up my spelling.’ Scott poked me very hard in my back and marched me out to his Jeep, which was illegally parked by the way.
‘It’s a respect issue,’ said Scott, ‘you didn’t show respect for your teacher and that’s not cool.’
‘Well,’ I sniffed, ‘it’s not particularly respectful to me that she can’t remember I’m Irish, not British. And anyway, I never said anything disrespectful to her before. I swear I always fall asleep in her class as soon as she starts talking.’
I glanced sideways at Scott expecting him to laugh. But he didn’t.