Marooned in Manhattan (4 page)

Chapter 6

S
cott and Leela were heading for Jack
son Hole, Wyoming, to attend the wedding of Scott’s friend, Ethan, a dentist who had fallen in love with one of his patients.

‘Do you know where Wyoming is, Evie?’ Scott challenged on Friday morning as I ate a bowl of Lucky Charms.

I paused to think. I had been focusing on how a dentist could fall in love with someone while drilling her teeth.

‘Sure,’ I replied, I hoped with a degree of nonchalance. ‘Wyoming is in Massachusetts.’

Scott clutched his stomach and faked mock hysterical laughter.

‘Not even close, Evie, and Wyoming is a STATE!’ he called out, as he disappeared down the corridor, returning a few minutes later with a large map of the United States, which he handed to me with a flourish.

‘You can learn the states and their capitals. Pop quiz when I get back.’

Scott stared resignedly at Leela’s three matching crocodile skin suitcases. ‘We are only going to be away for two nights, Leela,’ and turning to me, he muttered, ‘and you, you’re
the person who gets offended when Americans think that Dublin is in Scotland.’

‘Point taken,’ I said and I took the map into my bedroom.

I knew the U.S. was a big country, obviously, but I had no idea it was so amazingly enormous. I guess I had been thinking of it as not extending beyond the Brooklyn Bridge. The population of the Republic of Ireland is about four and a half million and the population of the United States is more than three hundred million. I couldn’t get my head around that number of people. We are just a pimple, I thought,
compared
to America.

Scott had roped Joanna into staying in the apartment all weekend to look after me.

‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ I’d argued.

‘Joanna might,’ he said. ‘Have fun!’ And we did.

We spent Friday night eating limited edition blueberry cheesecake ice cream and playing a grand slam tennis
tournament
on Wii. We eventually had to put Ben in my room while we played because he was so excited by the sound of the Wii tennis ball that he kept driving himself (and us) crazy, running around, sniffing everywhere and making excited yelping noises in his hopeless quest to find the cyber ball.

On Saturday afternoon I helped Joanna stock the medicine shelves in the clinic and we chatted about all kinds of stuff.

‘Where in Canada are you from?’ I asked her.

‘Prince Edward Island,’ she answered.

‘Prince Edward Island, are you serious?’ I said, delighted. ‘That’s where
Anne of Green Gables
is from. It was one of
Mum’s favourite books.’

She smiled.

‘I am debt free, thanks to Anne with an ‘e’.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, intrigued.

‘Well, I was nine years old, collecting shells on Cavendish beach, when a bunch of Japanese tourists swarmed all over me. They were so excited and kept pointing at me and snapping photographs and exclaiming, “Anne, Anne” because I suppose I looked like their image of
Anne of Green Gables
,’ and she pointed wryly to her red hair. ‘I told my mom about it and she’s not the type of woman to miss out on a good business opportunity. She sewed some old-fashioned calico dresses for me, did up my hair in two braids and used a brown eyeliner pencil to paint some freckles on my face. Our house was on one of the main roads and she cajoled my father into building a little stand in front of it with a hand-painted sign saying, “Have your photograph taken with
Anne of Green
Gables
.” The tourists lapped it up.

‘For the rest of that summer and every summer after that, I had a readymade job. I just sat on a little wooden stool in the stand and tourists paid to have their photographs taken with me. The European tourists often kissed me on the cheek, but we had to ban the kissing because they kept smudging my fake freckles so that it looked like I had mud smeared on my face. During the second summer, my mom and my sister started selling lemonade and snacks like hot dogs at the stand. My parents put all the
Anne
money into a college trust fund for me and the snacks money into an account for my sister.’

‘Did you like being Anne?’ I wondered.

‘Most of the time, yes, but there were some downers. The
Anne of Green Gables
in the books did not wear glasses and I’ve always been too squeamish to wear contact lenses so I had to whip off my glasses whenever tourists stopped by, and that led to quite a few accidents, trust me. And the business fell off a lot when I got older. A seventeen-year-old squeezed into a child’s dress with braids in her hair wasn’t as popular with the tourists.’

‘It started to get creepy.’ Joanna giggled. ‘And I had to put up with lots of flak from the dumb kids at school.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Did it bother you a lot?’

She nodded, ‘Yes, at the time, not that I let them know that.’

Then she added, ‘But Evie, I promise you this, you will NEVER see me with my hair in braids.’

‘Ok, Anne with an “e”!’ I said and we both laughed until we heard a polite cough coming from the waiting room.

‘I’ll go see who it is.’ And I skipped out to the waiting room.

It was Him, the boy with the Rangers cap. In his left hand he carried a cage with a large blue and green parrot with a curved beak.

‘Hi!’ he said. ‘How is the messed-up turtle?’

‘Fine, more than fine, totally good, his leg was broken and it’s healing really well now,’ I babbled.

‘Good, glad he’s doing ok. I know you guys close early
on Saturdays. I’m just looking for some beak conditioner,’ he said.

Joanna breezed through the door and her face
immediately
broke into a wide smile.

‘Hi! Finn, how are you doing? What’s up with Kurt?’

But Kurt jumped in before Finn could answer.

‘Booooreeeeeeed!’ he interjected.

We all jumped.

‘Sorry,’ said Finn. ‘Kurt’s manners need a little work. I think his beak is overgrown again.’

‘Let’s take a look,’ said Joanna and she picked up the cage as Finn and I followed her into the examining room.

Unluckily, the phone rang. I ran back and picked it up. It was that pompous old windbag, Adrienne Weismann, a woman with hair the colour of cigarette ash and the bane of Scott’s existence. She currently has three cats, Muffles, Delilah and KitKat, and she is on her fourth husband. She wrote a book about a zillion years ago called
Kitty Tips; From One Cat Lover To Another
. She considers herself an expert in the field of feline veterinary medicine. By the time she has exhausted her homemade remedies on one of her sick cats and brings them in to Scott, it’s usually far too late to help them. Then she acts like Scott killed her beloved pussies through his incompetence, but she still keeps coming back. Scott thinks her only joy in life is torturing him. It took me at least ten minutes to schedule an appointment for her to bring in Muffles and get her off the phone.

I ran to the examining room to see what was happening
with Kurt. I’d never come across a rude bird with a beak problem before. As I turned the corner and reached the step, I tripped so that I landed right inside the doorway, head first, on my knees.

‘That’s one way of making an entrance,’ said Finn, reaching down and hauling me up like I was a sack of potatoes.

I glared at Ben. He not only had access to every bed in the roomy apartment upstairs but he was also the sole owner of his very own, comfortable, super soft, donut bed. And yet, he decides to take a mid-afternoon snooze on the step up to the examining room. Why didn’t we just give him a key to the apartment, since he acted like he owns it! Ben yawned and he seemed to be laughing at me. With Finn and Joanna, that would make three then. I glared at Joanna as well. She’s just as clumsy as I am so I didn’t know what she had to laugh about.

Finn picked up Kurt’s cage and stepped past me.

‘Still boooored!’ said Kurt.

‘Shut up, Kurt!’ said Finn, ‘And say hello to, what’s your name?’

‘Evangeline,’ I said, firmly, ‘but everyone calls me Evie.’

‘Say hello Evie,’ Finn instructed.

‘Hello, Evie, pleased to meet you,’ responded Kurt promptly and he held out one of his claws through the bars of his cage for me to shake.

‘My pleasure,’ I responded and shook his claw gingerly. I didn’t totally trust Kurt.

‘Finn – that’s an Irish name. Are your parents Irish?’ I asked.

‘Nope, not a drop of Irish blood as far as I know. My mom liked movies of Broadway musicals. Finn is her shorthand for
Finian’s Rainbow
.’

‘Oh, it’s lucky she didn’t call you Georg. You know, like Captain von Trapp from
The Sound of Music
,’ I pointed out.

‘Wow!’ said Finn, ‘you’re pretty close to the mark. That honour was reserved for my little brother, but we call him Greg now.’

‘Georg was way too cruel,’ he added.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Joanna, ‘I think “Georg” could be a cool name.’

Finn and I exchanged quick looks. ‘Georg’ could never be a cool name for anyone – boy, girl, straight, gay, nobody.

‘No charge for the visit,’ said Joanna, ‘just three dollars for the beak conditioner.’

I was able to sneak a long look at Finn as he dug his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. I’d never met a boy who owned a wallet before. Finn’s brown hair was a little long, just below his collar, and his eyes were dark and difficult to read. He had a dark shadow of stubble on his face and I wanted to reach up and touch it just to see what it felt like, but I didn’t. Mum always told me to try to recognise the times when it is important to pretend to be normal, and this was one of them.

As Finn pulled some dollar bills out of his wallet, I noticed he was left-handed and that two, thin, white scars stood out on his deeply tanned left arm. He looked at me looking at him.

‘Ice hockey,’ he said, ‘a contact sport.’ He handed over the cash to Joanna.

‘Bye, enjoy the rest of the weekend,’ she said, and Finn trooped out, carrying Kurt in his cage.

‘Tell someone who cares!’ screeched Kurt.

‘How old do you think Finn is?’ I asked Joanna casually when the coast was clear.

She looked at me with a little teasing smile, which I ignored.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I would guess sixteen.’

‘Way too old for you to be friends with,’ she added
unnecessarily
.

Scott and Leela returned from Wyoming the following evening and we ate Thai food together. As I was telling Scott about Kurt and Finn, Leela suddenly waved her chopsticks in the air, nearly taking one of Scott’s eyes out.

‘Finn WINTERS!’ she announced triumphantly. ‘I know about him. My law firm represented his mother in the divorce. Well, we did represent her until she stopped being able to pay our fees and then we dumped her!’ She moistened her lips before continuing.

‘Finn’s father is an eminent Park Avenue psychiatrist and his mother is a theatre producer. They had a very long, very expensive, nasty divorce, with the two boys caught right in the middle of a big custody battle and …’

Scott interrupted her abruptly.

‘I don’t think we want to hear gossip about your clients’ private affairs. Don’t lawyers have duties of confidentiality?’

Leela tossed her head, sending a long, stray, dark hair into my lemongrass soup.

I stared at it.

‘Please, honey,’ she snapped impatiently, ‘where would the tabloids that you read get their information from without the divorce lawyers? The case was the usual mess: the parents fighting, the lawyers fighting and filling their cash registers and the judge kept changing her decisions, giving the kids to the dad in one decision, then to the mom, then handing them back to the dad. Anyway, that kid, Finn, took matters into his own hands. He ran away on New Year’s Eve, taking the younger brother with him.’

‘Ran away,’ I gasped, forgetting about the hair slithering in my soup. ‘How old was he?’

‘Let me think. He must be fourteen now and the little brother, Craig or Greg, or something like that, is twelve,’ said Leela.

‘I thought Finn was at least sixteen,’ I said.

Leela continued, ‘Guess where the boys turned up?’

Scott and I remained silent.

‘WISCONSIN. They were living in a trailer home and Finn managed to talk himself into some job as an assistant to a mechanic in a garage. Apparently, some customer at the garage got suspicious and called the police who brought the boys back.’

‘What happened then?’ I asked, fascinated.

‘The parents were so shook up that they decided to stop the divorce litigation and fire all the lawyers. They mediated
an agreement and now the boys live fifty percent of the time with the mom and the other half with the dad. The mom still owes our firm money, though.’

But I had stopped listening. I had retreated deep inside my own head, thinking about a runaway. I would have been way too scared to do something like that.

Chapter 7

K
ylie and I hung out in my room this
morning. We were listening to a new singer on Scott’s iPad who had a name that sounded like a breakfast cereal.

‘She is my fashion inspiration,’ Kylie confided, as she
wandered
around my room, looking at my stuff. I admired the purple and orange streaks in her hair.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, picking up a shiny mahogany box and trying to open the lid, but it was locked.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just some stuff my mum put in there for me to open when I turn sixteen.’

‘Exciting!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s like a movie. What kind of stuff do you think is in there?’

I felt embarrassed.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Stuff about my dad, maybe, I never met him.’

‘Do you wonder about your dad?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I did when I was little,’ I added, to be totally honest.

‘Do you ever think he will turn up one day looking for you?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘No way. Only Mum believed that. She
was a hopeless romantic. Well, that’s what her friends said about her, but not in a mean way, just in a “that’s Alicia, that’s who she is” exasperated but accepting sort of way.’

‘Do you ever wonder about your biological parents in China?’ I asked.

‘Not really,’ she said and we both laughed. ‘But I go to this club once a month. It’s for adopted kids in Manhattan. There are so many of us. We talk about stuff but mostly we go on outings to museums and the Bronx Zoo and kayaking in the Catskills.’

‘What kind of stuff do you guys talk about?’ I asked.

Kylie shrugged.

‘Things. Like how annoying it is when some people find it hard to accept that an Asian kid has a white mom, that kind of thing. Remember last week when we were in Dylan’s Candy Bar and the woman in the ugliest jeans ever asked me where I was from and I said, “Here, New York” and she said, “No, I mean where are you
really
from?”’

Suddenly Kylie leaned over and touched the mute sign on the iPad.

‘What is that weird noise?’ she asked. It was coming from under my bed. I got down on my knees to investigate. I found Ben having a snooze and snoring happily.

‘That’s so cute,’ said Kylie.

‘How come it’s so cute when dogs snore but not cute at all when humans do?’

I didn’t know, but she was right. Eurdes barged into the room without knocking and I was kind of glad that she was
fully dressed, what with Kylie being there and all.

‘Dr Brooks is going to visit a pig and he wants to know if you and your friend want to go with him,’ she announced.

‘A pig, Eurdes? Are you sure he said
pig
?’

‘I can understand English, you know,’ she said, huffily. ‘That’s what he said, a pig, and I’m not paid to be a messenger.’

‘I’m sorry, Eurdes. I wasn’t doubting your English. I just didn’t think there were any pigs in the city.’

‘Huh, pigs, New York is full of them,’ and she snorted with laughter at her own joke.

‘Come on, let’s go!’ I said, hustling Kylie out of the door.

Ray’s apartment was in the East Village. He is a tall guy, around Scott’s age, with longish dark hair. He answered the door wearing a faded Snoopy t-shirt and orange flip-flops, revealing very long and crusty toenails. Kylie told me Ray is a hipster, which is a dying breed. In his apartment he had about six computers, all switched on. We trooped in single file behind him as he led us through to the back door.

‘Sorry about the mess. I don’t clean when I’m working, when I’m in the zone. You have to drop everything when the creative juices are pumping.’

‘I’m an animator,’ he added, looking at myself and Kylie. ‘I was almost part of a team that was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature last year.’

‘Cool!’ said Kylie. ‘What movies have you made?
Toy Story?

‘No.’

‘Cars?’

‘No.’

‘Gnomeo and Juliet?’

‘No.’

I had a try.

‘
The Fantastic Mr Fox?
That’s my favourite,’ I added.

‘No,’ said Ray, sounding a little peeved, ‘but I did an
oatmeal
commercial with animated bears. I’ll show it to you guys after the doc has looked at Arnold.’

For Kylie, Ray’s star factor had started to fade.

Scott had treated Arnold before and had told us about him during the car trip to Ray’s apartment.

‘He’s a miniature pot-bellied pig.’

‘Oh, a little pig, how sweet,’ said Kylie.

‘
Miniature
is relative,’ grinned Scott. ‘He weighs about a hundred and thirty pounds.’

‘Why would anyone keep a pig as a pet?’ I wondered.

‘Pigs are very intelligent and affectionate, and very clean,’ said Scott.

‘Don’t they smell bad?’ I asked.

‘Nope. That’s a myth. Arnold is about seven years old. He’s very good at opening things with his snout. The last time Ray called me, Arnold had learned to open the refrigerator and had gorged himself on everything in there, which was mainly old pizza. I think Ray got him at first just because he thought it would be “cool” to have a pet pig. But he didn’t turn around and abandon him like so many other people do when the novelty wears off. He’s pretty attached to that pig.’

‘What’s wrong with Arnold?’ asked Kylie.

‘Nothing. He needs a vaccination. It’s just one little shot.’

Ray opened the glass sliding doors to the long, narrow, concrete backyard. I thought Arnold would be pink but he was black. We could see him rooting through a soft mound of dirt at the far end of the yard. Scott told us to wait by the glass doors in front of the fence, which looked like it had been hammed together out of parts of Ikea furniture and painted white.

Scott took out his needle, filled it, scaled the fence and walked steadily towards the back of the yard. Arnold glanced up, saw Scott, didn’t like what he saw and charged. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move so fast. Scott made it back over the fence in three seconds flat. It’s pretty frightening when a wheelbarrow-sized portion of pork is pounding towards you.

‘Arnie, STOP!’ yelled Ray, and Arnold halted in his tracks.

‘Sit!’ commanded Ray, and Arnold sat, just like a
well-trained
dog.

Ray smiled with pride and fondness as he put a leash on the pig.

‘You can give it to him now, Dr Brooks,’ he said.

Scott didn’t waste time in giving Arnold the injection. Then he waved at us to come through the gate. Arnold rolled over for a belly rub and we obliged. His belly was soft but his back was hard and dense and there was a hairy Mohawk running along it.

‘You have great hair, Dr Brooks,’ said Kylie. ‘It didn’t even get ruined when you were sprinting away from Arnold.’

Scott looked at Kylie as if she had just teleported herself from Jupiter.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome,’ Kylie replied.

‘I’m thinking of getting another pig as a companion to Arnie,’ Ray said.

‘Pigs are very social creatures. I think Arnold would like that,’ Scott said, obviously relieved to move the subject away from his hair. ‘But you need more space.’

Then we went inside to watch the forty-five second
animated
bears oatmeal commercial on Ray’s computer, three times in a row, with Ray chuckling softly each time and humming the jingle as we watched. Scott intervened when Ray started to replay the commercial a fourth time.

‘Sorry, we have to go. Diesel, a pet white rat with a toothache, is waiting for us back at the clinic.’

Ray looked disappointed.

‘A rat, so gross!’ said Kylie. ‘Can you drop me off at Mom’s gallery on the way home?’

‘Sure,’ replied Scott.

‘Guys, talking of rats, I was nearly on the team that did the animation for the
Ratatouille
movie,’ said Ray.

We all stared at him.

‘That’s cool, Ray,’ said Scott.

Ray smiled and gave Kylie and me a disk, which he explained had more examples of his work.

‘Thank you,’ we said in unison.

As we drove up Third Avenue, I asked, ‘Scott, could I please
have a pot-bellied pig for my birthday next February, or for Christmas, that’s even sooner?’

‘You can take some time to think about it,’ I suggested generously.

Scott snorted.

‘I don’t need time, thanks. NO WAY to a pig. We don’t have the outdoor space and anyway, aren’t you going back to Ireland in September? So you won’t be here to take care of him.’

‘Yes, of course I’m going back,’ I said.

Scott didn’t look upset at all.

‘Oh, I didn’t know you were going back to Ireland,’ said Kylie. ‘That stinks!’

At least someone would miss me, I thought sulkily.