Central Park Showdown Read online

  ‘Awee has a history of depression,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know animals could get depressed,’ I said.

  ‘Red pandas are susceptible to depression because of inbreeding,’ Scott explained, ‘although we have a lot of zoologists here in the US and around the world doing a great job on implementing the red panda species survival plan. They are trying to stamp out inbreeding and the problems it can cause like depression.’

  ‘Red pandas are sometimes called lesser pandas,’ he added.

  ‘Being labeled “lesser” would be enough to depress anyone,’ I observed.

  At that moment, Stanley startled us by making a series of eerily-realistic yipping noises. He was completely unselfconscious about it. Awee uncurled his tail and I got a look at his face. His eyes were like two glittering black diamonds and he had a white muzzle. He looked like a soft toy, the super expensive kind from FAO Schwartz. Scott handled him very gently, took some blood for testing and some fecal samples, which is a scientific way of saying poop.

  Still yipping, Stan stroked Awee’s head. He seemed to like it.

  ‘Right, I’ll get back to you with the results as soon as I can,’ said Scott.

  ‘Yip,’ said Stan.

  The visit to the zoo distracted me from my problems, but as Scott and I ambled home through the Park, I felt sick in the very bottom of my guts at the prospect of having to go to school again tomorrow. When I casually mentioned to Scott the potential benefits of home schooling, he burst out laughing in a very irritating way and said I will be ‘fine.’ Very helpful.

  Chapter 3

  I am lying here on my bed in my overly-girly, pink room counting the minutes until my second day of school will begin. In the corner, staring into space is Ella, a huge, soft toy elephant I got as a gift from a famous actor when I was a kid. Ben is sleeping, lying diagonally across the bed taking up a lot of space and making adorable little soft woofing sounds as if he’s hunting squirrels in his dreams. He is lying on his back so his large snowshoe paws are scrabbling around in the air like he’s riding a bicycle upside down. His eyes are wide open, which is a little creepy. I would like to shut them with my hand the way they do to dead people on TV, but I’ve never seen anyone do that to someone alive so I think I’ll let it go. What I can’t let go of is all the stuff that happened last week. I was able to block it out for a while in my excitement (and terror) about starting a new school. However, the most annoying thing about blocked problems is that they sit there in the dark side of your brain, growing bigger and bigger until finally, there isn’t enough space left in your head to think about anything but them.

  I wish I could make last week go away, so far away that it’s not even a memory. Everything had been almost perfect – we felt almost like a family. Now, Joanna isn’t even speaking to Scott and it’s all the fault of that man, the one who turned up in the clinic as if he was an ordinary veterinary pharmaceutical salesman and casually announced to Karen, our receptionist, that he’s my father. The nerve of that guy! Who does he think he is? Oh. I suppose he thinks he’s my father. But still – there should be a law prohibiting people from going around disturbing happy people by claiming to be their relatives.

  I am trying to piece together all the events of last week. It’s doing a mental jigsaw puzzle when you know some of the pieces might be missing. Janet, my godmother back in Ireland, is always criticising the sort of people she calls glass-half-empty types, which is the worst thing anyone can be other than a cheapskate or a mass murderer. I’m concentrating on the pieces of the puzzle that I do have instead of agonising about what might be missing. It takes a lot more effort to be a glass half-full person. I don’t know yet if it’s worth it.

  Let me see. Oh yeah. I remember being in the examining room in the clinic with Scott and Joanna, the other practice vet, and Dodger, the Great Dane. As I carried the microscope across the room, Karen, our receptionist, came in and told us that there was a man in the waiting room saying he was my father. Then I remember being enveloped in a thick duvet of blurry, inky blackness, a warm kind of darkness and, after that, a falling sensation. It wasn’t anything like being on the downward path of a rollercoaster. It was much slower, like the way a person jumps off a building in slow motion in a movie. The next thing I remember, I’m in my own bed in my room and Joanna is hovering over me and telling me to keep still and offering me a glass of grape juice.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘You fainted, but you’re going to be fine.’

  ‘I FAINTED? Are you sure? I’ve never fainted before. Where’s Scott?’

  ‘He’s in the clinic,’ Joanna replied.

  ‘Scott is dealing with the … with the … situation. Everything is going to be okay. Get some rest,’ she added as she walked across the room and closed the blinds on the window.

  I didn’t want to stay in my room in the semi-darkness while Scott was dealing with a situation all by himself. So I flung back the sheets and tried to jump out of bed but the room started spinning and I felt dizzy. Joanna was back at my side immediately, checking my pulse. Then she pulled up a chair beside my bed and sat down in it and crossed her legs, making it very clear that leaving my room wasn’t an option. I must have fallen asleep for a while. Although how I could sleep with a situation going on astounds me but I guess fainting must be pretty tiring.

  When I woke up, it was dark outside and Joanna was gone so I brushed my teeth and crept downstairs. Nobody was around but Karen, shutting the clinic for the night. At first, she refused to tell me anything about the situation. But after some over-the-top begging on my part, she relented.

  ‘The man who said he is my father; what did he look like?’

  ‘He was cute,’ said Karen, ‘and tall, you know, maybe not that tall, probably average height, with black hair and amazing grey eyes just like … Whatever, and he sounded … I don’t know, I’m not good at recognising accents, but it wasn’t like your brogue, it was South African or maybe Australian. I find it hard to tell the difference.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

  ‘Michael Carey.’

  I think I gasped a little at that because that’s my father’s name. Mum told me although there’s a blank on my birth certificate in the space for the father’s name because the hospital wouldn’t let Mum put his name down without his consent. She couldn’t get his permission because he ran off before I was born.

  ‘So, what happened next?’ I asked Karen.

  ‘The guy, Michael, said he wanted to see you and that he was your father. Then he sat down on that chair right there, the one with the loose back that I keep nagging Scott to fix.’

  I gestured impatiently and Karen, who does not like to be rushed, pointedly took an agonising minute to check for text messages on her cell phone before continuing.

  ‘Michael pretended he was reading one of the doggie magazines, the August issue, the one with the photograph of the Pomeranian dressed up as Lady Gaga on the front, so cute, but I could tell he wasn’t really reading. I went into the examining room and told you guys about him and that’s when you collapsed. What a commotion! Scott and Joanna bumped their heads together so hard that I was sure they would need brain surgery. The microscope shattered all over the floor. I’m still picking shards of glass out of my hair. And Dodger escaped, knocking over all the cans of cat and dog food. I wanted to stick around the examining room and make sure you were ok, Evie, but Scott told me to go back to the desk in the waiting room.’

  I nodded, and waited for her to continue.

  ‘Then Scott came striding in here looking very scary. Menacing. That’s the word. Like a mafia hit man except obviously Scott doesn’t look Italian, more Swedish mafia type. Do they have the mafia in Sweden?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, restraining myself with difficulty from adding, ‘and I couldn’t care less.’

  ‘Go on with what happened,’ I urged.

  ‘Michael stood up and held out his hand, but Scott just ignored it
and said right upfront, “Who the hell are you and what do you want?”

  Michael lowered his hand and said, “You must be Scott. Alicia talked about you all the time. You look so like her. Could we maybe go somewhere where we can talk?”

  And Scott looked at him as if he was a nasty virus that had just blown here from a cave in Uganda, the kind of plague that makes you cry blood from your eyeballs and said, “You’ve got thirty seconds right here, right now.”

  Michael said something like, “I know it wasn’t right to just turn up here unannounced but I didn’t know what else to do. I only found out a couple of weeks ago that Alicia died and I just, I don’t know, I want to find out what happened to the baby and try to make things right.”

  “Evie’s not a baby, she’s nearly thirteen,” said Scott and he said it with so much disgust that I almost felt sorry for your dad.’

  I felt so weird hearing Karen say; ‘my dad,’ but I asked ‘what happened next?’

  ‘Scott told Michael, “You’ve had your thirty seconds and I’m not interested in hearing more. You abandoned Evie before she was even born. You abandoned Alicia, leaving her alone and terrified and pregnant on the other side of the Atlantic. What kind of man does something like that?”

  Michael tried to say something. I couldn’t make out what it was but Scott cut him off.

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses. You abandoned them. Even if you are Evie’s biological father, it takes a lot more than biology to be a dad. If I ever see you again, if you try to contact my niece in any way, I will get the police involved and have you thrown in jail and deported. Now, get the hell out of my clinic!”

  Michael turned and headed to the door and when he reached the door, he turned back and said,

  “I understand how angry you must be. But she is my daughter and I will not give up.”

  ‘Evie, I am telling you, I felt like I’d been dropped into the middle of a Lifetime movie,’ said Karen, shaking her head in wonder.

  Not a very good one, I thought.

  ‘What happened next? Did the guy, Michael, leave?’ I asked.

  ‘Scott moved towards him and I thought for a few seconds that he was going to hit him, but Michael held up his hand and said, “Calm down mate, I’m going.”’

  Interesting. I stared hard at Karen.

  ‘What did you and Scott do next?’

  ‘I cleaned up the examining room. It took forever but I’m not looking for any extra pay. These things happen and we all have to pitch in. Scott went upstairs to check on you. How are you feeling anyway?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said a little impatiently.

  ‘I’m feeling a little scared of Scott right now,’ said Karen, ‘I shouldn’t have told you any of that stuff. Scott’s going to fire me. Kill me and then fire me.’

  I gave Karen a quick hug.

  ‘No, he’s not, he won’t ever find out you told me. And you did the right thing! I have a right to know. I mean, the guy is claiming to be my father.’

  ‘Yeah, ok,’ said Karen, ‘and personally, not that Scott asked for my opinion, but I think he should go after that guy for thirteen years of unpaid child support! That’s what I would do! Make the guy suffer in his wallet!’

  Karen then launched into some complicated anecdote about her cousin’s friend, Lindsey, (or it could have been Mindy), who has been chasing her baby’s daddy for unpaid child support across five different states. I tuned out. I needed to think.

  Chapter 4

  After talking with Karen, I went upstairs to find Scott. He was just coming in the apartment door, struggling to carry a big pizza, half-plain, half-pepperoni, and two cans of zero coke. Scott acted like it was a normal ordinary day. He clearly didn’t want to talk about anything important because as we ate, he kept up a running commentary on every supreme escape-artist animal he has ever treated, right up to Dodger. A stranger listening in might get the impression that all of his patients are mentally disturbed. Scott once had a hamster patient called Gladiator who escaped from the clinic here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and turned up three months later in a penthouse suite in a hotel in South Beach, Miami, pregnant and dressed in a doll’s bikini.

  Scott said stuff happens in South Beach.

  Carlos, the owner, was thrilled to be reunited with his hamster but when he got her home, he changed her name to Gladys.

  Scott never mentioned the situation. I couldn’t figure out how to bring it up. After we devoured most of the pizza, Scott insisted that I return to my room to rest. The very last thing I wanted to do was sleep. Instead, I sneaked down to the clinic and crawled into one of my favourite thinking spots behind the crates for the very large dogs in the back room. I had my phone with me so I thought about texting Kylie or Greg, but I couldn’t figure out what to say. ‘Had pizza for supper, extra cheesy, and btw my dad’s turned up.’

  I was still thinking about what to say to them when Joanna came in looking for some flea medication for cats, which was pretty odd at that time of night, but we have some annoying clients like Mrs Rubenstein who think fleas fall within the definition of ‘emergency.’ Scott followed Joanna into the room and shut the door. I swear I was about to jump up and let them know I was there, but Joanna said to Scott,

  ‘So, what are you going to do about Evie’s dad?’

  There are probably kids out there who could resist the temptation to eavesdrop in those circumstances. I’m not one of them. I didn’t make a sound.

  Scott replied, ‘Do? What am I going to do? Nothing! There’s nothing to be done. Even if this guy is the Michael Carey, so what? Turning up here now, after what? Thirteen years! That’s way too little, way too late.’

  ‘But,’ said Joanna, ‘what did he say?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Scott in a bored voice.

  Joanna raised her eyebrows in an exasperated manner.

  ‘Him! Michael! Evie’s dad.’

  ‘Not much. I didn’t want to hear his excuses. You think I was going to hang around and offer the guy a beer and tell him what a great guy he is for the way he treated Alicia and Evie?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Joanna, ‘but I thought you might at least talk to him enough to figure out whether he is Evie’s father and if so, what he wants to do about that?’

  ‘You really are Pollyanna living in a Pollyanna world,’ said Scott in a fake amazed voice. I winced. That’s absolutely the meanest thing I have ever heard him say.

  ‘It was Anne of Green Gables actually,’ said Joanna stiffly, referring to the summer job she had as a kid – dressing up as Anne Shirley and posing with tourists – ‘And I was thinking about EVIE. Doesn’t she have the right to know if this Michael guy is her father and to have a relationship with him?’

  ‘I can’t believe your attitude, Joanna,’ said Scott, ‘whose side are you on? You want me to send Evie off to the movies with that loser or I know, why don’t I let him take her on a trip to Disneyland?’

  ‘Don’t be flippant,’ snapped Joanna, ‘that’s not what I’m suggesting at all. All I’m saying is we need to think about this and talk about it with Evie and maybe hear what Michael has to say.’

  ‘We don’t need to do anything,’ replied Scott, ‘this isn’t any of your business, Joanna. None of it is your business. Evie is my niece. I am her sole guardian and I know what’s best for her.’

  Joanna looked like Scott had just whacked her across her kneecaps with a hockey stick. Hard. She screwed up her mouth and bit her lip and looked so horribly wounded that I had to turn my head away. I stared at the wall behind me, which had a bluish stain in the shape of the outline of an owl. I didn’t understand how Scott could have been so very mean to Joanna, like she’s not important to us at all. She is important to us – to me! Joanna’s been amazing to me ever since I moved to New York. I would always pick her for my team, no matter what game we were playing.

  ‘You’re right, it’s none of my business,’ said Joanna in a voice so cold it could have regenerated the melting polar caps.
/>
  I heard her open the door.

  ‘You know, Scott,’ she said, ‘I thought you had finally decided to grow up but you don’t have it in you,’ and she left.

  Although I had excruciating pins and needles, I didn’t dare move at all because Scott lingered in the room for aaaaaages. First, he kicked some empty cartons around but one of the boxes was full of cans of dog food and he yelped with pain. Then, he mooched around, doing nothing, just staring at the ceiling. When I reached the point of risking developing gangrene from the lack of blood supply to my legs, Scott left, turning off the light, leaving me alone in the dark with only the outline of an owl for company.

  Ben wakes up and yawns widely in a satisfied manner, distracting me from my thoughts. It’s a relief to see his eyes without that disturbing dead wide-eyed glassy look. I scratch his ears absentmindedly. I know this whole mess with the Michael guy and the horrendous row between Scott and Joanna isn’t my fault. Really, I do. I know that one hundred percent absolutely clearly … but it feels like it’s my fault in a roundabout way. So, it’s up to me to try and fix things and I’m not feeling overconfident about my abilities as a fixer.

  Chapter 5

  Greg and I walked slowly up the nave of the cathedral, about midway in the procession, he carrying his black rabbit, Dr Pepper, and me walking Ben, although sometimes it seemed like he was walking me. Directly ahead of us, a baby camel swayed slightly right and left in a dignified manner, led by his owner, a hefty, middle-aged woman with waist-length, black hair and muscular forearms, decked out in costume like a character in A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. A little further ahead, we spotted a kangaroo, a donkey, three ducklings, a small unidentifiable furry animal and a huge Galapagos turtle. Close on our heels were a potbellied pig, two pheasants, a fennec fox, a macaw and thousands and thousands of dogs and cats. It looked more like a scene from Noah’s Ark in Biblical times than an ordinary Sunday in Manhattan except none of the animals walked in pairs and there wasn’t even a hint of rain. We passed Scott, sitting in the fourth pew, and he winked at us.