Central Park Showdown Read online

  Every year since 1985, in celebration of St Francis of Assisi, there has been an annual Blessing of the Animals in the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, an enormous grey Gothic building on Amsterdam Avenue and West 112th Street. On that day, everyone is welcome to bring his or her pets into the church to be blessed. I haven’t been to church a lot in my life but if animals were allowed, I think I would go almost every day. The thing that surprised me most was the silence. With thousands of animals, I thought that it would be bedlam but it was quiet except for the occasional bark or the flap of wings.

  As we approached the altar, the procession broke into separate lines towards the priests or the reverends for the individual blessings. Well, I’m not sure exactly who they were but they were men in religious-looking black robes. Greg and I got separated in the crowd and I wound up in a line behind a teenage boy carrying a tiny brown cardboard box not much bigger than a matchbox, with air holes punched into it. Maybe a tiny baby white mouse, I thought, scouting around and standing on my tippy-toes to get a better view. The kid opened the box and the priest shrieked and jumped to the side so quickly that he landed very heavily on my right foot. (I still have a black toenail). Inside the box crawled an enormous, obese cockroach. Barf. The priest recovered his composure pretty quickly and mumbled something about St Francis’s love for all God’s creatures, big and small, fat and thin, cute and … not-so-cute. Then he sprinkled a few drops of holy water into the box from a very safe distance. When it was Ben’s turn for the blessing, he behaved himself very well, only sneezing twice rather loudly and extending his left paw to the priest for a high five.

  The crowd in the cathedral didn’t look anything like the people you see every day in midtown Manhattan. You could tell these people didn’t give much thought to their clothes; they wore stretch pants and old grey sweatshirts, which said Harvard or Princeton or Google. They weren’t nearly as skinny and busy and important looking as most Manhattanites. I spotted Debbie, who runs an animal sanctuary uptown and I waved at her. She waved back with such enthusiasm that one of the bundle of wriggling kittens in her arms fell to the floor, landing perfectly balanced on its paws like a … cat.

  Scott and Greg found me and we took a heap of photos of the animals to show to the kids in school. We walked all the way home and I thought it is funny that I can miss Ireland so much and love New York so much at the same time. And for a short while, I almost forgot about the Big Freeze between Scott and Joanna.

  It’s been nearly a month since the Big Freeze began. My clumsy attempts at bringing Scott and Joanna together haven’t paid off. To be fair to myself, it’s pretty hard to effect a reconciliation between two people if you have to pretend you don’t know that they’re fighting.

  Joanna hardly ever comes up to the apartment anymore. I miss her.

  There’s a tension in the clinic that was never there before. Sometimes, it’s so thick and cloying, I feel I can almost touch it. Scott and Joanna are being ridiculously formal and polite with one another. It’s all: ‘Could you please pass me the small forceps if it’s not too much trouble,’ and ‘Certainly, I’ll do that.’ I’m beginning to wonder if that bump on their heads really did affect their brains. I wish Mum were here. She’d instinctively know what to say and do. She was a born peacemaker. Everyone said so. Nobody has ever said that about me.

  Chapter 6

  Today was a clear, sunny, early October Saturday, the kind of morning on which it’s impossible to maintain a bad mood without a great deal of effort. Scott suggested we take Ben for a long walk over by the East River. We took a taxi to East 34th Street and the FDR Drive and started our walk along a concrete footpath by the choppy, swollen river. We could see the buildings of Brooklyn on the far side.

  We were probably the slowest people on the path. Intense-looking joggers dodged around us without breaking their rhythm. We were even overtaken by a motorised wheelchair, driven by a wrinkled old white toothless woman dressed in a blue hospital gown. Scott was clearly preoccupied because he didn’t automatically glance at the pretty female joggers with their slicked back ponytails and their focused faces. I noticed that none of them were sweating. Kylie’s Mom, Rachel, said a few weeks ago that some women in Manhattan have their sweat glands surgically removed. Joanna replied ‘that’s an urban myth’ or maybe she said, she hopes that’s an urban myth, I can’t remember.

  There were few interesting smells for Ben to sniff until we reached the East River Park where his nose vibrated loudly with excitement. Scott told me that a dog’s nose is thousands and thousands of times more sensitive than human noses; we have about 5 million cells devoted to smelling but they have about 220 million.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, but then I thought of some of the more unpleasant putrid garbage type smells in the city especially in the summer and I didn’t feel envious of Ben. If I could have a superpower-enhanced sense, I would choose sight or maybe hearing, definitely not smell. Scott said that he would choose touch.

  A text from Lorcan distracted me.

  ‘Call me ASAP’

  I waved Scott and Ben ahead and leaned against the pier to call Lorcan. He invited me to hang out at his apartment around 7ish – just me, nobody else. I felt sort of honoured because Lorcan had very quickly established himself as one of the cool popular kids at school.

  ‘Will your dads be there?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, of course they’ll be here. It’s Saturday. It’s their laundry night. Nobody who lives in Manhattan goes out on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Um, see you later,’ I said thinking that for someone who has only lived in Manhattan for a couple of months, Lorcan had acclimatised very quickly. Finn would never say something like that. It’s the kind of smug elitist comment the one percenters would make. Lorcan’s been sitting at their lunch table in the school cafeteria a lot so he’d probably picked it up from them.

  When I caught up with Scott and told him about my plans with Lorcan, he began to interrogate me, which is so not like him.

  ‘Lorcan’s just a new friend,’ I pointed out. ‘I like being with him. He’s Irish. We get to talk about stuff we miss about Ireland like Club Milks.’

  ‘Clubs?’ said Scott in an amazed voice, ‘you’re a long, long way from going clubbing young lady.’

  He actually said that – ‘young lady.’ What has happened to SCOTT? Seriously, I need to dial 311 and get on to the mayor’s office. Are they putting something different in the water?

  Scott continued to rant.

  ‘I’ve seen those junior clubs on MTV, where they have the separate VIP area and everything. It’s crazy. I know EXACTLY what goes on in those kinds of places. You’re not going out with that Lorcan kid tonight.’

  ‘A club milk is a miniature CHOCOLATE bar,’ I wailed, ‘it’s a biscuit – or you’d say a cookie – covered in chocolate … and, and, never mind, Lorcan and I, we’re going to hang out in his apartment. His dads will be there! We’re just FRIENDS!’ I said huffily, thinking Scott sounded way too much like an annoying parent.

  ‘Of course, you’re just friends,’ said Scott, looking startled, ‘you’re not even thirteen yet. And BTW, I think thirty would be a good age for you to start exploring romantic relationships. Girls start dating too early.’

  ‘THIRTY! That’s ludicrous. Joanna was totally right, you’re NOT a grown-up,’ I huffed.

  Scott stopped walking instantly as if he was a toy robot and I had clicked his switch to the off position. He stared at me in a very disconcerting way, looking extremely serious and grown-up like my math teacher, Mr Papadopoulos.

  ‘Wow, look at that bird, Scott,’ I said a little desperately, pointing at a passing gull, ‘it’s so, em, so … bird-like’ I added lamely.

  Scott didn’t buy that distraction. Nobody above the age of two would have.

  ‘How do you know Joanna said I wasn’t a grown-up?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Em, that’s not important, I think what is important is Joanna is hurt. I think we are her business. You
know, like, she’s one of us.’

  Scott ran his hand through his hair so it stood up in spikes, the way he always does when he’s agitated.

  ‘You need to say sorry to her,’ I added a little forcefully.

  ‘Evie, you’re right. I know. Did Joanna tell you about our fight?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘and stop trying to go off topic,’ I added (rather brilliantly I thought), ‘you need to apologise to Joanna!’

  ‘I will,’ he said bleakly.

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  Scott sighed. ‘I feel like I have my very own personal Jiminy Cricket hanging around my neck,’ he grumbled.

  ‘When?’ I repeated.

  ‘As soon as we get back to the clinic,’ he answered and I felt satisfied and thought that perhaps, I’m not such a talentless fixer after all.

  Scott said, ‘Evie, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the day you fainted. I’m sorry I haven’t before. It must have been weird for you that we didn’t talk about stuff. Let’s sit down on this bench.’

  ‘Ok,’ I said.

  We sat on the bench and I waited for Scott to say something. He didn’t appear to be in a hurry. We watched the Circle Line cruise boat go by and I waved at the tourists wearing shorts and sneakers with white socks and baseball caps. Most of them waved back. I got bored with waiting for Scott to say something so I gave him a nudge.

  ‘Has this something to do with the guy who came into the clinic last month saying he was my dad?’ I prompted.

  Scott seemed grateful to get the help with the starting off bit.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I told him to get lost and never come back.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘Yeeees, but I’m sorry, I should have talked to you first,’ Scott said.

  ‘That’s ok,’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t you curious about him?’ Scott asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Nah. Couldn’t care less.’

  ‘Not even a little bit curious?’ quizzed Scott.

  ‘Nope. When I was little, I often thought about my Dad turning up – what he would say, what I would say, what kind of presents he would bring me, how he and Mum would get married and we’d all go live in some amazing villa on a beach or maybe in Italy with olive trees. We’d be a real family like the kind on TV. But I haven’t thought like that for a very long time. What I think about now is Mum lying all yellowish and tired looking in that white hospital bed. It would have meant something to her if he’d turned up, even then. But now! I mean, what’s the point? Who cares? Not me!’

  Scott patted me awkwardly on my back as if I had hiccups. I continued blabbing on.

  ‘All those years Mum spent waiting for him to get in touch. He never even sent a birthday or a Christmas card, not one lousy card.’

  Scott looked at me in a way like he felt bad for me and I rushed to explain,

  ‘It didn’t matter. We always got loads of cards from heaps of people. I don’t think anyone in the world had as many friends as Mum. We didn’t need Michael’s stupid cards. We didn’t need anything from him. And we don’t need him now. I mean, I don’t need him now. I have you.’

  Scott smiled and gave me a hug. I was glad to hide my face in his very soft cotton t-shirt for a few minutes so I could blink back tears of rage.

  ‘I agree with you, Evie. But I need to tell you something. I found out this week that Michael has filed a lawsuit to try and get custody of you. It’s nothing for you to worry about. My lawyer says we will easily beat it. The guy has no rights when it comes to you. Not after all this time.’

  I felt beyond terrible hearing this, like I was going to throw up for real this time. From my experience with Scott’s old sneaky snake-like girlfriend, Leela, I knew lawyers cost a lot of money.

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ said Scott, hugging me again, ‘my friend Rob, you remember, the one with the kid Harry and Zak, the meerkat, he’s going to be my lawyer, he’s great and he doesn’t cost too much. He’s just going to write some papers and the Judge will dismiss Michael’s case. Throw it out! That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Will we have to be in court?’

  ‘No,’ said Scott, ‘it’s nothing, it’s about as serious as a parking ticket case. No big deal. Michael doesn’t have a chance.’

  ‘Ok,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about all this trouble and the money and the lawyer.’

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry about!’ Scott reassured me, ‘and I’m not as broke as you seem to think I am! The clinic’s doing great and the extra job at the Zoo helps.’

  I felt better knowing that we weren’t on the brink of bankruptcy. We walked up to the baseball diamonds and sat on some bleachers and watched a team of girls beat a team of guys at softball. It wasn’t even close. The girls crucified them.

  Chapter 7

  That evening, I went to Lorcan’s apartment, a huge ground floor loft in a converted warehouse in Tribeca. It was very cold. Simon, one of Lorcan’s dads, let me in and sang out, ‘Lorcan, your girlfriend’s here.’

  It was highly embarrassing. On the other hand, I felt very grown-up being called anybody’s ‘girlfriend.’ Lorcan shouted out that he was in the john and he’d be out in a minute. (Boys can be so weird. I would never in a million years announce to a boy visitor that I was in the loo (unless the visitor was Greg and he doesn’t count as a boy boy). Simon’s from Galway in Ireland, but you would never be able to tell from his accent, which sounded more smoothly and blandly American than most Americans I knew.

  Peter (Lorcan’s other dad) handed me a pomegranate smoothie and then he and Simon went back to the kitchen area. I looked around me. The walls were hung with enormous blurry photographs of Lorcan and his dads in Hong Kong. I think the pictures were supposed to be out-of-focus.

  Lorcan’s family was too cool to have much furniture. There was only one chair in the room, which looked like it was made out of barbed wire. I sat down, cross-legged, on an old, raggedy, threadbare rug in the middle of the floor and sipped my smoothie.

  Simon stepped back into the room and let rip a roar in the strongest Irish accent imaginable,

  ‘OH MY GOD PETE, SHE’S SITTING ON THE NAZMIYAL!’

  He startled me so much that I almost dropped my smoothie. Simon sprinted across the room, grabbed my arms and swung me off the rug as if I were a toddler. He totally robbed me of the tiniest morsel of dignity.

  Simon practically had tears in his eyes. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me for the heinous crime of sitting on his stupid rug.

  Lorcan was very nice and cool about the incident. He said that the rug was hideously ugly and that I shouldn’t stress about it. (I wasn’t stressed about it. Simon’s the one who freaked out about nothing, but it was sweet of Lorcan to try and reassure me). We had fun hanging out. There really isn’t any topic that Lorcan can’t talk about. He told me that when he was little and lived in Hong Kong, he thought he was Chinese except he just looked different.

  ‘Didn’t that tip you off that you were different?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Lorcan, ‘there was a kid in my class who always had snots in his nose. I thought I was different in the same kind of trivial – but not disgusting – way.’

  Lorcan didn’t realise he wasn’t Chinese until his amah (that’s what he called his nanny) told him. He was devastated.

  That night when Scott came into my room to say goodnight, I asked, ‘Well, how did it go with Joanna?’

  I’m not going to lie to you Evie, not so great.’

  ‘What does that mean? Not so great? You said sorry, right? You used the word “sorry”?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. But sorry isn’t a magic word. You can’t just wave it around like a wand and voila, the rabbit jumps out of the hat into your arms.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ I asked, ‘Is Joanna supposed to be the bunny in this scenario because I don’t think she’d like that at all. I hope you didn’t start talking about rabbits jumping out of hats.’

  ‘No, I do have some experi
ence with dealing with women. What do you take me for?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said, ‘what did Joanna say when you said sorry?’

  ‘She said she doesn’t want to become my partner in the clinic anymore,’ he said bleakly.

  ‘Way harsh,’ I said sympathetically, ‘do you think she means it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Scott.

  ‘What else did she say?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm. Something less than flattering about my fitness as a partner. I think her sugar levels might have been a little low. You know what she’s like when she hasn’t had her daily box of muffin bite bakes Baked by Melissa.’

  I didn’t buy that one little bit. I glared at him.

  ‘I’m not sure you apologised properly, an all-the-way on your knees apology, a I completely messed up and I will die if you don’t forgive me apology.’

  Scott looked a little like someone who has brazenly skipped the line at the movie theatre in front of a hundred people but acts like nobody noticed.

  ‘You can’t push people, Evie. I said I was sorry, what else can I do? Joanna is Canadian.’

  My mouth dropped open. I mean, seriously! Scott’s old Joanna-is-a-Canadian stand-by.

  It seemed pretty obvious to me that Scott didn’t do nearly well enough with his apology. Sounded like an ‘F’ grade apology to me. I was about to tell him so when something stopped me. I felt suddenly older than Scott and wise like Oprah. Scott needed to figure this one out by himself. He looked at me in a puzzled way.