We Were The Mulvaneys Part 51

Up in the cabin, again m.u.f.fin refused to eat. Sniffed at his food as if he'd forgotten what food was. And again he lay on the floor, tawny eyes going inward.

Next day, Marianne was so distracted at the market, Janie asked her what on earth was wrong, and Marianne laughed lightly and said, "Just life, I guess." Janie had learned not to question Marianne too closely, and so asked nothing more.

Again when Marianne returned to the cabin, she had to hunt out m.u.f.fin in the woods, more remote than ever. And again he refused to eat, turning away with a look of disdain. It seemed to Marianne that his eyes that had always been so beautiful were going flat, dull.

"m.u.f.fin, can't you try? Oh, please try."

Of course, Marianne had known for some time that m.u.f.fin wasn't "a hundred percent"-as Coninne used to say of an ailing person or animal-but she hadn't wanted to dwell upon it. She knew that m.u.f.fin was aging-in fact, old. Was he fifteen? Sixteen? Her mind went vague. She held him on her lap and petted him and wondered what would happen next even as her mind held to its vagueness, an upright wall of fog. She smiled recalling how, as foundling kittens never weaned, m.u.f.fin and his twin Big Torn had eaten so ravenously, and so often, everyone in the household was amazed. You would put food in the cats' plastic dishes, turn around for a moment, and next thing you knew-the dishes were licked clean, and the kittens were looking up expectantly, hungry for more. Dad marveled that the kittens ate more than he did, pound for pound. Patrick swore they were growing daily-hourly. When Morn had brought them home, from where they'd been abandoned on a country road, they'd been so tiny both could fit in the palm of her hand; at their heaviest, in the sleek, l.u.s.trous prime of mature cathood, they'd each weighed more than twenty pounds.

Now, m.u.f.fin probably weighted no more than seven pounds. Five?

Be realistic, Marianne.

Yes, she knew. But there'd be time to be realistic, wouldn't there, when there was no other choice?

S0 Marianne decided instead to take m.u.f.fin to the Stump Creek Hill Animal Shelter & Hospital, of which she'd been hearing such good things since coming to Sykesville. It was only a few miles away and next morning, early, she managed to get a ride with a local farmer, carrying m.u.f.fin not in the cardboard box but on her lap. The farmer was doubtful about just dropping her off at the end of the sandy driveway marked STUMP CREEK HILL ANIMAL SHELTER & HOSPiTA!., wouldn't she want him to conic by and pick her up, later?-but Marianne said no, thank you, she'd be fine. Walking then up the quarter-mile drive, m.u.f.fin in her arms, the two of them blinking and staring about them. A strange place-an old estate apparently, now given over to the care of animals; a broad stone house and a carriage house each weatherworn as aged grave markers, yet with bright yellow shutters and trim, and the front area overgrown and tangled as a jungle, lush with wild tiger lilies, goldenrod, and Queen Anne's lace. There were various outbuildings and sheds, and a graveled parking lot in which a half dozen vehicles were parked. To the rear was a yellow picket fence and twin gates nl2rked ENTER and EXIT, leading to what appeared to be an outdoor zoo. m.u.f.fin's pale nose began to twitch with the raffish smell of animals. There was a sound of excited screeching, jabbering in the distance. m.u.f.fled barking. Marianne saw a gigantic bird-iridescent niidmght blue, exquisitely beautiful, with a quivering feather crown and a long tail dragging in the dust-a peac.o.c.k?-ambling across the parking lot, and in its wake a smaller pure-white bird-a peahen? Farther along the lane were several deer, a small loose tame herd. Marianne stared-at least two of the deer were young bucks, with only three legs.

Marianne let herself into the niain house, through a door marked ANIMAL HOSPITAL PLEASE ENTER. She was in a veterinarian's waiting room with a shabby linoleum floor and an oilcloth-covered counter and several slightly sc.u.mmy gla.s.s-fronted cages with handmade signs ORPHANS! PLEASE ADOPT! inside which a number of small kittens slept, played with one another, stared through the gla.s.s. "Oh, look, m.u.f.fin! Aren't they sweet?" Marianne whispered. But Muflin scarcely looked, and Marianne herself could hardly bear to meet the kittens' eyes. A stringy-haired girl behind the counter, name tag RHODA, took Marianne's name and asked what the problem was, staring at m.u.f.fin, and Marianne explained, as clearly and brightly as she could, and it seemed to her, unless sh- imagined it, that the stringy-haired girl muttered, "Uh-oh," in a discouraged tone. There was no one ahead of Marianne, but the telephone rang, rang, rang for Rhoda to answer. After a few anxious minutes of studying a sunfaded poster PET OWNERS GUARD AGAINST RABIES- Marianne heard her name called, and quickly followed Rhoda into a frankly stalesmelling interior, a warren of rooms. At the end of a long corridor, as a door opened, there caine a noisy clamor of barking and yipping, before the door swung shut again. Marianne hugged m.u.f.fin tight in case lie should panic, but he didn't move, at all.

In one of the examining rooms was Dr. West, Whittaker West as he introduced himself, an impatient-looking man of moderate height, just slightly stoop-shouldered, in a soiled white jacket and khaki trousers. He hardly glanced at Marianne and surely hadn't heard her name as in the first instant his practiced eyes moved upon poor skinny m.u.f.fin-exaniifled, a.s.sessed, made a judgment. "Your cat is seriously ill, I'm afraid. How old is he?"

"How old? I-don't know," Marianne stammered.

The vet muttered a skeptical reply. Brusquely he removed m.u.f.fin from Marianne's arms and set hiiii upon the examination table, peered into his ears, his eyes, his mouth with a small lighted instrument; examined his teeth; palpated his abdomen, at some length. As he cx- aniined m.u.f.fin he spoke to him, not in words but in murmurs, Hmrnm? hrnmrn? hmmm? hmmm? Marianne spoke of m.u.f.fin's gradual loss of appet.i.te and his loss of weight, his recent, strange behavior in the woods-"He's never done anything like that before, he isn't an outdoor cat." Dr. West grunted as if he'd heard it all before, or wasn't listening. Marianne saw with disapproval that he hadn't even troubled to put on rubber gloves, like any other vet; his fingers were covered in nicks and scratches, splashed with iodine. His nails were wide and blunt and edged with dirt. His hair, thinning at the crown, was thick, lank, rather greasy at the sides of his head, that dull dun color of a deer's winter coat. Marianne said, trying to be helpful, "I think he's somewhere beyond twelve years old. His fir is so clean and healthy, isn't it? So soft." She spoke pleadingly. Dr. West did not respond. "It's hard to believe he's sick, except for losing weight. His eyes are clear. He still purrs." "His eyes are possibly turning yellow," the vet said almost carelessly. "Jaundice." "Oh, no-they've always been goldentawny. All his life." Again Dr. West muttered a skeptical, not quite audible reply. Marianne seemed to hear Be realistic. Realistic!

Through a haze of tears Marianne saw that the examination was over, unless it had been halted midway. The vet continued to stroke m.u.f.fin, with deft, practiced fingers, and m.u.f.fin, who for all his docility and shyness had sometimes panicked at the hands of other vets, lay unmoving, splay-legged, on the crinkly tissue paper covering the tabletop. Marianne too reached out to touch him-his bony head, the soft fur covering it. She wished that m.u.f.fin would glance up at her, in recognition of her, or simple acknowledgment; but he did not. Why, he seemed almost to be siding with this stranger, Whittaker West! There was some perverse stubborn maleness to it, a subtle repudiation of her. Marianne asked what seemed to be wrong with m.u.f.fin, and Dr. West said, shrugging, "He's old. Happens to us all." Marianne said, with childlike tenacity, "But what, exactly? It has to be something" Dr. West said, "I can do a blood test, a urinalysis, but it's almost certain your cat is suffering from kidney failure. His bloodstream is slowly filling up with toxins. It's been happening for months." "Oh, but isn't there anything you can do?" Marianne asked. "Nothing I can do, at Stump Creek Hill," Dr. West said. Marianne said quickly, "Somewhere else, then? Could he be helped somewhere else?" For the first time, Dr. West looked at Marianne. She could not meet his frank, searching gaze; she was blinking tears from her eyes, frightened she might break down. How ashamed she was of herself, begging for m.u.f.fin's life as she would never have begged for her own. How Corinne would wring her hands if she knew, scolding Be realistic, Marianne. Haven't I told you and told you! Whittaker West, this stranger so familiarly kneading Muflin's fur, stroking his ears and the underside of his chin as if they were old, old friends, was looking at her sternly, saying, "An animal knows when its time has come. That's why-is it m.u.f.fmn?has been slipping away into the woods. He prefers a quiet, dark, private place in which to die. Wouldn't you? Iwould. Of course he loves you, but the part of him that loves you, or even knows you, is fading. His cat-self, his instinct is emerging. Why not let him follow his instinct? You can't be bringing him back forever, can you?" Marianne stammered, ashamed of her desperation, but persisting, "Oh, forever is such a long time. Isn't there some way m.u.f.fin can be helped, forjust now?"

"At the most, he probably wouldn't live for more than another six months," Dr. West said reluctantly. "And it's expensive." "I have money saved," Marianne said eagerly. She knew she didn't look exactly prosperous- in her rumpled T-s.h.i.+rt and denim cut-offs and Sandals, summer wear for working at the farm market, but she'd brought along her wallet, thick with bills; her hands shook as she fumbled for it. "I could pay you ahead of time, Doctor. Oh, don't let him die!" "I can't do the procedure here, we don't have the facilities. There's a clinic in Pittsburgh that might do it-a kind of dialysis. Bloodcleansing," Dr. West said. And Marianne said, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with hope, "How soon can it be done, Dr. West? Today?"

There was a moment's silence. Marianne distinctly heard the vet grinding his teeth.

Finally he said, with a sigh, curtly, "You're in luck, miss. I happen to be driving to Pittsburgh later this morning with a van of ailing animals and I can take m.u.f.fin along. The procedure will involve not less than forty-eight hours and It isn't guaranteed- understand? You should be prepared for never seeing your cat alive again."

Marianne tried a smile, wavering and uncertain. "Oh, I'm prepared," she said brightly.

That lilting insincere brightness on the edge of despair: how like Corinne Mulvaney she was sounding!

So she said good-bye to m.u.f.fin, who scarcely responded, and hurried out. Thinking then that she should have left a deposit, a down payment, how would Dr. West know he could trust her?

In a daze then, vaguely smiling, Marianne wandered back through the parking lot, hoping for another glimpse of the peac.o.c.k and his hen, and the herd of deer. There were chattering guinea hens and a high-stepping bantam rooster running loose, there was a scrawny black tomcat with two half-ears sunning himself on the hood of a battered Chevy pickup. Marianne petted him, daringly- you never can tell, with a strange cat-but he merely blinked at her, lazy and content. It was a heating-up sort of August morning, the kind that begins damp and almost cool and turns baking by noon. A happy, hopeful day. No ticket seller at the ENTRANCE gate, just an orange plastic container STUMP CI-EEK HILL ANIMAlS NEED ALL YOU CAN GIVE THEM! so Marianne took a five-dollar bill from her wallet (yes, she'd saved plenty of money working as Penelope Hagstrorn's a.s.sistant) and pushed it into the slot. The pungent smell of animals drew her. Manure and hay, that just-slightly-rancid-pleasurable smell. A sharper smell-what was it? the antiseptic spray they'd used, at the farm, when the cows calved?-but this was sweeter somehow. And someone had been mowing deep gra.s.s, a wet green pungent smell, laced with wild onion.

How much larger the Stump Creek Hill shelter was than Marianne had antic.i.p.ated!-it must have covered acres. Visitors were starting to arrive, mothers with young children, retired-looking older couples. Not a very prosperous zoo, sort of shabby and blurred at the edges. Weeds poked through the sand paths, there were tall oaks badly in need of trinuning. Droppings underfoot from the stray wandering tame deer, buzzing with flies. Marianne read a sun-faded poster; Stump Creek Hill is the only federally and state-licensed zoo in the United States dedicated to the care of sick, injured, abandoned and elderly wildlife and domestic animals. Founded 1974 by Whittaker West. YOUR DONATIONS GREATLY AI'PRECIA TED! Marianne wandered from one animal compound to another, enthralled. She had never been in such a place before, nor had even heard of such a place. Her parents had taken them to zoos in Port Oriskany and Rochester, but those were very different-somehow so sad, you ended up wanting to leave early. But the Stump Creek Hill zoo was like home.

Each of the animals had not only a name but a story. There was King Sheba the mountain lion, mistreated as a cub in a Florida safari zoo and "retired" now to Stump Creek Hill-a huge-headed sand- colored cat with sleepy eyes, an enormous nose, matted mane.

There were Masha, Iriria and Olga, capuchin monkeys "abandoned by the roadside" in North Carolina, crowding against the wire fence, peering at Marianne as if they recognized her. There was Hickory the blind mule pony from New Jersey. There was Big Ben the Bengal tiger "rescued" from a traveling circus in New Mexico, there was Rocky the silver fox, three-legged since "misfortune in a hunter's trap" in Maine, there was Lena the llama, "donated" by a circus owner when he discovered she had cataracts in both eyes-a shy creature, handsome, the size of a mature deer, with white facial markings and the thick, nappy fur of a well-worn teddy bear. There was Joker the rhesus monkey, "sole survivor" of a shut-down research inst.i.tute in New Mexico. There was Big Girl the Vietnamese potbellied pig who'd "outgrown her owner's affections" arid was donated to the zoo, an enormous gray creature, no eyes that Marianne could see, creased like a satchel and stretched out luxuriantly in the shade. There was Princess the jaguar, a beautiful black_spotted big cat discovered "abandoned and starved" by a roadside in Minnesota. There was Sweetheart the Adirondacks bobcat missing a leg, there was Hickey the hyena, another mistreated former zoo resident, there were Cinderella and Svengali the "Thoroughbred ex-trotters from Saratoga Springs." There were donkeys, sheep, goats in barnyard pens and free-ranging fowl of all sorts-chickens, ducks, geese.

Shyly tame, there were 'oose deer. The zoo's main attraction, apart from the big cats and the playful chattering monkeys, were Delilah and Samson the African elephants who had been slated for "termination" by their Oregon zoo owner unless a new home could be found for them, fast-"As devoted a married pair as you'll ever meet, and just look at the size of those feet-" Marianne laughed she wondered if Whittaker West had written that. She wondered if the entire zoo was his-his idea, his scheme.

All that day, and it was a hot, dry, baking August day, Marianne wandered about the zoo. She helped staff workers scatter seed for the fowl; she helped a hara.s.sed young woman, name tag TRUDI, hose down the elephants and pigs. She'd forgotten to eat that morning, so made a meal, salty and delicious, of peanuts and popcorn from the vending machines marked BUY HERE 10 -EEI) ANIMALS- washed down with a lukewarm Royal Crown soda. More visitors caIne, more children. The zoo was a popular place, it seemed. Marianne sat for a while on a rickety bench in the shade of a big oak, watching Ezra, Smoke, ChaCha and Fleur the black bears being fed by their attendants-bare-chested teenaged boys who reminded her so much of her brothers, years ago, she had to shut her eyes finally. Moved to another rickety bench to watch Bo, Peep. Louie and LaLa, wild Barbary sheep in their compound, until she dozed off. Midafternoon, late afternoon. Sun-dappled shade. She had nowhere to go. She had found her way here, and had nowhere to go. But no-of course she did--he'd forgotten the little whitewashed wood-frame cabin in the Wayside Motor Court in-where was it? Not Spartansburg, she'd left Spartansburg weeks ago. The name would come to her in a minute, not that she needed a name to find her way back. Not that it mattered where she was exactly since she'd be moving on soon. When m.u.f.fin was returned to her she would know more clearly what her plans might be.

She thought of this strange zoo, this haven for animals. The abandoned, the mistreated, the sick, the injured. "Survivors." What would Patrick think? It's ridiculous to be sentimental about animals, he'd said. The individual doesn't exist, only the species. And maybe not even the species, for long-every day, every hour, species are becoming extinct. Many of these species, animal, bird, reptile, amphibian, never known to h.o.m.o sapiens, at all.

Religion is a comforting fantasy, Patrick said. Christianity above all. Just another story people tell themselves so they're spared telling themselves the story they don't want to hear.

Marianne felt something nudge her elbow-"Oh, who are you? Are you hungry?" It was one of the tame deer. A young velvetyhorned buck the size of a children's pony. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with the deer-it wasn't missing a leg, and didn't seem to be blind. Marianne laughed in delight, feeding it the remainder of her popcorn, which it ate quickly out of the palm of her hand. That damp ticklish sensation, so familiar.

Dr. West who'd seemed so impatient with her, begging for an aged cat's life, had told her to telephone next morning to hear how things had gone in Pittsburgh. Marianne fully intended to leave Stump Creek Hill and return to her dreary little rented cabin, and in the morning make that call, but somehow there she was lingering in the zoo; feeding more popcorn to the velvety-horned buck and a half dozen of his friends. Then she was feeding a bevy of longnecked white geese in a farther corner of the enclosure as an announcement came over a loudspeaker that the zoo was closing in five minutes. Then she was in a women's rest room not exactly hid- ing but hardly in view, either. Only at dusk did she emerge, feeling an immense sense of peace, tranquility. No 1-lomo sapiens here now, except for her- She made a nighttime meal of more peanuts- popcorn, soda from the vending machines, climbed from a bench to the crotch of an oak tree arid from the crotch of the tree to the roof of a shed behind Cinderella's and Svengali's compound where, very early the next morning, she was discovered just waking from a dazed, stuporous sleep-by Whittaker West himself, who stared at her in utter amazement. "Miss Mulvaney, what on earth are you doing here?"

Marianne said, faltering, though it was the simplest sort of truth, "I just thought, yoi-t know-it would be easier. If I didn't go so far away.'

m.u.f.fin was brought back from the Pittsburgh clinic, his left foreleg shaved, where the intravenous needle had gone in. He would regain his lost appet.i.te and some of his lost weight, and would live for another thirteen months. By the time he died, for the second time it almost seemed, Marianne would have joined the fulltime staff of Stump Creek Hill and would have been living on the premises for most of those months. It was the most wonde-ul job, she never ceased to marvel, she'd ever had in her life; she answered the telephone, did both clerical and manual tasks in the office, helped design the new fund-raising flyer ("12 Good Reasons You Should Be Generous to Stump Creek Hill"-With photo inserts of twelve of the most appealing and photogenic resident animals); she helped in the dog- and cat..kennels, in which there were both pr- vate animals, temporary visitors, and animals for adoption; she helped with grounds maintenance in the zoo, which was her favorite work. She told Whit West she wished she'd gone to college, to study veterinary science; and of course Whit replied, in that contrary way of his, "Why speak in the past tense? There's nothing to stop you going, right now." Which made Marianne blush in confusion, and back off-that wasn't what she meant, at all.

Rhoda told her. "Don't be hurt by Whit, he doesn't mean to be rude. It's just how he sounds."

Stump Creek Hill Animal Shelter & Hospital -had been established by Whit partly through a family inheritance and numerous solicited donations. The property itself, fifteen acres and a once- elegant English_style manor house, had been willed to Whit by an

elderly widow whose eleven Siamese cats he'd treated for yean- quite well, evidently. (One of the provisions of the widow's will was that the eleven Siamese should continue to live in the manor house exactly in the style to which they were accustomed, which Whit had no problem in obliging.) The widow's outraged relatives had contested the will and there had been a protracted lawsuit, with a good deal of publicity through western Pennsylvania-_"In certain quarters I was made out to be a gigolo," Whit complained, "in others, St. Francis of a.s.sisi." In the end, Stump Creek Hili had emerged ninety percent victorious. The gilt-ceilinged ballroom of the house was used for the kennels; the gla.s.s-topped conservatory was an aviary for injured, convalescent and "retired" birds (among them an African gray parrot and a snowy white c.o.c.katoo--arn.a.z.ing intelligent birds of a kind new to Mariatme); a former drawing room, still furnished with faded, Plush-upholstered chairs and sofas, now wonderfully shredded, was the site of "Kitty City" (a haven for as many as fifty cats sponsored by the well-intentioned who either could not or did not wish to bring them home). Most of the many smaller rooms of the house were empty; a few staff members lived on the premises, the rest commuted to their nearby homes. When Marianne was hired on, Whit took her upstairs, throwing open doors to rooms he hadn't, it seemed, glanced into in a long time-"Take any room you want, if you can find one that's livable. And ifirniture, anything-_use your imagination." Whit himself lived in the carriage house adjoining the veterinary. He was obsessed with the place, he acknowledged_ma)-be a little crazy. "The thought of going away, on a vacation for instance, if only for a few days, fills me with panic," he said.

Marianne said, "Oh, why would anyone ever want to leave here?" She could not imagine such a prospect. In the several years between her moving into the manor house, in August 1984, and Corinne's sudden call summoning her to Rochester, in October 1988, Mananne would not have been away from Stump Creek Hill for more than a day.

So, inspired, Marianne put together a room for herself on the second Boor of the house, overlookii-g the tall oaks of the zoo and with a view of the elephants' rocky compound. What a bliss of housewifery, furnis.h.i.+ng her room with odd wonderful shabbily elegant pieces of furniture scattered through the house! If only Corinne could see! But Marianne hesitated to call her mother for months. And even then, she was reluctant to confide in Corinne too fully. For what was so precious to Marianne it seemed at times a dream shc and m.u.f.fin had concocted together would appear less so to Corinne. "Rag-quilt life!" Corinne would sigh heavily over the phone. By implication, her own life was so fixed, so settled, so defi-i ed.

The "blood cleansing" had certainly worked magic on m.u.f.fin. Even Whit West was surprised. As soon as m.u.f.fin was returned to Marianne, and settled into his new quarters, he began to regain his health; within a few days he appeared normal, or nearly-the shaved foreleg gave him a somber look, which his gleaming white fur and addled, clownish markings did not dispel. Whit said warningly, "Now you know this is oniy a temporary respite, don't you, Marianne?" Marianne murmured yes. She was prepared to accept m.u.f.fin's second death, whenevcr. Thinking I'm temporary, too. I don't expect anythinR more.

At Stump Creek Hill, days melted into day-, weeks into weeks and months in a frenzy of activity punctuated by oases of relative calm-"Therapeutic boredom," Whit called it. Boredom! None of his staff shared Whit's att.i.tude: they were grateful for quiet, when it came. But in a place devoted to so many infirm and elderly creatures, with an emergency veterinary service to which people brought animals in desperate states (run over on the highway, for instance), there was little quiet. The ballroom-kennels were filled with yipping, yamniering, yowling creatures like an anteroom of h.e.l.l. Thanks to Whittaker West's promotion of Stump Creek Hill, the shelter-zoo was known for hundreds of miles-through the a.s.sociated Humane Societies, across the continent-and so the telephone was forever ringing, people were forevcr driving up the sandy front lane with injured animals, strays, litters of unwanted puppies and kittens, ex-baby chicks and Easter bunnies grown to unwanted adult sizes. (Big Girl, the three-hundred-pound Vietnamese potbellied pig, had actually been given as a piglet to a child.) There were animals who were the casualties of other animals-severely dog-bitten dogs and cats, bucks terribly injured in rutting season by rival bucks-but most of the animal casualties, of course, were human afflicted. Starvation, mistreatment, actual torture. (1X/hit's boxer Luther had been, as a puppy, doused in kerosene and set on fire by boys.) After a few days at Stump Creek Hill, Marianne learned not to ask detailed questions. When someone told her bluntly, "Hey. You really don't want to know," she took them at their word.

When Marianne was new at answering calls, she had a conversation with a distraught woman who told her she was "doomed to die" despite surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, and what worried her most was the fate of her two cats. "Mimi and Fifi have no one but me. They're not young. What will happen to them? As soon as I'm gone-what will happen to them?" The woman broke down sobbing and it was all Marianne could do not to break down herself Marianne promised she would personally take care of the cats. Without telling Whit, she drove ten miles to fetch them in the Chevy pickup-a pair of sleek-furred black cats with white-marbled markings and long tails prehensile as monkey tails. Their skeletal- thin mistress, weeping as she saw them off with Marianne, could have been no older than forty. She reminded Marianne of Corinne, fluttery eyelids and fingers, a steely resolve beneath. "I won't mind dying nearly so much if I know that Mimi and Fifi are in good hands," she said anxiously, and quite literally she seized Marianne's hands in hers. "You will promise? You will?" "Oh, yes," Marianne said, blinking away tears.." I promise." She drove back to Stump Creek Hill, Mimi and Fifi yowling in the backseat, in a wire carrier. 0G.o.d help us, what a world of sufferinR.

When Whit came by later that afternoon, he discovered Marianne ashen-faced, kneeling on a floor in a back room of the office, trying to coax Mimi and Fifi out from their hiding place behind boxes of Nu-Plus Canine Kibble. She'd been crying and looked so desolate, Whit resisted whatever sardonic remark might have sprung to his lips. He asked her what on earth was wrong and Marianne told himn about the terminally ill woman and her cats and she told him, too, she'd been reading some of the reports he'd filed with the Humane Society of the United States and the American Horse Protection a.s.sociation, the unspeakable cruelty endured by horses s.h.i.+pped to slaughter was something she hadn't known about and she'd had a horse she'd loved and her parents had sold it and she wasn't sure she was strong enough or courageous enough for this work after all-and Whit interrupted, "Marianne, we're here to serve these animals, not ourselves. We're dedicated to making what remains of their lives reasonably happy and if you can do only a little, that little is of great worth to the animals involved. Right?" Marianne shook her head yes, no-she wasn't sure. She'd used up her last tissue and her nose was running badly. Whit said, cheerftuly, "One day at a time! You'll see."

Just as, in time, Mimi and Fifi emerged from hiding, and were taken by Marianne upstairs to her room, to live, more or less harmoniously, with m.u.f.fin, so too in time Marianne came to share Whit's att.i.tude. Or to see its logic. It was the att.i.tude, the philosophy, of all of Whit's staff; at least those who didn't quickly burn out and depart. How they all admired, and were intimidated by, Dr. Whittaker West! He was one of those persons who seemcd to thrive upon emergencies, tension, "challenge" as he called it. He travelled frequently to Philadelphia and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., to argue for legislation to "reduce animal suffering at the hands of mankind." He had the look of an impatient, ungainly bird-an ostrich, a stork-lanklimbed, quick-darting. His eyebrows were untidy tufts, hairs grew in his ears and nostrils. His forearms, bared in his soiled white coat, were a tangle of wiry dark hairs. His features were so motile, you couldn't say if he was an attractive man or homely; his manner so direct, eyes so glaring, it was difficult to "see" him at all. He bore scars on his face and anns from animal a.s.saults over the years; the most prominent, a two-inch crescent moon above his left eye, was from a rabid bobcat. Marianne often did not look at him at all, even when he was speaking to her; like Penelope Hagstr"m, Whit West was just too-real. And the trouble with such people was, they seemed always, simply by singling you out for attention, to make you real, too.

Whittaker West was said to be the son of a well-to-do Philadelphia businessman who'd owned Thoroughbreds and who had been involved in a scandal in the 1950s in which stables had been set afire, by a paid arsonist, to collect insurance money on racehorses not performing so well as their owner would have liked. He was said to have been badly hurt and embittered by an early, long-since terminated marriage-his former wife, also of a well-to-do Philadelphia family, had divorced him on grounds of mental cruelty, charging in divorce court that he'd preferred "the love of animals" to "the love of a spouse." There had been much local media attention, and embarra.s.smnent for Whit. That had been years ago, and of the present staff only Irma, a woman in her fifties, recalled Mrs. West: a glam.orous, high-strung, fas.h.i.+onably dressed young woman who'd never seemed to approve of her husband's work, still less of his devotion to it. At that time, however, Whit lived with his wife in a real house and not on the estate grounds. Mrs. West came to visit rarely. When she did, she seemed invariably to find fault with the staff, or to suffer

comical mishaps. Once she'd amazed Irma by rus.h.i.+ng terrified into the office, staggering in high-heeled shoes, claiming that a 'gigantic" peac.o.c.k had screamed and flown straight at her head. The woman was white-faced, fainting, and Whit was quickly summoned, rus.h.i.+ng out from the rear of the office, a fresh-bleeding welt in his cheek where a parrot had just gashed him with its beak. Mrs. West, seeing him, gave a strangled scream and fell heavily to the floor.

Oh, it was funny! Sad, but funny. For of course Whit was the one to be hurt, finally. But, Irma insisted, it was so-always when Mrs. West arrived in her sporty little white Fiat coupe, the peac.o.c.ks seemed to be screaming that peac.o.c.k-shriek that could break your eardrum. One of the feral tomcats would dart out to spray the gleaming white-walled Fiat tires and, sometimes, Mrs. VJest's slender ankles. If Mrs. West visited the zoo, the monkeys cavorted shamelessly, even squirted water at her from their fluted little mouths. Though Stump Creek Hill animals were generally past the age for mating, or distracted by infirmities, it would happen that, if Mrs. West appeared, two of the younger animals were mating, shamelessly, too, in full view. The water bucks were the worst! Other animals squabbled, fought-the younger barnyard goats and the younger roosters seemed always to be taunting and feinting at one another. It was always too windy at Stump Creek Hill, or raining in gusts; or hot, and sand flies were biting, unless it was horseflies, or mosquitoes from the marshy land bordering Stump Creek close by. If there was a sudden outbreak of fleas-fleas you could see, like antic punctuation marks leaping from the ground onto your legs-poor Mrs. West was sure to arrive before the situation was under control. She was sarcastic with the young women staff workers, imagining they had "designs" on her husband; yet she was too vain to imagine that Whit, in turn, could be attracted to any of them. Such a scruffy, stringy-haired, poor-white_trash_looking crew! Marianne asked, guardedly, for she did not want to appear curious, "What did Mrs. West look like, exactly?" and Irma said vehemently, "Exactly like a cheerleader. Very blond, self-a.s.sured. Miss Personality Plus, except when things didn't go her way. You could see that Whit must have married her for love, there wasn't a thing else they had in common."

Marianne caught sight of herself in a s.h.i.+ny suthce-a sunburnt face that more resembled a boy's than a young woman's, eyebrows that might have needed plucking if she'd dared to look closely, fly- away hair grown to shoulder length and tied back carelessly in a ponytail. Her hands and forearms, too, were now finely nicked and scratched from animal encounters and stippled with who knows what sort of insect bites. She bit her lip, and laughed. No one would ever say of her, "Exactly like a cheerleader."

Marianne would not have said I am in love with Whit West but rather If I was in love, it would he with Whit West.

Did Whit sense? Could he guess? Marianne flushed with embarra.s.sment when he teased her, in his merciless way, asking for instance if she'd like to accompany him to Was.h.i.+ngton to meet with one or another congressman-"He'd sit up and listen to you"-or to New York City on one of his whirlwind fund_raising weekends- "Separate suites at the Waldorf, I promise." (Suites! Waldorf-. It was a joke, the Eco-Inn motels Whit managed to find wherever he travelled.) Marianne would laugh nervously, her gaze skidding sidelong, saying, "Well. Not just right now, Whit." Whit would say, "Why not, Marianne? You've done all the paperwork." Marianne would say, backing off, "I just don't think, you know, it's a good idea." Whit would say, laughing to show it was a joke, "Evidently not. Except-why not?" But Marianne would have fled to answer a ringing telephone, or to meet an animal owner bursting through the screen door with a pet in some stage of crisis. Whit never pursued Marianne beyond such jokey exchanges, which were part of the atmosphere of Stump Creek Hill, in any case. Always his tone was light, playful, kindly-meant. He was shrewd enough, seeing whatever it was in Marianne's face, a glimmer of panic, a stab of terror, to back away. He'd been a horseman as a boy and knew a spooked creature when he saw one: advance too quickly, it bolts away.

Marianne, on her part, was always watching for Whit. She was only really relaxed (did the others notice? she hoped not) when Whit was away and not expected back for a while. No chance of him slamming through a door, crying, "All right! Break's over! Back to work!"-as if in his absence they all just lazed around. No chance of running into him in the ballroom-kennel where it was so noisy, someone could conic up right behind you and speak your name and you wouldn't hear. And at mealtimes where Whit often ate with the half dozen staff members who lived on the grounds, casual picnicstyle meals around a handsome scroll-footed mahogany dining room table that was an elegant leftover from the manor house's prime days-and there was Whit in a blood-spattered jacket, two days' growth of beard and dirt-edged fingernails, spooning out his specialty black bean-s.h.i.+take mushroom-red pepper quiche onto plates and cursing the danined thing, as if, every time it turned out "ninny as dishwater" was the first time, a complete surprise and humiliation. The laughter at these tossed-together meals was such that Marianne, shy of her employer, found it difficult not to look at him-how could you avoid it, with Whit clowning shameless as a child, his good moods as dramatic and somehow coercive as the bad?