Dirty Secret (23 page)

That evening, Penny called.

“His leg is permanently disfigured,” she said the moment I answered the phone. “The vet says he was probably born like that. He'll always limp.”

My first reaction was annoyance, then disappointment. David and I loved going for long walks and we'd wanted a dog who could come with us along the river or across the city.

“Is he in pain?” I asked.

“She didn't say. But if you want your money back, you can have a refund.”

“What? You mean return him?”

“Yes.”

I paused. “Let me talk about it with my husband and call you back.”

Of course, neither of us seriously entertained the idea of returning him. We already loved him.

Maureen brought Abraham Lincoln back to us the next day and David and I were elated to see him. He looked happy to see us, too, even wagging his tiny tail for the first time we'd witnessed. The next day we brought him to a veterinarian we'd heard good things about. She gave Abraham Lincoln a thorough exam and x-rayed his leg. On the x-ray we could see that his back right leg was twisted about ninety degrees, at the hip. His right knee actually faced the left leg, rather than straight ahead. “I can't say with one hundred percent certainty,” our new veterinarian said, “but it's likely he was born this way.”

“Could it have been caused by sitting in the same position for too long?” David asked and explained what we knew about Abraham Lincoln's background.

“Well, yes. Depending on how old he was when he went into the cage. If the bone was still soft it could have reshaped itself this way.”

Unbelievable. How could a vet have treated an animal that way? How could anyone?

“Also,” our veterinarian said, “his front left leg appears to have been broken at some point. And it wasn't set very well.”

“That's not a surprise,” I said. I asked her if she thought Abraham Lincoln was in pain when he limped. I couldn't bear the thought of his little leg hurting each time he took a step.

“Does he go for walks with you?” she asked.

“Yes,” David said. “We walked him here—we live about twenty minutes away.”

She moved Abraham Lincoln's leg around in her hand. Thankfully he'd warmed up to her within a few minutes. “He
seems flexible other than that one spot and he's not yelping when I move it. On the way here, did he try to stop or did he just keep walking?”

“He didn't stop,” I said.

“Then I'd say he's not in pain. His limp might look bad, but he doesn't know any different. As he gets older, though, you'll want to keep an eye on that other back leg, because it's picking up the slack.”

The next day I called Penny. I asked for the veterinarian's phone number, saying I needed it because I wanted to find out what she'd fed our new dog. The real reason was because I intended to file a complaint against her. What she did to Abraham Lincoln was abuse and I wasn't going to let her get away with it. My intention must have been obvious.

“She just made a mistake. She liked to see him there.”

“Liked to see him there? He's not a painting! What she did was wrong.”

“He ate puppy chow,” Penny said, and hung up.

I called back, but she wouldn't answer. I didn't have a phone number for Maureen, but she'd given me her email address; I wrote to her numerous times, but she never responded. I considered calling every veterinarian's office in Hartsdale, but I didn't know for sure that's where the vet was, and besides, what veterinarian would ever admit to treating a dog like that?

Years later, when I learned that sometimes animal hoarders will cloak their behavior behind the pretense of running a “shelter,” and occasionally sell some of their charges for money to feed the rest, I started wondering about Penny. Her story about Abraham Lincoln living at a veterinarian's office just didn't make sense. And there was her car. Her chronic disorganization. The fact that we had to meet “Milton” at her husband's office rather than her house. And Abraham Lincoln smelled so
absolutely putrid when we got him. As a small, short-haired dog he shouldn't have smelled like that. (David and I have gone two or three months without bathing him and he doesn't smell bad at all.) The first few times we took him out, he looked startled and cowered when the wind blew, as if he'd never been outside in his life. And then there's his weight: In the first few months with us, his ribs became less and less visible as he went from seven and a half pounds to nine pounds, then ten.

In the beginning, David and I babied Abraham Lincoln (and still do), showering him with toys and treats and soft fluffy places to lie down. We wanted him to know that he wouldn't be hurt or neglected again, that he was safe and loved. It sickened and enraged me that someone had hurt him. And the intensity of my feelings triggered unexpected fury toward my mother: Why hadn't she felt the same protectiveness toward me? Once, when I was eight or nine, she even allowed a friend of hers to slap me. When I went crying to my mother about it she just shrugged and said, “She must have had a good reason.”

Abraham Lincoln is better now, but he hasn't gotten over the trauma of whatever happened that first year. He's distrusting of strangers and he flinches at the sight of a raised hand or the sound of a shoe scraping on concrete. And he's completely conflict-averse. If David and I are even slightly bickering, or if I happen to yell in response to something annoying on television, he'll immediately leave the room.

After I began putting the pieces together, I tried to find Penny's phone number. Maybe she wasn't an animal hoarder, maybe she'd rescued him from another hoarding situation and for some reason thought he'd sound more appealing if he came from a vet's office. I just wanted to know the truth. I had to at least try.

I searched our entire apartment, but I couldn't find Penny's phone number anywhere. Nor her email address, or even Maureen's. Why hadn't we at least kept the receipt? I didn't remember the name of Penny's organization, and David didn't either. Had I tossed out her contact information during one of my purges? Perhaps. All I know is that it was as if she'd vanished.

THERE'S A WOMAN IN CALIFORNIA WHO'S INTERESTED in subletting our apartment while we're in Italy, and she's willing to pay all six months upfront—a necessity because we won't be able to deposit checks while we're abroad. Another plus: She won't be arriving in New York until six weeks after we leave, which is surely long enough for any remaining bugs to die off. A friend of hers who lives in our neighborhood is coming over to look at the apartment, and the morning of the appointment, our buzzer rings twenty minutes earlier than the time we'd set. David and I, still in the middle of cleaning, shove the broom and dustpan into the closet and buzz her in.

“I'm Isabel,” she says when I open the door. She doesn't apologize for being early, nor does she wait to be invited in—just steps into our apartment, her champagne-colored skirt and jacket shimmering in the sun that streams in through the
skylight above the living room, her practically egg-sized diamond ring temporarily blinding me with its glare. Next to her, in my cutoff jeans, flip-flops, and tattered tank top, I feel like a hideous slob. Abraham Lincoln's growling at her from his bed in the corner, so David picks him up. Isabel reaches into her beige, buttery leather Marc Jacobs bag, pulls out a credit card–thin digital camera, and begins snapping pictures. David and I give each other a
what the hell?
look.

“The bathroom's this way, I assume,” Isabel says, striding toward the front of the apartment; she stops at the entrance to our narrow galley kitchen and snaps away. I follow behind her, noticing the two coffee mugs in the sink I hadn't had a chance to wash, the ever-so-slightly chipping paint near the handle of one of the cabinets, and the wedding pictures I've affixed with a magnet to the refrigerator. I hold my breath as she steps toward the photos. I don't want her looking at those.

“The bathroom's here,” I say from behind her and she takes a step back. Without a word she walks into our minuscule bathroom. I'm surprised when she shoves aside the shower curtain, but at least she doesn't photograph the tiles that are still dingy in spite of the twenty minutes I spent scrubbing them last night.

“Do you have any questions?” I ask as she moves past me, to the front room of the apartment.

She snaps more pictures—our old IKEA couch, the television set, the desk we've fashioned from a bookshelf where I usually write. Even the Persian-style rug on the floor. She looks out the window, to the sea of yellow cabs rolling down Seventh Avenue. “Does the apartment get loud with all the traffic?” she asks, “because I don't know what kind of sleeper Carolyn is.”

“Sometimes this room does, yes. But that's it.”

She nods once. “I think I've seen enough,” she says, slipping her camera into her jacket pocket.

“Good, because we've got someone else coming to look at the apartment soon,” I say as we walk through the hallway toward the front door. I'm clearly lying—she's only been here a few minutes and she arrived early—but I don't care.

“These floors are pretty scuffed, no?” Isabel says, pointing down.

I can't see why a subletter would care about gouged floors, but all I can think to say is, “It's an old building.”

“Ri-ght.” She hitches her thousand-dollar purse a little higher up on her shoulder as David opens the door for her.

“Bye,” he says sarcastically.

“All the best,” Isabel says, and David closes the door behind her.

“‘All the best'? Who says ‘all the best'?” I ask David.

“I was tempted to let Abraham Lincoln bite her,” David says and sets down our dog, who runs over to the door and barks at it.

“I was tempted to grab her hand and hold it long enough to give her the bugs,” I say.

“Magpie! That's awful.”

“I'm kidding,” I say. “Half.”

THAT AFTERNOON I
have an appointment with a dermatologist about the bugs. I've seen him before because I have so many strange moles on my back that I need to get them examined every year. Twice before today I've stood in front of this man naked while he went over every inch of my skin.

“No,” he barks when I tell him that I think I have scabies and that I've done the permethrin cream three times but it hasn't worked. “Then it's something else. If it were scabies, the cream would have worked.”

I pull down the waistband of my jeans to show him my hip bones. “Doesn't this look like scabies to you?”

He barely glances at it. He turns his back to me and pulls a small wooden stick from a box on the counter. “Let me see your arm,” he says, grabbing for it. He slides the pointy end of the stick across the palest part of my forearm, in a harsh, quick X.

“Ouch.”

He steps back to admire the work as the X turns red and raised. “You see.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“You have sensitive skin.”

I wait for him to say more, but that seems to be the extent of his diagnosis.

“So this rash that I have pretty much everywhere is sensitive skin?”

“Maybe you're using a new detergent? You're allergic?”

“No, I'm not. And what about the fact that my husband also has a rash? And my father, too?”

“It must be something in the environment,” he says, already starting to fill out my paperwork.

“But my dad lives in Minneapolis. That's where it started. My mother bought an infected pillow.”

“If you're so convinced it's scabies, I'll prescribe you permethrin.”

“Okay, if it's not scabies, what else could it be?”

“There is something called ‘scabiophobia,' a fear of scabies. It's possible to convince yourself that you have it.”

“Yes, but would that cause a person to break out in a rash? What about the fact that we're all covered in bites and itching like crazy?” I've raised my voice a bit; I need to calm down. The last thing I need is to have an argument with this man. He's the only dermatologist at the clinic my husband and I go to, and
all the other ones covered by our insurance had at least a two-month wait for an appointment. “Could you at least do a skin scraping to check for scabies?”

He shakes his head. “Those tests are inaccurate. They're not worth doing.”

I've read that, too, so I don't argue. “Maybe the scabies is resistant to permethrin? I read online that that can happen.” He flinches as if I've just told him what a pompous ass he is, which is what I'd like to do.

“No. That is not possible.”

I've read about two cures that seem to work even in the toughest cases.

“Can you prescribe me ivermectin pills?” I ask. Normally used for something called “river blindness,” ivermectin is used off-label for scabies and is supposedly almost 100 percent effective.

“Ivermectin? No. There's no proof that it works.”

“There is proof,” I say. “There are all kinds of studies.”

“I haven't seen any proof.”

“Okay, what about a sulfur lotion? Could you prescribe that?”

Sulfur has been used since ancient Roman times to cure scabies and is still prescribed for pregnant women, since it's nontoxic. I've already tried calling pharmacies to see if I could get it over the counter, but in New York, at least, you need a prescription.

He laughs. He actually laughs at me, and I want to slap that smug smile off his face.

“No one uses sulfur anymore. It's messy.”

“I don't care if it's messy. We've had these things for over a month. We'll try anything. We're desperate. Please.”

He shakes his head and writes me a prescription for permethrin.

*   *   *  

LATER THAT EVENING
David and I are walking to a restaurant he's reviewing in the East Village when he says, “Goddammit . . .” I know what it means. He's found another bite.