Free The Animal Girl by John Fulton Page B

her favorite meal—strawberry crepes and fresh whipped cream—and Leah knew they had difficult news for her. They had already showered and dressed. Noelle, who was in real estate, wore Franklin’s apron, which said “King of the Kitchen” on it, over her gray suit. She poured the batter while Leah’s father stood in sunlight slicing strawberries and humming. The table was set, the orange juice in glasses. The aroma of brewing coffee mixed with the warm pancake air of the kitchen. “What’s happening?” Leah asked. “Something’s up. You’re going to tell me something.”
    â€œWhy don’t you sit down, Leah?” Franklin said. He’d just had his hair and beard trimmed, and his neatness and good grooming made him look more and more like he belonged to this woman.
    Leah didn’t sit down. “I’ve got my first day of work. I can’t eat.”
    â€œYour father told me. Congratulations,” Noelle said. She really was a sweet woman, and Leah was at times disgusted with herself for disliking her. “What exactly will you be doing?”
    â€œI’m an executioner. I’ll be killing animals.” This answer silenced Noelle so completely that Leah felt compelled to take it back. “I’m working at a lab where they do experiments. I’ll be feeding and cleaning up after the animals they use. Sheep and dogs.”
    Noelle placed a plate of stacked crepes on the table, and Franklin followed her with bowls of strawberries and whipped cream. “So,” Leah said, “I suppose you two are getting married. That’s the news, I bet.”
    Standing behind his chair, Franklin’s face turned a deep red. Leah couldn’t remember ever seeing her father blush, though she had seen him weep, his eyes raw and beaten, until he could cry no more. “Not quite,” he said.
    â€œSo what’s the good news? Why are you bribing me with strawberry crepes?”
    Franklin all at once was nervous and started playing with his fork.“Noelle and I have been talking about the possibility of her moving in with us.”
    â€œThe possibility,” Leah said. “Are you asking me?”
    â€œHow about sitting down and eating a crepe, Leah?” Franklin said.
    When she didn’t sit, he turned to Noelle, who’d taken her apron off and looked powerful and businesslike in her gray suit. “No,” she said. “We just thought we should let you know.”
    â€œGreat. That’s great. Congratulations.” Leah felt her throat catch and the tears rise to her eyes, despite her best effort to hold them off. “I’m being a baby. I’m sorry for being a baby,” she said. Then she rushed out the front door.
    On Leah’s first day, they gave a sheep a heart attack, though Max and Diana, Max’s graduate student, called it a minor infarction, which Leah gathered was not quite the same as a heart attack. Leah was afraid she might relate to the animal, care for it; and so, midway through her workday, when she stood next to the sedated sheep and watched it jolt and begin to die on the operating table, she was proud of herself for feeling so little. It was a large animal, after all, so obviously alive, stinking with aliveness, with barnyard odors that permeated the laboratory. “Why are we doing this?” she asked, a question that Max, absorbed in the careful killing of the animal, had seemed not to hear. She didn’t ask again, though she did want there to be a good reason for destroying this creature, which she and Max had had to force down every inch of the hall between its pen and the operating room. From the moment Leah had sheared the wool from its left foreleg, where Max would insert the lethal device, an inflatable catheter, the sheep had seemed to guess its fate. The sound it made as they pushed it down the corridor was not unlike a child crying, though there was something purely