Emily and Einstein

by Linda Francis Lee

  The cab driver hit the brakes and swerved, fishtailing back and forth, sliding this way, overcorrecting that way, until the yellow taxi careened into the back of the Mercedes. The thick, falling snow muffled the crash, making the impact feel less destructive. Then silence. There was a moment when I was certain I could hear the snow falling, feel a strange sort of peace.

  All in all, the accident wouldn’t have caused too much of a problem if I hadn’t been standing at the front of one vehicle and an unfortunate five or so feet behind another. Something about thrust and velocity, mixed with angle of trajectory, even over relatively slow speeds and short distances, can make for a very dangerous combination. The long and short being that the cab hit the back of the Mercedes, jamming it forward into me, thrusting me down with such velocity and at such an angle that I crashed over like a domino, no time to break my fall. My head slammed against the fender of the van, traumatizing my brain so intensely and fracturing my spine so deeply that there was never a chance to recover. In seconds I was standing next to my body, no longer cold, merely stunned that the mess on the ground was actually me.

  I watched in stunned paralysis as the driver dialed 911, tried to resuscitate my body, then called his dispatch who called the firm. No one called my wife.

  I had never been one to panic, though I had never stood on a snowy street before watching someone work to revive my body. But when I tried to move and couldn’t, panic spiked through me. I gasped for air, but couldn’t do that either.

  They say that when your life hangs in the balance, your past flashes before you. But it wasn’t friends or events from my childhood I remembered. I didn’t think of my parents. I only thought of one thing.

  “Emily!”

  Her name burst out of me, burst out of my mind, as if somehow she could fix this, could solve this problem. But there was no sound, nothing, as if nothing of substance was left of me to save.

  I hadn’t known Emily for more than a week the first time I pulled her close. With our lips nearly touching, I whispered, “Fall in love with me. I dare you.”

  She did fall for me, though since then I have wondered if it was the dare that set me up to fall.

  emily

  My mother used to tell me that life could change in an instant, a line drawn in the sand separating before from after, altering you completely. Was that really true? Could a person be changed in an instant? Or did a crack already have to exist in the ice, the beginnings of a change we simply refused to see?

  —EXCERPT FROM My Mother’s Daughter

  chapter one

  Everyone has a story but I was never interested in telling my own. I was an editor of books, not a writer. I loved to find sense in someone else’s chaos, uncover the intent of a sentence or paragraph that only hinted at a truth. At least that was how I felt until I met Sandy Portman.

  The first time I saw him my world tilted. Ridiculous, I know, but seeing him that first time jarred me so deeply that I had to turn away, like turning away from looking directly at the sun, and pretend I hadn’t noticed him at all.

  It had nothing to do with the fact that he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. His face was a strike against him. I fell in love because there was something in his eyes that was at odds with his physical beauty. Sandy Portman drew me in, like the draft of a manuscript where perfectly constructed sentences hinted at but didn’t yet reveal a deeper truth. And when he pulled me close and smiled at me the first time, a crooked smile on his perfect face, hinting at a bit more of his truth? Well, I was lost.

  *

  My name is Emily Barlow, and I had never been good at sensing trouble. I didn’t need to be. I made lists, mapped out plans, then moved forward with a calm certainty that everything would work out. Unshakable faith. Bone-deep belief. Call it what you will. I stepped into any situation with the calm conviction that no matter what, I would survive.

  Perhaps that was my mistake. Then again, perhaps that’s what would save me.

  That morning, the day everything began, I woke with what I now can only call a premonition that my world was about to shift. But I didn’t recognize the feeling for what it was. I ignored it.

  It had been snowing all night, snow on top of snow during one of the worst winters New York City had seen in a decade. It was Friday, and when I got to work at Caldecote Press almost no one was there, kept away by the storm, safe in houses reached only through bridges and tunnels, or in apartments on the island of Manhattan that climbed up floor after floor into the mottled gray clouds until the buildings disappeared.

  At noon, I headed home. The animal clinic had closed due to the weather, and I tried calling Sandy to let him know I would meet him at the apartment. He didn’t answer, and his voice mail was full. I’d left a message with his secretary for him to call me, but I never heard back.

  We lived in the Dakota, a hundred-and-twenty-year-old building on the Upper West Side, and when I got home I worked, first on a manuscript that had come in early, then on the guest room I had been redoing for several weeks. I had painted the walls a pale yellow, with white crown molding, and a border of lavender, green, and blue flowers that I was painting myself, each delicate stroke like a line of a psalm as I sat at the top of the ladder, the impossibly high ceilings seeming to reach up to God.

  For the last two years, I had put every extra cent I had into the apartment. While my husband had a great deal of money, I did not. But I gave that no thought, pouring my heart and soul into the old but enchanted residence that had been little more than a dusty museum when Sandy lived there alone.

  I had ripped down ancient wallpaper, torn up broken bathroom tile, replaced outdated appliances, entwining myself in a place that represented everything I had been working toward my entire life. A home with a husband and children, Sunday dinners and friends. A life of work and family, the lines filled in with love, colored by years steadily passing. A life so different from the one I led with my mother where we moved from one apartment to the next, uptown, downtown, Alphabet City. We even did a stint in Chinatown, where plucked chickens and ducks hung in steamy shop windows like ornaments on a tree.

  Over the years I learned to guard my heart, didn’t let myself become attached to people or places despite my dream of having both. But the day I met Sandy in the Caldecote conference room, something inside me opened up. As everyone was leaving the meeting, Sandy stopped me. He didn’t notice, or perhaps didn’t care about, the glances others gave us. He looked only at me, his lips hiking up at one corner, turning what would have been a wicked smile into something boyish and playful. “Come away with me,” he said. “Right now, before everyone gets wise to us and reminds me of schedules and broken legs and all the things you make me forget.”

  I must have given him a strange look because his smile widened and he added, “At least let me take you someplace for a drink. Then you can tell me all about why you downplay your amazing looks, and I’ll tell you all the reasons why I’m falling for you.”

  He startled me, but I didn’t show it. “Do lines like that really work in your world?”

  He laughed out loud. “They do.” Then that smile again, this time bordering on sheepish, his hazel green eyes flashing. “Hard to believe, huh?”

  My guess was that it wasn’t the lines that worked, but his looks, his easy charm. This was a man used to getting his way without having to bargain or even ask.

  I smiled despite myself. “One, I have nothing to tell, and two, you don’t know half the reasons why I’m worth falling for.”

  This time he was surprised, but he recovered quickly. “Then I’ll take notes; you can dictate. It will give me an excuse to keep you out all afternoon and turn a drink into dinner.”

  I just shook my head and stepped around him. But at the door I turned back. “Dinner. After work. My choice of restaurant.”

  He cocked his head. “Ever the negotiator. But fine, I’ll meet you in the lobby at seven.”

  “Make it seven-thirty.” I started to leave.
>
  “Emily.”

  I hesitated.

  “Do you always win?”

  My smile softened. “Does anyone?”

  He studied me for a second, then told me I should have been named Diana after the Huntress or Helen after the woman from Troy. “Emily is too soft, too much like that boring cream dress you’re wearing. Neither does you justice.”

  I raised a brow. “For someone who doesn’t know the first thing about me, you have a lot of opinions.”

  What I didn’t say was that in every woman there is an Emily just as in every woman there’s a Helen of Troy. It depends on which part is nurtured. I’d had no choice but to be strong. And didn’t the hardness of strength come when the softness underneath was a threat?

  I would have written him off as yet another good-looking guy who used his charm to get what he wanted. But then his brow furrowed. “On second thought, I bet there’s an Emily in there somewhere. You just keep her hidden.”

  My breathing grew shallow. Somehow this seemingly all-surface guy understood.

  He walked past me through the doorway, stopping just long enough to tuck a single errant strand of hair behind my ear. “See you at seven-thirty,” he said.

  *

  I had just finished putting the final touches on the painted border when my BlackBerry rang.

  I clattered down the ladder, paintbrush still in hand, lavender paint splattered on the old shirt I wore to protect my clothes. When I glanced at the clock I was surprised to see how late it was. I’d have to hurry to get cleaned up before Sandy got home.

  “Hello,” I said on the fourth ring.

  But it wasn’t Sandy. It was Birdie Baleau, a woman who had recently moved to New York from Texas, and was like no New Yorker I had ever met. We had become fast friends almost instantly.

  “Congratulations!” Birdie squealed on the phone, like we were still in middle school. “I just heard about your promotion to senior editor!”

  I fell into a chair and kicked my feet up on the desk as we talked and laughed, excited over this new phase in my career. When I got off the phone, I tried my husband again, but his voice mail was still full.

  I showered, then poured myself a glass of wine, found my iPod and cranked up a crazy mix as I danced through the apartment. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys. Harry Nilsson’s “The Puppy Song.” Adam Lambert’s “No Boundaries.”

  Then “Broken” by Lifehouse.

  I didn’t remember downloading the song to my playlist. But I closed my eyes and sang to the century-old walls, twirling, arms wide open, head thrown back. My life felt full, my career soaring, a simple happiness wrapping around me as if there could be no stopping me.

  An hour later, Sandy still hadn’t shown up. I told myself there was no reason to worry. He had been late before. But another hour passed, then two, and still Sandy hadn’t called.

  At some level had I known? Had I remembered the premonition, had I thought of the song, but refused to assign meaning to it?

  Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I danced and sang in my bright yellow room while snow came down outside the window like thick white curtains that blocked out the view.

  sandy

  chapter two

  I might have called out to my wife, but it wasn’t Emily who showed up next to me. All of a sudden I felt a touch of heat, the snow around me melting, one single feather drifting down from the sky. I watched it seesaw back and forth, and I had the distinct thought that I had a choice. Catch the feather—or not.

  I hesitated, my mind cloudy with only half-realized thoughts, then just before the feather hit the ground I gasped and scooped it up. As soon as it hit my hand, the heat turned into a sizzle of what I can only call energy, then an old man appeared out of nowhere.

  I stumbled back and he smiled at me, his longish white hair swept away from his forehead in a soft wave. He wore a double-breasted frock coat as if he had stepped out of Regency England, a loud, wide tie, and round tortoiseshell glasses. Everything about him seemed mismatched, as if his clothes and bearing had been collected over centuries.

  He stepped closer. “I believe that’s mine,” he said, and plucked the feather from my fingers with the sort of kind, apologetic smile that wasn’t a staple in Manhattan. After shoving it in his pocket, he looked me up and down. “Are you all right?”

  I scoffed. “Apparently not.” I was glad to see my dry wit was still intact even if my body was not.

  He only chuckled. “It’s always a shock at first, especially when it’s an accident. It’s easier when the person has been sick for a long time, when the pain is unbearable, and they’re ready to move on. It’s not even all that hard with the young ones. They are more accepting, not yet so set in their ways. The hardest are the middle-aged. They realize time has run out on achieving their dreams. They don’t want to go. They want more time to live the life they have been too afraid or too weighed down by day-to-day existence to achieve. They’re the ones who fight every step of the way.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Part of me knew exactly what he meant, but another part didn’t want to know. One of my more useful traits had always been my ability to live and work happily with a narrow-eyed vision that allowed me to assume that I was right and everyone else was wrong. In this case, I had no interest in absorbing that I was dead and he was some sort of angel sent to cart me off to heaven just as in some overly trite movie I never would have bothered to see while alive.

  “It’s time to move on, Alexander.”

  No one, not even my mother, called me Alexander.

  He started down Seventy-sixth toward Columbus Avenue, brownstones and low-rise apartment buildings forming a narrow snowy canyon. He walked in the street, no footprints left behind in the slush and snow. “Are you coming?”

  I realized I had no idea what else to do. Just stand there? It seemed to me that arriving at heaven’s gate should be easier than this. But I followed.

  We walked the length of Seventy-sixth, crossing Columbus, eventually coming to Central Park. We entered the park on a footpath, taking the winding trail deeper into the snow-covered grounds, and turned south.

  Hmmm. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I panicked, the accident and my death finally sinking in.

  “I can’t do this.”

  I turned around and fled.

  I hadn’t run in years, but I started out at a good pace despite my handmade leather shoes, despite the fine wool suit, suspenders, and overcoat. Nothing obstructed me, not the layers of clothes, not my leg, as I ran toward the clinic.

  Throughout my life, when my back was against the wall, I had always been able to find a way to save myself. I would save myself again. Surely my injuries weren’t as catastrophic as the medics believed. It was probably a tough night; they hadn’t put their all into saving me. It couldn’t have been too long since the accident. Plus it was freezing cold, keeping my body temperature low. If I could get back into my body, I felt certain I could save myself once again.

  I hit Seventy-sixth Street in minutes, arrived at the clinic seconds later. I had never moved so fast in all my life. It was amazing. I could do this. But when I got to the building, the odd old man was already there shaking his head. “You really can’t outrun me, Alexander.”

  The sheer staggering force of it brought me to my knees, literally, my topcoat pooling around me in the frozen slush. “You can’t do this. I have so much left to do.”

  “Technically, that isn’t true.” Yet again he looked apologetic.

  My mind raced. “I have a wife. If I die it will kill her.”

  “I can’t disagree with you there. That woman loves you. Really loves you. Too bad you didn’t think of that sooner.”

  *

  The evening I arrived in the lobby of Caldecote Press to pick up Emily that very first time, I expected her to choose some quaint restaurant on the Upper East Side. Someplace where her classically simple clothes
wouldn’t stand out. We did end up on the east side, but not at any place that could be considered quaint. She took me to an out-of-the-way coffee shop where the crusty old waiter knew her by name.

  As soon as we were seated, the waiter handed us plastic-covered menus.

  “I give you a second,” the man said, his accent thick and nondescript.

  To be perfectly honest, I had never been in a diner before, and the sheer number of choices was staggering, making me suspect the chef couldn’t have time or fresh enough ingredients to make a single dish exceptional. Surely, though, he did one item better than the others.

  When the waiter returned, I asked, “What is the chef’s specialty?”

  The man looked put out, scoffed as only a New York waiter could, then used his short, blunt-nosed pencil to point out a section of the menu. CHEF’S SPECIALS, it read.

  “Can’ta you read?” the man demanded, then looked at Emily, his expression softening like a grandfather gazing at a beloved granddaughter. “He no good enough for you, latria mou.”

  Emily ducked her head to hide her smile, her long hair swinging forward.

  After I learned that he had said something about adoring her in Greek, I was half afraid to eat the roast beef dinner he banged down in front of me.

  “So, you were going to dictate a list of all the reasons you’re amazing,” I said.

  “No, I just said you didn’t know all the reasons.”

  “True. So I made my own list to prove you wrong.” I surprised her when I reached into my suit pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. With ceremony, I read, “Emily Barlow is beautiful, smart, straightforward, not worried about what others think of her. And funny, despite the fact that she doesn’t realize it.”

  “You actually made a list?” She gasped.

  I turned the sheet toward her.

  She laughed out loud when she saw that it was blank.

  “Now, your turn to tell me about you,” I said.

  “Fair enough.” But she didn’t tell me anything about herself, at least not directly. She was editing a manuscript about great men. Philosophers, scientists, athletes. Her New York–bred reserve evaporating completely, she leaned forward with the kind of enthusiasm the women I dated refused to show, and told me about the book.