Emily and Einstein

by Linda Francis Lee

  “What is that dog doing?”

  “Einstein!” Emily blurted.

  But it was too late. I tugged and pulled, growling, throwing every ounce of energy I had into my effort.

  Emily raced over to me, but before she could pull me away, or perhaps because of her added force, the paper ripped free with a start, revealing the decades-old heart and the word Mommy through the dried glue.

  I Mommy.

  My mother’s face went white.

  I sat as perfectly as I could next to the inscription, desperately staring at my mother, willing her to understand. But it was Emily who glanced back and forth between me and the wall.

  I could see the muscles working in my mother’s throat. But there were no tears, no grand recognition. “I want you out,” she said with the coldness of a slowly moving glacier. “And make no mistake about it. I will ensure that you and that hideous dog are gone.”

  My mother left me alone with my wife, and my desperate need turned to misery. My plan had failed. My mother was never going to understand that it was me. She had no ability to believe in anything beyond the concrete world she saw and the limits of reality. She might have made magic happen by getting my father to marry her and earning her own art show, but her ability to believe in something beyond a seeable, touchable reality had very real limits. And who was I to blame her? There was no way I would have believed had I not found myself in the body of a dog.

  Every ounce of hope I had held on to was gone. I was too depressed to call out to the old man. Not that it would have done any good. He came and went at his leisure. Neither my name nor my wealth mattered a bit to him. Not that I had those things anymore. I was simply Einstein the Dog. A hideous dog, at that.

  I collapsed on the floor. My mother’s inability to recognize the essence of her only child, to even be moved by my childhood scrawl underneath the wallpaper, forced me to accept what I had been denying.

  This situation couldn’t be fixed.

  For the rest of the evening and during the long dragging hours of the night, I remained inconsolable. At noon the next day when Jordan took me out I stood at the curb, staring at all the humans walking by, the nannies and children, men and women. I hated every one of them.

  Jordan tugged at my leash impatiently. How was it possible that I had fallen so low that a female I didn’t respect had me on a leash?

  Rage and depression simmered inside me, caged behind teeth I clenched so hard my jaw hurt. And I realized it was time to put an end to this madness.

  With no time to think about consequences, I bolted, yanking the leash free from Jordan’s lax hand. I flew off the curb into the street just as an M72 bus careened around the corner onto Seventy-second Street.

  “Oh my God!” Jordan screamed. Others shouted. The doorman cried out. All I cared about was the grinding churn of engine as the bus bore down on me. Please, God, let this nightmare end.

  But I should have known better. The guy driving was a New York City bus driver used to crazed messengers on bikes, disoriented tourists stepping off curbs, and maniac cab drivers cutting him off. He stopped that mass of rubber and steel on a dime.

  When my heart started beating again, I stared up at the driver through the windshield. He hunched over the oversized steering wheel, sweat having broken out on his forehead as he stared down at me. I expected him to yell at Jordan for not controlling her dog. But I could see from the dark condemnation in his eyes that he understood I had tried to kill myself. “Screw you!” I barked. “Don’t you dare judge me!”

  The next day I gave it another try when Jordan took me to the park.

  “Don’t you go doing anything stupid,” she admonished.

  Like I cared what she said.

  This time I went for a tree, running downhill full-force and headfirst into a two-foot wide towering oak. All I got was a headache.

  When that didn’t work—and I realized Jordan wasn’t taking me out ever again—I decided to poison myself. I knew as Sandy I had kept painkillers in my medicine chest, but after making the precarious climb up onto the counter of my old bathroom, I found that the drugs were gone, the cabinet bare.

  I howled and bayed, then fell off the counter. I lay there for a second, hoping for a broken neck. First I moved my paws, then my head. I thought I would cry in disappointment.

  Emily’s bathroom didn’t prove any more promising, though I did find a bottle of Tylenol with codeine a doctor had given her ages ago after she’d had a wisdom tooth extracted. The bottle was full but childproof caps, I found, were dog-proof as well. Even me-proof. I had to settle for half a dozen aspirin and a prayer that acetylsalicylic acid was poisonous to dogs.

  After gobbling them down, I rolled over on my back to get the feel of being dead. But after a mere thirty minutes all I felt was better. My headache was gone and I suspected that I had thinned Einstein’s blood enough to give him another year or two of life.

  “This is so unfair!” I howled.

  Not that it was over. I had every intention of finding a way to put an end to the insanity.

  emily

  My mother believed in dreaming, but she only believed in my dreams when they matched hers. She hated that Emily was so fixed in beliefs so different from her own. But in truth, our mother was no different. She was captive to the narrow world of her own beliefs and dreams.

  —EXCERPT FROM My Mother’s Daughter

  chapter twenty-one

  “Pick up the phone, Emily. If you don’t it will force me to cancel the first date I’ve had since I moved to town and personally come over there to hand-deliver candy.”

  I stared at the answering machine. After a second of indecision, I picked up the receiver. “Candy isn’t necessary, Birdie. I have a date, too, with Julia.”

  “What? You’ve gone gay?”

  I stood in the kitchen watching butter soften in the microwave for another round of baking. If I was lucky, the radiation would kill me. That or cure me of any impending Alzheimer’s.

  I gave a snort of laugher. “No, I have gone cake. Again. Though this time I’m working my way through Baking with Julia, as in Julia Child.”

  “Ah, that’s my girl. Doctors underestimate the medicinal power of scads of butter and even more sugar.”

  Since my run-ins with Victoria and Althea, anger had taken up residence in my brain like an unwelcome guest. Though when I thought about it, anger was a relief from the numb despair and insecurity.

  “I saw you storm out of the office,” she said. “What was that about? And I thought you said Ruth’s Intention was your book.”

  “Ruth is my book. And you saw me storm out?”

  This time she snorted.

  I cringed. “Do you think anyone else saw?”

  She added a scoff to the snort.

  “Okay, so everyone saw me.”

  “Only everyone on our floor, and probably only everyone in the lobby. But more importantly, why did you let Victoria take credit for your book?”

  I sighed. “What was I going to say? Technically she did buy it.”

  “What?” she screeched. “Where is my friend, the Emily Barlow who doesn’t put up with crap from anyone?”

  With the receiver tucked between my ear and shoulder, I took the softened butter out of the microwave. “I’m not sure, but her doppelganger is here getting ready for a date with an oven-roasted plum cake with chocolate sauce. Besides, Victoria is the least of my concerns. Sandy’s mother is determined to evict me.”

  “Althea Portman should date Victoria. Witches all. When are you going to get it through your head that you need a lawyer, sweetie? Even I know that sugar can only get you so far.”

  “But…”

  “No buts. You know I’m right.”

  Which was true, and which was how, just hours after my motherin-law’s visit, I found myself at Max’s door.

  I went there reluctantly, and no wonder. My mother might have complained about my lists and plans, but that hadn’t stopped her from allowing me t
o take care of our little family. At ten years old, if Jordan was sick, I called the doctor. At eleven, when a bill came in I put it in front of my mother along with the checkbook. At twelve, I saved us both the trouble and forged her signature.

  It was when Jordan was two that Mother changed all of our lives. For a short period of time, she dressed in a suit and cut her hair. She left in the morning carrying a briefcase.

  “There’s a new face on the women’s movement,” she said. “And I’m going to show them that I can be that new face.”

  But not long after she started this new phase, she came home and didn’t go back. She even took down the framed article. The woman who had fought for equal rights stayed home to bake and arrange sleepovers.

  Unfortunately, despite her conversion to a more traditional role, she never lost her radical leanings. She stayed home, but took to protesting whatever “injustice” she suspected at Jordan’s or my school. If it wasn’t a fight for better cafeteria fare, it was for better testing methods. And if the school ran out of transgressions, she turned her attention to the corner deli or dry cleaners. There wasn’t a shopkeeper in our neighborhood that didn’t flip over the CLOSED sign if they had the good fortune to see her coming.

  Worse, she took over the bills and doctor’s appointments. This would have been fine except she wasn’t good at it, and she resented my attempts to help. I ended up looking rigid when I pointed out that the electricity was about to be turned off, picky when I wanted my whites washed separately from Jordan’s red and orange baby clothes. I had finally gotten what I wanted, for my mother to stay home and be a regular mom. Only Lillian Barlow didn’t know how to be regular.

  All this to say that when I found myself standing in front of Max Reager’s door, I had never learned how to ask for help.

  At the last minute I nearly turned around and bolted, but just as I started to go the door opened.

  Max stood there, a good foot taller than me. I had to crane my neck to look up at him. He held keys in his hand, clearly on the way out. At the sight of me he stopped abruptly, everything about him radiating a finely controlled tension, his dark eyes narrowing. Then he registered that it was me, and I could practically feel the taut coil of him ease.

  “Emily. Hey.” So casual, almost practiced.

  But whatever I might have thought about Max and his odd reaction evaporated in the face of the woman who peeked out from around his shoulder. She was young, probably mid-twenties, gorgeous, as in model gorgeous, and she held on to Max’s arm like she had a right to.

  I would have thought maybe it was one of his sisters—please God let it be one of his sisters—but he’d already told me he was the youngest in his family. Not to mention she didn’t look a thing like Max.

  “Ah, hello,” I said, feeling like a chaperone as the woman stepped around him and looked me up and down. “I’ve caught you at a bad time,” I added.

  I turned to go, thinking maybe I could outrun my humiliation if I moved fast enough.

  “What is it?” Max said, catching my arm.

  He didn’t say anything more, but I saw that same concern he’d had when he bandaged me up and held me when I broke.

  “It’s nothing. Really.”

  “Emily.” Just that.

  “Well, you mentioned your brother-in-law was a lawyer and I thought perhaps I should look for one after all.”

  “No problem. I’ll talk to him and set up a time to meet.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Max,” the stunningly beautiful female whined. “We’re going to be late.”

  “Yes, well,” I mumbled, managing to stutter out my cell phone number while Ms. Beautiful all but tapped her high-heeled foot.

  I turned and bolted for the stairs.

  *

  Needing a distraction, basically from my life, I cajoled Jordan into going to Central Park. It was Saturday, the weather finally warming up. We ended up at the Boathouse for lunch. Since Einstein was with us, we sat outside and ordered burgers and fries from the café. Jordan leaned back in her chair, her face lifted to the sun. It was good to see my sister at ease, her laughter hinting at someone I didn’t really know beneath the confrontational surface.

  Abruptly she leaned forward, a gleam in her eye. “Let’s rent one of those boats and row out on the lake.”

  Central Park was a miniature world filled with wonders one would never guess could be found in a rectangle of trees and grassy lawns rolled out in the center of a city made of concrete and steel. There were the stone towers and crenellated battlements of Belvedere Castle high up on a granite hill overlooking the Turtle Pond and the open-air Delacorte Theatre that hosted Shakespeare in the Park. The lawn bowling and croquet courts. The century-old carousel. Even a meandering lake with rowboats and a gondolier.

  For a second I could only stare at her. “Jordan, we have Einstein with us.” Even I heard how nervous I sounded.

  “So what? We take Einstein. It’s just a rowboat. No big deal.”

  Unfortunately, I had a very long memory. While my ocean incident had happened decades earlier, I hadn’t been in any body of water larger than a bathtub since.

  Jordan stood, her expression devilish. “Come on, Em.”

  “I don’t know—”

  She pulled a fake sad face. “Emily, please, I’m trying here.”

  I had to smile.

  “Fair enough.” I stood, refusing to add fear to every other emotion that had rushed into my life recently. “Let’s rent a boat.”

  Einstein didn’t look any more thrilled to board the tiny vessel than I was. But Jordan picked him up, giving him little choice. I stood on the dock telling myself to stop being ridiculous. It was a small, man-made lake that couldn’t be all that deep.

  Jordan took the oars. I sat on the front bench, forcibly keeping my hands in my lap instead of clutching the sides. Einstein looked over the edge with a grimace of distaste.

  Jordan laughed at us both.

  We made our way out into the lake, the trees that were just beginning to bloom lining the shoreline like a pale green ruffle. Beyond the trees, the prewar apartment buildings on Central Park West rose up like sentinels. The Dakota, the San Remo with its twin beacons on top, and farther north just beyond the Natural History Museum, the Beresford with its three towers, standing like an emperor’s castle.

  With each oar stroke through the water, Einstein became more relaxed, carefully making his way over my bench to the bow of the boat. He stood at the front, his head extended as he sniffed, breathing in.

  “See, even Einstein is having fun now,” Jordan said, rowing.

  Like my dog, I started to loosen up. “This was a good idea, Jordan.”

  “Thank you. I have a good one every once in a while.”

  I heard the sarcasm in her voice, but didn’t say anything. I tried to relax completely, take in the sun after a long northeastern winter of snow and overcast skies. “This is nice.”

  I tipped my head back as Jordan had done at lunch, feeling the sun on my face. “How’s the job hunt with WomenFirst going?” I asked for no other reason than to make conversation.

  She stopped rowing. When she didn’t say anything I opened my eyes.

  “It’s not going so great,” she admitted. “Look, here’s the deal, I really need to borrow some money.”

  I forgot about the sun and the boat, fought to keep the lid on the anger that still simmered beneath the surface.

  “How much?” I asked carefully.

  “A couple thousand.”

  “A couple thousand!”

  Einstein glanced at us and seemed to roll his eyes.

  “I’ll pay you back! Though if you had bought my book I wouldn’t be broke. Since that didn’t work out I need a loan.”

  “Loan? You haven’t repaid a dime in the four years I’ve been lending you money! I have tried to be patient. I have tried to be what you needed. What have I done wrong, Jordan? What can I do to make you see you’ve got to grow up?”

 
; Her head fell back and she groaned up to the sky. “Nothing! There is nothing you can do because you aren’t my mother! It’s not your job to take care of me. It never was!”

  We stared at each other in that little boat, the angry words echoing against the water as we both grew quiet.

  “Someone had to,” I said, the words barely heard. “Our mother certainly didn’t.”

  After a second, her mouth opened to say something. But the words were lost when the boat suddenly rocked. I heard a splash, saw Jordan’s eyes go wide.

  “Freakin’ A! Einstein just went over.”

  I leaped up from the bench, the boat heaving, and leaned over just in time to see his little head go under.

  “Einstein!”

  “Emily, he’s a dog. He’ll be fine.”

  “He is not fine! He’s sinking!”

  The boat wobbled as Jordan came forward to look over the edge. “Man, he really is.”

  “Help!” I yelled. But there were no other boats close by.

  “Man,” Jordan repeated, her voice uncertain, young.

  I thought I was going to be sick. It didn’t matter that it was a small lake, not deep. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the ocean and that I was now an adult. I had never learned to swim.

  Fear clutched at me as I lifted my legs over the side.

  “What are you doing, Em?”

  The boat tipped precariously as I inched my butt closer to the edge.

  “Come on, Emily, you can’t go in there. No telling what kind of crap is in that water. Just give E some time. He’ll come back up. Remember, he’s a dog! And dogs can swim!”

  But I wasn’t listening. I heaved my body over the side, the boat nearly capsizing, my head going under as I fought back a scream.

  einstein

  chapter twenty-two

  A surprised woof rushed out of me as I hit the water.

  On the bow, standing on a pile of extra life jackets, I had realized this was my chance. I waited, poised to leap, but I made the mistake of looking down. The water was thick with mire and no doubt crawling with germs. Vertigo hit me hard, my stomach clenched. I was too afraid to jump. Which depressed me even more, and in turn sent me over the edge. Literally.