Emily and Einstein

by Linda Francis Lee

  And then, well, I got dead.

  It was the first week of August and the plan was to have a back-to-work party after Labor Day.

  “It’s perfect,” Emily told Jordan and me. “Everyone will be back from summering here and there, and Jordan, your book will be done! It will be both a welcome back and celebration party.”

  I didn’t really care what the reason for the party was. A party was a party. As to Jordan, I saw what I felt certain was genuine excitement on her face. I had the feeling that she had begun to think about morphing into some kind of literary star.

  For half a second, Emily mumbled something about doing the cooking herself. “But who has time?” she said, looking at me. “Besides,” she snorted, “all I’ve done recently is bake.”

  So she hired a caterer to take care of the food, though it turned out the woman who showed up wasn’t an actual caterer.

  “Thank you for letting me do this!” a woman named Birdie said.

  “If your first love is cooking, why are you working at Caldecote?”

  She wrinkled her pert little nose. “After I moved here it was the only company that would hire me. Though, truth to tell, I only got the job at Caldecote because of my sister.”

  “Why don’t I know any of this?”

  Birdie smiled and patted Emily’s cheek. “Maybe at heart I’m not so different from you with secrets to keep, and looking for a way to start over.”

  The woman was cute if you went for the perky Texas type, her accent thick as bourbon laced with honey. I’d never been one for perky, but then she kneeled in front of me and exclaimed, “Look at you! Sweet as sweet can be, I just love you!”

  What could I do? I wasn’t one to argue with good taste, so I decided to adore her.

  I sat next to Emily on the library sofa.

  “How about stuffed mushrooms?” Birdie suggested.

  Growl.

  Emily looked at me. “Too done?”

  Bark!

  “You’re right,” Birdie said, like she had no more trouble taking advice from a dog than my wife had.

  I sat back and half listened, half participated. I felt relaxed. Had I not been worried about the final destination of my soul, I realized I could have lived quite the contented life basking in the sun and indulging in Steakin’s at my Dakota apartment while I waited for the grand prize of greatness that awaited me when I finished helping my wife.

  Which reminded me of the apartment. My mother and even my lawyer had gone strangely silent. Just like Emily, I had come to hope that Mother was throwing in the towel. But I knew Althea Portman. She had never in her life rolled over in a fight. Which meant she was doing something to regain the apartment. We just didn’t know what it was.

  As has been established, I never knew how much my wife made in salary. It had had no bearing on me when I was a man. She had never once asked me for money, so I assumed she made plenty. When something needed to be done to the apartment, we split the bills, though she did the work. When she wanted to redo something, we split that too. In hindsight, I realized that as an associate editor, or even as an editor and now a senior editor, she couldn’t have come close to making the kind of money I earned on Wall Street. Yet she had never complained when I asked her to pay for her share of some new addition. That sound system which I loved, for example.

  Out of habit I scoffed at the thought that I should have done anything differently regarding our bills. Water under the bridge, and all that. Besides, hadn’t I paid the maintenance and taxes on the apartment? And wasn’t she the one who had insisted that she contribute to everything else—those equal rights, and all? What was I supposed to do, turn her money away?

  The stab of nausea brought me up short. I tripped over the carpet in my study, stumbling, hitting the floor with a woof. I laid there for a second, my heart skittering. I wanted to chalk the nausea up to yet another impending case of flu, but by then I knew better. I was fading again, but this time the sensation was even stronger.

  Was it possible that the old man had decided I was hopeless after all? After all this, was he giving up on me? For no good reason!

  My stomach heaved.

  Terror raced through me as I realized that the essence of Sandy Portman was … what? Being pulled out of Einstein’s body?

  The nausea grew. I felt a sucking burn along with a sickening light-headedness, as if I had cut myself and blood was rushing away from my heart to the wound.

  Okay, okay, there was a reason for this. I needed to keep going deeper into this awful insight to figure out what had precipitated this new round of fading.

  My mother not forgetting the apartment? Could that have caused this?

  The party? Me wondering where Emily was getting the money for it?

  The sound system?

  My hackles rose as something like a shock ran along my nerve endings. Good God, I was fading over a bloody sound system?

  For half a second I was incensed, and with that my vision went blurry. All I could “see” were the thoughts in my head, memories, and suddenly I saw myself standing next to Emily at the high-end electronics store, as excited as a child over a sound system that would rival a small theater’s.

  “We’ll take it,” I told the clerk without asking Emily, who was busy typing away on her BlackBerry.

  My wife never stopped working. She edited manuscripts at home like an artist in a studio, lost to everything but the work. She had just been promoted for the first time and as soon as we were done at the store we were going to celebrate. Everyone I met who knew her said she was great at what she did.

  When the cashier asked how I was going to pay, I said by credit card. A heartbeat passed, then I added, “And my wife is paying half.”

  The cashier, a smart-aleck girl, no doubt from Brooklyn, smirked. I ignored her. “Emily.”

  “What?” she said when I asked for her credit card.

  “Oh, what for?”

  “The sound system, silly.”

  Her head snapped up, her thumbs poised over the maddeningly small BlackBerry keyboard as she glanced from me to the cashier to the clerk who had already retrieved the boxes for us to take home in a cab.

  “Oh,” then “oh,” again.

  I got the credit card statement the next month, surprised at the total for just half. I had paid no mind to the amount when I was buying the system. But at the time, I gave no thought to Emily receiving her own bill.

  Pain stabbed into my blurry vision.

  “Okay! Okay!” I yelped.

  Perhaps I gave it a little thought.

  The pain didn’t abate.

  I concentrated, fought with something deep inside me, fought that place where I hated to be wrong, hated to admit that I wasn’t perfect, and it was as I moved even deeper that the answer came. I had wanted to hurt Emily. I had wanted to punish her for being good at her job and succeeding while I struggled to be more than someone who ripped up companies and destroyed people’s lives. Just as deep down I had suspected, but refused to admit, that during that earlier Christmas I had wanted proof that how Emily lived her life with decorated fir trees and eggnog wasn’t somehow better than the way I lived mine.

  The fading stopped completely then, but left me weak on my fine Persian rug. Anxiety mixed with exhaustion. After Emily went to sleep, I crept into her room and curled up in the corner. I needed to be close to her. In the morning, I woke before she did and returned to the kitchen.

  For the next few nights it was much the same. I snuck into Emily’s room, and with each night that passed I needed to be there, close to my wife, even more. If worry about my fate seeped in and I couldn’t go back to sleep, I quietly pawed and nosed one of her children’s books off the shelves, doing my best to make out the illustrations. My favorite was Eloise. I already knew the story and didn’t have to go through the laborious process of trying to make out the words.

  One night Emily woke, finding me engrossed in one of Eloise’s adventures, this time in Paris. Emily didn’t look surpris
ed to see me there in the semidark, seemingly reading by the faint light from the bright streets below. She just smiled sleepily and said, “That’s one of my favorites too.”

  She rolled over and went back to sleep. When she woke again that morning I hadn’t snuck out. I watched her wake, watched her face soften when she saw me. Stretching, she reached out to me. This time I went to her without a grumble or sigh, and let her scoop me up in bed and pull me close.

  She had dazzled me when she took on Victor Harken, intrigued me at her apartment when she made me dinner. When she surprised me with the train at Christmas I had been willing to admit that I cared for her more than I had cared for anyone—but I understood now that it had only been with the capacity of a man who was limited in how much he could allow himself to feel.

  Lying beside her now, captive in a dog’s body, I knew I had begun to feel something deeper for my wife, something truer, less shallow. I curled closer and found myself praying that somehow, someway, we could stay together forever.

  *

  We were both surprised the next morning when she and I woke at the same moment, our heads so close together.

  “Oh!” she squeaked.

  “Uhff!” I barked.

  Then she laughed and I inched even closer.

  It was the day of the party and we were both excited.

  Jordan’s book was due and I expected her to be excited as well. But as Emily flew around taking care of last minute details, Jordan was irritable and agitated.

  “Jordan, are you ready yet?” Emily called out as she came out of her own room.

  I was floored by the sight of her.

  My wife wore her hair long and flowing down her back. She had chosen a caramel-colored dress, sleeveless, hitting just above the knee, pearls around her neck, and a sleek bone shoe with three-inch, exceedingly narrow heels. I was astonished to note that her little jaunts around the reservoir had paid off in more ways than better mental health. Perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped going with her on the runs. Emily’s arms and calves were sleek and defined. It surprised me that such short runs could bring about such muscle definition.

  I should have known then that something was off. But all I knew was that once again my wife was the fearless woman who blew into everything like she was immortal. I might have felt a twinge of jealousy, but I quickly pushed it away and beamed with pride. More progress!

  And then there was me. She dressed me in a little tuxedo jacket—I kid you not. Oddly, I couldn’t muster up an ounce of indignation. I felt a twinge of embarrassment, but that was it.

  “You look so handsome!” she enthused.

  After one look in the mirror I couldn’t deny that she was right.

  The apartment looked festive with candles lit, the early September sun going down in the west, turning the buildings on the opposite side of the park a sparkling red, the treetops between Fifth Avenue and Central Park West like green velvet.

  It was in the minutes before the first guest arrived that we caught Jordan sneaking through the crush of waitstaff in the kitchen on her way to the service elevator.

  “Jordan?” Emily said. “Why haven’t you changed?”

  “Ah, oh, ah…”

  “Jordan? People should arrive any minute. You know half of them are here to see you. Celebrating your book, remember!”

  Jordan cringed, then found her more familiar militant stance. “That’s ridiculous. I am not going to be paraded around like a circus animal.”

  I felt Emily’s energy take a nosedive.

  “Jordan, is something wrong with the book? We agreed this morning that you would turn it over to me first thing tomorrow. Are you nervous? Is that why you’re acting like this?”

  “I’m not acting like anything.”

  Emily gave her a look.

  “Okay, so maybe I’m being a little huffy, but I need to get out. I need to clear my head. Writing is hard as hell.”

  “But the book is ready, right?”

  The sisters stood there amid the chaos of the chef and waiters scrabbling. But before Jordan could answer, the buzzer rang. The first guest had arrived.

  emily

  I became my mother’s favorite on purpose. Emily certainly had cornered the market on frustrating Lillian Barlow. But looking back I’ve begun to wonder why a perfect daughter frustrated a mother while a troublesome one made her smile.

  —EXCERPT FROM My Mother’s Daughter

  chapter thirty-one

  From the look on my sister’s face I knew something was very wrong.

  “Jordan, what is going on?”

  The buzzer rang again, but I ignored it.

  Jordan threw up her hands. “The book isn’t done, okay?”

  Dots swam in front of my eyes. “But it’s due. You said you’d turn it in tomorrow. The wheels are in motion. It’s got to be done.”

  “I know that,” Jordan snapped, before visibly calming herself. “Yeah, yeah, I know. That’s why I can’t do the party thing. I have to get out, get some fresh air, and get back to work. It’s almost done. Really. Maybe I need until Monday.”

  This wouldn’t be the first time an author was late with a book, but the tight publishing schedule for My Mother’s Daughter didn’t allow for delays. I still had to edit the book before we could send it out for advance quotes and long-lead magazine coverage. But what were my options?

  “If you don’t attend the party and you work tomorrow, work all weekend, you’ll have it done on Monday?”

  “Oh, yes! Yes! Monday!”

  “Jordan?”

  “Emily, stop pressing me! I’ll get it done. You’re always this way. Breathing down my neck.”

  I held back a cutting retort. Ever since I had bought her book Jordan had been different, better, cooking dinner, sharing the progress on her writing. She’d even been getting along with Einstein.

  “You’re sure everything’s all right, that you’ll turn in the manuscript on Monday?”

  “Emily, trust me. It’s all good. I’m going out to get a quick bite to eat, then I’ll slip back into my room with no one the wiser, and work like crazy.”

  I watched her sling her tattered backpack over one shoulder and disappear out the back door. I wanted to obsess, to fix this. But the buzzer rang yet again and I knew that whatever concern I felt would have to wait until later.

  *

  Once the first guest arrived, the concierge had a list of everyone else attending and simply sent them up. All told, of the sixty invitations I sent out, fifty-five had RSVPed yes, many of them couples. There would easily be a hundred people in the apartment before the night was over. I had also invited Max, with his strong yet kind smiles and his touch that was growing more heated.

  The young editors from work arrived first and together, each of the women dressed in short skirts and high heels. Birdie was busy with the food, in control like a general on the battlefield. Coworkers from production and publicity arrived, along with several people from sales. I had invited friends I knew from other publishing houses, including Hedda Vendome, agents I had gotten to know, and even people from industry periodicals.

  The only person who gave me pause was Victoria. The minute she walked into my home with Nate, I saw the change in her eyes, the shift from superiority to awe, then awe to jealousy. If she needed any more ammunition to hate me, she’d just found it. My peers were dumfounded by the apartment, though other than Birdie, none of them knew about the precariousness of my ownership.

  “It’s beautiful, Emily.”

  “You can feel the history.”

  “It’s so Time and Again,” someone said, referring to the Jack Finney novel about a modern man traveling back in time to the 1880s in the Dakota.

  “Quite frankly,” Victoria retorted, “I think it’s more that other story set here, the horror one, Rosemary’s Baby.”

  I walked away.

  The food was perfect, Birdie blushing over the compliments, the guests mostly wonderful. Hedda arrived with a flourish, along with
a surprising number of the New York literary glitterati. I found myself mingling with an ease I thought I had forgotten, completely putting out of my mind the fact that Jordan had slipped out the back door. I talked and laughed, told stories and listened while the night circled around me.

  A lull came when I moved between a small group of bloggers and a smaller circle from the Caldecote art department. Relishing the night, I retrieved a glass of wine and went in search of a quiet corner. With every inch of the place teeming with people, I headed back to my bedroom. Earlier I had shut the door, so I was surprised to find it ajar.

  Inside, Hedda stood in front of my collection of children’s books. In one hand she cupped a snifter of brandy, an unlit cigarette caught between her fingers. She looked like a glamorous movie star from the forties.

  “Hedda?”

  She turned without a trace of guilt. “Caught me.” She held up the crystal glass and cigarette. “It’s a party. I ask, how can I not have a glass of something?” Her deep laugh filled the room. “And how can I have a drink without a cigarette—even if all I do is hold it?”

  “You can drink all you want,” I told her. “I’m not your doctor.”

  “Thank God you’re not. My doctor is half my age and to-die-for good looking. Oh, if I could turn back the clock a few decades…”

  The words trailed off and she returned to my books. She didn’t say anything else, but just before I would have left her she caught me off guard.

  “When are you going to accept that you are meant to be in children’s publishing?”

  I shook my head and groaned. “Hedda—”

  “I know they are completely different worlds. But look at this.” She swept her hand toward the collection. “Every important children’s book since the beginning of time. It makes no sense to me that you wouldn’t work in my world instead of, say … Tatiana’s.”

  “Don’t start. It’s a party.”

  She ignored me, studying the shelves. When she finally spoke again there was a casualness to her tone that was at odds with the intensity of her expression. “Did you know that part of the reason I became a children’s book editor was because of this very collection?”