Emily & Einstein (36 page)

Nate compressed his lips. “I don’t like this one bit.”

Victoria’s stiff shoulders sagged with relief.

“But I don’t see that we have any choice,” he added. “And if all goes well, you’re right, Emily. It could work.”

Tatiana turned to me. “Get the book done.”

einstein

chapter thirty-seven

No one was more surprised than me when Emily came home from the office with a box of her belongings.

I tried to pull myself up from where I had been lying for hours—or maybe minutes. I no longer had an accurate sense of time. “Ha!” I barked, the effort making me cough. “You’ve been fired!”

I might have been surprised that things were going wrong for Emily so quickly, but I was bitterly pleased. And with each bitter or hateful thought, the pulling and sucking sensation increased. Yet I still found it hard to care about the disjointed feeling my mind and body had begun to experience.

“E, can you believe it?” Emily asked, her voice full of excitement.

My hackles rose, my spine going stiff. She wasn’t acting like a woman who had just been fired.

“I’m working from home until Jordan’s book is finished!”

“What? How did this happen?”

“I convinced them it was in the best interest of the company for me to work from home so that I can edit while Jordan is writing!”

My mouth fell open. She grimaced. Clearly, she didn’t need me to remind her of the pesky little detail that Jordan was gone. But her grimace didn’t last.

“I know I should have told them about Jordan, but I couldn’t. Forget about me, but if this debacle hurts Caldecote because of my harebrained idea to publish this book, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

She gave me one of those wry smiles, and I was struck with the memory of that seemingly immortal Emily. Vibrant, full of energy, a deep belief in herself. I realized with a start that despite my hope that my wife was falling apart again, I was wrong. The old Emily was back.

My anger and bitter frustration swelled.

“Besides, look at it this way,” she said. “If it doesn’t work out, it will be easier for them to fire me if I haven’t been in the office for six weeks.”

Not only wasn’t she a wreck, she moved around the apartment with a barely contained energy, going through every inch of Jordan’s room.

“Surely she left behind whatever else she had on the book.” She swung her head around to look at me. “Do you think she took it with her to the jungle?”

Not that she waited for an answer.

“No, she wouldn’t have done that. What is she going to do with computer files in the jungle without a computer?”

Like a dervish, she zipped through drawers and the closet. “Pay dirt!” she exclaimed, dancing around the room like Rocky at the top of that ridiculous Philadelphia staircase. It was as if this potential career catastrophe had finally snapped her into full gear.

She had found an outline of sorts, along with pages of barely legible notes. Not that this cramped Emily’s style. She shoved every scrap of paper into her box of office things. Next, she turned on the computer. As soon as the machine booted up, she went straight for the
My Mother’s Daughter
folder. Sitting behind Emily, panting with effort, I barely made out a listing of chapters. She opened each one. “Not much, but that’s okay. There’s enough here for me to get started.”

She turned the computer off.

That was it? She spends two seconds going over the files, then shuts down? Not exactly the way I would have gone about thoroughly assessing the situation, but heck, the worse she did, the happier it made me. So fumble away!

It turned out, however, that she wasn’t done. As soon as the machine powered down, Emily unplugged it and disconnected the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and hard drive.

Suspicious, I followed her down the hall toward the library.

“You can’t clutter up my five-thousand-dollar desk!” I barked.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to work in the library.”

During the next hour, she did far worse. She transported every piece of computer equipment and scrap of paper upstairs to the suite. My private suite.

My apartment, my money, my marathon, my life. Now this? I was incensed and I let her know it.

“Calm down, E. It’s just for six weeks. I need a private place to do this.”

Like we were overrun with guests. I snorted.

“I need a place that’s just for writing.” She glanced down at me. “
I
am going to be the ghostwriter for Jordan. I’m going to write her book, and I’m going to write it from her point of view.”

Oh, yeah, that’ll work.

“I know, it’ll be hard to see the story through her lens, but that’s what I’m excited about. I’m excited to tell my mother’s and my sister’s stories. Quite frankly, I’m excited to
learn
my mother’s and sister’s stories.”

Spare me.

Emily didn’t waste a second. No sooner had she set up her command center than she got to work. She used Jordan’s erratic outline and notes to create a real outline, each chapter of the book detailed. I had never seen my wife at work, nor had I been interested in listening to her talk about her job, but even I was impressed with her sheer dedication once she got started.

Interestingly, though, she didn’t start to write. She made calls and set up interviews, coming home from each with pages full of notes about her mother.

This went on for days, and during that time I hit a sort of reprieve from the fading. I didn’t get better, but I didn’t get worse, and I had the distinct thought that the old man was waiting for something.

Once Emily finished the research, she worked at all hours, never seeming to stop. Early, late. It would be two
A.M.
and I’d hear her get out of bed and go upstairs. I’d hear the suite door squeak open, the light switch flip, then the computer whirring to life, always followed by the tap, tap, tap of the keyboard.

For the next four weeks Emily wrote. She also made time to go to some lawyer about the apartment. When she returned I knew she had gotten bad news. But she only nodded with determination.

“I believe it’s going to work out.”

Emily and her faith.

If she thought to win me over with her impassioned declaration she was mistaken. I dragged myself up off the floor and walked out on her.

*   *   *

The only other thing Emily did besides work on that book was run. Always with the running. That, and I have to admit, she continued to love me.

When she finally realized that my energy wasn’t getting better, she took me to the vet. When the doctor said there was nothing wrong with me, then took her aside and told her he thought I was depressed, she brought me home and showered me with even more love and praise despite my ill-mannered attempts to make her miserable. If I was unpleasant before, I became horrible to Emily over the next few weeks.

I growled, I nipped at fingers. If she left something out, I destroyed it. Her favorite shoes. Ruined. Pages left on the floor. Ripped to shreds. When she lost herself to the words, I launched into a round of barking. I even peed on my precious floors.

No matter what I did, she hugged me every morning, and kissed me on the forehead before going to bed every night, as if the sheer determination of her love could pull me out of the supposed depression. But I was immune to her charm. I was progressing, but not to something greater. I had progressed from hating her to loathing her. I loathed her vitality, despised her ability to come and go, linger in a bath or talk on the phone.

I hated that despite the stress of writing Jordan’s book, and being on the verge of losing her home, she was happy. I hated that most of all.

*   *   *

Finally the day came when I heard her whoop. “It’s done!”

Despite myself, I felt a sizzle of excitement, not that it helped get me up the stairs. By this time I no longer even tried to make it to the suite. She came flying down, falling to her knees in front of me and hugging me tight.

“We did it, E! We did it!”

As it turned out, everyone back at Caldecote, at least the ones who mattered, were excited too. It didn’t take long before Emily heard that they loved the manuscript. I determined this based on the congratulatory notes, candy, and flowers that arrived. Tatiana sent a bottle of Dom Perignon. The card read,
“To Jordan, for a fabulous book. And to Emily, for saving the day.”

Excuse me,
I wanted to shout.
Emily was the one who got you in that mess in the first place.

I left my wife to her celebration, heading to the master bedroom to curl up with what had become the continuous loop of my discontent. Whether I liked it or not, Emily was saved. Whether I cared or not, Emily had saved herself. I had done very little to help.

To add insult to injury, the marathon was right around the corner.

My mother had moved on months ago, and now my wife was as well. Not only had Emily been able to succeed at work, now she was going to run, building a new life, while Sandy Portman was in the process of becoming nothing and being forgotten altogether.

chapter thirty-eight

With the manuscript turned in, Emily was able to devote herself full time to training. I thought it odd that she hadn’t gone back to the office, that she was still working upstairs in my suite. Strangest of all, some sort of reporter came by the apartment.

She showed him around. He asked about pictures he saw of me, the Sandy me, showed interest in photos of Jordan and Lillian Barlow, before they left together.

Tatiana called repeatedly, even came by one evening without warning.

“Finally,” the woman said when she walked into the gallery like she owned the place. “You are trying my patience, Emily. You did a great job. Now it’s time to come back.”

My wife wasn’t cowed. “I’m working on something,” she said, her excitement making Tatiana eye her with speculation. “And it’s not like I have a bunch of things going on at the office.”

“And you won’t have anything going on at the office until you get back there to start filling your pipeline with potential product.”

Emily cringed. “You make it sound so sterile.”

“Fine, let me rephrase. You have to get back to the office so you can start developing your list of literature that will inspire the masses. Better?”

Emily chuckled. “Yeah, that’s better, but the marathon is on Sunday. I’m dealing with some things on that end. Let me get through that. I’ll come in on Monday.”

*   *   *

The day of the race, in the wee hours of the morning before she had to head off to Staten Island and the starting line, Emily turned on the television for me.

“I thought you might like to watch,” she said.

Despite everything, I
did
want to watch.

On her way out the door, she kneeled in front of me, concern dark in her eyes.

“You’re going to be okay, E,” she said, though I could see she was worried.

Good. I hoped it ruined her race.

Coverage of the event began a couple hours later as the sun was coming up. My stomach churned with jealous misery at the sight of the tens of thousands of runners getting ready to run through the five boroughs of New York City. But whatever jealousy I felt tightened in a knot of surprise when a picture of Emily appeared on the screen.

“There are literally thousands of stories to be told,”
a reporter began, the reporter I had seen at the apartment
, “of the many men and women who come from all over the globe to run what is thought to be one of the greatest marathons in the world. Emily Barlow Portman is just one of those runners, but hers is a story that will stick with you long after the race is over.”

The program shifted to a taped piece.

“When Emily Barlow started to run, she had no plans to run the marathon.”

“I got a dog,”
Emily said with a laugh.
“Einstein got me walking, then running. To be honest, at first I hated every minute of it. The walking was okay, but the running?”
She grimaced.
“Then something happened, and I found myself looking forward to getting out there. Clearing my head, finding peace.”

“What Emily didn’t mention was that three months before she started running, she lost her husband.”

“At thirty-eight,”
Emily added, her voice tight with emotion
, “Sandy Portman was too young to go. He was smart and funny, and we all lost a great deal when he died.”

I stared at the television in shock. A photo of me that came up on the screen made me weep. How beautiful I was. How very much alive.

The taped piece shifted to the Dakota, Emily walking out of the front gates, Johnny tipping his hat to her.

How had I not realized this was going on?

“I run in the park six days a week, generally in the mornings before work, with long runs on the weekends.”

In this segment of the taped piece, the reporter now wore running clothes and walked with her to the park. When Emily started to run, the reporter ran with her on the bridle path, the cameraman doing a remarkable job of keeping the picture steady.

“My husband wanted to run the New York City Marathon, but never got the chance. I’m running this race in memory of Sandy, who didn’t have the chance to realize his dream, and for my dog Einstein, who saved me when I didn’t think I could get over the loss.”

I couldn’t believe it. She was doing this for me? Both as a man, and as a dog?

The taped piece ended, coming back live.

“People run for many reasons,”
the reporter said, crowds of spectators milling around him.
“Emily Barlow runs for a man she loved and a dog she says saved her. She might not place with the top finishers, but I’d like to think that by the sheer act of being here today she has already won a great deal more than a simple medal.”

After that, I sat unable to move and watched, riveted, as hour after hour of coverage unfolded. They showed Emily throughout the race. At the starting line, at mile six, at ten. And each time she looked good. She looked strong. I was surprised at myself when I couldn’t help but smile.