Emily & Einstein (7 page)

Emily still hadn’t shown up, and only Blue seemed to notice that something was wrong with me.

“Hey, Einstein,” she said, trying to calm me as I whimpered and drooled. “You miss Emily, don’t you?”

My head went up, my ears perking forward.

“Yeah,” she said, “I totally get it. You miss her. I called her, left messages telling her what was going on. But listen, she’s got a plate load to deal with right now. Dead husband, and all. Shrew of a mother-in-law. On top of everything, I don’t think she could take watching someone walk out of here with you. So she sort of went cold turkey. Nurse told me she resigned as a volunteer and isn’t coming back.”

Oh my God!

I was inconsolable the rest of the day. Shep tried to cheer me up, but he wasn’t much better off than I was.

On Monday evening Vinny came in and opened the shepherd’s cage. The proud dog scuttled backward, his giant paws churning up the towel and cushion flooring, his deep whimpering a plea. Not that this deterred Vinny. He reached in with some sort of stick and lasso, capturing Shep around the neck, yanking him out.

“Hey, where are you going?” I called out.

This wasn’t part of any schedule I had been able to discern. But neither Vinny nor Shep bothered to enlighten me.

By the end of Vinny’s shift, Shep hadn’t returned. The next evening when Blue returned and saw the empty cage, she seemed surprised.

“Damn,” she said.

Fear brought out the worst in me; it always had. I was barely nice to Blue, alternating growls with whimpers.

She looked at me. “You really have to get your act together. I know you never would have bitten that little girl, but you can’t expect anyone else to know that. And you know what happens if we can’t find a place for you, or worse, if they think you’re a biter, right?”

I felt my strange, shaky heart skip a beat.

“You get put down.”

Put down? As in put to sleep? Forever? Was that what happened to Shep?

The thoughts rose through me like stair steps leading back to panic followed quickly by something else. I barely knew the dog, but still. Shep was dead.

My throat tightened and for a moment I had to look away. “Shep,” I whimpered and panted even more.

“Einstein. Don’t freak out on me. You’ve got to calm down.”

I didn’t listen. Those embers of fear and anger flared to life. I started to howl again, though not intentionally. It just happened. Despair surged, crashing over me.

“Old man!” This time I shouted, the howling bark echoing against the cinder blocks and cement.

The swinging door burst open. “What’s going on in here?”

It was Nurse with Vinny on her heels.

“He’s upset,” Blue said, “because of Otto. We know the animals sense when others have been put down.”

Nurse looked resigned to the reality of it. Vinny shrugged then stepped forward. At the expression on his face and the sight of the stick-lasso thing leaning against the wall, I realized with a start that my time had come. I began to whimper again. Vinny didn’t bother with the lasso; he reached for me with one of his meaty hands. This bastard who had been so horrible when he bathed me was going to kill me.

Blue turned away. Nurse frowned. Vinny gave me a look that said I was in for a bit of retribution before I met my maker.

“Old man!” I cried again, scrambling in the cage, backing away, the terry cloth towels bunching underneath my paws. “Oh, God, no. Please,” I howled.

And just when Vinny grabbed me by the fur on my neck, a strange surge of heat and electricity shot through me. The room seemed to shift, and I swear even Vinny felt it. Confusion wrinkled his brow; his grip loosened and he glanced over his shoulder.

Yes, yes,
I thought. The old man was going to step in and fix this.

But just as suddenly, the energy shifted even more, seemed to grow static—then disappeared altogether as if the old man had thought better of saving me.

Misery spiked. “Old man! You can’t do this!”

Vinny shook himself, then jerked me from the cage. I cried and fought to get away, yelping when he yanked me off the floor and carried me dangling like a sack. My feet scrambled in the air, but my cries were cut off along with my breath because of his strangling grip. Then suddenly I heard the bang, like a shot echoing against all the metal and cinder blocks.

“What’s going on here?”

Vinny jerked, swinging me around with him. Surprise as much as pain made me yelp, followed quickly by relief when I saw my wife standing in the doorway, her eyes wide. Then her brows slammed together. “Put him down.”

“Emily!” I tried to bark. But Vinny hadn’t given up. He swung me up into his arms.

“I said, put him down.”

The man grumbled and glared at me.

Nurse glanced from me to my wife. “Emily, you know this is how it works. Einstein had his chance. No one wants him.”

The words surprised me. Never in my life had no one wanted me.

A strange sort of disconnect raced down my spine. I refused to examine what the words made me feel, refused to put a name to the pressure I felt behind Einstein’s eyes. My little dog’s body trembled as I looked at Emily. “Please want me.” It was yet another pathetic and embarrassing bout of begging. This from a man who had never been fond of sloppy displays of emotion. But I couldn’t help it. “You have to want me.”

My wife sighed. “This is crazy.”

“Please,” I murmured.

My wife pressed her eyes closed, exhaling sharply.

“Emily,” Nurse said. “Don’t get any ideas. You’d take every dog home if you could.”

She opened her eyes slowly, looking directly at me. “This is different.”

The skin beneath her eyes was shadowed with half-moon bruises as if she had been working around the clock—or been hit. She walked up and took me from Vinny. “Really,” she said so softly that only I heard. “I don’t know why, but Einstein is different.”

Relief soared, making me weak, and for a second I leaned into her with whimpering gratitude. But when I looked back into her sad luminous eyes, my relief shifted and jarred, replaced by frustration. Sure I should have been nothing but grateful. It’s easy to see that now. But in that moment I realized that despite the fact that her life was threatening to fall apart, somehow she still managed to be a warrior who I couldn’t afford to admit was saving me once again.

emily

My mother was a woman with a grand appetite for the possibilities of life, if not the actual living. She was glorious and wild, demanding something from the world that it was never quite willing to give. When I was born she was certain she was a hero to women. In a time when the world didn’t want to change, she fought against complacency. How could you not live in awe of this woman who was my mother?

—
EXCERPT FROM
My Mother’s Daughter

chapter six

After I took care of the necessary paperwork, I walked out of the clinic with Einstein. I was stiff with shock. What had I been thinking? What in the world was I going to do with a dog? But I hadn’t been able to ignore Blue’s last frantic message that if I didn’t save Einstein, he was going to be put down.

With Einstein at my side, we took a cab to the Dakota. My new dog stood on the seat next to me, his paws on the armrest so he could look out the window. He panted excitedly at the sight of the light brown sandstone and brick building with its high gables and deeply pitched roofs, balustrades and spandrels, the porte cochere archway leading into the inner courtyard and entrance. During the day, the old building looked almost white in the midday sun. But at night, when the hundred-year-old gaslights that lined the property came on, the bricks took on the rich hue of melting caramel.

The doorman opened the cab door.

“Whoa,” Johnny said, stepping back when Einstein rocketed toward him. Thankfully, my new dog thought better of pouncing. E stopped and sat abruptly, then did the smiling thing that was like no other dog I had ever known.

Johnny laughed.

“Mrs. Portman,” the man said, extending his white-gloved hand to help me out. “You got a new friend?”

“You could say that. I adopted him.”

“Really? Hey, buddy.” Johnny leaned down and scratched the dog behind the ears.

“His name is Einstein,” I said.

“A smart one, huh?”

I glanced at the dog. “Smart enough to get me to take him home.”

Einstein led the way through the portico. As New York apartment buildings went the Dakota was on a short list of the most illustrious. The grande dame had seen her share of grief and joy, and had survived, built in a square around a large, open courtyard with two massive fountains and main elevators in all four inner corners. Since it was built in the 1880s, a long line of famous people had lived there. John Lennon was probably the most famous, mostly because it was in the portico that he had been shot. But there was also Judy Garland, Boris Karloff, and Leonard Bernstein—to name a few. A mix of famous, wealthy, and regular people lived there now.

I didn’t care about the famous residents. I loved the Dakota for its old-world elegance, its roots in New York’s past, and for the fact that it had survived over a hundred years of history and heartache.

We took the northeast elevator up, and as soon as it opened Einstein strode out, heading straight for the fine French doors with inset stained glass of my apartment. Just when I thought Einstein was going to stop at the front door, he glanced back at me as if considering, then continued on, sniffing around the large common area, peering down the series of descending stairs to the bottom floor.

“For a second there I thought you knew exactly where I lived. Which is impossible. Right?”

I think he shrugged.

Once I opened the door, he trotted through the vestibule and stopped in the gallery with its intricately laid floor and massive light fixture of frosted glass and ornate metalwork hanging from the fourteen-foot-high ceiling. The gallery led directly into the library with its high, wide windows and rich draperies. To the left of the library, through a massive set of double doors with glass transoms, stood the master bedroom, which in turn circled back through a long hallway to the gallery.

I was seven years old when I first saw the glossy magazine photograph of the Dakota. From the beginning, I loved the building. I suspect it had something to do with the way it looked like the building where Eloise lived. The tale of a little girl with no discernable family who had the run of the Plaza Hotel had been my favorite book when I was growing up.

At eight, when my mother took me with her to the Dakota to visit some man, I was left to my own devices for the bulk of an afternoon. I climbed stairwells and rode elevators, sitting on the elevator’s bench seat like a princess. When the concierge told me that the building had been designed by the same man who designed the Plaza Hotel, my love of the building was solidified. Just as Eloise belonged in the Plaza, I decided I belonged at the Dakota. That Sandy had brought me to this very building as a bride had seemed prophetic.

Einstein stood in the gallery much as I had the first time, absorbing the silence, the thick walls blocking out the city noise.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Einstein jumped as if he had forgotten I was there.

“Sandy loves this place.”

The little dog seemed to sigh.

My throat tightened at the memory of my husband, tears threatening to squeeze over, but I shook them away. I hadn’t cried since the accident. That was how I saw it, an accident, something that could be fixed, undone, made right, like chiseling away broken bathroom tile and replacing it with perfect squares that matched the old. Which was crazy. But I ignored that too.

I headed down the main hall with the things the clinic had given me. “You’ll sleep in here,” I called back. “It’s the kitchen, but it’s a whole lot nicer than the clinic.”

He didn’t follow me. Instead he stayed in the gallery, glancing up the stairway that led to a separate suite of rooms on the floor above. The suite had always been Sandy’s private space, especially in the last few months. I hadn’t ventured up there since the accident.

“What is it, E?”

He raised his muzzle and continued past the stairs, marching down the hall toward the master bedroom.

“Hey!” I called after him. “No way, Einstein. It’s too late for me to figure out how you know so much about this place, but if my mother-in-law shows up and finds you on her precious son’s duvet there will be no mercy. I need that like I need a hole in my head.”

I didn’t add that I had been avoiding Sandy’s mother and estate lawyer since the funeral, holding on to some gauzy-brained idea that maybe they would forget the apartment and go away.

Einstein stood at the foot of the huge bed Sandy loved, seeming to debate. With a huff, he turned back and retraced his footsteps down the hall.

When I got over the strangeness, I grabbed three of the fluffiest beach blankets I could find and dashed after him. My new dog had found the kitchen on his own and waited for me with impatience.

After I piled the blankets in the corner, Einstein strode past without so much as a nod, circled twice, and flopped down with an exhausted groan. I put out a bowl of water for him, waiting a second to make sure he was settled. When he didn’t move a muscle, I turned off the light. “Good night, Einstein,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Strangely, I was.

*   *   *

I had taken up residence in the yellow guest room where I had painted the wall border, the drop cloths removed, furniture put back into place, my collection of children’s books returned to the tall shelves. I managed to stay in the numb, unfeeling place during the days by making a plan. Wake up, shower, find clothes, eat. I did everything in order, the same order every day.

But at night … I hated the nights, hated the dream that woke me up screaming, as if my subconscious played a continuous loop of what my conscious mind refused to accept. When I gasped awake, I couldn’t breathe, my eyes burned, and I was unsure how to move forward. Then I would remember the plan. Get up, shower, find clothes, eat, and the day would lurch forward.