Emma's Table (24 page)

Cassy glared down at the fancy shoes she was wearing in
honor of the occasion: they were pointy-toed with a kitten heel. Her mother had sent them to her a few weeks before.

She'd failed to see the maze of slushy puddles that was freezing over for the night. She was careful to avoid them, but her puppy marched straight ahead, pulling hard from his end of the leash.

“Slow down, Rusty,” she called.

And still he pulled, turning every iced-over puddle into an Olympic rink. He took the ice in a flurry of slippery paws and tumbledown steps, like a red-haired Abbott or Costello with a banana peel underfoot.

“Look at him,” she said, turning to Pete, the homely trainer.

They watched in unison as Rusty righted himself, finding his footing on solid ground. The little dog turned back to them every time—a flash of eye contact, then on to the next puddle.

“He's so proud of himself,” she said, projecting.

Cassy leaned lightly into Pete as they walked.

She hadn't seen him dressed up before, his heavy brown boots traded in for loafers, his long legs draped in gray flannel. He looks pretty good, she thought. There was still no getting around that face of his—the deep scars and tremendous nose—but Cassy noticed it less and less.

And handsome faces had always been her weakness.

“He just wants to make sure we're still here,” Pete said, squeezing her hand as he spoke. They watched the dog slip and slide, then turn around to face them.

She gazed at Pete, in profile, until he caught her looking, and then she turned away.

“Hey, Rusty,” she called, in a hissing whisper, the only
voice the dog responded to. The little thing stopped dead in his tracks and turned around to face her. “I'm not going anywhere,” she promised, whispering still.

The puppy cocked its head at a rakish angle.

They're both looking at me now, she saw: Rusty and Pete. Two nice boys, she thought. She wondered if she could get used to that.

And still the puppy stared.

Cassy took it as a sign of devotion.

“He wants a treat,” Pete told her, sounding knowledgeable as he dashed her loving fantasy into sharp little pieces.

“How do you know?” she asked, a little peevish.

He was always so quick to turn her dog into a pragmatic little beast. Maybe Rusty was staring because he loved her?

“I don't,” he said, sounding startled. “Not for a fact anyway.”

Cassy wondered how long Pete would stay in the picture, if he'd be there with them the very next week. Typically, she'd have moved on by now—at the first sign of trouble.

“I do have some experience with dogs though,” he said, smiling at her.

Cassy appreciated the minor backpedaling.

And she hoped, for the record, that he'd be with them next week, and the one after that. The little dog stared at her still, sitting politely, but not moving an inch. She knew Pete was right: he wanted a treat.

She reached into her pocket and bent down to the dog.

Pete leaned into her when she stood up again, as if he'd grown lonely in her absence. “Look at the lights over there,” he said, pointing past the skeletal trees at the perimeter of the park, his eyes lifted to the windows on Fifth Avenue.
They twinkled yellow in the velvet sky, like a jeweler's case filled up with canary diamonds. “They look like stars,” he said. “Don't they?”

They did, in fact, but she drew the line at his mushy tone. “Sure,” she said, a little harder than she meant. “If stars paid a light bill.”

She watched Pete's face fall. Cassy reached for his hand.

“No light bill,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Well, you got me there, I guess.”

She wondered at the syncopated rhythm of their courtship: the lavender-scented love notes floated up high, only to be dragged down to earth again—laced into a pair of gravity boots. Rusty wasn't staring because he loved her, he said; he was a hungry little brute. And the apartments in the distance were just that, she told him, not any kind of North Star at all.

Should all these missed connections be telling her something?

But the longer Cassy gazed into the blackish night, the more she thought Pete had a point. Those glittering buildings—with some lights on, and others off—did look a bit like constellations, glinting diagrams in the evening sky.

“Star light,” she whispered, right into Pete's ear. “Star bright,” she said.

She wanted to make it up to him.

He smiled back at her. “Who's from Con Edison now?” he asked.

Cassy didn't get to finish her wish though: just then, a hearty squirrel with an elaborate tail skittered in front of them on the macadam path. Rusty yanked his leash right out of her hands, running loose and giving chase, barking wildly as
he went. He might have gotten away altogether if Pete hadn't stepped on the leash—in quick order too.

“You have to wrap it around your fingers,” he snarled at her. “I've told you that a hundred times.”

Cassy nearly crumbled under the weight of his criticism.

“Relax,” she said, as if her feelings weren't hurt, as if she were shrugging the whole thing off. The crisis had been averted, after all. Rusty's leash was safely underfoot, and the squirrel had bobbled up some barky trunk, its luxurious tail trailing behind it.

“No,” Pete said, angry with her still.

The dog made soft growling noises beneath its breath.

“It's
your
job to keep him safe,” he told her. The fact that it had worked out—this time, anyway—didn't take her off the hook, not in his book.

Cassy felt terrible.

Oh, well, she thought, bidding Pete a silent farewell.

“Show me,” he said, very serious still.

Cassy was confused.

“The leash,” he said. “Show me how you wrap it.”

She wound the leash around her fingers, securing it in place just like he'd shown her so many times before. “Better?” she asked, looking up at him.

She cared enough to get it right.

For a split second, she could actually picture the long through-line of a real relationship: the screwing up and the moving on.

She lost it just as quickly.

Pete tried reaching an arm around her waist, but Cassy pulled away.

This was a brand-new leaf for her—sticking with it, with
anything—the nice man and the little dog, all these trees. She wanted to get it right, but she had no particular faith that she could.

She couldn't even remember to twine the leash around her fingers.

She liked Pete—a lot—but they were only at the very beginning, and her terrible track record bounced through her head like that mocking squirrel, leaping gaily from branch to branch, flashing its voluminous tail. She wanted to keep things light and easy, but light and easy wasn't easy for her. Cassy was like an emergency-room nurse when it came to romance—standing vigilant guard with a chart in hand, just waiting to clock that final breath.

Maybe she should just concentrate on the dog for now, the winding leash that kept him close?

 

The three of them had been together for seven days running. It hadn't taken nearly that long though—only four days, in fact—for Pete's kibble and leashes to turn to accidental brushings of hands and legs, and just a day longer for the ugly trainer to end up in Cassy's bed.

Still, it was much too soon for family portraits.

Cassy tried not to get ahead of herself; she didn't like to hope—not where other people's affections were concerned. She seemed bound to lose them every time. Better to keep it simple, she thought—just Rusty and me, for now. They'd be a pack of two, until she got it right. She could work her way up to loving Pete, and maybe Pete would stick around and love her back?

Early days still, she reminded herself.

Cassy glanced down at Rusty with a wide-open heart. He
was sniffing around the base of a silver streetlamp, ferreting out the places where other dogs had peed.

“Sundays aren't so bad,” she said.

“Who said they were?” he asked, reaching for her hand again. There wasn't a jot of trouble on his face.

He'd moved beyond the trouble with the leash.

She squeezed his fingers in gratitude, wrapped long and easy around her own. All the lurid Sundays before felt like ancient history to her then—as far off as the lights on Second Avenue.

But she was getting ahead of herself.

Stick with the dog, she thought, remembering her plan.

“Isn't that your mother?” Pete asked—like a slap across the face.

“Where?” she asked, ducking her head quickly, like an ostrich, into navy wool.

“Up there,” he said, pointing up a smallish hill.

Cassy shushed him, and swatted his finger down fast. She saw her mother and father up ahead, strolling on a path that would intersect with theirs soon enough.

“What the hell?” she mumbled, wriggling her hand free of Pete's.

He looked a little hurt, but she didn't have time for that now.

They were heading to her mother's place, in perfect time for Sunday dinner, but Cassy wasn't ready yet. She looked at Rusty and Pete with a jaundiced eye—her constant companions of seven days running.

What was I thinking? she wondered.

The dog was a given, she supposed—Cassy had to bring him; there was no telling what Rusty would do if she left
him alone. But she regretted inviting Pete. She glanced at her mother on the path ahead: the pelts of her coat seemed to echo her conclusion. She wouldn't be surprised if poor Pete were skinned alive. She fixed on his store of orange poop bags, their plastic corners peeking brightly from his hip pocket.

A dog trainer, she thought.

Her mother would have something to say about that.

I should end it right now, she supposed, looking at his face and not even noticing his mottled skin.

“Aren't you going to say hello?” Pete asked.

“Are you crazy?” she replied.

Cassy had already explained how things worked with her mother: it had taken her two full days just to reach her that week, and all she wanted to do was apologize for the Sunday before, the dinner with Benjamin and Melora.

“Go throw her a bone,” he said.

“She doesn't want a bone,” she told him. “She wants the whole damn carcass.”

“So throw her a carcass,” he said, a little surprised. Pete didn't understand the problem at all.

Cassy checked her watch. “We've got fifteen minutes still,” she said, like a petulant child at bedtime.

Her parents had walked nearly out of sight.

She heard the noises from Fifth Avenue filtering into the park—all the horns and brakes, the squealing tires. They'd have to leave their idyll soon enough, she supposed.

“You can't just ignore her,” Pete said.

Cassy nodded, as if she agreed, but she knew that Pete was out of his depth. It took nearly everything she had to ignore her mother—the cool indifference that she'd made as plain as day—and still it wasn't enough.

Cassy wanted to start moving, but she knew she should stay still.

She looked to the end of the path in front of them.

She was tired of all her complicated equations: leaving before she got left; ignoring before she was ignored; denying that the twinkling apartment lights looked like stars, that she wanted to say hello to her mother, up ahead.

Rusty turned around and stared, his furry head cocked in wait, either loving her deeply or wanting another treat.

Maybe
both
, she thought in a flash of inspiration.

Maybe they came down to the same thing in the end. Hadn't the persistent puppy taught her that already: just keep staring until you get what you want?

“Okay,” she sighed, caving in to Pete and all her onerous hopes.

She didn't have that much to lose.

Pete offered to take the leash from her hands.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “I'll need him for protection.”

Cassy followed her parents down the path, quickening her pace and straightening her overcoat as she walked. She felt glad for the smart navy wool and her pointy-toed shoes.

Her mother would be happy with them, at least.

She saw that her parents were holding hands; she couldn't think of the last time she'd seen them doing that. She slipped her free hand into her coat pocket, but she knew it wouldn't keep her nearly as warm as Pete had. She turned around and motioned him to join them.

Everyone was walking toward Emma.

“Mom,” she called, a little tentatively.

Her mother didn't turn around.

Nothing new in that, she thought, a pang of worry shoot
ing through her. Still, the dog pranced forward; he had a thicker skin.

“Emma,” she called, a little louder. “Emma.”

 

THE ELEVATOR DOORS OPENED ABOUT FIFTEEN
minutes later, framing an exquisite Shaker table on the opposite wall, a pale pink orchid off to one side. The other passengers stepped aside—her husband and daughter, the dog trainer with bad skin and a puppy in his arms. They leaned a little closer into the car's paneled walls, waiting for Emma to lead the way.

“It's housebroken,” she said, turning to the trainer. “Right?”

The young man smiled back at her, a little sheepishly. She supposed Cassy must be dating him.

A dog trainer, she thought, not exactly thrilled.

Still, she tried to keep an open mind. There are worse things, she supposed—a puppy that's not housebroken, for starters.

She wished she hadn't asked.

Emma stepped out of the elevator and onto the terra-cotta floor, setting her shoes quietly down. The tiles were amber and old, salvaged from some far-off place and only recently installed in that vestibule. They had the landing to themselves. She made a slow pirouette, searching all around—up and down—her eyes narrowed.

“No second chance to make a first impression, Emmy.” That's what her father always said.