Emily & Einstein (29 page)

Great, just great. With a weary sigh, I crawled forward and tugged the pillow away from her. Sure enough, my head cleared.

However when I revealed her face I caught a glimmer of tears. Never in my life had I felt such a physical need to flee. I could take the anger. I could take the frustration. I could even take the Sandy bashing. But I wanted out before there was any serious waterworks.

I tried to get up, but for the first time since our odd coupling, I couldn’t get Einstein’s body to move.

“In the beginning I think Sandy really did care for her in his own way,” Jordan continued, dashing at her eyes.

She started fishing around in the mess of the floor, pillows and worn jeans flying. It took a second before I realized she had unearthed a book of photos. Emily’s and my wedding album.

Come on, boy,
I told myself,
push up off the floor, get the hell out of Dodge. You can do it.

Silence settled in the room and I had the fleeting hope that Jordan was done talking.

“I hated that the most.”

Heavy sigh.

Jordan rolled over on her stomach and opened the thick album cover, turning to the first heavy page. There we were. Me. Emily. I was stunning, of course. But more than that, seeing the photograph made me remember how my breath had caught when Emily stepped into the church. If she was a warrior when I first met her, she was an angel when the church doors opened, golden light coming in behind her.

She had stood by herself, no one to give her away. She had no attendants, no maid of honor, just Emily standing there radiating happiness, so beautiful in a simple but elegant gown. Jordan hadn’t come to the wedding, explaining that she was too busy. But I knew Jordan hadn’t approved of our marriage. Not that I had cared. But I wondered now if Emily had wished she’d had family of her own that day, a mother and father, or even just her sister to be at her side. Since I had met Emily, she had done so much on her own. I hardly gave it a thought. But I wondered now what that had cost her.

More insight. I heaved a soft mewling cry and tried to cover my head with my paws.

The old-fashioned clock ticked on the bed stand near Jordan’s head. My sister-in-law’s emotions had run the gamut: anger, frustration, anguish. With each thick page of the wedding album she turned I began to sense an emptying. Thank God.

Quite frankly, I found the whole Jordan-talking-to-me thing a tad unnerving. It was as if at some level she too understood that it was me, and that she wanted me, Sandy Portman, to know what she had to say. Or maybe it was the old man’s doing. Maybe he wanted me to hear the girl’s ramblings. But hadn’t I had enough for one night? Hadn’t I kept her from going off with yet another guy to do who knows what? Didn’t I deserve a reprieve?

“Can you believe it?” Jordan said softly. “I hated that my sister was happy.”

That did it. Through sheer will I got my body up about an inch, only to start trembling before I collapsed back onto the floor.

“But don’t you see, if she loved Sandy, and they were crazy happy, then that meant everything Mom had ever said about guys was wrong.” She bit her lower lip as she turned another page. “My sister being happy with a man, especially someone like Sandy, undermined everything I grew up believing.”

My nose twitched with smug satisfaction at my sister-in-law’s acknowledgement that I wasn’t all bad.

“But it turns out Mom wasn’t wrong. Guys trick you.” Jordan slapped the book shut, rolled over on her back, and stared up at the ceiling.

Okay, come on, good fellow,
I cajoled.
Out we go.

“They reel you in with totally fake promises of forever. Then they show their true colors.”

My heart started beating hard again at the sudden difference in Jordan’s voice. Instinctually I knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming. I fought my body more furiously, only managing to roll over on my side.

“A few months before Sandy died, Em heard a rumor.”

My little dog’s body went still.

“A rumor that he was sleeping around. But since she’s Emily, she didn’t believe it.” Jordan scoffed. “She said that she and Sandy had just hit a rough patch like tons of married people. She said that they weren’t spending as much time together, so people were speculating. God, she could be so naïve. I, on the other hand, have never been naïve. The minute she told me I knew it was true. So what did I do?” Her voice was both angry and small. “I gloated. There I was on a cell phone in a Peruvian village with Emily thousands of miles away crying. My big sister crying. I didn’t say I felt bad for her. I didn’t say I was sure she was right, that Sandy was totally into her and wouldn’t do such a thing. I told her that Mom was right and she was wrong to ever have believed in that jerk.” Jordan groaned. “Of course she didn’t listen. Whatever was wrong, she swore she could fix it. She could fix her marriage. She just needed the chance.”

Jordan cried then, silent sobs. My breathing grew shallow. I wanted to cover my ears, but for reasons I couldn’t explain I needed to hear the rest.

“I told Emily she was crazy, told her to open her eyes. Good riddance, as far as I was concerned. But she said she believed in him.” Jordan pulled in a deep shuddering breath, then let it out slowly. “She believed he was struggling, that he dreamed of being great, like all these famous guys she knew about from some book she edited. But again and again something got in his way.”

My breath squeezed in my chest, my pulse banging inside my skull. Emily had understood.

“Pathetic,” she whispered. “Everyone knows a jerk is just a jerk, and a jerk doesn’t change. Sandy Portman was never going to be great.”

Heat flooded my body.

“There Emily was on the phone, so many miles away in New York, her world falling apart, and suddenly she got really quiet.”

My sister-in-law rolled to her side and looked directly at me.

“She told me that
I
was going to be great too.” She sucked in her breath. “God, it felt good.”

I might have blinked. As much as I didn’t like Jordan, I understood what I saw in her eyes: the joy of someone believing in you.

“But it only felt good for a second. I mean, really, just before Emily said that to me, I was over the moon because it turned out she was wrong about Sandy, which proved that Mom was right, that
I
was right.” Jordan tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and wiped away her tears. “But, if Emily was
wrong
about Sandy, if her judgment was off … didn’t that mean she was wrong about me too?” She closed her eyes. “No matter how I looked at it,” she said, her voice small, “one way or the other I lost.”

I got it then. Jordan had been grasping at men and lashing out at her sister because she no longer knew who was right, who was wrong. She no longer knew what to believe in.

Whether motivated by Einstein or motivated by me, when Jordan drifted off into a fitful sleep I crawled closer to her, my thoughts in turmoil. When she curled toward me I crept even closer, resting my head on her shoulder, not sure who needed comfort more, her or me, because with this new, hated depth in me came the understanding that I had been lost too. But Emily had believed in me and had tried to help me find my way back to myself even up to that last night before I died.

I groaned when the memory of coming home that last night leaped out at me. I had walked into the apartment, distracted, going through the mail, having spent the afternoon in a hotel room in midtown with yet another woman whose name was already forgotten.

I had just opened an envelope, maybe a bill, maybe something else. I don’t remember. But I remember that I stopped midstride when I saw the dining room table set with china and silver, candles and flowers, and my wife waiting for me.

Lost in thought, unprepared for the sight, I had no concept of time or place. I only saw Emily, the woman I had fallen for.

“Hello,” she said, coming around the table.

When she stood inches from me she hesitated as if unsure. But she shook whatever it was away. “My name is Emily.”

As if we could start over.

“Fall in love with me,” she whispered, repeating what I had said to her so long ago. “I dare you.”

At the words, everything rushed back. The women. My discontent. The impossibility of the situation.

I didn’t know how to start over. But what if I could?

“Emily,” I said, then nothing else before she wrapped her arms around me.

emily

“Fly, baby girl, fly,”
my mother used to tell me.
“Don’t let the world hold you down.”
Whenever Mom said the words to me, Emily’s head would pop up from whatever she was doing. From the expression on her face, I never knew if she was jealous or wistful.

—
EXCERPT FROM
My Mother’s Daughter

chapter twenty-nine

I jerked awake.

I had been dreaming of Sandy, not of the accident this time, but of the night before he died.

“Emily.”
One word, nothing more.

I felt disconcerted as if he had actually whispered the word in my head.

“It’s just a dream,” I said out loud.

Clearing my mind, I got up. Remembering that night wouldn’t help anything.

I pulled on my running shoes and tiptoed out of the apartment. I hadn’t looked in on Einstein, surely fast asleep in the kitchen, or Jordan in her room. It was early enough that I would be back before either of them opened an eye.

The quiet Upper West Side was just coming to life when I hit the park. Runners stretched against the benches that lined the entrance, the sky brightening just enough to make the little plaques embedded in the wooden slats shine. During the last few weeks I had slowly built up my mileage until I was running the bridle path around the reservoir regularly. That morning I planned to venture off the dirt and cinder path and run the upper park road loop that would take me to the top of the park then back to the Dakota, nearly doubling the distance I had been running.

I turned on my iPod and set off down the Seventy-second Street transverse. Shinedown’s “Second Chance” played as I passed the Bethesda Fountain with its towering bronze angel. I sloped down to the east park road and turned left to Robbie William’s “Millennium.” Heading north I felt fine. My footfalls were steady, my breathing easy, and my thoughts drifted. But then the music shifted, and there was that song again, the one I didn’t remember adding to my playlist. “Broken” by Lifehouse.

Without realizing it, the dream that woke me resurfaced, the dream of the night before Sandy died. I saw the candlelight dinner I had prepared. I saw Sandy walking into the apartment, going through the mail, then looking up and seeing me.

By then, I had heard the whispers about the other women, but like so many wives I put blinders on under the misguided belief that it couldn’t possibly be true. All I needed to do was refocus on my marriage and recreate what we once had.

Sandy didn’t look away from me as I went to him. Our gazes held when I leaned into him as I had done a thousand times before. He traced my face, ran his fingers over my lips, then he kissed me, long and deep. I felt his yearning, that intensity I had never quite understood when he held me. But after a long minute, he broke away, taking my hands from behind his neck, and pulling away. Without letting go, he looked at me, his brow furrowed as he exhaled sharply, then stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He retraced his steps and left the apartment. I didn’t hear from him again until he left a message for me the next morning asking to take me to dinner, saying he would pick me up at the clinic. He never got any of my own messages to meet me at home.

How many times since then had I wondered what would have happened had he not gone to that snowy stretch of West Seventy-sixth Street? Had that touch, that kiss stayed with him? Would I have been able to save my marriage? Or would I have been fighting with my husband over the apartment, rather than his mother?

During the long days that I had been unable to accept Sandy’s death, I’d been able to keep blinders on to the affairs by convincing myself that he had asked me to dinner so we could start over.

In the face of all evidence to the contrary, why do women try to make things right with husbands who no longer want them? And how was it possible that I, the always practical Emily Barlow, could possibly have been naïve enough to think that I could?

I staggered at the thought, my running shoe catching on the asphalt. I felt hot and cold, angry and sad. When I hit the first incline I was thankful. When I had to tuck my chin and concentrate on my stride, I almost laughed in relief. I didn’t mind that my muscles started to protest, my lungs starting to work.

Before I knew it, the memory and embarrassment of that night were gone and I found myself at the top of the first hill—Cat Hill they called it, for the sleek bronze panther that lined the way. I felt the beginnings of the runner’s high I had read about starting to take hold.

I picked up the pace as I passed the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then the reservoir. I felt strong when I came to the 102nd Street transverse. I hit the North Woods at a good clip. The descent down the north side wound like a mountain road in the Rockies, and when I passed the waterfall and swimming pool I didn’t think it was possible to be happier.

But no sooner had the thought flitted through my brain than I came around the lowest northern point and realized I had to go back up the other side. A shiver of concern hit me, but I brushed it off. My body felt good, adrenaline still carried me.

As with Cat Hill, I put my head down and started up. The world around me was quiet, the granite hills and cliffs and thick copse of green trees muffling the sounds of the city. I crested the first incline before I realized it.
Not bad,
I told myself.
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. It can’t be that far to the top.

I came around a curve, hoping I was getting close—and saw that I’d barely started.
Don’t freak out. You can do this.