Dog Whisperer (15 page)

She wished there was something she
could
say, which would help, and put everything at peace—but, if she made a remark about the photograph, she didn't think that would accomplish much.

Since Bobby couldn't read her mind, though, he was pointing at the pictures. “Hey, is that your dad?” he asked.

Mr. Griswold turned around to look. “Sure is,” he said. “He was a great guy. I miss him every day.”

“I'm sorry,” Bobby said. “That's really sad.”

Mr. Griswold nodded, packing their purchases into a small paper bag.

“Do you have a picture of your boat?” Bobby asked.

Mr. Griswold smiled. “You know, I actually do.” He showed them an old photo on the wall of a boy about twelve years old, sitting in a boat with a man, both of them holding fishing poles.

“Wow, it floats!” Bobby said.

Mr. Griswold laughed. “Don't worry, yours will, too.”

Emily leaned over to look at the picture more closely. “What's that on the bow?” she asked.

“That's technically the prow, not the bow. And that's a wooden gargoyle,” Mr. Griswold said, his expression looking wistful. “I always loved gargoyles, and my mother made that for me to christen the boat.”

Mrs. Griswold
made gargoyles
? The one on the boat looked sort of like a flying mermaid with the face of a lion. It was really neat. And, now that she thought about it, she actually had seen a few ornate wooden gargoyles on Mrs. Griswold's porch and in the front garden, over the years. “How did she make it?” Emily asked.

“She carved it for me,” Mr. Griswold said.

That was completely and totally impossible to imagine.

“Must have taken her hours,” Mr. Griswold said softly. Then, he shook his head and tucked the wallet away. “Well. Good luck with your boat, kids. If you think of it, bring me a picture of it sometime, when you're finished.”

Emily and Bobby promised that they would, and waved good-bye when they left.

“What's a gargoyle?” Bobby asked, as they went outside.

“They're sculptures,” Emily said. “They're usually made of stone, and they're up on buildings. You see them in New York all the time. My father told me that sometimes they're just for decoration, but that they also use them like fancy rain gutters. They're kind of scary-looking sometimes, but I like the way they look. Dragons and monsters and mythological things and all. They're supposed to keep away evil spirits, too, I think.”

“And Mrs. Griswold is sitting around
carving
them?” Bobby said, and shook his head. “Weird.”

Yes, it was definitely hard to picture. But, interesting.

Zack must have sensed that she was feeling very conflicted, because after she got into the car and put on her seat belt, he crawled partway onto her lap. She hugged him, half-listening while Andrea and Bobby talked about the fact that their mother's lobster rolls were
much
better than the ones sold at the famous lobster shack, and that the tourists really ought to come to Bailey's Cove for
their
lobster rolls, instead.

The road they were on was winding along right next to the ocean. As Zachary sniffed at the open window, Emily looked outside—and saw a person-sized gust of mist down by the water. It seemed to stay there just long enough for her to notice that it was there, and then, it disappeared.

Apparently, they weren't the only ones who had decided to go visiting today!

 

15

Emily was pretty tired when she got home, and that made it too easy to get into an argument with her parents about what she was going to do the next day after school. Bobby was heading down to Chebeague Island—he was going to be allowed to leave school early and everything—for his aunt and uncle's twenty-fifth anniversary party, and Karen had an appointment to see her orthodontist. Her friend Harriet had soccer practice, and her friend Florence had the flu, and had stayed home from school.

So, naturally, Emily and her parents spent most of dinner having the predictable discussion about whether she was old enough to stay home by herself for a few hours—and, as usual, her parents very unreasonably outvoted her.

“It's not fair,” Emily said grumpily. “If I had brothers or sisters, I would
win
a lot of these votes.”

Her father shook his head. “No, you wouldn't. Your mother and I would stuff the ballot box to make sure that you would still lose.”

But, Emily wasn't in the mood to be amused. In fact, she felt so disagreeable that when her parents said that she could come over to the college, and wait in one of their offices, she flat-out refused. In fact, she told them that it would be totally boring, and she would
still
be alone all afternoon, and that she would hate every minute of it, and that they were extremely mean and unfair.

After all, if they were going to be difficult,
she
could be difficult, too.

“But, you come over there all the time, and it's never been a problem before,” her mother said.

Emily shrugged. “Not a problem for
you
guys. You get to be all busy teaching and stuff, and I'm sitting around waiting, without even getting to play with Zack and Josephine.”

Maybe her parents were tired, too, because they both sighed.

“Some of the eighth and ninth graders babysit,” Emily said. “Maybe you should hire one of them to take care of me.”

To her horror, for a few seconds, her father actually seemed to be giving the idea some serious consideration. So, Emily decided to change the subject—quickly.

“Maybe I should just go upstairs and read some like, financial blogs,” she said. “Because I really
am
going to work on Wall Street and run a hedge fund when I grow up.”

That had always been one of her best threats, since the very concept upset her parents so much.

“I think Granddad can probably help me find the toughest and most profitable firm down there, and that's where I'll go,” she said, since he had spent most of his career as a financial mogul.

Her parents were fairly speechless.

The whole meal was pretty testy, and after they finished, her parents both got on their phones, scrambling around for an alternate solution. Finally, it was decided that, with Cyril's permission, Emily would go to the Mini-Mart when she got home from school and wait there. Emily wasn't crazy about the idea, but she was tired of arguing, and at least Zack could keep her company that way.

“I love the free market,” Emily said.

“Well, be that as it may,” her mother said—after the predictable appalled silence—“but, it's settled that you'll go to the Mini-Mart, after you get off the bus?”

“Okay,” Emily said. “After I come home and get Zack first.”

Her parents agreed, as though that was a
really
big concession on their part.

“And you'll call one of us, and check in, of course,” her father said.

Emily nodded. But, wow, were they
always
going to be so protective? If they were, it was going to be nearly impossible to do stuff like go on dates someday.

“So, when it's time for me to go to college, will I have to commute and live at home and all?” she asked.

Her parents sighed.

“That is, if I even
go
to college,” Emily said.

It was probably smart that her parents let that one pass without comment.

“I know we need to find some better solutions to the after-school situation,” her mother said, “but letting you spend the afternoons at home by yourself, at this age, is not an option. Period.”

“Fine, whatever,” Emily said grumpily, and went into the den, partially to do homework, but mostly, to sulk.

She had noticed that when any of them had a disagreement, it made their house suddenly seem
really small
. But, instead of working on math equations, she found herself playing a few rounds of “chase the pen and try to knock it out of my hand” with Josephine, and then throwing a tennis ball back and forth across the room for Zack.

She was over by the bookcases, picking up the slobbery tennis ball, when the row of Bowdoin yearbooks on the bottom shelf caught her eye. Her parents had a collection of about twenty yearbooks, dating back to when they had first started teaching at the college.

She stared at the yearbooks for a minute and then, to Zack's disappointment, let the ball drop out of her hand and onto the floor.

There was a really good chance that her mother might be
in
one of those yearbooks.

And there probably wouldn't be that many African-American students, either. The campus was somewhat diverse, but not to the degree that she would have that much trouble picking her out, or narrowing it down, at least. Emily looked at the row of books, and then started to take down the yearbook from twelve years earlier. But, if her birth mother had left school after she got pregnant, then she was more likely to be in the one from thirteen years ago, so she pulled out that volume, too. If she wasn't a senior—and she probably wasn't, since she had transferred to another school—she wouldn't have had a formal photograph taken, but she might have been in some clubs or on a team or something.

She started with the thirteen-year-old yearbook, first. She opened it up to the first page and took her time, although it wouldn't be very hard to skim through and just look for photos of young African-American women.

“She's not in any of them,” her mother said, from behind her.

Emily jumped, feeling guilty, even though she ought to have every right to find out as much as she wanted about her own birth mother. “I was just looking,” she said, and kept turning pages.

Her mother nodded, and sat down across the room on the love seat.

Neither of them spoke, but after a while, Emily began to feel self-conscious. She had found the page which had a photograph of members of the college's African-American Society, and she looked at each face, hoping to see something—anything—familiar.

“Are you sure she's not in here?” Emily asked finally.

“Yes,” her mother said.

She sounded so certain that it was probably true. “There's a good chance my father is in at least one of these yearbooks,” Emily said.

“It's certainly possible, but he could also have been a hometown boyfriend, or someone off-campus.” Her mother hesitated. “If you want to know the truth, I've looked at them myself before, wondering if I would see someone who resembled you, but I never have.”

“He could be Caucasian or African-American,” Emily said.

Her mother nodded. “Caucasian, I've always assumed. But, yes, either is certainly possible.”

So, there was a clue in there. “You mean, my mother has pretty dark skin?” Emily asked.

Her mother seemed to weigh whether it would be okay to answer that, and then nodded.

Emily thought about that. “Do you think it could have bothered her parents, then, that I might be biracial?”

“I'm not sure,” her mother said. “But, not as far as I know. They seemed like extremely good people.”

Wow, it sounded like her mother knew a lot about them. “So, that means that you met them?” Emily asked.

“Just briefly,” her mother said. “We really only had one conversation. Mostly, we just saw each other in passing, at the hospital. It was a very hard situation for them. Obviously, your father and I were overjoyed to be bringing you home with us, but we wanted to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone else, so we tried to be low-key.” Her mother grinned suddenly. “But, wow, were we happy, once we got outside. Then, you threw up in the cab on the way to the hotel, and your father was so panicky that he wanted to turn around right away and go back and have you admitted for observation.”

That was very easy to picture, since it didn't take much to make her father nervous. Emily had always heard that her parents flew back to Portland—from somewhere or other; although she now knew that it was Atlanta—and that lots of their friends and relatives were at the house, waiting for them, and that there was a huge party. Apparently, Emily's contribution had been to have a bottle, spit up again, get her diaper changed at least twice, and then sleep the rest of the time. She had seen pictures of the party, and in most of them, she was wrapped in a green crocheted blanket that her California grandmother had made. A photo from the party of her parents holding her with huge smiles on their faces had been framed and was hanging in the front hallway.

That part of her life, at least, was real. But, everything else about who she was felt imaginary. “They're like ghosts,” Emily said. A different sort of ghost, of course, but still, ghosts. “My mother. My father. All of them. I know they exist, but there's nothing
real
.”

Her mother nodded unhappily.

“Do you know stuff about her?” Emily asked. “Personal stuff?”

Her mother shrugged a tiny affirmative shrug.

“But, you're not going to tell me,” Emily said.

Her mother sighed. “You know that my primary loyalty is to you, but I gave her my word, all of those years ago, and I need to abide by that.”

Integrity was a really good thing—except when it wasn't.

What she really wanted was a detail of some kind—like “Your mother was a terrific soccer player” or “She was a whiz at chemistry” or that she loved poetry or anything specific like that.

The room was quiet.

Zack was making dog mumbles in his sleep, and Emily patted him gently, to soothe whatever dream he was having.

“She sang,” her mother said.

Emily looked up, startled.

“She was in an a capella group, on campus,” her mother said. “I never got a chance to hear her myself, but I'm told by people who did that she has an absolutely gorgeous voice.”