Dog Whisperer (7 page)

“Ha,” her father said.

Emily put in her new mouth guard and displayed her nicely protected teeth.

Her father nodded. “Just remember, you're never to go on the ice without that, no matter what.”

Maybe she should start asking,
regularly
, how old she would have to be to take flying lessons, just to goof with him. Although suggesting
skydiving
lessons might be even better.

When the presents were all unwrapped, her mother brought in a big spice cake with vanilla frosting, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her. Josephine came back downstairs, and behaved very nicely, except for the part where she put her face into the ice cream carton.

It had been quite an eventful evening, and once Emily was in bed, she couldn't seem to fall asleep. So, finally, she decided to go downstairs and get a glass of milk. Josephine took advantage of this by moving up to sleep on her pillow, but Zack followed her to the kitchen.

They found her grandfather, who was famous for being a night-owl, sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the
New York Post
. As long as she had known him, he had always read several newspapers every day, including what he called “the rags.”

When he saw her, he put down the newspaper and smiled. “Well, hello. You're not sleepy, either?”

Emily shook her head, giving Zachary a dog biscuit, and then sitting down across from her grandfather.

“I think we should have more cake,” her grandfather said.

“I do, too,” Emily agreed.

So, he fixed each of them a big slice, along with some ice cream that was probably full of Josephine germs, but Emily didn't mind, and apparently, he didn't, either.

“Thank you for all of the gifts,” Emily said. “They're
excellent
.”

Her grandfather laughed. “Your grandmother said that shopping for the gear made her wonder if she could find a senior hockey league somewhere and get out on the ice.”

Her grandmother was not at all athletic—but, she was very determined, and she would probably be a good player. Emily
was
pretty athletic, but she didn't think of herself as being particularly competitive, so she had no idea whether she was going to be any good. But, her friend Florence was a total jock, and had promised to teach her how to play before the league actually started up.

“Is this Mrs. Griswold person actually that unpleasant?” her grandfather asked.

Emily nodded. “Yes. I mean, I don't think people should vandalize her house, or do any bad stuff like that, but she is really mean.”

“I'd imagine she is very sad,” her grandfather said.

Probably, yeah. “Zack likes her a lot,” Emily said. “So, we're kind of friendly. I mean, she says hi to me and stuff, when we go by, and she never did before.”

“Progress, then,” her grandfather said.

“I didn't tell my parents, because I didn't want them to get upset, but she's the one who said they knew my birth mother,” Emily said. “Then, she said no, I'm sorry, I made a mistake, I shouldn't have said that, and all. But, I guess she was telling the truth.”

Her grandfather nodded. “Yes, I gather you all had a pretty rough conversation the other night.”

That meant that one—or both—of her parents had been upset enough about it to tell her grandparents. In fact, they had probably told her grandparents on both sides of the family, and maybe her aunts and uncles, and some of their close friends, too.

“I didn't realize
how much
I don't know,” Emily said. “And—” No, wait, she really didn't want to sound whiny.

“What?” her grandfather asked, when she didn't go on.

Okay. She sighed. “It makes it feel as though they care more about how
she
feels, than how I feel.”

Her grandfather sighed, too. “I suppose it does, but you know that isn't the way it
is
.”

She could know that like, intellectually, but that didn't mean that it felt that way. But, she nodded—mostly just to be polite.

“This isn't a situation with easy answers, Emily,” he said. “We all have to feel our way through things like this.”

Emily looked down at her cake, trying to decide whether she was losing her appetite, or just full.

“I have a feeling that twelve is a big enough birthday for you to feel more restless and impatient than you might have when you were younger,” her grandfather said.

That was about the size of it, yeah. So, Emily nodded, reaching down to pat Zack, who was resting his head on her knee. “Are my parents upset that I wanted to talk about it?”

Her grandfather shook his head. “No, they're upset that they don't have better answers for you.”

Okay. “Did you and Gram get to meet her?” Emily asked.

“No,” her grandfather said. “I think she wanted to keep it very private, and that she was very young, and that it was all extremely upsetting for her. But then,” he winked at her, “
we
lucked out, because we got to have you in our family.”

Yes, she felt very lucky to be part of her family. “But, it's okay that I still have lots of questions?” Emily said.

“It's normal,” he said. “And I hope that, someday, you get to find a few more answers.”

Emily definitely hoped so, too.

“Time to get some sleep?” her grandfather asked.

Emily nodded. If anything, it was
past
time. And tomorrow, she was going to have her
third
birthday celebration.

Maybe turning twelve wasn't so bad, after all.

 

8

Because of the hurricane, they had had to postpone her birthday party, which was a whale-watching cruise in Casco Bay. But, the next morning, they drove down to Portland, and met ten of her friends on the dock where the boat was to depart. Most of the friends she had invited were people she had met at her elementary school, since she didn't know many of the people at her new junior high very well yet. So, it was Bobby, and Karen, and Florence, along with seven of her other friends.

Emily was a little disappointed that Zack couldn't come along with them, but then again, he really didn't enjoy being on boats. She assumed it was because before she found him, he had lived on a fishing boat—and his owners had been mean. If that happened to her, she probably wouldn't like to ride on boats, either.

They were welcomed aboard by a man who said his name was “Captain Bill,” along with tour guides named Vince and Cara. Emily wasn't sure if they were all
really
required to wear life jackets the entire time, but she wasn't the only one with nervous parents. So, before they left the dock, they all suited up.

It was a warm fall day, the sun was shining, and the waves were nice and gentle. Some tourists were also on the cruise, so there were about twenty-five passengers, including everyone at her birthday party. Vince and Cara were stationed on opposite sides of the boat, each of them holding a microphone and narrating everything that they saw.

Which, so far, was absolutely
nothing
of interest. The tourists seemed pretty excited just to be in Maine, but all of the locals on the boat were looking around aimlessly, waiting for something exciting to happen.

“Well, these sure are nice seagulls,” Bobby said politely, after they had been at sea for about half an hour.

“Very pretty when they fly,” Emily agreed.

Their friend Harriet laughed. “You guys are so cynical.”

Kind of, yeah.

Vince and Cara filled the dead air with fun facts about the history of Casco Bay, and the various marine animals and mammals they
might
see, but so far, they hadn't seen anything but seagulls.

“Look!” her friend Peter shouted as they passed some rocks. “A puffin! A real, live puffin! It's a miracle!”

Okay, they all saw puffins more days than not—but, still, they were fun birds to watch. They looked sort of like a cartoon version of penguins. And all of the tourists were very impressed by the puffin, and started taking photographs.

The boat operators were getting pretty frustrated that they hadn't seen anything unique yet, and seemed to be falling into some wishful thinking. Vince would announce, “I think we have a sea turtle on the port side!”, and everyone would run over there, and then, the guy would end up saying something sheepish like, “Oh. I'm sorry. False alarm.”

Since the cruise had been so uneventful, the boys started egging each other on, shouting stuff like, “Look, it's the creature from the black lagoon!” and “Sharks! Everybody, hit the deck!”

Emily thought they were kind of funny, but she also had a couple of stray moments when she thought that the next time she had a party, she just might not invite any boys. Even Bobby was being silly and immature, although he came up to her at one point and muttered, “We're maybe being jerks.”

“Well, you should get them to stop throwing stuff,” Emily said. “My grandmother hates that.” In fact, she gave her grandmother points for not saying anything cross about it—yet.

Bobby nodded. “Yup. I'll tell 'em to dial it down a couple notches.”

Good.

By the time they got to the small island where they were going to have lunch, they
still
hadn't seen anything exciting. But, they boarded small dinghies, and Vince and Cara rowed them to shore, promising to return to pick them up in about three hours. There were lots of little islands in the Bay, and all over the Maine coastline. Some of them had year-round residents, but some of the islands, like this one, were too small and had nothing but a few evergreen trees and rocks.

The picnic was really fun. Her parents and grandparents spread out red-checkered tablecloths on the sand. Then, they unpacked sandwiches and soda and juice boxes and chips and fresh homemade pickles her grandparents had brought up from a tiny store they always went to on the Lower East Side in New York.

Her mother had baked a small ham and made barbecued chicken breasts the night before, for sandwiches. She'd also baked some sliced tofu with the same barbecue sauce—which tasted a little strange, but was still good—and hard-boiled some eggs for egg salad. Her grandparents had brought up about eight different kinds of cheese, some of which they made into sandwiches with lettuce and tomato, and some of which was just cut into small chunks for snacking. Her grandfather was famous for his recipe for hot mustard, so they put that on some of the sandwiches, and homemade Russian dressing on some of the others.

Her father had recently bought one of those flip cameras, so that he could record Important Moments. He used it a lot, but they almost never ended up watching the videos, afterwards. He was also heavily into using his DSLR camera, and had Nikon film cameras, too. There was even a tiny little room in the basement of their house which he had set up as his own darkroom. Emily didn't like the smell of the chemicals, but sometimes she watched him develop them, anyway, because it was really neat to see the images appear out of nowhere.

After they ate, they played Frisbee, and looked for seashells and driftwood, and took pictures of “scenery.” Emily thought it was pretty funny that every single one of them either had a small digital camera or a camera phone of some kind. It was like none of them went
anywhere
anymore without being able to capture it for posterity.

It was too steep and rocky for anyone to go swimming, but a few people took off their sneakers or sandals and waded a little.

On any other day, Emily would have wanted to sit quietly on a rock, and sketch—but, it would be dumb to be antisocial at her own birthday party. So, she threw one of the Frisbees around, and posed for not-very-candid pictures with her friends, and just generally goofed around.

When it was time for her cake, her mother produced such an impressive display—chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, in the shape of a castle—that Emily suspected that her grandmother must have been the one who baked it.

Of course, she could also have guessed that, anyway, since she had smelled it cooking the night before. Being twelve was turning into the Birthday That Would Never End—which was pretty cool. At this point, she was on her third cake!

There were twelve candles, with one extra to grow on. Emily had always had trouble deciding what her wish should be—but, this year, it was easy. She wanted to learn more about her birth mother—and her birth father, if possible—and maybe even meet them. It didn't get much more simple than that.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and blew out the candles with one hard burst of air. Everyone clapped, her father took a bunch of pictures, and her grandmother started cutting the cake and passing pieces to everyone. Naturally, Emily got the one with the frosted “E” on it.

Bobby requested the “B” from “Birthday,” and everyone else who had an initial in the remaining letters—“Happy irthday, mily!”—ended up asking to have that piece, if possible. Which meant that Peter, and Harriet, and David, and Mikey, among others, were all pleased.

Her parents had planned ahead, and brought lots of trash bags, so that they could gather up all of their garbage and make sure not to leave any litter anywhere in the cove. In fact, they even picked up cans and plates and papers that some other group must have left behind.

Their timing was perfect, because they had just finished packing up when Vince and Cara appeared in the dinghies.

“I hope we see another seagull,” Bobby said. “That would be so very neat.”

Emily hit him with her elbow—but, also, laughed.

Once they were back on the ship, it turned out that the tourists had been riding around for three hours, without a single sighting of a marine animal or mammal of any kind. The tourists were still cheerful, but they looked tired, and as though they were more than ready to go home.