Seven Days of Us(6)

She looked at him, asleep. It occurred to her that her overwhelming feeling was one of relief. No more waiting. No more hoping, every time they watched a sunset, that now might be the moment. No more fighting back ungenerous tears with each engagement paraded on Facebook. At last, it had happened. She lay, fingering the jewels on her hand, trying to absorb the idea of “married.” The cumulous duvet was suddenly too hot, and she stood up for water from the minibar. An opened envelope on top of the fridge caught her eye. She guessed it was the bill, and teased out the sheet of paper inside to see how much George had spent. It was sweet of him to have gone to so much effort. The thought of him lighting all the candles, even strewing the tacky rose petals, was so unlike him it was touching. The paper read:


THE PROPOSAL PACKAGE

Advance ring consultation and delivery: . . . . ￡500

Room preparation, including candles, rose petals, Mo?t & Chandon Rosé Impérial champagne, fruit basket, disposable camera, and personalized chocolates: . . . . ￡350

Executive Suite, including breakfast: . . . . ￡1,000

She turned, not sure if she should make a joke of it, or not. But George was snoring.





Jesse


THE GREEN ROOM BAR, LOS ANGELES, 8:00 P.M.

? ? ?

Jesse rechecked his e-mail while he waited for Dana, his younger sister. She’d suggested they meet for cocktails when he’d called earlier—rattled but jubilant—to say he’d finally sent the message to Andrew Birch. That had been twelve hours ago, but there was still no reply. Could he have missed it? His birth father didn’t seem like the type to miss e-mails. Plus Jesse knew he’d been online, because at 6 p.m. British time @ABirchReviews had tweeted: “Why must health writers invariably describe nuts as ‘nutritional powerhouses’? Lazy and meaningless.” At 7 p.m. he’d been back on Twitter to say: “Please make Christmas 2016 quick.” Wow. Sometimes the guy seemed so negative. Surely reviewing restaurants for a living couldn’t be that bad.

When Jesse had first googled “Andrew Birch,” exactly one year ago, and found hundreds of Andrew’s articles online, many with an e-mail byline, he’d been psyched. Here was a way to get to know his birth father, secretly, safely, before making contact. Researching Andrew had become his late-night hobby. His mind now contained a bulging file of Birch trivia, each new fact bringing Jesse a detective’s thrill. His therapist, Calgary, had warned that while this research was a “safe space,” he must not confuse knowing about his birth father with truly knowing him. Jesse knew she had a point. But the voice in Andrew’s fortnightly restaurant reviews for The World magazine sounded so critical—so unlike Jesse’s adoptive dad, Mitch—that the prospect of actually meeting his birth father in the flesh had become unduly daunting. Plus the column was a goldmine of information, since Andrew never gave the food more than a paragraph, filling the rest with glimpses of his personal life and past.

Jesse knew, for example, that Andrew was an only child, born in 1950 and raised by a single mother. She was named Margaret and had worked as an English teacher to support them both. When she died, Andrew had written a moving tribute to her, as the preamble to a review of a new curry house in Willesden Green, her hometown. In it, Andrew revealed that his father had walked out on them when he was born. The piece had moved Jesse to tears, and given him hope that this absent father might make Andrew more receptive to a son of his own. Several times, Andrew had mentioned that he’d gotten a scholarship to private school and studied history at Oxford University. He’d been one of The Times’ Middle East correspondents from 1977 until 1987, mostly based in Lebanon, at the height of the civil war. Jesse guessed this was how his birth parents had met. This phase in Andrew’s career seemed to have loomed large. Whenever he reviewed Middle Eastern food, most recently a falafel truck in “hipster Dalston,” he referred to it.

Not everything Jesse knew came from Andrew’s column. A quaint British website called ThePeerage.com revealed that Mr. Andrew Birch had married the Honourable Emma Hartley in 1983. They had had two daughters (Jesse’s half sisters!): Olivia Frances Birch, born 1984, and Phoebe Gwendoline Birch, born 1987. In his reviews, Andrew referred to Emma as The Matriarch. That was cool, Jesse thought. He liked the idea of an aristocratic stepmother. Better still was a clipping he’d found online, from an obscure eighties gossip column called Sloane’s Snooper. It revealed that Emma and Andrew had first met at the Royal Wedding, July 29, 1981, where Emma was a guest and Andrew a reporter. This fact, besides being pure British rom-com, was a coup. Since Jesse’s 1980 birthdate comfortably predated Andrew and Emma’s meeting, he felt confident he wouldn’t cause tension by making contact. Hopefully, Emma would be cool about her husband’s past. Still, he couldn’t get complacent. For starters, Jesse had no clue if Andrew was even aware of his existence. There was every chance his birth mother had never told Andrew she’d gotten pregnant. All his adopted mom and dad could tell him was that, when he was two weeks old, they’d taken him from a Lebanese orphanage. Calgary kept reminding him to limit his expectations. She said the entire Birch family would likely be profoundly shocked when they discovered that Andrew had fathered another child—even if it happened long before meeting Emma. They would need time and space to process their emotions.

There were photos to study, too, mostly of Andrew at various media functions—often with Phoebe on his arm. But beyond his height, Jesse just couldn’t see himself in his birth father. There was the shadow of his own hairline in Andrew’s byline picture, but his birth mother’s Lebanese genes were the dominant force in his DNA. Andrew had sandy, freckled coloring and wincing eyes, where Jesse’s high school nickname had been Aladdin, after the Disney movie. Andrew’s hair grew straight back in a slick, silver plume—Jesse’s curls had to be tamed daily. Even his birth father’s hawk-like nose—perfect for damning an inferior Merlot—looked discerning. Jesse’s straight, Roman profile hailed from his birth mother, like the rest of his features.