Happy Birthday: A Novel

Valerie showed up half an hour earlier, as she always did, with two shopping bags full of table decorations, and while other patrons ate their turkey, stuffing, homemade cranberry jelly, and chestnut purée, she transformed the table for the Wyatt family into a work of art. People at neighboring tables loved seeing what she did. She set up silver candlesticks on the table, brought her own tablecloth and napkins with turkeys embroidered on them, and always came up with incredible decorations. Most people in the restaurant recognized her, and she signed autographs while doing the table, as April moved around the room, greeting the guests. There were always lots of children in the restaurant that night, and April gave them chocolate turkeys that she made herself. The atmosphere in the room was always friendly and festive. April in New York seemed like a perfect place to spend Thanksgiving, and many of her regulars did so every year. There were several long tables set up for families, and they accommodated as many people as they could.

The group at April’s own table was the same every year. Her mother, father, stepmother, two half-sisters, and April were seated at a round table in the rear of the room. Ellen and her family came in every year at six o’clock, and were leaving just as the assorted Wyatts arrived. April had introduced the two families to each other several times, and as they left, the Puccinelli children looked drunk on food, clutching their chocolate turkeys in their hands. It was hard for April to imagine, as she looked at them this year, that in a few years she would have a child herself, and on the following Thanksgiving a baby in her arms.

She and Ellen exchanged a knowing look, as April kissed them goodbye. Ellen had been thinking the same thing about her, and was truly excited for her friend. She felt a proprietary interest in her pregnancy now, since she had been the first to guess. The two women exchanged a few whispered words before they left, and April smiled. Her mother had said nothing further about her pregnancy in the past three weeks. She had been too busy to think about it, and for the moment she preferred to have denial than focus on her coming grandchild. One thing at a time, she told herself. And April had been too busy to think about it much either. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be visibly pregnant, when her apron would barely go around her waist. For the moment, at thirteen weeks, nothing showed. She was three months pregnant, with six months to go.

April’s father and his family arrived as she was chatting with her mother, and looking at the photographs of Valerie giving her assistant the tiny Yorkie puppy. Marilyn had cried and named him Napoleon right on the show. He looked adorable and the ratings on their show were through the roof even before the Christmas segment aired.

April was excited to see her sister Annie, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d gone back to school in Boston in late August. Annie’s dream was to have a job in government one day, using her extraordinary math skills. Her mother always said that she had obviously been switched at the hospital at birth, since no one in the family could add or subtract or keep their checkbook straight, although April was very competent with the restaurant’s books. Annie had been a math whiz since she was six. Annie and April looked very much alike, and Annie could easily have been related to April’s mother, but both Maddie and Valerie had very similar features. The entire group had a family look, and it was hard to tell who was what to whom. Maddie was younger than Valerie but looked more her age at fifty-two, and the two women could easily have been sisters. They were a talkative, congenial group. And as they sat down to dinner, Maddie was asking Valerie’s advice about serving goose at a New Year’s Eve dinner that she and Pat were planning for some of his colleagues. Valerie was helping her construct an interesting menu to go with it, and commented positively on the way Maddie was doing her hair, and although she didn’t say it, she thought she should get rid of the gray. In some ways, Maddie looked older than April’s mother. Although they had similar features, she had none of Valerie’s glamour. All five women at the Wyatt table were tall, thin, and very striking. And Pat, as the only male in the family, was a big, burly teddy bear of a man with kind eyes and a warm smile. He enjoyed being with what he referred to as “his women.” There had been no grandparents on either side of the family since April was very little. April had taken a seat between her father and Heather, her younger sister, who was a senior in high school and hoping to go to Columbia, like April. At sixty-five, Pat had been a professor there for almost forty years.