22

By the time Michael and I picked Jacob up at UCLA to take him to dinner, it had been four days since I’d discovered that a retired doctor in Portland was my father. The main reason for our trip to the West Coast had been to visit Jacob midway through his summer film program. He’d never been so far away from home for so long. But I was thankful that Jacob hadn’t been around. I wasn’t ready to break this news to him. I had no idea how he would feel about it. I had no idea how I felt about it. I continued to seesaw between painful clarity and incomprehension about my entire history. My son was the only other person in the world for whom this discovery had genetic significance. All my life I had been giving medical history that was 50 percent incorrect. Father: dead. Family history: heart disease, stroke, depression, alcoholism (paternal uncle), drug addiction (father), anxiety disorder. I had been carrying burdens that weren’t mine. I was careful with alcohol. I worried when I had a heart palpitation. But what was starker and more upsetting was that I had also been unwittingly supplying incorrect medical information for my own son. When he was stricken with a deadly disease as an infant—a seizure disorder so rare that its origins were unknown—I confidently told the doctors that there was no history of seizures in my family. But was that true? Had there been? An entirely different genetic world existed within me—and within my son.

Jacob was excited to tell Michael and me all about his film program, the scripts he was writing, the short film he was making. It was easy to sit back and just watch him. He fit right in to the candlelit Hollywood restaurant with its palm fronds and comfortable banquettes. Seventeen, sandy-haired, lithe, with a Roman nose and deep blue eyes—he was a gorgeous boy, and I was, had always been, besotted with him. Maybe because we had come so close to losing him when he was small, I never took him, or anything about his existence, for granted. So many times I had wished my father and Jacob could have known each other. I conjured up the ease and friendship they might have had—both of them sensitive, kind, thoughtful, honest men. I was also comforted—I now realized with a start—by the thought that something of my father continued to live on in Jacob. Susie had no children. After me, Jacob was the last genetic link to my dad. I had always searched for my dad in his face, and his mannerisms. If Jacob had children of his own someday, there would, in some small way, be a tiny bit of Paul Shapiro continuing on in the world. This felt, though I never could have articulated it, like something I had done right.

Pru u’rvu. Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the world. The first words God spoke to human beings in Genesis. They were apparently more important than the commandments not to steal, or kill, or lie. Pru u’rvu. The first mitzvah. Had it given me pleasure to think of Jacob as my father’s descendant because I knew how important that would have been to my father himself? Now, as I sat across the table from my son, I felt heartbroken—not for him, not for me, but for my dad.

Beneath the palm fronds, as our waiter cleared desserts, I gave my phone a quick glance—always a reflexive habit, but more so these days than ever. I drew a sharp breath when I saw that Ben Walden had answered my last email.

From: Dr. Benjamin Walden

To: Dani Shapiro

Re: Important Letter

Thanks for the information. I’m forever amazed by the power of the Internet. Your research may be correct. I may plan to have DNA testing to evaluate this. I’m very grateful that you will respect our privacy and are not interested in disrupting our family.

First of all, congratulations on a very successful writing career. My wife and I plan to read your memoir. If the DNA findings show a match, I would imagine that you would be interested in some family history especially any medical history. If you let me know the questions you have, I’ll try to respond.