THE ROSE ROOM, WEYFIELD HALL, 10:56 P.M.
• • •
Jesse lay on his bed, looking round the Rose Room. The bedside lamps cast an amber glow, like an old sepia photograph. With the antique closet and ancestral portraits, he felt like he’d stepped back in time—although when he’d tried to film the room, it looked strangely sinister, and his own voiceover sounded ludicrous. Perhaps daylight would be a better time to get footage. He’d planned to shoot the house during the afternoon, but it had seemed kind of rude so soon after arriving. Tomorrow, maybe. He needed to pee again—Andrew kept refilling his glass at dinner—but the cistern was so loud he decided to wait. In his room he felt safe, like it was his little haven. The fact that he was here, at Weyfield, was enough to process—never mind the coincidences the cosmos had thrown his way. He’d nearly choked when George had walked in at lunch.
He switched off the hilariously old-school heater Emma had brought up, anxious that he’d get chilly. The room was roasting. He tried to crack a window, but the ivy growing up the wall outside had pinned it shut, so he stripped to his briefs instead. He took out his iPad—Dana had replied to the short e-mail he’d sent before lunch, and would be waiting for a response. In his alien surroundings, it was a relief to have a link to home. He read her e-mail again.
FROM: Dana Robinson <danar_1985@hotmail.com>
TO: Jesse Robinson <jesse.iskandar.robinson@gmail.com>
DATE: Tues, Dec 27, 2016 at 5:03 p.m.
SUBJECT: Re: Big news
Jesse!!! I’m freaking out, please promise me you won’t go getting Haag! Are you sure the risk is minimal? Didn’t some Irish doctor just get it already? Mom would have a fit if she knew where you are. Also, that is INSANE that you already met Andrew’s wife in the airport!!!!!! It’s like God wanted it to all work out. Although I hope it’s not too intense that you have to stay? Do you feel like your birth sisters are cool with it? What are they like? Tell me everything.
Happy for you,
D XOXO
FROM: Jesse Robinson <jesse.iskandar.robinson@gmail.com>
TO: Dana Robinson <danar_1985@hotmail.com>
DATE: Tues, Dec 27, 2016 at 11:05 p.m.
SUBJECT: Re: Big news
Don’t freak out!! I promise you I won’t get Haag. They told me the quarantine is just a formality, it’s pretty hard to infect somebody with it. You have to literally exchange bodily fluids. Plus the house is huge (the dining room is the size of your apartment), so it’s not too intense. I now fly home Jan 1—can you make some excuse to Mom and Dad? I owe you!
It’s just bizarre how I was all set to leave today, without even hearing from Andrew, and now I’m a houseguest . . . Emma has been super welcoming, which makes sense because she was the same at the airport. I still can’t believe I didn’t realize who she was, but we didn’t swap names and we barely talked about her family. Plus she looks nothing like that photo online. I guess I was picturing “The Honourable Emma Hartley” to be more aloof and aristocratic or something.
I get the feeling the others need longer to warm up. Olivia doesn’t say a whole lot, but she’s clearly very smart. She’s tall and skinny, like Andrew (and me!), and basically exactly like her dad. Phoebe is adorable—she looks like her picture and seems like fun. Her fiancé is here, too. Andrew is sort of terribly British and stiff upper lip, like I expected, although he opened up a little when he showed me “the grounds.” He’s pretty different from Dad—so far the only similarity I see is the universal male fascination with fire building. But I think they could get along, if they were to meet someday.
One thing that’s not so great—turns out Andrew was already with Emma when I was conceived. They were already having some kind of clandestine relationship way back before the Royal Wedding. I don’t fully get it. I think Andrew was afraid Emma’s parents would disapprove of him. But essentially he cheated on Emma with my birth mother, and Emma had no idea until today. She’s acting like she’s cool with it, but obviously it makes me feel very uncomfortable. Plus I messed up by asking Andrew about something she told me in the airport—that she has just been diagnosed with cancer. I assumed he knew, but it turned out he had no idea. (?!) It’s very weird, and I know it’s not my fault, but now I feel like I’ve come in and caused problems.
Jesse stopped. He wanted to be honest, but he was making Andrew and his family sound bad. Dana’s judgments were swift and lasting. If he confessed to feeling as out of place as excited at Weyfield, she would never warm to the Birches. Especially if he told Dana that one of his birth sisters appeared to hate him. Phoebe had barely looked at him during lunch, and he hadn’t seen her or George all afternoon. At supper, the two of them had eaten separately in the summer house they called the bungalow. It made Jesse feel pretty shitty. He had eaten with the other three in the big, cozy kitchen—Andrew quizzing him about Donald Trump, as if to avoid discussing anything personal. Olivia didn’t say much, even when Jesse tried to engage with her, although he got the feeling that was normal. It was kind of strange in a doctor, though. Weren’t they meant to be able to communicate? Even stranger was the way nobody mentioned Emma’s cancer. His own family would be the opposite. When his mom had a minor operation last year, everyone had pulled together, fussing over her, restocking the refrigerator, doing extra chores so she could rest up. But perhaps silence was the British coping mechanism.
On top of everything, there was the George situation. Jesse still hadn’t told Dana what had happened on Christmas Eve, just that he’d befriended some British guys. He felt even more uncomfortable about it now. He definitely wasn’t about to start explaining all that shit today. All Dana needed to know was “so far, so good.”
The door opened and Jesse jumped, pulling the blankets over his crotch. It was George. He came in, turned the rusty key in the lock, and stood with his back against the door.
“Hey,” began Jesse. “About before—”
“Listen, mate,” said George. His eyes looked a little crazy. Jesse wondered if he was drunk again. “The other night, it didn’t happen, OK?” he said, lowering his voice. “I was shitfaced. I don’t know what I was—that wasn’t me, OK?”
“Sure, sure. I get it. I was your experiment.”
“You weren’t anything! Nothing happened, mate. I never met you.”
“Fine. So I’ve never seen you in my life.”
“Right.”
“OK. Wait, how come you were out? I thought the quarantine started on the twenty-third?”
“I wasn’t here then. I came over on Christmas Day to surprise Phoebs.”
Guilty conscience, thought Jesse. “And you’re sure you want to go through with this?” he said.
“Through with what?” said George.
Jesus, the guy was obtuse. “With getting married.”
“What the fuck? Of course I do! Like I said, that wasn’t me that night. Haven’t you ever done anything stupid when you were pissed?”
“Pissed” meant drunk here, Jesse reminded himself.
“Sure, but I never stopped being gay.”
George took a deep, angry breath through his nose, his little nostrils quivering. Jesse wondered how he had thought he was cute. He looked like a flushed, balding pug.
“If you say anything about any of this,” said George, tendons flexing in his outsize neck, “I will personally fucking kill you. OK?”
“Dude, calm down. I’m not about to say anything. That’s your call. I just think you have some pretty deep thinking to do. You’re getting married—” Down the passage, a door closed. He lowered his voice. “You’re marrying Phoebe and that is a huge commitment. You don’t want to be having doubts as she walks down the aisle. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I don’t have doubts! Listen, I don’t know what you’re playing at just rocking up here, but Phoebs is devastated.”
“Hey, you told me to come here, remember?”
“I’m sorry? Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Forget it. What do you mean, Phoebe’s devastated?”
“What d’you think? You’ve destroyed her entire image of her daddy. She worships the ground he walks on, and now you show him up as the prick he really is. She just told me the whole story.”
“Hey, that’s my father you’re talking about.”
George made a snorting noise. “Ha! Your father for all of five minutes. Why couldn’t you have written to him first, like a normal adopted person, and met in private, for fuck’s sake?”
Somewhere, a flush set off a symphony of gurgling pipes.
“Anyway,” said George, in a tight whisper. “Just don’t say anything, OK?”
“Believe me, I won’t.”
“Good.”
He left, and Jesse lay looking at the scalloped valance. He felt bad for Phoebe, marrying such a dick. He wondered if the other Birches liked George. The things he’d said about Phoebe made Jesse feel terrible. He hadn’t planned any of this, the front door had opened, literally, and somehow it had all just happened. Besides, if Andrew had replied to his e-mails, he would have met up with him in private. An alert flashed up on his iPad—Jesse still hadn’t read Andrew’s latest column. The review was of a pub called the Perch, but mostly it was about being in quarantine. The “family first” headline was misleading. If anything, Andrew sounded kind of scathing about families. It was interesting to read his birth father’s writing again, having finally met the man. He had the same arch tone in person, but Jesse felt there was something warmer underneath. It was just buried.