Now Is Our Time

by Jo Kessel

  “So, are you going to marry my mother?”

  Jonah’s eyes boggled, but he largely stayed calm, chewing his food with a thoughtful expression on his face. She wanted to ask him ‘a penny for them’, meaning she’d give him a penny for his thoughts if he dared to divulge them, only she didn’t want to distract him or interrupt his thought processes. Darn, as Martha would say. She wanted him to answer that question. It was very simple. Yes or no, with no murky grey area in-between.

  “Do you think I should answer that question?” he asked.

  One of her pet hates was a question being answered with a question. Well, two could play at that game.

  “Do you think I think you should answer that question?”

  Martha started giggling. Thankfully Jonah was too grown-up to keep playing this game, which could have continued ad infinitum with a never-ending series of ‘do you think I think you think I think you thinks’.

  “I do think you think I should answer that question,” Jonah started. “And so I will try by saying that asking a woman for her hand in marriage is a very special thing and really, there’s only one person who should know about it first. Who do you think that is?”

  Oh boy, another question.

  “The person you’re going to ask to marry?” Martha suggested.

  “Exactly,” said Jonah.

  Clearly Miriam didn’t have the control or power that she hoped for. Reluctantly she realised that she had to move on. She opened the packaging to her turkey and coleslaw sandwich. It looked yummy. She took a mouthful. It was yummy. She hummed in appreciation. Miriam loved American food. Everything was so much tastier than at home.

  “Dad,” asked Martha, “how did you ask Mummy to marry you?”

  Jonah had just taken another mouthful of his salt beef sandwich and Miriam felt sorry for him. These pesky girls just wouldn’t stop asking questions.

  -------------

  Not only was Martha very bossy, she was very competitive too. Back at Lily Beach - that’s what Jonah’s house was called - Martha challenged Miriam to a game of Connect 4. They were pretty evenly matched but one game had turned into ‘best out of three’, which turned into ‘best of five’, which turned into ‘the first to twenty’. Martha was keeping a tally and somehow they were able to carry on a conversation as they played. So far, Martha was in the lead at eleven games to nine and her non-stop questions were probably some clever distraction tactic.

  “You don’t look much like your mom,” she said. “Why is that?”

  This wasn’t the first time Miriam had heard this. Friends at school often asked her the same thing. Whilst she could see a resemblance between herself and her mother, it was clear that others found it trickier.

  “My Dad’s black,” Miriam explained. “So I guess that makes it harder for you to see the similarity. But my mother says that I’ve got her nose and lips. You can check it out later.”

  Martha had the red discs, Miriam had the yellow. Martha made a bad move, allowing Miriam to complete a yellow row of four. Bingo!

  “Ten, eleven,” said Miriam.

  They emptied the discs out the frame and started again.

  “Would you like to be my sister?” asked Martha.

  “Yes,” said Miriam.

  She answered very quickly. Too quickly perhaps, for this was a concept to which she’d not yet given proper consideration. This was weird considering she’d pretty much asked Jonah if he was going to be her step-Dad. But if he became her step-father then Martha would become her step-sister and, actually, that would be pretty cool. As far as step-sisters went, it could be much worse. For starters, Martha could have been a boy. Not that she had anything against boys and she loved Jasper, but it wasn’t like she could play with him. And she actually enjoyed playing with Martha. She was pretty sure that if Martha had been at her school then they would have picked each other to be friends. So the fact that they had been forced together was pretty neat. Miriam laughed as she found herself thinking the word ‘neat’. Clearly Martha’s influence was rubbing off on her. In England that word had a completely different meaning.

  It was also great that they were both in the same position. They were both products of the big ‘D’ and that meant they shared a great understanding. It was hard having two homes and being passed from pillar to post. It was hard to hear your parents fight over you, to feel you were a pawn in their game of chess. It was hard if there wasn’t parity between your parents, if one was happy and the other wasn’t as a result of the ‘D’. It was hard when one of them had a boyfriend or girlfriend and the other one didn’t. Martha said her mother had lots of boyfriends since the ‘D’ and she didn’t like it. Claire was the first girlfriend her dad had introduced her to. She didn’t even know if there’d been others. So it was nice that Miriam had Martha and vice versa, because they understood each others’ pain in a way that others might not. They could be, and were, mutually supportive.

  That didn’t stop the fact that Martha could be a pain in the arse and frequently was! She always wanted to watch reruns of icarly whereas Miriam was hooked on The Gameshow Network which showed ‘80s reruns in which the female contestants all had hilariously big curly hairstyles and wore enormous shoulder pads.

  “Maybe we could go to the same school,” said Martha. “That would be cool, wouldn’t it?”

  “I win,” said Miriam, spotting a possible line of four on the diagonal and slotting in a yellow disc. Martha grunted. She’d lost her lead. That was the thing which most irritated Miriam about her, her competitiveness. Martha always had to win and was a bad loser. Not that Miriam liked to lose either but, if she did, at least she did it graciously.

  “I don’t want to play any more,” said Martha.

  -----------------

  Miriam’s father was fiercely competitive, just like Martha, and he was also a prime example of a grown-up trying to extract information from a kid. He thought he was being clever and that she didn’t see what he was up to, but one time, the first time she stayed with him after meeting Jonah, he fired question after question at her. What did she think of Jonah? Had Jonah stayed the night? What did you do together? Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, the questions had come at her as steady and rapid as gunfire. Miriam didn’t think it was any of her father’s business. Her mother never interrogated her, and her mother had got used to the idea not just of Daddy with another woman but Daddy with another child. And so she decided to wind up her father, as much as an eight year old child was able. She had a fair idea of his pressure points and she played to them, aggravating him with what was entirely the truth. She knew how much her father believed in the truth. What were the words he told her, the ones that witnesses were forced to swear on the bible in court? I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  And so she had. She told him she liked Jonah a lot. She told him that he let her win games. “Which you never do,” she added as an afterthought, to stick in the knife and turn it painfully. She told him that he stayed not one but two nights. And then her favourite part of the conversation had been when she told her father that her mother was going to be a TV superstar. He’d been really mean. He opened his mouth so wide in disbelief that she could have stuck a football between his teeth. And then he laughed sarcastically. That wasn’t nice. Miriam loved her mother even if her father didn’t. Weren’t grown-ups meant to behave better than children? And see, he’d been wrong. Mummy really was turning into a TV superstar.

  Miriam’s father was coming to pick her up in just over a week’s time and already she knew that she didn’t want to go. She loved him. He was her father after all and she wanted to spend time with him. The thing was, though, these last three weeks had been some of the best in her life and she didn’t want them to end. She loved it here. Yes, Martha could be a pain but she was a nice pain. She enjoyed being with her. They swam, they played tennis, they did things, but not in a forced way, in a natural way. She loved Jonah’s home, the surroundings, the sea, their lifes
tyle. Dinner was her favourite time of day. They’d started the way they meant to continue that first night, after her mother had won one miraculous point off Jonah in the tennis match. He’d fired up the barbecue in the garden and, even though strictly speaking it was Jonah who was meant to be the sole chef as his punishment for losing the bet, everyone had played a part. Martha had helped her dad with the sausages and chicken legs. Miriam and her mother had been in charge of salads. They’d made a potato salad with caramelised onions, a green salad and a simple corn salad. Most nights they had a barbecue and ate together on the patio but, occasionally Claire cooked something different. So far Martha had gone crazy for her beef lasagne as well as her homemade fresh fish in breadcrumbs. “You’re a much better cook than my mom,” she praised.

  Miriam would never admit it to her mother, but she even enjoyed the long beach walks Claire insisted they do every few days or so, dodging the incoming tide as they walked round tight coves overhung by cliffs garlanded in purple flowers. Her mother loved to walk in the fresh sea air. The ocean, as Martha called it. Everything her father did felt contrived. Jonah was completely different. He made it up as he went along. There was a quiet casualness about him which she found incredibly appealing. She felt wicked for admitting it but part of her wished that Jonah was her real father. He was fun. He was cool. She saw people turn their heads, recognising him when they were out and about, and he never alluded to any fame or past history. He just was.

  She wished her father wasn’t coming to America. She feared that wherever they went, whatever they did, wherever they stayed, she’d wish that she was at Lily Beach instead. She loved Jasper. He was sweet, but after a few minutes he was boring and Ali was always focusing on him instead of her, as if Miriam was a slightly tiresome afterthought. With Jonah she never felt anything less than part of the family. She never felt less than equal.

  Miriam was in a state of turmoil. She felt bad for having these mean thoughts about her Dad, who she knew loved her. But these last few days she’d been wondering if she dared ask her mother if she really had to go. Her father, Ali and Jasper could all have a great time without her. Heck, they’d probably have a better time without her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Much as Claire loved the children, her favourite moment of the day was after they’d gone to bed. She always put in maximum effort to ensure that a good time was had by all, and so the peace and quiet that came after the youngsters were asleep felt well and truly earned. It had been the same back in the UK and it was no different here in the US. Only now, with Jonah in her life, there was more of an incentive to achieve that precious child-free solitude earlier rather than later. The girls were always so active, swimming, body surfing or flying kites that most evenings they were happy to be tucked up by 8 pm. In fact, most nights they were begging for bed. Plus she was more fatigued than usual. That was the problem with her long Mondays. She was so exhausted from the pressure of performing in front of the camera for what wasn’t far off a twenty-four hour shift, that for the remainder of the week she felt as if she was playing catch-up. And the whole Orlando Goodman situation was preying on her mind. Their regular skype conversations always left her feeling as heavy as if she were shrouded in a blanket of lead. Her meal plans for him weren’t working. He said they were but every time she saw him when they video-spoke the sunken hollows on his cheeks were deeper, his complexion slightly greyer. His illness was being completely kept under wraps and he was still somehow managing to perform on the West End stage. The show must go on. She’d repeatedly asked if he might reconsider conventional treatment but he was adamant. “If I die on stage, then I die happy,” he’d said. “Better than dying in a hospital bed somewhere.”

  Now though, she tried to block out such thoughts. The girls were sleeping and the “mm” that left her lips as she lay back on the patio sofa said it all, the sound conveying ecstasy and relief. She raised her feet on the pile of cushions scattered at one end. Today had been, quite possibly, one of the best days of her life. Jonah had taken them all to Coronado Island, one of the most desirable zip codes in the USA. It’s not a real island, he explained, but just looks like one because a bridge attaches it to the mainland. A beautiful two-hour coastal cycle ride had been followed by an al fresco lunch at the Hotel Del Coronado, overlooking the ocean. The girls were delightfully entertaining and well behaved, charming the waiters and appreciating their breadcrumb coated cod with Yukon mashed potatoes. “This is the nicest food to ever cross my lips,” Miriam praised. Claire felt the same way about her meal – lobster risotto followed by diver scallops covered in orange pine-nut gremolata. At one point Jonah had taken her hand and lifted it to his lips. She could tell that he felt it too. That here, at this table, as they ate, chatted and drank wine, it all felt right. They’d somehow evolved into the perfect, blended family, a special unit. She wished she could pocket the feeling of elation and for nothing to ever change.

  It was a sultry evening, heavy with the type of heat that sticks to you, wrapping its moisture across your skin in an invisible sheen. Despite the mercury on the thermometer tipping 80 degrees Fahrenheit, Claire had brought out a mug of boiling water into which she’d added a slice of lemon. This was the only drink that seemed to quench her thirst at the moment. As she waited for her laptop to fire up she took her cup and blew the steam across its surface, watching it waft in curly squiggles towards the sky.

  “Hey you,” said Jonah, coming out with a bottle of Budweiser.

  He clanked the beer onto the glass coffee table, tossed the cushions onto the floor and placed her feet on his lap as he sat down. He started gently massaging her arches.

  “Mm, that’s nice,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “Pretty toes,” he admired.

  The girls had given her a pedicure when they’d got back and it actually wasn’t half-bad. They’d removed her blue polish, filed and scrubbed, and had repainted her nails with a chocolate-colour varnish. It was a fairly professional-looking job and they’d done the same on each other. All three of them now had matching pinkies. This lovely girlie session had been tainted with a touch of sadness. In two days’ time both Miriam and Martha would be handed back to their respective other parents and, whilst Martha would return for a weekend in a couple of weeks’ time, Claire wouldn’t be seeing her daughter again until she got back to London. She knew the girls wished it was otherwise. Martha would be celebrating her ninth birthday in a fortnight and she so wanted Miriam to come to her party.

  “I know,” she smiled, trying to focus on the good and not the bad. “San Diego’s beauty salons better watch out. The girls will steal their trade.”

  The screen of Claire’s laptop was facing Jonah. He scrunched up his forehead quizzically.

  “Who’s Will Ryan from ABC?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Claire, turning the screen to face her and clicking on the mail. Her jaw dropped as she started to read. “Ah yes,” she muttered, remembering. And then: “Oh. My. God,” she gasped.

  “What?”

  “Will Ryan is this Executive Producer who introduced himself to me when I was filming at SeaWorld. He’s asking if I would like to do a screen test for some new healthy eating programme they’ve been commissioned to make. Apparently accents are in vogue at the moment and they’re keen to hire someone British, if they can find the right person.”

  Jonah pulled the laptop closer and read the mail.

  “Wow, babe, that’s amazing.”

  Claire sipped her hot water, although now she had a sudden urge to celebrate on something stronger. She was reaching for Jonah’s Budweiser when her tummy was wracked by one of those irritating cramps. She was on the brink of crying out, but happily the pain disappeared almost at once. Perhaps the pills Jonah bought her were starting to work. Luckily he appeared not to have noticed, his eyes still fixed on Will Ryan’s email.

  “It’s a screen test,” she carried on. “I’m sure they’ve got lots of other candidates lined up. And, besides,
how many viewers does ABC have?”

  “I don’t know, tens of millions for sure.”

  Claire’s jaw dropped even wider.

  “Exactly,” she said. “I don’t think I can cope with that. That’s just insane. And I’m completely inexperienced, so let’s not get too excited.”

  Nonetheless, Claire could feel a rush of adrenaline racing through her veins. This was madness. She had to tell Georgia. She drew her laptop closer and started clicking out of her mails and onto Skype.