Jason asked if the adoption papers said anything about her biological parents.
“Just my mother,” Harvey said. “The space under father says unknown.”
“Well, that’s easy. Just write my name in there.”
This made Harvey start to sob again, so Jason found an empty bench between a row of flowering trees where there was no one around. When her tissue was all used up, Jason remembered the napkin he’d saved from breakfast, with the sketch of a girl holding flowers. He gave it to her.
Then a man came toward them with a suitcase and asked if they were interested in buying designer sunglasses. When he put the case down and started getting things out, Jason stood with his fists clenched. This made Harvey laugh, and Jason watched with more gratitude than anger as the man disappeared.
He asked Harvey if she was going to try and track down her biological parents.
“If you want my help,” he told her, “count on it.”
HARVEY HAD LEARNED that her birth mother was dead by typing the name Rita Vega from the birth certificate into Google. She had been born in Costa Rica and died of cancer in a hospital off the Long Island Expressway. Harvey and Jason would have driven past it many times.
Harvey wondered if she had been given up because of the illness, or if there had been another reason and the disease came later. Had her mother chosen the people to adopt her? Or was the process anonymous and Harvey’s life now the result of chance and circumstance?
Harvey had tried her best to find a picture, even calling the hospital to see if they had a photo on file, or if any of the nurses could remember what Rita Vega looked like.
In the weeks following her discovery, Harvey had a hard time getting used to the idea of it, and lay awake at night, unable to eat, crying in the bathroom at work—grieving for someone she couldn’t even imagine.
She went online and looked up the day she died.
A Friday in April. Six minutes before one o’clock.
The other patients would have been eating lunch. Harvey would have been eating lunch, or in line at the cafeteria deciding what to eat, worried about where she might sit and the shame if she dropped her tray.
She wondered (as she would for the rest of her life) if, in those final moments, she passed over her mother’s heart like the shadow of something in flight.
But more than anything, Harvey wished there was some way to get a message through. Some way to let her know about the man who became her father, and that her suffering had not been in vain, and all the love she had withheld, that was lost in death, had found its way back into the world and was undiminished.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE AUTHOR WISHES to acknowledge the following people:
Wes Anderson; Tina Andreadis; Amy Baker; Betty; Vimi Bhatia; Elona, Tammy and Joshua Bodwell; Bryan Le Boeuf; my dear brother, Darren Booy, and his wife, Raha; Joan and Stephen Booy; Theodore Bouloukos; Catrin Brace and the Welsh Assembly Government; Ken Browar; Dr. Elissa Brown and Lois Oliveira of the Child HELP Partnership; David Bruson; Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni; Jonathan Burnham; Li Chow; Maria Christodoulou; Scott and Liz Cohen; Denise and James Connelly; Rejean Daigneault; Cynthia and Justin Ellis; Wolfgang Egger; Dr. Shilpi Epstein; Laurie Fink; Foxy; Dani Gill; Dr. Bruce Gelb; Gaia Grossi; Jen Hart; Dolores Henry; Gregory Henry; James Hetfield and Metallica; Nancy Horner; Mr. Howard; Professor Huang; Jig; Carlos Juarbe; David Kaplan Martial Arts; Hilary Knight; Evelyn Lehman; Mike Leigh; Sam Levinson; Filippino Lippi; Michael and Delphine Matkin; Dorit Matthews; Megatronis; Erfan Mojib; Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Morris III; Michael Morrison; Lukas Ortiz; Deborah Ory; Murat Oztaskin; Wendy and Jon Paton; Bronson Pinchot; Jonathan D. Rabinowitz; Ashwin Rattan; Tamara Rawitt; Rob; Sepultura; Lori and Ted Schultz; Alexis Shanley; Lisa Sharkey; Ivan Shaw and Lisa Von Weise Shaw; Dmitri Shostakovich; Stop & Shop supermarkets; the coaches and staff at UFC Gym, New Hyde Park; Rebecca Torrey; Tuesday; Joseph Mallord William Turner; Violet; Virginia Stanley; Jeremy Strong; Gloria Vanderbilt; the Vilcek Foundation; Waldorf Astoria Hotels; Mojo Wang; Barbara Wersba; Sylvia Beach Whitman at Shakespeare & Company; Carol Zeitz, Ph.D.; Georgi and Sveta Zhikharev.
Special thanks to those guardians of story: librarians.
THE AMAZING INDIVIDUALS at Conville & Walsh: Jake Smith-Bosanquet, Alexander Cochran, Tracy England, Emma Finn, Alexandra McNicoll, and Dorcas Rogers.
EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS to my editor and friend, Laura Brown, for her editorial grace, integrity, and calm intelligence.
MY DEVOTED AND charming publicist, Rachel Elinsky; the incomparable Tom Hopke Jr.; and a special thank you to Cal Morgan, without whom, this book would not have been completed.
FOR CLOSE FRIENDSHIP, long walks from Mumbles to Kent Street, and poetry, Lucas Hunt.
FOR CLOSE FRIENDSHIP, strange humor, adventures on Jermyn Street, and three-hour lunches at the Wolseley, Carrie Kania (also my literary agent).
FINALLY, I WOULD like to express my deepest gratitude to Christina Daigneault and our talented, brilliant daughter, Madeleine Van Booy, for sharing their lives with me, and opening up new realms of happiness through our ongoing adventures in both the extraordinary and the everyday.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SIMON VAN BOOY is the author of six books, including The Secret Lives of People in Love, Tales of Accidental Genius, and The Illusion of Separateness, a national bestseller. Also the editor of three philosophy books, he has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times, Elle Men (China), National Public Radio, and the BBC. His fiction has been translated into seventeen languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.
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ALSO BY SIMON VAN BOOY
FICTION
The Secret Lives of People in Love
Love Begins in Winter
Everything Beautiful Began After
The Illusion of Separateness
Tales of Accidental Genius
NONFICTION
Why We Fight
Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter
Why We Need Love
PLAYS
Hindsight
CREDITS
COVER PHOTOGRAPHS: © IMAGE SOURCE / GETTY IMAGES; © ALIN DRAGULIN / ALAMY (JEANS DETAIL)
IMAGE IN CHAPTER XXXII BY MADELEINE VAN BOOY
COPYRIGHT
FATHER’S DAY. Copyright © 2016 by Simon Van Booy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 978-0-06-240894-5
EPub Edition April 2016 ISBN 9780062408969
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