Happy Birthday: A Novel

a total of six years in Europe before she brought her skills back to the States) — but it’s also a home away from home, where lucky diners can find the best of the foods they love and grew up with, and real comfort food on a bad day, the kind your mother should have made and didn’t, or at least mine never did. It’s where your palate can be challenged, tempted, teased, and thrilled, and your soul comforted, depending on your needs of the day. The fish is not only fresh but exquisitely prepared. It’s perfect. Chicken, roasted or Southern fried, melts in your mouth, and the mashed potatoes that go with it do the same. White truffle pasta or risotto in season were the only ones I’ve tasted that good in the States. Her wine list is the best collection of moderate-priced unusual wines I’ve ever seen, and are from Chile, Australia, California, and Europe. What April Wyatt has done is create a magic kingdom where the palate reigns supreme. But more than that, she offers a kind of atmosphere and comfort that meets other needs as well. Adults wait a month for reservations, and your kids will beg to go there. And don’t miss the Grand Marnier souffle. I am totally willing to admit that I missed the boat on this one. And I’ve been there often since, and realized how big a mistake I made. While others feasted on goose, pheasant, venison, lobster, turkey, and roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Christmas, followed up by Yule logs and plum pudding or chocolate souffle, what did I eat? Two stacks of the best buttermilk pancakes I’d ever had, with maple syrup. Why? Because I’d missed breakfast? No, because I hate the holidays, and Ms. Wyatt made them bearable for me with the comfort food I needed, and followed it up with a hot fudge sundae, sugar cookies, and homemade truffles Ducasse taught her to make himself. Don’t miss this one! You’ll have to wait until the end of summer, and for those of you already suffering from serious withdrawal, take heart, April in New York will be up and running again by Labor Day!

There were tears running down April’s cheeks as she finished reading it and handed it back to him. She didn’t know what to say. He had not only reversed his earlier damning position, but he had written the most incredible review she’d ever seen. But he believed every word of it, and they both knew it was true. And now everyone who read about the restaurant would know it too. When he wrote it he had had a moment of concern about what his editor would ultimately think when he found out that Mike was engaged to April, so he told them, and they still liked the piece. Mike stood behind every word he had written. He truly believed that her restaurant was one of the best in the city, for all the reasons he had stated. Her skills hadn’t been underused there, she had used them in the most sophisticated, unpretentious way, to serve elegant meals to those who wanted them, and simple wholesome meals to those who didn’t. Where else could you find athletes, movie stars, food buffs, and even six-year-olds thoroughly loving their meal and all under one roof? Only at April in New York. And even if he didn’t love her, he thought her food was terrific, and admired the sheer guts of what she did, even in the face of tough critics and food snobs like him.

“Thank you, thank you!” she whispered, and threw her arms around his neck. He had done exactly what she had hoped he would do in the beginning. But this was even better. It wasn’t just an objective review of her menu and wine list, it was also written from the heart and explained the philosophy behind it, and he had even let people know when she was planning to reopen. It was the best of all possible worlds. And then she suddenly worried about something as she hugged him and pulled away to look at him. “You didn’t get in trouble for this, when you told them about us, I mean?” Mike shook his head, smiling at her, ecstatic that she was so pleased with it. He had hoped she would be. He owed her that. His earlier review had been unnecessarily bitchy, but the menu had annoyed him, even if he did think she was the sexiest woman who had ever lived. He thought she had taken the easy way out. But she hadn’t. April always took the high road — in everything. She was that kind of woman. Instead of just easy food or hard food, she served people both kinds and wasn’t afraid to do it. He believed every word in his review.

“It’s all true,” he said simply. “Truth is the best defense for anything. April, people all over New York talk about your restaurant. It’s really something to be proud of, and when you open again, it will be even better. This will give you a little time to try new dishes, add some new things to the menu. Consider it maternity leave. Other women take three months off to have a baby, or even six. Enjoy it, play with your menu, watch your dream be reborn again. You have nothing to worry about. And I had nothing to apologize to my editor for, except my first stupid, ignorant, utterly pretentious review. I owed this one to you.” She sat cross-legged on his bed, beaming at him.

“This is the best gift you could have given me,” she said, deeply moved by his generosity and the eloquence of his review.

“No, that is,” he said, pointing at her belly, “and it’s the best one you could have given me, even though I was stupid about that too. When are we getting married, by the way?” he asked with interest.

“What about Memorial Day weekend? That gives my mother two weeks to do it when she gets back. Although knowing her, she could throw it together in five minutes. And it’s a week before my due date.” It was a little tight, but it made sense to her.

“What if the baby comes early?” he asked, looking worried. He really wanted to marry her before the baby came. He thought it was important to do that.

“We’ll bring it to the wedding,” April said simply, and he laughed at her. She was quite a woman. He had realized it when he met her, but then dropped the ball along the way. Fortunately, she hadn’t. April never dropped the ball. She grabbed it and ran with it, in everything she did. Even now after the fire. “How many people do you want at the wedding?” She had forgotten to ask him before, and her mother had emailed her to ask.

“Just me and you. I don’t want my parents, I haven’t seen them in ten years and they’re too drunk to care.” He had never heard from them again since his call. He was ready to let them go forever and his therapist agreed with him, they were a lost cause. He wanted to look forward, not backward, to the life he was going to share with April. “I’d like my friend Jim and his wife. He was a fan of this relationship and the baby even before I was.” They had been to the restaurant twice before the fire and April liked them both very much.

“Can we go on a honeymoon?” she asked, looking like a young girl, and he laughed at her.

“Yeah, at the hospital. You can’t go away now, silly. Why don’t we stay at a hotel for the weekend, and pretend we’re not in New York? Or pretend we are and enjoy it.”

“I’d really like to go to Italy with you,” she said, looking disappointed. They could go to all the restaurants they both knew and loved and talked about.

“Why don’t we go in August, before you reopen?”

“What’ll we do with the baby?” She was planning to nurse, and since she could have it with her at the restaurant for the first months, it wasn’t a problem.

“Take it with us. We can get him used to great food right from the beginning,” he teased her. “Sounds like a plan to me. Now all we have to do is get married, have the baby, and reopen the restaurant.” He made it sound like a snap of the fingers and one, two, three, and April laughed at him.

“I have a feeling none of it will be that easy,” she said, looking worried. “The wedding maybe, thanks to my mother. Getting the restaurant open again is a project, and I’m feeling nervous about getting this thing out of me,” she said, pointing to the basketball on her lap, and he nodded. It looked huge to both of them. She was a tall woman but narrow-framed, and it seemed impossible to believe that anything that enormous could emerge with ease. “Are you still planning to be there?” she asked, sounding anxious. He said he would, but she knew he was scared. If he was not there, she knew Ellen would be.

Mike nodded, looking pensive. “I think so. I want to be,” although it seemed scary to him too, and watching April in agony would be upsetting. She didn’t talk about it, but he knew that as the time grew closer, she was as worried as he was. The logistics of it looked damn near impossible to him, and to her too.

They talked about their trip to Italy as April cooked him dinner. She whipped up a primavera pasta from things he had in his refrigerator and a frisee salad with bacon and poached eggs. By the time they went to bed that night, they had agreed on Florence, Siena, Venice, Rome, Bologna, and Arezzo, where April knew a restaurant she insisted they couldn’t miss. They agreed to put off Paris for another trip, since everything was closed in August. And as they piled into bed, after she took another shower to get the smell of smoke off her, she put her arms around him and thanked him again for the great review. He was relieved that he had done it. He had wanted to for a long time, as a gift to her. And this seemed like the right time.

“Larry thinks I should look into opening a second restaurant now,” she said as he turned off the light and she yawned, and Mike looked at her with horror.

“One woman, one restaurant, and one baby are all I can handle right now,” he said honestly, and that was already a lot for him. He had come a long way in the past four months, farther than he ever thought he could. “Could we settle for that for the moment?” She nodded, smiling at him, grateful for all they had. And she wasn’t ready to open a second restaurant either. She had enough to do rebuilding the one she had.