Lenworth reached for his slippers in the dark, and, as he had learned to do over the years, felt around with his foot for whatever toy, book, plate or half-full glass of juice one of the boys had left untended on the floor. Nothing. He sat upright, his feet dangling from the bed, his soles brushing the top of his slippers. Careful, he thought, or Pauline might wake, and if she did, her voice would come at him in the dark like a needle pricking at an already sore spot.
Every year it was the same. His body remembered what he had trained his mind to forget, and every year on the morning of Opal’s birthday he woke long before dawn, in the hours before the birds outside his window started up a series of calls. But he never thought fully and deeply about the baby girl, seventeen years old now. Instead, he thought about her mother, Plum, lying in the hospital bed sleeping at last. The birth wasn’t easy, and for a while the doctors had thought he would lose both mother and child. But they pushed, one to reclaim and the other to lay her first claim on her space in the world. Resting, Plum was, as he had always thought, beautiful. Her dark skin glowed as if painted with oil, and her lips, a deep red that needed no additional color from lipstick or gloss, shone. In sleep, she rested her thumb against her lip as if she had fallen asleep sucking on her finger or was waiting for quiet and darkness to suck on it again. Every year, he thought about turning back the clock, walking away from the hospital that night for good, walking away from Plum empty-handed instead of with the baby girl wrapped in a blanket. In the crook of his arm, the baby had slept peacefully. When she woke, her eyes glistened with color, and he named her Opal for no other reason than she looked up at him with eyes that reminded him of a precious stone. He didn’t think signing his own newborn child out of the hospital without Plum’s knowledge was the worst of his mistakes. Up until then, his greatest mistake was falling in love with Plum, a student he had once been hired to tutor, and who was at that time not quite an adult. It didn’t matter that he was only twenty-four, a young teacher himself working temporarily as an assistant in the school’s chemistry lab and tutoring on the side.
Looking down at Plum in the hospital bed with her thumb against her lip, he was certain he wanted her to have a different kind of future, not the one conscripted to her now that she had had a child at seventeen, not the life his mother and sister had. He thought of what had spurred his life for nearly ten years: what it meant to have agency, to have the capacity to exert power and control over his life. And he wanted Plum to have the same. What he had thought of in the days leading up to her being at the hospital seemed like a plan etched in stone. Walking away with the baby seemed like the only gift he had left to give Plum. His gift would mean Plum could have a life, a promising future, a university experience like any other young adult, a clean slate to start her life again. And he had indeed followed through on that plan: he left with the baby, not bothering to stop to scratch out a note to Plum explaining his gift to her.
His gift: a future, an unencumbered start to whatever life Plum chose to live. In essence, power and control over her life.
Only, they hadn’t talked at all of what she wished or wanted. He forgot that his gift to Plum meant he was robbing her of the very control he thought he was giving.
Now, like he had done every other September 16, he imagined Plum waking seventeen years earlier to his inadequate gift, bawling perhaps, her surprise melting into despair, her love into hatred, and holding her empty arms out in front for the baby she wouldn’t receive, seeing again and again her still-swollen stomach and empty arms, her breasts achingly full of milk that would feed no one.
He closed his eyes to shut out the rest, and whispered the prayer he whispered every morning and night, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Yet, he had found no way to forgive himself.
Here was Opal’s birthday again, come to remind him of what he had taken away, his own inadequate role as a father to Opal, his mistakes piling up one on top the other. Opal, with her mother’s eyes and rich dark skin, reminded him day after day of what he had done those seventeen years ago, how he had robbed his own daughter of her mother’s touch, how he had robbed Plum of what most mothers craved: cradling the baby to whom she had sung, to whom she had whispered stories for nine whole months. There was no counting the number of times he had to walk away from Opal to hide the unending agony of his mistake, how many times he lied about Plum’s fate to keep his own secret, how many times he gave too much to make up for what Opal had lost. And so he had come up with tea by the sea, his gift to Opal and Opal alone, a poor substitute for time with her own mother but something he imagined Plum would have considered or even done.
He would take her to Coney Island that morning. Breakfast—tea, scones or bagels and fruit—by the sea with his daughter was the best that he could do on this birthday morning.
Behind him, Pauline snored lightly. Her breath rustled the sheet, and its every movement was to him a whispered reminder of how he had failed. What Pauline knew, or thought she knew, was nothing compared to what he had actually done. He eased off the bed slowly, checking again for toys or one of his sons rolled up in a blanket on the floor at the foot of the bed, and tiptoed through the dark house to his office, the place where he found refuge from the eyes that looked at him with a combination of longing and awe of the man they all imagined he was. He didn’t think himself worthy of the collar and vestments he wore, nor of his family’s love, but week after week he tried to do some good, if not to make himself worthy then to erase bit by bit the gargantuan sin that shadowed his life.
Lenworth remained in the dark office, his cupped hands chest high, mimicking the way his congregation knelt before him to receive the sacrament. He waited for God to speak, to send a blessing, inspiration for Sunday’s sermon, even a single word. Like every other night when he sat like that waiting for God to speak, he fell into sleep. His hands drifted down to his lap, his head drooped forward, and his jaw hung loose. Asleep, he was exactly how he pictured himself—a marionette controlled by an invisible string, except in his case he was his own puppeteer, incapable or unwilling to right his own wrongs.
He dreamt again of his mother. She stood outside hanging clothes on a line, the breeze pushing the wet clothes back against her body. The sheets, heavy with water, flapped, thwacked, flicked droplets of water through the air. When she turned around at last, she said, “Oh, you come,” just as she had done the very last time he saw her in person. Her disappointment in him was as palpable as the leather seat pressed against his thighs. As he did in every dream in which she came to him, he explained himself. As happened in every dream in which she came to him, she didn’t hear a single word he said. He spoke but someone or something muted his voice or plugged her ears. He heard her questions and accusations, but his words, his explanations, were held back by an invisible shield of sorts. They continued like that until he sprung up, weary and frustrated, suspended between sleep and wakefulness, fighting to fall back to sleep.