Tea by the Sea

by Donna Hemans

  But there she was, alive, disappointed but neither suicidal nor depressed, a woman once unforgettable to Lenworth, but now forgettable. She had Opal. Now hers. Plum had her now. And yet, she didn’t. Not fully. Not completely. There was, of course, no certainty that Opal would believe Plum’s version of events, no certainty that she would walk away from the only parents she had known. And still Plum wanted one more thing: to know the why of it all. Midstride, Plum stopped and looked up to the pulpit as if looking at the man she had come to see.

  “What would you tell him?” Opal gave herself away, and walked toward Plum who had remained in front of the altar, looking up at an imaginary person. Plum didn’t answer immediately, and Opal sidestepped her, taking the marble stairs two at a time, brushing past the enormous eagle lectern and toward the pulpit. “It would be funny if you interrupted his sermon. Just stand right here.” Opal shouted “Hello!” and giggled, then looked again at Plum. “It would surely wake up the congregation. They never listen to him anyway.” She shrugged, took another step toward the altar and shouted “hello!” again. Her voice echoed in the near-empty church.

  “Shh. Not so loud.” Plum stepped back, let her weight rest against the front pew. “Take me to see your father.”

  “No.”

  “This is important. There was a reason I wanted to see him last night. The time and the day were important.”

  “I can’t go home now.”

  “Why?” Concerned, even a bit protective, Plum stepped closer.

  “Why don’t you go home and come back tomorrow? You can always talk to him after church.”

  “Why don’t you want to go home?”

  “Can’t you tell?” Opal’s emotions shifted again. “He doesn’t care about me. Even if he didn’t want to see you, he should at least have come to find me.” Opal waved her hand, trying to brush aside her earlier words. But her voice was choked. “Maybe he hasn’t missed me yet. But by now, he must have come in to say ‘happy birthday’ and noticed that I’m not there. And if I’m right, all hell is breaking loose.”

  Plum moved quickly then, closing in on the altar like an animal let loose from a noose. “Happy birthday,” she said through sniffles. “You’re crying. Why does my birthday make everyone sad? Even you, a stranger.”

  “Your father, is he sad on your birthday?”

  “Yes. Sometimes I just wish he would forget the date altogether. Just let the day pass without acknowledging it. Maybe that would make it better for him.”

  “You shouldn’t be sad because he’s sad.”

  “I’m not. Besides, I’m too old now to be excited about my birthday. It’s just a day like any other.”

  “Is the thing you’re crying about the same reason you came to see my father?”

  “Yes.” Plum turned away, searching for a way to say the simplest of words, I am your mother. Instead she cried, the depth of emotion overtaking her body and surprising Opal, who stood away from Plum.

  When Plum’s emotions settled, she wiped her eyes and turned back to Opal. “If you could wish for anything for your birthday, what would it be?” Plum’s voice was almost normal again, except it quivered and she spoke low as if she wanted no one, not even Opal, to hear at all.

  “Tea by the sea.”

  “How so?”

  “When we first moved to Brooklyn, my father used to drive to Coney Island on Saturday mornings and walk along the boardwalk. He goes by himself. Except on my birthday. He takes me. Just the two of us. And afterwards we sat on a bench and drank tea from tiny little teacups. My stepmother’s porcelain cups with little flowers on the side. No matter how cold it was or how tired I was, it felt like everything was perfect. I was the perfect daughter. He was the perfect father. It felt like we were in a storybook. And nothing else that came before mattered. We didn’t really speak, but it felt just right. It felt like the world was all right.” Opal threw up her hands. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “You’re doing just fine. I understand.”

  “That was the only time I drank tea. And I felt like a little girl from a different world. Like a princess drinking from those dainty cups. So I guess that’s my birthday wish, to feel like I matter to somebody.”

  “You matter.”

  “You’re crying again.”

  “Sorry. I do that sometimes.” What Plum held onto was the simplest fact: Lenworth hadn’t forgotten one thing. Tea by the sea was Plum’s thing, the way she spent her Saturday mornings or holiday mornings when she was home from school: on a nearly empty beach with a thermos of tea, toast or fruit. Sometimes it was just Plum and the fishermen hauling in their catch. Sometimes Lenworth met her there, standing first at a distance and watching as she looked out at the flat and endless sea.

  From her enormous tote, Plum removed two bottles of water, a box of apple juice, and two apple turnovers. “It’s not tea by the sea,” she said apologetically.

  “Ah, breakfast. Guess you really came prepared to stay.”

  A moment’s hesitation, then, “My girls like them.”

  From the pew in front of Plum, “So what is the plan?”

  “To see your father, of course.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? He does not want to see you.”

  “No. He doesn’t.” Plum hesitated. “Take me to him. This is my last chance. It’s either you take me to him or I make trouble for him here on Sunday. I’ll stand up during his sermon and tell the congregation what he doesn’t want them to know. And that’s not what you want. I can tell. You still want to protect him.”

  “Who says I’m protecting him?”

  “You’re here. You stayed last night. Protecting him from me. Or running away from something.”

  “He’s coming.”

  “I’m not so sure. He would have come by now.”

  “He’s coming. I guarantee that he’s coming soon.”

  “Why are you now so sure?”

  “I just know it.”

  “I like to have alternatives. If he doesn’t come by noon, then I want you to take me to him.”

  “I’ll tell you where he is. But I don’t want to go home.”

  “Ever?”

  “Just not now.”

  “What are you running from?”

  Opal’s eyes slid away again. Plum looked away too, certain now that she had pushed for too much. She couldn’t mother Opal. Not just yet. Not without those four words: I am your mother. Opal gathered her things, her purse, retied her laces and fluffed the cushion beneath her.

  “I’ll tell you where he is. But you have to promise not to tell him where I am. And I won’t tell anyone we were here together all night.”

  “I can’t let you walk away like that. You’re not as old as you think.”

  “Seventeen is old enough.”

  “Believe me when I tell you that at seventeen, you’re not old enough. You’re not ready to do it all by yourself. You’re not ready for all the disappointments. You’re not ready to walk away from everything you know and live on your own.” Plum bent her head, trying to catch Opal’s eye. But Opal shifted her eyes again away from Plum, and her neck and shoulders followed.

  “All right.” Hesitation. Disappointment. “Let’s just go now.” Opal led Plum through the passageway to the hall.

  Unlike the church, the morning sounds—sirens and loud voices—bounced through the walls and around the cavernous hall. Red and blue lights, weakened in the daylight, danced against the windows. “Too late,” Plum said. “They’re here. Not just your father but the whole police force.”

  “I told you he would come.” Almost immediately, Opal’s bravado wilted. “What’s the worst that could happen to us?”

  “I don’t know.” Yet Plum did. She anticipated kidnapping or trespassing charges, Lenworth leaving in a hurry and taking her daughter with him. Again. “It’s not you who’s in trouble. It’s me.”

  “Is the thing you want to talk to my father about worth getting arrested over?”

  “Yes.
” Plum, her face pressed up against the glass, said, “The church door. We could leave through the church door.”

  “Maybe.” Opal, breathless, seemed excited now by the game, the one-sided hide-and-seek.

  They went back through the church, not quite at a run, not quite at a trot, Opal ahead, thinking and talking too fast and trying to control her jagged breath. And failing.

  At the back of the church, standing up against the red wooden doors, keyholes stared back at them. There was no knob to turn, no bolts to undo, just keyholes that needed keys.

  “Then back to the first plan. We wait.” Really, Plum wanted only to hold on to Opal a little bit longer, to say what she hadn’t said earlier. The manner in which Lenworth had come, with police officers and flashing lights, guaranteed her nothing beyond the time she had with Opal there in the church.

  “Not here,” Opal said. “Choir room. Upstairs. Come.”

  Plum followed, extending the cat and mouse game, wanting Lenworth to come yet prolonging the search to avoid the police. And so they moved, Plum, who understood the consequences of being caught with a girl who they surely considered a runaway—kidnapping charges or something just as serious—following Opal, up the stairs to the room that was home to musical instruments and robes and books. Both breathless, anxious, waiting, hiding upstairs in the musty choir room.

  11

  Lenworth’s carefully scripted life was falling apart, splitting open without his doing. He likened it to an egg with a life inside, opening on its own time, the chick emerging, its life no longer contained or constrained.

  He was of two minds. He could fight for the life he had built, contain the truth before it exploded and news of his family troubles spread amongst the parishioners. Or he could walk away from the life he had built and allow Plum and Opal to be together as they should have always been. Of course, there was the small chance that Opal was not with Plum but elsewhere in the city or out of it, alone and unprepared. But he knew with absolute certainty that Plum, once she had Opal, wouldn’t let go of her.

  Lenworth chose the former, the life he had built. He imagined the story already spreading from one parishioner to another, beginning with his neighbor, the father of the boys who should have taken Opal home, telling one person after another how Lenworth had run, flown, once he heard Plum’s name. And he imagined the variations of the story that would be passed on. Before the end of the day—perhaps even before noon—the entire congregation would know that his teenage daughter hadn’t spent the night at home where she belonged. He imagined the gossip—out with a man, a runaway, passed out somewhere. Or perhaps even the truth of what he had done seventeen years earlier.

  He was anxious now, angry too, at how Opal had singlehandedly orchestrated his downfall and brought down the shell he had built around his family. The fall, almost biblical in its magnanimity and as epic as anything Shakespeare ever dreamed, was nothing Lenworth could have imagined.

  He couldn’t panic and yet he did, fumbling and causing another stack of papers to fall as he tried to find the church lawyer’s number. He could think of nothing else to do but call the lawyer, to lay his problems upon someone else.

  Lenworth didn’t know exactly where to begin, how to tell his story so George, the parishioner who also served as St. Paul’s attorney—and the two wardens he had brought along with him—would understand that his missing daughter wasn’t really missing at all. How could he tell the attorney that he didn’t want to involve the police, that Plum deserved this opportunity to have her daughter at last? The three men were dressed for tennis, and Lenworth apologized for interrupting or postponing a game.

  George, the attorney, accustomed it seemed to waiting for his clients’ stories to evolve from the truth to the very real truth, spread cream cheese on a bagel with quick, deliberate strokes, then measured a teaspoon of honey for his tea.

  Lenworth’s voice was as quiet as he had ever heard it, a little boy’s cry for help. His daughter was missing, and though he should have been working his way back from that urgent and immediate fact, he began his story elsewhere, on the island all four of the men knew, in a little town called Anchovy that the three visitors didn’t know, in a little house on a hill that outlived even its builder’s expectations. A man with a motherless child, deliberately forgetting for the moment how he had come to be the baby’s only parent and the circumstances under which he and Plum had come to be parents at all.

  “I think Opal’s mother has found us, and has Opal now,” Lenworth said at last. “I want to find her but I don’t want to involve the police.”

  The men before Lenworth couldn’t see his guilt, the pressure inside him easing even without certain assurance that Plum and Opal were together. As if they hadn’t heard how he had come to be Opal’s only parent, they asked what right had Plum, absent from Opal’s life for seventeen years, to return and take a child she hadn’t raised? They wanted justice. But where they saw injustice, Lenworth saw justice—mother and daughter together.

  “First, we’ll go to the church,” George said.

  The four of them climbed in George’s car for the short ride down Church Avenue to St Paul’s place. By the time they arrived at the church, Lenworth in the back seat like an isolated prisoner, the police were there. Yellow tape cordoned off the entire block, and from where the car came to a stop, he could see a tarp on the sidewalk, inches from the steps that led up to the church hall’s red steel doors. He opened the car door quickly, uncertain of what he was about to encounter, and touched his neck to confirm he had worn his clerical collar. He took a moment to steady himself and mutter a threeword prayer: God help us. Then he rushed forward through the thin crowd of people who had gathered to watch and up to the yellow crime scene tape marking an artificial border around the tarp on the ground. Don’t think the worst, he told himself, then took determined steps toward the uniformed police officer guarding the crime scene tape.

  “I’m Father Barrett.” He touched his collar again and then kept his hand upon his chest. “Is it my daughter, Opal?”

  “Sir . . .”

  “Is it my daughter?”

  “Sir . . .”

  “This is my church and if it’s my child I have a right to know.” His voice was harsher than he intended. He remembered the reason he had come and dialed back his anger. “My daughter,” he said. “She didn’t come home last night. Is that her?” As if he could discern the shape or age or gender of the body beneath the tarp, he shifted his eyes to the slate gray cloth. But he couldn’t tell which end was the head or feet, whether the body was thin or large.

  “Captain,” the young officer called, then he stepped back to whisper to an older man, whose beard and hair aged him more than his face. Seconds later, the young officer turned away and walked back to the tape. “The deceased is an old woman. Caucasian.”

  Lenworth exhaled so deeply, his breath fluttered the yellow tape. “Thank you, Jesus.” He bent at the waist as if he could no longer hold himself up and watched the cold, bitter tea he had swallowed earlier trickle from his mouth onto the ground. “I’m sorry,” he said after wiping his mouth with a handkerchief.

  “It could be a parishioner,” the police officer said. “We might need you to identify the body.”

  “My daughter,” he said. “I have to find my daughter.” He took a step back, ashamed of his inability to hold himself together, and aware now of the broader possibilities of his daughter’s absence.

  “This whole area’s a crime scene. Nobody’s going past here now.”

  The captain returned, this time to pull him behind the tape away from the officers who stood around guarding nothing but air. “Delores Walker. Does that name ring a bell, Father?”

  “Yes, she’s on the altar guild. Comes in Saturday mornings to prepare the altar. Is that her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “We have to wait for the medical examiner’s report. But it looks like a heart attack. There’s no obvi
ous injury. No gunshot wounds. No knife wounds. And not a robbery since she had her purse.”

  “Has anyone been inside the church?”

  “It’s locked. From the looks of it, she didn’t get inside.”

  Before he could ask, another officer called the captain away, and Lenworth was left on the side of the tape where he wanted to be, but no closer to the red door, no closer to getting someone to focus on his missing child. He patted his pockets, realizing then that he had no keys, no way to get into the church through the front door at the other end of the block and, even if he could get through the police officers standing around, no way either to open the doors to get into the church hall.