I would sleep up for a few nights and run the numbers in my head, like you do when you’ve broken long enough. Not money. The other guy.
Did I do enough?
Did I say the right things at the right time?
Did you know that I loved them, or did they just know I was tired?
I was wondering if the girls noticed.
There was a fear under all that I never said out loud. That somewhere in the back of their hearts, the triplets were still waiting for their real father.
Magazines
I didn’t blame them for it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
There was a fear under everything.
***
The morning of the triplet graduation, I sat in my van in the parking lot for 20 minutes before I could leave.
I was 49 years old. My beard had turned gray in patches. My knee hurt from a ladder fall two summers before and it had never healed.
I had brought a cheap camera, which I didn’t fully know how to use, and I was shaking in my hand.
And in my wallet, behind the expired insurance card and a food receipt, I had saved Daniel’s original note. It was discolored, but still legible.
I brought a cheap camera.
I deployed it with both hands.
I was wondering if the girls would mention Daniel today. I was wondering, worse, if you wished him would come in his place.
I doubled the note and went out in the heat.
***
The auditorium smelled of polishing of soil and cheap perfume. I sat seven rows back with my camera resting on my bad knee, trying to keep my hands steady. Twenty-two years of waiting
this exact morning, and I still felt like I was about to drop a bottle of milk.
I deployed it with both hands.
***
The girls walked the college stage one after the other.
First they called Ava.
He started crying before his name had finished echoing through the speakers. I saw her wipe her face on the sleeve of that black dress and laugh at herself halfway across the stage.
Then Claire. My half, the wild.
He saw me in the crowd and waved with both hands, as he used to greet from the school bus window when he was eight. I stepped back with enthusiasm.
First they called Ava.
Finally, June arrived.
She didn’t smile, but walked through that scenario the same way she had walked through her entire life, as if she were carrying something heavier than the rest of us could see. Something heavier than a diploma.
I picked up the camera. The shutter clicked. That was supposed to be the end.
Then the dean took a step back towards the microphone and hit him twice.
“We have one more presentation before we close.”
I lowered the camera.
That was supposed to be the end.
Then my girls, or rather young women, walked back to the stage together, hand in hand, the way they used to cross the parking lots when they were five.
Something squeezed into my chest, but I couldn’t tell why.
June took the microphone.
“Our father couldn’t be here today,” he said.
My stomach fell down the floor of that auditorium.
Daniel.
Something squeezed into my chest, but I couldn’t tell why.
They were going to talk about Daniel.
Twenty-two years of birthday cards he never sent, phone calls he never made, and now, the only day he had really introduced me to,
they were going to honor the man who didn’t.
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I felt the pain rising in my throat as if I had been waiting. I told myself to stay still, smiled and had this if they needed it.
Ava got into the sleeve of her robe and pulled out a piece of folded paper. Claire squeezed her hand over her mouth, and I saw her shoulders tremble.
