How I Forgave
"The people who did you wrong or who didn't quite know how to show up, you forgive them. And forgiving them allows you to forgive yourself, too."
–Jane Fonda
My early experiences with dating sober had been disastrous. I was gun shy and skittish and had left the table during several dates, never to return. I developed a massive crush on a brilliant man who had been sober for years while I had just finished my ninety days. Although he suggested we remain friends, I invited him to dinner, determined to dance the Dance of the Seven Veils and finally have sober sex. Halfway through this plan, before the chocolate mousse, I burst into tears.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't want to have sex anymore."
He looked hurt.
"No, no, I want to. I put it in my Filofax. "
I produced my 1980’s day planner and showed him I'd written: "Sleep with Bill" in bright pink. “I’ve never had sober sex," I said.
"Let's not then," he said.
Another disaster occurred with a handsome Broadway theater crew guy who invited me to his place in Jersey City. This seemed promising, but I drank eight cups of his strong coffee and experienced a caffeine overdose that made me flee from his condo, calling my sponsor because I was too wired to remember how to get back to Manhattan.
I no longer knew how to hunt down men as I had in my drinking days. My self-confidence and sense of humor disappeared, and in place of lively chat, I seemed to say very little or burden my dates with hair-raising accounts of past bad behavior. Men had always triggered an urge to drink, probably because I was not Salome but a hurt and frightened girl from New Jersey. As the months passed, I slowly remembered how to flirt: smiling, flinging my hair around, and acting fascinated by whatever the other person said.
Charles M. Young was obsessed with punk and the band Butthole Surfers, but he didn't drink much, and he was kind. We went out on several dates before the MTV Ball. My sister Brigid called on the day of our first official date, a week before the event. We still rarely spoke. She made it clear she didn't like me, and even though I knew I owed her an amends for my bad behavior, she was so cold I was afraid to ask her if we could meet. "Guess what Daddy did." Was the first thing she said. She didn't even say hello. "What?" I replied.
My father had recently returned from Europe, where he had been at a Joyce seminar with the literary critic Richard Ellman. Returning home he had brought me a fetching hat as a present. It was fashionable but also functional and slightly silly. I felt seen. “I was thinking about you and bought you a hat." He had said.
Daddy had only given me books in the past except for one Christmas, the Christmas we'd lived in London, when he gave me a beautiful doll named Sasha, designed by a famous Swedish doll maker. She was the antithesis of the forbidden Barbie, sturdy and realistic but very pretty. He had called it the "last doll," but it was also the first since I'd always preferred stuffed animals. The gift of the hat was possibly the most intimate moment we'd ever had. I never believed he thought about me except when I was with him. I believed he thought about my mother, books, Catherine, and poor Native American children forced into Catholic orphanages, but not me.
My sister was making me guess what my father had done. "You'll never guess." It sounded like she had been crying, but also like she felt good about having a secret. "I can't tell you because you're the baby, and it's really bad. I think he might shoot himself in the head."
This made no sense. We didn't have any guns. I called my mother.
"Did she tell you?" My mother sounded weird.
"No. What happened?"
"Let her tell you." My mother hung up.
The phone rang. I didn't want to know.
"Daddy had an affair. There's a baby."
"A baby?"
"A girl. Her birthday's May 16th."
My birthday was May 15th, Brigid's May 18th, and Daddy's May 21st. Now there was an extra child also born in May.
I was late for my date. We were going to a comedy in a theater near NYU. Despite the witty banter, I cried throughout the performance. Charles was so uncomfortable he ignored me. The play was about rich people and infidelity. The woman on my left handed me a tissue.
"What's wrong?" Charles looked peeved. I suspected emotional women were not his thing.
"Nothing. I'm sorry. My father had an affair with a friend of my parents, and there's a baby."
"Really? Do you know her? A close friend?"
I had forgotten he was a journalist. If nothing else, this was a story, a sordid, stupid story containing all the elements of tragedy combined with sex. I shook my head. I couldn't speak. "I need to go home. My mother sounded like she was going insane."
As we parted, I walked towards the corner and hailed a cab. I held the cloche my father had brought home from Europe in my other hand, and I let it fall. Someone in the scrum around me stepped on it, and it was gone. He didn't think about me, I thought. He is a liar. I'd guessed my father was having an affair but buried the idea deep in my subconscious. The previous summer, after a full year of discussing in therapy how much I hoped for a closer relationship with him, I took a risk, which resulted in rejection and, in retrospect, my understanding he was cheating on my mom. I went to Truro, to the summer cottage on Cape Cod where I had spent childhood vacations.
The day after I arrived, I had an unusually close conversation with my mother, who asked how therapy was going. This was not my mother's normal behavior. Denial was how we managed to avoid things that revealed uncomfortable truths.
"Good, I mean, it's hard and sad." I told her.
"Why would it be sad? You had a happy childhood."
I poured more coffee and refused to bite.
"Didn't you?"
"No, mom. But it doesn't matter. Anyway, she thinks I should talk to Daddy more. Ask him to do things."
"What sort of things."
"Like walks, Maybe go for walks."
At that moment, as if on cue, my father came through the back door and said he would get the mail, about a half-mile walk into town.
"I'll come," I said, starting to get up.
"No," my father said.
"Julian!" My mother looked at me. "Molly wants to take a walk with you."
"No, I don't really. It's fine. Never mind." My feelings were hurt, but what else was new?
"I need to think," my father looked angry and sad.
"Julian," my mom looked pained. "Her therapist…"
"Mom!" I walked towards my room. "I don't want to go."
After he left, I put on my bathing suit and decided to walk to Ballston Beach.
"He doesn't mean it," my mom said, glancing from the NYT puzzle.
"I don't care."
I cared.
When I saw them, I had almost reached the final curve before Truro Center. There was nowhere to hide, so I just kept walking. He was bent over a patch of raspberries; she was holding his hat, and he was putting berries in it. There was nowhere to hide. He looked up and saw me, and his face went dark. "Molser."
photo by Matt Hanns Schroeter
I recognized her. She was the younger friend of our Dutch friends, the ones my ex-husband had once worked with. I didn't dislike her but sometimes wondered why she was always around. Sometimes, it felt like she was acting like another daughter, like Catherine. My father came towards me, holding the hat full of berries.
"These are for you," he said.
"No. They aren't for me."
I passed them and continued to the beach.
And now, with the birth of this girl a little over a year after my sister's death, the truth had been revealed. "Did you know?" My mother sounded frantic.
"Of course not. I would have told you if I knew." This was a lie.
"All she wanted was a baby."
”And he gave it to her,” I thought.
In therapy, I wept over my father's treachery. "What are you angry about?" We had established I cried when I was angry. "If your mother wants you to come home, you are forbidden to go." She had only said the word “forbid” two other times; one was about drinking, and one was the idea of seeing my ex.
"I have to go. He's having a breakdown. She wants me to commit him."
"Yes," Hazel leaned forward, her hands on her knees. "You can't commit your father. They will crush you."
I didn't go home. Brigid went and was crushed. After a few weeks, I finally went and was greeted by my father in what was called, my mother said, an agitated depression. He kept begging my forgiveness. For what? He did his best, and when he didn't, so what? I was sober and alive, and he had helped me. He told me love didn't exist, but he was lying. He loved me and Brigid and Catherine and my mother. He loved his grandchildren and his mother. He loved Dickens, James Joyce, Nabokov, Elizabeth Bowen, Maria Edgeworth, Toni Morrison, strawberry shortcake, and swimming. He had loved lots of things and thought other things were stupid and other things had hurt him. I felt a sea change from the years of longing and anger. I loved him. I forgave him, and I understood that my sister's death had broken his heart.
It took ages for Henry's father to allow me to have Henry stay on his own for a weekend in New York with his Aunt Molly. He was hyper-vigilant, keeping Henry as close to himself as possible. And who could blame him? My parents attended different events at Henry's school and managed to have him overnight as much as possible. I asked a male friend with connections to the Yankees to get us tickets. ”Is it okay if we're alone after the game?" I asked him, not wanting to seem ungrateful. He understood.
Henry was six now and I loved him so much it was hard not to act mushy and stupid around him. I understood the dignity of children, so we talked about first grade and his teacher and what television shows he liked. We went to see a child's movie called Willow, and halfway through, he held my hand.
When I tucked him into bed that night, I kissed him and sat on the edge of his bed.
"Did you know my mother?" he asked me.
"Yes, Henry, she was my oldest sister."
"She died when I was three."
"Yes. Henry, she would never have left you for a second if she could have stayed. When you were born, she never put you down."
"Never?"
"Well, maybe to pee, but then your daddy held you. She loved you so much, Henry."
I touched the side of his cheek. His skin had the same lovely olive tint as his mom's. His eyes were Catherine's. "Did you have a good day?"
"The best." He snuggled down in the quilt and smiled.
I sat and watched as his eyes drooped and finally closed. His breath came even and slow. When I was little, I imagined myself as Cleopatra, a movie star writing a bestselling book. But this boy, safe and asleep in my bed, this part of my lost Catherine, was enough. More than enough.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach