[Fiction] Leonard’s Eighth Birthday

By Lisa Lahey

Naomi wore her prettiest dress and flowers in her coiffed, red hair. She arranged the table with a plastic, blue tablecloth that fluttered in the slight breeze. Leonard loved soccer and had played it since he was five. Naomi was proud of his goalie skills. The goalie position was a difficult one, the hardest, in fact, on the team. The cake bore a plastic goal net and a little goalie standing in front of it. The icing was green, like a soccer field. “Happy 8^th Birthday, My Little Goalie!” was printed across the top of the cake in white icing. Printed, not written.  Leonard couldn’t write or read cursive yet.

Blue, white, and black helium balloons decorated the kitchen. Blue streamers were fastened from wall to wall and a silver banner read “Happy 8^th Birthday, Leonard!” Three places were set at the table and at each was a paper plate and a party hat. Leonard’s, of course, was a crown. He was, after all, King for a Day.

Jamaal, Leonard’s father, sat at his place beside Leonard. Naomi sat across from Jamaal, flanking her son. Smiling broadly, Naomi lit the large number “8” candle on the cake and placed her birthday hat on her head.

“Jamaal, do you mind putting on your party hat?” She asked politely. “We must sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Leonard now.”

Jamaal, as usual, was sulking. He hated celebrating his son’s birthdays.

“Is this necessary, Naomi? I come home and find you setting the table and the room looking like a bloody circus. Jesus.”

“Please put your hat on. Kids like birthday hats!”

Jamaal placed the little hat on his head and snapped the elastic hard beneath his chin as he glowered at his wife.

“It’s fucking ridiculous.”

“Watch your language in front of Leonard, Jamaal,” Naomi chided. “He’s only eight.”

She burst into a loud, happy rendition of “Happy Birthday to You,” while Jamaal stared at her without joining in.

Naomi turned to Leonard’s empty chair. “You’ll never guess what we got you this year!”

Jamaal rolled his eyes. “Do you have to do this? Does it really matter?”

“It matters to Leonard.”

“It doesn’t matter to Leonard!” Jamaal snapped. “It matters to you and you’re a lunatic.”

Naomi threw her head back and barked out a laugh. “Lunatic! Oh, that’s funny. Did you hear that, Leonard? Did you hear your father? I’m a goddamned lunatic!”

“There’s no Leonard!” Jamaal scoffed. “When will you let this go, Naomi?”

“It wasn’t my idea, Jamaal. I wanted the baby. You insisted I kill him.”

“No one killed anybody.”

“Abortion is murder, Jamaal. You know how I feel about that. You know how God feels, too. He put Leonard in my tummy, and He didn’t want me to kill him.”

“Naomi, you’re a grownup! God had nothing to do with it, Naomi. We had sex. Remember that thing called biology?” Jamaal snapped.

“You forced me into it, Jamaal. I begged you to change your mind.”

“You’re the one who had the abortion, Naomi, not me.”

“You said you’d divorce me if I had the baby, Jamaal. I can’t be alone. I’m afraid,” Naomi’s voice sounded like a small child’s. “I don’t like being alone.”

She managed not to suck her thumb. Jamaal hated that.

“Do I really have to remind you that you went off the pill without telling me? Why did you marry me if you wanted a kid so much?”

“Don’t listen to him, Leonard. You know your father loves you.” Naomi smiled and turned to Leonard’s empty seat. “Jamaal, he looks just like you.”

Jamaal stood and grabbed the birthday cake. He threw it across the room against the wall. It slid down the wall and onto the floor where it sat in a mushy lump. The goalie net and the little goalie smashed into pieces. Naomi burst into tears.

“Fuck your birthday party, Leonard!’ Jamaal yelled at the empty chair. “You ruined our lives.”

In between sobs, Naomi scolded, “You shouldn’t take it out on the boy, Jamaal.”

“Boy? How do you know it was a boy? It could have been a girl, Naomi!” Jamaal snapped.

The impact of his words hit him, and he fell silent. “I want a divorce, Naomi.”

“You say that every year on Leonard’s birthday, Jamaal. You always ruin his parties and I work so hard to make them wonderful.” Tears fell from Naomi’s face onto the table.

Her birthday hat slipped sideways but remained perched on her head, like a silly, spotted beret.

Jamaal sat down and placed his head in his hands. “It’s been eight years, and you still won’t let this go. You need help, Naomi.”

“You need to be nicer to Leonard.” Naomi wiped her eyes with Leonard’s blue napkin and straightened her birthday hat.

Jamaal shook his head. “I hate this marriage. I hate Leonard.”

Naomi reached for Jamaal’s hand and held it. “It’s only one day. It’ll be a whole year until Leonard has another birthday.”

Jamaal lifted pleading eyes to his wife. “Please Naomi. Can’t we go back to your doctor? I’ll go to the sessions with you this time, I promise.”

“Jamaal, you know I hate doctors,” Naomi said. “Doctors kill people.”

Jamaal looked at his wife for a full minute and neither of them spoke. He saw years of misery in her face, the defeated look in her slumped shoulders and the premature streaks of gray in her hair.

She was so fragile. Last time he’d try to leave her, she’d slit her wrist with a razor blade. With a heavy heart, he made the same choice he made every year during Leonard’s birthday party. He reached for Leonard’s present and shook it, forcing a smile.

“I wonder what’s in here, little man?”

Naomi beamed at him. “Open it for him, will you Jamaal?”

Lisa Lahey's short stories and poetry have been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Spaceports and Spidersilk, Five on the Fifth, Spadina Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Ariel Chart Review, Altered Reality, Suddenly, And Without Warning, Why Vandalism, Truth, Beauty and Imagination, and Creepy Podcast. She will soon be published in Epater Magazine, The Pink Hydra, Roi Fointenant, Small City World, VerbalArt Journal, Adelaide Review, Siren Call Publications, Bourbon and Blood Magazine, Bindweed Anthology, Roi Foinenant, and Propagate Fruits from the Garden.