The Year That Follows (17 page)

“The tall woman there?” Phyllis asks.

“That’s her.”

“The little boy is adorable.”

It’s startling to watch Connor walk toward the terminal. He looks exactly as Kyle did at that age, the fair hair, the smile, the bounce in his gait. Sam wonders if Cat sees this, how her son looks just like her brother.

When Connor enters the terminal he immediately sees Sam and takes off running till he jumps into Sam’s arms. Sam feels himself driven backward, reeling both from the welcome—he worried that Connor wouldn’t recognize him, or even remember him—and the weight of the boy. Phyllis is behind him, holding him up.

“Hi, Grampa,” Connor says.

“Hello, there. Look at how big you’ve grown.”

“I’m eight now.”

“That’s quite an age.”

“Who’s that?” the boy asks.

“That’s Phyllis. She’s a friend of mine.”

“Hi,” Connor says. He extends his hand, and Phyllis shakes it.

“You’re raising him well,” Sam tells Cat. Sam gets a close look at his daughter. She is, he knows, in her mid-forties, but to him she looks remarkably young. Still, the time has made certain things plain: Tarver’s cheekbones, for instance, his dark eyes. Like a jealous lover, Sam is always looking for these signs, for the influence of the other.

“Learned from you. Hi, Daddy.”

She hugs him. With his arms around her, he doesn’t want to let her go. Not quite yet. “Thank you,” he whispers in her ear. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot to me.”

“It means a lot to me, too. Now, are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

S
o, her father has a woman, an attractive one at that. He looks frail, more stooped than the last time she saw him, which was early in the year,
when he stopped in Detroit on his way back from New York. They went to the DIA to look at the Rivera murals, that brilliant depiction of the intricate play of man and machine. “I miss this,” he said. “I miss being part of it. Detroit was something once.” Remembering that day now she is also reminded of Tommy, of how he has the same wistfulness for what Detroit has been.

She needs to tell her father about Ian. Or maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe she should keep it a secret, the way he has kept secrets. There would be an odd justice to that, but she doubts she can do it. It would burden her more than him, and she wants to let it go. Let it all go. Withholding is exhausting; it takes the energy of youth.

She decides it is perhaps better to wait till after the ceremony. She’ll tell him then. Give him a few more days to come clean, and then, one way or the other, she’ll leave the old man on a hopeful note. She’s ready to move on.

S
he can hear Connor talking to his grandfather in the kitchen, but she can’t make out the words. Every once in a while there’s a pause, probably when her father is answering. Funny, she thinks, how boys are drawn to men, even men they barely know. She dials Tommy and gets him on his cell. “Hello, beautiful,” he answers. “How come you’re single?” she asks. The idea just occurred to her. How could a gorgeous, forty-four-year-old doctor not have women lined up at his door? “I’m not,” he answers.

“Not what?”

“Not single.”

Panic. It hits her so quickly she runs from the suitcase she’d been unpacking and toward the bathroom, hand over her mouth.

“I have you,” she hears him say.

She sees herself in the mirror, a wreck, but relieved.

“That’s the right thing to say,” she says.

“It is true?” he asks.

“You tell me.”

“I would like to have you,” he says. “Right now, in fact.”

“I’m forty-four years old.”

“I know how old you are, Cat. You’re my age. It’s easy to remember.”

“I have an eight-year-old son, and I’m about to adopt a toddler. I don’t make much money. You could have any woman you want. Some young thing. What do you want with me?”

A long silence.

“I’ve had young things,” he says. “It was fun for a while, and then it got boring. Girls who couldn’t remember Watergate, or even the Iran hostages. I want someone I can talk to. You.”

“You sure?” she asks. She can’t help herself. Why is it so difficult simply to accept good fortune?

“I’m sure I want to see you again, give it a go, see what happens.”

“Okay.”
Give it a go?
It’s the perfect noncommittal line, but still something.

“How’s your dad?” he asks.

“Old.”

“Tell him I say hi. See if he remembers me.”

“He will.”

“You told him about the boy?”

“Not yet.”

“It’s incredible. Incredible that he exists, and that you found him. You’re gonna make your dad very happy.”

“Well, he could use it, I think.”

“Hey,” Tommy says. “Who couldn’t?”

T
hey go out for dinner, then return to Sam’s apartment. In the living room she watches as her father shows a
40
mm shell casing to Connor. For the last fifty-odd years that shell has served as a token ashtray; she doesn’t remember her father ever letting anyone smoke in the house. Over time the shell filled with matchbooks from various restaurants, some even from hotels in the far reaches of the automobile universe: Frankfurt, Seoul, Osaka. That shell is a totem from her girlhood; it was a symbol of the wider world. She makes a mental note to save it for Connor.

She goes to the kitchen to make coffee, which she knows she shouldn’t drink, but will anyway. Her father is a coffee man, the type who drinks it before bed. Better she drink coffee than more alcohol; she wants to stick to her regimen. This last year of discipline has, she thinks, shown results.

“Let me help you,” says Phyllis.

Cat turns slightly and sees a wrinkled, manicured hand on the Formica counter. She looks into Phyllis’s eyes, blue and clear.

“I think I’ve got it,” Cat says.

“It’s good that you came. Your father really wanted it.”

Cat silently counts out the spoonfuls of coffee as she dumps them in the filter. She says, “I should visit more. I know. But it’s never really easy.”

“But important.”

“How did you meet him?” Cat asks. She moves to the sink for water, then looks back to see Phyllis smile, and in that smile Cat knows that this woman loves her father. It’s Cat’s little test. Ask a woman how she met her man, and if she lights up, then you know it’s not just an arrangement.

“He tried to help me load groceries into my car, at Vons. He’s a gentleman. Stubborn at times, but always a gentleman.”

“And he asked you out?”

“He did,” she says.

It’s odd for Cat to talk to this woman. She’s known that her father had girlfriends, but she has never met one. “I thought I was probably through with men,” Phyllis says, “and then one appeared.”

Cat hears the coffeemaker start to hiss and cough. Through with men? She can’t imagine what that really means.

“Your little boy is very cute,” Phyllis says. “I hope you’re cherishing these years.”

“Do you have children?”

“Two sons, middle-aged men now.”

“Do they visit?”

“Not enough.”

Cat reaches for the coffee cups. She asks Phyllis if she’d like some.

“Oh God, no. I’ll be up all night.”

“My dad drinks it all the time.”

“He’s up all night, anyway.”

Cat smiles. So, they spend the night together.

“Listen,” Phyllis says. “Anything you need to say to your father, say it this trip.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“He’s an old man,” Phyllis says. “He won’t last forever.”

H
e lies awake, wishing Phyllis were beside him, just in case. In case something happens. It’s funny the control children have over you, even long after they are children. Though Cat is a grown woman, a mother, he can’t bring himself to go to Phyllis’s and return in the morning. He just can’t.

Perhaps a little scotch would help him settle down, so he rises, puts on his blue robe, and walks out to the living room to find Cat sitting in his reading chair. “It’s almost three in the morning,” he says.

“I’m often up at this time, if you adjust for the time zones,” she says.

“Coffee?”

“Sounds great. Might as well keep going. I’ll make it.”

He follows her into the kitchen. She’s a tall, trim woman—too tall, really, to be his. He wonders if she suspects this, if he’ll ever find a way to tell her the truth.

She’s working the coffeemaker when she speaks to him, facing away so that he can just barely hear. “Look, there’s something important I need to tell you.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I was going to wait till I had everything worked out, but maybe you should know now.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about Kyle. It turns out …” She turns to face him. “He had a son.”

Sam sits at the kitchen table. He knows he should be shocked, but he isn’t. It makes sense; there’s a justice to it. If you want something badly enough, you just might get it. Not often, but sometimes.

S
he watches his chest, the jerky breathing, as if he can’t even seem to get enough air. She meant to wait, but couldn’t. Secrets are difficult for her. She tells him the full story, of her dinner with Kyle and
her search, and how she finally found the boy, which seemed like a long shot until it happened, when it seemed inevitable. Like so much in life, good and bad.

It’s still dark outside, not yet four, the day’s darkest and quietest hour. She tells him that she believes she will get the child, that she will raise him as her own. All she needs is money, and he promises her that.

He is moved, and she can guess the reason. The boy is his blood; some part of Kyle is still alive. For Cat, this child is a connection to her lost brother, someone she must protect. She wonders how she will tell Ian that she did not really carry him in her womb, that the woman who did is dead, that his father is dead, that he will never know his true parents. It is a delicate thing, and thankfully years off.

They go back to the living room while the coffee brews. Her father sits in his reading chair, and so Cat takes a place on the couch, from where she can make out the lights on the oil rigs, a twinkling on the water.

“He had a son,” her father says.

“Yes.”

“But he didn’t know.”

“He wasn’t sure.”

“He would have been a good father,” her father says.

“He was good at everything.”

“I was proud of him, but I never really told him,” he says. Then he adds, “When can I meet the little boy?”

“When I get him, I guess. His grandparents, they want assurances.”

“Such as?”

“That he’ll be well looked after, and that I’ll take him to New York to visit.”

“Of course you will.”

“They’re concerned about his religious training.”

“What are they?”

“Catholic,” she says.

“Oy. You want me to talk to them?”

“No. I want you to tell me about Phyllis.”

“What’s to know?”

“Well, for starters, Dad, are you in love with her?”

He hesitates.

“You can tell me,” she says. “Whatever the answer, you can tell me. All these years I’ve never met one of your girlfriends. Not one. Why not? Why did you keep them hidden?”

“It was easier, I thought.”

“Keeping secrets?”

“Sometimes,” he says. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” Here, she wants to say, here’s your opening. Tell me. Tell me where I came from.

“The truth is, it’s not always so easy.”

Just tell me
.

“You see,” he says, “your instinct with children is to protect them. And so I thought I was protecting you, and your brother, protecting the idea of parents, and the memory of your mother.”

He can’t do it. She can see it. He just can’t.

“I understood about you and Mom,” she says.

“What did you understand?”

“I understood that you weren’t in love. Later, I understood what that meant, being trapped. Because of your children. How you always feel guilty.”

He sighs. “That’s about right.”

“I’ve met someone,” she tells him. “So you know.”

“Who?”

“Remember Tommy Swenson?”

“The football player?”

“Now he’s a doctor.”

“Well, good for him. Is he the someone?”

“Yes. We met at the zoo. He has a little boy a little older than Connor.”

“My advice, honey, is don’t get caught up in the practical details.”

“What do you mean?”

“He has a son, he has a hamster, it’s not what counts. It’s how you feel about him. And he about you.”

“Which should be?”

“Passionate.”

“Passionate,” she repeats.

“Like you can’t live without him. Also, you should like him, who he is, right now. Because he’ll never be anyone else. Take your mother and me, for example. There were some convenient things, but in the end she liked what I was—war vet, gainfully employed—and not who I was.”

“And you?” Cat asks.

“I gave up. Forgive me.”

“I have.”

“Really?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, realizing that, finally, she can. He is who he is. He’ll never be, as he says, anyone else.

“I often felt I wasn’t up to snuff. Especially after your mother asked me to leave the house. Then she died. I didn’t think a father could be as close to a child as a mother, and you lost your mother, and so I could never quite measure up.”

He is breathing heavily now, almost panting, and it takes him time to speak.

“It’s what I felt,” he says. “I wish I’d been more forceful about your ex-husband.”

“You made your feelings plain.” She remembers when she introduced him to Michael, how he fumed. After a time, he wouldn’t even look at Michael and did his best not to speak to Michael directly. When Cat caught her father’s eye, she could feel his disgust. He never said much, but she knew how he felt, and this made her turn away. That he was right didn’t matter. She wanted the baby and was willing not to be too picky about the father. Sam knew better.

“You don’t blame me, do you? Anymore?” he asks.

“You were right,” she says.

“Sometimes that’s what’s hardest to forgive.”