The Year That Follows

by Scott Lasser

  Later, much later, after a day of calling prospects who don’t want to borrow, or those who do but can’t qualify, after searching again for Siobhan and then using the Internet to look for an old boyfriend, after six calls and messages left to Michael to make sure he will pick up Connor from day camp—as Michael requested, though he has done so in the past and then forgotten to show up—Sherri appears at the opening of Cat’s cubicle.

  “Hey, Cat,” she says. “Snap out of it.” Sherri is a top producer, does a couple of loans a week, a young and single woman who has nevertheless befriended Cat, either unable to see Cat’s failings or wanting to feel good about herself because of them. She’s standing now by Cat’s desk in navy slacks and a laundered white blouse that looks too crisp for so late in the afternoon. Cat tries to remember if she was wearing the same blouse this morning. “You want to get a drink after work?” Sherri asks. “Like now?”

  “Gonna work out.”

  “I’m talking a drink here. I’ll buy.”

  “You closed the whale,” Cat says.

  Sherri smiles, bouncing a little on her toes. Cat wonders who came up with the idea that Asians are reserved. Sherri has been working on a loan so large that Cat can only guess at its size: five million. She’s heard conjecture in the office as high as twenty, but she doubts this. What property in suburban Detroit would require so much money? “You’re buying dinner,” Cat says.

  “I knew you’d come around.”

  “After I work out.”

  Cat works out every day now, either after work at her club when Michael has Connor, or in the early mornings, cell phone in her pocket as she runs laps around her apartment building, running up and sticking her head in the apartment every ten minutes to make sure the boy is still sleeping. Darkness, sleet, rain, the frigid predawn winter air of Michigan—nothing stops her.

  She’s lost nine pounds since last September, and she likes how she feels, more like the girl she was, but this is just a fringe benefit of the regimen. What really matters is the discipline, the every-day-without-fail nature of the effort. For the first time since college, she feels she might get control of her life.

  She finds a parking space behind the restaurant, stands and stretches her arms above her head. It’s a warm and humid night, but cooling, a hint of autumn in the air as the light fades. Here, in this parking lot, in one of Detroit’s more prosperous suburbs, there are Mercedes and Volvos, BMWs and Acuras sprinkled among the Lincolns and Fords, Cadillacs and Chrysler 300s. How different from what Cat knew growing up, when it was almost a crime, certainly an act of apostasy, to drive a foreign nameplate. Her father, who worked for Ford, considered even a Chevrolet a foreign car. Cat spots Sherri’s sedan, a Lexus of deep gold, knows it by its vanity plate: RE-FI.

  Cat loves going to restaurants after exercising, her hair still damp underneath, the feeling of fatigue in her legs, yet with the muscles somehow refreshed. The bar is dark, its walls English racing green, dotted by small prints of successful racehorses, long-dead animals that won, say, the Irish Sweepstakes of 1913. There is the smell of meat and the tinkling din of a place where drinkers go. It is a bar for men, and for women like Sherri, who want to be successful in business.

  Sherri sits at the end of the bar, beneath a flat-screen TV playing the Tiger game, chatting up two guys. Cat thinks they were both once handsome, especially the one to the left, with his wide, symmetrical face and high cheekbones, but years of drinking and smoking—that’s what he’s doing now—have softened him around the edges. Men are supposed to age better than women, but Cat supposes this depends on the man. They are silly creatures, men, in their own ways as driven by vanity as women, but with that odd flavor of male ego. Still, they can be appealing. Perhaps it is just their size. Michael is a big man. Even now, when she sees him, she sometimes forgets what she knows and for an instant finds herself attracted.

  Sherri sees Cat, and motions her over. Cat wishes the men weren’t there, but she catches herself. She thinks of her friend Tonya’s rule: always make an effort. Always. Smile, stand up straight, shoulders back like a cadet, wear makeup, put your best foot forward. You never know, Tonya says. Cat thinks you often do know—and Tonya is no paragon of relationship health—but sometimes Cat suspects Tonya is right. She is a bit like the volleyball coach Cat had in junior high. Mr. Benson. A great coach, not that he could play the game himself.

  Cat draws up the corners of her mouth into what she hopes is an impish smile, squeezes together her shoulder blades, and approaches the bar, eyes on Sherri. Everything about Sherri, her posture, the thin arm on the bar, suggests she is totally at home. Like Cat, she grew up a couple of miles from here, but her father is Japanese, retired now from one of the car companies.

  Toyota, Cat thinks. Sherri’s mother is American. The story, according to Sherri, is that the father wanted to retire back in Japan, and so the mother sent him off; she now lives in Miami. Cat can feel the eyes of the men on her, and she is careful not to look at them, worried it might unnerve her.

  “Catwoman!” Sherri shouts. No one calls her this. “You all buffed and puffed?”

  “Can’t you tell?” Cat says.

  Sherri introduces the men, Bruce and David. They are older than Cat thought, perhaps as old as Cat. David is the handsome one. Up close Cat can see that his hair, thick and dark, is flecked with gray. Bruce, who is balding, has cut it very short. Cat is impressed that Sherri knows their names, but then, Sherri knows everyone’s name. Never forgets one, and so her customers keep coming back. Cat wonders, Is it really that simple? Do we just want to be remembered?

  Fifteen minutes later they are at the table, having left the men at the bar, which Sherri handled so deftly that Cat wonders if they’ve realized yet that Sherri isn’t coming back. Sherri collapses into her chair, makes a show of putting her napkin on her lap, and looks at Cat. “Ah, Cat. Life’s good, eh?”

  “Sure,” Cat says, hearing in Sherri’s voice that life perhaps is not so good. This is the night of Sherri’s biggest deal, and only Cat is at the table. Of course, if the roles were reversed, it would still be a small crowd. Tonya. Maybe her friend Elise, whom she hasn’t seen in close to a year. Maybe Sherri. Maybe Cat wouldn’t even bother. She’d just go home, wish she could call her brother. God, she thinks, I need a different career.

  “You know, Cat, you should be doing deals like this.”

  “I should.”

  “The thing is,” Sherri says, “now what do I do?”

  “How ’bout another one?”

  “What for?”

  “The money?”

  “It’s not about the money,” Sherri says.

  “What is it about?”

  “I have no idea.”

  They order salmon, Sherri a bottle of white wine, an expensive one, Cat guesses, judging from the way the waiter nervously presents it. Cat decides that tonight she will allow herself a second drink, in Sherri’s honor. She remembers coming here with her father and Kyle the year her mother died, their old fallback. This was how the old man adapted, buying dinner in restaurants, hiring a woman, Carmen, to do the laundry and clean the house. He got Cat up in the morning—never an easy thing then—and made sure she was out the door with Kyle on time. It was the year Cat learned to cook, write a check, eat peas off a fork, all of it learned from her father. It took years, she realized, to understand what you got from your parents, and what you didn’t.

  “Do you know,” Cat asks, “was your father in the war?”

  “What war?”

  “World War Two.”

  “He was too young, I think,” Sherri says. “I had an uncle, my father’s brother, who died in it, I guess. Fighting on the wrong side, you know.”

  “My father wants me to go visit him,” Cat says. She still hasn’t told him about Kyle’s son—if there even is one. She hasn’t told anyone.

  “So go,” Sherri says.

  Later, the waitress arrives with the salmon plates, sets them down, then pulls the wine from the i
ce bucket and adds it to both glasses. Cat takes in the smell of the fish, fragrant with lemon. Sherri opens her arms to acknowledge the spread, and this prompts Cat to raise her glass in a toast. “I still can’t believe you landed the whale. Here’s to you.”

  They drink. “How’s Connor?” Sherri asks. It’s the foolproof question. No mother ever minds talking about her child.

  “Good. You ever going to have one?”

  “I need a man for that, right?”

  “It’s one school of thought.”

  “I want one, but not right now,” Sherri says. “I mean, I’m supposed to want one, right?”

  Cat almost tells her about Siobhan and the boy, but she pulls back.

  “What is it?” Sherri asks.

  “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this business. I’m floundering. I should have gone to law school.”

  “Law school? You gotta be kidding me.”

  “No, I loved those constitutional law classes I took as an undergrad.”

  “So, why didn’t you go?”

  “Young and lazy and stupid. Then, older, wiser, and pregnant. And so now I’m in mortgages.”

  “It’s just sales.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sales,” Sherri says. “It’s seduction, you know. You gotta show desire and indifference at the same time. You want it, but you don’t need it. Stick with me. I could teach you to sell.”

  “I might be a special case.”

  “Ah, Catwoman, I’m sure you are.”

  III

  Sam walks, smelling the ocean, hearing its rhythm, the bay creamy white, covered in mist. He walks every day without fail. Never much of an athlete, he nevertheless cannot live without exercise. Mind and body, that’s the idea. He’s eighty. I have to keep moving, he thinks, or I’ll be dead.

  He makes a cup of instant coffee after the walk. He could do better, but he needs only one cup. He dresses and heads into town for a doctor appointment. He’s been short of breath, and every once in a while he feels a little chest pain. It could be heartburn, not that he ever eats that much. Today they will fill him full of dye, and take a look. It’s amazing, really, what they can do, though he wonders if it’s all for the good. When he was young, old people got sick and died, at home, with their families. They didn’t fear being alone, or the indignity of a hospital.

  The cardiologist’s name is Cunningham. He’s a nice enough man, though perhaps a little too smiley for Sam’s taste. Sam admits to a prejudice against overly cheerful people; he assumes they are idiots. He especially prefers dour professionals, but they are rare in California, and sometimes Sam wonders how this state handles all the feigned happiness. The tests take the better part of the morning, and then the nurse comes in and tells Sam to dress. Dr. Cunningham wants to see him in his office. This is a first. Usually there’s a chat while Sam sits shirtless on the examining room table. He didn’t know Cunningham had an office.

  It’s a bright room, with bookshelves painted white and lined with medical tomes. Cunningham is a product of the California public university system—Irvine undergrad, Davis Medical School—but he comes well recommended and Sam is not inclined to travel to Minnesota or Cleveland just for reputation. Sam sits and soon Cunningham appears, a dark-haired man with crow’s-feet, although otherwise he looks as young as all the lawyers and policemen and rabbis and business-suited lunch-goers whom Sam notices when he ventures from his apartment. Judging from the Roman numeral date on Cunningham’s degree from Irvine, Sam figures he’s about forty.

  “How you feeling, Sam?”

  “Good.”

  “But short of breath?”

  “Doctor, at my age I’m thankful for any breath at all.”

  “There are four arteries that carry blood to the heart. Two of yours are, for all practical purposes, clogged. The other two are mostly so. Sam, you need a bypass. Right away.”

  “A bypass. Another one?” He’s had one, way back, at Henry Ford Hospital. Ford. The name meant something once.

  “Today. Tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I’ve put in calls. Did you eat breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “Then we could do it today.”

  “Cut my chest open?” says Sam.

  “That’s how we get in there. It’s a serious operation, yes, but also quite common. You’re in fine health otherwise.”

  “I’m old. Can’t you do something else? Put in one of those things?”

  “A stent? No, not for you. Besides, you’ve got valve issues, too. You need the operation.”

  “I’m too old.”

  “Your age is not the risk that your arteries are. This surgery is indicated in patients your age with your health characteristics. I can guarantee you that if we do nothing, then you will die of some event—a heart attack, most likely—and that it won’t be that long from now.”

  Well, Sam thinks, there it is. Damned either way. He says, “I won’t survive surgery.”

  “You won’t survive if you don’t have it. This is truly a case of now or never.”

  “Never, then.”

  “Sam, you will die.”

  “You, too,” Sam says, feeling comfort in the words. He wants to live, and so sets himself against the operation, against the heart doctor. This takes will; it is a great temptation to give your life to a doctor. He can reconsider once Cat and Connor are gone. Missing their visit is impossible.

  “Yes, yes, all of us eventually,” Cunningham is saying. “My job is to push out that date. I can’t just let you walk out of my office, drive a car. Your condition is serious.”

  “I’m not having surgery. I’d rather just get the days I’m going to get.”

  “Today may be the last day you get,” says the doctor.

  “Believe it or not, I actually considered that possibility this morning. I consider it every morning.”

  “Sam—”

  “In two weeks my daughter is coming to visit. My surviving child. And my grandson. My boy was killed on September eleventh. I want to be able to see my daughter and mourn the child who isn’t here. If you put me under the knife, I’ll likely still be in the hospital then, if I’m alive at all. Bedridden certainly. I’d rather risk it.”

  Cunningham measures his words carefully. “Let’s say you get lucky, and you’re alive in two weeks. You see your daughter and grandson. Then will you have the surgery?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Say yes, Sam.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Cunningham, I want to live. I survived World War Two, kamikazes buzzing all around. One hit my ship. It’s why I can’t move my head from side to side. I thought I died that day. I woke up and was paralyzed. I thought I died again. Now here we are. It’s almost fifty-seven years since I discovered that I’d get a life. Fifty-seven years. More than I probably deserve, I know, but all I’m asking for, right now, is two more weeks.”

  “I don’t know that you’re going to get them.”

  Sam correctly predicted that the doctor was going to say this. They have their procedures, their miracle cures, their technology, and they want to use all of it. But Sam won’t miss the yahrzeit. He cannot let Cat slide through his fingers one more time. He had plenty of chances, but the last was really after Ann died. He tried to teach her things, and he did, but he only let her so close. She made him nervous. She was a girl, almost a woman, his daughter, and he didn’t feel equipped. What does a man know, really, that can help a young girl? For over twenty years she drifted off. Clearly, this is his last chance with her.

  “Sam?” the doctor says.

  “No.”

  “No what?” asks the doctor.

  “No surgery. I’ll take my chances.”

  “They’re lousy, your chances. Doomed.”

  “So they are,” Sam says. He stands and heads for the door. He knows he’s being reckless, but there is no other way. He hurries out, before he changes his mind.

  IV

  She can’t dream. She wakes, knows from the darkness it’s still quite ear
ly, not yet six, perhaps not yet five. Before Connor she dreamed, remembered long and detailed dreams of travels and adventures, of worlds happy enough that she woke hopeful. Even after her mother died, her dreams stayed bright. She’d wake and remember shopping trips with her mother that never happened in real life, her mother buying her shoes that made her feet look smaller, with a heel that lifted her almost to six feet, the height of men. In her dream her mother loved the shoes and Cat wore them out of the store, laughing, walking arm in arm with the woman, a wish fulfillment if there ever was one.

  She lies in bed, moving her legs between the sheets, seeking the cool spots. She would like not to wake alone. She hasn’t seen Chris for three months. She met him last winter and they dated sporadically till the spring, when she slept with him, slept with him because he was young and cute, because he wanted her and she had desire of her own. After that, unlike everything her mother taught her in high school, she couldn’t get rid of him. She liked him, but at thirty-four he was childless, without a real career, still young and unformed. He couldn’t conceive of the responsibilities of parenthood, and when she realized she didn’t want him to meet Connor she knew he had to go. It fit her basic philosophy for the men she dated: namely, that if she could live without them, then she probably should.

  She gets up and walks to the bathroom, her balance a little off, as it is every morning, as if she must wait for the world to right itself. She wraps herself in a robe and walks to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. The stove clock reads 6:14. Forty-five minutes to drink coffee and read the paper till she has to wake Connor and get him ready for his day. She logs on to the computer, searches again for Siobhan, and again she comes up empty. She has tried to access public records, but these yield no pictures and it is a spotty endeavor, something no doubt done better by the Times. She has also called two private investigators, but with just a first name and a photo, they made her no promises. And they were ridiculously expensive. So she decided to do it herself. She will, she realizes, look forever. It reminds her of being a kid, when she would always check the pay phones for returned change, back when there were pay phones, even though she never found so much as a penny. She knows looking for Siobhan is likely a lost cause, and yet she believes in it, too. Not everything has to make sense.