The Year That Follows

by Scott Lasser

  Off the plane, walking down the narrow corridors of Metro, she slows to look at two soldiers. They’re dressed in green camo, M16s strapped over their shoulders and pointed at the ground. M16s. Wasn’t there enough of that just a little to the east, in Detroit’s inner city? The striking thing here, though, isn’t the uniforms or the guns, but the faces of the soldiers, so young and smooth and pink. My God, she thinks, they’re babies. Fifteen? Sixteen? Connor is halfway to that age. No, these boys must be older. They must be, but they don’t look it.

  She comes down the stairs to the cramped baggage area still thinking about the soldiers. She has checked nothing, but this is the only way out. She looks up and there’s Tommy, standing by the baggage carousel, watching her. She feels maybe he’s been watching for some time.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks. “I told you I had my car.”

  “I didn’t want you to drive alone.”

  “Afraid I might change my mind?”

  “It never occurred to me,” he says, smiling.

  He is alive to her, taller than she remembers, bigger, with the bulk men get that, lucky for them, makes them attractive, more real and substantial. He’s wearing a plain black T-shirt; the hair on his arms, she notices, is darker than it once was, and there’s more of it. He takes her bag, wheels it himself, opens the door for her—this terminal is so old and run down that the doors aren’t even automatic—and follows her to her car. She’s left it in the expensive short-term lot for the first time in her life.

  The air is warm and humid, a comfort, the air of home.

  “You want me to drive?” he asks.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “I took a cab here, so I could ride with you.”

  He pays for parking, drives them out to 94, where once a plane went down, and then up the Southfield Expressway. “You going to talk to me?” he asks.

  She tells him about the trip, the stop at the Times and the drive out to Yorktown, about the Boyles and little Ian in his playpen. And at the same time she’s thinking what it will be like to undress Tommy Swenson, to put her body against his. Will the years melt away? The truth is her memory of sex with him, the physical part of it, is not nearly as strong as what she remembers emotionally, the intensity of what she felt for him, which she thought then was love. She thinks it now, too. Then she loved the idea of herself as a woman, which was exciting and real, devoid, she thought, of artifice. Alone with Tommy she felt free to be herself, which was the same as being free; she felt it partly because she trusted him and partly because she didn’t know yet not to be trustful.

  She glances at him, and wants it all back. She’s excited for the physical nature of what’s to come, and curious, too. Her whole life she’s only slept with one man at a time, and she’s never doubled back. Don’t make too much of it, she tells herself. Just let it happen and see where you end up.

  Large trees line Pilgrim Street and have grown together over the expanse of the road, a long canopy of foliage. Even at night she can see they’re magnificent trees. She asks what they are. “Elms,” he says. “Aren’t elms diseased?” “Not on this street.”

  He pulls her Ford in behind his Cadillac, the backside of the sedan wide and substantial, with two chrome exhaust pipes. “Driving American?” she says.

  “Started that right after the divorce. Besides, all doctors seem to drive Beemers now, or Lexuses. You see, that car makes me a rebel. Pathetic, right?”

  “Hardly.”

  “And it’s a nod to my hometown. I hate what’s happened to Detroit. The name Detroit once meant something good and powerful. That car’s my way of putting my finger in the dyke. I don’t care if it’s hopeless.”

  He leads her to the side door. She can see nothing, is aware only of the one breath he takes that is deeper than the rest. This reminds her of sneaking around when they were kids. Her stomach is turning over, excited, and then she hears the lock turn. She grabs his arm.

  “What?” he asks.

  She kisses him. Knowing that there will be more than kissing, it is like a first kiss, new and tempestuous. “Take me to bed,” she tells him. “Right away.”

  He guides her through the dark house by pulling on her hand till she is in a large, shadowy bedroom with a king-size sleigh bed onto which she finds herself quickly thrown, reminded of his size and strength, which always surprised her but which she liked, which she likes now as he falls atop her, kissing her, rubbing his hand over her body, then unbuttoning her blouse. He can’t do this fast enough for her, and so she helps him, first with the buttons and then out of his clothes, a well of desire coming up in her that she forgot she even had. Later, lying with her head against his damp chest, she feels almost embarrassed by this, by her desire, her neediness. She has learned to do things—expects to do things—for herself. And now there’s this man, both old and new.

  “You’re gonna sigh like that, the least you could do is tell me why. Talk to me,” he says.

  “You’re always saying that.”

  “You’re never talking. What are you thinking?”

  “That was …” She searches for the adjective. “Lovely.”

  “Lovely? That was great,” he says. “I’m hoping to try it again, very soon.”

  “You’re ambitious.”

  “Always have been.”

  “I remember,” she says.

  “But tempered now, as I’m older.”

  We’re both older, she thinks, both tempered. When was the last time she lay in his arms? 1976. Twenty-six years. They couldn’t possibly be the same people they were in ’76, and yet she still feels the attraction. There seems no way around it.

  She feels him running his left hand along the crook of her hip, a light touch, but without caution. When it comes to touching like this, it is a fine balance between brute force and tentativeness, but he traverses the line just right. A confident man, thus an appealing man. He puts his right index finger under her chin, turns her head up to his and suddenly she is kissing him, dizzy at first with all that has happened today, and then happy for this time, when she can forget about it all.

  XIX

  He thinks of Kyle, as he has every morning for almost a year. It is always the first thing he thinks of after the dream, and always it takes him a moment to realize that Kyle is dead, that there is nothing more he can do for the boy, that there is no way to protect him. He remembers how when Cat and Kyle were little they’d sneak into the bedroom and crawl on all fours to Sam’s side of the bed, then poke him and giggle till he woke up. It was a great joy to have someone, anyone, who wanted you to wake up. If it happened to be your children, then you were blessed.

  He puts his hand on his chest, to see if he can feel his heart beating. He can’t, though it must be; he’s cognizant, alive. Still, it would be nice to get that extra tactile confirmation. He realizes that Phyllis is asleep beside him, and then that he is in her bedroom and it is morning. This he can tell from the light. Not that he can see much. Most days he can make out things in the distance, but without his glasses the world up close is a total mystery.

  Phyllis, he remembers, wants to play golf today. He’s never much liked the game, and he’s never been good at it, but he was also a salesman, so he played. It’s been twenty years at least. Phyllis has reserved a cart. “You don’t have to play,” she told him, “if you don’t want to. But you have to ride along.”

  Eighty years old, he thinks, and still taking orders.

  It turns out that he does have to play, after a fashion. It’s a bright day but still overcast, with humidity that’s making his hip hurt. Every once in a while there’s a little tug in his chest, as though someone were pulling a string out of him. He’d be happy just to sit and watch her play, but now that she’s got him out here, she wants him to play along. At first he stands and takes swings at the ball, but then, too winded to continue, he sits and takes the occasional swipe from the cart, a geriatric version of polo. He’s bad enough that eventually she just picks up h
is ball.

  “I think it’s time,” she says, “that you tell me how your wife died.”

  “Haven’t I?”

  “You have, twice, and I’m still not sure I understand.”

  “I’m not sure I understand it myself.”

  He again recounts for her how Ann kicked him out when she discovered that he kept a separate apartment. He didn’t want to leave her because of the children—Cat was in her last year of high school, Kyle had a couple of years left—and the apartment was his way to deal with his home life. He never slept with his wife; she wouldn’t allow it. He literally bedded down each night in a royal blue mummy sleeping bag on the floor of their bedroom. He slept well like that. He had girlfriends, women who, like him, had families and responsibilities and certain human needs and weaknesses. “It seems a lifetime ago,” he tells Phyllis, and it does, more remote, even, than the war. “It’s as though I’m talking about someone else.”

  “Go on,” she says.

  “It was August. Cat’s last school year was about to start. I begged Ann just to let things be, but she couldn’t. About two months later I got a call from Cat. Ann was dead. She’d taken Valium and drunk gin. Gin! That was my drink. She didn’t drink when I met her, and I taught her. I taught her about martinis, how to enjoy one. It wasn’t a bad thing to know. Martinis saved my life, but that’s a different story. Anyway, she did herself in, but we never found out if she meant to. She didn’t leave a note. Cat and Kyle found her. They went into her bedroom after she didn’t surface for the whole day. Kyle, I think, never got over it. Hardly said a word the whole time he was in high school. He was quiet, though, in any case.”

  They’re at Phyllis’s ball. She gets out, takes her swing, sits back in the cart and starts to drive. Sam likes the cart, the whirr of its electric motor.

  “This is the part I don’t understand,” Phyllis says. “Did she want to kill herself?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But she knew better. It was as if she didn’t care what happened. Probably went to bed thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll wake up, maybe I won’t.’”

  “Like you go to bed.”

  “I know I’m going to wake up,” Sam says. “God is not going to let me die before Cat and Connor get here.”

  “I thought you don’t believe in God.” “I don’t,” he says.

  XX

  She wakes in a large, bright bedroom, lying in a bed beneath a down duvet. She hears the soft hum of air-conditioning. It takes her a moment to realize that she’s in Tommy’s bedroom. The blinds are drawn but they’re not blackouts. Here is a man who doesn’t sleep late.

  She hasn’t slept so well in years. She lies still for a moment to let her head clear, running yesterday and last night through her mind, the little boy, the two flights, Tommy. Quite a day, and with sex. It has been months, and, of course, decades.

  She looks at the blinds and tries to guess at the time, arriving at seven-thirty. Maybe eight. There’s a clock on the nightstand on Tommy’s side of the bed, and so she moves over to look at it, feeling a little decadent, sleeping so late, crawling naked in a man’s bed. Oh, my God, she thinks. It’s ten to ten.

  She reaches to the floor for her cell phone—she never lets it out of her sight unless she’s with Connor—and calls Tonya at work.

  “Guess where I am?” she asks.

  “Uh, at work,” says Tonya. “No, wait. You’re in New York.”

  “No.”

  “Now I’m interested.”

  “In his bed.”

  “Well, well. How was it?”

  “I just woke up,” Cat says. “What else do I need to say?”

  “Oh God, when I think about my morning, I’d love to be able to make a call like this.”

  “You’re married,” Cat points out.

  “Don’t I know it. Where is he now?”

  “At work, I guess.”

  “Well,” Tonya says, “Go find the note he left you, then call me back and tell me what it says.”

  She hangs up and finds the robe Tommy placed for her at the end of the bed. She puts it on, goes to the bathroom (no note), and walks out to his kitchen, expecting to find the note. Instead he’s sitting at his glass breakfast table in a T-shirt and boxers, typing at a laptop. He looks up and smiles at her. She wonders if this is the guy, if this was always the guy.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey, yourself. I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Why? What do you mean, why?”

  “You’re in sales, right? No time clock.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, if anybody asks, or you’re worried about your image, you say you spent the morning with a rich prospect. Me.”

  “So, you’re rich.”

  “Well, it’s not all about money. And right now your prospect would like you to sit down and have a cup of coffee with him, and then he’d like to take you back to bed.”

  “Don’t think that will get you a better rate,” she says.

  “I get nothing for the effort?”

  She has to take a breath, change gears. “Don’t you have to work?”

  “It’s mostly a paperwork morning for me, which I’ve been doing for the last three hours. I canceled my afternoon appointments. Please, sit.”

  She does what she’s told.

  You know,” she tells him, “we’re basically strangers.” She’s snuggled up against his warm body, still a little light-headed, probably from not eating since early yesterday. The last twelve hours remind her how much she likes sex. Working and mothering and living alone, it’s easy to forget.

  “We’re strangers with one big difference,” he says.

  “What?”

  “I trust you.”

  “You trust me,” she says.

  “Yes, I trust you. I don’t know you, but also I do. I know you in a way that I never could if I just met you yesterday. That, and the trust, is incredibly appealing. I find myself very attracted to you, in case you can’t tell.”

  “I can tell,” she admits.

  “Still. I always was. You’ve stayed in great shape, by the way.”

  “That’s recent.”

  “Really.”

  “Since nine-eleven. I decided I wanted more control of things. My body seemed like a good place to start.”

  He nods, and she wonders if he truly understands. He is looking directly into her eyes, and for now that is enough.

  Later, she watches him watch her as she returns from the bathroom. She feels admired, and is amazed by it.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Do you think you could give me a tour of your house? This is really the only room where you’ve let me spend any time.”

  She puts on the robe and follows him around. There’s the dining room she noticed off the kitchen, a den with a couch and a large television, plus two bathrooms other than the master and two more bedrooms, one of which he’s converted to an office, and the other for his son. It is here she lingers, familiar with the little-boy nature of it, the toy vehicles and sports posters of men she does not recognize, the books about dinosaurs and the solar system.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “The space of a missing child,” she says. “There’s something about it.”

  “He’s not exactly missing. He’s at his mother’s.”

  “Who was she?” Cat realizes she doesn’t even know the woman’s name.

  “She’s still alive.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Laurie is her name. She’s a nurse. A bad idea for a doctor, I know, but with all the training there’s a long time when the only women you ever see are nurses, or other doctors.”

  “Or patients.”

  “Well, yes, except that young cardiologists don’t usually treat people who are age appropriate; often they’re not even women. And if a younger woman does ever need my help, she has bigger problems than needing a date.”

  At lunch she has a wonderful feeling of well-being
. She’s free on a workday, eating in a restaurant. It seems there’s a whole world out here she’s lost touch with, if she ever touched it at all. She checks her watch: over three hours till she has to pick up Connor.

  “When can I see you again?” he asks.

  “Not for a little while.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got to go to California,” she tells him. “As you know.”

  “I forgot.”

  He seems genuinely disappointed by her departure. She looks across at him. “Doctor, I have several hours till I have to be anywhere. Would you like to take me home?” she asks, knowing full well that he does.

  XXI

  Phyllis drives. Sam sits in her old Toyota sedan, newspapers on the floor by his feet, along with an empty paper coffee cup and what looks like a lipstick tube. He doesn’t understand how a woman who keeps her house as tidy as officers’ quarters can let her car come to this. He wanted to drive his Lincoln, but she doesn’t want him on the road, and says his car is too big for her. So here he is, old news beneath his feet, an empty paper coffee cup bumping at his ankles.

  At Cunningham’s office he checks in, and then she comes with him to the examining room. Soon he is sitting on the table, looking down at the folds of his chest and the patches of gray hair. He glances at her and finds her looking at him. He thinks that the way women forgive and forbear is an essential element on the planet, like water.