by Scott Lasser
“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?”
They 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.”
XXVII
He 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.
XXVIII
She 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.”
“I know,” she says.
“I’d known enough men by then to know when one wasn’t good enough for my daughter.”
“So, Dad, you never answered me: are you in love with Phyllis?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Can’t live without her. I care more about her happiness than my own. I don’t like being apart from her.”
“So why don’t you two live together?” Cat asks.
“We’ve talked about it.”
“Will she have you?”
He smiles. “She says she might.”
“Then you better take her up on it, Dad.” She is excited for him. A romance, at this time in his life. She should be so lucky.
“When can I see the little boy?” he asks again.
“As soon as I get him. I don’t want to pressure them.”
“I’m feeling the pressure of time,” he says.
“Phyllis made me think maybe you’re sick.”
“I’m eighty,” he tells her. “Eighty is a sickness unto itself. I’ve been lucky beyond any reason, and I’d like to see that little boy. Just lay eyes on him. Pushing my luck, I know, but I’ve never found any reason not to.”
XXIX
He should tell her, right now, in the wee hours, but he can’t bring himself to do it. It is so awkward. Besides, he is her father, the man who raised her and supported her and taught her what it is to be a serious person in this world. This, he thinks, is the problem with the modern world: not enough serious people. When he was a young man, a man like George Marshall meant something. His was a life that inspired. John Foster Dulles was a bit thick and a blowhard, but they named an airport after him. Today Brad Pitt would more likely get an airport than would a secretary of state. Sam thinks of George Kennan. What ever happened to his kind? Now, there was a man, purely American, Midwestern (the same thing, really), sophisticated yet resolute, generous yet austere, fierce and implacable. The country no longer seems to produce his kind.
Cat should have been a diplomat. She has the brains and the advantage of being an attractive woman, which is totally disarming. And she is tough, as fierce as any man. He wonders whatever happened to her plans. He’d believed once that she would go to law school. Mortgages? It’s not a serious thing. Still, she has to make a buck. She has Connor, and now, it appears, Kyle’s son. Kyle’s son. The phrase rings in his head, its meaning almost unknowable, but something close to the completion of his life, that final brick put into place. It’s almost enough to make him believe in a higher power. Almost.
“Dad?”
He turns to her.
“You’re smiling,” she says. “If you’ve got a good joke, please share it.”
“Do you smoke?” he asks.
“No.”
“Ever?”
“Never,” she says. “You taught me that.”
“I’m going to have a cigarette.”
“Dad, you don’t smoke.”
“Now I do.”
She is incredulous.
“I like it,” he says, “and at my age it’s hardly a vice. It’s not as if it will kill me. I didn’t smoke for fifty-seven years. That was deprivation enough. Abstinence at my age is just silly.”
“But you don’t want me to smoke.”
“I’d kill you,” he says.
“Hypocritical?”
“Not at all. Contradictions are the one constant in life.”
“You used to make guests smoke outside the house, even in winter.”
“Still would. Step outside with me. Grab a sweatshirt; it’ll be cold.”
“Connor—”
“Won’t wake up. It’s four in the morning.”
Outside he can hear the surf rustle at the shore. There’s a small stone wall along part of the walkway that leads to the ocean, and here they sit, he with his cigarette, she with her cup of coffee. It’s too early for birds, or even cars. There’s only the sound of the water and his breathing. Another morning, he thinks. I get another morning.
“Tell me again about this ceremony?” she asks.
“The ceremony celebrates the start of the Sabbath. Toward the end they read the names of the dead, those who died this week and have loved ones in the congregation. It’s a way of remembering.”
“It’s not as though you’d forget Kyle.”
“No, but it’s to honor him, too. And as the years go on, it’s a reminder to remember. A prayer is recited, the Kaddish, to honor the dead. Ancient rituals.”
“W
e never did this when I was growing up.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to,” he tells her, remembering how when he was younger it was easier to let things go.
“And now?”
“Now I’m an old man, and I feel the need to do it. And I want to teach you, so that someday, if you need it, then you’ll have it. I hope you never need it for a child, but if you said Kaddish for me one day, I would appreciate that.”
“I thought you don’t believe.”
“I don’t.”
“So, if you don’t believe …”
He thinks about this. The old rituals matter; he knows they do.
“If I don’t believe, why do I do it? I may be wrong,” he tells her. “And if I’m not, I still don’t want to forgotten.”
“You won’t be,” she promises.
He decides he will tell her. He will tell her about her biological father after the service. He’ll wait till that’s out of the way.
“Someday we are all forgotten,” he says. “But till then, we should recite the prayers for the dead.”
“You’ll need to teach me that prayer,” she says.
XXX
Connor plays with the planes he got from United, little toy 767s circling the living room to his swishing sound effects. He moves the planes around the little city he’s built in the corner of the living room, most of it made from the large Lego pieces given to him by Phyllis, who does seem to know something about boys. It’s only nine in the morning. Cat thinks she will take Connor to the water when it warms up a bit more. The water here is freezing, and Connor can barely swim, so maybe they will build sand castles and thus pass the time till tonight, when they have the ceremony for Kyle and then can fly home to their regular lives.
Cat heads to the kitchen for more coffee, where she finds her father looking out the window. Never a big man, he looks smaller now, more hunched. Really, he’s just tipped forward—his back can’t bend—with his bony shoulder blades sticking out. “Dad,” she says. “Can you stand up straighter?”
“Aren’t I straight?”
“Not so much.”
Cat stares at her father’s back, at the shoulder blades almost dorsal, the old man tipping, slowly, she realizes, toward the grave.
“There, how’s that?” her father asks.
