Year of the Cat

by DS Levy

Rachel’s proud of Aunt Lydia. She’s the only one in the cafeteria who can still hold up her head and tap her arthritic fingers to the music.

“I loved the Seventies,” Aunt Lydia sighs. “Me and Lucille, first thing we’d do when we got home from work was turn on the radio.” 

At home, Rachel’s parents listen to boring spiritual music. Nothing like this music. Smooth as a fresh ocean breeze. She can almost ignore the lingering stench of institutional food. The wrinkled faces. The shrunken bodies.

The musicians look a tad younger than the residents. At least they can stand up. Sailor collars squeeze their necks, bellies challenge their gold buttons.

The guitarist with shaggy blonde hair presses his lips to the microphone. Beside him, the bass player, with a graying mustache and spiky hair, stares straight ahead. And in the back, the keyboardist hunches over his Yamaha PSS-F30, long gray hair bobbing. The drummer seems to be the leader and does most of the talking. On his kick drum, written in pastel colors: Yacht Rock Ahoy. Celina, Ohio.

Must’ve sailed up the Saint Mary’s River to get to Fort Wayne, Rachel thinks, smiling as she leans over to ask Aunt Lydia if she’d like more punch.

“What?” Her aunt won’t wear her hearing aids, claims they’re uncomfortable and squeak like mice.

“More punch?”

Aunt Lydia nods, mouthing the words to some song about a girl named Brandy.

Rachel stands up. The hem of her denim skirt tumbles down below her knees. At work, Patty Larkin jokingly called her a “long skirt,” adding, “Just a fact.” They were stocking candy shelves. “And know what? Every long skirt who comes in here’s got, like, a dozen kids.”

“Yeah?” Rachel returned. “Which means?”

Patty sliced a box open with a box cutter.

“It’s just funny that women who cover up their legs, hips and thighs seem to have—well, sizzling hot boxes.”

They’d both laughed.

Patty was right. After high school, most of the girls at Rachel’s church get married and start families. More kids mean more help around the farm. But Rachel knows those shy church boys have a different kind of plowing in mind.

She grabs another glass of punch, no cookies. Aunt Lydia lost her dentures again and can only have liquids and mushy foods.

Rachel glances at the guitarist; his eyes track her as she glides across the room. The only other person who stares at her is Amos Hilty. Every Wednesday evening during youth group. Every Friday night and Sunday morning during church. A nice boy, but not l that interesting.

The guitarist leans into the microphone, sings about his lover and the sea—sings to me, Rachel thinks.

“I love that song,” Aunt Lydia says wistfully as Rachel sits down.

When Aunt Lydia was Rachel’s age, she left the farm in Lagrange and moved to Fort Wayne where she got a job at a potato chip factory. Her parents were devastated.

For a while, a family who was related to a family from church let her stay with them. The parents were kind but gave subtle hints she ought to return home. When she made enough money to move out, Aunt Lydia gave up her long skirts and moved in with a coworker, Lucille Duckworth. Lucille turned out to be the love of Aunt Lydia’s life, and they lived together for years.

Then, six years ago, coming home from an Air Supply concert, a drunk driver crossed the center line and killed Lucille outright. Aunt Lydia’s health slipped. She sailed without a fuss into Twin Oaks.

The drummer clicks his sticks together and tells a silly joke, punctuating the punchline with a ba-bump on the kick drum. The residents who can hear, laugh. Rachel rolls her eyes. When she looks over at the guitarist, he’s smiling at her, the lines around his eyes pulled tight. 

Next month, Rachel will graduate from high school. She’s talked to Brenda, Aunt Lydia’s nurse, about getting a CNA certification and working here at Twin Oaks. This afternoon, taking Aunt Lydia’s blood pressure, Brenda described each step to her protégé.

“See?” she smiled when she was done. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

The keyboardist warbles something about this being the year of the cat. Though Rachel doesn’t understand what it means, she, like Aunt Lydia, taps her hand along to the melody.

“Pure poetry,” Aunt Lydia sighs.

Rachel tries to imagine what her aunt’s life was like before Twin Oaks. When she had Lucille. When she wasn’t tied to a wheelchair. Aunt Lydia has said she doesn’t care what Rachel decides to do. “The main thing,” she says, “it’s your choice.”

“We’re gonna take a little break,” the drummer says. “Ya’all don’t run off, okay?”

The audience—slumped in wheelchairs or comfy chairs, their walkers a reach away—don’t move.

Aunt Lydia’s snoozing, which she often does these days. Rachel meanders over to the refreshments table even though she’s not hungry. Her heart flutters when she sees the guitarist come over and stand next to her. He winks.

“Probably don’t know many of our songs, do you?”

Rachel shakes her head. “They’re nice, though,” she blushes, her words tumbling out smooth and easy.

BIO: DS Levy lives in the Midwest. She has had work included in Wigleaf's Top 50 2021, and Long List 2022.