Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (11 page)

She had lost so much weight now, there were hollows in her cheeks and her eyes seemed more luminous against her pale skin. Jimmy’s absence made her somehow more mysterious. The other kids watched her, and the older boys began to take new and sudden notice. She was the girl with the missing brother. She had been through something and now, because of it, she knew something that they didn’t.

She continued to write Jimmy every night in her notebook, and the more she wrote, the more she felt as if he were standing behind her.
People are saying your body is in the woods, in the water. I don’t believe any of it
. Sometimes she read what she wrote out loud, as if it would help make her words a bridge to him. The more pages she filled up, the more hopeful she felt. He would hear her. He would find his way back.

She slumped down on the toilet seat, suddenly panicked. She had done this to him, this awful thing. She was responsible. If she had been there, she could have stopped the car that took him, or bit and kicked the person grabbing him. She could have screamed—everyone listens when a girl screams. She could have saved him.

Jimmy’s green toothbrush was still in the holder. She touched the bristles and then ran water over them, as if he had just used it. She stared at herself in the mirror. She had her brother’s eyes. Maybe in the right light, she had his chin. She wondered if people looking at her would see her brother. If the man who had taken her brother thought so, maybe he would take her, too, and lead her to Jimmy.

Opening the medicine cabinet, she found her mother’s scissors. Taking up a hank of her hair in her hand, she cut it to her ears. The hair drifted to the floor, dusting her with strands. She’d worn it long all her life. She had refused to go to Clip N’ Curl, or to wear curlers at night and spray every morning and she hated the styles her mother kept suggesting to her: artichoke or shingles or a poodle or a pixie. It was a shock to see all that hair on the floor, but she kept snipping, even her bangs, making her eyes look cartoon-character large. When she was done, it was short as a boy’s. Looking in the mirror, Rose reached up and touched her reflection.

She looked like Jimmy now.

She cleaned the bathroom, stuffing the hair in the wastebasket, swabbing out the sink. Her head felt impossibly light, as if any moment it might float off like a helium balloon. She looked different and that felt good.

Rose went into Jimmy’s room. She opened his drawers and got out a pair of his jeans and his favorite T-shirt and put them on. They were too big but her hips held them up and she could grab his Teepee Town belt from the closet. She put on his sneakers with three pairs of his socks until they fit.

Rose settled onto a chair in the living room, reading the pirate book, so lost she didn’t realize her mother was in the room until she heard her gasp. Rose looked up and her mother had her body braced along the wall. “What have you done, Rose?” she said. Her mother shuffled over. She smelled like sleep and sweat, and Rose anxiously stood up.

“We can go to Clip N’ Curl. They can fix it.”

“I don’t want anyone touching it. It’s my hair.”

Her mother’s eyes slid along Rose’s clothes. “Why did you do this?” she said. Then her mother put her hand on Rose’s hair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Baby girl, I’m so sorry.” She bent and Rose felt a kiss through her hair, but before she could grab her mother and pull her closer, Dot was gone, ambling back to her bedroom.

D
OT SAID NOTHING
when Rose came to breakfast in Jimmy’s pants, though she handed Rose a hairbrush. “At least brush it back,” she said, and Rose gave her hair a few perfunctory licks. The kids stared when she showed up at the bus stop, but no one said a word to her, though some of the girls touched their own hair self-consciously and edged away from her, whispering, their eyes on her. She climbed the bus and found a seat in the back, alone, which was fine by her because she could gaze out the window and look for signs of Jimmy. She strode into the school and immediately she heard murmuring, like a tide following her, the waves tumbling closer and closer, which made her feel even more defiant. The only person who spoke to her was the principal, who called her into his office after third period. “If you need to go home, I won’t mark you absent,” he told her, but she said she wanted to stay.

As soon as she got home from school, she stood out on her porch, waiting for a car to come by. Waiting for the man who had taken Jimmy to come and find her. A car passed and she stretched up taller, her heart like a fist inside of her. Come on, she thought. I dare you. Come and get me. We’ll do a trade. Take me instead. She’d know the kidnapper as soon as she saw him. She’d feel it.

She was sitting on her front steps when she saw Lewis. He was in the center of the road, his eyes glued to her, not moving. Her hands floated to her hair and she stood up. “You thought I was him, didn’t you?” she said. “For a moment you thought it was him.” She heard the crack in her voice and her body began to shake. She pressed her lips together as if she might swallow them.

He walked up and sat down beside her. She could feel the heat of his body. “I knew it was you,” he said, and then he put one arm about her while she cried.

Chapter Nine

A month after Jimmy’s disappearance, on a cool May evening, Ava showed up for the neighborhood patrol walk in black stretch stirrup pants and red flats, a gold chiffon kerchief holding back her hair. She was a half hour early, but she had been too anxious to wait. Her hands were so cold she pressed them together, digging her heels into the ground as she walked, as if that might stop them from trembling. No one had called her to come, but she had seen the notices posted on the phone poles.
PARENTS ONLY, THE SIGN SAID. ELLIE ROBERTS OFFERS BABYSITTING,
105
WARWICK
.
Ava didn’t want Lewis leaving the house and reminded him not to answer the phone or the door. She checked the window locks and the doors.

He didn’t want her kissing him good-bye anymore, not on the face, not on his milky cheeks or the slope of his neck or even his nose, but he dipped his head so she could press her mouth to the top of his head, his silky hair against her lips, like a barrier.

“I won’t be long,” she told him.

They were all supposed to meet in front of Bob Gallagher’s at six, but the street was empty. She couldn’t just stand here—she was too tense, too jittery—so she walked around the block, wishing she had paid more attention to everything in the neighborhood before so that now she’d know if anything was different.

She found a shoelace in the middle of Greer Street, frayed at the ends, but really, it could have been anyone’s. She tucked it in her pocket, like a talisman. She noticed something glinting by the sewer, but when she stooped down, it was just a skate key, and she knew Jimmy didn’t skate. She left it and kept looking. Everything could mean something, and the harder she looked, the more it all seemed to elude her, and the queasier she felt, as if her heart were drowning.

She walked down to Abbot Road and then turned around, and by the time she came back on Warwick, there was a crowd around Bob Gallagher’s. She waved and as she came closer, she felt some of the men’s eyes sliding down her. Ava looked down at her stirrup pants. A saleswoman at Filene’s had talked her into these, assuring Ava that she could pull them off. “Those really work with your gorgeous figure,” the saleswoman had said, and Ava had looked at herself in the mirror, skimming her hands over her hips, loving the feel of the stretchy fabric. Now she felt as if she had made a mistake. Look at the way Ellie walked right over to her husband, who was regarding Ava. Ava wished she had brought a sweater so at least she could tie it around her waist.

Debbie looked at her with surprise. “Oh Ava, you’re here,” she said.

“Dot is my friend,” Ava said.

“Dot’s not here tonight,” Debbie said.

As they started moving down the street, Ava trailed to the back of the group, so it wasn’t as obvious that no one was really talking to her. The group had flashlights to hand out, but she had brought her own, swinging it proudly. “Why do you need such a big flashlight?” Tina Gallagher asked her pointedly.

“It casts a big light,” Ava said. She waved her flashlight across the sidewalk and into the bushes.

“Save your batteries for the woods,” Bob Gallagher said, but Ava kept pointing her flashlight every which way. She couldn’t afford to miss anything. Ribbons of light hit the houses. A cat scurried out from under a car. She followed everyone into the woods behind the school, stepping over the mushy damp ground, the thickets scratching her ankles. “They ought to burn these woods down,” someone said, and Ava remembered how when she rented the house, these woods were a selling point. “Do you know what people pay to have nature right in your backyard?” the realtor had told her.

She could catch snippets of conversation. Someone mentioned how little the police seemed to be doing. Why didn’t they set up a hotline? Why weren’t they at Dot’s every day? Why weren’t the detectives patrolling with them? Ava had heard the cops say they had been over and over this ground, that there was nothing left to find here. “You aren’t doing us any favors trying to help,” that detective Maroni had told them. “You could be messing up key evidence without even knowing it.” But how could they do nothing? And what evidence? As far as anyone knew, the cops had found nothing. The neighbors kept talking, their voices growing louder and louder.

“This is what I think we should do,” Bob Gallagher said. “We need to spread out more, maybe get walkie-talkies. I think my kid has one.” Everyone had a suggestion, and to Ava, they all sounded worthless. “We ought to stop everyone who comes into Waltham and if they don’t have a good reason for being here, we take down their license plate number,” Debbie said.

“We could set up checkpoints,” Debbie’s husband said.

“What about the Morgan Memorial bin?” someone said and Bob sighed. “We looked there already.”

“I heard the detectives say they just want to find someone and fast,” Debbie said. “Would they say that if we were Belmont? Or Cambridge?”

They talked about Dot, how horrible it must be for her to have lost her husband so young, and now this, and how lucky it was that at least Dot had Rose, though wasn’t she the strangest little girl? She didn’t seem to have many friends and what kind of mother would let her run around in her brother’s clothes and chop her hair off like that?

“She’s not strange,” Ava said. She cleared her throat and spoke louder. “Rose is a lovely young woman.”

Two of the women in front of her turned and looked at Ava.

“She’s good friends with my son,” Ava said. A flush of heat rose up along the back of her neck. As soon as she said it, she felt a sting of guilt, as if she had done something wrong.

Debbie moved her mouth as if to speak and Ava braced herself. Then Bob Gallagher shouted, “We’ve found something!” The women stopped looking at Ava and then everyone was running forward. Ava sprang forward, too, moving to the front, crowding around a patch of land. Her breath came in hard catches. Bob Gallagher was holding up a muddy sandal, the strap hanging like a tongue. His hands were shaking. He held it high up so everyone could see, the lights hitting the silver buckle.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sakes,” someone said. “That’s my Marsha’s sandal. She lost it last week.”

The sandal was handed over to the woman, who took one look at it and dropped it back on the ground “It’s ruined,” she announced.

They all went home after that, even though Ava felt they should keep looking. “There’s tomorrow,” said Bob Gallagher, but was there? What if they had gone a foot deeper into the woods and found something? Ava stared into the woods. She’d go by herself if all that dark didn’t make her feel suffocated.

She looked around for support, but no one else seemed interested, no longer eager, as they were when the walk had begun. The group started back. This time, Ava was in the lead, but the only sound was the crunch of the leaves under everyone’s feet, and the swish of a branch that caught in someone’s clothing. As soon as they left the woods and hit Warwick Avenue, it was as if someone had turned on a light switch. The world seemed so bright, shined up as a spinning coin. “See you tomorrow,” Ava said, but no one responded.

She came back to the house, happy to see that Lewis had double-locked the front door like she had asked. His bedroom door was closed, but she heard his music. Her son was here. He was fine. She opened the door to check on him, to see his face. He was asleep on his bed. She shut off his radio, threw a blanket over him, and turned out the lights.

The night stretched out in front of her, cold and lonely. Ava looked out the window. Some of the neighbors were still milling around, talking to each other, and here she was alone.

She heard a motorcycle, and then a knock, and she felt flooded with relief. She opened the door and there was Jake.

They sat in the living room and she quietly told him about her night. He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking,” Jake said, and then she noticed how carefully dressed he was, in a clean silky white shirt, his hair combed back. “This isn’t going to get better, Ava.”

“Don’t say that,” she said quietly. “You don’t know that.”

“No one’s finding him, and it’s just feeling uglier and uglier,” he said. He leaned forward. “What if you and Lewis and I hightail it out of here?”

“What?”

“I’ve already made some phone calls. I have work lined up on the West Coast. We could rent a house on the beach. Lewis would love it. You would love it, Ava.”

“You want to move? Jake, I can’t move. I have Brian threatening custody. If I take our son out of state—well, he’s just looking for a chance to make things difficult.”

“So let him try. We can handle it.”

Ava tilted her head. “Are you talking marriage?”

Jake’s silence made Ava wish she could burrow under the couch. She knew how he felt about marriage. How many times had he pointed out couples sitting at dinner in restaurants, not saying a word to each other. “That’s what married looks like,” he said.

“Can’t we just see how things go for us, first?”

“I can’t just move in with you,” she said. “Brian would take Lewis from me and the courts would let him.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“You don’t know him. He already accuses me of being a floozy. Plus, how can I move Lewis from his school and his friends?”

Jake sighed. “Ava, if Brian were going to do something, wouldn’t he have done it by now?”

“I can’t risk it,” she said.

Because of Lewis, Jake didn’t stay that night. In the morning, Ava called her lawyer, but when she got to the part about moving, he cleared his throat. “I don’t know if this is the best time. You have to prove you have a stable home, and moving with some guy you’re not married to isn’t going to do it for a judge.”

When she told Jake, later that day, he was silent. “What am I supposed to do?” he finally said. “You don’t want to be with me?”

“Of course I want to be with you! I am with you! But I told you what the lawyer said.”

Ava felt him drifting away. After that, she didn’t see or hear from him as often, and when he called, it was so late at night that she had a hard time staying awake. He asked her about her day, and she told him, but every time she brought the conversation to Jimmy, to the neighborhood, he always said the same thing, more and more insistently. “We can leave this behind, Ava,” he said. “We can move on.”

“I told you I can’t leave. Not yet,” she told him.

“I don’t want a long-distance romance,” he said. “Whether this relationship goes on or off is all up to you.” He was quiet for a moment. “Look, I’m tired. I don’t want to get into this tonight. Come meet me at the club tomorrow. We’ll really talk.”

She felt flooded with relief. They would talk. It was just what she needed. It was always better to discuss things in person than to try to do it over the phone, and wasn’t so much of communication nonverbal anyway? She thought of the dark woods, and how safe she might feel if he would search through them with her, how much better it would be if he were there at night.

“I’ll see you at eight,” he told her. “The Hornet.”

N
OW,
A
VA SAT
at a small wooden table across from Jake. He was on his break and had just a half-hour pocket of time he could devote to her. Usually, he took her hands and kissed the tips of her fingers. Tonight, he didn’t reach for her, and even when he had been playing, she could tell something was wrong. The notes sounded bristling, as if he were forcing them. She noticed, too, how he now kept checking his watch, shifting in his seat. She wanted to touch his hair and smooth it from his face. She wanted to rest her forehead against his, as if his thoughts might race into hers. Instead, she reached out a hand for his, but he pulled back. “Hands all wet from my beer,” he apologized, wiping them on a napkin before reaching for his drink again. Conversation buzzed all around her, but her own words stuck in her throat.

Ava felt her hair frizzing in the swampy heat of the club. Another hour and all the pin curl would be gone and her clothes would smell like cigarettes. She moved closer to Jake, scraping her chair on the floor. “I’ve missed you,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to her, like it had rusted. “I’ve really missed you,” she said again. Every cell of her seemed to be snapping awake. She wanted to bite his shoulder, to take his hand and put his fingers to her mouth.

“I’ve really missed you, too,” he told her. “Don’t take it personally.”

But how could she not take things personally? All the advice in the magazines told her to let the man call the shots. To talk about what he was interested in, to wear your hair for him. Cook his favorite meals. Make his friends your friends. She had done all that and more with Brian and look where that had gotten her. She had learned to fish because it was something Brian loved, even though the rock and sway of the boat made her nauseous. He had urged her to dye her hair blonde and she had, bleaching out her skin tones, making her silky hair feel like straw. “I admit it was a mistake,” Brian had told her, giving her money to go and dye it back to its natural brunette.

Jake hadn’t asked her for anything. “I like everything about you,” he had said, but clearly there was something about her now that bothered him. What was she supposed to do? Who was she supposed to be?

She smoothed her dress, white eyelet cotton with a fitted top and tight waist and little cap sleeves, with a built-in crinoline that made the circle skirt sway. She knew she looked good. Four men had tried to pick her up as she walked to the club, and she had ignored every one of them. “Hey, good-looking,” they had called. But now, Jake was staring past her. He drained his beer and then motioned for the waitress, pointing to his empty glass. “You look like you haven’t been sleeping,” he told her. “Or eating. Look at the shadows under your eyes.”

“It’s all that’s going on in the neighborhood—” she said.

“I want you and Lewis to leave with me. I don’t know how many times I have to say it.”

The waitress brought a beer and he took a swig of it, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. “Look, I know this horrible thing happened, but we have a chance to leave it behind.”