Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (12 page)

“I told you. I can’t just leave right now. There’s all this with Brian—”

“It’s not about Brian.” Jake set his beer down, leaving a rim of foam on the table. “What has Brian done exactly, except threaten?”

“I had to hire a lawyer,” Ava said tightly.

“Come with me, Ava.”

She cupped her glass of wine, trying to keep her hands from shaking. “I want you to stay here,” she said, her mouth dry. “With me and Lewis. I need you to help me get through this.”

He leaned back in his chair, away from her. He looked at her as if he hadn’t slept in her arms or kissed her mouth, or sang Billie Holiday songs to her. Brian had kept the lights off during sex, but Jake always wanted to see her.

“Why can’t you stay?” she persisted. “Did the cops come to talk to you again? Is that what this is about? They talk to me all the time. We can form a united front here.” She shook her head. “Something’s going on with you and I don’t even know what it is.”

He twirled his beer glass around in his fingers. “You have to make the decision, Ava. Come with me or stay here.”

Ava took her glass of wine and drained it. She knew nothing about wines, but this one tasted sharp and vinegary in her mouth. What she had loved most about him was that he had made her feel that she was steering the relationship. “I can’t leave,” Ava said. “And you won’t stand by me. Doesn’t what I want matter?”

“You’re not listening to me. I want you to come with me.”

“And I told you we can’t.”

“Ava.” Jake looked pained, as if he were just seeing her for the first time.

“This is about you, not me,” Ava whispered. “This is about something that happened to you and I don’t even know what it is.” Ava felt as if the world had dislodged. When had he changed and she hadn’t noticed it? Was it when she was out walking the neighborhood looking for Jimmy and wishing Jake was with her? She wanted him to tell her he’d stay with her and fight, that he’d support her until this was over and be loyal to her. She yearned to kiss his face and bring him back to her. Tears pricked behind her lids and she willed her eyes to dry. She sat up straighter. “What if I come later, when it’s all sorted out with Brian?”

“And when will that be? Six months? A year? Will we get to talk on the phone or are you worried Brian’s going to tap your phone, too? Should I send smoke signals so they can’t be traced?”

The room folded like origami. She had had too much wine. “Why are you doing this?” Ava asked him. His face turned serious, but she didn’t really want to wait to hear what he would say, because she had heard it all before, from other men. She knew what it all really meant. It had to be a smoke screen for something else.
I’m not good enough for you, Ava. You’ll find the right person.
You’ll be happier without me.
It was all just another way of saying good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, I’m moving on. The thing she had loved the most about him was he was easygoing, but now she saw how wrong she had been to think that was a good thing, because here it was, so easy for him to leave her.

She didn’t know how she stood up, but she did, balancing her hands against the edge of the chair. “Ava, wait,” he said. He was saying something else, but she couldn’t hear him anymore. She kept rising. She noticed he didn’t get up, too. What a fool she had been, wasting her kisses on him. Shame on her for believing this time might be different. She remembered her mother had told her once that the way to true love was to find someone who would be good to you when things came crashing down around you. Someone who would think you were beautiful even when you had the flu, who would let you weep so hard on his shoulder you might ruin his shirt. “It’s easy to love someone when things are good,” her mother had told her.

The skirt of Ava’s new dress bloomed out around her, the crinoline scratching her thighs. An edge of it caught on a splinter in a chair and made a tiny rip. Twenty-five dollars for this dress, but she’d never wear it again.

“I’m staying,” she said. “I have to.”

He stared at her. “I asked and you answered,” he said flatly, and then she turned before he could say anything more to her, before she could see his expression, and walked toward the door. Like an idiot, she kept expecting him to follow her and grab her arm and tell her,
Wait Ava, I’ll help you. We need to be together.
I love you.
She got to the door and swung it open. She felt the sharp cool of the evening on her face, like a kiss. She couldn’t help it—she turned and the table was empty, and there was Jake, climbing the stage as if he hadn’t just broken up with the woman he was supposed to love. Saxophone in hand, he was smiling at the cheering crowd, at the women leaning forward, their bare shoulders gleaming in the light. “How’re you doing tonight, Boston!” he shouted. The applause was like pony kicks. Her whole body felt as if it didn’t belong to her anymore.

As soon as she got in the car, Ava started to cry. But after a few minutes, she collected herself. She started the car. She would drive home, take off this stupid dress and throw it out, and tell herself that Jake had been a dream, and now she was awake, and if she were lucky, she would stay that way. She would never let herself dream again.

The tears came back and didn’t stop until she reached Trapelo Road. She turned onto Abbott Road, swiping at her eyes with her fingers. It was nearly midnight, but a woman was walking along the side of the road, her face hidden in a silk scarf, a thin-looking jacket bundled around her even though it was the beginning of June. No one should be out alone this time of night, especially after everything that had happened.

She slowed and got closer, and the woman tilted her face up, and Ava saw Dot’s strong nose, her startled blue eyes, the fiery hair. Ava pulled over and Dot stopped and stared at Ava as if she didn’t know her. A curl flew into her face, but Dot didn’t bother to brush it away. “Dot,” Ava called. “Let me give you a lift.”

Dot hesitated.

“Come on, it’s late,” Ava said. “You shouldn’t be out here walking all by yourself.” Dot peered at Ava. “Is Rose okay? Are you?”

Dot started to speak and then shook her head.

“Please. Get in the car.”

Dot slowly climbed in and then shut the door. “Rose is with a neighbor. I didn’t leave her alone,” Dot said.

“Of course, you wouldn’t have done that,” Ava said. She thought of Lewis, asleep in their house, the doors double-locked.

“I’ve wanted to come see you. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since all of this happened,” Ava said. “I didn’t want to just barge in.”

Dot stared out the window. “Dot?” Ava said. She wanted to grasp her hand, to share everything she knew about Jimmy, every memory, as if it might help, but Dot turned to her, and her gaze was stony.

“Please,” Dot said finally. “Can we not talk?” She lifted her neck and shut her eyes. “If I get a call from one more reporter I’ll scream. Always the same question.
Where did he go that day? Do you know what happened?
If I knew, don’t they think I would have said something?”

“Of course you would have.”

“Do you know people I haven’t seen or heard from in years have been calling me? People telling me that this wouldn’t have happened if Benjamin was still alive, if there had been a man in the house. As if a man could have done anything different.” Ava looked at Dot’s hands, the veins ropey, her nails bitten. “I was a fool to let Jimmy run around loose.”

“Do you want to stop somewhere and get coffee?” Ava asked, but Dot shook her head. “The priest keeps telling me it’s an act of God, but all that does is make me wonder what kind of God would act that way? He wants to do things like that, then what do I need Him for?”

Ava drove slowly. She felt Dot beside her, Dot’s red curls ruffling in the wind. She thought of Jimmy standing on her porch that day, his wide smile. “Dot,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”

Dot held up her hand. “Don’t,” she said. “Please, don’t tell me anything. I don’t have room in my head.”

Ava hesitated. “I just wanted to say I was sorry.”

“I know my Jimmy hung around your house, even when Lewis wasn’t there,” Dot said. “Maybe I was glad I had time to myself. Maybe I was glad he had a place to go, another adult to watch him. We were friends. What was I going to say about it?”

“We’re still friends.”

“You had plenty of boyfriends. What could you possibly want with a boy?”

“It wasn’t like that—”

“I found a love note he wrote you in his drawer.” Dot stared straight ahead out the window. “I didn’t know what to do with it, what to say to him, so I left it there. I didn’t say anything to him about it, but the next day I was in his room cleaning, and the note was gone.”

“I never got a love note,” Ava said. “He was just a kid. He didn’t know what love was.”

“And now he won’t ever know, will he?” Dot folded her hands. “I stuck up for you in this neighborhood,” she said. “When people called you ‘the Jew,’ I told them not to talk that way.”

A wire tightened in Ava’s spine. “Who called me that?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Let her talk, Ava thought. Let her say whatever ugly thing she was going to say. If Ava was in her position, she’d probably be coming apart, too. It didn’t have to mean anything, and if it didn’t really carry weight, well, then, it didn’t have to hurt. Ava pulled onto Warwick Avenue. The neighborhood was dark and quiet. She thought of how Dot used to bring over cakes, thanking her for letting Rose and Jimmy hang out at her house and eat countless meals there. “You’re a great neighbor,” Dot wrote on a card she had sent Ava. “And a good friend.”

“Everyone loved my husband, did you know that?” Dot said abruptly. “He was the nicest guy in the world. He was this big, strapping, handsome guy. When the streets were snowed in, he’d get out the shovel and clear the walk. If I was sick, he’d go get the groceries. He remembered birthdays and anniversaries and he was always smiling. You would have liked him. And I bet he would have liked you, and not the way you think, either, because he was so crazy for me that there just wasn’t room for anyone else. You might be beautiful, but even if I was in curlers and Pond’s cream, my Benjamin would have gone for me.”

Jake was crazy for me, too, Ava thought, and then she thought how stupid that was, the many ways you could fool yourself. She had never met or known Benjamin, and only knew what Dot and the neighbors told her about him, and then, it was all so reverential, she didn’t really know what to believe. Maybe Dot’s husband really did dote on her and never cheated. Perhaps he came home every evening with a smile and waltzed her in her housedress and pearls and kissed her nose. When he died, the last thought he had might have been about how much he wanted to see her face.

She pulled up in front of Dot’s house and let the motor idle.

“Isn’t it funny that it’s easier to talk about Benjamin than about Jimmy? Maybe it’s because I know how Benjamin’s story ended.” She looked at Ava. “You think you know how your life is going to turn out and then it turns around and kicks you in the teeth. You don’t know what’s in store for you, and maybe it’s better that you don’t.”

“Do you want to stay at my place?” Ava blurted. “So you won’t be alone?”

“Alone? There can be a hundred people near me and I’ll still be alone,” Dot said.

“You have Rose.”

Dot averted her face. “Yes, I have Rose,” she said.

“You can call me,” Ava said. “It doesn’t matter what time.”

“I won’t call, but thank you.”

“I’ll check on you tomorrow,” Ava offered. “I’ll make you and Rose dinner if you like.”

Dot shook her head. She got out of the car heavily, as if she were sleepwalking. She made her way up the walk and the last thing she did before she went inside was to flip the switch for the outside light, so it shone brightly, like a beacon.

Chapter Ten

Jake didn’t call. Every time the phone rang, Ava jumped to answer, but it was always a wrong number or someone wanting to sell her something. At work, every time she heard the glass door open to the reception area, she looked up expectantly, waiting to see his face, but it was never him. I never promised you anything, he had told her, but hadn’t he? Wasn’t a kiss a promise? Wasn’t wanting to meet Lewis a contract?

Lewis didn’t seem to notice Jake was gone from Ava’s life. June turned into July, and sometimes at night she heard him crying and she’d go in, but as soon as she opened the door, he had the covers over his head. She once heard him talking to Rose in his room, the two of them mapping out where they’d look next. She didn’t interfere.

Ava began to have conversations in her head with Jake, and the more she did, the more furious she became. Why hadn’t he been more supportive? How could he expect her to upend her life? Imagine him not calling her or giving her time!

One day, when she didn’t have to work until the afternoon, she put on her favorite red dress and earrings and heels and then she took the car and drove to Jake’s Cambridgeport house. She was going to confront him, give him one last chance. “Don’t chase,” the women at work always cautioned each other, as did the glossy magazines, but Ava told herself she needed to make sure, and that was different. And besides, what did she really have to lose?

By the time she reached his neighborhood, she felt dipped in sweat. Her dress was pasted along her back and her curls were fuzzing. She fluffed them with her free hand and then turned onto Jake’s block, an enclave of apartment buildings and old houses, and there was a moving truck. When she got out of the car, her body was shaking. All her plans began to fade. The front door slapped open and a young couple sprang out of the house, laughing, holding hands. The woman was wearing a gingham shirt tied above her waist.

“Are you lost?” the man asked Ava.

“I don’t know.” Ava stared at them and then at the moving truck.

“Can we help you?” The wife’s voice was full of bells.

Ava could have made something up, that she was indeed lost and needed directions back to Waltham, but all her energy seemed to have left her. Plus, she hated lying. “My boyfriend used to live here,” she said. The man and the woman exchanged glances, and she felt like an idiot. What they must think, Ava thought, and then she turned to go back to the car.

“Wait!” the woman said and Ava stopped and looked back at her. The woman was still holding her husband’s hand. “Did you want to come in?” the woman asked.

“I’ve never been inside,” Ava admitted.

“It’s just empty rooms now, but go have a look if you want.”

Ava hesitated. “Really, it’s fine,” the woman encouraged. “We don’t mind, do we, Bobby?”

“Be our guest,” Bobby said.

Ava didn’t know what she expected. Maybe that she’d feel Jake in the rooms, that she’d find a photo of herself that he had left behind, but all she felt was empty. He had sold his house so fast, the same way he had left her. She wandered the rooms, the big living room with a bay window, a smaller room that must have been the bedroom, the kitchen and the bath. The rooms smelled faintly of Ajax and floor polish. The windows sparkled and light danced across the wood floors. She sat in the middle of the bedroom, running her fingers on the floor. Lewis, who had believed in magic, told her once that rooms carried the personalities of the people who had lived there, that if you shut your eyes you could hear them whispering to you. She had laughed at that time, but now she shut her eyes and strained to hear what message Jake might have left her. All she heard was the sound of a plane flying overhead.

Ava got up, smoothing her dress, rubbing her ankles. Wherever he was, Jake wasn’t here, and she was, and that was a problem.

She walked out. The man and woman were in the back of the truck. They couldn’t see her, which was a relief because the last thing Ava wanted was to have to chat right now. She quickly made her way to her car and drove off.

Ava arrived at work just a few minutes late. Her dress was really too fancy for the office, her heels too high, but she couldn’t afford to take the time to go home and change. Well, the other girls would think she had a date. They’d be impressed. She had made the mistake of saying the words
my boyfriend
at work a month ago, something the other women never let up on. They both wanted to know who he was, what he did, and how serious it was, and every answer Ava came up with seemed to be the wrong one. “A jazz musician? Really?” Charmaine had said, although she really seemed to mean “Couldn’t you do better than that?”

As soon as Ava sat down, Betty came over. “Jeeze Louise, what’s with the sad puss?”

“I broke up with my boyfriend,” Ava said. She didn’t know why she said that. It was and it wasn’t true, but she didn’t want the women thinking she’d been dumped. Betty peered closer at her, and that made Cathy and Charmaine study her, too. “It wasn’t working out so I gave him the boot,” Ava said. “You were right. A jazz musician is no boyfriend. I should have listened to you.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Cathy said, but her voice was sad when she said it.

“I dated an engineer once,” Charmaine said. “The first day he came to get me, my mother told me, ‘He’s not for you’ because he hadn’t bought her a little gift. I didn’t believe her, but then I saw how stingy he was, and soon after, he just broke it off.”

Betty put one hand on Ava’s shoulder. “Forget that jerk,” she said.

All that day, the women were kind to her. Betty loaned Ava her smock so Ava wouldn’t get carbon marks on her dress. At eleven, when the other women went to break, Cathy stopped at Ava’s desk. “You want to come?” she said.

Cathy’s face was open, but Ava didn’t think she could move. “Thank you for asking,” she said. “But I think I’ll work through this.”

Cathy put one hand on Ava’s shoulder, a touch so gentle, Ava wanted to grab her hand and hold on to it. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”

When the women returned, Betty put a small paper plate with a lemon square on it on Ava’s desk. “I know you aren’t hungry, but eat. Sugar gives you energy.”

Ava took a bite of the square because the women were watching her. It was crumbly and overly sweet and the middle didn’t taste as if it were quite done, but she ate all of it. “Delicious,” she said. “Just what I needed.”

“My mom made it,” Charmaine said. “Everyone loves her world-famous squares.”

Ava couldn’t concentrate on sinks and tubs and toilets today. The new claw-footed tubs made her think of Jake soaking after a session. The plaid sink that no one wanted reminded her of the plaid shorts she had worn to picnic with Jake when he had told her he couldn’t wait to get her out of them. She thought of Jake, driving somewhere new, a U-Haul loaded with all the things he owned pulled behind him. She didn’t even know his new address.

At ten to five, before the closing bell rang, Betty leaned over. “If you want to sneak out, I’ll cover for you,” Betty said. “I’ll tell Richard you’re on the rag. That always shuts him up.”

Ava quickly got up, keeping her typewriter uncovered, her little lamp switched on. If she ran into Richard now, she’d pretend she was going to the ladies’ room. She nodded at the other women and headed for the elevator, not relaxing until she was back out on the street.

As soon as she got home, the phone was ringing and she picked it up. Jake. It was Jake.

“Mrs. Lark,” said a voice. “Did you know one of your boyfriends has a record?”

Ava swallowed. “Who is this? What are you talking about?”

“Hank Maroni. One of your boyfriends, Jake Riverton. Actually Jake Richardson. He did time for assault in juvie. Did you know that? Did you know that he had another name?”

She flinched. Assault. It was an ugly word and she couldn’t believe it, but suddenly, sickeningly, it explained why Jake wanted to get out of town so fast. What was she supposed to say? “It’s got to be a mistake,” she said. “Jake would never harm anyone.”

“Where is he now, Mrs. Lark?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anything anymore.” She began to hear something humming in her ear, like the whine of an insect.

“If you hear from him, if he calls you, you let us know,” Hank said. “We’re going to be checking further into this.” The humming in Ava’s ear grew louder. She had never seen Jake even get angry. Could he really be violent and she hadn’t seen it? No, it couldn’t be true. She wouldn’t believe it because then it would mean that she hadn’t known him at all. It would show how stupid she really had been to love him. She hung up the phone and then she planted her hands flat on the table, as if that could stop their shaking.

Jake was gone from her life. The next few days, she forced herself not to think about him, not to remember. If she felt like crying, she did it quickly and then drew herself up. No matter how she yearned for him, she knew he wasn’t worth it. She wouldn’t waste time trying to find him. She’d only try to find Jimmy.

Now, when the phone rang, she didn’t immediately wonder if it was Jake. Instead, she thought it could be the boy, and why not? If Jimmy was going to call anyone, he would call her. She was an adult he trusted, but not a parent who might punish him. And she had already kept one secret for him.

About a year ago, she had been home from work with the tag end of a cold, when the bell rang. She had thought it must be the mailman with a package, but there was Jimmy, in a pressed white shirt and dark pants and good leather shoes. “Lewis isn’t home,” she told him, a blossom of tissue at her nose.

“That’s okay. Can I come in?” he asked.

She didn’t know why she let him in. Maybe because he looked so pained. She showed him in and he sat carefully on the edge of the couch. “Are you okay?” she asked.

His dark eyes looked everywhere but at her face. “Jimmy,” she said his name, and then he looked at her and his face was so full of longing, she felt struck.

“I like you,” he said, his voice a rasp. He looked at his feet, at his carefully shined shoes.

“I like you, too. I like all the neighborhood kids.”

He sat there, fumbling his hands in his lap.

“Is something wrong?” Ava asked. “Do you want some juice or chocolate milk?”

“I’ve never kissed a girl,” he whispered.

She didn’t laugh. “You’re twelve. You have lots of time for that,” she said. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Would you give me kissing lessons?’

Ava stood up then. Her nose was red and she hadn’t combed her hair. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and she knew she must have looked a thousand years old. Yet here was this boy.

“Why would you ask me that?” she said quietly.

“I told you. I like you. I think you’re beautiful.”

“Jimmy—” She sat back down. “I want to tell you something,” she said. “I am flattered more than I can tell you, but I’m far too old for you, plus I’m your best friend’s mother, plus I want you to save your kisses for someone your age who deserves them.”

His mouth wobbled. “James,” she said. She had never heard anyone call him that, but she knew it sounded more adult.

He lowered his head. “Everyone acts like I have cooties. I have no one to do things with except Lewis and Rose. No girl will sit next to me. Not the way they do with Lewis, even though he doesn’t notice.”

She knew that. She had seen the way Lewis missed all the signals Rose was throwing toward him. She sighed. “You wait,” she said. “Girls are dumb about these things when they’re young, but when they get older they smarten up. They see that your best feature isn’t your eyes or your thick hair, but your good heart.”

“So you won’t give me kissing lessons?”

“No. But I want you to promise me something. That your first kiss will be from someone near your age who loves you, who really sees you for who you are.”

He stood up. “You won’t tell anyone I asked, will you?” he said and she lifted up her hand and made a motion as if she were locking her lips shut.

“You probably shouldn’t come around here anymore when Lewis isn’t home, either,” she said quietly.

“Why not? I can’t even talk to you?”

“Of course you can. But when Lewis is here.”

He still came by. He brought over a Wooly Willy toy, a big, bald cartoon face under a bubble of plastic, with tiny metal particles settled on the bottom, and he showed her how all you had to do was touch the screen with the special magnetic wand and you could guide the particles to make whiskers or eyebrows or a big mop of hair. She made him grilled-cheese sandwiches and TV dinners with apple brown betty for dessert, and when he didn’t touch the peas, she didn’t say a word. Still, she became more careful when he was around. She didn’t hug him the way she used to. When Jimmy came over to see Lewis, the two of them would head to Lewis’s room and shut the door. Ava wondered if Jimmy had told Lewis that he sometimes came over here by himself. She wondered what her son might think, but as far as she could tell, Lewis never treated her differently or even looked at her with suspicion.

One evening, when she was in her room reading and the kids were playing cards in the dining room, she heard Jimmy ask Lewis, “Do you have a father who’s still alive?”

“Of course I do,” Lewis said hotly.

“Where is he, then? Why doesn’t he come to see you?”

“My father is crazy about me.” Ava heard the stutter in Lewis’s voice. “He writes me letters all the time. He’s tall and strong and he used to win prizes for being the best salesman and stuff.”

“Really? Can I see the letters?”

There was a silence. “They’re private,” Lewis said.

“Do you have pictures of him? What did he look like?”

Ava walked into the room. “Who wants to go to Brigham’s for ice cream?” she said, and the boys jumped up.

The whole drive to Brigham’s, she worried. She saw how wistful her son was when he talked about his dad. Lewis didn’t hear the anger in Brian’s voice when he called to talk to Ava. He didn’t know that his father could have easily come and visited him but simply chose not to. To him, his father was a hero and Ava was somehow the reason why Brian left.