Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (18 page)

Lewis heard his mother walking to her room, shutting her door. He heard her crying grow quiet, and then silence. In the morning, she’d act as if nothing were wrong. She might not even bring it up and if he did, she’d tilt her head as if she were remembering something. “He’s not for me,” she’d say, as if it had been her decision all along.

The night crowded around him. He didn’t want to spend any more nights listening to his mother’s crying. He didn’t want to see her hopefully putting on her face, introducing him to men who looked at Lewis as if he were a burr they couldn’t wait to remove. He didn’t want to go to the Star Market and make displays of canned beets that housewives would dismantle. He couldn’t stand to be here. There was a whole huge world spinning out there, a roulette wheel, and he could bet on it.

Lewis got up out of bed. There were two more weeks of school, but even if he didn’t go, he’d still graduate. He took the money he had been saving from his job for college—three hundred dollars—and tucked it into his knapsack. He took out a piece of paper and carefully wrote his mother a note, because he knew if he tried to tell her in person, she’d try to talk him out of it. She might be so upset that he would falter and stay home, and if he didn’t leave now, he might be stuck in Waltham forever.

After all that had happened, he couldn’t just vanish. “I promise I’ll let you know where I land. Love, Lewis,” he wrote. He thought a minute and then wrote, “This is not your fault.” She would wake up with her alarm at seven, rushing to work. She would knock on his door to wake him, and then she’d be frying eggs, making herself coffee to get through the day. She might go into his room and see he wasn’t there, but even then, she would think he was just out for an early walk. Maybe she wouldn’t see the note until the moment she was leaving. He didn’t think he could bear to see her standing there, like a pull of gravity on him, pinning him in place.

When he left, the house was dark and quiet. He put the note in an envelope and propped it up on the kitchen table, where she’d see it. He thought of her waking up, changing from the person who had had a bad date to the person who held a job. Soon she’d be the person who didn’t have a son at home, and maybe that would be better for everyone.

When he stepped outside, the neighborhood was empty. The whole walk to the bus, he thought about his mother. She would see his note. He knew her. She’d get in the car and try to find him, going to the places where she thought he might be. The bowling alley. The movie theater. The school. Just like she had when Jimmy was missing. She might call the police and they might tell her that Lewis was eighteen now, that there was nothing she could do. They might remember her. Oh yes, you’re the one who knew that boy who disappeared.

You’re the one.

She might just sit on the couch with his note in her hand.

He stood at the ticket line and he remembered all the cities on the map that he and Jimmy were going to go to. San Francisco because it was by the ocean. Kansas City because of the song. Madison because Jimmy thought they had good cheese and rodeos. By the time it was Lewis’s turn at the window, he had decided. He’d go where Jimmy would have gone. He’d live some of the life they had planned. He bought a ticket to Madison and climbed on the bus. The seats were only half-filled and people were looking out the windows or rustling paper bags and no one noticed him or paid him any attention. There was an empty seat at the back of the bus, and he slid into it.

By the time he was out of Massachusetts, Lewis began to make up a new story for himself. He had been born in Florida, and his parents were happily married. His father was an accountant, his mother a housewife, and they lived right off the beach. Oh, but they were an absurdly close family, so much so that he missed them greatly, especially his father. He had gone to a private school where he had lots of friends, and yes, they all kept in touch, and no, he was just putting off college for a few years until he found himself.

He’d never look back. And someday he might even believe his own story.

A
NOTHER YEAR PASSED
and he turned twenty and Madison now felt like home. Jimmy had been wrong about the cheese being so great here (it was mostly plain old cheddar) and there were no rodeos, but he liked the city nevertheless. He had called his mother as soon as he was settled. He told her how he didn’t want to take classes at Mass Bay, that he needed to be somewhere different, and though she cried, she didn’t try to make him come home. “I understand,” she said, though she didn’t sound like it. He could sense her biting back words she wanted to say. She asked when she could visit, or when he’d visit her. “We could always meet halfway,” she said.

When he told her he was a nurse’s aide, she didn’t laugh. “You’re my son, all right,” she said. “I’m proud of you,” and there was that confusion, that feeling where he didn’t know whether to be ashamed or pleased about being anything like her. “I just want you to be happy,” she said.

Chapter Fourteen

It was Saturday, and Lewis was at Suds over on State Street, finishing up his laundry. He had called Mick earlier to see if he wanted to grab a pizza afterward, but Mick had to take his daughter to get a Halloween costume, and when Lewis called John, John told him that his wife wanted him to go look at carpet for the den. “We’ll catch you at Pins Palace Friday,” John said, and Lewis pretended it was okay. Lewis didn’t even really like bowling all that much. He just liked hanging out with them, having something to do and someone to do it with.

Suds was crowded with housewives lugging plastic baskets and kids hanging on to their slacks, and the only other guys there were students, which wasn’t such a bad thing, because they usually stuffed all their bright colors and whites together in one load, making things move a little more quickly. The Beatles boomed into the place, though you couldn’t really hear much over the noise. Plastic seats lined the walls and if you weren’t folding or washing, you were waiting for the next available machine, which Lewis knew from experience could take awhile. In the corner, the matron who gave you change was smoking, tapping the ashes on the floor. Lewis had positioned himself to be next in line for the washer over in the corner, sitting at a chair catty-corner to it, but he hadn’t realized that the woman commandeering it was going to do two separate loads plus a hand-wash. When he sighed audibly, she glared at him. “Hey, I was here first,” she told him.

By the time he was done with his wash, the dryer situation didn’t look much better. Already, a fight had broken out because a girl had taken out someone else’s dry clothes, piling them on the folding table, so she could stuff in her wet ones. At the far end, a dryer stopped with a whoosh, and a woman in a blue hat swarmed toward it. Lewis sat, resigned to a long wait, telling himself he had no plans anyway, and wishing he had brought a book, when a woman ran into Suds, all pineapple-blond corkscrews and dark eyes. She was out of breath, but Lewis couldn’t take his eyes off her. Every woman he knew now had hair as long and straight as Joan Baez’s or big teased bouffants, but here she was with all those ringlets. She opened the door to the dryer and even from where he was sitting, he could see the clothes inside were still damp.

“I just have to run it another cycle,” she apologized to the waiting woman. She dug in her jeans. “I know I have some change,” she said, shifting her hips.

“You don’t have change, then this dryer’s available, wet stuff or not,” the other woman snapped.

“Just wait. Please,” the blonde said. She patted down her back pockets. “I don’t know where my wallet is. Maybe it’s in the car.”

“I’ve been waiting here an hour,” the other woman said. “I’m not waiting for you to go to your car,” and she put one hand on the dryer, claiming it.

Lewis got up and walked over to the dryer. He dug out the change he was going to use for his own wash and quietly put it in the dryer, sliding the change slot closed. The dryer sputtered and whirred.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” the other woman said, but the blonde was looking at him, her mouth curling into a smile.

“You’re so kind,” she said.

They sat together on the plastic chairs while her clothes spun around. He ran out and got more change, and when he came back, not only had she held his seat for him, but she had claimed a dryer for him. He threw his clothes in, and when he came back to his seat, she pointed to the map that was sticking out of his pocket. “Are you new here?”

“Not really.”

She gave him a funny look.

“No sense of direction,” he admitted.

They both got coffee out of the machine by the door and she kept blowing across the top of her cup. “What can I say?” she said, smiling. “I wish they would sell iced tea.”

It was hard to hear over the din of the machines, but she leaned forward so she could talk to him. Her name was Rita and she said she had grown up in Manhattan and come here for school and unlike all the other East Coasters who fled back home as soon as school was over, she had stayed and opened up a little dress shop, Fine Frocks. “I know it probably sounds ridiculous,” she said. “But I think I change lives. I know what people should be wearing, the colors they need to perk them up, give them confidence. I have some clients who tell me to just pick things out for them and have them ready. They trust me that much.” She gazed at him. “You could use more green,” she said and he suddenly wanted to go out and buy a green shirt just to please her. She told him she had a lot of friends, but she didn’t see people as often as she’d like outside of the shop. “They all have kids now,” she said. “Families. Work. You know how it is.”

Lewis thought of the guys he bowled with. “I know what you mean,” he said.

She began to talk about her parents, how her mother had been an opera singer who gave it up when she got married because it would have meant traveling all over and she wanted to be at her husband’s side. “Every day at four, she’d peel me away from her so she could shower and put on a dress and perfume,” Rita said. “And every time my father walked through the door, her face changed. She just lit up, even after all those years of being together. Isn’t that something?”

Lewis thought about how hopeful his mother used to be whenever she had a date, and how most of those evenings ended with her crying quietly behind her bedroom door. “It’s something,” he said.

She told him how she and her brother would fling themselves at their father when he walked through the door and he’d always have something for them, a red rubber ball or a brown paper bag of rock candy. “Then my parents would talk together for ten minutes and we weren’t allowed to interrupt,” Rita said. “It was nice, though, hearing them talking.” Lewis thought about all the days he had sat on his front porch, waiting for his father to show up, aching at every car that passed.

Rita didn’t finish talking until she was done with her coffee, then she looked at him as if it was his turn, and he felt like someone had shined too bright a light on him. What story was he going to tell her? It was hard with people you wanted to keep seeing, people you wanted to know better.

“So,” she said. “Are you going to tell me that you’re wanted by the FBI?”

That smile was making him want to tell her the true story of how he ended up in Madison, but then she’d feel sorry for him, and he didn’t want that. So instead, he told her what he had told Elaine. He told her as much of the truth as he could, listening to himself carefully because he didn’t want to lose track and forget what he had said.

He told her he was a nurse’s aide, that he sometimes talked to this old woman Sheila, who was always in and out of the hospital, but most of the time he just sat and listened to her talk. “That’s lovely,” Rita said. He told her about all the movies he went to, the bookstores he frequented, even the bowling on Friday nights, and she showed him her long fingernails, laughing. “Can you imagine me bowling with these?”

He could imagine it. He could see himself having dinner with her and walking with her and kissing her mouth. But maybe she was just passing time in the laundromat, being nice to him because he had rescued her dryer for her. Maybe she always told her life story to strangers.

They sat at the laundromat until it it grew dark outside, the air nippy with fall. Almost everyone else had cleared out by now. He kept buying more cups of coffee, although he was now so wired, his hands were shaking, but he didn’t want to leave because what if he didn’t see her again? He noticed Rita glance at her watch, but he saw, too, how she took her time folding her wash, lingering over each piece the same way he was. When she finished balling the last pair of socks, she turned to him. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Lewis,” she said. “I hope I see you the next time your clothes are dirty.”

She pulled on her jacket, wrapping a kerchief around her hair. She bent to pick up her basket of clothes and he knew that he had to do something.

“Can I get your number? Would you like to go out to dinner some time?”

She looked at him, considering, and for a moment, he thought she was going to say no. “Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, I think I’d like that.”

H
E MADE A
reservation at Prunella’s, which Mick had told him was his wife’s favorite restaurant because the waiters kept refilling the bread basket without being asked. It was one of those new fondue places that were springing up, and though Lewis wasn’t sure how he felt about dipping bread in melted cheese, he thought it might impress Rita. They were supposed to meet there, and he got there first, his heart hammering. The restaurant was dark, and every table was lit with candles, and all along the walls were green, leafy fern plants.

As soon as he saw Rita come in, in a fancy dress, her ringlets piled on top of her head, he wanted to kiss her, to touch her hair, but instead he waved. They were led to a table, and he held the chair for her, before the host could. “A gentleman,” she said, pleased.

He didn’t want to blow this. He could tell that she was nervous, too, by the way she kept twisting one of her hoop earrings round and round. Maybe he couldn’t calm himself down, but he knew, from his work at the hospital, how he could make her relax. It was all in how you spoke to people, lowering your voice, tilting your head to show you were really listening. It was how you looked at someone, and she was so pretty that he could have looked at her forever.

They were halfway through the fondue, Lewis already sick of the cheese, when she started telling a story of how she had been so traumatized seeing
White Heat
that she refused to go to high school because her science teacher looked just like Jimmy Cagney. “
White Heat,
” he said, amused. “That’s an old movie.”

“I saw it the week it came out.”

“You must have been five, then,” he said, and her fork hovered in the air.

“Seventeen,” she said.

He looked at her in wonder, doing the math in his head. “I’m thirty-two,” she said quietly.

“Twenty,” he said, and she put her fork down.

“Seriously?” She tilted her head. He reached across the table and took her hand, feeling a jolt of heat. “Who cares how old we are,” he told her. “What matters is we’re having a good time.”

He saw her relax, her features softening. “Maybe,” she said.

All through dinner, he didn’t worry about the age difference. He saw only how the light seemed to shimmy through her curls, how delicate her hands were. Plus, he liked listening to her. She was smart, and she made him laugh. But that night, after walking her home, he began to worry about it. She was in her thirties. She must have had other boyfriends, and how could he compare with someone who probably knew how to tip a maitre d’, or who even had a passport. He had kissed women before, but he had never slept with one. He had always thought he’d fumble his way through with someone as new to all of this as he was, but he hadn’t counted on someone like Rita. How long would it be before she learned he was too green for her? He told himself he’d just have to show her that their age difference didn’t matter.

He didn’t want to go bowling Friday nights anymore, because he wanted to be with her, but he didn’t know how to tell the guys, so finally, he just told them the truth. Mick grinned, waving his hand. “Go, go,” he said. “When your feet hit the ground again, we’ll be here to bowl with you.”

T
HE FIRST TIME
they made love, he was careful because he didn’t want Rita to know she was his first. He knew the mechanics of sex, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure how you went about it. She had opened all the windows in her apartment, so the air felt like a drug. She shone in the moonlight and then he kissed her, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what to do because he stopped thinking altogether.

Afterward, they sprawled on her bed, the sheet over the two of them. He couldn’t get over the shape of her shoulders, the way her neck sloped. Every time he looked at her ears, he felt a pull of desire. He wanted to kiss them. “Tell me everything,” she said, and he told her how Sheila had told him that her husband had died when he was about to take his first subway in New York, getting dizzy and falling off the platform right onto the tracks. He told her how John was taking up golf, and how Mick was going to night school to get his GED because he didn’t want to be an orderly all his life. Rita sat up. “Tell me something about you now,” she said.

He angled his body over hers. “This is what I want to tell you,” he said. He kissed her neck, the hollow below her throat, and then he kissed her mouth until he felt her kissing him back.

O
N
M
ONDAY, WHEN
Lewis walked into the break room to get a packet of sugar for his coffee, one of the aides actually smiled at him. “I saw you the other night with your girlfriend. I waved but you didn’t see me.” She pulled a chair out at her table and Lewis sat down. There it was, the coffee pot, bubbling as always. The donuts layered onto a tray, even though all the women always complained they were too fat and they really shouldn’t.

Just like that, things changed. The nurses began to talk to him and even confide their secrets. They told him that, unlike their boyfriends, he really listened, and how could they get their guys to do the same? They began to rely on him more at work, too, to appreciate that he might just be an aide, but he had a reputation for calming patients down. “Mr. Tranquilizer,” one of the aides called him. They began to give him useful tips, like showing how to rely on a drawsheet instead of lifting patients up under their armpits (“Your back will give out in two years,” one nurse said).

He found himself gravitating back to the nurses, wanting to hang out with them in the break room. “Call me Angie,” one nurse said, even though he had always called her Miss Roget.

He was walking down the halls when he saw that Sheila was back, sitting in a hospital bed surrounded by magazines. “Hey stranger,” he said, coming into her room, and she smiled, waved, and then tapped her chest. “Always my heart,” she said. “Come talk to me.” He pulled up a chair, listening to her talk about how the doctors were treating her, why she especially loved the lime Jell-O. He couldn’t resist telling her about Rita, as if the old woman’s approval would cement things. “She’s beautiful,” he said and Sheila nodded, settling into her sheets. “My Bill was beautiful,” Sheila told him. “His being pretty got us through a lot of rough patches.”