Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (2 page)

She was so thrilled when Lewis had found Jimmy and Rose. Of course, they would be together, the only kids on the block without fathers and with single mothers. Ava was grateful, too, that Dot Rearson was so open-minded, and they were actually good enough friends to talk over a cup of coffee every once in a while. Dot didn’t share the same prejudices as some of the other parents. Oh, Ava had heard the remarks.
Divorced and Jewish, what a combo platter.
“You killed Christ,” one neighborhood kid had told her matter-of-factly as he ran across her front lawn, and Ava had stood there, shaken. It was awful enough that Lewis had to say the Lord’s Prayer in school every morning (“Just fold your hands and shut your eyes and think about what you want to do later,” she advised him), but when Lewis was in third grade, he had come home with an F on a test, and she was about to yell at him when she saw all the questions were about Christmas—about Mary, Jesus, and Joseph.
Who was Jesus’s mother?
She had gone up to talk to Mr. Powers, the principal, but all he said to her was, “I understand your peoples’ sensitivity,” like it was her fault.

Well, these kids were lucky to have one another. You didn’t have to be a genius to see Rose was besotted with Lewis. Ava couldn’t remember how she had felt about love at thirteen, if love had ever unspooled her the way it seemed to be doing with Rose. How could you possibly feel so much when so young? Rose followed Lewis around, her head cocked as if she were waiting for him to say something to her. She looked at him as if she were breathing him in, her shoulders rising and falling. Ava knew Rose went into her room and daubed her mouth with Ava’s old DuBarry lipsticks, that Rose dotted Ava’s Wind Song perfume on her wrists, but Rose didn’t know that Ava set them out deliberately to make them easier for Rose to find. Once, Ava had seen Rose slide up behind Lewis while he was painting a model airplane. Rose lifted up her hand and held it just above his hair, as if she were blessing him, her eyes hidden beneath the palm frond of her bangs. He hadn’t noticed a thing. Ava, though, had watched and all she could think was,
You poor darling
.

She whisked into the den for her white gloves. Jimmy trailed after her, nearly bumping into her when she came back out again. “Jimmy,” she said and he grinned at her. Look at all of them, this round of wrongheaded love. Jimmy in love with her and Rose in love with Lewis. Lewis yearning for his father, and Brian in love with himself. Only Ava couldn’t imagine ever being that lucky again, to have the kind of innocent crushes these kids had, or what she most wanted, a love that might last.
You have all those men,
Brian had accused. He heard them in the background when he called, he insisted. He said someone he knew from Boston had seen Ava out on the town one too many times, dressed skimpily, with her shoulders and her bosom hanging out, and was that a way for a mother to act? “My pal said you looked drunk,” Brian had insisted.

Ava didn’t drink. And if she had men, she usually had them only for weeks at a time. It wasn’t long before they realized that Lewis was part of the deal and they didn’t want to be a father to someone else’s kid. They soon learned that despite her curvy hips (“Maybe you should wear a cowbell on them so we can hear you coming,” one man, an accountant who had asked her to dinner, had joked when he watched Ava walking), Ava wasn’t advertising anything but her heart, and the kind of relationship she was looking for was one that would end up with a ring on her finger.

A headache pulsed over her right eye. “Can you grab me a glass of water?” she asked Jimmy. He glided into the kitchen. Tonight, she’d come home and she wouldn’t think about how she hated and needed her job. She would put the lawyer out of her mind, and she would forget about Brian, looming like a storm.

Tonight, her latest boyfriend, Jake, was coming over. He was going to take Lewis and her to Brigham’s for ice cream, and she was thrilled about it. It was a school night, so Lewis had to be in bed by ten, but Ava thought a short first meeting might be just the thing for the first time the two guys in her life would meet. She didn’t give a damn what Brian thought, because this was something. They’d been dating three months already. Still, she had told Jake not to expect much, because when she had told Lewis about meeting Jake, he brought up his father, as if she and Brian were still married and what she was doing was a crime, and then he had gone into his room and shut the door. “We’ll get along fine,” Jake had said. She had never let Lewis meet the men she dated because she had never felt sure about them. But Jake was different. She thought that maybe this time, this one might last. He was the polar opposite of Brian, which had drawn her to him. Maybe he didn’t look as good on paper because he was a musician and he didn’t have the steady job Brian had had, the money, but he was easygoing. Kind. He actually seemed to like and appreciate her just the way she was.

She’d let Lewis get a double-decker cone, and while she wouldn’t let him actually ride Jake’s motorcycle, how could he turn his nose up at getting to sit on it?

“Maybe we could play checkers again tomorrow,” Jimmy said. “I know what I did wrong. I shouldn’t have moved so you could double jump me.” He handed her the water, in a purple steel tumbler the guy from the Esso station had given her as a promotion even though she didn’t have the money to fill her tank all the way. She glanced at Jimmy. How could she not understand such loneliness when she felt it herself? “Is your mother at home? Who’s watching you?” she asked and he shrugged, a little offended. “I can watch out for myself,” he said. “I’m not some little kid. I’m twelve.” He stood up, stretching. “Anyway, she’s going to the church carnival after the beauty parlor.”

The beauty parlor. Ava remembered when she could afford to spend a whole afternoon being pampered, getting her curly hair permed so it wouldn’t look so untamed, adding highlights so it would glint in the sun, and adorning her toes with polish with names like Rosy Rapture or Midnight Plum. The beauty shop women used to fuss all over her, asking endless questions about Brian, the one they were really interested in because he was so handsome, so charming to all of them when he came to pick her up at the shop. He’s a salesman, she wanted to remind them. He can sell anything to anyone, including himself. She ought to know. Now, she trimmed her own hair at home, pin-curled it herself, following the complicated diagrams in
Ladies’ Home Journal,
and made dates with Lady Clairol (
Does she or doesn’t she?
Well Ava certainly did, later scrubbing the dye spatters out of the tub with a stiff brush.)

“If you give me a moment, I can walk you home,” she said, glancing at her watch. It was nearly four. It would take her forty-five minutes to drive into Boston to work because of the traffic. She reached for her newspaper, glancing at the headlines. Communists and the pale baked-potato face of Eisenhower warning everyone about nuclear disaster.
We have to be safe, we have to be safe
. Over and over like a drumroll. She had seen Khrushchev on the TV news ranting about Stalin and all she had thought of was Lewis when he was five and how he had had a tantrum in the middle of Better Dresses in Filene’s because he was tired of shopping and wanted to go home. The kids had duck-and-cover drills at school, curling up under their desks, their hands over their heads, waiting out a fake nuclear attack until the teachers gave the all-clear signal, and Ava couldn’t see how anyone would know it was all clear when radiation was invisible, and anyway, couldn’t it chew right through a desk, let alone a person?

Jimmy looked out the window. “I can make it home myself.” He had the same rangy build that Lewis did. Both boys could use some meat on their bones. He sighed, as if he were humoring her. “You can watch me from the window. I’ll be fine,” he said.

“You just be careful,” she said. “And wait a minute. I’ll walk out with you.” Last week, she was running catty-corner across the street to borrow some eggs from Jimmy’s mother, Dot, when she had heard the neighborhood women gossiping about a man hanging around the playground at school, staring so intently at the kids that a teacher had strode over to find out what he wanted, but the man had sprinted into the woods. The week before, the
Waltham News Tribune
had reported a car had swerved onto a curb in Belmont and frightened a little girl. A man had tried to grab her, but she ran away. The kids seemed riled up by the news, especially Jimmy, who kept asking Ava how much faster could a man run than a child? “What if the man was in a car? What do they do to you when they have you?” Jimmy persisted.

“That’s not going to happen, so don’t you even think it,” Ava told him.

“We should watch our kids better,” Ava had insisted to the other neighbors, but one of the neighborhood women had narrowed her eyes at Ava. “It wasn’t one of your boyfriends looking for you, was it, Ava?”

“That’s not what her boyfriends are after,” someone had smirked and they had all laughed, except for Ava.

Well, things had calmed down. This is a safe neighborhood, people said, a good neighborhood. There had been no more reports, and if she still felt uneasy it was probably because all the gossip always seemed to lead to yours truly, Ava Lark, no thank you very much.

Ava grabbed her things, ferreting out her lipstick and swiping it on her lips. She held up one finger, to tell Jimmy to wait, and then she called Jake, just to make sure they were still on for tonight. “You bet, baby,” he said, “See you at eight,” and hearing his voice, rich as maple syrup, she pressed the receiver hard against her temple, and then she turned and saw Jimmy was watching her. “Come on, out we go,” she said. She led him outside, and then she locked up the house. (Fine! Let her be the only one to lock her door!)

It was so unseasonably hot. Everything looked wilted and spoiled in the heat. The tarry road buckled from the sun. Her car was dirty but she didn’t want to spend money to have it washed. Maybe it was something she could do with Lewis, or with Jimmy and Rose, too. Make it fun, washing her car.

Jimmy was the only other kid who just had a mom, but Dot was widowed, and Ava knew that that was considered a step up from divorce, since it couldn’t be Dot’s fault that her husband had keeled over from a heart attack while mowing the lawn. Rose was only three and Jimmy barely two when it happened. Dot had told her that her husband had had an insurance policy so large that she would never have to work. The neighbors had brought casseroles and flowers for weeks, and they still invited Dot and her kids to dinner and to backyard barbecues and parties. But when they found out Ava was divorced, they didn’t invite her to any of their soirees, not even to the Tupperware events, which maybe wasn’t such a terrible thing since Ava didn’t have extra money to spend. The women saw their husbands’ eyes following Ava, and they noticed the way the men talked to her as if she were as exotic as a South American parrot. They were always asking her if she needed them to fix her gutters or take out her trash. “Anything I can do,” one of the men said meaningfully.

“Where is everyone?” Ava wondered aloud. Why was everything so empty and still, as if the air itself had stopped in place?

“Our Lady’s, probably,” Jimmy said. “I told you. The church carnival. Same as my mom. You couldn’t get me there if you stuck bamboo shoots under my fingernails. The rides are junky and the hot dogs taste like rubber.” And then Ava remembered driving by the little parking lot by the church over on Trapelo, seeing how crowded with people and tables it was. “My mom won’t be back until after the church supper.”

Jimmy stared into the street for a moment. “Bye!” he said, and then he ran, all arms and pumping legs, her son’s best friend in the world. She was shamed to think that sometimes he was the best company she had. She watched Jimmy sprint out of her house. He tore out across her lawn, crossed the street, and veered to the left toward his home, two houses down, a yellow ranch house with white shutters. When he got to the door, he turned and waved with both hands, grinning.

Later, that’s what she told the police. How happy he was. How he smiled.

Chapter Two

Ava hurried herself into the office for the evening shift. She moved past the big green Perkin’s Plumbing sign (
WE PLUMB NEW DEPTHS OF GREAT DESIGN!
) to the small gray room that housed the three other women in the typing pool besides Ava, all of them in their twenties, younger than Ava by a decade. Traffic had indeed been terrible, stalled for miles, and it was now five on the dot. The other women had been here since nine in the morning, and they were done for the day, cleaning their workstations, draping their typewriters with plastic covers. Richard’s office was already dark, the door closed, which was a relief because it meant she wouldn’t have to talk to him. Betty frowned over her glasses at Ava. She took off her smock, thoroughly stained with carbon. Charmaine and Cathy were already putting on their coats

“Well, look who’s here,” Cathy said.

Ava sat at her desk, taking off the cover on her typewriter, reaching for one of the papers in her overfilled in-box, which even so, looked like a smaller pile than those of the other women’s. Each invoice she had to type was more mind-numbingly boring than the next. Her lightning typing was a curse because the faster she got a job done, the more work Richard gave her, and the less the other typists seemed to like her.

Maybe it was because she was older than they were. Betty, Cathy, and Charmaine were just working until they could get married and take on their brand-new lives, something they talked about incessantly. Cathy and Betty shared apartments with other young working women, and Charmaine lived with her mother, whom she treated like a girlfriend, calling her several times a day to ask for advice or just to say hello. They had friends and pets (Betty had once brought her new kitten Fluffy to work, hiding it in the file cabinet until Richard heard the meowing and made her take it home.) They all worked full-time, with paid vacation and job security. Betty had been there for five years already, and Cathy and Charmaine for only a little less.

She wasn’t sure why the women didn’t like her. Ava had tried so hard when she had started, bringing in a Whitman’s Sampler of candy to share, trying to make conversation. At first the women were friendly. They wanted to know everything about her. Betty admired the framed photo of Lewis that Ava had brought in. “You got one of his dad?” Charmaine asked. “I’m divorced,” Ava said quietly, and then the women stopped fluttering around her. They began to look at her as if there were something wrong with her, something they didn’t want to catch.

On her first day, when Richard had called from his office, “I need coffee in here,” Ava got up, thinking she’d make the other women’s lives easier, but Cathy quickly stood, nudging past Ava. “That’s my job,” she said curtly. Ava watched Cathy sweetly handing Richard his coffee, lowering her head so her curls dipped down onto her face, and when Cathy came back to her desk, she gave Ava a hard, triumphant smile.

Ava still tried, but she kept getting off on the wrong foot. Betty organized all the office parties for birthdays and engagements, and she took offense when Ava didn’t decorate her desk for Christmas the way the other women did. “I’m Jewish,” Ava had said. “Well, pardon me for trying to make things festive,” Betty had replied.

Coming in to work had begun to make Ava feel like she was walking across a field full of hidden explosives, so she kept to herself, because it just felt safer. She watched the women laughing and listened to them talking to each other over her head, as if she weren’t there. But she felt compassion, too. When Charmaine called her mother, she always seemed to be soothing her. “Mom, stop crying. I’ll be home soon and I’ll help you figure it out,” Charmaine said. Cathy was clearly smitten with Richard, but he ignored her even more than he ignored Ava, and Betty spent hours planning the office parties, buying decorations with petty cash and excitedly adorning one of the conference rooms, but unless it was to celebrate one of the secretaries or typists, she herself couldn’t attend any of the very events she had so carefully organized. She had to walk past the party and wistfully glance inside at her own handiwork.

Ava sat at her desk and studied the pile she had to type, a mix of invoices and letters. She was lucky, really. It was easy work and it paid the bills. She still felt wired from talking with the lawyer. She told herself to just think about all the good things that were in her life now, to block out Brian’s threats. Think about Lewis. Think about Jake. Her mouth curved upward.

“Is that finally a smile on your face or gas?” Betty said and Cathy laughed. Ava blushed with shame, as if she had been caught putting on her panties in public, but she kept silent.

“I don’t want to go to Rudy’s again tonight,” Cathy said to Charmaine. “The guys are just scouting good times and divorcées.”

Ava tried to keep her hands steady as she turned the scroll of her typewriter and quickly began typing.

“Want to invite Barb from accounting?” Charmaine said. “She’s fun.”

Ava finished the first invoice and reached for another. She thought she was fun, but they never asked her to join them. In a flurry of coats and laughter, they were gone. She had to admit she liked the office when no one was there. She worked in a narrow pool of light, and sometimes she brought in a little transistor, propping it on her desk so she could listen to the radio while she worked. She picked up another invoice. Plaid sinks. Who would want plaid sinks?

She glanced at her watch. Tonight she’d see Jake. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. Jake was a jazz saxophone player and her relationship with him was the longest she had had with a man since her ex-husband had left.

She’d met him one night when Lewis was at a sleepover at Jimmy’s and she had gone into Boston by herself. She’d wandered into a smoky little jazz club on Tremont Street and sat at the front table. He was alone on the stage, lean and tall, with a shock of black hair. When he played, it was as if the only thing that existed in the room was him and his music. He swayed with each note, smiling to himself as if he had a secret. Ava couldn’t look away from him. She felt as if he and his music had gotten into her blood and were coursing through her. Jake’s eyes were shut the whole time he was playing, but when he finished, she saw how pale and blue they were, like ice floes. He looked as if he were hypnotized with joy, and she couldn’t help but feel a flicker of envy.

Afterward, he came down into the audience. Several women flocked to him, but Ava saw him looking at her, and then he came over, the women trailing him. “You remind me of James Dean,” a blonde said, sliding up against Jake’s shoulder. “That kind of smart, burning sexy glow.”

“What about you?” he said suddenly to Ava. “Did you like the set?”

“You remind me of Charlie Parker,” Ava said. She cleared her throat and said it again. She spoke louder so he could hear her over the din, so he would understand that the music was the only reason she was here. “You’ve got some blues in with the jazz,” she told him. Jake looked at her with new interest. He brushed the blonde away. “You like Charlie Parker?” he said, but she knew he was really asking another question.

He rested one hand on her table, leaning toward her. “Let me take you to dinner,” he said impulsively. “Whenever you want.”

“You don’t even know me,” she said. She watched him carefully, wondering what he’d think if he knew who she really was. “I’m divorced,” she said. “I have a son. I’m Jewish.” He pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. “I like kids,” he said. “I teach a little. Kids are my favorite students.”

“Aren’t you on the road all the time?” she asked, beginning to relax. “How does that work with teaching?” She knew the stories about musicians, how you couldn’t depend on them, how they had lots of women, how they drank or took drugs. You’d have to be crazy to want to be with someone like that. Then she thought of Brian, how even with his steady job, he always was running off to sales conferences, coming home with awards or, once, an oversized star sprinkled with glitter that spelled out his name for the top salesman. She remembered, too, how lonely she had felt.

“Not me,” he said. “Rooted like a green plant. I have a steady gig here and a few other places around town.” He smiled encouragingly at her.

“Really?”

He leaned closer to her. “I even own a house.”

A mortgage. He paid a mortgage. She felt something unfolding within her. A thrill. She thought again of how he had sounded on stage, lost in a kind of zone, delirious with happiness. “So when can we have dinner?” he said. “Anytime you like. Anywhere you want.”

“My choice?”

“Totally up to you.”

She wasn’t sure how to answer. Brian had always planned everything for them. He would take her to the best restaurants in Boston, but he always ordered for the two of them. He’d take her to shows, but he’d decide what they were seeing. When she tried to talk to other women about wanting to have a say in things, they laughed. “At least he takes you out,” one woman told Ava. “Count your blessings.” And fool that she was, Ava had.

Smoke clouded around them and she felt as if she were seeing Jake through a haze. She blinked, trying to clear her vision and figure out if this was a good move for her or not, and then he started to get up, still smiling at her, and she reached for him. When he took her outstretched hand in his, a jolt of heat ran through her. “Thursday,” she said. “How about Thursday?”

That Thursday, a night when Lewis was staying at Jimmy’s again, Ava went to meet Jake at the restaurant she had chosen, despite his offer to pick her up at home. Instead of taking her car, which would be impossible to park, she took the bus, which left her off in front, and when she looked up, he was already there, standing at the door.

They sat at a table in the back, next to a potted tree that smelled faintly of jasmine. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and leaned toward her and she could smell him, like pine and grasses. She knew you were supposed to ask men about themselves, but he said, “Tell me about Ava,” and as she did, she realized just how much had been bottled up, all the stories she hadn’t been able to share with the neighbors or her coworkers. He didn’t seem to care that she had been married or that she had a son or that she was Jewish. When she told him about Brian, how he had cheated on her, running off with a woman who came with a business attached to her, he just shook his head. “What a jerk,” he said. “It was smart of you to get a divorce.” No one had ever said that to her. He didn’t look at her with pity, or wonder what she had done to make Brian leave her. She reached out and touched Jake’s fingers, one at a time, making him laugh.

When he asked to drive her home, Ava didn’t think twice about it. But when they got outside the restaurant, she stared in wonder at his motorcycle. “This thing safe?” she asked.

“With me driving, it is.”

She didn’t know what to do, but he was patiently waiting for her, and so she popped on the heavy helmet he gave her and hooped one leg over the seat. She held on tight, her head against his back, her eyes wide open as the streets flew by. The wind bit at her cheeks and flung her skirt up over her knees, but she didn’t loosen her grip. When he peeled into the neighborhood, she saw the curtains in the house across the street fluttering open, and for a moment she worried how this wonderful night might end up in neighborhood gossip.

She got off the bike, her legs wobbly. “Gotta get your sea legs,” Jake laughed and he held out his hand to gently steady her. Jake walked her to her door, polite. He didn’t try anything, not a kiss, not asking if he could come in. Instead, he walked his fingers up her arm as if he were playing notes, making her laugh. “We’re like jazz,” he told her, “we go together.” And then he said, “I’ll see you, kiddo.”

The very next afternoon, Jake had called and suddenly they were seeing each other as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He understood why she didn’t want him meeting Lewis just yet, how you’d need to prepare a kid for something like that, and he was fine about her keeping things quiet. He appreciated, too, that she cared about how the neighbors saw her, and he was careful to arrive late at night when everyone was asleep, and only on nights when Lewis was at Jimmy’s. “We’ll improvise,” he laughed. It was always an odd hour when she saw him. Friday after midnight. Wednesday morning after Lewis went to school. He called her blue note, bebop, but never honey, and every time he left, after she heard his motorcycle rumbling away into the distance, she had to stop herself from running after him.

At night, by herself, she sometimes worried. Jake didn’t have the things she had told herself she wanted. He did have a mortgage, but it was in Cambridgeport, which was sort of a hardscrabble part of the city, looping around the river, an area where everything was dirt cheap. He didn’t have a full-time job or a lot of money. It made her scared. One night, she told herself this was too crazy, too difficult, that it didn’t have a future. She’d have to break it off. Then he came over at two in the morning with his sax. He was keyed up after his set, and before she could open her mouth, he said, “Listen to this.” He took his sax and began playing something for her, a melody so haunting and moody, she was hypnotized. She couldn’t help it. She walked over to him, rested her head along his back, and she swore she could feel the music coming through her, like a vibration, almost as if she were a part of the melody. She shivered and shut her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him.

She knew what a big a step it was, Jake meeting Lewis, how it turned their relationship into something new. He had been the one who had suggested it, which seemed an even bigger deal to her. They were in bed when he had asked, the fan on them, filmed in sweat. “Wait,” Jake said, and then he vanished. She thought he was just going to get a drink or to the bathroom, but he came back with a glass of water. Laughing, he sprinkled it over her curves until she couldn’t help herself. She shut her eyes. She felt him leaning over her. “Ava,” he said. “You should let me meet your son now.”

She liked the way he put it, like she was in control, like it was up to her.
You should let me.
She threaded her fingers at the back of his head, pulling him closer so she could kiss his mouth.