Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (20 page)

“I love it,” she said. And she had. The whole image of herself as a sleek, powerful jungle creature, of something undomesticated, made her want to kiss the spot where his neck joined his shoulder.
Jungle Cat.

Suddenly sleepy, she turned off the lights and headed for her room. Lewis used to believe in ghosts when he was a little boy. He’d insist on sleeping with the lights on, and sometimes he would grow so frightened, he’d ask for Ava to sit in the rocker and wait until he was sleep. Lewis would pull the covers up to his chin. She would see him trembling. “Be a man,” Brian would urge him.

“He’s not a man, he’s a little boy,” Ava said, one night.

Brian shined a light under the bed. He poked in Lewis’s closet, pushing the clothes aside. “No zombies. No devils. No nothing,” Brian said.

“Zombies?” Lewis quavered and Brian sighed again. “Don’t you start,” he said.

“Leave the door open as wide as it goes,” Lewis pleaded.

“Fine, but don’t complain if you hear the TV,” Brian said.

Ava bent and kissed her boy goodnight, breathing him in. “I’m right here,” she whispered. When Ava checked on Lewis later, she saw him sleeping with the blanket all around him like a shroud, with only his tiny nose poking out. God, but it broke her heart. She carefully bent over and loosened up the folds so he’d get more air.

Now she went into his room. She opened a drawer and there was an old rugby shirt of his. She pulled it out and held it against her face, breathing in his scent, and when she started to cry, she told herself she was being stupid. She had lied when she had told him there were no ghosts. There most certainly were, and they were right here in this room, haunting her.

I
N THE MORNING,
the phone rang and she ran to the kitchen to get it and as soon as she said hello, she somehow knew it was Lewis. She was still his mother, no matter what had happened between them. His voice sounded tinny, like the scratch of metal on a can. Her knees buckled and she reached for the kitchen stool, sloping her body down onto it. “Lewis,” she said because she didn’t know what else to say, and because she didn’t want to say anything that would make him hang up. He told her about his job, a little about his life. He wished her a Happy New Year.

She wanted to ask if he had a girlfriend, if he had friends or if he was lonely, but instead, she pressed the phone against her temple. It was like talking to a stranger sometimes.

“I’m tired from work,” he said. He told her how he had sat with a cancer patient all night, holding her hand, listening to stories about her grandkids until she felt better. He was glad it was Saturday and as soon as he got off the phone, he said he was going to sleep all day. “I read medical books at night,” he told her.

“You were always smart,” she said. She could hear something humming through the wires.

“I’d better go,” he said. “I just wanted to say hello.”

She started to say something else, to tell him how much she missed him, but then she heard the click of his phone hanging up. She sat there, holding on to the receiver, unable to let go.

The hours spread before her. Maybe she should make herself something to eat. Ava had always been a lousy cook. When she was growing up, her mother used to joke that Ava couldn’t even boil water and kept prodding her to make a meal, telling her it was a talent she needed to cultivate if she was ever going to get married. “Men love my meat loaf,” she had assured Ava. “It has the surprise of a whole hard-boiled egg right in the center.” But every time Ava tried to make it, her mother standing by, coaxing her, Ava’s heart just wasn’t in it. The meat came out rubbery. The potatoes were starchy. “I followed the directions,” she insisted and her mother held up her hands in defeat. “Get a mix,” her mother urged. “Use cans. Everything’s so easy now.”

When she had married Brian, he assured her that he hadn’t fallen in love with her for her cooking. In fact, she had only made him spaghetti once, with sauce from a jar. He wanted to show her off, so they went out to eat almost every night. “Isn’t she a beaut?” he asked everyone and Ava felt as if she had been dipped in silver so she gleamed.

Marriage, though, changed everything. He began to look at her in a new and distressing way, lowering his eyes, as if he were taking her measure. He called her “the Mrs.” which sounded so much less sexy than “honey” or “doll.” He began noticing things around the house, stooping to pick up a tumbleweed of dust on the floor. He frowned when his shirts weren’t pressed. “Didn’t you know I’d need them?” he asked. “What do you do all day?”

“You didn’t tell me—”

“But sweetheart, isn’t it your job to know?”

“I’m not a mind reader,” she said.

“You’re my wife,” he said, and it sounded like an accusation.

Wanting to please him, she went to the bookstore and bought a cookbook called
Meals Men Love
. The glossy cover had a picture of a smiling man, his elbows on the table, a fork in one hand, a knife in the other, and coming toward him was his wife in a frilly apron, carrying a huge platter with a roast and potatoes on it. Ava riffled the pages, glancing at the Jell-O molds and the list of what ingredients would float in the gelatin and which wouldn’t (who knew to put cucumbers in lime Jell-O?), the sweet-and-sour spinach with a potato-chip crust that made Ava tired. Carrots had to be curled and celery had to form a spray like a living green plant. You were supposed to have salads and desserts and even a theme, like the Polynesian luau meal complete with leis by each place mat. There was only one recipe in the whole book that urged wives to “let the men do it!” and that was for a salad, and how hard was it to tear lettuce, pour on some bottled dressing, and toss it around? Why was the man in the picture beaming like he had discovered how to send a rocket to the moon? It all irritated her. She wanted to shake his wife and ask her, was she a fool? Didn’t she, like Ava, want to go out to dinner and have it served to her? Did she really want to make a meat-loaf train with carrot wheels and spend hours cutting hard peas in half for the heads of the passengers? She put down the book and called Brian on the phone. “I hate cooking,” she said, and he laughed, which made her feel better.

That night, she tried to make Beer-Battered Chicken. She dredged the chicken in the batter and fried it, but her timing was off, and by the time Brian came in through the door, the chicken had burnt on the outside, but was still pink and raw when she tore at it with a fork. The peas, she saw, were overcooked, all the color drained from them and the pearl onions looked like tiny eyeballs rolling in grease.

Brian might have been sweet and funny on the phone, but she noticed the way a tic pulsed near his mouth when he saw the plate she set before him. She heard the scrape of his fork on the plate, reluctantly teasing a piece of raw chicken.

It wasn’t long before Brian began telling her he had eaten before he came home. She felt a flash of relief. She began to eat by herself before he came home, too, or later, with Lewis, the two of them happy with peanut butter and jelly.

She hadn’t cooked for Jake. When he came into the picture, neither one of them couldn’t have cared less if they lived on TV dinners.

Well, she was alone now and could eat whatever she wanted. A meal didn’t have to include meat or vegetables. She could have pie for dinner if she wanted. In fact, blueberry pie sounded just delicious. There was ice cream in the fridge and no one to tell her not to have it on top.

She put on the radio. Ray Charles was singing that he couldn’t stop loving you. “A lot of good that will do you,” Ava told him. She went to the bookcase and took out her mother’s old cookbook and leafed through it until she found a recipe for blueberry pie. She got out the butter, shortening, cornstarch, and flour, and some frozen blueberries she had bought. “Stop acting like an idiot,” she told herself. “You can do this.” And if she couldn’t, she’d throw it out and no one would know. She got out a mixing bowl, tied an apron around her waist, and took a deep breath.

An hour and a half later, Ava stared in amazement at her pie. The crust was golden and when she tapped it with the edge of a fork, it flaked.

She took a bite. The crust melted along her tongue. The fruit was tangy. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty good. She sat there, in her tiny kitchen, and slowly, carefully, devoured the pie.

A
FTER THAT,
A
VA
began to bake pies whenever she could. She found she looked forward to it on the long nights when there was nothing to do, when everyone else was home with their families. She began to experiment, buying apples one week, and pears the next. Sometimes nothing worked right. The crusts came out hard or tasted like cardboard. More than a few times, the fillings were gelatinous or runny. Ava leaned against the counter, surveying the damage. So what if a few pies were disasters? She didn’t feel like giving up. There was no one judging her, no one telling her not to waste the flour and the butter. Plus, with a whole night ahead, she could throw out the bad pies, clean her work area, and then start again from scratch. Humming with pleasure, she made pie after pie until they began to look better, to smell better, and when she put the fork in her mouth, she shut her eyes and swooned.

She began to realize that she didn’t have to follow the recipes exactly, that she could use maple syrup instead of sugar and it would still taste delicious, that she could add less corn starch or more fruit for a brighter-tasting pie. She worked to perfect her crimp, studying the photos in her cookbooks, laying one finger along the dough, taking her time. She remembered her mother telling her that so much of cooking was your mood. You could have the best ingredients in the world, but if you were feeling ornery, nothing would taste right.

What got Ava, though, was there was no one to share her giddy joy when a pie came out right. “Oh, smell that!” she said to herself as a waft of cinnamon rose in the kitchen and the apples began to bubble. “How pretty!” she said, but the only other sound was the music from the radio. She wished she had a camera so she could photograph this pie and send a print to Lewis, with the words,
look what I can do!

Ava brought one of her blueberry pies into work. She didn’t know what she expected, but she felt jumpy. Every once in a while people brought in food. There were always Charmaine’s mother’s famous lemon squares or Richard’s wife’s chocolate cake, which was always too sweet for Ava’s taste, and sometimes, someone would splurge and bring something in from Bell’s Café down the street. Well, this blueberry pie was Ava’s simplest, the filling just blueberries and real maple syrup, vanilla, and cinnamon, but it was so perfect looking, so beautiful, she wanted to show it off. As soon as she stepped into work, she felt nervous. Charmaine was sipping a can of cherry Metrecal, making a face even as she smoothed the fabric of her skirt around her hips with her free hand. Betty looked at the pie. “Where’d you get that? Is that from the Teacup Café?”

“I made it,” Ava said.

“You?” said Betty. “You told us you were a lousy cook.”

“I am. But I can make pies,” Ava said.

Charmaine gave the pie another, more serious glance. “It looks good,” she decided. She put the can down. “I can diet tomorrow,” she said.

Ava placed the pie out by the coffee. By noon, when she returned to the kitchenette, the whole thing was gone. Richard was standing there, scraping his fork on the plate. “Did you have some of this?” he asked. “It’s fabulous.”

“I baked it,” Ava said.

He lifted his brows. Ava felt a flush of pleasure creep up along her neck. He had never said anything particularly kind about her work. Every few months, he had evaluations of the staff, and when it was Ava’s turn, he always told her “Keep up the good work,” and then refused to give her a raise. Last time, she asked him to tell her what she was doing that was good. She wanted to hear it. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing,” he had said. Now, he set the plate down. “Really?” he said. “Best pie I’ve ever had.” He winked at her, something she usually didn’t like. “Ava, you’ve got something,” he told her. For the first time that she could remember, he was looking at her face and not her bosom.

All that day, while typing up invoices for tubs, she thought about pie, about a new kind she might try. Bourbon chocolate. Pear spice. Apple pecan. She thought about how, when the weather got warmer, more fruit would be in season. She could drive right down to the DeVincent Farm Stand and get it.

At lunch, instead of staying in and eating at her desk, she began to frequent different cafés, just to taste test their pies, to examine the crusts at close range. She went to Juniper Tree and ordered the apple pie and when she couldn’t tell what the spice was, she asked. “Cloves,” the waitress said and Ava made a mental note to buy some. She went to Bell’s Café and had the Dutch apple, wanting to compare, but when she asked the waitress for the ingredients, the waitress laughed. “Bell won’t tell you any trade secrets,” she said. “Don’t even think of asking. She’d probably tell you the wrong thing anyway, just to throw you off the track.” The waitress nodded at an older woman with a long gray braid, who was angrily fussing with a blue-checked tablecloth.

“Is she always that intense?” Ava asked and the waitress laughed.

“That’s just Bell,” the waitress said.

“Well, please tell her this pie’s delicious,” Ava said. She watched as the waitress went over to Bell and spoke to her quietly. Bell stood up, her hands braced on her waist. She nodded when the waitress was talking and then glanced over at Ava, narrowing her eyes, as if she were sizing her up. It made Ava so uncomfortable that she quickly wolfed down the pie and left a big tip.

Every night, Ava couldn’t wait to get home. She no longer minded coming home to an empty house because she would soon be moving around her kitchen, baking, experimenting, listening to music. She made three small pies, each one different, and cut tiny slices for herself.

She tried to cook other things. She made a beef stew, which had no flavor. She roasted a chicken, which was dry. Never mind, she told herself. It didn’t matter if those things were not part of your gift. You just had to have one thing that was your own.