Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (22 page)

“I’ve eaten here,” Ava said, though all she could remember was a muffin and coffee.

“Really? When? Name the last thing you ate here, and no looking at the blackboard menu for ideas. I’ll know if you lie.”

Ava shrugged, embarrassed.

“You’re not the only one who takes pride in her cooking,” Bell said. She motioned to a table. “Have a seat,” she said.

Ava complied, but when she reached for a menu, Bell shook her head. “Let me surprise you,” she said. “It’s soul food night.” Bell brought her a stew, silky with wide flat noodles and chunks of chicken, some turnip greens on the side, and then she sat down opposite Ava. “You ever had turnip greens?” She waited for Ava to take her first bite. “Good, right?” Bell said.

“I could never cook like this,” Ava said and Bell snorted.

“Bull,” she said. “Maybe you just don’t want to, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” Bell rested her head in her hands.

“I think you might be right about that.”

“My husband Henry started this café,” Bell said. “He worked here doing everything, the cooking, the cleaning, the buying, right up until he got cancer, and then I took over. Everyone thought I was crazy, that it was just grief talking, and that soon the place would run into the ground with a woman at the helm. I had all these buyers for it and then I decided I liked running the place. It gave me something to do. Plus, it made me feel close to Henry still.”

“You miss him?” As soon as Ava said it, she felt ridiculous, but Bell took a breath. “Everyone misses someone,” Bell said, and Ava thought of Lewis. “Yes,” Ava said. “They do.”

Ava was finishing the stew when she recognized a voice spinning across the restaurant. She looked up and Debbie Hill had come into the café. She had a wrinkled raincoat thrown over what looked like her flannel pajamas, and her hair was tied back in a chiffon kerchief. Shivering, Debbie looked right at Ava and then pretended she didn’t know her, turning quickly away. She slid into a booth in the back and popped up a menu so it hid her face.

Bell followed Ava’s eyes and then leaned forward. “See that woman?” Bell said, lowering her voice. “She comes here every night and has your lemon pie and cries.”

Ava looked at Debbie again. She remembered how Debbie’s husband had walked out with a suitcase, leaving Debbie standing on her front porch in a robe and fuzzy slippers, her face pale. Ava hadn’t spotted Dick since, and she didn’t see Debbie so much anymore, either, or even Barbara, their girl. Ava looked over at Debbie, who was clutching the top of her raincoat, avoiding looking over at them. “Do me a favor,” Ava said. “Don’t tell her I make the pies, but next time, give her a really big piece and I’ll pay for it. Tell her it’s on the house.”

T
WO WEEKS LATER,
Ava was shoveling snow off her front walk when she saw Dick’s car drive up to his house. He got out and Debbie came out of the front door, wavering for a moment before she walked toward him, her hand raised as if she were going to strike him, but instead, she rested her head along his shoulder. He stroked Debbie’s hair and said something quietly to her. Then Barbara ran out and wrapped her arms ecstatically around her father.

It made Ava feel better, even though Dick was no prize, and she wondered if Debbie would come back to the café anymore.

The cold air bit her cheeks, energizing her, and when she was finished shoveling, Ava decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. The people down the street were building an addition, making their tiny ranch house look more like a colonial. Someone else had painted their house this funny bright pink, with deep plum shutters. She was coming back around the block, her boots caked with snow, when she bumped into Bob Gallagher, planting a big
FOR SALE
sign on his lawn, hammering it down.

She was surprised. She had been so busy she hadn’t really seen much of him or his family. For ages, it seemed. “You’re moving!” she called to him. He strode over to her.

“Company’s moving me to Florida. Much more opportunity,” he told her. “Though I don’t like being so close to Cuba and that Fidel Castro.” He told her he was being paid for the move, that they had a nice brand-new split level right by the beach, something Tina had always wanted, and that realtors would sell this house. “I’ll miss it here,” he told Ava. “I’ll miss you.”

“Me?” She saw the way his mouth curved and then he leaned forward and hugged her. “Yeah, you,” he said.

I
N
M
ARCH,
B
OB
and Tina left. The house was sold to a doctor and his wife who wanted it as a teardown. As soon as the snow melted, there were bulldozers razing the property. Ava saw the new owners prowling about the grounds, the man tall and thin as a swizzle stick, in a fancy dark suit, his wife in a pink maternity dress with a big satin bow on the empire waist, her hands laced across her belly. “Hello!” Ava waved, walking over.

The woman glanced over at Ava and her husband thrust out his hand. “Stan Morton,” he said.

“Doris,” the woman said.

“It’s such a nice neighborhood,” Doris said. She waved her hand. “And the school so close.”

“We’re building everything brand-new,” Stan said. He told her they wanted a split-level, something imposing and different. They wanted a big fenced-in pool in the backyard. “You’ll see, we’ll have everyone over for a housewarming party when we’re done,” Doris said graciously.

The construction went on for weeks. The workers had to put up a fence around the property because two kids had written their names in a patch of wet cement. The sound of the trucks woke her every morning when the contractors arrived, six of them in old dungarees and T-shirts. For the first time in a while, Debbie Hill came outside and this time, her eyes were clear. “That house is going to make everyone else’s look plain old shabby,” Debbie said.

The family dug up everything, including the beautiful old willow tree in the backyard. They pulled up the sod lawn, and then, one sunny day in April, Ava came home from work to find, like the reopening of a wound, a police car in front of Bob Gallagher’s old house, the lights on. There was a line of sawhorses and yellow rope leading to the backyard, and cops standing around. But what was most disconcerting to Ava were the photographers, coming around the front of the house, snapping everything they saw, including the people. Ava blinked at the flash. Debbie, her hand resting on her mouth, looked at Ava, and that was when Ava began to get really scared.

Ava grabbed at Debbie. “What happened?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

Debbie stared at Ava. “They found an old bomb shelter,” she said. “And they found bones.”

Chapter Sixteen

Ava felt as if she couldn’t move. She stared at the lot, all those beautiful trees gone, the flowers, everything, really, just gone, like someone had punched a piece of the landscape away and filled it up with this dirty wash of sky.

She could see the new owners, standing helplessly, staring at their property—and it was theirs now, no matter what had been discovered.

She cautiously walked closer. She didn’t recognize any of these cops. Their faces were all new, but the feeling of dread was not. One of the officers stopped her. “Step away from the crime scene, please,” he said.

“Whose bones are they?” Ava’s could barely speak. One of the onlookers told her it was a boy, that they knew from the size of the femur. Someone else had said they heard there was a disintegrated pair of plaid shorts, a pair of sneakers with scribbles on them. Debbie put her hand to her mouth and then lowered it. “They called all the local dentists. They got a match already. It’s Jimmy.”

“How do you know? How do you know for sure?” Ava cried.

“I’m not going to ask you again, ma’am,” the cop said. “You need to step away.”

Ava thought of the day that Jimmy had vanished. The whole neighborhood, the cops, everyone had looked everywhere. Cars had been stopped. Strangers questioned. She tried to remember all that had gone on. The neighbors had been looking for someone in a car, for a stranger, for things outside the neighborhood. She hadn’t even known there was a bomb shelter. When had Bob even built it? And why hadn’t the cops found it in their investigation? They had checked every house on the block, every backyard, every basement. Hadn’t she heard someone say that? How could any of this be true?

“A bomb shelter! Who knew there was one in this neighborhood? What was he thinking?” Dick asked. “Why didn’t he tell anyone?” Dick shook his head. “I never trusted the guy.” All Ava could think of was all the times she had seen Dick and Bob playing badminton in Dick’s backyard, the net strung across the lawn, the two of them sweaty and puffing, not stopping until Debbie came out with cold drinks.

“Can you imagine? Bob a murderer?” Debbie shook her head.

“Don’t say that,” Ava said. She hadn’t liked Bob very much, but she had seen the tender way he kissed his wife in the mornings, the playful way he hugged his son.

“Are you sure? Are they sure it’s Jimmy?” Ava asked and Debbie looked at her with pity.

“Ava,” she said. “What do you think?”

The press had been here that morning while Ava was at work, a TV truck, a newsman in a suit. A neighbor had told Ava that Bob Gallagher was coming back from Florida for questioning.

A few neighborhood kids—kids Ava didn’t know so well anymore—in Keds and dungarees, roamed on their bikes, veering close to the house and then swooping away again.

A
VA WENT HOME.
She sat in her living room and stared at her walls. She thought of all the times Lewis ran wild over the neighborhood, how everyone’s house had an open-door policy. She remembered how Bob had once leaned in close to her when he was fixing one of her lights, as if he wanted to kiss her, how every time she needed her gutters cleaned or a drain unclogged, he was always there and as soon as he was done, he’d linger until she’d say, “Want coffee?” and of course, he always did.

Jimmy had been right here all this time and no one had known. What if Bob hadn’t gotten that new job? What if he had stayed? Would anyone ever have known? Or would there be more bones?

She picked up the phone and dialed Lewis. She wanted to hear his voice, as if she could touch him through the wires. This was something he would want to know. This was something they had shared. It rang and rang, but he didn’t answer.

The next morning, Ava stood in the middle of the street, when Stan walked over to her, his hat almost apologetically in his hand.

“We’re staying with my mother,” Stan said. “I don’t even know if we’ll come back here. Doris is just too spooked.”

Ava nodded.

“You knew this kid,” he said.

“I did.” Ava thought of Jimmy waving good-bye to her. The crooked smile. She thought how long the neighborhood patrols had gone on, how how much time the cops had spent on the case, and now they had found bones, and in less than a day, they knew they were Jimmy’s.

“I heard that there was no sign of struggle,” Stan said. “No evidence of anyone being around the shelter at all except for that kid. I heard the cops say that he must have known that place was there.” Stan looked past Ava. “Crazy kids,” he said. “They always think they’re invincible.” Stan folded his hat between his fingers. It was a cool day but his face was dappled with sweat. “Who’s going to buy this house now?” he said.

I
N THE FOLLOWING
days, Ava tried repeatedly to reach Lewis, but to no avail. She watched the news constantly, wondering if any national channels would pick up the story. Every local channel aired photographs of Dot, Rose, and Jimmy, and every time she saw them, she flinched, but the news told her nothing new. All those nights, everyone had searched for Jimmy. They had all wondered and panicked, passing stories around like party nuts, about what they thought might have happened, and none of them had been true. He hadn’t been pulled into a car. He wasn’t kidnapped and living as someone else’s son.

She turned the channel. Patsy Baker, the freckle-faced newscaster she liked, was staring out at her, talking about Jimmy. Ava hadn’t seen Patsy at the crime scene, but she was talking as if she knew all the facts. She talked to a cop Ava didn’t recognize, either, who looked uneasy and defensive, and when she asked him about the bomb shelter, when she asked why no one had looked for it back when Jimmy had first disappeared, he sighed. “No one told us about any bomb shelter,” he said. “Don’t you think we would have checked it out if we had known?” He pointed out that when a kid vanishes, the first twenty-four hours are the most important. “You have to do everything you can do fast,” the cop said. Patsy nodded gravely at him and then she mentioned that some people felt the detective in charge, Hank Maroni, had botched the case, hurrying it along, cutting corners because it was a working-class neighborhood rather than a wealthy one. He had been fired a few years ago for tampering with evidence on another case, and had died of a heart attack shortly after, believing he had been made a scapegoat.

Ava sighed and then Patsy began talking about how they were calling in some of the old suspects. Ava felt relieved they hadn’t called her, but she wondered if they had found and called Jake or her other boyfriends, if once again, she’d be getting those angry phone calls. Then Patsy switched to talking about Bob Gallagher, how he had come back for questioning. He had insisted on a lie detector test, and the cops had had to call in to Boston to borrow a polygraph machine, and he had passed. “We have an interview tape,” Patsy said, and there was Bob, his face drawn, his forehead pinched in worry. Bob insisted that he had forgotten the shelter, that he had started building it when his son was a baby, but he had never even totally finished it. He’d given it up years ago, letting it rust shut, and he was sure that no one ever knew about it but him.

The whole time Bob was talking Ava leaned forward, as if the real truth might be floating on top of his words and all she would have to do would be to be quick enough to skim it free. He kept talking and talking, revealing much more than the interviewer asked for.

“I was afraid of Communists,” Bob said. He said he had read this
pamphlet,
Is
This Tomorrow: America Under Communism
!
that
spooked him every time he looked at the cover, where people were screaming in horror and running from a nuclear attack. What struck him most was the panic, the way neighbor clawed over neighbor to escape the bombs.

He bought plans to build a fallout shelter, but he told no one what he was doing, because he couldn’t risk his neighbors wanting to storm the small space if there was an attack and jeopardize his family’s safety. There just wasn’t room. He hadn’t even told his wife, because he knew she was more soft-hearted than he was and she wouldn’t dream of shutting anyone out. He’d never tell his little boy who would consider it a playhouse, plus who could keep kids quiet about a thing like that? Instead, he crept outside at three in the morning, when his wife and son were sleeping. His yard was ringed by big trees and a fence. No one could see what he was doing. The building materials were all in the garage, mixed in with his workshop supplies, and he would carefully take them outside to the area he had specifically cleared, concealed by overgrown hemlock bushes. Surprisingly, no one seemed to wake at the noise, or if they did, not enough to come over and see what was going on. He worked by flashlight, hidden by the hedges and the trees and the dark night. When he was finished, he covered the opening with sod and then brought everything back inside or hid it in the yard. During the daytime, he yelled whenever he saw anyone even attempt to cross his lawn, and gradually people learned not to do it. Sometimes, walking in his backyard, he felt a surge of comfort just knowing it was there, that he could protect his wife and his son.

He had it just about finished, stocked with canned goods and water, even a little cot. And then, one day at the dentist, he had picked up a magazine and read a piece by a scientist that said that a bomb shelter wouldn’t be enough in an attack. It wouldn’t protect anyone, and people who thought so were objects of ridicule. Bob had felt hot with shame. The more he read, the more he began to agree with the writer, and the more embarrassed he became. He felt duped, and the only thing to do was to try to seal it up and forget about it. No one had to know he had made a fool of himself. Not his wife, or his kid, or any of the neighbors. He’d find another way to protect his family.

Patsy Baker looked out at the audience, her face grave. “On a sunny day, when most of the neighborhood was away celebrating at a local church carnival, one young boy’s tomb was a bomb shelter hidden under hemlock bushes. His mother died without peace, never knowing what had happened to her only son.” Ava stood up, sweating. She hadn’t known Dot was dead. She wanted to shake Patsy, to tell her to shut up. Tears tripped down her cheeks, but she couldn’t stop watching. She wished Bob had come back to the neighborhood so she could have spoken to him.

“Let’s go inside,” Patsy said meaningfully. Film flashed on the screen and Ava thought, when had the TV crew filmed this? Why had the cops even allowed it? The film showed the bomb shelter. It was a metal well with a circular hole, a rusted ladder torn from the wall. “He must have fallen because his ankle was broken,” Patsy said. The camera panned across the two empty glass bottles, which had held water. It pointed out the flashlight, with batteries that had worn out, the two cans of tuna and one can of corn niblets, punctured with the rusty can opener. There was the rusted cot propped up against the wall, almost like a ladder, almost as if Jimmy had tried to escape. “Sources say he could have lived a week,” Patsy said. There were no books, no phone, no window. Just those thick walls that kept anyone from hearing Jimmy. Just the sealed over ventilation system that would have suffocated him. “If more people had known, if the police investigation had been more thorough,” she said, “perhaps this tragedy could have been averted.”

Ava swiped at her tears. She turned off the television. She thought of Jimmy showing up on her front step, standing there as if he knew he was somehow expected. She didn’t know what she had thought, but sometimes she had imagined that she would hear from Jimmy again, that he’d just appear. When she saw him in her mind, he was in his twenties, like her Lewis, tall and handsome and so very adult. “I remember you,” he’d tell her, and she could say, “I remember you, too,” right back at him. She could take him out for coffee, show him off, a big, strapping, handsome boy now, and ask him about the girls he was dating, the ones who were in love with him. All that promise.

Poor Dot, she thought. And oh dear God, that sweet little Rose. She hadn’t heard from either of them in years. No one had. The police must have contacted Rose and maybe it was a blessing Dot was dead, because what mother could bear hearing such news? At least Ava knew Lewis was alive, that he had a job, that he seemed happy, or at least he made a show of it on the phone to her when she called.

It could have been Lewis in that shelter.

Ava picked up the phone and called Lewis again. The phone rang three times, and then there he was. “Lewis,” she said, breathing into the phone. “I have to tell you something.” The whole time she was spilling out the story, he was quiet. She couldn’t even hear his breathing, which unnerved her. “Lewis, are you there?” she said.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “This can’t be right.”

“It is,” Ava said. “The cops said there were dental records. The sneakers.”

“Jimmy wouldn’t go near that bomb shelter.”

Ava started. “You knew there was a shelter? How did you know?”

“We came across it once and went inside. But none of us would go down there ever again. It was too scary.”

“What? You were inside? Why didn’t I know this?”

“Mom, I don’t know—I was a kid, I didn’t tell you everything.”

“But when the cops were here, why didn’t you kids mention it?”

“We’d never, ever, think of it as a place he’d be. It never entered our minds.”

She hesitated. “Do you want to come home?” She heard Lewis rustling in the background. “I have a job, Mom. I can’t just leave it.” His voice was so sad she wanted to burrow into it. He hung up the phone. For a while, Ava sat there, listening to the dial tone.