Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (28 page)

Now his hands were trembling. “I don’t think I ever saw these photos.”

“Sure you did,” she said.

She dug deeper into the box and then brought out a folded, tattered piece of paper and handed it slowly to him, like it was something important. Her face was grave and he opened it. The map. She had saved the map. He touched the soft surface as if it were ancient parchment. The map was riddled with pinpricks and he followed their path marks as if they were Braille. If he shut his eyes, he could see the colored pushpins he and Jimmy had placed in each point, the blue pins for the places they had to go to, the red ones for side trips. Every place and every pushpin had meant something to both of them, like prophecies they were determined to fulfill.

“My mother threw out almost everything of Jimmy’s, but I held on to this.”

He could just barely make out the notes Jimmy and he had written under each state, the writing so faded now, he had to squint.
Our First stop. Uncle Bob lived here.
Lewis looked up at Rose helplessly. “Let me show you some more things,” she said, and he reluctantly gave her the map and watched her fold it back up.

She pulled out birthday cards from Jimmy, one with a cartoon dog wearing a birthday hat, another with a duck perched on top of a cake. There was one from Rose’s mother, with garlands all over it, and then one expensive-looking big one that was all purple with white lettering made out of lace that said simply “Happy Birthday,” and when he opened it, Ava’s name, like a shock, jolted him.
With lots of love,
Ava had written. “My mother sent you cards?” he said, and Rose nodded. “She was really good to me,” she said.

Lewis fingered the card. Why did his mother’s secrets always ambush him? He felt a flare of jealousy that Rose had known this soft, loving side of his mother. He looked back down in the box, rummaging a bit, and then as he was about to lift up a plastic slider puzzle, he spotted half of Jimmy Stewart’s face on Rose’s old notebook, the same one she had used to collect clues about Jimmy’s disappearance, and his hand stopped in midair.

Rose glanced at the notebook. “I saved everything. I thought I’d be able to give it to Jimmy when I found him.”

Lewis’s own notebook was long gone. He had stuffed it in a drawer the week Rose had left, and when he took off for Madison, he didn’t even think to take it with him.

He had never even seen what was inside her notebook before. They had always planned to compare notes, but they never had somehow. He leafed through the pages. His notebook had been full of facts: the times neighbors came and went, the license plate numbers of cars he didn’t recognize, and lists of all the places Jimmy might have gone: the Star Market, Harvard Square, the zoo. But Rose’s notebook was full of poems, drawings, letters to Jimmy, and even what looked like stories. “I thought we were putting clues in here,” he said, turning the pages, and she shrugged, embarrassed. “They were my kind of clues,” she said.

He turned a few more pages and caught sight of his name scribbled in a girlish looping slant.
No one knows how much I love Lewis.

He looked at it, shocked, reading a few more lines.
Even
Jimmy never knew, though he sometimes wondered why I wanted to hang around with someone younger all the time. I don’t know what to do, who to talk to about this. I can’t talk to my other friends because a) I don’t have any and b) they’re all too busy having crushes on older boys in high school, and c) they think I’m immature, that I don’t feel as much as they do, but I know I feel more. I can’t talk to my mother because she’s busy blaming me, and forget Ava because she’s Lewis’s mother. Worst of all, I can’t talk to Lewis because he doesn’t know I love him, either.

“Oh, no,” Rose said, her voice lowering, “No, no, no,” and she put her hand over the page. She tugged the journal back to her, but not before he saw another line:
How can I love Lewis like this when my own brother is missing?
She quickly began stacking things back in the wicker box, closing the lid and latching it tight.

“Rose,” he said.

“I was such a kid,” she said quickly. “So dramatic.” She smoothed the cover of the basket, and he saw how flustered she suddenly was, and it made him feel unmoored, as if everything he had thought he had known about his past wasn’t quite true anymore.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he said quietly.

She hesitated, fanning her fingers over her mouth for a moment, before letting her hand drift back into her lap. “I was afraid.”

“But we were always together and you never said anything. And when you left, when I didn’t hear from you, I assumed I didn’t matter.”

“You mattered,” she said. He heard her swallow. “Remember how we used to touch foreheads? How I’d think the color red and you’d just know what it was?” she said.

“I didn’t always know.” He remembered thinking he was always guessing, trying to please her. She’d smile and clap him on the back no matter what he said.

“Every time we did it, I knew how I felt about you,” she said.

“Rose, I’m so sorry—” he started to say, but her smile had turned funny. He didn’t know what else to say to her. She got up and slid the closed box back into the bookcase, shrugging. “It’s in the past,” she said, but she wouldn’t look at him.

“It’s late. We should get some sleep,” she said shortly, and then retreated to her room.

T
HE NEXT DAY
was Saturday and they were awkward around each other in the morning. Lewis didn’t know what to say or do. “My apartment is your apartment,” she said, opening the cupboard and showing him the collection of cereal boxes. He chose the Sugar Frosted Flakes and poured them each a bowl. Neither one of them was talking much, and the click of their spoons was driving Lewis crazy.

“I have an idea,” Rose said, her whole body brightening. “Let’s go swimming. I know the perfect place, Pickerel Lake. It’s only a twenty-minute drive from here.”

“Swimming?” He remembered when they were kids and Rose would take them to the pool at Green Acres Day Camp when no one was there. Lewis couldn’t swim, but he didn’t want anyone to know. He knew Jimmy would tease him, so he stayed in the shallow end, pretending that he wanted to be just lazily walking around the pool on his tiptoes, occasionally dunking his head. But one day, when Jimmy was at the doctor, Rose took him swimming, just the two of them. Rose dove into the water and then swam over to him in the shallows. “Hey,” she said. “I learned this cool new stroke.” She paddled her hands in the water, her eyes on his, and then he mimicked her. “Come on, let’s have a dog-paddle race,” she said, and he had lowered himself in the water, scooping at it, and to his surprise, he was moving, swimming, actually covering ground. When he finally stopped, grabbing on to the edge of the pool, he turned and saw her treading water, acting as if this were no big deal at all, but her eyes were shining. “You won,” she had said casually.

He had loved swimming after that, but he hadn’t gone since he had been living in Madison.

“We can stop on State Street and grab you a swimsuit,” Rose said.

A
S SOON AS
they got to the lake, Rose wondered if she had made a mistake. She remembered when Lewis was little, the one way she could get him to relax was to get him out of his head, to make him run races with her, or go for a bike ride or anything physical. She’d suggest crazy things to do back then, and he would just do them with her. This morning, when he was so silent and strange about the cereal, she hadn’t known what to do or what to say, and swimming seemed like a good idea. But now, here she was, in her little black bathing suit, the one Brady always said made him want to carry her off to her bedroom, and she suddenly felt naked and embarrassed. It was a small lake with a beautiful sandy beach, and no motors were allowed, so it was quiet and private. She had thought it would be pretty, and it was. You could see bluegills, sunfish, and she had spotted a catfish already. She looked up at the sky and a hawk was lazily swooping in the air. And there Lewis was, in the swimsuit he had bought, and she could see his strong chest, the muscles in his arms and legs, the warm olive tone to his skin. She felt her face heat up. She ran into the water and began swimming, the shock of the cold water making her shiver. She could hear him, and then she turned and watched him in the water. She didn’t know why she expected to see him sloppily swimming, still doing a dog paddle. Instead, his strokes were graceful. He looked as if he had been born in the water.

Rose turned over so she was floating on her back, looking at the sky. This was a bust. They drove all this way and she didn’t feel any better. Lewis was swimming so far away from her, they might as well have come separately. She shut her eyes, and then suddenly, she felt him near her and she blinked and righted herself. Lewis was treading water next to her. He looked relaxed and even happy and she didn’t know what to say, but then he drew her forehead to his. “This was a great idea,” he told her. She felt his breath against her ear. “You were the one who always kept my head above water,” he said, and for a moment, she felt the warmth of his skin before he let her go and began swimming again.

O
N
S
UNDAY,
R
OSE
gave him the guided tour of Ann Arbor. She made him spin
The Cube,
the big black metal box in the center of the Diag. She took him dancing at a local club, not suggesting they go home until they both were sleek with sweat. That night, they went through another box of Rose’s old photographs and papers, but there was nothing there that gave them any clues as to what might have really happened.

She pulled out an old pipe of her father’s and studied it. “My mother saved this,” she said. “And now I have it.”

“I used to have a fishing lure of my dad’s. I never really enjoyed the fishing, but I liked going with him.”

“You did? Do you still have it?”

He took the pipe from her, stroked his finger along the bowl, and then gently put it back in the box. “Nope. Gone. Along with him.”

“You ever think about him?”

He stood up, stretching. “I’m really tired,” he told her, and she knew enough not to press.

Tomorrow she was taking him to her class, to be a special guest. She didn’t know what was going to happen after that. He had told her he was only coming for a few days and then he’d go home. All she knew was that she was glad he was there.

M
ONDAY MORNING,
L
EWIS
stood in the center of Rose’s classroom, astonished. The kids were noisy, racing around, but as soon as they saw Rose with Lewis, they stopped. “Who’s this?” they clamored, their eyes round as planets.

“This is my friend Lewis and he’s going to talk to you about being a nurse’s aide.”

The low hum of the class quieted. The kids sat at their desks and wove their fingers together. Lewis stood in front of the class. The kids stared at him, frowning, as if he didn’t belong there. He took a deep breath. He knew the secret with kids was to surprise them. How many times had he pretended to take quarters from the ears of sick kids to relax them enough so he could move them? He glanced at Rose, in her dress, her hair held back by a leather clip. She gave him an expectant look, like he was about to audition and she wasn’t sure he knew his lines.

“Burping,” Lewis said, and instantly the kids perked up. A girl in the back dropped her mouth open. A boy in the front row grinned. “Burping is caused by swallowed air. It comes up through this tube called the esophagus.” He drew an esophagus on the blackboard. The white chalk dust sifted in the air like flour. “It’s nothing to worry about, and in fact, you can even make yourself burp by drinking soda or swallowing air,” Lewis said. He gulped in air, hoped for the best, and burped. There was a stunned silence. One of the kids, a little girl in the front, giggled, and then the boy in back of her sucked at the air and burped.

“It’s okay, you can do it!” he told the class.

The kids began burping. “I can burp the alphabet!” one boy cried and began to burp loudly, and there it was under the belch, an
A,
a
B.
There was a jungle of burps, and all the kids were laughing. “Listen!” one little girl yelped and she stood up on a chair and threw her head back and gave a tight little burp. Rose was still and quiet, and for a moment he felt a curtain of gloom. He was disrupting her class. She’d never get them back in line.

He looked over at Rose. She lifted her hands as if she were raising a curtain. “Class,” she said, her voice commanding, and all the kids turned to look at her. For a moment there was a shamed quiet. He was going to apologize, but then she thunked her chest and burped so loudly the kids stared at her in wonder. The kids clapped and Rose took a delicate bow.

A
LL THE REST
of the week, he came with her to her class. “Mr. Lewis is going to be our extra helper,” Rose told the children. Lewis coaxed kids struggling to read. He set out supplies and collected papers, and in the evenings, he helped Rose grade their homework. While he liked being at her school, he couldn’t help but feel happy when it was finally Friday and spring break, and he had Rose all to himself.

“Happy vacation!” Rose called to her class. It was pouring outside and neither one of them had an umbrella. The kids were shouting, stamping their feet in the puddles and soaking their shoes, refusing to open their umbrellas. “See ya, Mr. Lewis!” a voice called, and Lewis looked around. “Oh, my shoes,” Rose said. She leaned on Lewis to slip them off.

“It’s only a few blocks. It’s not too bad,” Rose said, fanning her hands out into the rain, but in minutes her dress and her hair turned dark with rain, his soaked shirt and pants clung to his body. “Whoops,” she said. “I lied. Her arm bumped against his and he took it, as if to steady her. They were rounding her corner, when she suddenly winced and then made a small cry and they both looked down and there was a bright star of blood around her foot, a sparkling of broken glass like diamonds at her feet. Bending, she struggled to pick out the big pieces in her foot, but Lewis shook his head. “There could be all sorts of tiny pieces,” he told her.