Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (31 page)

“Are you okay?” Jake asked, forcing himself to soften his tone.

“I’m telling,” Jimmy said hotly.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Jake said, but he felt something snaking up his spine.

“You grabbed me,” Jimmy accused.

The sun was too hot. A thin line of sweat prickled along his back. In the distance, he heard a dog barking hysterically. “I didn’t mean to,” Jake said. Jimmy put his hands on his hips and Jake suddenly felt how ridiculous the whole situation was. The kid’s face was dirty. His shirt was untucked from his shorts, his sneakers all scribbled over. What was the matter with him, feeling jealous of a little boy? Better to befriend this kid, have him be on his side, and Jake knew just the way to do it, too. “Hey,” he said. “How’d you like a ride on my motorcycle?”

A light flickered in Jimmy’s eyes. “Really? It’s not broke?”

“Just the mirror and that can be fixed.”

“You’re not kidding?”

“We’ll go really, really slow.”

“Honest? For real?” Jimmy stretched up toward him, his body tense with excitement.

He gave Jimmy his helmet. “Sit in back and grab me as if you’re glued to me.”

The helmet was too big and was rolling off Jimmy’s head, but the kid was beaming, holding it on. Jake waited for Jimmy to get on the bike. Jimmy grabbed him tightly. “Easy now,” Jake said. He started the bike, moving it so slowly, he might as well have been walking it, but Jimmy didn’t seem to mind.
“Vroom!”
Jimmy shouted. Jake kept it nice and slow, once around the block, past this huge tree that had fallen, past two of the neighborhood women standing on the sidewalk, deep in conversation. He pulled back around to the house and helped Jimmy off. The kid’s face was shining with glee. Jake stuck out his hand like he would to another man, to an equal, and Jimmy solemnly shook it. “Thanks,” Jimmy said. “I mean it. Thanks a billion times. That was so, so cool.”

“We’re friends now, right?” Jake said.

Jimmy nodded. “I’m going home now,” he said.

Jake watched him run across the street. He could probably get to like this kid, his spunk. Maybe he would like Lewis, too. He glanced at his watch. Not even four thirty. He’d be back here by seven.

A few hours later, he had dressed up in a suit, the present he had carefully picked out for Lewis (a magic kit, because she said he liked magic) tucked under his arm. It was a big night, his meeting Lewis, and he wanted everything to go right.

But when he got to her neighborhood, Ava was distracted because Lewis wasn’t even there, not even after hours had passed. He did his best to support her. “It’s going to be all right,” he told her. He put his arm around her. He wasn’t worried. Not then. He figured those kids were just being kids, that they’d show up sometime, and maybe even this was Lewis’s way of telling Jake to screw off. But Jake could handle that, too. He’d give Lewis the gift, make sure he got whatever flavor ice cream he wanted. He’d show Ava how he had fixed the step, and later, when they were alone, he’d tell her how he had made friends with Jimmy, leaving out the part where he got so angry.

But then Ava had begun to really worry, especially when that kid Jimmy’s mother called to say Jimmy and his sister were missing, too, and that she had called the cops. Jake stood out on the street with Ava, the neighbors, and then the cops, and then Lewis and Rose had stumbled into view. Jake saw that Jimmy was missing, and that was when he suddenly felt as if he were drowning under water. Get lost, he had told Jimmy.
Vamoose.
And the kid had and nobody knew where he was now. Everyone was asking questions, like the rat-a-tat of machine guns. He thought of how he had driven around the neighborhood with the kid. He wondered who might have seen him? His neck prickled with sweat.

It kept getting worse and worse. The police were questioning Ava, and then they called him, pulling him out of a gig, always asking the same things. “A jazz musician, huh,” a cop said, as if that itself was a crime. They kept asking him what had he done that day, where had he gone? “How much time did you say you spent with Jimmy?” the cops asked.

“None,” Jake lied. “None. I never met the kid.”

“We’ll talk to the neighbors, see what they say,” the officer said.

J
AKE STARTED TO
hate to come to Ava’s neighborhood. The neighbors were outside, and if the kids were outside, they seemed glued to their parents. He was afraid someone would point to him and say, Hey, you were the one with Jimmy on your motorcycle that day. Or what if someone came forward and said, You’re the one who grabbed that kid. Everything felt different. The last time he came over, he had watched Ava talking to a group of neighbors. People kept remembering things they had seen, and even Jake could hear how they changed their stories, how a strange black car on the street was suddenly brown, and then it was speeding, and then it wasn’t. He saw how they turned their backs on Ava, leaving her standing helplessly in the middle of the street.

“Let’s get out of here,” he had told her. He had it planned out. There were always people asking about his house. He could sell it in a minute. They could move to California. He could almost imagine it, coming home every day and finding her, getting to know Lewis. But then she started hedging, coming up with excuses about Brian and the investigation, and he felt caught. Why couldn’t she just trust him and come with him? If he stayed, the cops would keep asking him questions. But if he left, he’d be leaving Ava.

Then he and Ava had that final argument at the club. He kept urging her to come with him and she kept saying no until it turned into something final. Fine, let her break up with him. Let it be on her head, he thought. But then one night, he missed her so much, he got on his bike to go over there and apologize and try to work it out. It was eight at night, and dusky. There were neighbors standing in groups, slowly walking, their ribbons of lights making a path, and he thought of that old Frankenstein movie, with the villagers angrily waving torches on their way to finding the monster. He heard the neighbors’ voices, growing louder. “We’ll get that guy!” someone said, almost making it a chant. It didn’t matter whether you had done something or not. All that mattered was if people thought you had. And from where he stood, he seemed like the perfect target. They didn’t even know who this person was and they wanted to kill him. How long before Ava would turn on him, too? He had made a mistake with Jimmy. He knew it was wrong, but he also knew that in this world, that distinction didn’t matter.

He turned his motorcycle around and headed back to his house and as soon as he got there, he started making phone calls. He had friends in California who owned a club. He knew people in San Diego where he could crash until he got himself settled. He even had friends in Des Moines. He thought of the beach and the ocean and the weather so warm, he could ditch his leather jacket entirely.

In all, it took him only an hour and about half a dozen calls and then he had a new life spread before him in Iowa, of all places. The realtor was coming the next morning to put the house on the market. He didn’t even have to be there for it.

He told himself it wasn’t just his fear of being blamed that was making him leave, his refusal to ever go back inside any sort of prison. It was that it would never work, the two of them, not with Jimmy hanging over them. He told himself it would be better for her, too, with him gone, that she’d be less of a target for the cops and the neighbors. It was what she wanted, to stay here, anyway. He had asked and she had answered.

He just didn’t bank on his never being able to forget her.

A
VA STARED AT
Jake. He put one hand over his mouth and then took it away. “That’s the whole story,” he said. He reached for Ava but she pulled away.

“All this time and you left out the biggest part of the story,” she said.

“I was wrong to have left you,” he said. “I can admit it.”

He looked weathered, as if someone had rubbed at his outlines. It was the first time she noticed the downward pull to his mouth. His handsomeness had faded. He touched a curl of her hair, swinging it like a jump rope. “Aren’t you my girl?” he said.

She was silent. The words bunched in her throat. “The criminal record,” she said carefully. “You were a kid and you paid for it. But, this, with Jimmy. You were an adult. You had choices.”

“I didn’t hurt him, Ava. He was just scared. I lost my temper but then I stopped. And I made it up to him. I did the right thing afterward. The whole thing took five minutes and when I left, he was fine. He was happy.”

“But you never told me.”

“I grabbed Jimmy. I knew what that would look like, how easy it would be to pin something on me.”

“You let me think your leaving was about something entirely different. You put yourself in a better light, like you hadn’t done anything wrong. It was really yourself you cared about. Not Jimmy. And certainly not me.”

“What would you have thought if you knew I had grabbed Jimmy? It didn’t have a damn thing to do with his vanishing, but what would you have thought?”

“Do you hear what you’re saying?”

“You’re looking at this all wrong.”

“It’s easy to be here, now that you’re safe.” She tried to think of all the times she had felt secure with him, the way she had felt riding behind him on the bike, like he had unpeeled the world for her, showing her the stars from Cambridge Common, hiring a boat so they could go out on the Charles, the wind whipping her hair like an eggbeater. “No,” she said.

He frowned. “Ava,” he said.

Ava got out of bed. She pulled her robe around her, watching him.

“Ava, you love me. You know you do.”

“I’ve stayed here all this time, but you didn’t even think to come back until they found the remains. And it wasn’t because you missed me, because if you had, nothing would have stopped you. It was because you figured you were off the hook and it was safe. You are still lying to me, don’t you see that? What other pieces of the truth are missing?”

“Don’t do this,” he said. He stood up, and he tried to touch her, but she stepped away. “How can you deny what we have? I want to take care of you now.”

“I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. And I think you should leave,” she told him. When he didn’t move, she bent and got his clothes, throwing them on the bed. “Now,” she said.

He looked at her, incredulous, and then reluctantly starting pulling on his shirt, his pants. He shoved his feet into his shoes. “We’ll work this out,” he said.

She walked out to the front of her house and opened the door, waiting, and when he left, she locked the door, leaning against it, and wept. She was so very tired.

J
AKE KEPT CALLING.
The only reason Ava picked up the phone was because she was afraid it might be Lewis, reporting on his father. “We can put all this behind us,” Jake said.

“Don’t call me,” she told him.

She thought of how happy she had been. Well, she had seen what she wanted to see. He treated her like an equal. He had a steady job and a house. He actually gave her choices. Did she want to eat at a steak house or a fish place? Did she like when he touched her thigh or did she prefer he nibble the back of her neck? And there were those nights when he played his music, swaying with the notes, as if he had tapped into a whole other magical world she could only watch and envy. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, and yet, how badly had she been blinded?
How had she missed the truth? Maybe subconsciously, she just hadn’t wanted to know.

That Friday, he showed up at her office. Ava was in the back making Xerox copies. “A guy’s here for you,” Charmaine said. “And he looks like hell.” She put one hand on Ava’s shoulder. “Should I tell him to scram?”

“I’ll go talk to him,” she said. She walked out and there he was, slumped by the elevator. She could feel the other women watching her.

“Here we are again,” Jake said. He looked rumpled, like he had slept in his clothes, and there were bags under his eyes. “I have to go back to Iowa, but I want you to come with me.”

Ava heard the ring of the other elevator. How was this different from the last time they broke up? In a way, it was worse because now she was the bigger fool. She saw Richard striding by, taking her in. She couldn’t get past this, couldn’t forgive or trust Jake again, but if she spoke, she was afraid she’d burst into tears. Instead, she just shook her head. She saw his face crumple, but she steeled herself. She walked away from him, past Charmaine and Betty, into the break room. She didn’t hear Jake’s footsteps or his voice. He wasn’t following her. Again.

She fell into one of the chairs, shutting her eyes. She heard the door open and shut. She opened her eyes and there was Charmaine, who sat down beside her. She took Ava’s hand and held on to it. “Let him go, the jerk,” Charmaine told her and that’s when Ava began to cry.

Charmaine took Ava to the ladies’ room and made Ava wash her face. She gave Ava some foundation to put under her eyes so no one would know she had cried, using a little triangle sponge she kept in her makeup bag. “My mom showed me this trick,” Charmaine told her, blotting a tissue with cold water on Ava’s skin. And when the two of them walked out of the bathroom, Charmaine tried to shield Ava from Richard. “Someone’s got his panties in a knot today,” Charmaine whispered.

Ava sat back at her typewriter. She could feel the makeup caked on her face but she left it where it was. In front of her were more invoices than she could possibly handle in a week, let alone a day. She looked up and saw him at his desk, his feet up as usual, not working, just watching her, like he was the lord of the jungle. She felt herself closing, like a door slamming. She picked up a sheet and started to type.

T
HAT NIGHT,
A
VA
came back home, and all around her, families were carrying on their lives, and she was in her little house alone. She sifted through the mail, half hoping there might be a postcard from Lewis and Rose, though it was probably too soon for any mail to get here. Why was she always the one waiting? Why was her life full of maybes?