Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (4 page)

Lewis wasn’t sure how he felt about his mother anymore. He didn’t think he trusted her. She seemed full of secrets lately, and sometimes he swore he could hear them rattling around in her like marbles caught in a glass jar.

Last week, he was sleeping at Jimmy and Rose’s, a special treat on a school night. He, Rose, and Jimmy had spent the evening playing Go to the Head of the Class. Later that night, Lewis was tucked into a sleeping bag on Jimmy’s floor, sandwiched between Jimmy’s bed and Rose’s sleeping bag. Lewis felt woozy and achy. Sweat filmed his body, making his pajamas paste against his skin. “I want to go home,” he told Jimmy. “I think I’m sick.” Rose put one hand on his forehead. “You’re boiling,” she said.

They didn’t want to wake Jimmy’s mother, who got cranky if she had to lift her sleep mask or take her earplugs out, so Jimmy and Rose both put their coats over their pajamas, slid into their slippers, and walked Lewis to his house across the street. The night was still and cold and sparkling with stars, but every step Lewis took, he felt sicker and sicker. The houses seemed to be moving. The ground felt soft and sticky, as if he might sink into it. Rose’s hand drifted across his back and he leaned into it, feeling a pulse of heat.

At his door, he heard music. Frank Sinatra. One of the albums his mother liked. Lewis could see his breath in the air. He could feel the sweat trickling along his back. Rose shut her eyes for a moment, swaying to the music. “Your mom is some smoothy,” she said. “Music past midnight! My mom doesn’t even have a record player. When she hums, she hums Speedy Alka-Selzer commercials.”

Jimmy tilted his head up to the window and then stopped. He put one hand out in front of Lewis, the way Lewis’s mother did when she was driving and she had to stop short, keeping Lewis from banging into the glove compartment or going through the windshield. Lewis stumbled, and then he looked at the window, at the shadows through the curtains. They all saw his mother standing up, her head resting on someone’s shoulder, slow dancing, moving into one dramatic dip. Rose sucked in a breath.

Lewis froze. His mother’s shadow kissed the other shadow and he turned away.

“I feel okay now,” he said stiffly. He turned and faced the dark street. “Let’s go back to your house.”

Jimmy and Rose were just standing there, staring at him.

“C’mon, I’m okay. I feel fine now,” Lewis said. “I want to go back to your house.”

Rose tugged his arm and Lewis pulled it roughly away. Then he started walking away, and every step he took, the music grew fainter and fainter, the image of his mother and the man blurred, and he felt so weak and dizzy he could have lain down in the middle of the road. He didn’t turn around to see if Rose and Jimmy were following, but he heard the scuff of their slippers, and he was grateful for their silence.

They all went back inside, removed their coats, shuffled off their slippers, and got back under the covers. Lewis stayed awake, staring at the ceiling, trying not to cry. The room reeled around him. He heard Jimmy beginning to snore and he felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life.

Then he heard Rose, the rustle of her sleeping bag. She got up and left the room and a few minutes later, he heard her bare feet on the floor. He heard her coming closer to him, as if she were about to tell him a great secret.

A cloth, stunningly cool, pressed along his forehead. He shut his eyes, sighing. She tapped his shoulder and his eyes flew open again and he saw her, blurry, hovering over him. “Lewis, take this,” she said, and she held out her palm with two aspirins resting in the center. He saw the glass of water she held in her hand. He couldn’t see her eyes, hidden under her bangs, long as sable paintbrushes. When she leaned over, one of her braids dusted against his chest, rising and falling as if it were alive and breathing along with him.

Rose sat on the edge of his sleeping bag. She waited for him to take the aspirin and drink the water. “Lie back down,” she whispered. But she didn’t move and he didn’t really want her to. Every time he drifted off to sleep, his eyes would flutter open, and he would see her again, so calm and still. It made him feel better. He sensed her there, and gradually, he rolled into sleep.

When he thought about it now, he bet anything that shadow they had all seen through the window was this Jake person. Well, forget Jake. Forget his mother. Forget tonight. He was done with his dentist appointment, finished with the library. He was going to hang out with Jimmy and who knew what they might do, what plans they might devise? Lewis left the library, surprised at how the day had grown so hot and muggy. He paid attention to the buildings along Lexington Street so he wouldn’t get lost, something that often happened, leaving him tense and disoriented as if the world had changed shape without his knowing it. There was the church on his right, the gas station on his left. Over there was the huge maple tree.

A car passed, honking at him, making him leap closer to the inner side of the sidewalk, and for a moment, he thought the man driving might be his father. Wouldn’t that be perfect? If it was his dad, he wouldn’t have to meet stupid Jake tonight, and neither would his mom. If it was his dad, everything could go back to normal.

When his father left abruptly just after Lewis’s seventh birthday, without even saying good-bye, the whole world had changed. Things didn’t taste right. Lewis would eat a bite of cereal and it would taste like steak. His potato at dinner would taste like metal and he’d have to spit it out into his napkin. It was as if the world had gone suddenly crazy. Lewis and his mother couldn’t afford the big Back Bay townhouse on their own, and had to move out of Boston to one tiny apartment after another, and finally to the suburb in Waltham and the only thing good about it was that it was a house and he had a backyard. “Does Dad know we’re here?” Lewis kept asking

“Of course he does,” his mother said, but she looked suddenly smaller to him.

“How does he know?” Lewis thought of ham radios, of smoke signals, of the way a voice could travel on a phone line

“He knows,” his mother said.

His father was even supposed to visit him once. He had called shortly after Lewis’s eighth birthday, just like a sudden snap of fingers, and when Lewis heard his voice, he started to cry.

“Hey, what’s that crying?” His father’s voice was jovial, teasing. He was slurring his words in a funny way. “That couldn’t be my Lewis crying, could it? My Lewis doesn’t cry.”

Lewis snuffled. “I’m not crying,” he insisted, swiping at his eyes. “Where do you live? How can I find you?”

His father cleared his throat. “Well, right now, you can’t really visit me. I’m living out of a suitcase, but maybe later. In the meantime, I can visit you.”

“When?”

“Well, I don’t know, sport. Maybe next weekend, how about that?” He could hear his father’s breathing, deep and even on the phone.

“I’ll be better,” Lewis said. “I’ll be quiet in school. I’ll get good grades.”

The silence hummed through the wires.

“I miss you,” Lewis said. “I’ll wait out front for you,” and then his mother was taking the phone out of his hands and hanging it up. “He’s coming to see me next week,” Lewis said, but his mother walked over to the sink and began clattering dishes under the water.

That weekend, Lewis waited out front on the porch, though Ava tried to get him to come inside. Every time a car passed, Lewis jumped up, but then the car sped by. When Ava came out to say she was going grocery shopping and would he like to come, he shook his head no.

Later, when Ava pulled up and saw Lewis sitting there, she didn’t move for a moment. Then she got out of the car and handed him a package of cookies from the grocery bag, Fudge Stripes, his favorite, and sat beside him. “I’m sorry,” she said. She ripped open the cellophane bag and even though it was before dinner, they both sat there, eating cookies and not talking, ruining their appetites and not even caring.

Another car passed and then another, but of course none of them was his father. Lewis rested his chin on his knees. Why didn’t his father come see him? If he split himself into two columns, it felt like he had more pluses than minuses. He saw it, so why didn’t his father? Why didn’t he know what he had done wrong?

“I love you,” his mom told him, but how could he be sure? “You’re my best friend,” Jimmy assured him, but Lewis wasn’t always convinced Jimmy really meant it. He had to keep replaying how Rose and Jimmy always sought him out, how they didn’t want to hang out with anyone but him. “Hey, worrywart,” Rose teased. “Keep looking like that and your face will freeze.” She was smiling when she said it.

Houdini used to say that people saw what they wanted to see, they imagined it to be true, and maybe that was what Lewis was doing. But then again, Jimmy and Rose really did seem like real friends, the realest Lewis had ever had. They were plotting their future together, he and Jimmy. As soon as they were old enough, they were going to buy a car and drive cross-country into new lives. He and Jimmy had pooled their money and bought a big huge map and taped it to Jimmy’s wall. For every place they wanted to go—and it had to be a place that had meaning to them—they stuck in a pushpin. Lewis thrilled every time he saw the map, but it was something that Rose was miffed about because she wasn’t a part of their plan.

“It’s a boy thing,” Lewis told her.

“You can come visit,” Jimmy assured her. “We’ll keep an extra room for you.”

“Sure, we will,” Lewis said. He liked Rose. When he practiced magic tricks, she was always willing to hold the top hat or be his guinea pig. She always acted surprised and pleased when Lewis told her about something he was reading—about space travel or carnivorous plants—and she always wanted to know more.

“I can get my own room,” Rose said. “And I can leave before the two of you because I’m older. I’m going to plenty of important places myself.”

He and Jimmy were going to Kentucky or Wyoming or California, where they would be chefs or doctors. Jimmy wanted to stop in Santa Fe because his favorite aunt lived there. He liked Los Angeles because there were movie stars and maybe he could see Natalie Wood, whom he sort of had a crush on. Lewis wanted to visit Springfield, Missouri, because he thought that was where
Father Knows Best
took place. He made sure to put a tack on the Mojave Desert, where Death Valley was, because he loved the show
Death Valley Days
and watched it all the time. They were going to be happy and famous, and he wouldn’t have to think about his mother’s boyfriends or the light not going on because the electricity bill hadn’t been paid or getting secondhand bags of clothes from Morgan Memorial that he’d have to wear. He’d be so well-known that he’d get in the news or maybe be a star on TV and his father would read about him, and feel terrible, and call him instantly to make amends.

Lewis was walking from Main Street, winding in and out of the side roads of the neighborhoods because he was bored. He was on Chesterbrook Road when he saw the three kids hanging around the muddy empty lot. He knew them vaguely from the junior high crowd, their hair slicked back, two of them smoking cigarettes. They were all swigging bottles of soda. Joey Salvatore, the one with the curly dark hair, had once been at the same school bus stop as Lewis. Joey had taken a piece of chalk from his pocket and written
PENIS
and then
VAGINA
on the telephone pole, snickering and hooting when one of the girls glanced over and blushed. He once had grabbed another kid’s gym suit and stuffed it into the mailbox, and when the kid had protested, Joey had kicked him hard enough to topple him to the ground.

Lewis had learned to steer clear from Joey and his crew, but now there was no escape. He felt the boys all looking at him.

“Hey, creep.” Joey waved at him, casually. “Hey, I recognize that shirt.”

Lewis glanced down at his shirt. Blue and red check, pulled from one of the Morgan Memorial bags. He hadn’t given a thought whose shirt this might have been when he put it on. He only knew it wasn’t his.

Joey snickered. “I threw up on it and that’s why my mom gave it away.”

Lewis kept walking, hoping to be ignored. He thought as soon as he got home, he’d throw this shirt out. He’d rather not have anything to wear than have to wear something that had been Joey Salvatore’s. Suddenly, the boys were around him, grins stretched across their faces, eyes hard and gleaming. “Jewish Lewish,” Joey said.

“So.” Barney, one of the other boys, shoved him. “You hungry? Because we’ve got cookies.” He held up a pack of Oreos, half of them gone. “You want one?”

“No,” Lewis said.

“Oh, for crying out loud, don’t be like that,” Joey said, taking a drag on his cigarette, then chasing it with a big gulp of soda. “Thirsty, Lewis?” he asked. “I didn’t spit in it. You can have a drink.”

Lewis kept silent.

“Pull your pants down and you can have it,” Joey said. He tossed his cigarette and teased a cookie out of the bag and waved it under Lewis’s nose. “Mmmm, fresh, delicious cookie.” The other boys laughed and Joey took a few steps closer until his nose could have touched Lewis’s.

Joey grabbed the edge of Lewis’s shirt. His smile widened. “No, I mean it,” he said pleasantly. “Pull your pants down. I hear Jews’ wieners are different and I want to see.” Lewis could smell Joey’s breath, sugary from the Oreos, sour from tobacco. He could see the other boys behind Joey, impatient, shifting their weight from one foot to another, waiting to see what was going to happen. Joey shook the soda bottle, making it fizz.

“Here, wet your whistle,” Joey said, and then he heaved the soda towards Lewis, soaking his clothes. Barney bent and scooped up handfuls of mud, flinging them at Lewis, spattering his shirt and pants. “Aw, what a shame, but you’re used to dirty clothes, aren’t you?” he said.

Joey snickered and something snapped in Lewis. He sprang one fist back and grazed Joey’s jaw, and Lewis didn’t know who was more surprised, he or Joey. His knuckles throbbed. Numb with terror, he tried to swallow, but the lump in his throat refused to dislodge.

The other boys were frozen, but Joey’s eyes gleamed. “You’re dead,” Joey said, rubbing his chin, and Lewis turned and broke into a run.