Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (5 page)

Lewis was faster than they were. He was horrible in gym, the last one ever picked on a team, but he could run when he wanted to, and now he sprinted, his breath in his ears. Huh huh huh, and when he ran onto Lexington Street, there was Rose, like a miracle, in a yellow dress, almost as if she had been waiting for him. She looked beyond him at the other boys and then she reached out and grabbed his hand as he ran past. “Run,” she said.

They both ran, hearing the boys shouting after them. “Always remember, the toughest people are cowards,” his father had once told him, but these kids were still running. They weren’t giving up. The clap of their sneakers quickened. “This way,” Rose said, tugging him. “We have to hide.” They ran up to the pathway for Green Acres Day Camp, sprinting into the woods. He followed her deep into the forest, brushing aside the bushes, until all they could hear was their own breaths. They stopped, and Lewis looked around.

The sun dappled through the trees. The ground was soft with moss, and Rose was standing so close to him that he could smell her hair, like wet wood and cherries. He didn’t hear footsteps or voices. Rose touched him and he jolted. “You’re shivering,” she said. “You’re completely soaked and covered in mud.” She stepped closer and then, before he could stop himself, he was crying. It wasn’t just about being chased or shamed, there was Jake, his father, everything was wrong.

“I bet your clothes will dry in the sun.” She pointed to a patch of bright light, a clearing. “We can brush the mud off then.”

He squinted at her.

“I’ll shut my eyes. Your clothes are wet. It’s only me.”

His clothes—Joey’s clothes—were damp and sticky and caked with dirt. If he could have burned them, he would have.

“I have a younger brother, remember? It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” Her eyes were clear and gray and serious. “I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “Not even Jimmy.” Lewis thought of the boys jeering,
I want to see. I hear Jews’ wieners are different
. The whole time he had known her she had never teased him, even when he and Jimmy had ganged up on her and tickled her or hid her diary or threatened to read it. She had never snapped at him when he and Jimmy shut her out of Jimmy’s room, when they wanted it to be just boys. Sometimes Rose ignored them, too, when she wanted to be alone to read.

Jimmy wasn’t much of a reader, but Rose read so intently, you could shout in her ear and she wouldn’t lift herself up out of the story. You had to shake her, and then she’d look at you, dazed, as if she couldn’t believe she was no longer in the story. And best of all, she talked to Lewis about what she was reading. She was the one who put
A High Wind in Jamaica
into his hands and insisted he read it. She gave him
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
and
The Catcher in the Rye
. He held her dog-eared copies in his hands, reading at night in his bed. He read the notes she wrote in the margins.
I feel like that. I love the pirates!
And once,
What are we all to do?
It was as if she were reading the books with him, talking with him on every page.

“Come on,” Rose said now.

He felt clammy, but it wasn’t as if he’d be naked. He still had his gym shorts under his pants because his mother hadn’t done laundry and there wasn’t anything else.

He stepped out of his clothes, glancing at his watch. He was late to meet Jimmy. Then he had to meet Jake, but how could he do either when he felt as if he were breaking apart?

“It’ll be really warm in the sun over there. Your clothes will dry. We can just brush the mud off,” she repeated. When he didn’t move, she gave him a look of great pity. “It’s all right,” she said. “Everything is all right.” She put her hands over her eyes and carefully lay down on the ground in the patch of sunlight. Then he took off his pants and his shirt, stretching them out in the sun. He lay down beside her, the two of them not moving. Lewis didn’t dare look at her, and Rose’s eyes were still covered. “We’ll just lay here,” she said.

He listened to her breathing, and then his own, almost as if it were a conversation, her quick, short breaths, and his longer ones. “Jimmy’s going to be so mad,” he said.

“He could never be mad at
us
,
” Rose said.

Lewis couldn’t deny it. He had never had a friend like Jimmy or like Rose, people who made him feel anchored to the world. When he and his mother had lived in an apartment in Watertown, before they moved here, he had hung out with a boy in his third grade named Don, but although Don was funny and liked to ride bikes and play Go to the Head of the Class as much as Lewis did, the person he really loved was Don’s father, a big, burly man who always lighted up when he saw Lewis. “There’s my other boy!” he said. He was always taking the two boys places, the movies, the museum, the theater, and when Don took his dad’s hand, and Lewis shied, Don’s father laughed and grabbed Lewis’s fingers. Don’s father spoiled Don, buying him games and books and toys. All Don had to do was look at something and his dad would buy it for him, and if Lewis was tagging along, Don’s dad would buy one for Lewis, too. Lewis loved it when they all would go out for ice cream and the lady who served the cones said, “What two fine boys you have!” and Don’s father didn’t correct her. Instead, Don’s father just smiled and the whole world seemed to fit into place.

A few months later, Don’s father got a job in Texas and the whole family moved away. Lewis, frantic, ran to the house, watching the moving truck. “I’ll write you every day!” Don promised, but how could Lewis tell him that it wasn’t Don that he was going to miss? He hugged Don’s father, shutting his eyes so the tears wouldn’t come, and Don’s father stroked his hair. Lewis was just figuring out how he could stow away, when his mother came over and put her arm around him. “Come on, honey,” she said quietly. “It’s time to go home.”

He had found Jimmy the first day of fourth grade, shortly after they moved to Waltham, zooming in on him in art class when they were doing family portraits, and Lewis quickly saw that Jimmy was the only other boy without a father. “I’m Jewish,” Lewis said defiantly, because he wanted to get it over with, the weird looks, the questions (“So do you hate Christ?” some kid had actually asked him at his old school), but Jimmy had actually looked impressed. “You lucky duck, you don’t have to go to church on Sunday,” Jimmy said. Lewis met Jimmy’s sister Rose, who offered to teach Lewis how to play Chinese checkers, and had one whole wall of her bedroom filled with books that she said he could borrow. Soon, they all began to hang out together, forming their own little family. They never talked about their missing fathers, but they didn’t have to. When the kids had to make presents for Father’s Day at school, Jimmy and he spent the time looking up information on all the places they were going to go to when they were older. Lewis carefully wrote all the facts into one of his notebooks. “Madison, Wisconsin, has great cheese,” Jimmy informed Lewis. “Write that down. Write down they have rodeos there.” When they saw fathers playing ball with their sons in the neighborhood, the three of them hightailed it to the schoolyard where it was empty and quiet and they could play ball on their own without the distraction of fathers.

Now, lying next to Rose, his lids heavy, he wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder, to make sure she was really there. Her eyes were open and she was watching the sky. The air felt hot, like a blanket thrown over the world, and the more he listened to Rose’s breathing, the more tired he felt. Slowly, so gently that he didn’t feel it at first, she curled against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Rose,” he started to say, and then he thought about Jimmy, waiting for him, he thought about their plans, and how he needed to get home, and then he was drifting, falling deeper and deeper into sleep while Rose was whispering something in his ear, the beginning of a story that he couldn’t quite hear.

I
T WAS DARK
when Lewis jolted awake. The woods seemed to be moving around them. He turned to Rose, who was sleeping, one arm thrown over his chest. As soon as he moved, her eyes flew open. She jolted up and started brushing the twigs from her skirt. “Hurry,” he said. He was suddenly embarrassed and grabbed for his shirt, his pants. They were dry, though still sticky and caked with mud. He tried to brush the mud off, but all it did was smear on the cloth. He threw on his shirt and stepped into his pants. Rose was hurriedly combing her hair with her fingers. She wouldn’t look at him. “My mother’s going to kill me,” she said.

“Mine, too.”

Jimmy. He glanced at his watch, shocked. Ten thirty at night now. Jimmy would never forgive him. And his mother—she’d be furious that he hadn’t come home to meet Jake. She might think he had done it on purpose.

The whole way home, picking their way through the twigs and the rocks and the dark, they tried to come up with a story. “We could tell the truth,” Rose said, and Lewis glowered at her.

“My mother would call their mothers,” he said and Rose’s face fell.

“We can’t do that, then.”

They tested out other stories. Rose’s mom had been at the Our Lady carnival, so they couldn’t say they had gone there, because she’d know they were lying. Brigham’s was open late, filled with high school kids. Maybe they could say they had gone there. “But what about Jimmy? I was supposed to meet him at your house. And what about the time?”

“Say you forgot,” Rose said. “That we both forgot the time.”

“That’d really bug Jimmy.” He thought of how Jimmy hadn’t stood up for him in the cafeteria. Too bad, he thought. Too bad if it bugged him.

Rose held her finger up. “I know. Say I was upset, then. That I was crying about school and you had to calm me down.” She looked at him hopefully. Rose was a girl who almost never cried. “You can blame me,” she insisted. He tried to think and then they were on pavement, walking down Lexington Street to Trapelo Road, over to Warwick Avenue.

The first thing he saw was the police car, white and black with a revolving gumball light on the roof, and he stopped walking, stunned. “We weren’t gone that long,” he said. The doors of the police car were open, like a mouth. There were two cops, one with his hands on his hips, and there, in a group, was his mother and Dot, and some of the neighbors.

Lewis saw his mother pointing to him, calling out to him. “Lewis!” she cried and there was something strange and stretched in her voice that made him uncomfortable. “Lewis!”

Rose and Lewis walked toward the group. When he got close to his mother, she grabbed his shoulders. “Where were you kids?” Ava cried. “It’s past ten o’clock!” She shook him and then she hugged him so tightly he could barely breathe. “Don’t do that again,” she said. “Don’t ever do that!” Lewis saw a man standing beside her, narrowing his eyes, as if he were drinking Lewis in, considering him. Jake, he thought. That must be Jake. For a moment he thought, I’ve ruined their date, and he felt a skip of glee.

Ava pulled away and then stared at him. “What happened to your clothes? What’s that all over you, mud? What have you been doing?”

“Do you know how worried we were?” Dot said to Rose. “I drove around looking for you! I called everyone I could think of!” Dot put both her hands on the sides of Rose’s arms, making Rose stiffen.

“What’s the matter with you?” Ava asked Lewis. “Do you have any idea how scared I was?” Lewis hung his head.

“It’s my fault,” Rose blurted.

“Where were you two?” Dot asked. “What were you thinking?”

“We went to a movie,” Lewis lied. “We sat on a bench and fell asleep.”

“What? You did what?” Ava looked at him as if she didn’t know him. “Where did you get the money for a movie? Why didn’t you call?”

Lewis wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he kept glancing over at Rose, who quietly shook her head.
No. Don’t tell.
When Ava looked at Rose, Rose looked away, panicked and moved closer to Lewis. “What’s going on here?” Ava said. She tried to pin Lewis in place with her gaze.

The cops seemed to relax. “Kids,” he said. One of them started writing something on a pad, while the other went to sit in the police car, to message something in. The man Lewis thought must be Jake walked over and wound one arm about his mother’s waist. He nodded at Lewis, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he lowered his head, whispering to Ava and she nodded. Lewis stepped back, not wanting to have to speak to Jake, relieved, in a way, that Jake was there, because then he wouldn’t get punished. At least not for a while.

Dot let go of Rose, who rubbed her arms as if Dot’s hold had bruised them. Dot circled away from the group of people. She arched her neck as if she were looking over a great height. She put her hands to her forehead, rubbing the skin over her eyes, squinting. Then she turned to Rose.

“Where’s your brother?” she said.

Chapter Four

J
immy’s not here?” Lewis said. Ava stared at him, incredulous. His hair was awry and there was some sort of muddy stain splashed across his shirt and pants.

“Weren’t you with your brother?” Dot cried, and Rose looked down at the ground. “Where is he?”

Ava felt Jake’s hand against the small of her back. She thought of Jimmy, crying because he had lost at checkers. She saw him standing at his doorstep, waving at her, his chin tilted up. Jimmy, she thought. Oh Jesus, Jimmy.

The cops milled around, asking questions. “We should do a search,” one of the neighbors said, and a cop lifted one hand. “Now, just settle down and let us do our job,” he snapped. “Things need to be done quickly and in the right way and you can do more harm than good if you interfere.”

Bob Gallagher shook his head. “Size
12
shoe and size
5
hat. That’s the way they want them in the force. Brawny and stupid,” he muttered.

“Bob,” said Tina, his wife, putting one hand on his elbow. Her big silvery hoop earrings swung against her cheek.

“You say something?” one of the cops said.

“Not me, Officer,” said Bob Gallagher.

“Kids, come here,” one of the cops said. He crouched down so his face was level with theirs. “What kind of places did your friend Jimmy like to go?”

Lewis stared blankly. He bit on his lower lip, trying to think, but it felt as if a cloud had settled in his head.

“Look in everyone’s basements,” one of the neighbors said.

“He didn’t like the dark,” Lewis blurted. “He’d never go in any basement.”

“Oh no?” the cop said. “Where’d he like to go?”

It was warm out, but Rose was shivering and when the cop looked at her, her whole body seemed to shake. “He liked climbing trees,” she said. “He liked wide open places. He liked the Wal-Lex!” Her voice cracked.

“Don’t forget Brigham’s,” Bob Gallagher said. “All the kids hang out there. My Eddy loves it there.” There were the swings in the Northeast Elementary playground, the Embassy theater.

“Who were his other friends?” the cop asked.

“Us. Just us,” Rose said.

One of the neighbors started talking about an abandoned refrigerator over by the Star Market, and one of the cops wrote that in a notebook.

“He’d never go in a refrigerator!” Rose said, but the cop kept writing.

“What about Brigham’s?” Bob Gallagher said again.

“I didn’t see him at the church carnival,” Tina Gallagher said.

“Jimmy wouldn’t go to the carnival,” Rose insisted.

The cops wanted Dot and Rose to come with them, to call out to
Jimmy from different locations. Ava and Lewis were told to go with another officer and drive around in a patrol car. “Something might jar your memory,” the cop told Lewis. Jake stood there, his hands in his pockets. Ava turned to him, trying to read him. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“Go,” Jake urged. “You need to go with Lewis.” She wanted to lean over and kiss him, touch his face, his hair, but she felt the neighbors watching, so she headed for the cop car instead, staring at him through the smeary window.

The patrol cars took off in different directions to cover more ground. Ava turned around in the car and saw her neighbors spreading out over the neighborhood like a lengthening shadow.

A
T NIGHT,
W
ALTHAM
was dark and uninviting. The church parking lot was empty and silent, the carnival completely gone, the church closed up. The cop drove by, not stopping. “My partner will go talk to them,” he told Ava. “I’m just double-checking.” The two-way radio in the car spit static and the police officer muttered under his breath. “Jesus, give me a break here,” he said. The streets were empty except for a few students from Brandeis wandering around, young couples holding hands. The front windows of Grover Cronin’s were covered with brown paper while they were being redesigned. To Ava, everything had a dangerous edge to it, nothing looked familiar.

Jimmy wasn’t at Wal-Lex. He wasn’t bowling or at Brigham’s. They drove up to the schoolyard and all tumbled out. Lewis lagged behind, muddying his shoes as he walked through the dirt by the playground, his small face pinched in misery. Ava glanced at her watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. Lewis was asleep on his feet. She touched the cop’s arm and nodded at her son. “It’s really late,” she said. “I need to get my son home.”

“We’ll wrap it up,” the cop said.

They got back in the car with Ava and Lewis in the back. Every time Ava glanced at the rearview mirror, she saw the cop watching her.

“Is it possible Jimmy tried to get back inside the school?” the cop asked.

“Why would he do that?” Lewis said.

“Did he have a girlfriend?”

“We’re twelve. No one has girlfriends.”

“He might have. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

Lewis shook his head. “We hung out with Rose,” he said. “His sister. And I would have known if he had a girl.”

“Where could he have gone?” Ava asked, and Lewis moved closer to the door, as if any minute he might push open the handle and tumble out into the night.

“Honey,” she said. “Jimmy said he was going to meet you at his house. Why didn’t you meet him?”

“I just didn’t.”

“But why not, honey—”

The cop cleared his throat. “How did your clothes get so muddy?” he said and Lewis stiffened. “I fell,” he said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. I just fell!”

“Where were you, really?”

“I told you—with Rose. We were walking around!” He pressed his body close to the door. “Why don’t you believe me? I was with Rose!” He looked at Ava pleadingly. She reached across the seat to touch his shoulder, and then she sat up straighter.

“Stop,” Ava said fiercely. “No more questions tonight.”

The two-way radio crackled again and a voice snapped, “What the hell are you doing, Maroni?” He stiffened and picked up the phone. “What do you think I’m doing?” he snapped. “Trying to find the boy. We’re out looking right now. I got someone from the neighborhood. The kid’s best friend and his mother.” The static jumped.

“In the squad car? Are you crazy? Take them home immediately and you get back to the station,” the voice said. The cop hung up. “Whatever you goddamned say,” he said under his breath, turning the car around. The car was silent after that. Ava wished she could see Lewis’s face, but his head was lowered. She stared out at the street, as if any moment she would see Jimmy darting out from the bushes.

When they got back, the neighborhood was dark. If you didn’t know what had happened, you’d think that nothing had. The lights were off, the front doors shut, except there was a cop car in front of Dot’s that made her feel as if her bones had turned to water. “Call me if you think of anything else,” the cop said, and he gave her a card, his name on it in tiny block letters. Detective Hank Maroni. “Usually, they just send regular officers first,” he told her. “But I came along.”

Lewis spilled out of the car, and Ava followed. Then she saw Jake, sitting on her front porch. He had stayed. As soon as he saw them, he stood up and started walking toward them.

“I couldn’t leave,” he said, and she nodded. “Lot of commotion. A few more cops showed up and they were canvassing the neighborhood. Talking to everyone, writing everything down. A TV crew showed up. I talked to some of the other neighbors, then I sat out here and watched the stars.” He touched her shoulder. “Do they know anything?” He looked so concerned, she felt herself listing toward him.

“No, nothing.”

Jake sighed. “Then I’m sorry.” He stood so close, it felt comforting, then he glanced over at Lewis. “Hey.” Jake held out the present to Lewis, who stared at it. “It’s for you,” Jake said. “I hope you like it. Your mother says you might.”

Lewis took it without looking at it. “Thank you,” he mumbled, his face lowered. He walked past Jake to the house, his shoulders hunched. “It was nice of you to stay,” Ava said.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay. It was quite a scene here.”

Ava glanced at Lewis, letting himself into the house with his key. “It’s his best friend. He’s upset.”

“I get that.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. She wanted to ask him to come inside and sit with her. To lie beside her and just hold her so she wouldn’t feel so small and alone. She wanted to get out of the neighborhood and take Lewis and go to his place, but he had never invited her over. She had driven past, wanting to see. It was a great old house, pale yellow with flowers lining the walk, and big picture windows and, for a moment, she imagined herself inside. She had no idea what he did when he wasn’t with her, if he puttered in the garden the way she did or sat for hours reading. She tried to remember if he had ever asked her what she wanted in life, but all she could remember was the way he kissed the inside of her elbow, the way he stroked her hip.

“We’ll do this another time,” he told her. Jake leaned in and kissed her, as brief as a quarter note, and then was gone before she realized he hadn’t said when he would call, or when she would see him next.

When she got inside, the house was quiet. “Lewis?” she called,
winding her way to the den where he was staring at the magic kit Jake had given him, the wrapping torn into strips. He blinked at the picture of the grinning man, at the thought bubble that said “Abracadabra!” “This is for a little kid,” Lewis said, but when he got up from the table, he took the magic kit with him, tucked under his arm, and she could hear the slam of his door.

She fell onto her own bed, but couldn’t sleep. She worried about how little sleep Lewis would have for school the next day. She thought of having to go to work tomorrow and pressed the pillow over her head. She could call Richard and tell him she needed to be home because she didn’t want her son staying alone in an empty house after what happened. But she knew he’d say, “This isn’t a half day, Ava. You’re either here when we need you, or you’re not.” She had already seen Richard fire one of the typists for coming to work a half hour late, and when the poor girl tried to explain, he had said, “I don’t care if it was the atom bomb.” Without a job, she didn’t stand a chance of keeping custody of Lewis. She could ask one of the other neighbors if Lewis could go over there, just until she was home from work, or at least to just keep an eye out on the house, but would they do it? If he stayed inside, Lewis would be safe.

Her mind tumbled from one scenario to another. Where in God’s name was Jimmy? She got up and went outside. The police had told her they had checked, but she searched her whole backyard again. She remembered one night, when she had woken with a headache, worrying about bills and Brian and custody, she had stood out at the kitchen window and she had seen Jimmy sprawled on her lawn in his pajamas, his eyes closed. She had gone outside in her robe and nightgown, not relaxing until she had seen his shoulders moving up and down with breath. He was sleeping, that was all. Just sleeping. Why had she even thought otherwise? “Jimmy,” she had said, and his eyes had fluttered open and he had given her a big, drowsy smile. His feet curled in the dewy grass, a dandelion caught between his toes.

“What are you doing here?” she had whispered.

He had sat up, rubbing at his eyes. “I couldn’t sleep.” His pajamas were printed with space ships on green cotton and he suddenly looked about ten years old to her.

“Oh, sweetie,” she had said, with deep pity. She had made him promise that he’d never do anything like that again, and then she had walked him back home and waited to make sure he was in his house again.

So he had promised her, but here she was again in the backyard, looking for him, the grass cool against her bare feet. She was half sure she might find him, because what kid ever really listened to an adult? She parted the overgrown rhododendron bushes with her hands, looked around the side of the house, and then, defeated, she came back inside. She went to Lewis’s room and cracked open his door so she could see him sleeping, his shoulders under the covers moving up and down, his nose poking out. She felt a flood of love. What would she do if Lewis was missing? How would she manage? And how would he?

Lewis was afraid of so many things. Bugs, dogs, birds, even the jungle gym in the park that the other kids climbed all over. It broke her heart. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she kept telling him, urging him to try the rope ladder, to kick high on the swings, but he shook her off, turning away. “Be a man!” Brian used to tell him when he was little, which was no help at all. “My Lewis doesn’t cry,” Brian would say when Lewis scraped his knees trying to play basketball with his dad.

Lewis was twelve now, and without her even realizing it, he was growing up. He’d begun to read by himself in bed, falling asleep with a book and not coming out to kiss her good-night. “I forgot,” he’d tell her in the morning, but he forgot to kiss her more and more, and she found herself collecting those losses like debts that might never be paid. When she went to check on him at night now, he looked suddenly so much older that she felt discombobulated. He holed up in his room alone, or with Jimmy and Rose, and when she came with cookies for them, the conversation abruptly stopped, not starting up again until after she was gone. “Close the door, Mom,” he said. Mom. Not Mommy anymore, but a truncated syllable, like the bang of a screen door. Mom.

Ava had started to realize how much she was going to miss the boy that he was. Well, twelve was still a child, wasn’t it? She still had a few more years with him before he would be gone from the house.

She made her way deeper into his room. When he was at school, she often wandered in here, not snooping—never snooping—but just wanting to be around him, trying to learn all the things about her son that she could. Now, she crept to his bed and leaned down, inhaling the scent of his hair, which was like green leaves, and he woke, startled. He sat up in bed.

“Mom, what are you doing?” He rubbed his eyes.

“Nothing, honey,” she said. He squinted at her and then rolled back down on the bed, asleep again. He wouldn’t remember this moment, but she would never forget it.