“Totally up to you.”
She wasn’t sure how to answer. Brian had always planned everything for them. He would take her to the best restaurants in Boston, but he always ordered for the two of them. He’d take her to shows, but he’d decide what they were seeing. When she tried to talk to other women about wanting to have a say in things, they laughed. “At least he takes you out,” one woman told Ava. “Count your blessings.” And fool that she was, Ava had.
Smoke clouded around them and she felt as if she were seeing Jake through a haze. She blinked, trying to clear her vision and figure out if this was a good move for her or not, and then he started to get up, still smiling at her, and she reached for him. When he took her outstretched hand in his, a jolt of heat ran through her. “Thursday,” she said. “How about Thursday?”
That Thursday, a night when Lewis was staying at Jimmy’s again, Ava went to meet Jake at the restaurant she had chosen, despite his offer to pick her up at home. Instead of taking her car, which would be impossible to park, she took the bus, which left her off in front, and when she looked up, he was already there, standing at the door.
They sat at a table in the back, next to a potted tree that smelled faintly of jasmine. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and leaned toward her and she could smell him, like pine and grasses. She knew you were supposed to ask men about themselves, but he said, “Tell me about Ava,” and as she did, she realized just how much had been bottled up, all the stories she hadn’t been able to share with the neighbors or her coworkers. He didn’t seem to care that she had been married or that she had a son or that she was Jewish. When she told him about Brian, how he had cheated on her, running off with a woman who came with a business attached to her, he just shook his head. “What a jerk,” he said. “It was smart of you to get a divorce.” No one had ever said that to her. He didn’t look at her with pity, or wonder what she had done to make Brian leave her. She reached out and touched Jake’s fingers, one at a time, making him laugh.
When he asked to drive her home, Ava didn’t think twice about it. But when they got outside the restaurant, she stared in wonder at his motorcycle. “This thing safe?” she asked.
“With me driving, it is.”
She didn’t know what to do, but he was patiently waiting for her, and so she popped on the heavy helmet he gave her and hooped one leg over the seat. She held on tight, her head against his back, her eyes wide open as the streets flew by. The wind bit at her cheeks and flung her skirt up over her knees, but she didn’t loosen her grip. When he peeled into the neighborhood, she saw the curtains in the house across the street fluttering open, and for a moment she worried how this wonderful night might end up in neighborhood gossip.
She got off the bike, her legs wobbly. “Gotta get your sea legs,” Jake laughed and he held out his hand to gently steady her. Jake walked her to her door, polite. He didn’t try anything, not a kiss, not asking if he could come in. Instead, he walked his fingers up her arm as if he were playing notes, making her laugh. “We’re like jazz,” he told her, “we go together.” And then he said, “I’ll see you, kiddo.”
The very next afternoon, Jake had called and suddenly they were seeing each other as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He understood why she didn’t want him meeting Lewis just yet, how you’d need to prepare a kid for something like that, and he was fine about her keeping things quiet. He appreciated, too, that she cared about how the neighbors saw her, and he was careful to arrive late at night when everyone was asleep, and only on nights when Lewis was at Jimmy’s. “We’ll improvise,” he laughed. It was always an odd hour when she saw him. Friday after midnight. Wednesday morning after Lewis went to school. He called her blue note, bebop, but never honey, and every time he left, after she heard his motorcycle rumbling away into the distance, she had to stop herself from running after him.
At night, by herself, she sometimes worried. Jake didn’t have the things she had told herself she wanted. He did have a mortgage, but it was in Cambridgeport, which was sort of a hardscrabble part of the city, looping around the river, an area where everything was dirt cheap. He didn’t have a full-time job or a lot of money. It made her scared. One night, she told herself this was too crazy, too difficult, that it didn’t have a future. She’d have to break it off. Then he came over at two in the morning with his sax. He was keyed up after his set, and before she could open her mouth, he said, “Listen to this.” He took his sax and began playing something for her, a melody so haunting and moody, she was hypnotized. She couldn’t help it. She walked over to him, rested her head along his back, and she swore she could feel the music coming through her, like a vibration, almost as if she were a part of the melody. She shivered and shut her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him.
She knew what a big a step it was, Jake meeting Lewis, how it turned their relationship into something new. He had been the one who had suggested it, which seemed an even bigger deal to her. They were in bed when he had asked, the fan on them, filmed in sweat. “Wait,” Jake said, and then he vanished. She thought he was just going to get a drink or to the bathroom, but he came back with a glass of water. Laughing, he sprinkled it over her curves until she couldn’t help herself. She shut her eyes. She felt him leaning over her. “Ava,” he said. “You should let me meet your son now.”
She liked the way he put it, like she was in control, like it was up to her. You should let me. She threaded her fingers at the back of his head, pulling him closer so she could kiss his mouth.
Now, she glanced at the clock. Five more minutes and she could go home and get ready.
IN PREPARATION FOR her date, she showered in lilac soap. She stood in a cloud of Tabu perfume, a sample they had handed out at Grover Cronin’s, and pulled on a new dress, red, with a low neckline. This was the start of a whole new phase of their relationship. She knew it. As soon as you got your child involved, you couldn’t be casual. And he had suggested it, not her, and maybe that was why her heart was hurtling. She kept going over and over in her mind how the evening might go. She didn’t do more than sip wine, but Jake liked a glass, and she had bought a bottle of red that the man in the wine store assured her was delicious, even at such a low price. She picked daisies and put them in a vase on the table, and even set out some Charlie Parker records.
Ava paced the house, waiting for Lewis. She wasn’t sure how he’d act tonight, if he’d be nice and give this guy a chance. When Lewis wasn’t home yet and it was seven, she began to get annoyed. She wanted him to put on good pants and a nice shirt, to wet a comb and rake it through his hair, straighten up his room.
She walked from room to room, obsessing, trying to see if her house looked presentable. Her mind churned. She moved back into the living room and sat on the couch. It felt like two different days, the worry about Brian and the joy about Jake. But it was important to remember that she deserved happiness and had worked hard for it. They were two very different people, Brian and Jake. History didn’t have to do any repeating.
She got up and brushed some dust off the edge of the couch, then she glanced at her watch. Seven thirty. How did it get to be so late? Where was Lewis? She looked outside, at the waning light splashing across the neighborhood.
Jimmy had said his mom was at the Our Lady’s carnival, but when she spotted a light across the street, she called Dot, who sounded exasperated. “Jimmy’s not home, either,” Dot said.
“Those boys,” Ava said, relieved. Lewis wasn’t alone then.
“And girl. Count Rose in, too.” Dot sighed. “At least they’re together, having fun,” she said.
“The Three Mouseketeers,” Ava said, and Dot laughed.
“They’re good kids,” Dot said. “We’re lucky they have each other.”
Ava didn’t want to spoil her good mood by yelling at Lewis when he got home, nor did she want to risk making him surly and silent when Jake got there. No, she’d rise above it, the way she did at work when Richard decided he neede
d to throw his weight around as the boss and stood in front of the whole typing pool and blamed her for botching a sale of the new turquoise sinks they were pushing, when she and everyone else knew all Ava did was type invoices and letters, and the real reason they hadn’t sold was because the sinks were so ugly no one wanted them. The other women had looked at her as if she were to blame, too, or maybe they were just glad she was the one being chewed out, instead of them.
No, she’d bide her time. She’d talk to Lewis later about responsibility and considering other people. He’d bow his head as if he were praying, but she knew him: he acted like he didn’t care sometimes, but he was a sensitive kid. He’d take it to heart.
She glanced out the big picture window. Some of the neighbors were walking home with their kids, holding on to balloons and stuffed animals from the carnival, carrying covered aluminum dishes of food. She saw wives greeting their men, already home from work, flinging their arms around them, talking and laughing. By eight o’clock, she was furious, wondering if Lewis was doing this deliberately. Jake would be here soon. Her good mood, her joy, wilted. The daisies in the glass now looked faded, her dress felt wrinkled, and the jazz albums she had put out casually on the table seemed suddenly forced and stupid, so she got up and put them back in the album rack. What was she supposed to tell Jake when he showed up and there was this silent spot where her son was supposed to be? How would the evening go now?
She walked to the kitchen, knocking her hip against the edge of the table, placing one hand over the jab of pain, and then she reached toward the phone, about to call Dot again, when it rang. Lewis, she bet. At the Wal-Lex bowling alley or the skating rink, his voice hushed with apology. At the library. All the places he usually went to and she wouldn’t have been so angry if it hadn’t been this one special night for her. If it hadn’t meant so much.
“I don’t know where Jimmy and Rose are,” Dot said, “And frankly I’m beginning to worry.” Ava leaned against the kitchen wall, shutting her eyes. She wasn’t afraid. Not then.
“Those kids are so irresponsible,” Ava said. “They all have watches—why can’t they learn to use them?” She thought of Lewis’s Superman watch, red and bright yellow. She had scoured all of Boston for it for Lewis’s birthday, wrapping the timepiece up, buying a card, and forging Brian’s name, so he’d think his father had remembered him. Lewis never took it off. He even slept with it on. When people asked him who gave it to him, he always said, “My dad.”
The roar of a motorcycle split the air. “What’s that?” Dot said alarmed.
“I have to go,” Ava said.
There were neighbors outside, in a group, studying Jake as he parked. Ava felt their eyes on her as she walked toward him in her heels, sinking a bit in the soft grass. She heard someone say, “That’s what she’s wearing?” The comment felt aimed at her like a barbed arrow, and she self-consciously smoothed down the front of her dress. Jake was in a suit, and he held a small wrapped package. He smiled when he saw her, and when she told him about Lewis, he shrugged
“Kids,” he said. “I’d be pissed off, too, if I thought someone was courting my mama.”
Courting. He said courting.
He bent and kissed her. “We have time.” He held up the package. “You told me he liked magic, so I bought him a kit.” He unpeeled some of the tape on the wrapping, opening one side carefully to show her, and she felt a pulse of warmth. It was such a sweet gesture. Then she studied the glossy cover of the kit and her heart sank a little when she saw the silly-looking rabbit popping out of a hat, the cartoony magician holding the animal by the ears. She could tell that it was a kit for a younger kid, and even worse, right there in shiny red letters on the bottom it said “for ages 4–6.” Lewis would be insulted. He read adult-level books. He’d no more want this kit than he would want a pacifier, but she could only hope that Lewis would be polite.
Ava and Jake sat in her living room and had a glass of the burgundy, but she couldn’t relax, not without Lewis being there. She kept checking her watch, and every time she saw the time, she felt a little sicker. After half a glass of wine, she felt faintly buzzed, as if there were a scrim over the room. They played a game of gin, but in the back of her mind, she thought of what she was going to do and say when Lewis sauntered in. She’d wait to see if he apologized, and if he did, the evening still might be salvaged, but if he didn’t, she might explode. She was going to ground Lewis. She was going to set down new and clear rules around the house that he had to obey. She was furious with him for being so inconsiderate. Kids. They ran away, they did stupid things, they came home tired and dirty and full of excuses and you didn’t know whether to yell at them or hold them close.
By ten, she was frantic. He had never stayed out this late before, even when he was with Jimmy and Rose. She looked out the window and saw how dark it was.
“We need to go look for him,” she told Jake, and he nodded and stood up, just as the phone rang, startling her.
“I called the police,” Dot’s voice was strained. “They’re coming over.”
The cops arrived within ten minutes, pulling up to Dot, who was standing in the street, her face pale of her usual makeup, her I Love Lucy curls limply held back by her kerchief. Ava and Jake came out to join her, but Dot looked at them as if they were strangers, instead grabbing for the first cop who got out of the car, an older beefy guy who absently patted her hand. The second cop sauntered out, young and thin, and then the other neighbors came out of their houses to find out what was going on. Ava, tight with fear, didn’t care that the neighbors were watching her, that they were drinking Jake in. Lewis. Where was Lewis?
“Where could they be?” Dot cried.
Ava thought of the map that had been in her son’s room for a week before it went back to Jimmy’s, all those pushpins tacked to the places that he and Jimmy were going to visit when they were older, a cross-country trip they thought would be an adventure. She dropped Jake’s hand. “They were planning this trip—” she said. “There’s a map.”
“The map’s for fun, it doesn’t mean anything!” Dot said. “And they’re happy kids, why would they run away?”
“You don’t know that they were running away,” Ava said, her voice sharpening. She tried to imagine Lewis on the road and felt sickened. Lewis had no sense of direction. He had once left their table at a restaurant to go to the men’s room, and on the way back, he had gotten lost. He wouldn’t ask any of the waiters for help, and she had finally gotten up to look for him and found him wandering in another room by a tropical fish tank. She had tried to teach him how to find his way, from home to the school, from the Star Market to home. “Pick out signposts,” she had told him. “Look for trees, a white house, a mark on the wall.” She thought of Lewis out somewhere in the dark and she braced one hand against Jake’s arm.
“Who saw the kids last?” one of the cops asked.
“Jimmy came to my house this afternoon,” Ava said, and as soon as she said it, the cop looked at her with interest. “Lewis was at the dentist.”
“Again at your house?” Dot said. “Again?” Her voice slid up an octave.
“What do you mean, again? Of course at my house. The kids are always at my house. He was waiting for Lewis. I don’t like kids being in my house without me so I shooed him out so I could get to work. He went right home. I saw him.”
“Who were these kids’ other friends?” the cop asked. “Did they have any enemies? What do they do to blow off steam?”
Ava told them everything she remembered. How Jimmy had looked standing on his front porch, the day shiny with heat. How Lewis had promised to be home by six. A metallic taste filled her throat and her heart was beating so hard she felt it pushing against her skin.
She watched one of the cops writing something down. And then, like a mirage, in the distance, she saw Lewis and Rose stumbling toward them, in a gold halo of streetlight.
Chapter Three
At four o’clock, earlier that day, after the d
entist cleaned his teeth (“You need to brush better,” the dentist had scolded Lewis, smacking a new red toothbrush onto Lewis’s palm), Lewis walked to the library to pick up a book he needed for school. He was supposed to meet Jimmy at his house, something they’d planned earlier at school, and though Lewis had sort of wanted to check out the carnival, Jimmy wouldn’t even consider it. “Bunch of junk and parents,” Jimmy said.
Sometimes Lewis wondered if Jimmy only hung around him because of Ava, which was an absolutely creepy thought. “Is your mom going to be home?” Jimmy had asked this morning, which irritated Lewis. “What if she isn’t?” he had asked and Jimmy just shrugged. “I have to go to the dentist, but I’ll meet you at your house around four,” Lewis told him. Then later, at lunch in the cafeteria, when two of the rougher boys, Billy D’Adario and Tommy Scanell, had pried Lewis’s sandwich from his hands to show there was no filling in the middle, to laugh (“Haw! A bread sandwich!” Tommy had said), Jimmy had just sat there. Billy flung a handful of rusty pennies on the table. “You’re a Jew, pick them up,” he said, and for one horrible moment Lewis had wanted to, because he could have used those pennies. There were enough there so he could have put the coins in his pocket, along with the cab money Ava had given him, adding it all to the stash he was saving for his trip across the country with Jimmy when they were older. Instead, he did what his mother had told him to do. He turned away. He pretended it didn’t hurt, looked bored, and the boys scattered.
“Why didn’t you stand up for me?” Lewis asked Jimmy.
“You can’t win with those guys,” Jimmy said. He sipped grape juice from a plaid thermos.
“You’re just scared,” Lewis muttered, and Jimmy flushed, which meant that Lewis was right. But Lewis was scared, too. He stared down at his bread sandwich, manhandled by the boys, and shoved it aside. He saw the pennies were still there, but he wouldn’t touch them, either.
That had been earlier, but he was still upset about it at the dentist, and even here in the library. He wandered into the main room, which was cool and dark, and as soon as he saw the stacks of books, he felt a little better. He traced his fingers along the spines of the novels (his favorite section), and pulled out The Great Gatsby. Maybe it would be good. He turned right and then left until he was in biographies. The titles winked out at him. He was supposed to find a biography of a famous person to do a report for sixth-grade finals, but none of these names spoke to him. Benjamin Franklin was boring and fat and greasy looking, Clara Barton had a mean face, and no way was he going to do Davy Crockett like every other kid in school because they all thought it might be a good excuse to buy those stupid furry hats.
Is This Tomorrow Page 3