Is This Tomorrow

by Caroline Leavitt

  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

  Jimmy’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.

  AT NIGHT, WALTHAM 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.

  Chapter Five

  As soon as Ava left his bedroom, Lewis threw back the covers. He was still in his clothes and all his senses were ramped up to alert, as if he were wired for an emergency. Every noise, every feeling, could mean Jimmy was near. He hadn’t put on his pajamas because he might have to leave the house any moment, and he’d need his clothes and shoes, so he could move fast. His thoughts kept roller-coastering. How could Jimmy be gone? He dug his fingers into his arms. It should have been me.

  He could hear his mother clattering pots, moving about the house cleaning, the way she always did when she was upset. She wasn’t sleeping, either.

  “Jimmy.” Now he said his name out loud as if he were calling him. Jimmy had been in his room just the day before and right now Lewis could be breathing in the same air that Jimmy had breathed. He traced his hand along the bedspread because he had read that cells slough off all the time and maybe he was touching Jimmy’s. He thought of how weird it was that when people left, the world didn’t come spilling in to fill up the hole where they had been, the empty space just stayed there. When his father left, he had first told himself his father was just away at one of his sales conferences, and that he’d be back, with a trophy and little gifts for both Ava and Lewis, cups with the name of the city on them, or snow domes, which Lewis kept on a shelf in his room. He didn’t know where his father was now or why he wasn’t coming back, except that somehow it must be his fault. Just like Jimmy was.