Is This Tomorrow

by Caroline Leavitt

  Rose found her mother in the kitchen, sprawled on the floor in her nightgown and her dirty robe, her feet bare, her hair uncombed. “Mom!” Rose shouted. She crouched down, her heart pounding and reached for her mother’s hand. There was a pulse. Her mother jerked her hand away and turned her face to Rose. “I can’t do this anymore,” Dot said, and hearing her voice, Rose felt so relieved she could have cried.

  Rose struggled to get her up. Her mother was heavy and perspiring. She dragged her into the bathroom and ran a bath. She didn’t want to see her mother naked, but she pulled the dirty clothes off. “Get in,” she ordered, and her mother silently did, sinking into the hot water. “Oh, that feels good,” Dot said. Rose was afraid to leave her, so she sat on the toilet, waiting, watching, until her mother’s eyes fluttered and then focused on Rose. Dot grabbed the shower curtain and pulled it closed around her, shutting Rose out. “Go,” she said, her voice muffled. “I’ll be fine.”

  Rose waited outside the door, leaning forward, listening. She heard the water draining from the tub. She heard her mother’s long sigh, and then the door opened and Dot walked down the hall to her room, not looking at Rose, but padding into her room and firmly shutting the door.

  THE NEXT DAY, when Rose came home from school, Dot was dressed, and she had even made a snack for Rose: four Ritz crackers and a piece of American cheese. Rose was about to head over to Lewis’s for dinner when she heard something crackling in the pan, a snap of grease, the smell of bacon. She wandered into the kitchen and there was Dot making bacon in a pan, slices of bread set out in front of her. “BLTs okay?” Dot asked, and Rose sat down on the chair in wonder. “They’re great,” she said.

  Every night after that, there was some sort of dinner. It was never anything special, but there were eggs and toast (“breakfast for dinner,” Dot called it), spaghetti and butter, and even fried chicken and a baked potato. Dot ate, too, and afterward, she did the dishes, humming to herself, staring out the window as if she were the only one there. “Want to watch TV?” Rose asked and Dot shrugged, but she came and sat beside her on the couch. It didn’t matter what Rose put on, Dot always seemed to be somewhere else.

  It was the beginning of June, the week before school ended, when Rose came home, and right there, in the living room, there were two suitcases, their tops wide open like jaws. Her mother was packing, her face flushed. “I’ve made a decision,” she said. She told Rose they were going to stay with her sister Hope in Pittsburgh, a woman Rose barely knew, and when they were on their feet, they’d get their own place. Maybe in Pittsburgh or in some place else altogether. “She suggested it out of the blue and as soon as I heard it, it felt right,” Dot said.

  “We’re leaving?” Rose said. “You didn’t even talk to me about this.”

  “You’re a child. You don’t get a decision in this.” Dot folded more clothing.

  “I’m not a child. And I don’t want to go.”

  “I already called a realtor. He says the market is good, the house should sell quickly.”

  “What about Jimmy? How can we leave Jimmy?”

  Her mother stopped packing and turned to Rose.

  “You’re going to let him come home to a strange house?” Rose said. “You’re going to let him think we didn’t care enough about him to stay here? How can you leave?”

  “Rose—” Dot warned, but Rose felt a bubble of grief rising in her throat. “Do you think we’ll just leave and everything will be all right?” Rose cried.

  “We need a change. I want to be someplace where everything doesn’t remind me and every morning I don’t wake up and wish I hadn’t. If the police need to find us, they can.” Dot looked around the house. “This is the first day I’ve felt alive,” she said quietly.

  Rose fled the house. The streets were empty and the air felt thick and heavy as a coat around her. She was crying when Lewis opened his front door. He grabbed her hand and took her to his room, shutting the door, sitting her down. She couldn’t stop crying, so he moved closer and put his forehead against hers, and then she began to tell him what had happened. “I’ll write you as soon as I have a real address. I’ll call. Pittsburgh’s not so far away,” she said. She could feel his breath on her face, his mouth so close all she had to do was move a bit closer and his lips would be touching hers. She draped her arms on his shoulders and he let her. She held him so close she felt his heart beating against her. Then she pulled back. “We need to have another pact,” she said. She put her hand up and he placed his against hers. “We’ll find Jimmy. We’ll never give up looking.”

  “We’ll never give up,” Lewis assured her.

  There was a knock on the door and their hands flew back into their laps. “What’s going on?” Ava said, opening the door. Rose looked at Lewis, who had a blank look on his face. “Rose is moving,” he said.

  Ava walked into the room, knelt down, and cupped Rose’s face. “Oh, honey,” she said.

  ROSE AND DOT were leaving as soon as the house was sold. Already, there was a thick white FOR SALE sign planted in their yard like a dandelion. Rose spent every minute she could with Lewis. “I’ll write you every single day,” she promised. “As soon as we have a real address, I’ll give it to you. Maybe I can figure out a way to visit, or you can visit us.” As soon as she said it, she knew how stupid it sounded. She didn’t even know what Pittsburgh was like. How would she get from there to here again, if her mother wouldn’t drive her or put her on a train, two things she could tell you right now her mother would never do? How would Lewis get to her? She kept asking her mother for her aunt’s address in Pittsburgh, to write it down so she could give it to Lewis. “I’ll get it,” Dot said, but then she never did.

  The neighbors were murmuring about their move. Even though they lowered their voices when Rose walked by, she heard the comments. How could a mother move when her son was still missing? What if he came back? What if there was only an empty house to greet him? There was something wrong with the whole picture and what did you expect when it was a woman alone? But Dot kept talking about how this was going to be a whole new life, how they’d be settled in a new neighborhood before school even started up again.

  One night, Rose lay sprawled across her bed, ignoring the empty boxes Dot had pushed into her room, and wrote in her journal to Jimmy, We are moving but I will never stop looking for you. And then, to make herself feel better, she added, Maybe you are in Pittsburgh, too. And then, like a postscript, she wrote, I promise I will find you.

  Her mother wanted her to take only what was important, but Rose knew her mother’s idea of what to take was different from hers. She packed only one box, filling it with the clues she had collected about Jimmy, with all the objects that meant something to her: Jimmy’s favorite shirt, the map. Then Rose looked out the window, taking the flashlight and flashing S-O-S at Lewis’s house, but his shades stayed drawn, and after a while, she gave up. It was past one, really late, and she knew he must be asleep. She picked up her journal again and leafed through it. It was filled with letters to Jimmy and feelings she had about people or places that might be clues, and an occasional story she had written, always about a girl like herself looking for and always finding her lost brother. Taking up the pen, she began writing again, but this time, before she even realized what she was doing, she was writing about a girl about to move away from her best friend, a boy. At the very end, the girl tells the boy she loves him, but as she scribbled that part, Rose’s hands trembled. She couldn’t write the next sentence because she didn’t know what the boy would say back, and the not knowing made it seem as though her room was reeling.

  She got up and made her way to her closet, looking at the walls. If Jimmy came back, he might look for a message from her. A sign. Find me in Pittsburgh, she wrote, and then she scribbled her name.

  AT THE END of July, the house was sold. When Lewis saw the sign, he wanted to kick it out from the grass. He waited for Rose, who tumbled out of the house, her face stormy. She made her way to Lewis.


  “A dentist,” she said. “That’s who bought our house. Ron and Rhonda Brown. Isn’t that so cute you want to throw up?” Rose said. “My mother’s given them free range. As far as she’s concerned, it’s their house now.”

  “It’s not their house. It will never be their house.”

  “She thinks this is going to fix things, but it won’t,” Rose said. “How can we leave?” Rose scratched at the dirt along the curb with her toe. “You have to keep watch for him,” she told Lewis. “Hair might be dyed and cut. People can get fatter, too.” She put up one hand like a visor, scanning the neighborhood. “He could walk right back up here tomorrow.”

  “I’ll never stop looking,” Lewis told her.

  “Neither will I.” She pressed her forehead against his, her lids lowering.

  THEY WERE MOVING August 15. Lewis had the day marked on his calendar with a small red x. Rose told him they were leaving early in the morning, that they were renting a U-Haul and driving. The neighbors had all chipped in, including Ava, to buy Dot a red suitcase, a white bow tied around it. When they had brought it over, Dot had looked at it like she didn’t know what to do with it. “Thank you,” she said, but she didn’t open it.

  Every day when Lewis woke up, he was sure something would happen to prevent their departure. The Browns might decide they didn’t want to live in such a nosy neighborhood. Dot might realize she couldn’t leave while her son was still missing. Maybe a Communist missile would blow up Pittsburgh. Sometimes he imagined that Rose would get sick—not sick to her death, but sick enough so that they had to stay. And there was the other, amazing miracle: they would be all out on the street, watching the U-Haul being loaded, when Jimmy would appear, his jeans ragged, his hair longer, looking at them in astonishment. “Where’ve you been?” he’d say, as if it were everyone in the neighborhood that had been missing and not him.

  The night before Rose’s departure, Lewis and Rose hung out at the schoolyard, sitting on the swings, scraping their sneakers in the dirt. Neither one of them said anything about this being the last time they might see each other. “I have to get going,” she said finally.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. Rose turned from him and he grabbed her hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he repeated.

  She was still for a moment. “Yeah. Tomorrow,” she said, but she didn’t look at him when she said it.

  IN THE MORNING, the clock blinked at Lewis and he grabbed it in his fist like a baseball, panicked. Seven. How could it be seven? He fiddled with the dials. His alarm hadn’t gone off. He swung his legs over the bed and shoved his feet into his sneakers. Rose had told him that they were leaving at six, before anyone was up, but maybe they had gotten a late start. Maybe he could still make it. He ran to the living room, grabbing a coat to throw over his pajamas, then dashed out the front door. The frosty morning air made him shiver. He could hear the thwack of his shoes on the pavement. He ran and even before he got to the house, he could feel it for the first time, the connection Rose was always trying to get him to feel with her, only now it was raw and empty, and he knew they were gone.

  He stopped, bracing his hands on his knees, panting. The U-Haul wasn’t there. The house looked empty. He thought of Rose, waking up, waiting for him. He wondered if she was mad or sad or if she’d ever forgive him. He knew he’d never forgive himself.

  You could look right through the front windows and see how bare the house was. He tried the front door, but it was locked, so he went around to the back and pried open one of the back windows. He and Jimmy used to climb up from here to sit on the roof and survey the street. He got inside and saw that everything was ready for the Browns. The wood floors were glossy, the carpets clean. He walked into Jimmy’s room and was struck by the emptiness. There was a faint block on the wall where their travel map had been. The bed, the curtains, every trace of Jimmy was gone. It was just any old room now.

  He explored the rest of the house, his skin hot. The kitchen was empty. So was the living room. He went into Rose’s room. The walls were still pale pink. He went to her closet, sliding down into a crouch and then sitting. “Rose,” he said out loud, and his voice echoed. He saw something in the corner and peered at it. Find me in Pittsburgh was etched on the wall, and under it her name.

  Lewis touched it. Her handwriting. When had she written this? Did she mean it for Jimmy or for him, or for both? How did she even know he’d go into her closet? He pressed his hand over her words. The new people would hire someone to paint over this and then it would be gone, too.

  Lewis got up. Already the morning light was sifting into the house. Soon, the fathers would be coming out of their houses, their lunches under their arms, and getting into their cars. Lewis went outside, crossed the street, and sat on his porch, his head in his hands. Rose had never gotten her aunt’s address in Pittsburgh from Dot. The world was wide and terrifying and there was no place for him in it alone.

  ALL THAT WEEK, Lewis stayed in his room, staring at the ceiling. School was starting in a few weeks, eighth grade. Rose was gone. He kicked the book he had been reading about Houdini to the ground. Houdini, with all his tricks, now irritated him. He was tired of tricks and feelings and things you couldn’t touch. At one point, his mother came by and opened the door to his room. “Hey,” she said. “Aren’t there any kids around today?”

  Didn’t she know he had no friends? He waited, but Ava didn’t leave.

  “I have an idea,” Ava said. “What about the Penny Pool?”

  The Penny Pool was a big community pool that cost a penny. It was always jam-packed and all the little kids peed in the pool. “No?” Ava said. “Well, how about you and I go to the movies? Johnny Tremain’s at the Embassy.”

  “I don’t want to see a movie.” He willed her to leave, but she sat down on his bed, studying him. “Don’t you think I feel bad, too? Dot was a friend of mine, but this street is only a tiny part of the world. People leave all the time. That’s what life is,” she said quietly.

  “Do you know where they went in Pittsburgh?” he said. “Did Dot give you an address or the aunt’s last name?”

  “I asked, but she didn’t tell me. I think Dot just wanted to leave everything behind,” Ava said.

  Lewis turned his back to her, facing the wall.

  “If you change your mind, we could make the four o’clock show,” she said, as she got up and walked out of the room.

  THE DAY THE Browns moved in, it seemed that all of the neighborhood was outside, watching the big van unload, commenting on the furniture, which was white and ornate. “Oh, do I love French Colonial,” Debbie Hill said. She commented on the brass lamps and the wooden rocker. “What taste!” Tina Gallagher said. When Mrs. Brown spotted Lewis, she waved, but he pretended not to see her, and soon she was talking to someone else. He watched them going in and out and he suddenly wished he had scratched away Rose’s message. He didn’t want them finding it. It belonged to him. But when he tried to sneak into the house, Mrs. Brown stopped him. “Whoah now,” she said. “We’re not open for business just yet.”

  Every night he wrote Rose letters. He told her how sorry he was that he had missed her leaving, that he would do anything to make it up to her if she would only let him. He told her how strange and lonely the neighborhood was now without her. He sealed the letters in envelopes, but because he didn’t have an address, he put the letters in a drawer, hiding them under his underwear.

  Then it was fall and suddenly all the teachers were telling them what a big deal it was, how before they knew it, they would be in high school. “You aren’t children, anymore,” Lewis’s teacher said.

  Lewis read books about different places: San Francisco, Chicago, Rome. He went to a gas station and asked for a free United States map and he taped it up in his bedroom, trying to remember all the routes he had planned out with Jimmy. He stuck a red thumbtack in San Francisco. He could go on the road. When he turned eighteen, he could leave home and live anywhere he wanted. He could do anything. Whe
n he lay back on his bed, the tack seemed to twinkle at him, like a star he could wish upon. Yeah, soon he’d be gone.

  Part Two

  1963

  Chapter Thirteen

  Halfway through his night shift, Lewis walked the hospital floors at St. Merciful’s in Madison, quietly opening doors and checking in on the patients. He looked at the top of each door to see if the yellow call light was blinking. His step was clean and precise as a cat’s, his white sneakers gliding along the red line the hospital put down for visitors to find their way. Visitors got lost anyway, standing in the center of the busy hall, their arms full of flowers or stuffed bears, turning around searching for a sign, and finding Lewis instead. He would take people wherever they needed to go, never minding that he wasn’t usually thanked or even remembered. Well. People had things on their minds in a place like this. Lewis knew he was the least of their problems.

  Lewis had just turned nineteen, and he was on the surgical ward this month. He had been on the job almost a year, and it suited him just fine. He was one of two nurse’s aides for ten or so patients, the youngest one and the only male, too, which was either a conversation starter or stopper, depending on whom you talked to. Elaine, his supervising nurse on surgical, certainly wasn’t happy to take him on at first. Nothing about him seemed to please her, not his too-long hair or the fact that he was a man, which seemed like the greatest affront of all.

  He had gotten this job as a fluke, going through the paper the week he had arrived in town, eighteen years old with only a little money in his pocket. He told himself he would be lucky. He had responded to all the job ads that didn’t require college, and when he saw one for a nurse’s aide, it seemed like a destination. They offered training. He wouldn’t be ashamed to tell people that was what he did. He didn’t need much sleep and he liked the idea of taking care of people, of making them feel better, even if all he was doing was filling a glass with water. He loved the idea of being needed. And though it was nursing, nowhere did he see the word female.