Is This Tomorrow

by Caroline Leavitt

  Her eyelids fluttered shut. She sighed and burrowed into the sheets. “It’s so nice to hear conversation,” she said, and then she yawned again. He put one hand gently on her head, like a blessing, and she sighed and shut her eyes. “Sleep,” he gently ordered.

  “Will you come back? To talk to me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Promise me.”

  He promised and Sheila’s breath slowed and evened, and then he walked outside, back into the corridor, and leaned against the wall to steady himself.

  There it was. The missing feeling.

  For so many years, he had wished he could see or talk to Rose. All he wanted was an explanation for why she had vanished from his life. He wanted to know if she was still looking for Jimmy, though he had given up, knowing that if there was any news, his mother would tell him. He tried to imagine Rose now. Most women got married, had kids, but he could no more imagine her staying at home and being a housewife than he could his mother.

  What did it matter anyway? How many people did he know who were still friends with their childhood buddies? He had heard a story recently from one of the nurses who said she had been contacted by her boyfriend from sixth grade, shortly after Kennedy was elected. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he had said and she had gone to meet him. She had gotten all dressed up in a sparkly marigold-colored dress, her hair bouffant like Jackie Kennedy’s. She had walked into the restaurant and the only person sitting at a table alone was an overweight man with pasty skin who was wearing a terrible brown toupee. “So much for memory lane,” she said.

  Lewis walked by the windows, where he could hear the wind howling outside. A blizzard was expected, with temperatures so cold that the aged and those with respiratory problems were urged to stay inside. That was Madison for you. The summers so hot and muggy you didn’t feel like moving, the winters icing your bones until they seemed as if they might shatter. The first time he had walked outside in the winter, damp from a shower, his hair had frozen. A lock of hair actually broke off in his fingers. He hadn’t known what to do with his broken hair and had ended up leaving the pieces in the snow for the birds, thinking maybe they would want it for their nests when it thawed.

  LEWIS HADN’T EXPECTED that he’d wind up in Madison, but he had wanted to move out of Waltham since the day that Rose had. He had begged Ava to leave, but she kept refusing, especially after she was finally put on staff full-time. “We’re lucky to have a house to rent here. And where would I work? I’m lucky to have the position I have now. It isn’t so easy for a divorced woman with a kid to start over,” she said.

  “There are tons of jobs.”

  “Oh, there are?” She grabbed the newspaper and flipped to the Help Wanted, scanning the ads. “Ah, here we go. The Women’s Section. A quarter of the size of the men’s, which is a problem right there. Let’s look at this,” she said. “Perky young woman with good personality.” She tapped another ad. “Pretty young woman with pleasing speaking voice.” She put the paper down. “Perky. Pleasing. Pretty. Young.” She punctuated each word with a snap. “You see me anywhere in there?”

  “You’re young,” he said, though he had no idea if she really was anymore, and then, he instantly felt guilty that he hadn’t also called her perky and pleasing. She brushed him away. “What we need to do is get on with our lives here,” she told him.

  It wasn’t even their house, yet she was spending all this time fixing it up, painting the rooms herself. She watched pennies and kept a ledger and every month she said, “We’re almost there for a down payment.” All Lewis could think was, why would anyone ever want to buy this house, least of all her, after all that had happened? How could she have so much pride in the run-down kitchen, the scratched-up wood floors?

  “It’s important to have something that’s yours,” she said. She was grouting new adobe tiles around the sink, her hair pulled back in a kerchief. She made a sweeping gesture. “I’ll buy this house and then I can borrow against it so you can go to college.”

  “I don’t need college.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course you do.” She sat up, the putty knife in one hand, making parabolas with it in the air. “And eventually, I can give the house to you.”

  “I won’t want to live in it,” he said.

  “You might change your mind when you get out in the world and see how expensive things are,” Ava had told him. “A house is equity. It’s peace of mind, owning it. And if you really don’t want it, then you can sell it, with my blessing. Then you can get enough money to live wherever it is you want to live.”

  “Why do you want us to stay here?”

  She had spread grout along a green tile. “Why do you want us to leave?”

  He had always wanted to leave. Every minute he had been in the neighborhood and in his house, without Jimmy, without Rose, he had felt as if his real life were somewhere else and he just needed to find his way to it.

  The worst time of every year was the anniversary of Jimmy’s disappearance. There was always something in the local papers, though there was less coverage as time passed: Local Boy Still Missing. No New Clues in Disappearance Case. There was a grainy photograph of Jimmy, his sixth-grade school picture. How would anyone ever recognize Jimmy in that? Patsy Baker, the newscaster known for her freckles, always did a segment on the show, talking about the lack of clues, giving sad updates, as if she were taking it personally. There was usually one neighbor or another willing to go on camera, but it was inevitably the person who knew the least about Jimmy, or who had the weirdest theories, like Mr. Corcoran blaming it on a Communist infiltration on Warwick Avenue, or even hinting it might have something to do with a Negro family who had moved in six blocks away, a statement that made Patsy Baker quickly wind up the story.

  Lewis had waited and waited for Rose to write, but no letters ever arrived. He had even gone out and bought special stationery to write to her, and a new felt-tip pen in deep blue. “What have you heard from your friend?” the neighbors would ask him at first, which always made him feel worse, as if it were his fault somehow that yet another person in the neighborhood had vanished. He had called Pittsburgh information but there were no Rearsons listed and he had no idea what Rose’s aunt’s last name would be. He even tried writing to Rose’s address in Waltham, in case the mail would be forwarded, but it came back, and when it did, he tore it up in his hands. One night, he shut his eyes and tried to send her a message telepathically, the way she had shown him. Write me. Find me, Rose. All that happened was he began to hear the dog barking outside, louder than ever before.

  But it wasn’t just Jimmy and Rose who haunted Lewis. There hadn’t been news of his father for years, but still, every time the phone rang, or the mail came, Lewis couldn’t help but hope. No matter what his mother had said, he knew there was some explanation. There had to be.

  Lewis, though, kept changing. His voice bumped to a lower register. When he caught his face in the bathroom mirror, it seemed to have new hollows, and downy hairs sprouted along his upper lip and on his body. He tapped the length of his nose with a finger. It looked longer to him, more pointed. Even his eyes looked different, as if he had grown more lashes. He pulled on his dungarees only to find they didn’t reach past his calves. His shirts exposed his wrists and forearms. How strange it was that he was now taller than the Jimmy he remembered. How would Jimmy recognize him if he looked this different, and how would he recognize Jimmy? He swiveled, studying himself. From this angle, he almost looked like the old photographs of his father.

  Shortly after Lewis turned fifteen, he was eating dinner with his mother when she turned to him and said, “Why don’t you ever talk to me anymore? You used to.”

  “I talk,” Lewis insisted, though the last conversation he could remember having with his mother was over whether or not he wanted baloney for lunch, and he chose American cheese instead.

  “Where are your friends?” Ava asked. “It’s not good to be a loner. You need kids your own
age to do things with, to talk to. I worry about you.”

  “Excuse me? You’re asking me about friends?” He shook his head and she waved her hand.

  “We’re not talking about me,” Ava said. “And I’m with people all day at work.”

  It wasn’t true anyway. Lewis wasn’t such a loner. He had friends he palled around with. He played chess with a guy Greg from his science class sometimes. He often biked with Scott from gym. He was fine while he was with them, but something always felt as if it were missing. Sometimes he noticed girls looking at him, their mouths opening as if to speak, but he never knew what to say back to them. He had heard the girls, too, talking. “My parents would never let me date a Jew,” someone said, and Lewis withdrew. There was no one he could really talk to, and even if he could, how could he be sure they would stay?

  When he turned seventeen, he got a job as a stock boy at the Star Market on Lexington Street, saving half the money for himself, giving the other half to his mother. Every week, he counted his earnings, spreading the bills out on his bed. Inside, this feeling that he was bound for something new, something better, kicked against him like a can. His old life could be erased, just as easily as an Etch A Sketch drawing. He just needed to find the way.

  One afternoon, he was at work, putting canned corn in a display, when the assistant manager, a guy named Robert, only five years older than Lewis and with an angry cluster of pimples on his chin, came by. “Do a good job,” he barked. Lewis knew better than to respond, but he watched Robert leaving and he suddenly thought about how awful it would be if this were your life. Assistant manager of canned goods at the Waltham Star Market.

  He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he did know that he wanted to do something. He didn’t want to wind up pumping gas or joining the army like half the guys did, especially with Vietnam heating up. He also didn’t want to grow old here, watching his life receding in the same place, like he was vanishing. Panic clenched his throat. Robert turned around. “Are you working or not?” he sniped. “Have some pride in what you’re doing.” Lewis picked up another can of corn and wedged it into the display.

  Ava was always pushing Lewis about his future, nagging him about his grades. She left brochures around about scholarship applications and local colleges where he could save money by commuting, but he brushed them away because the schools were always right within the area, and what kind of a change was that, living at home? But maybe college wasn’t a bad idea. The more he worked as a stock boy, the more suffocated he felt. If he went to college, he’d have professors instead of the dopey teachers at school. Kids paid to go there so they would be smarter, more serious. It would be different from regular school, wouldn’t it? He felt a bright ray of hope.

  He decided to talk to Mrs. Geary, the guidance counselor. Mrs. Geary, heavyset with a frosted blond fall anchored to her head with a bow, stared at him impassively. “What’s on your mind?” she said.

  “I want to go to college. How do I get a scholarship?”

  Mrs. Geary sighed. She got up and went to the big gray file cabinet and pulled out his file, sitting back down, riffling pages until she got to his report cards. “Oh you do, do you? Look at this, D, C, F, C, D. Those are not college grades. Your Scholastic Aptitude Test scores were rock bottom.”

  Lewis had not taken the test very seriously. He had barely read the questions, let alone tried to do well. “I can turn things around,” he insisted.

  “A little late for that now, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s nearly January.”

  “I know I messed up.”

  She adjusted her glasses, peering at him. “Who do you think will even give you a recommendation?”

  He felt a pulse in his neck. He tried to think. Miss Koledo, his English teacher who spent most of every class talking about her skier boyfriend, wouldn’t. Mr. Rowan, his science teacher, was still angry with Lewis for insisting that it was scientifically possible that man could one day land on the moon. “It isn’t my fault,” Lewis said. “It’s just me and my mom at home.” He saw the way she was studying him, her eyes almost floating shut. She shuffled papers on her desk and then handed him a brochure for Mass Bay Community College, a joke school. A last resort. “Everyone gets in here,” she told him. “Even you might.”

  He came home, panicked, not knowing what to do with himself. Maybe Mrs. Geary was wrong. He could still apply to schools. He didn’t need stupid Mrs. Geary.

  He began to pay attention in class, to turn in papers, but his teachers didn’t believe it was his work, and his French teacher even accused him of cheating. He signed up to take the SATs again, studying a practice book over the weekends and at night, and he earned nearly perfect scores. When he showed his mom, he saw the tears pooling in her eyes. “I knew you could do it,” she said, throwing her arms about him. “This is who you are.”

  He began to get excited, to imagine his new life. Elementary and high school had been a waste, but college was something different. And he could be different, too. He could be one of those boys on the cover of the college brochures, lolling on the grass with other kids, striding to a lab to do an experiment. Some schools even had independent study where he could learn whatever he wanted, and the professors would even help him.

  One night, when he was trying to fill out a financial aid application, he went into his mother’s room to forage in her drawers for a good pen. He pulled open her desk drawer, where she kept rubber bands, thumbtacks, pennies, all manner of odd things she said it was important not to waste. His hands felt a fold of cardboard, and he pulled out a small folder, fastened with a rubber band. He opened it up and pulled out a letter. He didn’t think his mother had many friends and she certainly didn’t write to anyone that he knew. He opened the letter up, unfolding it like a fan, scanning the type, the official-looking page, the letterhead: J. T. Smith, Attorney-at-Law. The date was three years ago. He scanned the page, and then he saw the word custody and his hands began to shake. He turned a page.

  It does indeed appear that Mr. Lark has given up all claims for Lewis.

  Lewis reread the letter, over and over.

  The print swam. He wanted to kick the chair in front of him, to break dishes in the kitchen. What did any of this mean? His mother had told him his father had left, that he didn’t want a family anymore, and that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. “If it’s anybody’s loss, it’s your father’s,” she had told him. Lewis hadn’t believed her. He had thought maybe his dad had developed amnesia and forgotten them. Or sometimes he blamed Ava for keeping his father away. But this letter seemed to mean that his father had fought for him.

  When Ava came home from work an hour later, her veiled hat perched on her head, a bag of groceries in her arms, Lewis was still so angry he could barely think. He walked toward her, with the letter in his hand. “What’s that paper?” Ava said. “Is that from school? Something I need to sign? What’s the matter, honey?”

  He handed her the letter. As soon as she saw it, her shoulders tightened. “Oh,” she said slowly.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” he said. He was taller than she was now, so she had to look up at him to meet his eyes. He felt like he might burst into flames. “What else didn’t you tell me?”

  “Where did you find this?”

  “How come I didn’t know there was a custody battle?”

  She shook her head. “There wasn’t.”

  “It says right here—”

  “I’m telling you there wasn’t a battle. He threatened and I got a lawyer.”

  “Threatened means a fight.”

  Ava shook her head. “No baby, it doesn’t.”

  “Why do you always lie when it comes to him? I’m not a kid anymore. Why can’t you just tell me the truth?” His voice scraped in his throat.

  “Because the truth is complicated,” she said. “He did threaten, but that was all it was. Threats. No one even knows where he is now.”

  “But he wanted custody. It says right here that he wanted custody
. I’m not making that up! You’re lying to me.” Lewis insisted.

  Ava drew herself up. “How many times has he called you?” she snapped. “Has he ever remembered a birthday or come to visit? Where has he been all these years? Are we that hard to find, Lewis?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t come visit. Or maybe you wouldn’t let him.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “He hired a lawyer!”

  “People hire lawyers for all kinds of reasons, and sometimes it’s just to make trouble.”

  “I don’t believe you! Was he here? Did you get to see him? Where is he? You knew where he was and you didn’t tell me!”

  “What good would it have done to know where he was when he was making no effort to come and see us? And I don’t know where he is anymore. He moved a few times and he hasn’t called for years.”

  “Why couldn’t you have told me? It concerned me and I had a right to know. Who knows what you did to make him give up? Maybe he thought I didn’t want to be with him. What did you tell him?”

  She took the paper, snatching it from his fingers and stuffed it in her pocket. “Whatever I tell you, you’re not going to believe,” she said quietly. “But you should know that I thought I was protecting you.” Then she took the groceries and went into the kitchen, where he could hear her banging things into the cabinets, and he knew enough to leave her alone. Lewis got his jacket and slammed out of the house, not coming back until long after the dinner she made was cold on his plate.

  THE NEXT DAY, as soon as he got home from school, hours before Ava got home from work, Lewis was on the phone. It had been a long time since he had tried to find his father, but now everything was different. There had been a custody battle. The operator in Houston had no Brian Lark listed. It was the same with Phoenix and San Francisco and every city Lewis remembered his father mentioning. His father could be anywhere. He could be a truck driver in Canada or a teacher in Santa Fe. He could be remarried with a whole new family, a whole new life, or God, he hoped not, his father could be dead. Lewis knew it was futile, but he still couldn’t keep himself from picking up the phone and trying again, and each time he did, he felt more defeated. He took his allowance money and put an ad in the Boston Globe, imagining his father might still read it. BRIAN LARK, CONTACT LEWIS. It was all he could afford.