Is This Tomorrow

by Caroline Leavitt

  No one answered the ad.

  After that, he stopped imagining what it would be like to find his father, how the two of them, both now grown men, might sit and talk about their lives. He went into his drawer and dug out everything he had saved from his father. A peso his father had brought back from a business trip to Mexico that he told Lewis was enough to buy a stack of delicious tortillas. A tiny gold star his father had won for selling the most cars one year, with Brian’s name etched across it. It didn’t seem like very much to Lewis. He thought of all the things about him that his father had missed seeing. That Lewis had grown a foot taller. That he still couldn’t shoot a basket, but he could run really, really fast. That Lewis now shared his father’s strong, straight nose. That his dad might look at Lewis and actually see something of himself there.

  Lewis never discussed his father with his mother again, but he could tell that she was trying to make amends. “Do you want to go bowling?” she asked one night.

  He thought about being trapped with her, having to listen to her talk about her job, having to hear her talk about his life as if it still belonged to her.

  “I have to study,” he said, which was his all-purpose response. “I want to do more college applications.” All he wanted to do now was get away from her.

  She was quiet for a moment. “That’s what I like to hear,” she said.

  He was a senior and it was March when the college letters began to come back and he was always the first to see them because Ava was at work. He didn’t get into Stanford or UCLA. The University of Michigan also said no thanks. He tore the letters up. It got so he could feel defeat just by the thinness of the envelopes. The only acceptance letter that came was for Mass Bay. The joke school. That was his road out of this, his only road. He thought of commuting from home, going to classes with all the kids who never read, who paid him to write their papers because they were too dumb to do it on their own. He crumpled the letter in his hand.

  When he finally told Ava, she was quiet. “You can take a few classes at the community college,” she suggested. “You wouldn’t have to go there full-time. And you can apply to colleges again. People do that.” He knew she was trying to make him feel better, but instead, he felt worse.

  “Maybe,” he said, and then left the room.

  ONE AFTERNOON, AT the end of May, when he came home, Ava was primping. “I have a date,” she said. She carefully pursed her lips at herself in the mirror. “I want you to meet him, his name is Frank,” she said. “He sells bathtubs, but he seems awfully nice.”

  When the doorbell rang, she flew to the door. She opened it and her voice chimed, “Oh Frank, come meet my Lewis.”

  Frank’s hair was so shiny with oil, Lewis swore he could see his reflection in it, and he was wearing a dark suit like an undertaker. Frank looked at Lewis as if he were an affront. “He’s so big!” he said to Ava. “What is he, sixteen?”

  “Eighteen,” Lewis said.

  “What are you doing here home on a Saturday night?” Frank asked Lewis. “You should be stepping out yourself.” Ava adjusted the veil on her hat so that her eyes were hidden. “Don’t wait up,” Frank said, and winked at Lewis.

  “I’ll see you later, darling,” his mother said to him. He saw the way her eyes darted to Frank and then back to her skirt, which she was smoothing, and Lewis walked over and hugged her. “Oh, this is nice,” she said, and Frank pulled her toward him, peeling her from Lewis.

  Lewis watched Frank guiding his mother to the car, one arm about her waist, as if he owned her. He saw the careful way his mother was walking in her heels, as if she thought she might trip, how she dipped down into the car. She looked up and gave him a wave and he waved back.

  He had the evening to himself, so he watched an old movie on TV. Then he made himself dinner, and went to bed to read because he didn’t want to wait up for his mother and hear her talk about the nice restaurant Frank took her to, or how Frank wanted to get to know him better. Plus, she kept asking him if he had made a decision about taking college classes, and he kept lying, saying, not yet. He knew she thought Mass Bay was his chance, just like she thought Frank was hers.

  At midnight, he heard the key in the lock. Was that a good sign or bad? His door was closed, and he turned out his light, listening, hoping she hadn’t brought Frank back home with her. He didn’t want to have to feel trapped in his room.

  He didn’t hear another voice. Instead, there was a bang, as if she had bumped into a table or dropped something heavily down. He heard her sigh and he didn’t move. He heard the radio click on and then he heard her crying, soft muffled sounds, her voice catching like a skip on his records. Stop, he wanted to tell her. Don’t do this. Don’t be this person anymore. He might have been saying that to himself. He had cried for his father and for Rose and Jimmy, but look where that got him. He had thought his father had loved him. He had thought Rose had, too. Sometimes, to live your life, you had to protect yourself against what other people might take from you.

  Lewis heard his mother walking to her room, shutting her door. He heard her crying grow quiet, and then silence. In the morning, she’d act as if nothing were wrong. She might not even bring it up and if he did, she’d tilt her head as if she were remembering something. “He’s not for me,” she’d say, as if it had been her decision all along.

  The night crowded around him. He didn’t want to spend any more nights listening to his mother’s crying. He didn’t want to see her hopefully putting on her face, introducing him to men who looked at Lewis as if he were a burr they couldn’t wait to remove. He didn’t want to go to the Star Market and make displays of canned beets that housewives would dismantle. He couldn’t stand to be here. There was a whole huge world spinning out there, a roulette wheel, and he could bet on it.

  Lewis got up out of bed. There were two more weeks of school, but even if he didn’t go, he’d still graduate. He took the money he had been saving from his job for college—three hundred dollars—and tucked it into his knapsack. He took out a piece of paper and carefully wrote his mother a note, because he knew if he tried to tell her in person, she’d try to talk him out of it. She might be so upset that he would falter and stay home, and if he didn’t leave now, he might be stuck in Waltham forever.

  After all that had happened, he couldn’t just vanish. “I promise I’ll let you know where I land. Love, Lewis,” he wrote. He thought a minute and then wrote, “This is not your fault.” She would wake up with her alarm at seven, rushing to work. She would knock on his door to wake him, and then she’d be frying eggs, making herself coffee to get through the day. She might go into his room and see he wasn’t there, but even then, she would think he was just out for an early walk. Maybe she wouldn’t see the note until the moment she was leaving. He didn’t think he could bear to see her standing there, like a pull of gravity on him, pinning him in place.

  When he left, the house was dark and quiet. He put the note in an envelope and propped it up on the kitchen table, where she’d see it. He thought of her waking up, changing from the person who had had a bad date to the person who held a job. Soon she’d be the person who didn’t have a son at home, and maybe that would be better for everyone.

  When he stepped outside, the neighborhood was empty. The whole walk to the bus, he thought about his mother. She would see his note. He knew her. She’d get in the car and try to find him, going to the places where she thought he might be. The bowling alley. The movie theater. The school. Just like she had when Jimmy was missing. She might call the police and they might tell her that Lewis was eighteen now, that there was nothing she could do. They might remember her. Oh yes, you’re the one who knew that boy who disappeared.

  You’re the one.

  She might just sit on the couch with his note in her hand.

  He stood at the ticket line and he remembered all the cities on the map that he and Jimmy were going to go to. San Francisco because it was by the ocean. Kansas City because of the song. Madison because Jim
my thought they had good cheese and rodeos. By the time it was Lewis’s turn at the window, he had decided. He’d go where Jimmy would have gone. He’d live some of the life they had planned. He bought a ticket to Madison and climbed on the bus. The seats were only half-filled and people were looking out the windows or rustling paper bags and no one noticed him or paid him any attention. There was an empty seat at the back of the bus, and he slid into it.

  By the time he was out of Massachusetts, Lewis began to make up a new story for himself. He had been born in Florida, and his parents were happily married. His father was an accountant, his mother a housewife, and they lived right off the beach. Oh, but they were an absurdly close family, so much so that he missed them greatly, especially his father. He had gone to a private school where he had lots of friends, and yes, they all kept in touch, and no, he was just putting off college for a few years until he found himself.

  He’d never look back. And someday he might even believe his own story.

  ANOTHER YEAR PASSED and he turned twenty and Madison now felt like home. Jimmy had been wrong about the cheese being so great here (it was mostly plain old cheddar) and there were no rodeos, but he liked the city nevertheless. He had called his mother as soon as he was settled. He told her how he didn’t want to take classes at Mass Bay, that he needed to be somewhere different, and though she cried, she didn’t try to make him come home. “I understand,” she said, though she didn’t sound like it. He could sense her biting back words she wanted to say. She asked when she could visit, or when he’d visit her. “We could always meet halfway,” she said.

  When he told her he was a nurse’s aide, she didn’t laugh. “You’re my son, all right,” she said. “I’m proud of you,” and there was that confusion, that feeling where he didn’t know whether to be ashamed or pleased about being anything like her. “I just want you to be happy,” she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was Saturday, and Lewis was at Suds over on State Street, finishing up his laundry. He had called Mick earlier to see if he wanted to grab a pizza afterward, but Mick had to take his daughter to get a Halloween costume, and when Lewis called John, John told him that his wife wanted him to go look at carpet for the den. “We’ll catch you at Pins Palace Friday,” John said, and Lewis pretended it was okay. Lewis didn’t even really like bowling all that much. He just liked hanging out with them, having something to do and someone to do it with.

  Suds was crowded with housewives lugging plastic baskets and kids hanging on to their slacks, and the only other guys there were students, which wasn’t such a bad thing, because they usually stuffed all their bright colors and whites together in one load, making things move a little more quickly. The Beatles boomed into the place, though you couldn’t really hear much over the noise. Plastic seats lined the walls and if you weren’t folding or washing, you were waiting for the next available machine, which Lewis knew from experience could take awhile. In the corner, the matron who gave you change was smoking, tapping the ashes on the floor. Lewis had positioned himself to be next in line for the washer over in the corner, sitting at a chair catty-corner to it, but he hadn’t realized that the woman commandeering it was going to do two separate loads plus a hand-wash. When he sighed audibly, she glared at him. “Hey, I was here first,” she told him.

  By the time he was done with his wash, the dryer situation didn’t look much better. Already, a fight had broken out because a girl had taken out someone else’s dry clothes, piling them on the folding table, so she could stuff in her wet ones. At the far end, a dryer stopped with a whoosh, and a woman in a blue hat swarmed toward it. Lewis sat, resigned to a long wait, telling himself he had no plans anyway, and wishing he had brought a book, when a woman ran into Suds, all pineapple-blond corkscrews and dark eyes. She was out of breath, but Lewis couldn’t take his eyes off her. Every woman he knew now had hair as long and straight as Joan Baez’s or big teased bouffants, but here she was with all those ringlets. She opened the door to the dryer and even from where he was sitting, he could see the clothes inside were still damp.

  “I just have to run it another cycle,” she apologized to the waiting woman. She dug in her jeans. “I know I have some change,” she said, shifting her hips.

  “You don’t have change, then this dryer’s available, wet stuff or not,” the other woman snapped.

  “Just wait. Please,” the blonde said. She patted down her back pockets. “I don’t know where my wallet is. Maybe it’s in the car.”

  “I’ve been waiting here an hour,” the other woman said. “I’m not waiting for you to go to your car,” and she put one hand on the dryer, claiming it.

  Lewis got up and walked over to the dryer. He dug out the change he was going to use for his own wash and quietly put it in the dryer, sliding the change slot closed. The dryer sputtered and whirred.

  “Hey, you can’t do that!” the other woman said, but the blonde was looking at him, her mouth curling into a smile.

  “You’re so kind,” she said.

  They sat together on the plastic chairs while her clothes spun around. He ran out and got more change, and when he came back, not only had she held his seat for him, but she had claimed a dryer for him. He threw his clothes in, and when he came back to his seat, she pointed to the map that was sticking out of his pocket. “Are you new here?”

  “Not really.”

  She gave him a funny look.

  “No sense of direction,” he admitted.

  They both got coffee out of the machine by the door and she kept blowing across the top of her cup. “What can I say?” she said, smiling. “I wish they would sell iced tea.”

  It was hard to hear over the din of the machines, but she leaned forward so she could talk to him. Her name was Rita and she said she had grown up in Manhattan and come here for school and unlike all the other East Coasters who fled back home as soon as school was over, she had stayed and opened up a little dress shop, Fine Frocks. “I know it probably sounds ridiculous,” she said. “But I think I change lives. I know what people should be wearing, the colors they need to perk them up, give them confidence. I have some clients who tell me to just pick things out for them and have them ready. They trust me that much.” She gazed at him. “You could use more green,” she said and he suddenly wanted to go out and buy a green shirt just to please her. She told him she had a lot of friends, but she didn’t see people as often as she’d like outside of the shop. “They all have kids now,” she said. “Families. Work. You know how it is.”

  Lewis thought of the guys he bowled with. “I know what you mean,” he said.

  She began to talk about her parents, how her mother had been an opera singer who gave it up when she got married because it would have meant traveling all over and she wanted to be at her husband’s side. “Every day at four, she’d peel me away from her so she could shower and put on a dress and perfume,” Rita said. “And every time my father walked through the door, her face changed. She just lit up, even after all those years of being together. Isn’t that something?”

  Lewis thought about how hopeful his mother used to be whenever she had a date, and how most of those evenings ended with her crying quietly behind her bedroom door. “It’s something,” he said.

  She told him how she and her brother would fling themselves at their father when he walked through the door and he’d always have something for them, a red rubber ball or a brown paper bag of rock candy. “Then my parents would talk together for ten minutes and we weren’t allowed to interrupt,” Rita said. “It was nice, though, hearing them talking.” Lewis thought about all the days he had sat on his front porch, waiting for his father to show up, aching at every car that passed.

  Rita didn’t finish talking until she was done with her coffee, then she looked at him as if it was his turn, and he felt like someone had shined too bright a light on him. What story was he going to tell her? It was hard with people you wanted to keep seeing, people you wanted to know better.

  �
��So,” she said. “Are you going to tell me that you’re wanted by the FBI?”

  That smile was making him want to tell her the true story of how he ended up in Madison, but then she’d feel sorry for him, and he didn’t want that. So instead, he told her what he had told Elaine. He told her as much of the truth as he could, listening to himself carefully because he didn’t want to lose track and forget what he had said.

  He told her he was a nurse’s aide, that he sometimes talked to this old woman Sheila, who was always in and out of the hospital, but most of the time he just sat and listened to her talk. “That’s lovely,” Rita said. He told her about all the movies he went to, the bookstores he frequented, even the bowling on Friday nights, and she showed him her long fingernails, laughing. “Can you imagine me bowling with these?”

  He could imagine it. He could see himself having dinner with her and walking with her and kissing her mouth. But maybe she was just passing time in the laundromat, being nice to him because he had rescued her dryer for her. Maybe she always told her life story to strangers.

  They sat at the laundromat until it it grew dark outside, the air nippy with fall. Almost everyone else had cleared out by now. He kept buying more cups of coffee, although he was now so wired, his hands were shaking, but he didn’t want to leave because what if he didn’t see her again? He noticed Rita glance at her watch, but he saw, too, how she took her time folding her wash, lingering over each piece the same way he was. When she finished balling the last pair of socks, she turned to him. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Lewis,” she said. “I hope I see you the next time your clothes are dirty.”