Is This Tomorrow

by Caroline Leavitt

  Rose turned over so she was floating on her back, looking at the sky. This was a bust. They drove all this way and she didn’t feel any better. Lewis was swimming so far away from her, they might as well have come separately. She shut her eyes, and then suddenly, she felt him near her and she blinked and righted herself. Lewis was treading water next to her. He looked relaxed and even happy and she didn’t know what to say, but then he drew her forehead to his. “This was a great idea,” he told her. She felt his breath against her ear. “You were the one who always kept my head above water,” he said, and for a moment, she felt the warmth of his skin before he let her go and began swimming again.

  ON SUNDAY, ROSE gave him the guided tour of Ann Arbor. She made him spin The Cube, the big black metal box in the center of the Diag. She took him dancing at a local club, not suggesting they go home until they both were sleek with sweat. That night, they went through another box of Rose’s old photographs and papers, but there was nothing there that gave them any clues as to what might have really happened.

  She pulled out an old pipe of her father’s and studied it. “My mother saved this,” she said. “And now I have it.”

  “I used to have a fishing lure of my dad’s. I never really enjoyed the fishing, but I liked going with him.”

  “You did? Do you still have it?”

  He took the pipe from her, stroked his finger along the bowl, and then gently put it back in the box. “Nope. Gone. Along with him.”

  “You ever think about him?”

  He stood up, stretching. “I’m really tired,” he told her, and she knew enough not to press.

  Tomorrow she was taking him to her class, to be a special guest. She didn’t know what was going to happen after that. He had told her he was only coming for a few days and then he’d go home. All she knew was that she was glad he was there.

  MONDAY MORNING, LEWIS stood in the center of Rose’s classroom, astonished. The kids were noisy, racing around, but as soon as they saw Rose with Lewis, they stopped. “Who’s this?” they clamored, their eyes round as planets.

  “This is my friend Lewis and he’s going to talk to you about being a nurse’s aide.”

  The low hum of the class quieted. The kids sat at their desks and wove their fingers together. Lewis stood in front of the class. The kids stared at him, frowning, as if he didn’t belong there. He took a deep breath. He knew the secret with kids was to surprise them. How many times had he pretended to take quarters from the ears of sick kids to relax them enough so he could move them? He glanced at Rose, in her dress, her hair held back by a leather clip. She gave him an expectant look, like he was about to audition and she wasn’t sure he knew his lines.

  “Burping,” Lewis said, and instantly the kids perked up. A girl in the back dropped her mouth open. A boy in the front row grinned. “Burping is caused by swallowed air. It comes up through this tube called the esophagus.” He drew an esophagus on the blackboard. The white chalk dust sifted in the air like flour. “It’s nothing to worry about, and in fact, you can even make yourself burp by drinking soda or swallowing air,” Lewis said. He gulped in air, hoped for the best, and burped. There was a stunned silence. One of the kids, a little girl in the front, giggled, and then the boy in back of her sucked at the air and burped.

  “It’s okay, you can do it!” he told the class.

  The kids began burping. “I can burp the alphabet!” one boy cried and began to burp loudly, and there it was under the belch, an A, a B. There was a jungle of burps, and all the kids were laughing. “Listen!” one little girl yelped and she stood up on a chair and threw her head back and gave a tight little burp. Rose was still and quiet, and for a moment he felt a curtain of gloom. He was disrupting her class. She’d never get them back in line.

  He looked over at Rose. She lifted her hands as if she were raising a curtain. “Class,” she said, her voice commanding, and all the kids turned to look at her. For a moment there was a shamed quiet. He was going to apologize, but then she thunked her chest and burped so loudly the kids stared at her in wonder. The kids clapped and Rose took a delicate bow.

  ALL THE REST of the week, he came with her to her class. “Mr. Lewis is going to be our extra helper,” Rose told the children. Lewis coaxed kids struggling to read. He set out supplies and collected papers, and in the evenings, he helped Rose grade their homework. While he liked being at her school, he couldn’t help but feel happy when it was finally Friday and spring break, and he had Rose all to himself.

  “Happy vacation!” Rose called to her class. It was pouring outside and neither one of them had an umbrella. The kids were shouting, stamping their feet in the puddles and soaking their shoes, refusing to open their umbrellas. “See ya, Mr. Lewis!” a voice called, and Lewis looked around. “Oh, my shoes,” Rose said. She leaned on Lewis to slip them off.

  “It’s only a few blocks. It’s not too bad,” Rose said, fanning her hands out into the rain, but in minutes her dress and her hair turned dark with rain, his soaked shirt and pants clung to his body. “Whoops,” she said. “I lied. Her arm bumped against his and he took it, as if to steady her. They were rounding her corner, when she suddenly winced and then made a small cry and they both looked down and there was a bright star of blood around her foot, a sparkling of broken glass like diamonds at her feet. Bending, she struggled to pick out the big pieces in her foot, but Lewis shook his head. “There could be all sorts of tiny pieces,” he told her.

  “Lean on me,” he said, and he helped her to her place, up the five flights, leaving a trail of blood she kept looking back at. “I’ll get it later,” he told her. He sat her on the couch. “I can do this,” she said, but he went into her bathroom. As soon as he opened her medicine cabinet, he sighed. She had a bottle of Arpège perfume, a Tangee lipstick, and some lotions. He couldn’t find even the simplest first-aid items like Bactine or bandages. He pushed aside the Pond’s face cream, grabbed a washcloth and big towel, and found some tweezers that he wiped with rubbing alcohol to sterilize.

  When he came out, Rose had peeled off her stocking and there was a long pale leg, a flash of creamy skin, and he saw that she had painted every nail a different, bright color, and he wanted to touch every one. “You’re going to get bloody,” she warned.

  “Occupational hazard,” he said. He gave her the big towel to drape around her wet body. He lifted up her foot in his hands, the warmth of it, and gently turned it on its side. He could feel her pulse along her ankle. He took the tweezers and gently pulled the first piece of glass out. When he looked up at her, she didn’t wince. Instead, her face was grave and lovely, watching him. He took his time, carefully setting each piece of glass on the washcloth. “It looks worse than it is,” he told her. “It’s all for show, this blood.” When he was done, he ran his fingers along the bottom of her skin, checking for rough, tiny pieces of glass, and when he finished, he did it again. “Your patients must love you,” she said. He glanced up at her. She was still watching him. “Does it hurt?” he said.

  Her eyes were deep as pools and he couldn’t stop looking at them. “Everything hurts,” she said.

  His mouth went dry. “Your eyes? Do your eyes need medical attention?” he said, and when she nodded, he couldn’t help it. He leaned up and kissed them. She didn’t move away.“What about your nose?” he said.

  “It kills.” He kissed the tilt of it. He was so close he could see the shadows her lashes made on her cheeks.

  “And my lips. Awful,” she said quietly, and then he cupped her chin, his eyes on hers. He placed his forehead against hers and she moved closer against him. He kissed her mouth, and then she was kissing him back, unbuttoning his shirt, and he was pulling her to the floor.

  IN THE MORNING, Lewis got up first and dressed and went into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator. It was as bad as his. A half a loaf of bread, some cheese, a few pieces of fruit, and a stalk of limp broccoli freckled with mold. “Hey.” He turned to see Rose, sleepy and beautiful, her hair a storm about h
er shoulders. She rubbed her eyes. “Sleepy?” he said and she shook her head and sat down. He couldn’t stop sneaking peeks at her. He had known her since they were kids, but everything about her seemed new, the way her neck curved into her shoulders, the graceful way she walked. She drank her juice as if she were considering each sip.

  “Are you okay about this?” she finally said. He didn’t know what to say. He was used to women changing suddenly after sleeping together, wanting to make him breakfast and then lunch and then dinner, wanting things he wasn’t sure he had in him. But with Rose it was different. He didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world, but this kitchen. “I’m good,” he said.

  She drew a circle in a damp spot on the table. “What do we do now?”

  They went out to eat breakfast at a little café Rose knew and then walked around the campus until they found a sunny spot to sit on the grass. “I spend so much time thinking about my past and here you are, a real part of it,” she said. She tugged up a dandelion and blew on it, scattering the gray seeds. She brushed her hand against the soft grass. “Maybe you should try to find your father,” she said.

  He looked at her, surprised. “What? Why would I want to do that? Why would you even think about that?”

  “It keeps hitting me how I don’t have any family left,” she said. “What that means, how it feels. But you do, and maybe you shouldn’t throw that away like it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you want to know what happened to him? I know he wasn’t there for you as a kid, but maybe he’s changed. Maybe he deserves a second chance. Don’t you ever wonder about him?”

  He couldn’t lie. He had thought about his father. Sometimes when his relationships soured, he wondered if it was because he’d never really had a man in the house to model himself after. When he was dealing with children at the hospital, he went by instinct, by what he thought he’d want if he were a kid in a bed. Sometimes, too, he wondered if his father ever thought about him, if he ever regretted leaving them.

  “I think you need to find him,” Rose said.

  “And then what?” Lewis said.

  “Whatever happens happens. But at least you’ll know him.”

  “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “He’s your father,” she said. “A father is a father. You can’t just throw that away like it’s nothing.” She took his hand. “Besides, I want to know everything about you, and that includes him. I want to know if you got your eyes from him or if you have the same sense of humor.”

  “I can tell you we don’t.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rose said. “You were so little when he left. You’re a man now. It’s all different. You should find him, Lewis.”

  “He could have found me if he wanted.”

  “You can’t leave things up to other people. Sometimes you have to just go and make things happen. Come on. It’s something we can do something about.” She tugged on his sleeve. “I’ll go with you,” she said. She tugged his sleeve harder.

  “You would?”

  He saw that her eyes were full of light. He still didn’t know how he felt about finding his father. It was all dark and confused inside of him, but he knew how he felt about going on a road trip with Rose, maybe taking the whole rest of his vacation to do it. She moved closer to him.

  “How are we going to find him, though?” Lewis asked.

  “You could ask Ava.”

  “My mom? She doesn’t know where he is. And if she did, she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “She might know.” Rose touched Lewis’s arm. “Call her. Ask.”

  HE CALLED FROM Rose’s apartment and his mother answered on the second ring, and as soon as she heard his voice, her own voice changed, growing warmer. “Honey,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m with Rose,” he said. “I took vacation days to come see her.”

  “Rose.” She sighed her name. “But that’s wonderful. I’m so glad. How is she?”

  He told her a little about Rose and then his mother insisted on speaking to her. As soon as Rose took the receiver, she brightened. “Me, too,” Rose said, and then she gave the phone back to Lewis. “She said she missed me,” Rose whispered. “She said she’s glad we’re together.”

  “So, Mom,” Lewis said, hesitating. “I think I want to find Dad.”

  There was silence, but he didn’t know whether she was buying time or whether she was trying to think of a new reason why he shouldn’t do this. “Do you know where he is?” Lewis pressed.

  He heard his mother sigh. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Mom, please.”

  “I’d have to track down the lawyer, see if he had an old address. I don’t even know if he’d give it to me, or if he even has it after all this time.”

  “But you’ll try?”

  “Why do you want to do this, Lewis? How are you going to feel if you don’t find him, or if you do and he’s just the same?”

  He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t twelve anymore. She didn’t have to protect him like this or lie about his father. “Rose is coming with me,” he said. “We’re going to find him together.”

  “You and Rose?” He heard the change in her voice. She was his mother, after all, and he could sense her weighing how much she wanted him to have a nice girlfriend, one that she approved of, against the fact that she didn’t want him to find his dad.

  “Mom. I’m an adult now. I’m not going to fall apart over this. I just want to meet him.”

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Give me the number there and I’ll call you back, but I’m not promising anything.”

  Lewis hung up the phone. He didn’t know how he felt about finding his father, not really, but when he looked at Rose, he felt as if something were lighting up inside of him. She was leaning against the counter. “What?” she asked, and he swallowed.

  “She’s going to help us.”

  TWO DAYS LATER, they had an address in Cleveland, courtesy of Ava’s old lawyer who remembered Ava and called in a few favors from friends. Lewis was surprised that Ava didn’t give him advice about how to act with his father. He thought she would have told him not to talk about her, what to be wary of and what to say, but all she did was recite the address and tell him to call if he needed her. “Mom, thanks,” he said, and he meant it.

  They took Lewis’s car and the old map because it was symbolic, but they stopped at a gas station and got a new map for Ohio, spreading it out in the car. “Okay, so what’s the best way to go?” Rose asked.

  Lewis was driving and Rose held the map, but every time he looked at it, he couldn’t quite get where the route was. After he turned off at a wrong exist, Rose proclaimed herself the navigator. She put her feet up on the dash and sang heartily to the radio. It was all he could do not to pull over and kiss her.

  By the time they pulled into a diner to grab a bite to eat, they were famished. They ordered burgers and fries before the waitress could even set down the menu.

  “She reminds me of your mom,” Rose said when the waitress sped away, and Lewis wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. He hoped his mother wasn’t wearing black toreador pants or blouses that shiny and tight to the café where she sold her pies.

  At night, to save money, they parked and tried to sleep in the car. Rose took the back, her knees curled up. In the front seat, Lewis could hear her tossing and turning. Rose finally sat up, sighing, a strand of hair pasted along her cheek. “How much could a motel cost?” Rose said, rubbing her shoulder.

  They drove to the nearest motel, but at the door, there was a small sign that read: PLEASE LEAVE YOUR GUNS AT HOME! “Are we sure we want to go here?” Rose asked, and Lewis looked around. The area was desolate. There were no cars around, no people, and he thought, well maybe that meant there would be no guns, too. He didn’t know where there were any other motels, how far away they might be.

  “Come on, we’ll be fine,” he promised. They reached the counter and rang the little bell, and a bored-looking man came out. W
hen it was time to sign the register, Lewis wrote Mr. and Mrs. Lark with a flourish, and Rose put her hands in her pockets so the clerk wouldn’t see she didn’t have a wedding band on. Fighting back yawns, they made their way into the elevator, which had a rug in the middle of the floor and as soon as Rose stepped on it, she stumbled. She jumped back surprised and lifted the edge of the rug. There was a hole in the linoleum as if someone had punched it in. Lewis pulled Rose over to the side of the elevator. “Maybe the room is better,” he said hopefully.

  The first thing Lewis noticed about the room were the two tiny twin beds. There was a huge painting of migrating geese on the wall, and someone had drawn a handlebar mustache on one of the birds. The bathroom had a line of fungus along the shower and there was a spiderwebbing of cracks moving across one ceiling. Rose silently went and got a chair and wedged it under the door. She came back and flopped on the bed, motioning Lewis to lie beside her. “I guess we can call this an adventure,” she said weakly.

  “Thank you for coming with me,” Lewis said.

  “That’s what friends do.” She looked at him seriously. “You don’t know the half of how Jimmy used to stick up for you.”

  “He didn’t that day. That’s why I was so mad at him.”

  Rose shook her head. “I remember some kids were talking about how they could get you to do anything if they gave you money or offered ice cream, and he stood up for you.”

  Lewis felt a flash of shame. As a kid, he had felt the lure of cookies, of presents, of privileges he didn’t have. He had been helpless against his own yearning. It pulled at him like a tide. Once he had taken off his pants when he was five for an Oreo cookie, standing helplessly on Danny Zaroni’s porch, his face hot with fear, but all he could think about was the cookie, the sugar melting on his tongue, the taste of the chocolate. Danny’s mother suddenly appeared and she took one look at Lewis standing there with his pants hanging at his ankles and accused him of peeing on her front porch. “You wait right there,” she warned him, and he had tugged up his pants, terrified, and Danny wouldn’t look at him. She came back with a bucket of soapy water and Lysol and she made him scrub the porch while she watched, not caring how the cement scraped his knees. “All those germs!” she scolded.