Is This Tomorrow

by Caroline Leavitt

  Lewis put one hand along Rose’s face, where the skin was cool.

  “He loved you,” she said. “He would have done anything for you.” She got up and stretched. “Tomorrow, we’ll see your father,” she said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ava was at home on Saturday morning, lost in a novel about a widowed pioneer woman who was fighting off wolves and despair on a Kansas homestead, half wondering how Lewis and Rose’s road trip was going. She hadn’t wanted to help him find Brian, but maybe it was time to let that go. Brian wasn’t holding anything over her anymore. There was nothing he could do to Lewis now. Lewis was a grown man and able to make his own decisions about people. Plus, she couldn’t stop thinking of Lewis with Rose. She had always loved that girl, and who knew, maybe her son would, too. When the bell rang, the sound startled Ava.

  She tossed off the blanket she was curled under, wondering who it could be. She wrapped her robe tighter about her, catching her reflection in the hall mirror as she went to the door. She hadn’t set her hair last night, but she found to her surprise that she liked the way it looked today, wild and curly and doing as it pleased.

  She opened the door and there, like a shock, was Jake, in a suit and tie, his hair so long it touched his shoulders. “Ava,” he said, and for a moment, she was drowning just looking at him. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice tight.

  “Please. Let me come in and talk to you.”

  “No.” She tried to push the door shut. She didn’t want to have to look at his face. He had left her behind when everything around her was falling apart. It had been years and there had been no letters, not a single phone call. No matter what she did to forget, he bounced back inside of her, reminding her of all she was missing. Every time she kissed a man, she thought of Jake’s mouth. When a man took off her blouse and lowered her to a bed, she felt Jake’s arms about her. He was like an imprint on her skin, a stain she couldn’t wash out.

  “Do you know what I went through?” she said. She thought of what Charmaine always said about bum boyfriends: You can’t chase someone who doesn’t want to be caught. He’s gum on the bottom of your shoe. Scrape him off and forget him. Move on.

  “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  “You had your chance.”

  “Ava, the neighbors. Please let me come in.”

  “Screw the neighbors,” Ava said, but it pained her to see the hopeful way he was standing there. She opened the door wider and stood aside so he could come in, his shoulder brushing hers.

  Jake hadn’t been in this house for years. Since then, she had rearranged the room and painted the walls, but he didn’t even register a flicker of surprise. He acted as if he had as much right to be here as the furniture. But just his being in the room changed things. The air felt warmer and smelled like he did, all pine and wood shavings and smoke. He stood, shifting his weight from foot to foot. She nodded at a chair and took the couch. “Sit,” she said and he did, leaning toward her as if he were swimming through air.

  “You look good, Ava. Different.”

  “You look the same.”

  “No. I’m different.”

  “Why are you here?” she said.

  He was quiet for a moment. “I missed you.”

  “Just like that? You missed me?” Ava snorted.

  “You think I wanted to leave?”

  “You did leave,” she said bitterly.

  “Ava, I begged you to come with me. You refused.”

  “You had a criminal record,” Ava blurted. “You changed your name.”

  He was so quiet, she was frightened.

  “Oh God, it’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “I didn’t know if they were making it up to get me to say something about you.”

  “I was sixteen,” he said quietly. “You know how young that is?”

  She thought of Lewis, how silent he had become by the time he was sixteen, how he had this whole secret world about him. “I do,” she said. She looked at Jake and his mouth was one tight line, his face darkened, but she couldn’t tell whether it was in shame or anger.

  “You want the story like everybody else? Fine, I’ll give it to you,” he said shortly. “This kid at school kept stealing my money, roughing me up. Every fucking day and there was nothing I could do about it. When I told the principal, he didn’t believe me because the kid was from a rich family, and why’d he need to steal anything? But it kept going on, and finally, one day, when it was snowing, this kid surrounded me outside with his Neanderthal buddies and demanded my jacket. He was standing there laughing, like there was nothing I could do about it. Like I was nothing. The other kids were waiting, like it was a show and I was the main attraction and I popped. I boiled over and I started to beat him up.”

  Ava stared at him.

  “I could have stopped after I bloodied him, but I kept going until his eyes closed and he was like jelly under me. I broke his nose and his jaw. I couldn’t stop myself even when his buddies were pulling me off him. When they looked at me, Ava, they were afraid. But that was it for me. They sent me to juvenile detention, and if I thought high school was horrible, it was a cakewalk compared to juvie.” He couldn’t look at her. “I did it on purpose, Ava,” he said. “That’s who I was.”

  “You were a kid,” she said, but the words jammed in her throat.

  “I was old enough to know better than pounding on someone who was already knocked out. I was wrong and ashamed and scared and I paid for all of it.” She watched the anger drain from him, and he slumped onto her couch. “I haven’t been that person for a long time.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Don’t be. When I got to juvie, I had to fight for everything, every day. When I got out, I was through with fighting for the rest of my life. All I did at home was hang back and play my sax like my life depended on it. When I played, it was like I was talking to it, and it talked back in the only language I wanted to know. The better I got, the better I felt about myself, the more the rage melted away. The day I got good enough, I changed my name and hitched to Boston.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I wanted to start over. All that was dead.”

  “You could have explained this to the police. One thing didn’t have to do with the other.”

  “Oh no? Ever hear of once guilty, always guilty? I thought the records might have been sealed, because I was so young, but they could have gotten a court order to look at them.”

  “But the case went cold. They must have dropped you as a suspect the way they did everyone else.”

  “If I had been there, they might not have. Think of the field day the papers could have had. They were so desperate for a lead. The police called me again, you know, after they found the bones, to see if I had any more information, but after a few questions, they left me alone.”

  “And you left me to handle the whole mess by myself,” she said quietly.

  “Ava, all that time, in that little room, with those cops hunched over me, I kept thinking how they put innocent people in jail all the time,” he said. “If you can’t afford a good lawyer, you’re screwed, and I certainly couldn’t. I’ve seen it, Ava. Half the musicians I work with have stories. Nabbed on everything from drugs to robbery and they’re suspect just because they don’t have regular jobs. And I had a record. I’d have been stuck in jail for months until the truth came out, if it came out at all. What good could I do you if they put me away? How could I have helped you and Lewis? Can you imagine how your neighbors would have treated you then?”

  “Please don’t tell me you did this for me.” Ava folded her arms. “You gave me a choice to come with you or not, like it was cut-and-dried. Like there really was a choice. I never got the sense that you were leaving to protect me.”

  “I wanted to be there for you. But I was the perfect scapegoat. Single, a musician, a guy who rides a motorcycle and has a record. And there’s such a thing as guilt by association.�
��

  “There was no note. No calls. You never even helped look for him.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Don’t give me that. I just can’t believe you were thinking of me and not you.”

  “All I do is think about you,” he said.

  “You didn’t even write me after you left.”

  “There hasn’t been a day or night that’s gone by that I haven’t thought of you and wondered what you were doing, how you were. I told myself it was over, that I needed to move on. And then, later, I began to beat myself up for being a coward. I knew that I was. There’s nothing you’re saying to me now that I haven’t said to myself. The more time went on, the worse I felt. I figured you’d never take me back so I didn’t even try. Then I saw the story about finding Jimmy, how everybody knew it was an accident, and everything changed.”

  “Just stop,” Ava said, but when he got up and sat beside her, she didn’t move. Now he was so close, he made her nervous.“Where were you?” she said. “What were you doing?”

  She thought he was going to tell her that he had been recording in California, playing the beach clubs, but he got that pained look again. “Teaching music in Des Moines.”

  “Iowa?” She looked at him askance. She tried to imagine him in all that flat prairie, but it made her think of the games Lewis used to love when he was a kid, the “What’s wrong in this picture?” drawings. “You’ve spent all these years in Iowa?”

  “A friend got me the job. It’s steady income, plus I had money from the sale of my house in Cambridgeport, so any gig I get is just extra gravy.” He shrugged. “It’s not the way it sounds. I like it there. I’m used to it.”

  “Is ‘used to it’ the same as being happy? How could you end up in Iowa?”

  “Ava, look at me. I’m here now.”

  “What’s the matter, no single women where you are? You’re getting older and you just thought I’d be here waiting for you?”

  “I love you, Ava,” he said.

  She stood up from the couch, looking at the door. “I can’t do this right now,” she told him. She wondered if she was being a fool. “Please go,” she said.

  “Can I call you later? Can I come back?”

  “I don’t know.” She felt a flush of relief when he got up and walked out the door. Ava watched him from the window, his car driving off. She saw him wave wistfully at her, almost as if he were beckoning her to him, but she kept her hands at her sides.

  FOR THE REST of the day, she couldn’t do anything right. She picked up her book again and then realized she was reading the same page over and over. She tried to color her hair, a new shade called Kicky Redhead, in the bathroom and got a streak of auburn in the grout she couldn’t scrub out. When the phone rang, she didn’t move until it stopped. When it rang again the next morning, she grabbed for it. “Can I see you today?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I rented a place,” he said. “A little efficiency on Moody Street. I even got a gig in Cambridge.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just showing you how serious I can be.”

  “What about your job in Iowa?”

  “Leave of absence,” he said.

  “You didn’t quit.”

  “Ava, I’m a romantic, but I’m also a realist. Let’s have dinner. Please.”

  “All right. Dinner. But that’s all.”

  AVA ASKED HIM to take her to Bell’s, because Bell had once told her she was an excellent judge of men and because she wanted to show off for Jake.

  “Every pie here is mine,” Ava told him, pointing to the displays. She sat opposite Jake and when Bell came over, Ava felt the way Bell was studying Jake. “You good to this girl?” Bell asked him pointedly.

  “Absolutely,” said Jake.

  “You better be, because I’m cooking tonight and you wouldn’t want to cross me.” She winked at him and he laughed, and then she laughed, too. “Good. I like a man with a sense of humor,” Bell said. She tapped Ava on the shoulder as she left.

  Jake insisted they order the most expensive things on the menu. All through dinner, her concentration was hazy. She couldn’t taste the steak because of the stones in her throat. “I’ll take that if you don’t want it,” Jake said, spearing a slice of meat on his fork. When the waiter came by, Jake said, “Isn’t she beautiful?” nodding at Ava, who blushed. When it came time for the pie—coconut this evening—one of her better pies, she watched his face. He shut his eyes when he took a bite. He sighed. She felt her whole body warming.

  After dinner, he drove her home. She felt buzzed on the wine Jake had ordered, and starving from all the food she hadn’t eaten. It felt as if her senses had all been shuffled. “You can come inside,” she said.

  She stood wavering in the middle of the living room, grasping the edge of the couch, looking for steady ground. “What do you think, Ava?” he said. She was used to men teasing her, testing her by the way they might stroke her wrist, or sigh into her hair, but Jake was just standing there. He was leaving it up to her, the way he always had, but she wasn’t thinking about the future right now. She was thinking about the feel of his skin against hers, the deep thrumming of desire. You didn’t always want the right thing for you, but sometimes you just had to make the same mistake to find out for sure. So she crossed the room and pulled his shirt out of his pants and then slid her hand under his shirt, along his back, in the hollows. She heard his deep intake of breath. She stopped thinking then. She let herself fall against him, hearing his breath in her ears, kissing his mouth as if she wanted to swallow him whole.

  AVA AWOKE IN her bed to the sound of a lawn mower. She had a headache, thumping like a rabbit paw in her head. Jake was sleeping, beautiful and still, the daylight splashed across him. He had one arm hooped about her possessively. They had never slept this way, and it made her feel strange, uneasy. His mouth moved as if he were saying something. “Shfll,” he said, as if it were a secret language. She traced a finger on his mouth, but he didn’t stir.

  She touched his shoulder and his eyes flew open. He gave her a lazy smile. “Well, hi,” he said and rose up and kissed her mouth. She pulled away. “I’ll be late for work,” she said.

  “Don’t go today.”

  “I have to.”

  “I’ll drive you,” he told her.

  “No, I’ll drive myself.”

  She ran the shower so hot, her skin blossomed red. She felt self-conscious and dressed in the bathroom. By the time she got out, Jake was already fully clothed and making coffee for both of them in the kitchen. “One for me, one for my baby,” he said.

  He wanted to come to the office with her to meet the people she worked with. “Come on, show me off,” he joked.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  THEY BEGAN SEEING each other again. Ava found herself watching the calendar, marking the days with the red ink of her pen. Jake stayed for two days and then three, but instead of feeling a thrill or growing calmer, content, she couldn’t shake her unease.

  One night, Jake was playing his sax for her in the living room. His eyes were shut, his body swaying, and occasionally he’d turn and look at her before he was lost in the music again. She used to be able to sit for hours, just listening, or she’d get up and lean against the length of his back, so the vibrations of the music would flow through her. But tonight, watching him made her want to get her hands in flour. Hearing the way he slid the notes made her think about adding coconut to a pear pie, or dusting the rim of fluted crust with brown sugar. As soon as he was finished, she got up and went into the kitchen to bake. “Hey, where you going?” he called, and she laughed. She let him sit on a stool and watch her, but she wouldn’t let him help, and she got so lost in concentration that she actually forgot he was there. Later that night, when they were eating the pie, she talked to him about how she made it, the same way he spoke to her about music. He scraped the last bit of filling from his plate and then pointed his fork at her. “I don’t know which one is more d
elicious.”

  Later, in bed with Jake, his head was on her breast, his arm wrapped about her waist. The two of them were so slick with sweat, he got up and came back with a bowl full of ice. He tilted a piece out and traced it down her body until she shivered and then he lay back against her. She heard the ice fall back into the bowl. The chill of the ice, the heat of his body. She shut her eyes.

  She took a chip of ice from the bowl and put it in her mouth, letting it melt, cool against her tongue. It was going to be summer soon. Before she knew it, the neighborhood would be awash with kids home from school, fathers watering their lawns, the wives bringing out frosty pitchers of lemonade. The neighbors knew Jake was back, but to her surprise, they waved when they saw him. Bell seemed to like him, too, and every time they came to the café, Bell would tease him and give him extra-big portions.

  “You and me, we’re like music,” Jake told her. “It’s just all in the timing. There’s no neighbors breathing down our throats. Your son is grown and on his own. There are no exes. It’s just us.” He kissed her mouth. “What do you say, you want to get married?”

  She stared at him. “Is this a real question?”

  “Will you give me a real answer?”

  “I don’t know. I have to think about it.”

  He cupped her face. “Whenever you’re ready,” he told her.

  AT WORK THE next day, Ava felt as if she were in a cloud. She barely heard Richard when he yelled at her about a typing mistake she made. “The client’s name is Bohart, not Bohert,” he sniped. “If you need to take time off to go to the eye doctor, go and do it.” He watched her put a carbon between two sheets of paper and slide it in the machine. Charmaine looked at Ava with concern. “Are you all right?” Charmaine asked.