Is This Tomorrow

by Caroline Leavitt

  Shaking, he lowered himself into the shelter, clinging to the rickety ladder, closing the top, and suddenly Rose was right there beside him. Once inside the shelter, she felt his fear. She heard his thoughts, like dictation in her mind. As soon as the coast was clear, he could run back home. He would stay here just as long as it took to be safe and then he would go. And so he waited, clinging to the ladder, listening for footsteps, for Brian’s shout, but the ladder, freckled with rust, pulled away from the wall, opening like a zipper, and Jimmy hit the ground. She heard the crack of his ankle, the bright bolt of pain like an exploding star, and she moved down beside him but she couldn’t help him. He gulped in the dank, heavy air. She watched helplessly while Jimmy hobbled to the shelf and tried a flashlight he found, but the batteries were no good anymore, and the light made a dull flicker before it vanished. The hunger began hours later. He had to use his hands to feel around for the cans of food he knew were there, for the rusty opener. He went through tuna first, and then corn niblets and he cut his fingers on the jagged edges, but he kept going because he was so hungry. He found the water and finished it. He screamed, but nobody heard him. And then everything she saw became a circle, with her brother at the center, and the circle grew smaller and smaller, and he curled himself up as tightly as he could, his scribbled sneakers tucked under him, his plaid shorts damp and dirty from mud. He gulped at the air until he was panting. She was right there with him when he felt like there was no air left for him to breathe, when he knew no one would ever find him.

  She woke up, leaping from the bed, her whole body shaking. She focused on the hotel dresser, the TV, the minibar. Her fingers brushed the bedspread. She was alive in this room. These things around her were real. All these years, she had been desperate for Jimmy to visit her in dreams, frantic to see him, and finally he came and it was more terrible than she could imagine. When she felt a hand on her, she whipped around to see Lewis, and she began to cry. But she couldn’t tell him about the dream. “Can we just get out of here?” she asked.

  ROSE AND LEWIS went to a restaurant near the motel for breakfast, and then they took a walk, but neither one of them was talking very much.

  Rose felt Brian everywhere, like a ghost, haunting her. At the restaurant, Brian was sitting at a table with a child on his lap. When they went to the bookstore, a man with thick hair like Brian’s was browsing the shelves. Rose put one hand over her face. “Are you all right?” Lewis asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Everything seemed wrong. She used to think that if she knew what had happened to Jimmy, if she had all the pieces, she’d be able to move on, and instead, she felt even more broken. She had thought all she wanted was to be with Lewis, but being with him reminded her of so much she wanted to forget. She had never understood why her mother had left the neighborhood, but now all she could think was, Of course that’s what you did, fleeing from the pain as if it were a wild animal about to tear you in two. How could she not have seen it? When the pain reached a certain point, how could you do anything else?

  THEY DROVE BACK to Ann Arbor, as if distance would make things better, but the dreams kept coming. Every night, as she slept beside Lewis, there was Jimmy running and her chasing him. Every night, she felt Jimmy’s loss of hope, heard his desperate pleas. Come and find me.

  She went to the Thrift-T-Mart and bought Sominex, but the pills just made her groggy and cranky and didn’t stop the dreams at all. She couldn’t speak to Lewis about any of it because she didn’t want him sharing her guilt. She was afraid to go to sleep. She wanted to stay up all night. “You have to sleep,” Lewis told her. He rubbed her hands and stroked her hair. He stayed up with her as long as he could, and then he was sleeping fitfully and she was staring at the walls, waiting for the dreams to come and haunt her.

  She got up and went into the living room and turned the TV on and then off again. She lay down on the couch, waiting, and then, despite herself, she fell asleep, not waking until Lewis shook her. “Come back to bed,” he whispered.

  She sat up. “I didn’t dream,” she said in wonder. “I didn’t dream.” As soon as she went back to bed with Lewis, his arm around her, there she was again, running on the street, trying to grab her brother, following him down into the hole. But this time, Jimmy saw her and when she reached for him, she actually touched his skin, and she was able to hold him, to feel him against her, alive. He pulled away and then looked at her as if it was the most unsurprising thing in the world for them to be there together. “It’s over,” he said, his shoulders hunching. “It’s the end.” She bolted awake.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Lewis wrapped himself about her, but she felt as if she were suffocating. She broke the band of his arms.

  “You just had a bad dream,” he said, and she shook her head, crying.

  “It’s not just a bad dream. And I can’t do this anymore,” she blurted. “I can’t keep being this sad. I can’t keep dreaming about me and Jimmy and your father.”

  Lewis looked at her, shocked. “You’ve been dreaming about my dad?”

  “Yes.” She lowered her head.

  “All this time?”

  “I wish I didn’t know what happened,” she said finally.

  He was quiet for a moment. “I wish that, too,” he said. “I never thought I’d say that.”

  “I can say that,” she said abruptly. “But you can’t. He’s your father. He’s in our life.” As soon as she got the words out, she felt as if she were sinking.

  “What are you talking about? Who says I want to see him again?”

  “You’re upset about him now, but you loved him so much as a kid. He was so important to you. How do you know that you’re not going to miss him?”

  “Are you kidding? I never will. I’m done. Why are you even bringing this up?”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t know that. A father’s a father. My mother told me you’re with a man, you’re with his family, whether you like them or not. That’s just the way it is. I have to move on from this. I have to find some way to deal with it. I want to be with you, but how can I be the kind of person who tells you not to see your father?”

  “You won’t have to, I told you.”

  “What if he’s sick, Lewis? What if he’s dying? What if he gets thrown out of his house and Glory is gone and he has no place else to stay, no one else but you to turn to? You wouldn’t give him another chance? I know you well enough to know that you would.”

  “Rose, come on—how long have you been thinking about this? Why didn’t you talk to me about this?”

  “I know how you feel about me. I know. We haven’t talked about it, but what if we stay together and we have a child some day? You know as well as I do what it’s like to grow up without family—are you going to deny your kid grandparents? My mother’s parents are dead, but my father’s family just made themselves dead to us. After my father died, my mother said they froze us all out cold. That’s not right. It’s family. It’s got to mean something.”

  “How do you know what’s going to happen? Can’t you just focus on now?”

  Her shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t want to be sad anymore. I feel like I can’t ever escape this.”

  “You’re so upset, you’re not thinking straight. It won’t always feel that way.”

  “How do you know that? So we’ll be together and every time we see each other, we’ll have that day in our minds.”

  “I love you.” It was the first time he had ever said it to her, and she stepped back, blinking her eyes hard. He stood there looking at her, and she thought how easy it would be to say yes to him, and then she thought of everything she’d be saying yes to.

  “I think you need to go home,” she said, her voice small.

  “No,” Lewis said, and she looked at him with pity.

  “This isn’t the real world,” she said. “It’s just you and me in my apartment.”

  “We can make it the real world,” Lewis said. His voice sped up. �
�My job’s portable. I can live anywhere, hospitals always need help. I can move to Ann Arbor. Or you could come live near me—there are so many schools there—you could find another teaching job. You said yourself, what if we were together, really together—”

  “Aren’t you listening to me?” she said. “I can’t do any of those things. This horrible thing happened and I need to get over it, or at least around it. I can’t feel like this anymore.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Is this it? We’ve gone through all this and now we don’t see or talk to each other again? How does that make sense? Who else knows you the way I do? How can you do this?”

  “Because I have to.” She started getting dressed. “When I slept by myself, without you beside me, I didn’t dream and it was like a little breath, like a respite. I’m not blaming you. I know it’s all in me, but I need to be able to get up in the morning and not feel like I want to die.”

  “Rose—” he pleaded, but she got up and began straightening the room, and when she came to Jimmy’s map, she carefully folded it, hesitating before she gently put it into the wastebasket. “You really have to go,” she said.

  LEWIS WAS SURE that any moment she’d change her mind. She was just upset. She wasn’t thinking clearly. He didn’t press her because in the hospital that usually made patients do the opposite of what you wanted them to do. But then she brought out his little suitcase and handed it to him, and he looked at it, dismayed. “Will you call me?” he asked. “Can I call you?”

  “Just give me some time.”

  “How much?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I won’t know until I feel better.” Tears streaked her face and he stepped forward to hold her, but she moved back away from him, drying her face with her hands. “I can’t watch you leave. I’m going to take a walk, so when I come back, you’ll be gone.”

  “Rose, come on,” he said, but she grabbed her jacket. “You have to let me be by myself,” she said, and then she left, the door slapping behind her.

  For a moment he didn’t know what to do, where to go. He wanted to stay and wait for her, but he didn’t want to get her more upset. Maybe he could drive home to Madison and call her later, but he didn’t have to be back at work yet, and he didn’t want to be in Madison by himself. He found a piece of paper on Rose’s table and started to write, Rose—just that, that one word seemed to be enough, so he put the pen down, and that’s when he noticed Jimmy’s map in Rose’s wastebasket. He picked it up, tucked it under his arm, and left her house.

  HE DROVE. ALL these cars around him, full of husbands and wives and kids, families on their way someplace or on their way home. On his right a man leaned over and kissed the blond woman beside him and when she cupped the back of his head, the way Rose did to Lewis, he averted his head. He didn’t even have a pet fish at home to welcome him.

  He stopped at a rest stop to get coffee, and then, in the car, he pulled out Jimmy’s map and looked at it again. He had four days left of his vacation and he didn’t want to be alone. He knew Rose needed to figure it all out herself, that she wanted to be alone, and maybe even she wanted to erase him, to start fresh, and maybe he couldn’t blame her, but he couldn’t do the same, not yet. Instead, he wanted to be with someone who was glad to see him, who had some idea what he was going through. He wanted to talk about everything that had happened until he understood it.

  He got back on the highway, heading east until he saw the sign, BOSTON 67 MILES. Every time he had come here, it was because he felt he had to, because it was family, because she was his mother. He had been here many times, but he always ended up getting lost somehow, taking the wrong turn or missing it entirely, ending up in Auburn or Cambridge instead of Waltham. He stopped at gas stations, asking for directions, and then as soon as he was back in the car, he forgot the route numbers. “You’ve been here a million times, don’t you know your way already?” Ava used to joke when he showed up late. “Maybe you do it deliberately.” He looked up, and there, like a message, was the sign. ROUTE 128 WALTHAM. He wasn’t lost at all. He made the turn.

  It was night, and before he got to his old neighborhood, he passed Bell’s, the café where his mother sold pies. The parking lot was crowded, and he was about to keep going when he saw his mother’s car parked by the door. He pulled into the lot, driving around twice before he found a space, and then got out. A couple, laughing, walked into the café. He glanced at his watch. By now, Rose would be eating dinner.

  He walked in. He swore he smelled cinnamon. The place looked the same as the last time he had seen it, all green plants and polished wood tables spread with red floral tablecloths. The clock was in the shape of a big mermaid with a switching tail that beat out the minutes. One of the two waitresses, her hair teased up into a bubble, a blue apron tied at her waist, smiled at him. Lewis had never seen so many pies. They were all lined up like trophies in a glass case, some with lattice crusts, and each one looked delicious. The waitress came over, her face expectant. “Come on, hon,” she said, and led him to a booth.

  “Is Ava here?” Lewis felt his voice fumble. “I’ll get her,” she said. “And I’ll grab you a menu, too.”

  He sat in the booth, still dumbfounded by his surroundings, and then, there, in the back, like a mirage, was his mother. He could see her clearly now. Her hair was a storm of curls. She was talking to a man, who took her elbow and said something to her, drawing her close, so she blushed and laughed. He saw the sparkle in the man’s eyes, the way he touched Ava’s arm, but Ava’s eyes were clear, focused on the table and not on him. She extricated her arm and reached for a plate. And then the waitress caught up with Ava and said something, pointing to Lewis, and that’s when Ava turned, the plate in her hand. She stood there, staring at him. She looked confused, framed in the doorway and the light, as if she didn’t know who he was or what to do. She walked to his table and slowly sat down. “I’m not dreaming, am I?” she said.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “I’m working here. Full-time now. Bell’s training me to be the manager.”

  “That’s incredible!” He looked at her again, how relaxed she seemed, how happy.

  “You’ll have to meet her. I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but I have all these plans for baking evenings and hootenannies. I may even sell bagels here, imagine that!”

  “The man you were talking with. Is he a boyfriend?”

  Ava sighed. “What if he was?” she said quietly. “Would that be so terrible?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Well, he’s not. I’m too busy to have boyfriends.”

  She leaned toward him, the way she used to when he was young, as if she wanted to scoop up every word. “Tell me everything. Where’s Rose? How was the road trip?”

  He had never really confided anything about his life to his mother before, but things had changed now. He wouldn’t be talking to her about his father like a boy who wanted him back. He wouldn’t be talking to her about Rose like Rose was just a friend. And when he looked at his mother, she wasn’t the person she had been before to him, either. She looked so different, so calm. She didn’t take her eyes from his face. “It didn’t work out for Rose and me,” he said.

  “Some things just don’t,” she said. “No matter how much you want them to.”

  “Did you want them to with Dad?” He thought of that day when his father was supposed to show up and she’d sat out waiting with him, the two of them working their way through a bag of cookies.

  She got a funny look on her face. “Oh, honey,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure how to start, how to tell her. “Did you ever wonder what might have happened if he had come to get me?”

  “He never did,” she said flatly. “Do you know how happy I was when you turned eighteen? And you want to know why? Because then he couldn’t come for you. Then it was over. You were an adult and he couldn’t change his mind about custody again. Not anymore.” She lifted up her hand
s. “Why are you doing this? Why are you spoiling a visit by talking about him? Do you know what it was like for me, on my own, terrified about money, worrying about you and him and you-and-him?”

  He felt a flicker of old anger and tried to push it away. “What about what it was like for me? I just wanted my dad and you had all these boyfriends.” A woman at the next booth glanced over, her eyes hooded, and he lowered his voice. “You had Jake.”

  “The boyfriends again. You’re an adult now. Have you never been lonely?”

  He thought of driving in the car here, how every once in a while, he’d think, if he just shut his eyes and then opened them, Rose would be in the seat beside him.

  “You still blame me for your father,” she snapped. “Isn’t it time to give that up? I’m the one who took care of you, not him. I bought your clothes and your food, and I did it with my money, not his.” She leaned across the table to him. “What has he ever done for you? Just tell me that.” Her eyes flashed. “How am I wrong? Go ahead and tell me,” she said.

  He had gone over the story on the drive here. How he’d tell his mother about his reunion with Brian and how the whole visit had been like electric shocks. He could tell her how she had been wrong, how Brian had wanted him so much he had come back to get him, and that Jimmy had died because of it. He could tell her, too, how he knew suddenly, sitting in his father’s living room, how right Ava had been all along. Brian wasn’t worth her or him or any of them because he couldn’t take responsibility, he didn’t want to see himself in any light that wasn’t shining. And Lewis could tell his mother the saddest thing of all, how and why Rose had left him.

  If he told her, she’d be horrified and he knew she’d feel responsible for all of it, and what good would it do either one of them? She always knew she had married a jerk, but she didn’t know he was involved in Jimmy’s death, that he had ruined things between Lewis and Rose. Did she deserve that after all she’d been through?

  “Did you see your father?” she finally asked.

  He shook his head. “He wasn’t at that address,” Lewis lied.