Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (14 page)

“Yeah, me. I’m a big, dirty Red and I’m going to eat you. And you’re a big, dirty Jew and you drink the blood of babies.” She bared her teeth, tickling him until he laughed, too.

Lewis’s stomach growled, but Rose seemed in no hurry to go home to dinner. “You hungry?” he asked. She shrugged. “Because I am,” he said.

“Then go home and eat.”

He studied her, the way she was kicking at the snow in front of her, not going anywhere. “Come with me,” he said.

As soon as Lewis brought Rose into his kitchen, where Ava was stirring something in a pot, Rose dipped her head shyly.

“Hi, honey,” Ava said. “Did you want to eat with us? Would it be all right with your mother?”

“My mother ate already,” Rose said quietly.

“Call her and tell her you’re having dinner here,” Ava said. “You don’t want her to worry.”

Rose curled around the phone, speaking in a low voice. “Yes. Okay, I will,” she said. She hung up the phone, and for a minute, it almost looked as if she were disappointed. “She said it’s fine,” Rose said.

“Your company is just what we need,” Ava said, setting a plate for Rose. Lewis had eaten enough meals at Dot’s to know that his mother wasn’t nearly as good a cook as Dot was, but he noticed how Rose was looking longingly at Ava’s potatoes boiling on the stove. “Make yourself at home, honey,” Ava said.

Every night after that, Ava simply set a plate for Rose and stretched whatever she had planned for dinner. There was never a lot, but all through the winter Ava boiled up spaghetti as a side dish so it would be enough, adding water to the sauce or more milk to the potatoes to increase the servings. Rose showed up and ate every bite of whatever it was, and afterward, Ava always gave her a Tupperware container of food to take home for Dot. “She has to eat,” Ava said. “And if not, then you have yourself a nice snack for later.” Ava and Lewis always walked Rose home. “I’d love to talk to Dot,” Ava said one evening, but the windows were dark, and when Ava knocked, no one came to the door. “You go inside then, honey,” Ava said gently. They waited until Rose unlocked the door herself, got inside safely, and closed the door again. Only then did they turn and head back.

One night, though, when Rose didn’t show up for dinner, Lewis went to find her. “I’ll keep everything on warm,” Ava said. He ran to her house, and there she was, standing on the front porch as if she were waiting for him. “Aren’t you eating with us tonight?” Lewis said. Then he noticed how red her eyes were, how her hands were trembling. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

“You’re nuts. I tell you everything,” she said. She looked past him, at the blinking street light. Her breath looked like puffs of smoke in the air.

“You can’t tell me to sense things about you and then, when I do, tell me it doesn’t exist.”

“In this case, it doesn’t.” She shook her head. “I’m just not hungry tonight.”

“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. Lewis got up and bounded back to his own house.

Ava was in the living room, curled up with a book, in dungarees and a sweater, her hair tied back with a kerchief. She looked like a mother, not like a working woman, not like the divorcée the neighbors all talked about.

“What do you think happens when we die?” he asked. Ava started. She turned to him, her face serious. “Why do you want to know that?”

“I just do.”

“I’m smart enough to know I don’t know,” she said finally. “What do you believe?”

He bit on his lip, the place where it was chapped. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s another parallel world.”

“That sounds as good as anything,” she told him. Lewis thought of Jimmy, lost in a parallel world, with a whole new set of friends and family, but instead of making him feel better, he felt as if he were trapped inside a maze.

“Rose can’t make dinner tonight,” he said.

“We’ll see her next time,” his mother reassured him.

That night, Lewis woke up in the darkness. He blinked at the clock. Four o’clock in the morning. His mother called it the hour of the wolf, the time when nightmares were at their most fierce. He put his hand over his heart, feeling the pulse thump against his fingers. He thought of Rose. After their dinner tonight, his mother had brought a container of chicken and noodles over to Rose and Dot. When she came back, it seemed as if she had been gone for a long time. “What took so long?” Lewis said and Ava shrugged. “We were talking.”

“About what?” Lewis said.

“Just things.”

“What was Rose doing?” he asked, but Ava walked past him into the kitchen.

Now Lewis went to the window with the flashlight and blinked it, S-O-S, over and over. He waited, but the night stayed dark. She didn’t answer, and he felt something loose and unsettling inside of him, like a lightbulb that wasn’t screwed in tightly enough.

Chapter Twelve

Rose stood in the kitchen, foraging for breakfast, trying to find something that wasn’t stale or with an expiration date of two weeks ago. She found an unopened package of cheese crackers and an apple that was only brown on one side.

She chewed on one of the crackers, which turned powdery on her tongue. Her mother used to wake up at six and have breakfast ready: eggs and toast with bacon or sausage. There used to be clean clothes laid out on her bed, lunch bags for her and Jimmy to take to school. Dot had always kept busy cooking and cleaning, playing cards with neighbors, but now she didn’t seem to do anything.

Everything familiar was vanishing, and it scared her. Rose had to wet the chips in the soap dish so she could mash them together into a semblance of a bar. When she came home from school, her mother looked relieved when she saw her, but she never asked her any questions about school or homework, and when Rose brought home a D on a math test for her mother to sign, sure her mother would yell, Dot just scribbled her name without comment. Her mother didn’t even suggest Rose go to the teacher and ask for a makeup.

B
Y SPRING, HER
mother was someone she didn’t know. Rose couldn’t even have Lewis over the house anymore because she didn’t know how her mother was going to act, if she’d be dressed and speaking in monosyllables or if she’d just be lying on the couch in her ratty nightgown. “I want you home,” her mother said, “not traipsing around.” But when Rose stayed around, her mother ignored her.

One afternoon, when the only thing in the fridge was an old casserole someone had brought over from the previous week, Rose made a decision. She leafed out a ten from her mother’s wallet and went out, even though she wasn’t supposed to. If she didn’t go and buy groceries, there would be nothing to eat.

The whole walk down Trapelo Road to the Star Market, Rose was nervous. Walk fast, like you know where you are going, the teacher had told the kids. Swing your arms purposefully. Be prepared to run.

She bought two bagfuls of groceries, green peppers and tomatoes and apples, detergent and soap, and when she got home, she put the groceries away and read the back of all the cleaning products to see what to do.

By the end of the night, she had scrubbed the kitchen floor and washed the wood floors in the living room, dining room, and her own bedroom. She had dusted the venetian blinds and folded the laundry, and all she had left to do was straighten up the den. But as soon as she walked in and saw the pile of newspapers, she couldn’t help scouring the pages for photographs. Secrets, she knew, could hide in all sorts of places. She looked for the articles that had crowd shots, and then poured over the faces, just in case one might be his. She rummaged in the drawers and found a magnifying glass, then studied each and every face, sure that one might belong to her brother. She stopped at a blurry head of a boy, in the back of the crowd. She circled his face with a pen, so she wouldn’t lose sight of him.

“What are you doing?”

Rose looked up. Dot was standing in the doorway in her nightgown, her hair awry. “Doesn’t this look like Jimmy?” Rose showed Dot the shot, the place where she had circled a face. Dot took the page to the wastebasket and buried it, and then walked out of room.

Rose fished it out again, smoothing it down. She squinted at the photo. The eyes were wrong. She saw it now.

Rose heard her mother in the kitchen and she went in to find her staring at the cupboards filled with food. “Where did this come from?” Dot demanded. “Did neighbors bring this by?”

“I bought it,” Rose said. Dot stared at her. “Do you want to take a walk?” Rose asked her mother.

“What for?” Dot said.

“To be with me, to do something,” Rose told her mother. “At least get dressed. Let me wash your bathrobe.” She reached out, but Rose’s mother flinched and drew the robe more tightly around her. Dot looked around. “Did someone clean in here?” she said. For a moment, Rose thought her mother was going to roll up her robe sleeves and dig into the cleaning that was left, but instead, she shook her head. “I’m just going to lie down,” she said.

“We have overdue bills,” Rose blurted, waiting for her mother to get mad, to tell her to mind her own beeswax, but Dot just waved her hand. “I’ll take care of that,” she said, but Rose didn’t believe her, and she was terrified.

Rose had just turned fourteen. She couldn’t handle all this herself, the cooking, the cleaning, the worrying about her mother and money. She needed to tell someone, but who could she tell? Lewis couldn’t really help with something like this. A grown-up could call Social Services and they might take Rose away because she was still a minor. She had heard of things like that happening. It would kill her mother, and it would probably kill Rose, too, having to live with a strange family, with new rules, people who might say they loved her, but you knew deep down that they really didn’t.

Her mother was in the other room, probably asleep by now. Rose flew out of the house. She gulped at the air. Come with me, she wanted to scream at her mother. Come with me.

R
OSE WAS IN
her home economics class, trying to figure out how to thread the needle in her sewing machine, when there was a knock on the classroom door. All the girls looked up. A hall monitor, one of the kids, came in and whispered something to the teacher, who looked sternly at Rose and beckoned her over. “Go to the principal’s office,” she whispered.

The whole way to the principal, Rose knew it was about Jimmy. Jimmy would be standing there. She bit down her lip to keep from crying, stilled her legs to keep from running.

But as soon as she got to the office, the only person standing there was stern-faced Mr. Morang (the kids all called him Lemon, snickering at the joke). “Your mother called,” he said. “She wants you to go right home.”

“Did something happen?”

Mr. Morang shrugged. “I think she just wants you home,” he said gently, and then he went to call her a cab. He told her the secretary would wait outside with her and make sure she got in the car safely.

W
HEN
R
OSE GOT
home, there was an envelope attached to the door that said
CABBIE
on it, a fistful of money inside. She gave it to the driver and came inside, calling, “Mom?”

Rose found her mother in the kitchen, sprawled on the floor in her nightgown and her dirty robe, her feet bare, her hair uncombed. “Mom!” Rose shouted. She crouched down, her heart pounding and reached for her mother’s hand. There was a pulse. Her mother jerked her hand away and turned her face to Rose. “I can’t do this anymore,” Dot said, and hearing her voice, Rose felt so relieved she could have cried.

Rose struggled to get her up. Her mother was heavy and perspiring. She dragged her into the bathroom and ran a bath. She didn’t want to see her mother naked, but she pulled the dirty clothes off. “Get in,” she ordered, and her mother silently did, sinking into the hot water. “Oh, that feels good,” Dot said. Rose was afraid to leave her, so she sat on the toilet, waiting, watching, until her mother’s eyes fluttered and then focused on Rose. Dot grabbed the shower curtain and pulled it closed around her, shutting Rose out. “Go,” she said, her voice muffled. “I’ll be fine.”

Rose waited outside the door, leaning forward, listening. She heard the water draining from the tub. She heard her mother’s long sigh, and then the door opened and Dot walked down the hall to her room, not looking at Rose, but padding into her room and firmly shutting the door.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
when Rose came home from school, Dot was dressed, and she had even made a snack for Rose: four Ritz crackers and a piece of American cheese. Rose was about to head over to Lewis’s for dinner when she heard something crackling in the pan, a snap of grease, the smell of bacon. She wandered into the kitchen and there was Dot making bacon in a pan, slices of bread set out in front of her. “BLTs okay?” Dot asked, and Rose sat down on the chair in wonder. “They’re great,” she said.

Every night after that, there was some sort of dinner. It was never anything special, but there were eggs and toast (“breakfast for dinner,” Dot called it), spaghetti and butter, and even fried chicken and a baked potato. Dot ate, too, and afterward, she did the dishes, humming to herself, staring out the window as if she were the only one there. “Want to watch TV?” Rose asked and Dot shrugged, but she came and sat beside her on the couch. It didn’t matter what Rose put on, Dot always seemed to be somewhere else.

It was the beginning of June, the week before school ended, when Rose came home, and right there, in the living room, there were two suitcases, their tops wide open like jaws. Her mother was packing, her face flushed. “I’ve made a decision,” she said. She told Rose they were going to stay with her sister Hope in Pittsburgh, a woman Rose barely knew, and when they were on their feet, they’d get their own place. Maybe in Pittsburgh or in some place else altogether. “She suggested it out of the blue and as soon as I heard it, it felt right,” Dot said.

“We’re leaving?” Rose said. “You didn’t even talk to me about this.”

“You’re a child. You don’t get a decision in this.” Dot folded more clothing.

“I’m not a child. And I don’t want to go.”

“I already called a realtor. He says the market is good, the house should sell quickly.”

“What about Jimmy? How can we leave Jimmy?”

Her mother stopped packing and turned to Rose.

“You’re going to let him come home to a strange house?” Rose said. “You’re going to let him think we didn’t care enough about him to stay here? How can you leave?”

“Rose—” Dot warned, but Rose felt a bubble of grief rising in her throat. “Do you think we’ll just leave and everything will be all right?” Rose cried.

“We need a change. I want to be someplace where everything doesn’t remind me and every morning I don’t wake up and wish I hadn’t. If the police need to find us, they can.” Dot looked around the house. “This is the first day I’ve felt alive,” she said quietly.

Rose fled the house. The streets were empty and the air felt thick and heavy as a coat around her. She was crying when Lewis opened his front door. He grabbed her hand and took her to his room, shutting the door, sitting her down. She couldn’t stop crying, so he moved closer and put his forehead against hers, and then she began to tell him what had happened. “I’ll write you as soon as I have a real address. I’ll call. Pittsburgh’s not so far away,” she said. She could feel his breath on her face, his mouth so close all she had to do was move a bit closer and his lips would be touching hers. She draped her arms on his shoulders and he let her. She held him so close she felt his heart beating against her. Then she pulled back. “We need to have another pact,” she said. She put her hand up and he placed his against hers. “We’ll find Jimmy. We’ll never give up looking.”

“We’ll never give up,” Lewis assured her.

There was a knock on the door and their hands flew back into their laps. “What’s going on?” Ava said, opening the door. Rose looked at Lewis, who had a blank look on his face. “Rose is moving,” he said.

Ava walked into the room, knelt down, and cupped Rose’s face. “Oh, honey,” she said.

R
OSE AND
D
OT
were leaving as soon as the house was sold. Already, there was a thick white
FOR SALE
sign planted in their yard like a dandelion. Rose spent every minute she could with Lewis. “I’ll write you every single day,” she promised. “As soon as we have a real address, I’ll give it to you. Maybe I can figure out a way to visit, or you can visit us.” As soon as she said it, she knew how stupid it sounded. She didn’t even know what Pittsburgh was like. How would she get from there to here again, if her mother wouldn’t drive her or put her on a train, two things she could tell you right now her mother would never do? How would Lewis get to her? She kept asking her mother for her aunt’s address in Pittsburgh, to write it down so she could give it to Lewis. “I’ll get it,” Dot said, but then she never did.

The neighbors were murmuring about their move. Even though they lowered their voices when Rose walked by, she heard the comments. How could a mother move when her son was still missing? What if he came back? What if there was only an empty house to greet him? There was something wrong with the whole picture and what did you expect when it was a woman alone? But Dot kept talking about how this was going to be a whole new life, how they’d be settled in a new neighborhood before school even started up again.

One night, Rose lay sprawled across her bed, ignoring the empty boxes Dot had pushed into her room, and wrote in her journal to Jimmy,
We are moving but I will never stop looking for you.
And then, to make herself feel better, she added,
Maybe you are in Pittsburgh, too
. And then, like a postscript, she wrote,
I promise I will find you.

Her mother wanted her to take only what was important, but Rose knew her mother’s idea of what to take was different from hers. She packed only one box, filling it with the clues she had collected about Jimmy, with all the objects that meant something to her: Jimmy’s favorite shirt, the map. Then Rose looked out the window, taking the flashlight and flashing S-O-S at Lewis’s house, but his shades stayed drawn, and after a while, she gave up. It was past one, really late, and she knew he must be asleep. She picked up her journal again and leafed through it. It was filled with letters to Jimmy and feelings she had about people or places that might be clues, and an occasional story she had written, always about a girl like herself looking for and always finding her lost brother. Taking up the pen, she began writing again, but this time, before she even realized what she was doing, she was writing about a girl about to move away from her best friend, a boy. At the very end, the girl tells the boy she loves him, but as she scribbled that part, Rose’s hands trembled. She couldn’t write the next sentence because she didn’t know what the boy would say back, and the not knowing made it seem as though her room was reeling.