Is This Tomorrow: A Novel (8 page)

The other men Ava had dated began to call her. Their voices were raw and angry on the phone. Sometimes they didn’t say their names right off, so she had to struggle to piece together who they were, picking out their identities by a twang in a voice, a figure of speech. “We didn’t even get along,” said one man, “Why would you have them call me?” They were angry that they had been contacted at work, that their girlfriends knew, the women who were now their wives. It was the sort of case where being questioned made people look at you differently. Ava remembered a teacher in Lewis’s school who had been accused of molesting one of the kids. He had lost his job and had had to move away and then, four years later, the child had recanted. The boy said he had made it up because he was mad at the teacher for yelling at him in front of the class, that he had been with a cop in a room with no windows for what seemed like hours and he was scared and tired and all he wanted to do was say the things the cop seemed to want him to say.

“I’m sorry,” Ava said. She let the men rant until their anger died down and then they hung up.

She had a terrible feeling that, on top of all of this, Brian might call again, asking about custody. What if he had heard what was going on here, what if that gave him more of a case against her?

Chapter Seven

The first time Ava had set eyes on Brian, she was nineteen years old and working behind the candy counter at a Woolworth’s in Boston. Her parents lived in Chelsea, but she had left home as soon as she could, fleeing their relentless arguing to share a tiny Brookline apartment with a girlfriend. “A girl shouldn’t leave her parents’ home until she gets married,” Ava’s mother had told her. “It doesn’t look right.” Although Ava worried about the same thing, she had decided to take her chances.

From the time she was little, her parents had had screaming fights because her father was always at the racetrack, gambling away their money. He didn’t always pay the bills, he didn’t always go to work at his construction job, and all of his sure bets on horses with names like Lucky Thunder or Juliet’s Romeo never panned out. Her father could be funny and charming, but you couldn’t depend on him. He forgot Ava’s tenth birthday party. He missed his wedding anniversary party at the house, and when he finally showed up, just as people were leaving, Ava’s mother walloped him across the face. Ava still remembered how he had taken her to the movies, but right in the middle, just when Rin Tin Tin was about to save the day, he had gotten up. “Just be a minute,” he whispered, touching her arm. She sat there, watching the movie alone, unable to concentrate, and every time she heard a noise, she kept craning her neck around, hoping it was him. When the movie was over, she didn’t know what to do. She went to the front of the theater, and stood there, terrified, while people thronged around her. Her dad had driven her here and she had no idea how to get home and she knew if she called her mother from the pay phone inside the lobby, she would be the cause of another blistering battle. She was just about to burst into tears, when she saw him running up to her, grinning. He put his arm around her. “Thanks to your dad, we’re all going out to a fancy meal tonight!” he said. He showed her a fan of bills, but all Ava could think about was how long she had been waiting and how scared she had been.

Her mother loved her father, but Ava saw how hard it was for her. Ava’s mother might reach for her husband’s hand and glow when he came home, but she never knew what kind of a mood he’d come home in, and he always took it out on her, egging her on until she shouted back. Ava’s mother gave Ava a lot of advice. “Don’t marry just for love,” she told her. “You want a good provider who’ll take care of you. Someone calm and kind who thinks about your needs and not just his. Someone with a steady job who doesn’t gamble.”

Ava listened. As soon as she started dating, she considered every boy husband material. She wouldn’t date any man who didn’t have a good job and some money in his pocket. He had to have a plan for his future and if a man so much as raised his voice at her, she was gone.

Marcy, a friend over in cosmetics, had offered to set her up on a blind date. Ava was reluctant until Marcy told her that, at twenty-two, Brian was already a sales manager at a car lot, and that he even had his own apartment in the Back Bay. “He’s going places,” Marcy said. “If I didn’t have my Billy, I’d date him myself.” Her friend nudged her. “Blue eyes. Blond hair. Dimples. Tall, too. Come on, you don’t want to be standing behind the candy counter at Woolworth’s forever, do you?”

So she said yes, and then Brian showed up at her door three nights later, and he wasn’t just everything Marcy said, he was more. His teeth were perfect and dazzlingly white. His hair wasn’t just golden, it had a wavy dip in it, and his lashes were as long as hers, and she used Maybelline. He was in a dark suit, and he carried a bouquet of daisies in his hand.

“How did you know I loved daisies?” she asked, surprised.

“I asked Marcy,” he said. “I try to find out what people like so I can give it to them.” She felt a blush stain her cheeks.

He took her to a French restaurant in the Back Bay, with gold foil wallpaper and waiters in tuxedos and bow ties. Ava had never been to any place so fancy. The maitre d’ smiled as soon as he saw Brian. “Mr. Lark,” he said, “always a pleasure to see you,” and Brian slid some money into the maitre d’s hands, whispering something. They were instantly led to a table by the window, which impressed Ava even more. The menu was all in French and she looked helplessly at it, too embarrassed to admit she didn’t understand what anything said, but Brian seemed to know she was struggling. He carefully took it out of her hands. “I’ll order for both of us,” he said.

All through dinner, he talked to her, carrying the conversation so she didn’t have to. He told her his mother had died when he was a kid. His father was a retired surgeon who now lived in Florida, but they weren’t close. When the waiter brought the wrong appetizer to him, smoked oysters instead of onion soup, he didn’t get angry the way Ava’s father would have. “No problem,” he said easily, “I’ll just have this.” He told her he had gotten his third raise just this year alone and when he talked about the things he liked to do—fishing, bowling, going for drives—he didn’t mention cards or the racetrack. By the end of meal, Ava was sure there was such a thing as love at first sight, because she could have sworn it had just happened to her.

T
HEY MARRIED THAT
spring, she in a tea-length white dress with tiny cap sleeves, a bouquet of daisies in her hand, all his officemates standing there cheering, their wives smiling at her, her friends from Woolworth’s crying happily into their handkerchiefs. Brian’s father was sick, and did not make it. After the ceremony, Ava’s father hugged her and slid a fifty into her palm. Her mother took Ava aside. “You did good, honey,” she said. “You picked a fine man.” Ava beamed and hugged her.

They moved to Brian’s apartment in Back Bay, a one-bedroom that looked out onto trees. He bought new venetian blinds for every room in the place, and a Danish Modern divan. When it came to the bedroom, he surprised Ava by ordering one big double bed instead of two twins, extra long both because he was tall, and because it was more luxurious. When she told him that her mother had always insisted couples should have twin beds, with a nightstand separating them, in case one of them had a cold, he laughed. “Whatever you have, I want, even a cold,” he told her. Ava leaned her whole body up against his. “I fit perfectly here,” she told him.

She quit her job, of course. “Your job is to run the house,” Brian told her. She didn’t miss the paltry paycheck she used to get because every week Brian gave her an allowance that was hers to use however she wanted. They had lots of money. She was a wife! Finally, a wife! She couldn’t stop staring at her ring, flashing her hand so it caught the light and so everyone could see it. Every once in a while, they went out to dinner with her parents—Brian’s treat—but with Brian beside her, it didn’t bother her so much when her father got up to use the phone and didn’t come back for twenty minutes. When her parents started arguing loudly as they left a restaurant, Brian took her arm and led her quietly away to their car. As soon as they were inside, he turned on the car radio and leaned over and kissed her and she felt the tension slide away.

She loved that everything was taken care of. He chose the restaurants they went out to, the movies, the shows in Boston. But what she loved even more was that there was no drama. He woke up in a sunny mood and stayed that way, and when Ava was upset, usually after calling her parents, he glided her onto his lap and rocked her.

“Life is golden,” she told her mother, and it took her a while to see the miles and miles of tin.

I
T TOOK HER
two years to get pregnant, but when she finally was, she had the whole kit and caboodle. The early nausea turned into full-blown morning sickness and she was too exhausted to even straighten up the apartment.When she told Brian she was pregnant, he cried. He kneeled and kissed her belly. “Wait until you see the father I’m going to be!” he told her. By then, both her parents had died, one after the other, as though one didn’t know what to do without the other. Brian only had his father in Florida, whom Ava had never even met, but Brian told her it didn’t matter. “We have each other,” he said. “The perfect family. That’s all we need.”

And oh, but he was a great father at first, and an even more wonderful husband. He doted on her during the pregnancy, rubbing her feet, sometimes even making dinner, nothing fancy, just Green Giant vegetables heated up and spaghetti with sauce from a jar, but to Ava, it tasted delicious because Brian had made it. When Lewis was born, and Ava was still groggy from the anesthesia, he stayed at her bedside the whole week she was in the hospital, telling her dirty jokes to make her laugh, charming all the nurses with boxes of chocolate. “That’s for taking such good care of my little wife,” he said. When she came home, he brought flowers for Ava and soft plush toys for the baby, a little basketball, a monkey, a whale. Sure, he wasn’t always there because he was working, but he was already talking about buying a big house in the suburbs. Ava was thrilled. Though she loved the city, the suburbs were green and leafy, a paradise. She could just imagine it. A house! Maybe a little grassy backyard for Lewis to play in.

Sometimes when she missed him, she would put Lewis in her lap and spread Brian’s clippings from the company newsletter all across the living room floor. There were the photos of him holding a trophy for generating more sales for the lot this year than any other salesman. He was smiling so hard his whole body seemed to gleam. There he was, caught in time, and still so beautiful, as supple and strong as a willow tree, that her breath skipped. “That’s your daddy,” she whispered. Lewis banged his rattle against her wrist.

Everything Lewis did fascinated her. She loved just watching him grow. Look at the way he lifted his head! Look at how he toddled around the house, and when he began speaking, all she wanted to do was scoop up every word. She was determined that he was going to have everything in life. College. A good job. A happy home.

She spent all her time with her son, reading him books, painstakingly teaching him his letters, making excursions to the park, but Lewis grew up worshipping his father. “He’s your biggest fan,” she told Brian, and for a while, it seemed to be mutual. Lewis couldn’t wait to go bounce a ball around with his father, to go catch fish. When little Lewis was six, even taking a walk with his big, tall daddy was excitement for him, and Ava didn’t mind. It gave her time to nap, or just sit in the apartment and read a magazine. How could life be any better?

But then Brian had a bad month at the lot. The cars weren’t moving the way they should and he had to fire two of the salesmen, but the new hires didn’t seem to be working out. The next month wasn’t much better. Brian began to come home without flowers or toys. He didn’t talk about a house in the suburbs anymore. They stopped going out to dinner because he said he was too tired, and when she tried to comfort him, he brushed her worries away. “It’s all going to work out,” he promised.

A few months later, she came home from the grocery store and there was Brian slumped on the couch, in the middle of the day. “I got let go,” he said quietly.

She sat on the edge of the couch. “Fired? Just like that? But why?”

He put his head in his hands. She scooted over beside him, and when he cried against her, she stroked his hair. “It’s going to be fine,” she said. “You’ll find another job. A man like you.”

It didn’t take him long, He looked great dressed up in his best suit, his handshake was firm, and in two weeks, he had a new position, working at Buxbaum Buick. “Didn’t I tell you?” he told Ava, beaming. He said it didn’t matter that it was a used car lot, rather than a new one. The fact that he wasn’t a sales manager but only a salesman was no obstacle for him. “They’ll see how good I am and move me up,” Brian told Ava. The pay was much less, which made Ava worry, but Brian told her that wasn’t an issue, either. “There’s such a thing as raises,” he said. If he had to be a salesperson for a while, well, then, he was going to be the best one on the lot.

He had trained enough salesmen in his old job to know there was a real art to it. You never sold a car to a person who shouldn’t have it. You found out what the customer wanted and you found the car that would do the job for him.

Brian was surprised when Mike, his boss, gave him the traders and the beaters that would never make much money. How could he succeed with cars like these? He tried to think of a strategy, but he was used to taking his time to make a sale, and now Mike kept urging him to move faster. “You’ve got to go for the today deals,” he said. “And no one but you wears a shirt and tie on the lot. Who do you think you are?” Brian cast a wider net for sales jobs, refusing to give up. “How would you feel about living in Chicago?” he said. “What about Detroit?” He was so radiant with hope that she dared to hope, too. She began imagining a bigger, burlier city than Boston, a life back on track, but none of his leads ever panned out.

By the time Lewis turned seven, Brian was almost always tense and defeated when he came home. No matter what Ava did, no matter how she took Lewis to the zoo, the circus, or the playground every day, he still scrambled toward his father, his face bright and expectant. “Want to shoot hoops?” Lewis asked. He lifted up one hand, twirling the ball clumsily on one finger. Lewis followed him around like a puppy.

“Not tonight,” Brian said. Lewis let the ball fall from his fingers, watching it roll to the corner of the room. Brian put his hands in his pockets. Then he went to the table and began to write out notes for himself on lined pieces of paper, ignoring both her and Lewis, not speaking at dinner. Ava touched his sleeve, but Brian didn’t even react to the warmth of her hand.

“Lewis told me something new and wonderful about Alaska today,” she told him and Lewis perked up, sitting straighter in his chair, watching Brian expectantly, but Brian looked at her as if she had told him the moon was made of plaster. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’ve had a long day.”

Ava followed him into the kitchen, where he rummaged in the spice cupboard. She lowered her voice. “You have a son in there who needs you,” she said. “And so do I.”