Is This Tomorrow: A Novel by Caroline Leavitt Read Free Book Online

that was why Lewis had to be careful around her. She could make things worse. Especially with this Jake guy.
    “Lewis.” He turned around, startled. Mrs. Groth (the librarian, a spindly woman who didn’t like it that he took books out from the adult section and always shooed him, as if he were a dog, back to the kids’ room with all those dumb toys and miniature desks) glared at him. “Is this where you belong?” she asked pointedly. She stared at the book in his hand, The Great Gatsby, and took it from him. “This is too old for you,” she said, as if she knew the slightest thing about him. She leafed through it, stopping at a page with a small rip. “And where did this come from?” she demanded, fingering the page.
    Lewis stared at the tear, a fingernail of paper. “It was there when I took the book.”
    Her mouth pinched like his mother’s change purse. “I see,” she said. She walked to her desk and then took a slip and wrote something on it and handed it to him. “You have to pay for what you destroy,” she said.
    “I didn’t destroy anything,” Lewis said. He stared down at the note. She had written “Two dollars: destruction of library property” in black ink and underlined it twice. The last time she had done this, he had told his mother when he got home and, to his surprise, Ava had driven all the way back to the library and marched right up to Mrs. Groth and told her that not only did she personally remember the rip (“I don’t know why the library doesn’t keep better care of their books,” she had said) but she was tired of hearing comments about what books her son could take out. “I’m his mother and if he wants to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover , he can,” she had snapped. “What do you care, as long as he’s reading?” Mrs. Groth had flushed. He had loved his mother intensely at that moment.
    “You see that you pay for this,” Mrs. Groth told him now.
    Lewis stuffed the notice in his pocket. He waited for her to leave, and then he began roaming the adult stacks again. He knew if he asked, his mother would confront Mrs. Groth again. She’d never stand for any of this. Still, as grateful as he was, there were so many times he wished that his mom were different.
    No one else’s mother made sandwiches out of bagels or brought home foods like lox and chicken livers, and even worse, tongue. Even though Lewis liked bagels, he was embarrassed to be seen with them because kids made fun of them. “What’s with the donut bread?” they mocked. Other children complained about having to go to church on Sundays, but Lewis’s mom didn’t even take him to temple. The only religious thing she did was light those stupid Sabbath candles on Friday nights when she remembered, which wasn’t all that often. Every once in a while, she would talk to him about God, but it didn’t sound anything like what the other kids talked about. “Everyone communes with God in his or her own way,” she said. She didn’t believe that one religion was better than another. “You find your own truth,” she told him. She didn’t look like anyone else’s mother, either, not the suits she wore to work when all the other mothers were in housedresses, the tiny two-piece swimsuit she wore to get a tan, when everyone else’s mother wore a skirted one-piece. The other mothers wore slacks, but Ava wore tight dungarees with the bottoms rolled into cuffs. “Why do you dress differently from everybody else?” he had asked. She had looked at him, surprised. “I do?” He noticed her watching the neighborhood women as if she were studying them. Two days later, she came home from shopping with a pair of slacks that zipped on the side and a housedress, but the pants were still tight and the dress was a shocking shade of orange.
    And he remembered Jimmy’s amazed reaction the first time he’d ever laid eyes on Ava. The two boys were walking past Lewis’s house to Jimmy’s when they saw Ava through the picture