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

rustle of her sleeping bag. She got up and left the room and a few minutes later, he heard her bare feet on the floor. He heard her coming closer to him, as if she were about to tell him a great secret.
    A cloth, stunningly cool, pressed along his forehead. He shut his eyes, sighing. She tapped his shoulder and his eyes flew open again and he saw her, blurry, hovering over him. “Lewis, take this,” she said, and she held out her palm with two aspirins resting in the center. He saw the glass of water she held in her hand. He couldn’t see her eyes, hidden under her bangs, long as sable paintbrushes. When she leaned over, one of her braids dusted against his chest, rising and falling as if it were alive and breathing along with him.
    Rose sat on the edge of his sleeping bag. She waited for him to take the aspirin and drink the water. “Lie back down,” she whispered. But she didn’t move and he didn’t really want her to. Every time he drifted off to sleep, his eyes would flutter open, and he would see her again, so calm and still. It made him feel better. He sensed her there, and gradually, he rolled into sleep.
    When he thought about it now, he bet anything that shadow they had all seen through the window was this Jake person. Well, forget Jake. Forget his mother. Forget tonight. He was done with his dentist appointment, finished with the library. He was going to hang out with Jimmy and who knew what they might do, what plans they might devise? Lewis left the library, surprised at how the day had grown so hot and muggy. He paid attention to the buildings along Lexington Street so he wouldn’t get lost, something that often happened, leaving him tense and disoriented as if the world had changed shape without his knowing it. There was the church on his right, the gas station on his left. Over there was the huge maple tree.
    A car passed, honking at him, making him leap closer to the inner side of the sidewalk, and for a moment, he thought the man driving might be his father. Wouldn’t that be perfect? If it was his dad, he wouldn’t have to meet stupid Jake tonight, and neither would his mom. If it was his dad, everything could go back to normal.
    When his father left abruptly just after Lewis’s seventh birthday, without even saying good-bye, the whole world had changed. Things didn’t taste right. Lewis would eat a bite of cereal and it would taste like steak. His potato at dinner would taste like metal and he’d have to spit it out into his napkin. It was as if the world had gone suddenly crazy. Lewis and his mother couldn’t afford the big Back Bay townhouse on their own, and had to move out of Boston to one tiny apartment after another, and finally to the suburb in Waltham and the only thing good about it was that it was a house and he had a backyard. “Does Dad know we’re here?” Lewis kept asking
    “Of course he does,” his mother said, but she looked suddenly smaller to him.
    “How does he know?” Lewis thought of ham radios, of smoke signals, of the way a voice could travel on a phone line
    “He knows,” his mother said.
    His father was even supposed to visit him once. He had called shortly after Lewis’s eighth birthday, just like a sudden snap of fingers, and when Lewis heard his voice, he started to cry.
    “Hey, what’s that crying?” His father’s voice was jovial, teasing. He was slurring his words in a funny way. “That couldn’t be my Lewis crying, could it? My Lewis doesn’t cry.”
    Lewis snuffled. “I’m not crying,” he insisted, swiping at his eyes. “Where do you live? How can I find you?”
    His father cleared his throat. “Well, right now, you can’t really visit me. I’m living out of a suitcase, but maybe later. In the meantime, I can visit you.”
    “When?”
    “Well, I don’t know, sport. Maybe next weekend, how about that?” He could hear his father’s breathing, deep and even on the phone.
    “I’ll be better,” Lewis said. “I’ll be quiet in school.