Absent Friends (43 page)

M
ARIAN
'
S
S
TORY

Chapter 16

First In, Last Out

November 2, 2001

Marian walked out onto the deck of the ferry, on the east side. The boat seemed to lurch; she thought she might fall, but did not. She stood in shadow, aware of people moving uneasily away: something in her face, her eyes, making them uncomfortable, making them uncertain. Marian was uncertain, also: uncertain how she'd come to be on the boat, uncertain where she was going. Uncertain of everything, and yet it was all so clear, every minute, every second.

The phone ringing, Kevin in his room picking up before Sally could. A few minutes later, Kevin, dressed but not shaved, reaching into the kitchen for his keys.

“That was Uncle Phil.” Sally flushed; Kevin went on, “He wants me to meet him.”

“Why?”

“He wants to show me something. Be back later, Mom. Goodbye, Aunt Marian.” His smile, not the sunburst, but a sweet, sweet one. It seemed slightly sad to Marian, this smile, but of course she didn't say that to Sally. Sally had enough on her mind.

Goodbye, Aunt Marian.

More tea in Sally's kitchen, Marian and Sally talking, at first about Jimmy's papers, where they could be, what could be in them. Then their mood lightening, trading gossip, then just talking, as best friends, as they always had.

The phone ringing, high-pitched, Sally laughing at a joke Marian had made as she reached for it.

Racing to the hospital, Marian driving Sally's car, Marian no more fit to drive than Sally, her skin cold and her stomach churning, but she knew it was right. (Strangely, frighteningly, she took the keys, she took the wheel, because she heard Jimmy tell her to, heard Jimmy saying it was right.)

The hours there, and then the doctor, and then Sally in Marian's arms, wailing, sobbing, and Marian, too, and nothing she could do.

And the hours since. At the hospital, police officers with questions. Back at Sally's house, family, friends. Firefighters. The telephone ringing, nonstop, unbearable, finally silenced, turned off, still ringing and ringing, thought Marian, but no one could hear. Sally, white, silent, motionless.

Sally's mother, finally, asking everyone to leave, thanking them all, asking them to go home. But not me, surely, Marian thought, not me, to leave, to be alone now. Not me, too. Marian the last friend remaining, as she'd been the first, Marian expecting to stay.

Sally, green eyes finding Marian from across a vast, lifeless desert. Sally saying nothing, shaking her head.

Marian spending the night at her father's house, sitting in the yard for a long time before going to bed. Her mother's flower beds were overgrown with grass.

Now, on the ferry, Marian watched the clouds, the ships, the hills. The place where she'd grown up, where her heart had remained, grew unimaginably distant as the boat plowed without remorse toward the opposite shore.

If only, she thought: if only she could have spoken to Sally, across the desert of Sally's eyes, if only she could have found words. If only she'd found words for Kevin: Where are you going, Kevin, what are you planning, I'm sorry if I upset you, Kevin, don't go.

Why hadn't she found the words?

And so she stood now by the rail of the ferry, watching the gulls circle, watching the bridge, watching, on this perfect, beautiful day, watching everything slip away.

L
AURA
'
S
S
TORY

Chapter 17

Abraham Lincoln and the Pig

November 2, 2001

In the gathering twilight, Laura sat on the deck of the ferry. Not the front, to see the glittering towers of Manhattan reach for her; not the back, to see Staten Island's angry hills grimly cheering her departure. Not the west side, where the Statue of Liberty still welcomed the wretched. Laura sat outside on a wooden bench on the ferry's east side and stared at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the last place where Harry had stood.

She saw the bridge waver, she felt the tears hot on her cheeks, and she knew her fellow passengers were aware that she was crying. But in New York now, people burst into tears in public places. No one knew why, but everyone knew why. Strangers would comfort you if you let them, and they would leave you alone if that was what you wanted, and that was what Laura wanted, and people must have seen that because they left her alone.

“Harry?” Laura whispered.

The sun was setting, the sky had gone cold.

“Harry?”

The wind blew over her and was sharp as a blade.

“Harry?”

Yes, I'm here,
came the gentle answer.

“Harry!”

He asked,
Do you see now?

Laura swallowed. Her throat was parched. “We were wrong.”

No,
Harry said softly, I
was wrong. That is to say: years ago, when the fact finally dawned on my thick brain that the truth was—contrary to the sermon I'd been preaching all my life—neither obtainable nor by any means the highest good, at
that
time I was right. And when I met you, my little starfish, I should have told you that. But you were so beautiful.

“Me? I've never—”

Beautiful. So alive. It wasn't even that you'd never lost hope. You didn't need hope. You had religion. You wanted nothing but the truth. And my good fortune, when you consented to spend your time with me, astounded me. But I was sly. I
knew.
I knew which man you loved. Not the old and tired one who'd dedicated himself to
not making waves.
He wasn't the man you loved, Laura. You were in love with the crusading truth-seeker. Harry Randall, star reporter. For you—for you—I became that man again.

“Harry? Harry . . .”

Harry waited politely, but Laura could find no words. He resumed:
And then Owen McCardle gave me Jimmy McCaffery's papers. I read them, as you have. And I could see. Yes, the scales fell from my eyes, the clouds lifted, the floodwaters of illusion receded. Write it however you want. I saw the harm I'd done and the harm that was coming. I saw my selfishness and my guilt. So much destroyed, so that a washed-up drunk could keep a love that was never really his.

“It was yours!”

No. The man you loved died long ago. He should never have returned. Look at the mess he made.

“But couldn't . . . Couldn't you have . . . Once you knew . . . A retraction . . . ?”

You said it yourself,
Harry's voice came sadly.
“First in, last out.” A retraction wouldn't have mattered. Or even been read. I'd destroyed a hero. I'd deliberately broken hearts. Given people who never even knew Captain McCaffery one more reason for hopelessness in a season of despair.
Harry, invisible in the clear autumn air, spread his arms wide.

“You can't have known. You can't have seen this coming.”

The shrug. Harry's shrug.
Not this exactly. Something like it. It doesn't matter.

“Harry?” Laura's throat hurt so much, ached so badly, she hoped, after this, to never have to speak again. But she had to ask: “What they said. It was true?”

What
I
said—what I said and you, my love, echoed and elaborated after I was gone—was not true. What they said was.

Laura, speaking what felt like her last words: “You jumped.”

Harry, replying, confirming, pronouncing sentence:
I jumped.

B
OYS
'
O
WN
B
OOK

Chapter 18

The Invisible Man
Steps Between You and the Mirror

September 11, 2001

Jimmy folds his T-shirt and shorts into his gym bag, slings it over his shoulder as he leaves the basement apartment that's been his for twenty years. Since spring he's been going to yoga classes at a place around the corner from the firehouse, will be heading there today at the end of his shift. Needs to stay flexible, Jimmy does: he's forty-six, and though he's got his eye on a Battalion Chief's spot in the next year or two (and been told over the back fence he has a good shot at it), at Ladder 62 he's Captain. He's got to be ready, when the bell rings, for the ax, the flames, the smothering smoke and heat like a wall. He's got men depending on him, men who follow him.

Some of the guys, they rag on him about it—Hey, when you do the stork one, they give you a baby to deliver?—but the guys rag on the officers anyway, it's part of what makes the firehouse what it is, your brothers yanking your chain. And Jimmy has to admit, you need a good laugh, you could do worse than watch him try to stand on his head. But, he tells the guys, there's a dozen twenty-five-year-old girls there standing on
their
heads, so maybe it's not so bad.

And delivering babies, he's done that seven times already since he came on the Job.

Jimmy's up early today so he can take the long way, down around the tip of the island. This is something he does sometimes, just walk and look and think. He's got a lot on his mind, nothing he can't handle, but he needs to think what to do, make a plan for each thing. Two of his guys are out for a couple of days—Doherty's sick, and Logan's wife just had twins—so he's got to work their replacements into the rotation. He's got a probie, Adams, three months out of the Academy, green like Kevin; Jimmy'll have to come up with some drills for the kid, doesn't want him just sitting around. And Gino Aiello: Jimmy needs to call him, to see how the Deputy Chief's coming on that favor he promised, getting Kevin assigned to 62 for a few months. Kev asked for 168 in Pleasant Hills, same as Jimmy did out of the Academy, and Jimmy thinks that's great, a good place for him. He can serve out his whole time in that house the way Jimmy'd been planning to before; but first he needs experience, he needs knowledge. Kev's up for the transfer, and Jimmy wants to get him here, show him, teach him, before it's too late. Because when Jimmy moves to the Battalion, he won't be running a house day-to-day anymore.

Jimmy's picked up coffee from the Pakistani guy at the newsstand. He peels back the lid, sips it as he walks. It's good; it always is, from that place, a lot better than the guys make at 62. Either he's got to get some Italian guy transferred to 62, Jimmy decides, or he's got to detail one of those micks to learn to make decent coffee.

This early, New York's still shaking off sleep, getting started on the day. A neighbor, walking a funny yellow mutt, greets him: Perfect weather, she says, and strolls away smiling. As Jimmy passes the Y, he hears the thud of a basketball on the hardwood; God, those guys must love that game, to come out at this hour. He crosses the highway to the path by the Hudson, watches the sun glinting off the silver water. A bird and an airplane cross high overhead, going in opposite directions, and Jimmy has to smile: they look the same size.

At the tip of Manhattan, Jimmy stands at the rail near the ferry terminal. On a morning as clear as this, he can see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge arching away, see Staten Island across the harbor, see the boat docking there as one approaches here. Watching the ferry come in, Jimmy spots some young guy on the deck, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, not too tall, but standing straight, like Jimmy himself when he was young. Staring straight ahead, like Jimmy himself.

Twenty-five years old: Jimmy's on the ferry. Two hours, back and forth five times already, how stupid is that, but he can't decide.

It's a February day, the sky that hard blue it only gets in winter, everything sharp and fresh. Not like that gray day last week, sitting under the bridge with Tom.

When Jimmy first gets on the boat, he goes to the front. The sunlight glints on the water as Manhattan grows and grows. When he can't decide, he stays there while the boat heads the other way. The towers of the skyline throw bursts of light at him, but they keep getting smaller. After that he goes inside and buys coffee and stares through the window. The glass is so clouded and scratched that he can't make anything out.

Jimmy's thinking this: More than anything, he wants to stop keeping this secret. For months it's been inside him, filling up places that should have been for other things. This secret is changing him, and Jimmy doesn't want it anymore. He wants to stand up and say, This is what happened that night on Coleman Road. This is why Jack is dead, and why Markie.

But if he does that, what happens?

One thing, Sally would find out Markie chose to be where he was. He didn't have to leave her and Kevin and put himself where this could happen to him, but he did. As bad as things are for Sally now, Jimmy thinks knowing that would be much worse.

And Tom goes to prison. Peggy Molloy's lost both sons then.

And if Tom's in prison, he's not giving money to Sally, that idea he had about giving her money. Jimmy could give her some himself, but he doesn't make that much, and he's just a fireman, he never will.

And Vicky. She just had a baby, hers and Tom's second. Vicky and Sally, both raising their kids without fathers, Jimmy thinks about that.

And this, too: Tom says if that's what it takes, he'll go straight. That would be a good thing, God, yes, Jimmy knows. For Tom, for Vicky, for a lot of people.

Through the beat-up glass Jimmy sees sunlight flash off something, it looks like a flame. And again he thinks, what he wants is to not have this secret anymore. He wants to walk into a fire and have it burned away. That's what it would feel like, he thinks, if he told it. It would hurt, like getting burned, but he'd be clean after that.

But if he does that, who's saved?

Only Jimmy.

The other way, it's better for everybody else. Jimmy can't see anyone, besides him, that the other way—Tom's way—isn't better for.

The boat groans into the slip back at home, back on Staten Island. Jimmy goes outside on the side where the Verrazano Narrows Bridge is, and when the boat pulls out from the slip he stands in the wind and the sunlight, so strong in winter it's not yellow, it's pure white but it doesn't warm you. He watches the bridge slide by, watches Staten Island get small.

When they get close to the Manhattan side, Jimmy checks his pocket for Phil Constantine's address. He moves to the front and he watches the towers come close. As the boat slides into the slip, sunlight bounces off the windows at the top of the World Trade Center, the ones highest in the air. It sparkles off the water at the end of the island. It's so bright it even glitters on the pathway stones, worn smooth by so many people over so much time.

The sun's a huge fireball burning in the sky, and Jimmy wants to be the sun. That strong. That clean. That distant.

But Jimmy's a twenty-five-year-old guy standing on the steel deck of a ferry. When it docks, when they lower the ramp, he takes one more minute, like he's still not sure. He's not. But he heads down the slope with the people around him. Jimmy stands for a moment at the rail, looking back. Then he turns, leaves Superman on the boat, and walks out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan.

And at the rail now, Jimmy stands there, in that same place, different, after so many years, but the same. The ferry that docked is pulling out again, carrying people across the water. Jimmy finishes his coffee. He checks his pocket for his St. Florian medal that his mother gave him his first week in the Academy; and for Marian's photograph, the single one he's kept all these years. They're both there, they always are; he's taken them into each house as he's transferred, slips them into the pocket of his dress uniform for ceremonies and funerals. But he's always checked for them as he's heading for the firehouse, and he checks now.

Jimmy glances at the river and the ferry one more time. Then he turns and walks out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan.