Absent Friends (19 page)

M
ARIAN
'
S
S
TORY

Chapter 6

Secrets No One Knew

October 31, 2001

Marian had had a heavy morning of meetings: the Downtown Council, among others. There, the topics of the Fund, of Harry Randall's poisonous story, of Jimmy, of Marian's association with what had gone before, pulled at everyone's words, at their thoughts, like tree roots clutching at travelers attempting to pass through a cheerless forest.

She spoke twice, to averted eyes and yes-fine-let's-get-on-with-it nods, and after that she kept silent, one hand conscientiously taking notes on a yellow pad, the other in her lap twisting a scrap of paper into a tight hard knot. She swept from that meeting as soon as it broke, though she herself had always been the first to say the business of a meeting is truly conducted before it begins and after it ends. One or two of the others started to say something as she passed by them, but she did not stop.

The other two meetings had gone better. The downtown arts organizations involved were, in the wake of the attacks, in desperate need of money, and the MANY Foundation had money. Marian's questionable morality, her sordid past—well, that was the way Harry Randall's third story had made things appear, there was no use pretending otherwise—these things, it seemed, were important to people in absolutely inverse proportion to how much they felt she could do for them.

Marian was disappointed by this reaction, but not surprised. She'd been in the nonprofit world, cajoling money out of Peter to give away to Paul, for too long to find herself caught off guard by anyone's agenda, anyone's motives.

But she was tired. Tired from her morning, from all the other mornings this autumn, from the phones that didn't work and the diverted subways and the dust and the children's drawings from South Dakota and Virginia that were taped to schoolyard fences and announced “We Love You, New York.” She was tired from the list of times and places of firefighters' funerals, half a dozen a day, that scrolled silently down her TV screen when she watched the evening news. Tired of having to fight for a place for the Downtown Council at the Lower Manhattan redevelopment table. Of acting strong so that her weary staff would take courage and be able to go on. Of declaring, over and over, that the Jimmy McCaffery she had known—the Captain McCaffery, Marian was always careful to say, to whom so many owed their lives, not just on the basis of his heroic and ultimately self-sacrificing actions in this unprecedented disaster but because of his breathtaking bravery over the years—that this man would never have been a part of any scheme of corruption or cold betrayal, as some were hinting now.

Marian wondered what would happen if she stood and walked out the door. Now, before Laura Stone arrived. She would smile at Elena. Elena would smile back, expecting Marian was going on an errand and would presently return. But she would not. She'd make her way to Grand Central Station and board a train heading north. After a day of sitting perfectly still watching the trees and the towns and the river flash by, she would get off at some nowhere stop in the Adirondacks, find a one-room cabin no one else wanted in the dense shadows of pungent pine trees that blocked the sun. She would clear a patch of earth, turning the worm-rich, fragrant soil so she could plant a garden for next spring. She'd sit wrapped in sweaters and shawls drinking herbal tea as winter shortened the days. She would give up coffee, give up wine and flesh, subsist on the bounty of the earth, which she would nurture, returning, in her labor and husbandry, more than she took away.

And who would miss her, really? Sam? He was wrapped up in the pretty actress he'd met in June—and what a relief that had been, his mooning over Marian having gone on far too long after she had ended their lovely but, from the beginning, finite affair. (She'd seen the potential, and the limits, from their first flirtatious glance; he obviously hadn't. But that was the way it had always been with Marian, since Jimmy. Jimmy was the only lover who had ever left her.)

Her friends—Jeana, Tomiko, Ulrich? Yes, of course, they'd miss her, wonder why she did it, why she'd given up so much, to go live
where
was that again? and in not very long she'd be more valuable as a topic of endless speculation, conversation, head-shaking, than she'd ever been as a dinner companion, a pal.

Sally? Kevin? Yes, they would feel a loss, an empty place in their lives, if she were gone. But Kevin was young; his life spread boundlessly before him, an infinite number of beckoning choices. She was his aging aunt, and not even that by blood: treasured, to be sure, but occupying a place in his life smaller and less vital with each passing year. And Sally had so many friends, and Sally had Phil. And perhaps—Marian was startled to find she was permitting herself this thought; it was a sign of the difficulty of the times that her self-discipline had not been powerful enough to forbid it—perhaps Sally would be in a small way relieved to have the twenty-year war between Marian and Phil finally ended, as Marian ceded the territory and went into exile.

And her work? Well, it was true some of the projects she was involved in would crumble without her. MANY might even collapse. That thought stirred her, made her sit up, straighten her shoulders. That would be bad. Clearly, bad. This was important work. Helping. Giving. Saving. She left her desk, went to get more coffee. And stood holding her mug at the coffee machine, confused as to which pot to take from, the fresh or the old, the decaf or the strong, and what to put in it, and how much she'd been intending to have.

Marian was halfway through her coffee when Elena buzzed to tell her Laura Stone had arrived. Marian put down the proposal she had been reviewing (a graphic artist who had escaped from the south tower's sixty-third floor with his life but none of his materials was asking for a grant to rent new space and to restock; Marian was inclined to approve the application provided the space he selected was below Canal Street). She shrugged on her suit jacket, gave her glasses a quick polish, and arranged the muscles of her face into a comforting, reassuring smile, but not one too broad or welcoming. Laura Stone knew that Marian had not wanted to give this interview and would not trust her if Marian pretended to be pleased that she was there.

So she put on a smile that said, We can agree that truth is important, and the search for it equally so; come, let us reason together.

Marian led Laura Stone into the small conference room. Someone else might have a meeting that required the large one, and while, as director, Marian's needs trumped everyone else's, she did not approve of such flagrant assertions of power and avoided playing that card whenever she could.

And also: the windows of the smaller room faced west. From here, in the gap between the buildings, you could see the smoke crawling skyward, see the dinosaurlike cranes, see the smoldering, twisted ruins where so many—and one was Jimmy McCaffery—had died. Marian seated Laura Stone so that Stone would have that view. Elena, warmly efficient, followed them into the room with a carafe of coffee, fresh mugs, three kinds of cookies arranged on a tray. Laura Stone turned down an offer of coffee, but the carafe and the mugs and the tray remained. Marian made the small bet with herself that she always made: how long it would take a guest who had gained an upper hand by refusing hospitality to decide her point had been made and give in to covetous tastebuds or falling blood sugar or the very human hope for reassurance through food. In the case of this thin, harried-looking young reporter, Marian predicted it wouldn't be ten minutes.

“Well.” Marian nodded as Elena withdrew and she and Laura Stone arranged themselves. The reporter, not looking at Marian, rooted in her large canvas shoulder bag, retrieved a notebook, two ballpoint pens, one of which she frowned at and tossed back, and a tape recorder the size of a cigarette pack.

“Is this all right?” Laura Stone asked, lifting the recorder.

“Yes, of course,” Marian said placidly; what had Marian Gallagher to hide? She went on, silkily seizing the high ground. “I was sorry to hear about Mr. Randall's death,” she said. “As you might imagine, I'd been . . . dismayed . . . to read some of the things he'd written. About me and about people I know. Still . . .” She shook her head, leaving the rest unspoken, because some people were superstitious about the word
suicide.

“Mr. Randall was a major figure at my newspaper,” Laura Stone said, flipping the notebook open. “I'd like to ask for your comments about him—the stories he was working on, his approach when he interviewed you and your friends. His death. Anything you'd like to say.”

A ragged edge to Stone's clear midwestern voice pricked Marian's awareness. Her sympathetic smile still lingering and her eyes still frank, Marian reinventoried the reporter's looks. Thin, she'd thought on first seeing her; but perhaps the word was
drawn.
No makeup, but that might be a statement, something political: Marian had gone makeupless herself when younger. Eyes dark-circled, restless. The way all New Yorkers' eyes were these past weeks.

Or was this something more? Were Stone's eyes ashamed, and suspicious, and hoping to hide their hurt, as the eyes of someone who had for the first time been betrayed?

As by a lover, who left without warning.

As by a lover, say, who had killed himself.

“I'm not sure how I can help you,” Marian said, watching Stone as she spoke. At the sound of Marian's voice, the reporter glanced up, her eyes filled with something like hope, which faded but did not vanish when Marian's words registered. Marian softened her tones, speaking as a woman does in the presence of another who is bereaved. “Mr. Randall only came here twice, and we spoke on the telephone a few times.”

Stone looked back to her notebook, where she had written nothing. Marian allowed herself a tiny, relieved smile. Not that another woman's loss and pain gave her any pleasure, of course not. But perhaps this interview would not be, as each of the interviews with Randall had increasingly been, dangerous with traps and snares. Perhaps Laura Stone was not looking for the truth, but only for the ghost of Harry Randall.

In a voice from which the shiver had all but disappeared (and Marian admired this, the reporter's dogged attempt at control) Laura Stone said, “What did you think when you heard about Mr. Randall's death?”

“What is there to think? Or to say?” Laura Stone had lifted her eyes to Marian again, and Marian met them comfortingly. Even before the attacks and the collapse of the towers, when death was a private, individual calamity, Marian had never found any words worthy of it, though she had delivered eulogies when asked and muttered sincere consoling nonsense as she pressed the hands of the grieving. Laura Stone's pen traveled over her notebook page. Marian couldn't see what she was writing, but from the rhythmic movements she suspected it was not notes, just strokes, just a way to keep control.

She almost offered the reporter the plate of cookies, but that would be unfair.

Stone, her eyes still on Marian's, said: “What if you were told Mr. Randall's death wasn't suicide?”

Marian stared at the young woman. “Not—you're saying you think someone killed him?”

“Can you tell me who might want to do that?”

“No,” said Marian. “No.” Then: “Are you serious?” But of course Stone was serious. And like a nightmare vine that breaks the earth and in seconds spreads, branches, and soon towers overhead, blackening the sky, a memory threw a cold black shadow over Marian, a memory she had long buried.

Herself, younger than this young reporter, in bed alone, after Jimmy had gone to Manhattan, after Jimmy had left. The siren at the firehouse going off, Marian burrowing more deeply in the blankets while Engine 168 screams down the street. And Marian thinking of Jimmy gone from that truck, and thinking how it would be, how it would be
better,
if he were missing because he'd been lost. Missing because he'd been a hero and he'd died. Instead of the way it was, when he was not a hero—although Marian said that to no one, not even, after that night, ever again to herself—and had not been lost, but had merely turned his back on what had happened and gone away.

B
OYS
'
O
WN
B
OOK

Chapter 10

A Hundred Circling Camps

September 1, 1979

It begins with a phone call, Tom's father to Jimmy. Soon Jimmy's in a booth at Flanagan's, waiting, sipping beer from a heavy glass mug, nursing it really. He wants to have his wits about him when Mike the Bear walks in.

Not that Jimmy's spooked, being summoned to a meet with Michael Molloy. Nothing spooks Jimmy. And he's known Mr. Molloy all his life. Barbecues in the big backyard, Mr. Molloy grilling hotdogs, Mrs. Molloy making sure all the kids have something to drink, the kids running around, squirting each other with the garden hose. Trips to Shea Stadium (without the girls, without Mrs. Molloy), Mr. Molloy springing for ice cream and Cokes for everyone. Scary carved pumpkins and the best candy take on the block at Halloween, Mrs. Molloy dressed like a witch, green hair, extra-long teeth, but you knew it was her so you were never afraid. A Fourth of July pig roast in the middle of the street, the street closed because Mr. Molloy asks the cops to close it. And then the cops who close the street disappear, every year called away on urgent business, so that they never notice the fireworks Mr. Molloy sets off as the violet sky goes to black; a convenient thing, as fireworks are illegal in New York.

But Jimmy's father, a steel-muscled Teamster, though also spooked by nothing, has always grown uneasy in Mr. Molloy's presence. His eyes will narrow, his talk become short, and he drinks at another place, not at Flanagan's.

And it is whispered that Michael Molloy became Mike the Bear when, at Jimmy's age, he crushed a man to death in his arms.

Jimmy's beer is halfway gone when Mr. Molloy walks into the bar. Tribute is paid, in
How ya doin'?
and
Hey, Big Mike.
And he is big: six foot six, edging three hundred pounds, hair almost gone now but hands still hard. Jimmy feels the power in his handshake; Jimmy tries to return it with one of equal weight.

Mr. Molloy calls for a beer, and another for Jimmy. He inspects Jimmy, he asks how life is treating him.

Fair, Jimmy answers, returning his smile, nodding his head, to show Mr. Molloy he's appreciative that he's been asked.

Fair? Mr. Molloy pulls back in his seat, as though surprised. What I hear, you're hot shit, kiddo. What Tom tells me, you're the balls.

Hey, and now Jimmy's smile widens.

The waitress brings two more mugs, both full, both cloudy with frost. Jimmy's momentarily confused, not sure what's called for. He makes his choice, abandons the old beer—the one he paid for—in favor of the new one, from Mr. Molloy.

Mr. Molloy takes that first cold sip of beer. No, really, kid, it's what I hear. Last week, the Chinese restaurant, that guy in the fire, you rolled him in the tablecloth? Saved his life?

Yeah, says Jimmy, guy'll smell like moo shu pork for a year.

Mr. Molloy laughs with Jimmy.

Jimmy sips at his beer, but for a minute he doesn't see Mr. Molloy.

Last week: dark street, locked restaurant, smell of smoke even before they pile off the truck. Probably a grease fire in the kitchen, Jimmy's captain says. Calls for Door Man to bring the irons and the others to stretch a line to the front door. Door Man's Jimmy, he's right there. He pops it and they go in together, the captain and him. Place smells, smoke's banked halfway down. No one here, says Jimmy's captain. Bring it in! he yells to the men ready with the hose. He heads toward the kitchen. Jimmy stands for a second, takes it all in, thinks, that's wrong. Wait! he shouts. The kitchen door bursts open, flames push out. Jimmy's captain jumps back as the fire rolls over the ceiling into the room, looking for something to devour. And there's this guy staggering out from the kitchen, screaming, running around, covered in flames. Worst thing you can do, run: it feeds the dragon.

And then for Jimmy it happens, what he loves so much: time slows to nothing. Every sound is clear, every sight is sharp, like he can see each thing and its deepest secret, too. Jimmy feels fire under his skin, that fire that's his, inside. He knows exactly what to do, and he has time, all the time he needs, to do it.

He yanks on a tablecloth, soy sauce and teacups flying. He sees how the burning guy's running, takes a few steps, and the guy runs right into him, right where Jimmy knew he'd be. Jimmy throws the cloth over him, knocks him down, rolls him over and over and over. The guy's still screaming, but the fire's out. Jimmy's brothers open the line and the fire hisses, throws billows of steam at them. Finally it gives up, angry like always, but defeated once again.

His captain calls in the EMTs, claps Jimmy on the shoulder, says, Good work, Superman. But you better knock off that smile. Your teeth'll turn black from the smoke. Jimmy feels the grin stretching across his face, tries to control it, but it gets wider from his captain's praise. Jimmy's glad he saved the guy, glad no one else is hurt, glad the fire's out. But the fire under his skin is fading, too, and like every time, he's sorry to see that go.

Jimmy? Mr. Molloy asks. You okay?

Oh, hey, yeah. Jimmy says. Yeah, just thinking about something. He nods and Big Mike nods, and they drink beer together.

Jimmy asks after Mrs. Molloy, how's she doing, everything's good?

Tell you the truth, Jimmy, Mr. Molloy says, that's why I called you. Mr. Molloy stops to lift his beer, takes a long pull, wipes the foam from his lip with a napkin.

Jimmy says, Something wrong? Mrs. Molloy, she's okay?

Oh yeah, Peggy, she's fine, she's okay—he smiles here, Mr. Molloy does, the same smile the kids have been seeing forever when Mr. Molloy looks at his wife, mentions her name, the kids thinking he probably doesn't even know he does it—but she's worried, she's worried about something.

Sorry to hear that, Jimmy says, and he is.

Mr. Molloy says, I need a favor, kid.

Jimmy lifts his beer, too, drinks, does not answer. Sees in his mind his father's narrowed eyes, thinks:
Mike the Bear.

Hey, Mr. Molloy, he says, trying lightness. I'm just a fireman.

Yeah, maybe so. But the guys, they look up to you. You know I've always thought the world of you, Jimmy. Mr. Molloy sounds serious now, leaning his big body forward, his eyes locked on Jimmy. The two of them are being watched by other eyes at Flanagan's, and Jimmy knows this.
What's going on?
he imagines he can hear them ask each other.
Brendan McCaffery's boy sitting with Mike the Bear.
The fuck's going on?

Mr. Molloy pulls two cigars from his shirt pocket, offers one across the table. No, thanks, says Jimmy, I don't smoke.

Yeah, says Mike the Bear, like he knows that already.

Fifteen years old: Tom, who does not smoke, sells cheap cigarettes to the other kids, from a booth at the diner, from his backpack on the playground. By the pack, sometimes by the carton, always without that stupid tax tape on them, that's why they're so cheap. The kids know this is a small piece of Tom's father's action: they could buy these same cigarettes from Junior's Corner, still a lot cheaper than at the A&P or the magazine place but for more than Tom gets. But Tom takes care of his friends.

One day on the ballfield, the kids just messing around, Tom says this to Jimmy: Anyone you know needs smokes, they don't have to come to me, you know. I could give you a couple of cartons, make it easier.

Now Tom and Jimmy, they're in different schools, and Jimmy's a jock besides, so, yeah, Jimmy knows different kids, there's some money to be made. But Jimmy sees something else, too. Jack is Tom's brother. Jack goes to St. Ann's with Tom, but he's a grade higher; different group of guys there. And Jack plays summer league softball at the Y same as Jimmy, knows some of the guys Jimmy knows. But Jack doesn't peddle cigarettes or anything else. Tom's offer, it's not about making a few bucks, not about making anything easier. It's Tom's way of asking,
Do you want in?
It's not about cigarettes.

On the ballfield, Jimmy tosses the ball high in the air, watches it streak straight up. He waits for that breathless instant at the top when it's not going in either direction. Then here it comes cutting back down through the blue sky, thumping into his glove.

He says to Tom, No, thanks, man, I'm not much good at that kind of thing, know what I mean?

Tom nods. I hear you, he says.

And that's the end of it. The kids get older, start to drink in the bars, Jimmy goes to the Bird, stays out of Flanagan's, like his dad. Tom, he's in and out of the place, happy to hang at the Bird with everyone, but Sunday afternoons now, you're looking for Tom, you can find him at Flanagan's, watching the game.

Jack likes Flanagan's best; almost always, that's where Jack is.

And since that day on the ballfield, Mr. Molloy still grins at Jimmy when he sees him, waves his cigar, asks him, How's it hanging? Gives Jimmy a bottle of single malt when he graduates from the Academy, a whiskey so expensive Jimmy doesn't know anyone who's ever tasted it, except Mr. Molloy. Tells Jimmy how proud he is, he always knew Jimmy would do great, get to be just what he was born to be.

So here in Flanagan's, Jimmy watches Mr. Molloy slip the second cigar back in his pocket like he knew all along Jimmy wasn't going to want it. Jimmy thinks about this, thinks about Mrs. Molloy, her smile, and her sad eyes.

Well, he says, and drinks more beer. Well, he says, anything I can do.

Thanks, Jimmy.

It surprises Jimmy that Mr. Molloy actually sounds relieved, as a man would who'd been worried he'd be refused.

Mr. Molloy wraps his huge hands around his beer mug, leans forward again. It's Jack, he tells Jimmy. I got a problem with Jack.