Miracle on 49th Street (12 page)

Molly pointed. “What's on the other side? Of the park, I mean.”

Mattie said, “The West Side.”

“Then what? I'm just trying to get my bearings.”

“After the West Side comes what people here think of as the
real
West Side,” Mattie said. “Of the whole darn country.”

Josh had just called on Mattie's cell, telling her that the team had just landed, a little after three o'clock. Mattie talked to him for a minute, then motioned for Molly to come get on the phone.

“What do you want to do when I get to the city?” he said.

Molly thought about busting him a little, just on account of what Mattie had told her about his history with sightseeing. She might say she couldn't decide what she wanted to see first, the Statue of Liberty or Yankee Stadium.

Or maybe she'd just tell him she couldn't decide which museum she wanted to see first.

For once, she just came right out with it.

“I just want to be with you,” she said.

It was so quiet at his end of the phone, she thought he'd run out of minutes.

N
o hugs when Josh got to their suite.

The first thing he did was look at his watch.

He told Molly he'd made a reservation for them at a restaurant he liked a few blocks away, called the Post House. Saying there was a back door he could use, and a table tucked in the back of the restaurant.

“Sounds like going out to have room service,” Molly said.

Mattie said, “Girl's got a point.”

“Nobody will see us,” Josh said.

“Whew!” Molly said, making a motion like she was wiping sweat off her forehead. “We wouldn't want
that
to happen.”

“I thought we were losing the sarcasm.”

“Slipped out.”

“I'll see you back here about seven,” he said.

It was five.

Molly said, “Wait, where are you going?”

“I've got a team meeting,” he said. “And then some stuff I gotta do.”

Molly looked at Mattie for help. But Mattie was frowning at Josh Cameron, like people do when they're trying to remember whether they recognize somebody or not.

“I thought we were going to get a chance to do stuff between now and dinner,” Molly said.

“I'm sorry,” Josh said. “This other stuff came up.”

“But today's our one day in New York,” Molly said.

“We've got tomorrow,” Josh said.

“Gee,” Molly said, “do you think it could be any better than today?”

Mattie, Molly saw, was still staring at Josh. He gave her a quick look and then turned away from her, almost like he was afraid.

“I can't help it if I've got things to do,” he said.

“No,” Mattie said. “You can't help it.”

Molly didn't know what else she could say. So she went back over to the window and stared at Central Park, the skating rink in the distance she'd noticed before. Thinking about the day she'd imagined for herself in New York.

For the two of them.

“We'll have a great dinner,” he said. “I promise.”

Molly didn't even turn around.

“Whatever.”

He made a sound like he was hurt, trying to make a joke out of the whole thing now, staggering backward. “I'm hit,” he said. “By the
whatever
word.”

Molly tried to give him the same frown Mattie had. “Is that supposed to be, like, funny?”

Josh reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out his wallet, took out a thick wad of cash, and handed it to Mattie. She looked down at the money and then up at him. “What is this, a tip?”

“More sarcasm,” he said. “I thought you and Molly could go out. Go shopping or something.”

“You just go,” Mattie said. “We'll see you when you get back from that big meeting of yours.”

“Seriously, take the money and shop,” he said.

Molly wanted to tell him to take his money and do something with it, even if the suggestion wouldn't be very ladylike.

When he was gone and the suite was quiet again, Mattie said, “So what
do
you want to do, girl?”

Molly motioned her over to the window and showed her where the skaters were in the park.

Jen Parker had thought about being an Olympic figure skater someday, until she landed wrong at the junior nationals in Cincinnati when she was thirteen. She told Molly that knee surgeries in those days weren't as sophisticated as they became later. So you didn't come back, even at that age, as good as new from torn ligaments. She never got her chance to be one of those little ice princesses who were the stars of every winter Olympics.

But she still loved to skate, even though she used to tell Molly she was glad that they played loud music at most rinks, so people couldn't hear her bad knee making the kinds of noises only squeaky doors were supposed to make.

Molly would tell her, “You're still the best one out there by far.”

“You're very sweet,” she said. “Let's just say I'm the best one out there who's going so slow she looks like she's skating underwater.”

In London they would skate at the Kew Gardens Ice Rink, at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Or at the Hampton Court Palace Rink, practically next door to Henry VIII's redbrick palace. Most of the time, they'd go to the Greenwich Ice Rink at the Old Royal Naval College, on the River Thames. Just the two of them. Molly never had any interest in competing. She would see some of the serious little-girl skaters at those places and wonder why they were even out there. They all had the same face on them. Like they'd all been sent to their rooms.

But she loved to skate. And got better at it, just by watching her mom. She even got to the point where she could do some basic spins and very tricky twirls, moves she'd only try if the Greenwich rink wasn't too crowded and she didn't feel like too many people were watching. When her mom's knee would start to bother her, she'd stop, go sit up in the small bleachers, and applaud silently when Molly would manage to get up in the air, pull off a spin, and land like a champ.

Anytime her mom said to Molly on a Saturday, “Okay, shop or skate?” Molly would always say the same thing.

“You even have to ask?”

She told Mattie all that after they crossed Fifth and made what felt like a pretty long walk to Wollman Rink. She was glad Mattie had ordered her to dress warmly, because it was getting colder now, winter cold, even in the last of the Saturday afternoon sunlight.

Molly skated in Central Park then, with Mattie watching her from the bleachers. She started off slowly, not having skated since she'd gotten to Boston. Not really wanting to skate ever again, until now. But slowly she picked up speed and confidence, to the point where every time she passed Mattie, she'd try something. A jump. A spin. Some kind of flashy stop. Mattie would occasionally give her a thumbs-up, or just wave. She'd wave back.

She flew around Wollman Rink, and one time when she came around to where the bleachers were, Mattie was gone.

And Josh was there.

She started to skate over, but he made a motion for her to keep going.

“You're doing great,” he said.

“How'd you find me?”

“Mattie has a way of yelling at me even in a note,” he said.

“I didn't know she left you a note.”

“She has secret powers,” he said. “I thought you knew that by now. Now, go skate. I'll be the one in the stands for once.”

Now he was her audience. She showed off as much as she possibly could, telling herself not to fall and end up looking like some dorky goof. She didn't want to look like a total klutz in front of him. She did even more spins and twirls and jumps than she'd done for Mattie. Josh was the one giving her the thumbs-up in approval now. Sometimes a double thumbs-up. She did one spin and looked up at him, and he made the motion like the players did sometimes, like he was trying to pump up the volume. All around her, she could see the lights of New York coming on.

An hour ago, he couldn't wait to get away from me, Molly thought. Now he looks like he's having more fun than anybody here.

And boys were always saying they couldn't understand girls.

She skated until she thought she was going to drop. Picked up one more head of steam, like she was going to go right through the sideboards in front of him, put on the brakes like a pro, spraying ice everywhere.

He stood and applauded.

She did a skater's curtsy.

“Let's bounce,” he said.

They walked back across Central Park and back down Fifth Avenue on the park side, toward the Sherry-Netherland. If people were noticing who he was, even in his knit-cap disguise, they didn't show it by bothering them. Maybe because Molly was with him.

He didn't seem any more comfortable with her here than he was anyplace else.

Molly thought, At least he's here.

He asked her what she thought of New York so far.

“I think I might have seen the best part of it back there,” she said.

“I can't believe you and your mom never got here.”

“She kept saying we'd do it at Christmas,” Molly said. She felt her voice catch a little bit, like a sleeve she'd snagged on something. “She said when she was better we'd come to New York because I had to see the tree at Rockefeller Center at Christmas.”

“Yeah,” he said in a quiet voice. “She would say that.”

“How come?”

“Because we were there once, the last Christmas before she went to Europe,” he said.

“She never told me that.”

“She told you everything
you
know about me,” he said. “Just not everything
she
knew.”

He pointed to a bench. “Sit down for a second,” he said.

UConn was in New York to play a tournament called the Holiday Festival, between Christmas and New Year's. Just four teams, but still a big deal, because it was in New York, and in Madison Square Garden. If you won your first game, you made the final. UConn's first game was against Wake Forest, and if they won, they'd play Kansas, the number-one team in the country that year. Jen Parker wasn't supposed to be anywhere near New York. Her parents were still alive then, and she was supposed to spend the whole Christmas break with them.

Only she didn't want to.

“Why?”

“Because she knew how scared I was of coming to New York,” he said.

“You?” Molly said. “Scared about basketball?”

“This wasn't just basketball,” he said. “This was basketball at the Garden. They call it the Mecca. The Celtics have won a lot more than the Knicks ever did, but somehow it's still Madison Square Garden that's the capital of hoops. And I was sure that I was going to fall on my face. I kept telling that to your mom, and she kept telling me I was crazy, that I was going to be great and then everybody would know about me.”

“But you didn't believe her,” Molly said.

“Listen,” he said, “when you're a kid, you always think there's somebody better. I thought I was good enough for my school then. But even if we got lucky in the first game, we had to go up against the number-one team in the next game. Which is where I'd
really
be found out.”

“So what happened?”

“She left her parents a note, told them she was coming to New York to watch me play, jumped on a train.”

“Sounds like something I'd do, kind of,” Molly said.

“Just like Mattie says,” Josh said, trying to imitate Mattie's voice. “Wonder where she gets it from?”

She smiled. He smiled. It was like somebody had cast a spell on them, just for this one day and night. She didn't want anything to break it. She didn't want the traffic noise to break it, horns that kept blowing every few seconds or the roar of the buses from the bus lane right in front of them. She didn't want anybody to recognize Josh Cameron, especially right now.

He told her how the UConn team was staying at the big Hyatt hotel near Grand Central Station. He got back there after practice, the day before the Wake Forest game, and there was a message from her mom in his room.

“It just said, ‘Meet me at the tree,'” he said.

“What?” Molly said.

“Meet me at the tree,” he said. “That was her message.”

Molly looked up at him now, eyes wide. “Wow,” she said, almost laughing.

“Wow what?”

“When she was getting sicker at the end,” she said, “that's what she'd always say to me, to still make me think things were going to be okay. Meet me at the tree.”

“In New York, there's only one,” he said. “It goes up pretty soon, actually, but they don't light it until after Thanksgiving. They even make a TV special out of it now.”

There had been a huge snowstorm overnight, he remembered. He said the only thing that would have gotten him out of his room that day would have been basketball.

Or her.

“Remember,” he said, “no cell phones back then. She hadn't left me a number, or where she was staying. I had to go meet her if I wanted to see her.”

He hadn't brought any boots. Just his one pair of high-top Converse sneakers, the blue-and-white version in those days be-case UConn wore blue. He had them, a sweatshirt, and the leather jacket she'd given him.

There he was, he said, slogging up Fifth Avenue in the snow, feeling his sneakers getting wetter and wetter. His gamers, he called them. Knowing he wasn't going to be able to find a pair that looked like them in New York in the next twenty-four hours, wondering how he was going to get them dry before the game.

He finally got to Rockefeller Center, soaking wet, freezing. Molly asked him where Rockefeller Center was. He said only about ten blocks down Fifth from the Sherry-Netherland. Which was roughly the same distance from the Hyatt that day, just coming from the other direction.