Miracle on 49th Street (18 page)

“I actually followed that.”

“It wasn't that hard,” Molly said.

Sam said, “It's like the test.”

“You mean the DNA one?”

“Yup.”

“The one I was going to use before I didn't want to use it,” she said.

“Yup.”

“I guess it is,” she said. “I want him to figure this out for himself, the way I did.”

“He has to want you as his daughter because he wants you as his daughter, not because anybody made him made him want to do it,” Sam said. Then he shook his head a couple of times, like he was dazed and confused suddenly. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Now I'm starting to talk like you.”

On the floor in front of them was their first disgusting Sam snack of the night. What he called his “pregame meal.” Nachos. Two hot dogs. Curly fries. Onion rings. Two Cokes.

Molly said, “If he only does something because I'm leaving, it doesn't count.”

“With you,” Sam said. “It doesn't count with
you
.”

“Right,” she said.

Sam Bloom, her best friend, the frog she thought of as a prince, didn't turn his head, just kept watching the Celtics warm up as he said the next thing.

“How come we never talk about what you moving to LA is going to do to you and me?” he said.

This wasn't the funny Sam now. This wasn't Sam playing.

This was serious.

Molly gave him as serious an answer as she could.

“Because if I don't talk about it,” she said, “then that's a little while when I don't have to think about it.”

She took his hand, and for once he let her without yanking it away.

“I think about it all the time,” he said.

“I know.”

“You gotta tell him, Mols. If you tell him you're leaving, I bet he won't let you.”

“No.”

“Molly's Rules,” he said. “Like the Cameron Rules.”

The horn sounded, which meant the game was about to begin.

“Less than three weeks until Christmas,” he said. “It's not enough time.”

“What do you call it when you put up a crazy shot and try to beat the buzzer?” Molly said.

“Firing up a prayer,” he said.

T
he Celtics went on the road for a week right after that, one game in Utah and then three in Texas against the Rockets, Spurs and Mavericks.

Now it was the last full week before Christmas, and Josh still had no idea that the Evanses were packing for the move to Los Angeles. Molly didn't take any chances when the Celtics came back off the road, never letting Josh pick her up at 1A Joyless, always waiting outside when he'd pick her up or working it out that she'd go meet him at his place.

Mr. Evans and Barbara had decided to hold off on selling their Boston home for now, because Mr. Evans said there was a chance he could be coming back in a couple of years. The most his bank had asked for from him was a two-year commitment. They would rent it out instead.

“Nothing is forever,” he said to Molly one day.

Tell me about it, Molly told herself.

Once the Celtics got home from Texas, they had three straight games at the Garden. Molly got to go to a couple of practices on the off days, got to goof around when they were done and play H-O-R-S-E with L.J.

Only this time Josh played, too.

He killed them both.

When it was over, he looked at Molly and L.J. and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I don't even like losing coin flips.”

L.J. looked at Molly.

“That's why he's him, and the rest of us is the rest of us,” he said, then laughed his laugh.

The second day she was at practice, Coach Gubbins did something he said the great Celtics coach Red Auerbach used to do: Divided the team up into the big guys and the little guys. Not that Molly thought of any of them, Josh included, as being particularly little.

Red Auerbach had told Coach Gubbins that when he used to do it, the little guys usually won, even though one of his big guys was Bill Russell. Molly sure knew who that was by now, having heard the coach talk about him enough. Bill Russell had played on Celtics teams that had won eleven championships in thirteen years and was the greatest Celtic of them all, greater than Bob Cousy or Larry Bird. Even greater than Josh Cameron, though the coach would never say that too loudly when Josh was around. Russell's number, six, was one of the retired numbers up there at the top of the new Garden, just the way it had been at the old Garden.

Coach said his Christmas present to Molly was that she could coach the little guys.

“Maybe they'll listen to you,” he said, and winked.

Josh and the little guys won. When it was over, he said to Molly, “You ask me, coaching was the difference.”

Molly said, “It might have been the guy I had handling the ball.”

Josh tapped her closed fist with his. “That's what they all say,” he said.

It was a great week. One day after school, they snuck into a movie, just her and Josh. He got the tickets beforehand, worked it out with the manager, and the two of them sat by themselves in the balcony.

One night, even though it was a school night, he ordered in pizza from Upper Crust, and he let Molly pick the movie. She went with her all-time favorite,
Miracle on 34th Street
, the black-and-white one.

They ate pizza, and he watched the whole movie with her and didn't get up to answer the phone or make a cell phone call one time.

Molly still hadn't told Mattie about the move. And she had sworn Sam Bloom to secrecy under penalty of what she threatened would be, in Sam-speak, a severe beatdown.

“I'm not afraid of you,” Sam said, then quickly added, “Well, maybe a little.”

“Those are my terms,” she said.

“How come this whole gig has to be on your terms?”

“Because,” Molly said to him, “up to now practically nothing that's ever happened to me has been on my terms.”

Five days before Christmas now. Six until they moved.

There was a Saturday game tomorrow, a day game, and they were supposed to have dinner at Two Commonwealth, her and Mattie and Josh. Then the Celtics had a few days off before playing one of the big nationally televised games of the season—the Christmas Day game against the Knicks.

She'd tell him at dinner. Tomorrow.

Then she'd find out whether the week they'd just spent together was real or not. Or whether this was just more make-believe with him. She'd find out whether he wanted her to stay or go. What if he'd already found out somehow that she and the Evanses were moving, and he was only being this nice to her because he knew he'd be rid of her soon? What if he was fine being her friend as long as she had another home to go to—what he thought of as her real home?

What if?

That night, she spread her mom's letters around her on the bed and went through them until she found the one she was looking for, one her mom wrote not long after they got to Boston.

“We can what-if ourselves to death, pardon the expression,” her mom wrote. “But what-if never does anybody any good. All any of us ever have, sweetheart, is one thing, and we better make the most of it while we can: What
is
.”

She would tell him tomorrow what was. That the Evanses were moving to Los Angeles, but she wanted to stay with him. Him and Mattie. Wanted the three of them to be as much of a family as they could. Molly was sure Josh's fans would understand, once they knew the real story. He hadn't lied to anybody about anything. He hadn't known that he ever had a daughter. Now he knew, and he wanted her to be with him.

If
he wanted her to be with him.

All Molly could do was try. If he still couldn't handle the idea of being a real dad to her, if he wanted her to go, well, she'd at least have given it one last shot.

She organized her letters, put them back in the box, shut off the light, fired up a real prayer about tomorrow, and went to sleep.

T
he Celtics won their Saturday game easily over the Miami Heat, which Molly thought was one of the funnier team names. She wondered what they did about a team mascot. How did somebody dress up as heat?

Her friend L. J. Brown was the one who was hot on this night, scoring thirty-two points, the most he'd had in one game all season. Josh, perfectly happy to keep feeding L.J. the ball, ended up with twenty assists, the most he'd had in a game in two seasons, according to Sam the stats guy.

Molly told Sam once that if his head spilled open, numbers would come tumbling out. Along with nacho cheese. Lots and lots of nacho cheese.

“I should be so lucky,” Sam had said.

When the game was over, Mattie said that the hired car was waiting outside near the players' parking lot to take them home. Josh and the rest of the Celtics players had a stop to make first, at Children's Hospital Boston, where they were all going to play Santa Claus for the kids there.

He said that he'd be home by seven-thirty, eight at the latest, and he and Mattie and Molly could still have dinner together.

“No later than eight, mister,” Mattie said, wagging what Molly always thought of as the finger of death at him.

“Cross my heart,” Josh said outside the locker room, actually crossing his heart.

“No need to finish the rest of it,” Mattie said, cutting him off. “'Cause you
will
die if you're late for my pot roast.”

They dropped Sam off first. Then Molly asked if she could stop at home because she wanted to pick up the Christmas presents she'd wrapped for Mattie and Josh.

“Does he know we're supposed to exchange tonight, and whatnot?” Mattie said.

“We don't have to exchange,” Molly said. “I just want to give you guys mine.”

Then she added, “You guys have given me a lot already.”

Now, she thought, I just want him to give me a yes.

When they got to 1A Joyless—by now she knew she was going to think of it this way to the end—Molly unlocked the front door with her key, knowing that Mr. Evans and Barb and Kimmy had gone to a real performance of
The Nutcracker,
at a real theater. She grabbed the two presents from the bottom drawer of her desk, raced down the stairs, locked the door behind her, and got into the backseat with Mattie, smiling to herself as she did, picturing them opening their presents, picturing the way she was sure the night was going to go.

Mattie said to Molly, “Is there something you know that I ought to know, my girl?”

“Tell you later,” Molly said.

“You keepin' secrets?”

Mattie looked at her, smiling at her the way Molly imagined a grandmother would, from underneath her black beret. Molly knew she was going to love the red one—cashmere—she'd bought with all her saved-up allowance and birthday money the day she'd gone Christmas shopping for Mattie, Barbara, Mr. Evans and Kimmy at Louis, a big clothing store on Newbury Street around the corner from Two Commonwealth.

“No secrets,” Molly said.

“When I think he's keepin' a secret on me, I make him tell me,” she said.

Molly smiled at Mattie, and then used a Sam line on her. “I'm not afraid of you,” she said, then quickly added, “Well, maybe a little.”

They both laughed. She pressed her cheek into Mattie's coat, loving the scratchiness of it, feeling the warmth of it and Mattie at the same time, feeling as safe and snug with her as she felt anywhere.

Thinking to herself that everything finally felt right.

When they got back to Two Commonwealth, Mattie said she had some shopping to do before the stores closed.

“Shopping for who?” Molly said.

“Never mind.”

Then she said she'd be back in about an hour. Molly said she wasn't going anywhere, settled in on the couch, found some episodes of
Full House
she'd put on Josh's TiVo once she figured out how to operate it.

When the doorbell rang two minutes later, she just figured Mattie had forgotten her purse or keys or something.

Molly was already mimicking Mattie as she opened the door, talking to her the way she talked to Josh, saying, “You'd forget your head it wasn't attached to your shoulders—”

Only it wasn't Mattie.

It was Bobby Fishman.

“Remember me?” he said.

He was talking fast right away, almost like he'd started in the elevator. He told Molly he'd seen Mattie walking around the corner to Arlington as his cab dropped him off. He told her he'd left Josh and the guys at Children's Hospital. Told her Josh was going to be there a little longer than he originally planned. The kids had prepared a Christmas show for the players, and they all had to stay.

Told her all that in what felt like ten seconds.

“Which is actually a good thing,” he said, plopping himself down in Josh's favorite television chair, making himself at home.

Acting as if he owned the place.

As if Josh worked for him instead of the other way around.

“Why would that possibly be a good thing?” Molly said, not even wanting to be on the same planet with this guy, much less in the same room.

“Because I actually wanted to talk to you,” he said. “A heart-to-heart.”

Right away, Molly remembered one of the first things she'd heard that day at the hotel in New York and wanted to say to him, But you don't
have
a heart.

“No adults to bother us,” he added, and Molly said, “Does that mean you don't count?”

Bobby Fishman said, “J.C. is always telling me what a clever kid you are.”

She wished she were clever enough to come up with an excuse to go upstairs. Or just leave.

But she knew she was stuck until Mattie came back, that there were house rules, even though this wasn't her house—at least not yet—and that when she did get left alone she wasn't supposed to go anywhere. She knew that even as slowly as Mattie's pot roast was cooking in the kitchen—“Slower than I move,” she'd said—that Mattie couldn't be gone
that
long. But Molly also knew that all the last-minute shoppers were probably out there now on the last Saturday before Christmas.

What a dope you are, she thought to herself, thinking nothing could possibly spoil tonight.

“The two of us have never really gotten a chance to talk,” Bobby Fishman said.

He was wearing Nike sneakers that looked like the new pair Josh had been wearing. The green didn't really go with his jeans. He was wearing a sweater and a sports jacket and had his hair cut short, which only made Molly more aware of what a pointy head he had.

A pointy head and dark, buttonlike eyes.

She'd never understood what beady eyes really meant until now.

“I hear you talking to Josh all the time,” Molly said, then couldn't keep herself from adding, “When you're on speaker phone, Mattie says everybody in the building can hear you.”

He ignored that. Or maybe just didn't care. Maybe you couldn't hurt his feelings because he didn't have any, the way he didn't have a heart. Or maybe Bobby Fishman was like some kids she knew at school, the ones who weren't listening to you, they were just waiting for you to stop talking so they could start up again.

“So how's it going?” Bobby Fishman said. “With you and J.C., I mean.”

Now Molly really couldn't help herself. “None of your business.”

“See now, that's where you're wrong, kid,” he said. “Anything that has to do with him is my business. Even when it's personal. That's just the deal.”

“I'm not part of one of your deals.”

He smiled. Only it didn't look like a real smile to Molly, it looked like some small dog baring its teeth.

“Funny you should mention deals,” he said.

“No,” Molly said. “You did.”

Molly hoped against hope that Mattie or Josh would walk through the front door right now.

Only they didn't.

“You know anything about the sneaker deal I've been working on the past year?” he said.

“Not really.”

“Want to?”

“Not really.”

“Biggest shoe contract since LeBron,” he said. “You know who he is, right?”

“I know a lot more than you think,” Molly said. “And if you keep talking to me like I don't, I'm going upstairs to wait at Mattie's.”

“Whoa,” he said, putting out his hands. “Jump back, kid. Sometimes I forget I'm not talking to an owner.” He waited for a response from Molly and when he didn't get one said, “That's a joke, kid. Most owners are a little slow out of the chutes.”

Molly held her sides and put her head back as if she were laughing, except no sound came out.

“Okay, kid, I get it. You don't like me. I get a lot of that. So we can dispense with the small talk.”

Molly waited.

“You want to know why this is going to be the biggest shoe deal in history? Because Josh Cameron isn't like the other guys.”

“What other guys?”

“The bad guys.”

“What bad guys?”

“The other stars of our NBA. Not all, mind you. But enough.”

“L. J. Brown is a star, and he isn't a bad guy.”

“Nope,” Bobby Fishman said. “But he isn't in the upper echelon of stars, either. I'm talking about all those other guys with their attitudes.” He bracketed
attitudes
with his fingers. “All those guys who tell you that they want you to love them and buy their stuff, but they don't want to be your role model, they'd rather act like a rock star or a rapper or some bling-bling thing.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Molly said.

“I think you do. Because you're smart. Josh Cameron, from the day he got to the pros, has been marketed as the opposite of all that. The last boy next door. He doesn't get into trouble. He doesn't brag. He doesn't smoke or drink or cheat on his wife.”

“He doesn't have a wife.”

Molly looked at the front door again, begging it to open, wanting this to be over.

“I'm making a point, kid, about the world's greatest point guard.”

“What does this have to do with me?” she said.

“Everything,” Bobby Fishman said. “Josh Cameron can't have a daughter nobody ever knew about without having a wife nobody ever knew about to go with her.”

In the distance, Molly heard church bells play “Silver Bells.”

“Do I really have to draw you a picture?” Bobby Fishman said.

“People will understand,” Molly said.

It was what she always told herself. Now she tried to tell Josh's terrier agent.

“No, they won't,” he said.

Now all Molly could hear was the ticking of the grandfather clock from across the room.

“You know why his girlfriend hasn't been coming around? Because she knows about you. Because he told her he had to take pity on this kid belonging to an old girlfriend. Wait till she finds out you're his kid. You really think she's going to understand? And if
she
doesn't, how're his millions of fans going to understand?”

Before Molly could say anything, he kept going. “You will hurt him if you keep hanging around. Shake your head all you want, kid. Stick your fingers in your ears, for all I care. You're still hearing what I'm telling you. You will hurt him financially, and you will hurt his reputation. People will forgive him, sure, because people do in sports if you're a great enough player. They'll forgive you for robbing a bank. But you
will
hurt him. He won't tell you that, so I'm telling you.”

“You're wrong,” Molly said. “You're twisting everything around.”

“No,” Bobby Fishman said, “I'm not. I'm actually trying to get everything straightened out here. It's time somebody at least told you the truth.”

“Am I supposed to thank you now?” Molly said.

“You want to know what my full-time job really is these days? Keeping the media away from doing some heart-warming little feature on Josh and you. Telling them he's not doing this for publicity. You want to know the real reason? Because I'm not gonna let him look like a liar if the truth about you ever comes out.”

He leaned forward so far that Molly was afraid he might pitch right over on the carpet.

This was what he must be like when he's closing one of his stupid deals.

“Oh, he'll try to do the right thing,” Bobby Fishman said. “That's the kind of guy he is. But it will be the wrongest possible thing for Josh Cameron.”