Absent Friends

MARIAN'S STORY

Chapter 9

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The Old Masters
(Sailing Calmly On)

October 31, 2001

Marian sat in Flanagan's with Tom, in a swirl of unfamiliar people, sounds, sights. His mother was well, Tom told her, in answer to a question she must have asked. Peggy went to mass almost every day, he said, as she had for many years, and she did what she could to offer solace to others, those whose recent losses were greatest, most heartbreaking (though in Pleasant Hills, Marian knew, everyone's heart was broken). Peggy took great comfort in the company of her grandchildren, said Tom, his own two sons and daughter. It was like Tom, Marian thought as she drank from a second glass of wine, not to say how comforted his mother surely was by his own presence, as she always had been, even when Peggy Molloy was the reigning queen and the royal family was whole. In the odd light and strange colors that made up this new Flanagan's, the Molloys shimmered and appeared before Marian as though in a posed photograph. In the center sat Peggy, with her straight back, her smile, and her worried eyes. Big Mike stood behind her, stolid and strong. At Mike's side, looking squarely into the camera, was Tom; and next to Peggy, grinning, shoulders forward, as though he was ready to race somewhere else as soon as the photographer was finished, Jack.



The autumn night when Jack died had been sticky and hot, a night of slamming doors, screeching brakes, and lovers' quarrels. Because he had not died naturally (though there were those who muttered that death from a gunshot wound was a natural one for Jack Molloy), because an investigation was under way, criminal charges pending, the laws of the city demanded that the Medical Examiner conduct an autopsy. Thus the wake and funeral were delayed by days, and the weather turned colder. The morning the bells tolled to summon them to St. Ann's, a raw wind marauded through the streets, driving before it a thin cruel rain. Marian walked to church beside Jimmy. All of Pleasant Hills was scurrying along the sidewalks, shivering in hastily unearthed coats and dark wool suits, converging on the vortex of St. Ann's, with their umbrellas held like shields.

Marian clutched an umbrella with two hands, unreasonably angry with the wind for coveting it, for attempting to wrench it from her and leave her unprotected. Jimmy carried no umbrella, and he wore no hat. The rain darkened his hair and ran in glistening trails down his cheeks, and it occurred to Marian that rain like this was a perfect disguise for hiding tears. Jimmy's hands, for warmth on this bitter day, were thrust deep, deep into the pockets of his good coat, and Marian struggled with the umbrella, and so perhaps it was not surprising that he had not put an arm around her shoulder or taken hold of her elbow to steer and steady her. Or perhaps it was.

From the night Jack had been killed, and Markie arrested, Jimmy had spoken little. Marian sat with him in soft silence over their morning coffee, kissed him, and smiled into his eyes when he left for his shift at 168. At night she held him, and he nestled tight to her both awake and asleep, though she knew he slept very little, and not deeply. Once, in a night syncopated with bursts of lightning and rumors of thunder but without rain, he turned suddenly (did he know she was awake also, waiting for the storm?) and made love to her with a furious urgency she had not known in him before. Afterward the thought came to her that this might be what it was like for him in a fire: to act before thought prevented action, to seize the chance before the chance was gone.

So Marian held Jimmy close, and lay awake, and the weather changed. The authorities, their work complete, released Jack's body for burial. The police made their arrest, and after an unexplained delay—but the police never explained, and who could insist?—charges were filed and a lawyer assigned. Jimmy traded shifts with a fireman brother to be free for Jack's funeral.

The day was dark, and the church was dark. Watery trails crisscrossed the tile in the echoing entryway. Parishioners plunged umbrellas into brass stands as though they were swords thrust into rock to attest to an oath (of community? of justice?) that everyone had sworn.

Marian furled her umbrella and placed it with the others, though gently. She reached for Jimmy's hand as they walked toward the front pews where the Molloy family already sat. Peggy Molloy's head was bent forward; black lace hid her face. Vicky, married to Tom in this same church, as Sally had been to Markie, sat beside Peggy, whispering something, holding her gloved hand. Tom and Big Mike stared straight ahead, their unblinking eyes keeping watch over the bronze-handled coffin before the altar. The air smelled of damp wool, of cedar and camphor. Jimmy's hand in Marian's was rough and cold, as though he had been laboring for hours in the icy morning.

Marian looked around for Sally. Some days before the funeral, Sally had asked Marian what to do, what the right thing would be.

“But, my God, you grew up with Jack,” Marian had answered. “It was an accident. No one blames Markie.”

Accident was the word they were all using, as though they had debated, negotiated, and come to an agreement, but it was not an accident. Markie had told them what had happened. Jack had said to Markie he would kill him. He had fired a shot that may have been meant to scream as it did over Markie's head and shatter the wooden frame of the half-built house where Jack and Markie were sharing a six-pack. And a second shot, which might have been meant to burn as it did into the plywood flooring. Or both bullets may have been meant to rip bloody holes through Markie's heart. Markie thought they had been, or Markie was too scared to think. He tugged a gun from his own jacket. (They all looked at one another with wide eyes when they heard this and asked, “Did you know Markie had a gun?” and told one another, “No.”) He only wanted, he told them, to startle Jack, to slow him down, to show him how ridiculous it all was, how nuts this moment was, the two of them with guns pointed at each other in the middle of an unfinished building in the middle of the night. Maybe Jack, seeing Markie—Markie!—with a gun, did suddenly see that, maybe he looked at his own gun and wondered what the hell he was doing. Or maybe he was too drunk. The accident was that Markie's gun went off.

Three days after Jack died, Sally, on the phone to Marian, asked her about attending Jack's funeral. Since high school Marian and Sally had called each other two or three times a day, always something that could not wait, something funny, amazing, or in doubt.

Marian said, “You have to come.”

Sally said, “I'm not sure it would be right.”

“Oh, Sally, no! You should come, of course you should. If Markie's out, I think he should come, too,” Marian added. Surely Markie's bail would be set by then, and they all could pool their savings and get him out. Or the court, seeing the true nature of things, would drop all charges and Markie could come home.

Markie was not out—his bail hearing was finally set, for the day after the funeral, Marian wondering silently how hard his court-appointed lawyer, that arrogant man Constantine, had really tried—but when she went over to Sally's later that day, Tom was there, drinking coffee in Sally's kitchen while Kevin cheerfully pulverized cookies into crumbs on the table.

Marian, who always knocked at Sally's unlocked door but never waited for Sally to come open it, called out, “Hi, Sal,” and had nearly reached the kitchen before she saw Tom. She stopped, unsure of what to do. Tom was a criminal, in his father's profession, and the time had long passed when she was able to pretend that that made no difference. But Tom was also a childhood friend in mourning for his brother.

Kevin beamed and giggled when he saw Marian, pounding his chubby fists in his crumbs as a gesture of welcome. Sally's smile was tired and uncertain. Her beautiful face was ashen, the only color in her skin the smudges below her eyes. Marian crossed the kitchen with fast steps and took Sally in her arms. She hugged her the way she had when Sally fell on her roller skates or spilled her milk when they were young, when no disaster of childhood ever loomed so large that Marian was not able to comfort her, and Marian wanted to wrap her arms around Sally now and keep all bad things from her, to hold her and protect her until Markie came home again.

“I saw Markie this morning,” Sally told her. “He says not to worry, everything will be okay.”

“What about bail? Did you talk to that lawyer?”

“Just now. He thinks bail will be around fifty thousand dollars.”

The figure staggered Marian, but she concealed that. “We'll raise it,” she said. “Jimmy's checking how to borrow against his insurance, and my job has the credit union, and Markie's boss . . . Sal, don't worry—we'll find it.”

Sally nodded, biting her lip. “Mr. Constantine says that's low. For . . . for something like this.” She glanced at Tom, as though afraid what she'd said had hurt him.

Marian, too, looked at Tom. He met her eyes; he rose, moving wearily, and Marian drew a breath: for the first time she could ever remember, Tom looked not like his father, but like his mother, with Peggy's soft, sad smile. “I'll come back, Sal,” he said, his voice quiet.

Sally turned to Marian.

Marian said, “No, Tom. Stay.”

Tom hesitated, then nodded and sat again.

Sally set a cup and saucer in front of Marian. “Shall I make you some tea?”

“No, don't bother. I'll be happy with coffee.”

“It's no trouble.”

“Sally, please, coffee's fine. Thanks,” she said as Sally poured for her. Tom's nearness disquieted her. She turned to Sally. “Sal, this lawyer. Is he really . . . I mean, Legal Aid, they're so overworked—”

“He's not Legal Aid,” said Sally. “When it's . . . when it's this serious . . .”

When her voice faltered, Tom took over, as though explaining this to Marian was his responsibility. “If it looks like the charge'll be homicide, they appoint lawyers who're experienced in that. They pay them more than Legal Aid. This guy Constantine, he has his own criminal practice. I checked him out. He knows what he's doing.”

Marian stared. “You checked him out?”

Tom nodded.

“Why?”

Looking into his coffee, Tom said, “If he wasn't any good, there's a guy I know.”

“Tom . . .” Marian wasn't sure what she wanted to ask, what she wanted to say.

“Look,” said Tom, but he stopped also, and he, too, seemed unsure. And then he said the same thing Marian had. “No one blames Markie.”

Marian could not take her eyes off Tom. She gazed at him the way she sometimes stared at spring shoots in her garden, the beginnings of plants she had not grown before, wondering exactly what this one or that would become. Jimmy had laughed when, one morning, he'd come upon her peering at the tiny sprouts and she'd told him what she wondered. They're whatever they were when you put them there, he'd said, wrapping an arm around her, nuzzling her neck. They don't change.

Sally sat and poured coffee for herself. “Your parents, Tom,” she said. “How could they not blame Markie?”

“It was Jack. It was what he was like.” Tom stirred sugar into his cup. His face was pale, and gray crescents underlined his blue eyes as they did Sally's green ones. He seemed about to say more, but Kevin swept his hands gleefully across the table, knocking a cookie into the air. Tom grabbed for it and caught it before it hit the floor. Kevin chortled. Tom gave him a smile and put the cookie on the table again. Kevin looked at Tom and giggled, then pushed it over the edge. This time Tom was too slow. The cookie flew to pieces when it hit the floor. Kevin peered over the edge of the chair, and then up at Tom, his face uncomprehending.

“Okay, enough.” Sally lifted Kevin out, hugging him tightly. He squirmed. She kissed his cheek, wiped his face, and set him down. He scuttled over to a red fire truck and made eee-eee noises as he rolled it around.

Tom, his eyes following Kevin, said to Sally and Marian, “If it's anyone's fault, it's mine.”

“How can you say that?” Marian asked hotly, defending Tom as though an accusation had been made. “You weren't even there.”

“I'm supposed to keep an eye on him. I'm supposed to know when he gets that way.”

Marian reached for a cookie, and Sally poured more coffee, and everyone pretended they hadn't noticed Tom speaking as though he would one day again have the chance to do what he'd been doing all his life, what he was supposed to do.

“It wasn't your job,” Marian heard herself say. “Looking out for everyone all the time. Especially someone like Jack.” She said this although she knew it was not true. Words could not change the past, change who they all had always been.

Kevin pushed his truck under the table and through the legs of their chairs.

“The funeral,” Marian said quietly, to Sally. “You'll come with us. Jimmy and I will pick you up.”

“No,” Tom said. “Let's make sure everyone understands. You'll come with Vicky and me. Come with us.”

In the end Sally did go to Jack's funeral, but alone. Vicky called to repeat Tom's offer, to assure her that Sally would be welcome to go to church with them; Sally thanked her and turned her down. She would not impose herself on the Molloys, she replied: she would not intrude on the family. To Marian, over another cup of coffee on the following day, she said she thought her presence would be difficult for Peggy and Big Mike, even if it was true they did not blame Markie. She shook her head and wondered how they could not, even if it was not Markie's fault; and though Marian insisted it would be unfair if they did, Jack was drunk, Jack threatened Markie, everyone believed that, everyone who knew Jack, though she said that, in Marian's heart she knew what Sally knew: Jack was dead and Markie had killed him, and if she were Jack's mother, her own grief and guilt would be burdens so enormous that she would be desperate to find someone else to whom they rightfully belonged.

Nor did Sally go to the church with Jimmy and Marian: this was a matter of having to wait for Kevin's sitter, she said, though when Marian walked with Jimmy down the drafty aisle of St. Ann's to the front pews where Jack's friends were gathering, she found Sally already seated, a black hat covering her bound red hair.

Jimmy and Marian slipped in beside Sally, and Marian took her hand. Jimmy's hand in her right, and Sally's in her left, her lover and her best friend, and yet she trembled deep within, shivering with a chill she feared neither the incense-streaked warmth of the church nor the presence of people she loved could ever cure. The cold wind from the abyss of Jack's death whispered of darkness to come, possibilities they had all known about and none had believed would come true.

And Marian shivered, too, for fear of what could be waiting now for Markie, and for Sally and Kevin. She was stunned, bewildered by the way one terrible instant could destroy so much.

And the bleakness within her was made colder, more vast and empty, by another certainty: Jimmy was lying to her.

No, she told herself, oh no, it was not that simple. Not lying. Not in words, telling her things were true when he knew they were false. Marian did not expect Jimmy to speak to her of what was in his heart. That was not Jimmy; he didn't know how, had never known how. And Marian had always loved Jimmy, always, and she knew that what was in his heart came out not in words but in other ways, Jimmy's ways.

She was not surprised that he had secrets, questions or answers, worries or knowledge that he would not talk about. But when he said he did not have those things, when he kissed her, told her he guessed he was just shaken, just could not get over what a mess this was, what a nightmare, Marian's stomach clenched. She would study him, walking down the street, or sitting in the living room, or flowing with her in bed so close, so perfectly, each time over the years an echo of that first, wondrous time when they were both afraid it wouldn't be as good as their dreams of it together and found instead, as they moved and touched, that they had always known these things about each other, and it was better beyond imagining. She would study him, and she saw that his eyes were seeing nothing, or at least nothing that she could also see; she would look for the tiny slant at the side of his mouth and it wasn't there, and Marian knew.

He had always held things in his heart; he was doing it now. He had never told her all his secrets. But he had never said to her, before this, that he did not have one.