Absent Friends

LAURA'S STORY

Chapter 17

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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.