Next to him, Tommy put his head in his hands and prayed. It had been a while since he prayed to God or anyone. When he was younger, he used to believe he could pray to his missing friends and relatives. He felt envious of his old self, the one who thought someone was listening. At first he’d stopped believing out of laziness and then out of anger and now it was more an apathetic meander. He wouldn’t have called himself an atheist; being an atheist required more belief than he had, a kind of determined certainty about mystery that he didn’t think was feasible or possible, admirable or even desirable. Who could deny a guiding hand of some kind, a design to the world? Calling it science didn’t explain it all to him either. He wasn’t a believer and he wasn’t a nonbeliever. He wasn’t something and he wasn’t nothing. He was a survivor.
For a long time after Ronnie’s death, he’d prayed to her. Not just those endless months on the pile when he was desperate and lost, but for years afterward. He was embarrassed to think about this, but he’d prayed to the statue, too. It had become a shrine in his house until one day he saw himself, caught his reflection in a window, sitting on a folding chair, talking to the statue and he got scared that he was losing his mind. That’s when he put the thing behind doors in a china cabinet.
At first he’d been terrified by Jack Plumb’s offer to sell the statue, but once he got used to the idea, Tommy was filled with relief. He’d had some sleepless nights imagining what would happen if he died suddenly—hit by a car, massive heart attack—and his daughters found the statue in the closet. Eventually, they would figure out what it was and what he’d done. Reshaping the story of their hero father would be bad enough, but if they knew he’d stolen from the pile and hidden the contraband, it would change their relationship to the story of their mother, too. He knew, God how he knew, that if your memories of someone couldn’t carry you from grief to recovery, the loss would be that much more incontrovertible. He’d seen firsthand how his children started writing the mythology of Ronnie mere hours after she was dead. If they knew about the statue, her death would become tainted by his actions, and he wouldn’t put his kids through another loss surrounding their mother. He couldn’t leave them with a stolen statue that would become the thing in the closet they had to hide. He’d dump it in the river first.
He knew there would be complications to the sale. How to move it, where to put the money, but Jack Plumb reassured him he would help with, as he put it, all the particulars. He was full service. But before they’d even gotten into the particulars, Jack had let slip that the London buyer was from Saudi Arabia.
“An Arab?” Tommy said to Jack, clenching his fists, not believing what he was hearing.
“A Londoner,” Jack said, clearing his throat. “Everyone in the Middle East isn’t a terrorist, for heaven’s sake. He’s a finance guy. Very successful businessman and a very successful collector. Highly respected.”
Tommy was enraged. “But he came from oil money, right? And don’t tell me he didn’t because you’ll be lying.”
“I have no idea,” Jack said. “That’s irrelevant. You want to sell on the black market you don’t get to run a credit check and an employment history. He’s rich and he wants the statue and he’s discreet. Bingo.”
Tommy had practically carried Jack out the front door. Not even giving him the courtesy of a lecture about why he—someone who’d lost a wife and countless friends and fellow firefighters on 9/11—couldn’t possibly take Middle Eastern oil money in exchange for a ground zero artifact from anyone, anytime, ever.
He was relieved by the turn of events because it snapped him out of his funk. He’d been crazy to think selling the statue was possible, or ethical. He’d meant it when he’d told Jack that it wasn’t about money. All he cared about was where the statue ended up because he needed to honor Ronnie’s memory. But if he exposed himself—accidentally or on purpose—he’d harm her memory for his kids. And that was the never-ending loop he’d been caught in for weeks. He yawned. He hadn’t been sleeping. How to get the statue somewhere safe? For days Jack had called him hourly wanting to reopen negotiations until Tommy finally threatened to call his friends in the police department and turn them both in. “I’ll do it, asshole,” he told Jack. “Don’t think I won’t.” At least there’d be some honor in being honest.
Sinatra lifted his head and whined a little. “What do you say, Mr. S.?” He rubbed a few knuckles across Sinatra’s head, the place where his skin was a little slack and the fur soft. The dog panted with pleasure. From down the street he could see Stephanie waving at him. She probably wanted help with her bags. Sinatra started barking at something in the opposite direction.