Absent Friends

Marian still believed in God. She still believed, she tried her hardest to believe, that the world was unfolding according to His plan. She had always done her best to try to understand her part in that plan. The work she had made her life—MANY, her volunteer work, the boards on which she served, and now, God help her, the McCaffery Fund—was the way she tried to follow the path God had chosen for her.

She'd done this although, from the night Jack died, that path—always so bright before, so straight and wide—had twisted and darkened, plunging into thickets, thorns, and shadows. She'd kept on following, growing more determined as the way became more difficult: as Markie died, and Jimmy left her, and she moved away from Pleasant Hills.

On September 11, the path had vanished altogether. Still she'd gone on blindly, hoping to break into a clearing and find it again, shining ahead. And now with no path to guide her, she stood on the sidewalk in Pleasant Hills with Tom, stalked by a terrifying truth.

“Markie,” she said to Tom. It had gotten cooler while they stood, facing each other, and she shivered. “He wanted to save somebody?”

Tom nodded.

“How?” And also she meant, From what?

Tom said, “It was Markie's fault that Jack was so pissed off. It was his fault, everything that happened, Markie said. He said if anyone even knew Jimmy was there, just if he was even there, he'd get kicked off the Job.”

Off the Job. Out of the department. If Jimmy got in trouble, they wouldn't let him be a fireman. That would have been like not letting him breathe.

“And me,” Tom said, “who I was, if they found me there, they'd have thrown a party.”

Tom looked down. Marian suddenly wanted to take him in her arms, to hold him and say, Who you were, Tom, not who you are. But she couldn't move.

“Markie said he wanted to be the one. No way Markie was taking this fall, Jimmy said, he could forget that. Markie had a wife and kid. A manslaughter sentence, it was years.

“Markie said, No, not manslaughter, he'd tell them Jack was shooting, they'd see it was self-defense, he'd get off.

“But not from the gun, I told them. The gun wasn't licensed, there was no way out of the gun.

“But that could be a good thing. It could give the cops something to convict Markie on, so they'd look good. And it would be a short sentence. Maybe even no jail time, a guy like Markie.”

A vision flashed in front of Marian, so complete and real it stopped her breath: how it would be if Markie hadn't gone to jail. He and Sally would have a house, maybe right on this street; close, anyway, to where she and Jimmy lived. She'd have watched from the kitchen window as her kids, hers and Jimmy's, grew up playing with Kevin and his red-haired brothers and sisters in each other's backyards. With Tom and Vicky's kids, too, Tom and Vicky probably never breaking up because if Markie hadn't gone to jail, hadn't died, the world would not have changed. Everyone would miss Jack, but Jack would have gone away anyway, to Atlanta, someplace, Jack wouldn't have been one of them now, no matter what.

“You couldn't—you couldn't have just run away?” Why was she asking Tom that? What did it matter what they could have done? And that would have been wrong, so wrong. But the beautiful world of her vision was fading, and she grasped for it. “Couldn't you all just pretend you weren't there? Why did anyone have to know?”

“Because it was Jack. The cops would've thought some Molloy-Spano thing was going on. They'd have leaned on everyone. They'd have found witnesses who saw the four of us together, they'd have dug up evidence. It would have all come out, that we were there. No, someone had to step up, to stop any of that.”

“And you decided it would be Markie.”

“It was what Markie wanted. The way we talked about it, in the end that's how it went down, except Constantine couldn't get him out of doing jail time, but the sentence was short.”

“Did he know?” Marian whispered. “Did Phil know it wasn't Markie?”

“I don't think he bought the whole thing, but Markie never changed his story.” Tom looked across the street, to a white house, its windows dark. Marian couldn't remember who lived there. “It was a stupid prison fight,” Tom said softly. “It all worked so well, and then that.”

Marian looked at Tom in the streetlit night but didn't see him. She saw instead Jimmy's face turning white as he listened on the phone, heard him asking, What? What? as though the person on the other end were babbling. She saw Jimmy's eyes when he slipped the receiver down and stood there empty-handed. His eyes terrified her. They looked as though they had seen something he wanted very very much, watched it vanish away.

Tom put his arm around Marian's shoulders. “You're so cold,” he said. “Come on.” Marian didn't think she could move. But she was surprised and grateful to find that her immobility could not withstand Tom's decision that they should walk.