Absent Friends

Laura, ready with her next argument, a fresh assault of convincing words, tossed away those words and grabbed some new ones. “Thank you.” She stood quickly.

Leo had no more to say. Laura, afraid something would occur to him, turned and hurried away, resisting (as she was sure everyone always had to) the urge to back out of Leo's presence, bowing.

MARIAN'S STORY

Chapter 2

Complicated Work

October 31, 2001

Pedestrians were no longer required to show identification at the Canal Street barricades. Police sentries still stood two to a block, but their job now was to prevent vehicles from entering, to answer questions from the public when they could (although what answers did anyone have?), and to keep an eye out (for what, no one knew). They generally ignored anyone who neither spoke to them nor appeared suspicious according to whatever private formula for suspicion each officer used. Still, Marian offered a smile to the young policeman standing by the blue sawhorse she passed. He nodded but did not smile back, his eyes old and wary in his impassive face. The gold numbers on his collar showed him to be from a precinct far from Lower Manhattan. Marian wondered whether he was glad to have been assigned here. Was he grateful to have a useful role to play? Or did he desperately want to be home, reporting at his usual time to his usual captain, patrolling streets he knew, on the lookout for crimes he could understand?

Through the late morning sun Marian carried coffee and the morning Times. She had never had much faith in the Tribune, even before, but she used to buy it every day. Sam, back when they were together, had put forward a theory.

“Too much meditation,” he declared, rising from the breakfast table to fetch the coffee press, “lowers your blood pressure. The Tribune raises it again.”

“You can't read just one paper,” Marian countered. “Even if it's the Times. Thank you,” as he poured coffee first for her, then for himself. “You need different perspectives. You're old enough to know that.”

“I thought I wasn't old enough to cross the street by myself.”

“If you look both ways.” Marian shook the paper out and turned the page. This was the way they dealt with the difference in their ages, making a joke of it between them. Marian believed in keeping issues in the open. Then nothing could be slowly turning bad, rotting where it couldn't be seen. “Anyway, you should try meditating. Maybe you wouldn't get so upset when you're running late to meetings.”

“My boss would fire me if I didn't get upset when I ran late.” On his way back to his chair Sam leaned over Marian, parted her hair, and nuzzled the back of her neck.

“Ummm,” said Marian; but she leaned forward, reached across the table as though she needed the milk pitcher, though her coffee was already pale. “Oh my God, listen to this!” she wailed, and she was off again, incensed at the Tribune for the same quality she admired: fiery muckraking.

Tribune reporters tore into corrupt politicians, drug-dealing rock stars, millionaire athletes who beat their wives. They pounced with conviction and courage, and of those things, Marian approved. The problem was a lack of balance. Everyone had a story; every story had two sides. At least; at least that. But you never saw the other side of a story in the Tribune. Only the Tribune's passionate indignation, its outraged cries for justice.

Or whatever powerful emotion the Tribune was peddling at the moment.

Two weeks ago, when they'd run Harry Randall's tribute to Jimmy, Marian had been unable to read it. She sat at her desk, her office door shut, staring at the headline, trying to make her eyes move down the page. But every time she hit a name—Tom's, Father Connor's; Owen McCardle, she remembered him—it was another bone-jarring bump on a rocky road. In the end she gave up. And what would she learn, what would this story tell her? Everything in it was no doubt true, but the truth would not be in it.

Marian recognized the irony: the McCaffery Fund had by that time already hit over $100,000 and by anyone's accounting was likely to top out at over $2 million; people were being so generous in these terrible times. And the McCaffery Fund's administrator could not bring herself even to skim a newspaper story that was sure to spark a new round of donations, a newspaper story in which she herself was quoted. Everyone else in the office was talking about it, about the sorrow and the sense of loss it brought home to them. Marian hoped no one would notice her silence, or perhaps that they would take it for deep emotion and go no further.