Absent Friends

Some of the firefighters had been digging on the pile, and had conscientiously scrubbed and changed clothes before coming to the hospital. Some were on their way to dig, or going on duty, or coming off duty. They told Kevin what had happened on the site today, who was giving commands, whose body had been found; they told him what fires they had fought in the course of their normal day's work and whose funerals they had gone to. One evening Marian had arrived to hear three firefighters describing Jimmy's memorial service to Kevin: the dignitaries, the prayers, the pallbearers shouldering the bier of flowers that carried Jimmy's helmet because there was no body to bury. Kevin was in tears, and Marian, hovering outside the open door—Marian who had been there, who had sat at the back of St. Patrick's Cathedral among the largest crowd she had ever seen in a church and had found herself shivering uncontrollably—felt her own hot tears start. She'd turned and fled from the hospital before she was noticed.

The firefighters were always courteous to her and got up to go for coffee or buy Kevin ice cream so he and Marian could have time alone. Occasionally she let them go, but most often she insisted they stay. She'd smile and set to the task of keeping order among the gifts that crowded Kevin's room.

As a rule she had trouble discarding flowers; at home she let them linger until colors dulled and petals scattered. But in Kevin's room, bouquets and sprays, cut flowers and potted plants, and also balloons, fruit baskets, and candy, arrived daily, from friends and neighbors and from total strangers who sent these things to Kevin for the same reason they sent money to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and the McCaffery Fund.

At his suggestion she distributed many of them to other patients in the Burns Unit, and to the nurses and therapists who worked so hard for these patients. Then she would sit and drink a cup of tea, telling Kevin about anything funny that had happened to her, any gossip or intriguing event that might interest him. When her tea was gone, she would rise, kiss his cheek, and leave, promising to return the following day. If Sally arrived while she was there, and Marian had the time, she'd wait in the lounge for Sally to finish her visit, and she and Sally would go for coffee, or a drink if the hour was late enough.

“Honey, he's fine,” she'd reassure Sally the same way each time. “He's doing really well. I talked to the doctor.”

“Thanks.” Sally would squeeze Marian's hand. “I talked to him, too, but I can't understand a word he says.”

Of course Sally could understand doctors, but Marian knew what she meant, and smiled encouragingly. Because the more important something was to you, the more you needed it and demanded it, the more it grew and mushroomed in your own head, and then the harder it was to hear.

There was a rhythm to Marian's visits with Kevin, and only one thing could disturb it. If Phil Constantine arrived while she was there, Marian would gather her things and leave at once. The lawyer invariably offered to be the one to come back later, but she would not allow it. And if he was there when she arrived, she would put her flowers in water and leave. She wanted to owe him nothing, not even ten minutes with Kevin. Let him owe that to her.

And after three weeks Marian's office building reopened. On that day Marian had come in alone and very early, lugging files and computer disks. Unlocking the oak door, she anticipated with a child's excitement the magic of that moment, when she would step from the wilderness—a wilderness, always; but never before as desolate as this—into the garden.

It had not happened. Disappointed, almost panicked, Marian had found no enchantment inside, only drooping plants and forlorn furniture coated with a fine white dust that had once been buildings and everything inside them.

Marian and her staff had cleaned for three days, resolutely discarding what they could not save. They had scrubbed and vacuumed floors and furniture, dusted the books in their extensive library, the photographs on their walls. They bought new file folders and computer keyboards, new potted plants to replace withered, choked foliage they had raised from cuttings, been given as gifts. They did all their purchasing downtown, using their dollars to help their struggling neighbors. In this determined, unfaltering renewal, Marian approved expenses without a second glance and did not look behind her as treasured, unsalvageable objects were carted away.

All that had been four weeks ago. Now the MANY offices were humming again. Work, that secular savior, proceeded as devoutly as before. The MANY Foundation and Marian in particular were in a position to rise to this terrible occasion.