Absent Friends

Laura looked down at the notepad, names and numbers in a tidy list. Names on the left, numbers on the right, ruled blue lines between them like the rungs of a ladder waiting to be climbed.

Stone! she heard Harry howl. Stop that simile! Mash that metaphor! Annihilate those allegories! Fight, team, fight!

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 6

The Invisible Man

Steps Between You and the Mirror

October 31, 2001

Almost always, when Sally spoke about Markie, Phil got the sense that where Sally was, the sun had gone behind clouds. The exception: when she was talking to Kevin. Then her eyes sparkled, and the stories she told her son about his father were funny ones, or tender. And Kevin, a child never happy unless he was in motion, would listen and be still.

“He gave me a kitten once, when we were little,” she said to Kevin when he was eight. Kevin asked if it was Socks. “It was Snowflake. Socks's great-gran.” It had been late on one of their excursion afternoons, the three of them returning from Manhattan, from the circus. Phil didn't like circuses, or zoos, not even aquariums: places where animals were confined to amuse people left him restless and impatient. But Kevin wanted to go to the circus.

“The first time we went, we were ten,” Sally told Phil. He'd just arrived on a late-night boat. The cat had been out late, too, and had followed Phil up the walk, meowing. “Before that there was a show that used to come. Spivey's Traveling Circus. It wasn't much, but when we were little, we didn't know the difference.”

“It doesn't come anymore?”

“They built a Buick dealership on the lot they used to use. Besides, the elephant was old. I think she retired.”

Because Sally knew how Phil felt about circuses, she didn't ask if he'd come. Because Phil knew how Sally felt about traveling solo off Staten Island, he'd pulled three tickets from his shirt pocket a few nights later and asked if anyone had plans for Saturday.

Kevin was wild for the circus, unable to sit still. Each time the acts changed, he tried to watch everything all at once. Finally choosing, he'd lean forward, more and more, then leap up with excitement. His seat would snap up, and every time, he'd turn, stare, and laugh and laugh, delighted that even the chairs were part of the show.

Phil loved watching Kevin, and watching Sally watch Kevin. The circus itself he'd hated, though he was unexpectedly gripped by the high-wire act. Briefly he forgot the sad elephants standing on hind legs and the great cats jumping unnaturally into fire. Jolted by adrenaline as though he were the one somersaulting into space, he waited without breathing for the flyer's arms to make contact with the catcher's. And if they hadn't? Who would have been more frightened, he wondered, who more thrilled, as the flyer fell?

At the start of the ferry trip back—because Kevin was along, it was just a boat ride, and their Brigadoon did not emerge—Kevin, wedged between Phil and Sally on a smooth wooden bench, listened to the story of Sally, Markie, the boys, and Snowflake. The second the tale was over, he pushed off the bench. He swung the circus flashlight Phil had bought him, then gave it to Sally to hold while he played a growling tiger pawing at the trainer's whip. He tried standing on his head like the clowns and asked why the ringmaster didn't do any tricks of his own.

“He's directing everybody,” Sally said.

“Can I be him?”

“You could try. I'm not sure how much fun he has, though.”

Kevin tried directing other passengers to get up and do tricks, but it didn't work, not even once. “It's not fun,” he declared. Then, as though struck by a thought, he pushed back into his place between them on the bench and asked about Snowflake again, and Sally smiled and told the story a second time.

Phil bought them all ice cream when they got off the ferry. The flower shop in the terminal had one bunch of roses left. He bought them when Sally was busy with Kevin and swept them out from behind his back with a big “Ta da!” that made both Sally and Kevin laugh. He stayed at Sally's for another hour. When he left, Kevin jumped up from his toy fire engine, wrapped Phil in a bear hug, and said, “Thanks, Uncle Phil.”

“Any time, pal.”

Kevin dropped to the floor again. He started pushing the engine around the room, but stopped and looked up at Phil. “Were you friends with my daddy, Uncle Phil?”

Oh, it was so much more complicated than that: but Kevin was eight. “Yes.”

“You remember Snowflake?”

“No.”

Kevin's face took on a worried look, as though this were unexpected. “But you remember Socks?”

“Socks? Sure. I think he's out back.”

Kevin nodded and switched his attention to the fire truck. He drove it right through the kitchen and into the yard.