Absent Friends

And even though it's kind of impossible not to like Tom, she doesn't want to be around him a lot, not for a while now. Not since they were all too old not to know what Mr. Molloy does, what Tom now does. Jimmy doesn't push it when Marian says she has to work the night Tom has Mets tickets (though Marian loves baseball) or when she drops by only long enough for one quick eggnog at Tom and Vicky's Christmas party and spends most of that time talking quietly with Peggy Molloy. Sometimes Jimmy wonders what he'd do, himself, if he and Tom weren't part of each other's first memories. But they are.

Tom goes far back in Marian's life, too, of course, as far as he goes in Jimmy's, and Jack does, too. But with girls it's different. The girls see this kind of thing, see most things, a different way.

For the girls, Jimmy thinks, it's not just who people are. Not just that they've all always known each other, been in the middle of each other's lives like all the different colors making up the same picture, all the different sounds in the same song. That's not enough. For the girls, it's the kinds of things you do, too. For them, those can change how they think about people. For him, for the other guys, what you do, that's one thing, but who you are, that's another.

Maybe the way the girls see things is right, and his is wrong. That wouldn't surprise Jimmy. But whose way is right, he thinks, that's not what matters sometimes.

And there's the other thing, too: Marian wouldn't get it, why Jimmy can't just go to Jack and tell him what's going to happen, tell him he has to cool it or he'll be screwed. But if it's the truth, Jimmy, she'd say. Why can't you just tell him, if it's the truth?

Jimmy knows having the truth is only part of the answer, but he doesn't know how to tell this to Marian.

So when Marian asks what's on his mind, Jimmy says, Just stuff.

Nothing I can help with?

Jimmy smiles and says, You are. You're helping.

Marian smiles, too. She says, Okay. She kisses him, says, It's Saturday night. Do you want to go out?

Jimmy wraps his own hand around hers, kisses each of her fingers separately. The curtains shimmy, someone's screen door creaks. Not tonight, Jimmy says. He slides closer to her under the sheet, folds his arms around her from behind. He kisses her ear, her throat. He parts her hair and kisses the back of her neck. Not unless you can think of somewhere to go, Jimmy says, somewhere we would go that would be better than here.

Marian turns to face Jimmy and her answer is her smile, and the slow way she circles her arms around him.

So why doesn't Jimmy marry Marian, why hasn't he asked her? He knows she'd say yes. He knows how he feels.

But sometimes when she looks at him—and he sees this most when he's coming off his shift, when they've had a big job and one of the guys, maybe, has almost fallen, almost been lost—the way she looks at him, Jimmy's not sure it's for him. It's for what he does, but not even that: it's for what Marian thinks he does, and for the man she thinks he is for doing it.

That look, that's what's been stopping Jimmy. He needs to be sure of what he is not sure of now: that Marian knows the man who is asking her, the man she'd be marrying, is Jimmy.

Not Superman. Just Jimmy.

MARIAN'S STORY

Chapter 8

The Way Home

October 31, 2001

Marian hesitated outside. She had always disliked Flanagan's. She had been the one to call; but now, standing on the sidewalk in the amethyst hour when day surrenders to night, she wondered why she had agreed to have this encounter here. She could have demurred when Tom suggested it. (Though suggest was wrong: “Meet you at Flanagan's, five-thirty,” was what he'd said, and she'd said, “Fine, see you there,” as though Flanagan's ponderous furnishings and hushed talk had not, from the first, given her the uncomfortable feeling that something was happening just beyond the borders of her experience, something she was not welcome to know.) She could have requested another location. He would have consented, perhaps even apologized for not remembering how she felt, she who had not been inside Flanagan's for twenty years. But truly, how could he be expected to remember? You should have said something, she admonished herself, you should have spoken up if it mattered to you. It was not Tom's responsibility. People do not read minds.