S Rozan - Absent Friends

“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.

Phil kissed Sally goodbye before he opened the front door. As he passed the driveway, he spotted Kevin squatting there. He would have spoken to him, said goodbye a second time, but Kevin was busy sneaking Socks an unauthorized can of sardines.

That circus afternoon, just before he left, Sally said, “Move in with us.”

Phil didn't answer, but as though he had, she smiled and said, “I know. I just thought I'd try again.”

It was also true that Sally had never given a moment's serious thought to the idea that she and Kevin might leave Pleasant Hills, might move across the water into Phil's world.

When he'd first suggested that, Sally's answer was that she wanted Kevin to live somewhere he belonged, not a place-Phil's downtown loft, she meant-where things had been pushed aside and room made for him.

So Phil offered neutral addresses, worlds they could create together: a co-op on the Upper West Side, and Kevin could go to private school; or a house on Long Island with a pool in the backyard. Sally smiled at these ideas, the same smile Phil had seen her give Kevin when, at six, he brought home a Valentine's Day heart, painted red and stuck with sequins and plastic pearls. And Phil came to understand that “somewhere he belonged” meant only one thing to Sally: it meant Pleasant Hills.

And so the years reeled slowly out, so many years. Sometimes Phil found himself looking around, surprised to be where he was, wondering where those years had gone, wondering sometimes if Sally wondered, too. So many years, when their lives had been locked together while their worlds, to each other, were mist-shrouded, hidden.

That was before.

And since?

Phil had seen little of Sally since September 11. Not even spoken to her as often as he'd wanted. Not since those first frantic hours when they were desperate to find Kevin, Phil calling Sally over and over as the connection broke and came back, Phil jogging thirty blocks uptown to the office of a friend whose power had not gone out so he could scan the names of missing firefighters on website lists as they were updated and grew ever longer.

Jimmy McCaffery's name was one of the first posted. Phil read it with disbelief but no other emotion; that all came later.

Kevin's name never appeared. Phil had called everyone he could think of, everyone he could reach, all of them equally despairing, no one able to help. He had been useless, come up with nothing, but another firefighter, someone Sally didn't know, called Sally in the late afternoon. He told her Kevin was at NYU Hospital, hurt but all right. Sally had called Phil, weeping a mother's tears of relief.

That day Sally couldn't cross the harbor from Staten Island to be with Kevin at the hospital: all ferries were moored, all bridges closed, all trips canceled. So she had gone to church. She wanted, she told Phil on the crackling cell phone, to give thanks for the life of her son, and to pray for the lost.

Phil, sitting at that point on a curb in a milling crowd of strangers, smoke stinging his eyes, said, Good, said, Being with people, the comfort of the church, that's a good idea. I'll go up to the hospital, he promised, I'll go see Kevin. Weeping, she said to tell Kevin she'd come as soon as she could. She asked Phil to call from the hospital. She asked him if he'd be all right. Automatically, he said he would. Maybe she believed him; maybe she just knew there was nothing she could do for him. She told him she loved him and said goodbye. He thumbed off his phone, hearing the echo of Sally's voice, the joyful catch in it. He wondered what was in the voices of the hundreds, thousands, of other mothers, wives, children, clutching for that same golden ghost, hope. What would be in their voices after the phantom flashed and vanished, leaving empty hands, empty air? Or lingered, laughing, just beyond reach, disturbing sleep, distracting days, for a long, long time? And faded, finally disappearing, after that.

Now, on this bright corner six weeks later, it was again Sally's voice that riveted Phil. This time, no joy, no warmth: just cold, windswept distance.

He said again, “I'll meet you on the ferry.”

She said, “No.”

“There's another reporter,” he said. He felt like he was warning her. Against what? He didn't know.

“I don't want you calling me.”

But she didn't hang up.

And this was his chance. To explain, persuade, to show her, tell her: it had all been for her, everything had been for her. A wizard, his opponents called him, one of the Dark Side's best, words his weapon, wielded with a wild, sweeping daring and a jeweler's precision. He could use that weapon now, surely, he could win this battle.