S Rozan - Absent Friends

One day when Marian was sitting against the fence with her knees pulled up tight she heard scratchy footsteps on the gravel driveway. Tom slipped through the secret passage between the house and the garage.

“Hi,” Tom said.

“Hi.”

She waited for him to say something else but he just sat down next to her. Marian first thought she wanted Tom to go away, but then when he was just quiet and she went back to thinking about her mom she thought maybe she liked it that he was there.

After a while Tom turned his head to look at her. “You know what my mom says? She says your mom went to Heaven.”

Marian nodded. She didn't want to talk because her throat felt sore.

“She says, the way you and your dad and everyone, the way you feel all sad and lonely? She says that's how God felt. Your mom was on earth and God got lonely. He missed her so much he asked her to come to Heaven.”

God was lonely? He missed her mommy? That made Marian very sad, and she started to cry.

“But,” said Tom fast, “but Heaven's beautiful. It's got clouds and flowers and oceans and stuff, pretty music, too, my mom says, and she says your mom likes it. She's just waiting for you to come.”

Marian sniffled. Her mom liked pretty music. “Waiting for me?”

“Uh-huh,” said Tom. “If you're good you go to Heaven when you die. Don't you know that?”

Marian thought maybe she did, but she wasn't positive. “I can go to Heaven?” she asked, just to make sure. “Where Mommy is?”

“Uh-huh.”

Marian wiped her eyes and thought about this, about the clouds and flowers and oceans. “Can Daddy go there, too?”

“Everybody who's good.”

“Betty? And Eileen and Patty? And Davey?”

“Everybody.”

“And Aunt Fiona?”

Tom grinned and poked her in the ribs. “ Every body.”

Marian squirmed; it tickled where Tom poked her. “You?” she asked. “And Jimmy? And Jack? And Sally, and Markie, and Vicky?”

Every time Marian said a name, Tom poked her. She kept saying more names-“Your mom? Your dad? Sister Hilda?”-and then she poked him, too, and then they were saying everyone's name they could think of and poking each other and squirming and giggling.

When they ran out of names they both plopped back against the fence, tired from giggling. Tom was still smiling but something Marian thought of made her sad again.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Know what?”

“About going to Heaven?” What if Tom was wrong, that was the thing she'd thought of.

“My mom says God promised.”

God promised. God already thought about this and had it all planned, and Tom's mom knew about it; probably the other grown-ups did, too, her dad and everyone.

She thought of something else about Heaven. “Do everyone's dogs and cats go there, too? And the elephant from Spivey's Circus? Are there animals in Heaven?”

“If they're good. You just have to be good, then you can go.”

Marian thought about the elephant sitting on a cloud, and she smiled, but Tom wasn't smiling, he had a serious face, even kind of sad. “What's the matter?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

She leaned against him, and then he smiled.

The sun lit up the lilies her mom had planted along the fence. There was grass growing in with them. Her mom always said grass belonged on the lawn. When it grew where the flowers were, it needed to be pulled out so the flowers could get big. Marian knew how to do that. Maybe later she would, maybe after lunch. She wasn't less sad when she thought about her mom now, or less lonely. But she hadn't known she was scared until now. Now that Tom had told her about Heaven, she thought she might not be scared anymore.

“Are you sure?” she asked Tom, one more time.

Tom nodded and told her he was sure.

That was how it used to be. God had thought about everything, and even the things the grown-ups couldn't make better, God had planned out. Everything was under control even if you didn't understand it. Even if you didn't like it, there was a reason.

Marian still believed in God. She still believed, she tried her hardest to believe, that the world was unfolding according to His plan. She had always done her best to try to understand her part in that plan. The work she had made her life-MANY, her volunteer work, the boards on which she served, and now, God help her, the McCaffery Fund-was the way she tried to follow the path God had chosen for her.

She'd done this although, from the night Jack died, that path-always so bright before, so straight and wide-had twisted and darkened, plunging into thickets, thorns, and shadows. She'd kept on following, growing more determined as the way became more difficult: as Markie died, and Jimmy left her, and she moved away from Pleasant Hills.

On September 11, the path had vanished altogether. Still she'd gone on blindly, hoping to break into a clearing and find it again, shining ahead. And now with no path to guide her, she stood on the sidewalk in Pleasant Hills with Tom, stalked by a terrifying truth.

“Markie,” she said to Tom. It had gotten cooler while they stood, facing each other, and she shivered. “He wanted to save somebody?”

Tom nodded.

“How?” And also she meant, From what?

Tom said, “It was Markie's fault that Jack was so pissed off. It was his fault, everything that happened, Markie said. He said if anyone even knew Jimmy was there, just if he was even there, he'd get kicked off the Job.”

Off the Job. Out of the department. If Jimmy got in trouble, they wouldn't let him be a fireman. That would have been like not letting him breathe.

“And me,” Tom said, “who I was, if they found me there, they'd have thrown a party.”

Tom looked down. Marian suddenly wanted to take him in her arms, to hold him and say, Who you were, Tom, not who you are. But she couldn't move.

“Markie said he wanted to be the one. No way Markie was taking this fall, Jimmy said, he could forget that. Markie had a wife and kid. A manslaughter sentence, it was years.

“Markie said, No, not manslaughter, he'd tell them Jack was shooting, they'd see it was self-defense, he'd get off.

“But not from the gun, I told them. The gun wasn't licensed, there was no way out of the gun.

“But that could be a good thing. It could give the cops something to convict Markie on, so they'd look good. And it would be a short sentence. Maybe even no jail time, a guy like Markie.”

A vision flashed in front of Marian, so complete and real it stopped her breath: how it would be if Markie hadn't gone to jail. He and Sally would have a house, maybe right on this street; close, anyway, to where she and Jimmy lived. She'd have watched from the kitchen window as her kids, hers and Jimmy's, grew up playing with Kevin and his red-haired brothers and sisters in each other's backyards. With Tom and Vicky's kids, too, Tom and Vicky probably never breaking up because if Markie hadn't gone to jail, hadn't died, the world would not have changed. Everyone would miss Jack, but Jack would have gone away anyway, to Atlanta, someplace, Jack wouldn't have been one of them now, no matter what.

“You couldn't-you couldn't have just run away?” Why was she asking Tom that? What did it matter what they could have done? And that would have been wrong, so wrong. But the beautiful world of her vision was fading, and she grasped for it. “Couldn't you all just pretend you weren't there? Why did anyone have to know?”

“Because it was Jack. The cops would've thought some Molloy-Spano thing was going on. They'd have leaned on everyone. They'd have found witnesses who saw the four of us together, they'd have dug up evidence. It would have all come out, that we were there. No, someone had to step up, to stop any of that.”