S Rozan - Absent Friends

“You should see him when he's clean.” Sally's voice startled Marian. She spun to find Sally in the kitchen doorway behind her.

“What?”

“Kevin. He's much more worth staring at after his shower. He's almost handsome if you can get him to shave.”

Kevin dropped himself onto a chair and rolled his eyes.

Marian said, “Was I staring?”

Sally hugged her and murmured, “A little, but who could blame you?” She crossed to the kitchen table, kissed Kevin's cheek, took the crutches, and propped them in a corner. “What are you doing out here so early?” she asked Marian. “Did you stay with your dad last night? Want some coffee?” She brought out three yellow cups and saucers from the cabinet and put the coffeepot on the table.

“Thanks, Mom,” Kevin said, pouring coffee, reaching for the sugar.

“Could I have tea?” Marian asked.

“Real tea? Or smelly flowers?”

“Flowers, thanks. Kevin, darling, you can just unwrinkle your nose.”

When he was four, Kevin had asked Marian why she always drank smelly flowers. He hadn't understood what was funny, but that she'd laughed was good enough for him. From then on, for years, he'd clapped his hand to his head in mock horror and announced, “Smelly flowers!” every time the chamomile tea box came off the shelf.

“How do you feel?” Marian asked Kevin.

He shrugged. “Pretty good, I guess.”

She peered more closely. “You look like you're worried about something. Is your therapy going all right?”

“The PT?” Kevin glanced down at his leg. “It's going fine.”

“His physical therapist says he's improving faster than she expected. She says he's impressive. Fantastic, extraordinary, unbelievable-”

“No, Mom, that was you. Mrs. Cummings said I sweat a lot.”

“Same thing. Marian, did you have breakfast?”

“Yes, thanks. Can I help you do something?” Marian made the offer quickly, before Sally could ask where she'd eaten. Marian's father liked to take her out to breakfast whenever she stayed over in Pleasant Hills.

“No, I have it under control.” Into melted butter Sally broke three eggs. She popped bread into the toaster and sliced a grapefruit in half. The scents of domesticity, of the life Marian had not had, crowded the sunny air like phantoms.

Sally asked, “Are you sure you don't want anything?”

“No, the tea will be perfect, thanks.”

Marian felt herself distracted. She tried to force herself to focus on her task, but before she could begin, Sally asked quietly, “Did you see the paper this morning?”

Marian nodded.

“What?” said Kevin. “What's in it?”

Sally reached for the New York Tribune from the counter and handed it to her son. It was already folded to the story on the bottom of the front page, the story Tom had read aloud to Marian an hour earlier, Tom glancing up from time to time, Marian's hand lifting to cover her mouth as though to smother despair.

Marian watched Sally cook, watched Kevin read. His face could hide anger no better than it could joy. When it came time to turn to the inside pages, he snapped the paper to a new fold. His skin flushed, his scowl deepened.

Marian waited until she judged he was finished, though his eyes remained on the newspaper. She took a breath and said, “Listen, you guys. I came over to talk to you about something serious.”

Now Kevin looked up. Sally, back at the stove, turned to regard Marian over her shoulder. The two concerned pairs of eyes so exactly alike, so dear to her. Marian thought, Can I take it back? Can I leave them out of this? Hasn't it been terrible enough for them? Why don't I just say, No, never mind, I'll handle it, you guys just go on doing what you're doing, it's enough.

But of course she couldn't. It wasn't her choice. Earlier, watching Tom drink coffee, she had seemed to choose, but it wasn't her decision. The real choice was Jimmy's, made long ago. All Marian had done, all she'd been able to do, was to determine to take whatever action she must to limit the damage now.

“What is it, honey?” Sally set Kevin's eggs in front of him. “Is everything all right?”

Such an odd question, in these times. Is anything all right? would have been better, and even that Marian was not certain she could answer.

“These newspaper stories,” she began. She would have said more, but Sally raised a hand to stop her.

“There's no need to discuss them,” Sally said. Standing next to Kevin, she laid her hand on his shoulder. “I don't believe any of it.”

“Sal-”

“No, honey, really. It's okay. I don't believe Jimmy was there, and I certainly don't believe he shot Jack. That's so completely ridiculous. Someone could only say that who never knew him. That he let Markie go to prison? Jimmy? And,” she went on, as Marian's stomach twisted, “Jimmy would never have had anything to do with a man like Eddie. Any of the Spanos, anytime. It just isn't true.”

“Sal,” Marian said gently. “Sal, the money-”

Sally shook her head. “I know.”

“You know what?”

“I know about the money.” Sally spoke quietly, like someone admitting a wrongdoing.

Confused, Marian asked, “You know?”

Sally said slowly, “It was Phil's.” Kevin twisted in his chair to look at her. She met his gaze. “That's right, isn't it, Marian?”

Kevin flushed and turned away. He looked at neither of them as with a fork he broke the yolks of the eggs.

“Phil's?” Marian spoke uncertainly.

Sally came around the table to slip into the chair next to Marian. She picked up a teaspoon and turned it over between finger and thumb. “He always wanted to give me money. I never let him. I never wanted him to think it was that.” She stopped the spoon in midtwirl as if catching herself in a bad habit she'd meant to break. She put it gently down. “Phil always wanted to take care of us. He wanted me to marry him.”

Kevin lifted his eyes to her. “He asked you? When?” His voice was uneven.

“Over and over. Honey, I'm sorry. I know you'd have liked that, to have a dad. But he wouldn't move here.”

“Move here?”

When Kevin asked that, Sally frowned, as if she'd heard something untrue, as if someone had said something she could not let pass. “No,” she said. “No, that's not fair. It wasn't… Phil said he'd buy us a house anywhere, in Manhattan, or Brooklyn Heights, or maybe up in Westchester. Just not here. I said, only here.”

Marian had a feeling there was something she should do, say, right now, some step she should take, but how could you take steps on such treacherous, shifting soil? Kevin was watching his mother with his lips pressed tight.

“When I said I'd only marry him if he moved here, he said it wouldn't be good for you, for me, if he did that. Because he'd been Markie's lawyer. Because he's Jewish. And it's true, those things would have made it hard. But it wasn't that.”

“Then what was it?” Kevin asked.

“It was-that we had to live here-I said it because I knew he'd say no.”

Kevin's forehead creased. “I don't get it.”

“No, I don't suppose you do,” Sally said softly. She reached across the table to touch Kevin's cheek, as though her hands could tell him something words never could. “The way we lived, Kev, I don't know if you can understand this, but it's the only way we could have lived. I love Phil. I do. I gave him everything I could. But not everything I had. There was always Markie. Still. Always.

“So I… it was like in a fairy tale. Do something impossible, and you win the princess's hand. But you know what happens in fairy tales. Only the right prince can do it. The monster kills the other ones when they try.

“Phil knew that. He knew I made it impossible on purpose, and he knew he wasn't that prince. So he… you could say he agreed. To call it impossible. He agreed not to try. So that we could go on. So that we could have as much as we had.”