S Rozan - Absent Friends

“Jimmy's a hero,” she said softly. “He was always a hero, except, if anything in the Tribune 's right, except maybe once. Somehow. I don't know how.” Oh God, she thought, how can I be lying like this ? She continued bitterly, punishing herself. “Something. It changed him, whatever it was.”

Suddenly her words began to come fast. She felt like a machine caught and racing, unregulated, unstoppable. “But now, now he's a symbol. Of courage, sacrifice, things people need to believe in. Whatever the truth is, what people need now to help them through what happened is more important. I think Jimmy would think so, too. I think he always thought that, or he'd have told the truth-all the truth-back then. You can't change the… mistakes of the past. You can only build the future.”

She was dismayed, yes, even frightened, to see the storm still raging in Kevin's eyes. What do you believe? What do you know?

But Marian did not ask, and Kevin did not speak.

“Marian?” Sally said. “You really think, you think whatever happened then… Markie and Jack… you think it wasn't what they told us?”

All Marian could do was nod her head and wish she were somewhere infinitely far away.

“And that's what you think Jimmy… what he wrote down?” Sally's question was so hushed Marian could barely hear it.

“Whatever it is,” Marian said, “whatever it is, if someone finds it, people will read it who didn't know him, didn't know any of them, any of us. They'll make judgments. Nothing good will come of it, Sally.” Breathe in, breathe out, in, out. Find a calm place. “And,” she said, “it's the only thing they have.”

“The only thing people have?”

“No.” Marian shook her head. “The Tribune. Whoever's investigating. In Phil's case, the Ethics Commission.” She waited for the earth to open up and swallow her. She hoped it would. How could she be doing this, using Sally's love for Phil as just another tool of her own, another implement to shape the structure she had concluded must be built?

“Without what Jimmy wrote,” she said, “it's just speculation. It will go away. It's a hot story now, but it will cool, with so much else going on.”

“Aunt Marian.” Kevin pronounced the words carefully, as though he was afraid they were going to give him trouble. “‘The only thing they have.' But the paper”-he jerked his thumb at the Tribune, lying in bread crumbs-“they say they haven't seen them, Uncle Jimmy's papers. Only that reporter who died, they say he saw them. Where are they? Who has them?”

And at last Marian had reached the center of the labyrinth, the reason she had torn apart their sunny morning. “I don't know. I hoped you knew.”

“Me?” Kevin's eyes widened. “I never even knew about them, until the Tribune. Mom?”

“No, I didn't know.”

Both pairs of green eyes resting on her, waiting.

“Are you… sure?” asked Marian. To Kevin: “He left you his things.”

It was Sally who answered. “I cleaned out his apartment,” she told Marian. “Kevin was at Burke, and I thought… anyway, it was me.” She took a breath. “There wasn't anything like that there. He didn't have much. Shirts, pants. His dress uniform. Some books.” Softly, she smiled. “I wouldn't have thought … The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Some books about Buddhism. But nothing from those days. Not even old photographs. A picture of Kevin, from when he graduated the Academy. But not any old ones.”

None? Not any?

Oh, please, this is not important, Marian begged herself wildly, feeling her spirit plunge as though a cliffside path had crumbled suddenly beneath her feet. That Jimmy had not kept a photograph of her, not a single one, as she had of him, just the one, all these years in her bedside table- what had she expected? What had she any right to hope for?

She forced herself to speak. “Even if they were there,” she said, “the papers, even if you found them, wouldn't be the ones the reporter saw. There must be copies. Who has those?”

Kevin's face was dark and hard. With a shock Marian recalled a day long ago: Kevin at thirteen, Marian arriving to pick him up after school. She had entered the gate at St. Ann's at the start of a schoolyard brawl. Kevin had looked exactly this way in the seconds before he threw himself at a bigger boy. She'd run over and pulled the boys apart, had told them they should be ashamed of themselves, civilized people did not settle arguments with violence. She had made them shake hands. Marching Kevin out of the yard, she'd asked him what the fight was about. Kevin, still crimson, said without looking at her, “He said I had no dad because my dad was a killer and he died in jail. He said my mom was screwing a Jew.”

Now, empty of the certainties she'd had that afternoon, Marian said to Kevin, “Couldn't there be something, something Jimmy told you about, just so someone would know? That you never knew what it was, but you knew it was important to him? Because”-she raced to say this; she couldn't help herself, but that was good, because maybe the truth of it was powerful enough to force things to turn out the way they must, the way she needed them to-“because, Kevin, besides fighting fires, you're the thing he loved most in the world.”

Kevin's eyes fastened on hers again, but not to hold her, she thought, not to bind her. More, this time, to be held.

“Kevin?” Sally asked softly. “Was there anything like that, that Jimmy ever talked about?”

“He wouldn't have. It's not like that. I'm a probie. He's-he was Jimmy McCaffery. He was lowering guys on ropes when I was a kid. He had anything important to say to someone, maybe when I had a few years on the Job it might be me. I was thinking that. I was thinking, maybe someday it could be just, you know, Jimmy. Not Uncle Jimmy. Maybe someday. But not yet.

“The only thing I have, besides the books Mom said-his shirts don't fit me-” He swallowed and had to start again. “The only thing, from the memorial service, is his helmet. The guys gave it to me.”

He swiped at his eyes and looked away. Sally reached across the table, withdrew her hand without touching him. Silence as thick as the sunlight filled the room. Sally asked Marian, “Where do you think they are? Whatever's in them, these papers?”

“I don't know,” Marian answered. “But we need to find them-we need to find them-before that reporter does.”

Kevin's chair scraped across the floor as he pushed back from the table, reaching for his crutches.

“Kev?” Sally stood as he levered himself up. “Honey?”

Kevin shook his head and kept going. Sally took a step as though to follow but stopped herself. Marian didn't watch him go but she heard, she felt, the hard slam of his door.

November 1, 2001

Early morning at the Y, but no game today, so Phil was running. Long rhythmic strides, faster than comfortable so it wouldn't get easy. Though this track, tenth of a mile, God he hated it. The same thing, past the same point, forty times, you have to be kidding. Before, even in bad weather, he ran outdoors. Down from his place, through the streets to a park. Either side of the island, up along the river. But now you couldn't run downtown. The ash, the rubble, the trucks. The nervous National Guardsmen. The smell. He couldn't breathe that air. Not like you breathed when you ran. Couldn't take it in, deep in his lungs. Couldn't make it part of him. He'd tried, early on. It had made him sick.