The idea was not Tom's, as the press later had it. Tom was inclined, as Marian was, to let Jimmy's legend rest, though his reasons were surely different. But other people—men who, as boys, had won trophies on teams Jimmy had captained; women who, when girls, had contrived innumerable accidental encounters with him in noisy school corridors, had whispered jealously to each other as Marian walked by—had elected this loss to stand for all the unbearable others. They had chosen to take action now to console themselves for their helplessness on that day, and they had come to Tom.
As he was coming to Marian.
“Please,” Tom said again. “He meant a lot to a lot of people. People want to give money—hell, it's all they can do. Think of all the good you can do with this, Marian.”
He'd smiled, and she'd had to smile, too. She was an Eskimo, and Tom knew, as he always had, just what to say so that she would be most likely to sign up for a delivery of ice.
She was nevertheless steeling herself and planning to refuse, when the church doors creaked open. She and Tom stepped aside to let a group of people pass. At their center walked Eddie Spano, talking on his right to someone Marian didn't know, while his left hand gripped the arm of his father, Aldo. Eddie was almost bald—had it been that long since she'd seen him? But it was the sight of Aldo Spano that stunned and scared her. When they all were young, Mr. Spano had been a legendary monster, lying in wait to eat you (or at least smack you, though you were not his) and teaching his two sons to be like him. Now he leaned on a cane, and on his son, his movements crabbed, imprisoned by that ferocious and insatiable jailer, age. The face she remembered as terrifyingly scarlet was dull, wrinkled, and soft, like something beginning to rot. While Marian watched, Aldo Spano looked to Eddie as though unsure what to do. Eddie spoke to his father calmly, then turned back to his conversation as though he had done this many times before. Marian drew a breath.
That Aldo Spano was no longer frightening was, to Marian, a fearful thing.
Tom watched her; Tom, because he was Tom, knew what she was thinking and how to turn it to his use.
“It's just us now, Marian,” he'd said, as they both watched the Spanos' slow progress down the stairs, Eddie half-lifting his hesitating father to each step. “There are no grown-ups anymore. It's just us. We have to do it.”
And so she'd told him she'd think about it. From the top of the steps she'd searched the crowd, found her own father in it, and hurried to him.
As Marian, still thinking of smoke and prayers, reached the door to her own office, she heard Elena call after her.
“Marian? That reporter, it was all right I gave her your cell phone? I wasn't sure, but you said, the press —”
“Yes, of course. Thank you,” Marian added with a quick smile.
Since September 11 Marian had been interviewed often in print, on radio, and on TV. To discuss the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan—and the role of the MANY Foundation and the Downtown Council in it—she made herself available to any journalist at any time. It was one of her responsibilities, one of the tasks she felt called upon to perform. Because MANY's phones still didn't work, she had given her staff permission to give her cell phone number out as liberally as she had jealously guarded it before.
And since she'd taken on the administration of the McCaffery Fund, she had been repeatedly asked about that, too, and she'd always replied with her gentlest smile and most assured tone.
“Our mission is outreach and support for Fire Department recruitment,” she'd told Larry King, and she'd taped that interview and later watched it carefully, to study her own face, her body language, as she said, “The New York City Fire Department was Captain McCaffery's life. His dream was to see a department that would continue to be the best in the world, because it would contain, it would welcome,
As a rule Marian did not worry about her public image, what she projected or how she was perceived. She tried to tell the truth and to be kind. She did not waste her time in inordinate concern about whether those intents were understood. Time spent speculating and fretting was time wasted on vanity, and Marian did not approve of vanity, least of all in herself.
But in this interview, she'd been talking about Jimmy.
This ground was too unsteady, this path too treacherous, for her to tread without looking back: she needed to assure herself of where she'd been. She needed to prepare herself for where she was to go.
She had run the tape three times, finally deciding she was satisfied with her look of comforting, of caring and firm resolve. “Through the McCaffery Fund,” she watched herself say, “we will be able to reach out to communities that have historically not had the opportunity to serve the people of New York through this extraordinary department. In this way we will help make Captain McCaffery's dream a reality.”
“A rainbow department,” Larry King had said. “Captain James McCaffery's dream. We'll be right back.”
It was beautiful, this dream, it was comforting to imagine heroes of all races, all colors, shapes, all beliefs and loves, being given the chance to help and save, to use their courage and their caring no matter who they were, no matter what. Beautiful, and a worthy goal for this Fund in Jimmy's name. It was a condition Marian had laid down for her service to the Fund, that this be its focus.
In truth Marian did not know what had been in Jimmy's dreams since the nights when they were young. She did not know what he had hoped for, what he had feared, over the years, but she did not imagine that since those nights his sleep had been untroubled.
Marian was not sure that the dead looked down from Heaven, or that they benefited from prayers rising or actions taken on their behalf, though Father Connor had always told them this was one of the purposes of worship. She did not know if Jimmy had made it to Heaven, was not sure what kind of heroism outweighed which sins. She did not know whether good done by a person in this life could redeem the darkness of a life gone before.
Once she had been sure of these things and so many others. The unsureness that now surrounded her, the sense that the ground was shifting under her and she had no firm place to stand: was it because, after so long, after a lifetime, of working to keep a vast empty space between them, she stood so close to Jimmy now?
Accepting the leadership of the McCaffery Fund had made her a visible target for Harry Randall's sharpshooting and all that followed. But more and more Marian suspected this: her true error was not the public revelation but the private one: that the bridge between herself and Jimmy that she'd crossed, when the time came, without looking back, she had never burned.
