Oh, Marian knew how much was in her hands. Still, reluctant to begin, to open a conversation she had avoided for twenty years (though it could not be that Tom did not know why they were here, so why did he not help her, why did he not begin?), Marian twirled her pasta, drank more wine, and asked after Tom's mother. “I saw her in September,” she told Tom. “At St. Ann's. But I didn't have a chance to talk to her.”
“That's too bad,” Tom said. “She'd have liked to see you.”
Marian had not spoken to Peggy Molloy at the mass she had come back to Pleasant Hills to attend, five days after the attacks. But not really because she had not had the chance.
Everyone, that day, was stunned and confused and trying to manage. All around her Marian had seen people working, for their own sakes and the sake of others, to hold themselves together, and she'd seen the different small things that made each fall apart. The sight of the empty apparatus floor through the open door at Engine 168 had been too much for one friend; another broke down sobbing as she spoke of talking to her neighbor while he watered the vegetable garden that now he would never harvest.
For Marian, strong and useful for those past five days, offering support to those weaker than she, volunteering late into the night and bearing up, that small thing had been the sight of Peggy Molloy. Seeing her shoulders bent as though carrying weight, her head covered in the old style with a black lace shawl, had brought Marian to unexpected tears.
If Tom was the abdicated prince, living now by choice as a commoner, Peggy Molloy, widowed seven years, was still the sad queen she had always been. She dressed as other women did, and walked like them, sat and talked among them in the same gentle voice she had always used; her grandchildren's friends adored her as her sons' friends always had. Others in church that day had lost loved ones; Peggy Molloy had not. But seeing her clothed in mourning out of respect for other mothers' sons had swept Marian back through years, to another mass, also at St. Ann's, when the loss had been all of theirs but Peggy's more than anyone's: the funeral mass for Jack.
PHIL'S STORY
Chapter 10
The phone again. Goddamn it. There might be something to be said, Phil thought, fumbling for the damn thing in his pocket, for a city where the phones don't work.
“Constantine.” More of a threat than a greeting, but screw whoever it was if they couldn't take a joke.
“It's Kevin.”
Shit. Good going, Phil. Courtroom technique, swift softening of voice: “Hey, Kev. How're you doing?”
“You need to come out here. I need to talk to you.”
“I've been wanting to. But your mother—”
“Mom doesn't want to see you. We'll meet somewhere. You and me.” Kevin was on edge, his voice tight and cold, but at least he was calling.
“Wherever you say.”
“I'd come in—”
“No, no problem.” Come in, Kev—on the crutches, with the pain pills every four hours. “Where's good?”
“There's a bar called the Bird.”
“I know it. On Main Street?”
“That reporter's dead, Uncle Phil. I need you to tell me what's going on.”
“Kev? Kev, I don't know.”
“The paper says someone killed him.”
“I saw that.” And was just told it, by a girl not much older than you are, who's sure it's true and wonders if it was me.
“Did they?”
Do you mean, did I? “There's no evidence he didn't jump, Kevin.”
“Evidence? Oh, fuck evidence! What the fuck does that mean, there's no evidence? You think you're talking to a jury, you can just throw words around and convince me?”
“I'm not trying to convince you of anything.”
Kevin's anger fell back, a quick blaze that flared itself to embers. “What's going on, Uncle Phil? What does it have to do with Uncle Jimmy?”
And there you had it. The way it had always been: Uncle Phil and Uncle Jimmy. One weaving through the world the other came from, like the wind, everywhere in it, never part of it; the other a shining light so bright his glow had colored that world long after he'd left it. Now he was gone from all worlds, Jimmy McCaffery was, but his radiance was still blinding.
“Kev . . .” At a loss for words. Phil Constantine? Amazing, incredible. Thou who dost not believe how much the world has changed, check this out. Finally, with colossal effort: “I'll meet you. I'll tell you what I know. But it's not much. Kev, how's your mother?”
“Mom's . . . yeah, Mom's fine. When can you come?”
Yeah. Mom's fine. “I'll take the next boat. Half-hour, forty-five minutes at the outside.”
