Absent Friends

raw wind marauded through the streets, driving before it a thin cruel rain. Marian walked to church beside Jimmy. All of Pleasant Hills was scurrying along the sidewalks, shivering in hastily unearthed coats and dark wool suits, converging on the vortex of St. Ann's, with their umbrellas held like shields.

Marian clutched an umbrella with two hands, unreasonably angry with the wind for coveting it, for attempting to wrench it from her and leave her unprotected. Jimmy carried no umbrella, and he wore no hat. The rain darkened his hair and ran in glistening trails down his cheeks, and it occurred to Marian that rain like this was a perfect disguise for hiding tears. Jimmy's hands, for warmth on this bitter day, were thrust deep, deep into the pockets of his good coat, and Marian struggled with the umbrella, and so perhaps it was not surprising that he had not put an arm around her shoulder or taken hold of her elbow to steer and steady her. Or perhaps it was.

From the night Jack had been killed, and Markie arrested, Jimmy had spoken little. Marian sat with him in soft silence over their morning coffee, kissed him, and smiled into his eyes when he left for his shift at 168. At night she held him, and he nestled tight to her both awake and asleep, though she knew he slept very little, and not deeply. Once, in a night syncopated with bursts of lightning and rumors of thunder but without rain, he turned suddenly (did he know she was awake also, waiting for the storm?) and made love to her with a furious urgency she had not known in him before. Afterward the thought came to her that this might be what it was like for him in a fire: to act before thought prevented action, to seize the chance before the chance was gone.

So Marian held Jimmy close, and lay awake, and the weather changed. The authorities, their work complete, released Jack's body for burial. The police made their arrest, and after an unexplained delay—but the police never explained, and who could insist?—charges were filed and a lawyer assigned. Jimmy traded shifts with a fireman brother to be free for Jack's funeral.

The day was dark, and the church was dark. Watery trails crisscrossed the tile in the echoing entryway. Parishioners plunged umbrellas into brass stands as though they were swords thrust into rock to attest to an oath (of community? of justice?) that everyone had sworn.

Marian furled her umbrella and placed it with the others, though gently. She reached for Jimmy's hand as they walked toward the front pews where the Molloy family already sat. Peggy Molloy's head was bent forward; black lace hid her face. Vicky, married to Tom in this same church, as Sally had been to Markie, sat beside Peggy, whispering something, holding her gloved hand. Tom and Big Mike stared straight ahead, their unblinking eyes keeping watch over the bronze-handled coffin before the altar. The air smelled of damp wool, of cedar and camphor. Jimmy's hand in Marian's was rough and cold, as though he had been laboring for hours in the icy morning.

Marian looked around for Sally. Some days before the funeral, Sally had asked Marian what to do, what the right thing would be.

“But, my God, you grew up with Jack,” Marian had answered. “It was an accident. No one blames Markie.”

Accident was the word they were all using, as though they had debated, negotiated, and come to an agreement, but it was not an accident. Markie had told them what had happened. Jack had said to Markie he would kill him. He had fired a shot that may have been meant to scream as it did over Markie's head and shatter the wooden frame of the half-built house where Jack and Markie were sharing a six-pack. And a second shot, which might have been meant to burn as it did into the plywood flooring. Or both bullets may have been meant to rip bloody holes through Markie's heart. Markie thought they had been, or Markie was too scared to think. He tugged a gun from his own jacket. (They all looked at one another with wide eyes when they heard this and asked, “Did you know Markie had a gun?” and told one another, “No.”) He only wanted, he told them, to startle Jack, to slow him down, to show him how ridiculous it all was, how nuts this moment was, the two of them with guns pointed at each other in the middle of an unfinished building in the middle of the night. Maybe Jack, seeing Markie—Markie!—with a gun, did suddenly see that, maybe he looked at his own gun and wondered what the hell he was doing. Or maybe he was too drunk. The accident was that Markie's gun went off.

Three days after Jack died, Sally, on the phone to Marian, asked her about attending Jack's funeral. Since high school Marian and Sally had called each other two or three times a day, always something that could not wait, something funny, amazing, or in doubt.

Marian said, “You have to come.”

Sally said, “I'm not sure it would be right.”

“Oh, Sally, no! You should come, of course you should. If Markie's out, I think he should come, too,” Marian added. Surely Markie's bail would be set by then, and they all could pool their savings and get him out. Or the court, seeing the true nature of things, would drop all charges and Markie could come home.

Markie was not out—his bail hearing was finally set, for the day after the funeral, Marian wondering silently how hard his court-appointed lawyer, that arrogant man Constantine, had really tried—but when she went over to Sally's later that day, Tom was there, drinking coffee in Sally's kitchen while Kevin cheerfully pulverized cookies into crumbs on the table.

Marian, who always knocked at Sally's unlocked door but never waited for Sally to come open it, called out, “Hi, Sal,” and had nearly reached the kitchen before she saw Tom. She stopped, unsure of what to do. Tom was a criminal, in his father's profession, and the time had long passed when she was able to pretend that that made no difference. But Tom was also a childhood friend in mourning for his brother.

Kevin beamed and giggled when he saw Marian, pounding his chubby fists in his crumbs as a gesture of welcome. Sally's smile was tired and uncertain. Her beautiful face was ashen, the only color in her skin the smudges below her eyes. Marian crossed the kitchen with fast steps and took Sally in her arms. She hugged her the way she had when Sally fell on her roller skates or spilled her milk when they were young, when no disaster of childhood ever loomed so large that Marian was not able to comfort her, and Marian wanted to wrap her arms around Sally now and keep all bad things from her, to hold her and protect her until Markie came home again.

“I saw Markie this morning,” Sally told her. “He says not to worry, everything will be okay.”

“What about bail? Did you talk to that lawyer?”

“Just now. He thinks bail will be around fifty thousand dollars.”

The figure staggered Marian, but she concealed that. “We'll raise it,” she said. “Jimmy's checking how to borrow against his insurance, and my job has the credit union, and Markie's boss . . . Sal, don't worry—we'll find it.”

Sally nodded, biting her lip. “Mr. Constantine says that's low. For . . . for something like this.” She glanced at Tom, as though afraid what she'd said had hurt him.

Marian, too, looked at Tom. He met her eyes; he rose, moving wearily, and Marian drew a breath: for the first time she could ever remember, Tom looked not like his father, but like his mother, with Peggy's soft, sad smile. “I'll come back, Sal,” he said, his voice quiet.