The music stopped and the skating teacher, Miss Carr, who had brought twelve students to Rockefeller Center as a special treat, motioned that it was time to go. Marissa did one final pirouette before she coasted to the exit. The minute she started to untie her laces the hurt came back. She could feel it growing around her heart and filling her chest and then rising like a tide into her throat. But though it was a struggle, she managed to keep it from pressing against her eyes.
“You’re a terrific skater,” one of the attendants said. “You’ll be a star like Tara Lipinsky when you grow up.”
NorNor used to tell her that all the time. Before she could help herself, Marissa’s eyes began to blur. Turning her head so that the attendant wouldn’t see that she was almost crying, she looked straight into the eyes of a man who was standing at the fence around the rink. He was wearing a funny-looking hat and coat, but he had a nice face and he was sort of smiling at her.
“Come along, Marissa,” Miss Carr called, and Marissa, hearing the slightly grouchy tone in her teacher’s voice, began to run to catch up with the other kids.
“It seems familiar and yet so different,” Sterling murmured to himself as he glanced around Rockefeller Center. For one thing it was far more crowded than the last time he was here. Every inch of space seemed to be filled with people. Some were carrying shopping bags laden with gifts, hurrying about, while others stood gazing up at the big tree.
This tree seemed taller than the last one he had seen here-forty-six years ago-and it had more lights on it than he remembered. It was magnificent, but so different from the otherworldly light he had experienced in the celestial conference room.
Even though he’d grown up on Seventieth Street off Fifth Avenue, and lived most of his life in Manhattan, a sudden wave of homesickness for the celestial life swept over him. He needed to find the person he was supposed to help so he could complete his mission.
Two young children came racing toward him. He stepped aside before they ran into him, then realized he had bumped into a woman who was admiring the tree.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I hope I didn’t hurt you?” She did not look at him or indicate that she had heard a single word he said, or even that she’d felt the bump.
She doesn’t know I’m here, he realized. He had a moment of total dismay. How can I help someone if that person can’t see or hear me? he wondered. The council really left me to sink or swim on my own.
Sterling looked into the faces of the passersby. They were talking to each other, laughing, carrying packages, pointing to the tree. No one seemed to be in any special distress. He thought of how the admiral said he never helped an old lady cross the street. Maybe he should try to find one now.
He walked quickly toward Fifth Avenue and was appalled at the volume of traffic he saw. He passed a shop window, then stopped, astonished when he saw his reflection gazing back at him. Other people couldn’t see him, but he could see himself. He studied his image in the window. Not bad, old boy, he thought admiringly. It was the first time he’d seen his reflection since that fateful morning when he left for the golf course. He noted his salt-and-pepper hair, in the early stages of recession, his somewhat angular features, his lean, muscular body. He was wearing his winter outerwear: a dark blue chesterfield coat with a velvet collar, his favorite hat, a gray felt homburg, and gray kidskin gloves. Noticing the way other people were dressed, he realized that his clothing must have gone out of style.
If people could see me, they’d think I was heading for a costume party, he decided.
At Fifth Avenue, he looked uptown. His best friend used to work at American President Lines. The office was gone. He was aware that many of the shops and firms that he remembered had been replaced. Well, it has been forty-six years, he thought. Now, where is the sweet old lady who requires assistance?
It was almost as though the council had heard him. An elderly woman with a cane began crossing the street as the light was turning red. That’s too dangerous, he thought, even though the traffic was barely crawling.
Taking long strides, he rushed to assist her, but was chagrined to see that a young man had recognized her plight and was already grabbing her elbow.
“Leave me alone,” she screamed. “I’ve gotten by for a long time without the likes of you trying to grab my pocketbook.”
The young man muttered something under his breath, dropped her arm, and left her in the middle of the street. Horns blared, but the traffic stopped as, without any indication of haste, the old lady made her way to the curb.
Clearly the council didn’t send me back to earth for her, Sterling decided.
There was a long line in front of the Saks Fifth Avenue windows. He wondered what they were looking at that was so special. Nothing but clothes was ever displayed in those windows, he thought. From the corner of his eye he could see the spires of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and he felt his sense of urgency deepen.
Let’s reason this out, he thought. I was sent to help someone, and I was placed in Rockefeller Center. That certainly suggests that I’m supposed to begin my task there. Sterling turned and retraced his steps.
With ever-increasing care he studied the faces of the people he was passing. A couple walked by, both wearing skintight, black leather outfits, both also appearing to have been scalped. Pierced noses and eyebrows completed the fashion statement. He tried not to stare. Times sure have changed, he thought.
As he moved through the crowd, he sensed he was being drawn back toward the majestic Christmas tree that was the heart of the holiday season at Rockefeller Center.
He found himself standing next to a more traditional looking young couple, holding hands and appearing to be very much in love. He felt like an eavesdropper, but he had to hear what they were saying. Something made him certain the young man was about to propose. Go for it, he thought. Before it’s too late.
“I’ve decided it’s time,” the young man said.
“I’m ready too.” The girl’s eyes were shining.
Where’s the ring? Sterling wondered.
“We’ll move in together for six months and see how it works out.”
The young woman looked blissful. “I’m so happy,” she whispered.
Shaking his head, Sterling turned away. That was never an option in my time, he told himself. Somewhat discouraged, he walked to the railing overlooking the ice-skating rink and looked down. The music was just ending, and skaters were heading for the exit. He saw one little girl give a final twirl. She’s very good, he thought admiringly.
A moment later she looked up, and he could see that she was trying to blink back tears. Their eyes locked. Does she see me? Sterling wondered. He couldn’t be sure, but he was certain that she had sensed his presence, and that she needed him. As he watched her slowly skate off the ice, her shoulders drooping noticeably, he knew with certainty that she was the one he had been sent to help.
He watched as she changed into her shoes and then headed up the stairs from the rink. He momentarily lost her in the crowd, but then caught up with her just as she was boarding a van marked MADISON VILLAGE SCHOOLS that was waiting on Forty-ninth Street. So that’s where they were going, he thought-Long Island. He heard the teacher call his new little charge Marissa. Obviously the youngest student in the group, she went straight to the back and sat alone in the last seat. Quickly becoming comfortable in the knowledge that no one could see him, he followed the little girl onto the van and slid into the seat across the aisle from her. She glanced in his direction several times, as if she somehow were aware that he was there.
Sterling settled back. He was on his way. He looked over at Marissa, who had leaned against the window and closed her eyes. What was weighing so heavily on that little girl’s heart? Who was she thinking about?
He couldn’t wait to see what was going on in her home.
“I can’t believe it. Another Christmas with Mama so many miles away.” Eddie Badgett was close to tears. “I miss my homeland. I miss my mam
a. I want to see her.”
His ruddy face dissolved in grief. He ran his thick fingers through his plentiful grizzled hair.
The Yuletide season had thrown Eddie into a blue funk that all his worldly wealth, accumulated through loan-sharking and pyramid schemes, could not erase.
He was speaking to his brother Junior, who, at fifty-four, was three years younger. Junior had been named for their father, who had spent most of his sons’ lives incarcerated in a dank prison cell in Wallonia, a tiny country bordering Albania.
The brothers were in the room their pricey decorator had grandly dubbed the library, and which he had filled with books that neither one of them had any intention of reading.
The Badgetts’ mansion, set on twelve acres on Long Island’s North Shore gold coast, was a tribute to the ability of the brothers to separate other human beings from their hard-earned assets.
Their lawyer, Charlie Santoli, was with them in the library, seated at the ornate marble table, his briefcase beside him, an open file in front of him.
Santoli, a small, neat, sixtyish man with the unfortunate tendency to complete his daily toilette with a substantial quantity of Manly Elegance cologne, eyed the brothers with his usual combination of disdain and fear.
It frequently occurred to him that in appearance the pair resembled a bowling ball and a baseball bat. Eddie was short, squat, rounded, hard. Junior was tall, lean, powerful. And sinister-he could chill a room with his smile or even the grin he considered ingratiating.
Charlie’s mouth was dry. It was his unhappy duty to tell the brothers that he’d been unable to get another postponement of their trial for racketeering, loan-sharking, arson, and attempted murder. Which meant that Billy Campbell, the handsome, thirty-year-old, climbing-the-charts rock singer, and his glamorous mother, aging cabaret singer and popular restaurant owner Nor Kelly, would be whisked out of hiding and brought to federal court. Their testimony would put Eddie and Junior in prison cells that they could cover with pictures of Mama, because they’d never lay eyes on her again. But Santoli knew that, even from prison, they would manage to make sure that Billy Campbell never sang another note, and that his mother, Nor Kelly, never welcomed another patron to her restaurant.
“You’re too scared to talk to us,” Junior barked. “But you’d better start. We’re all ears.”
“Yeah,” Eddie echoed, as he dabbed his eyes and blew his nose, “we’re all ears.”
Madison Village was a few exits past Syosset on the Long Island Expressway.
At the school parking lot, Sterling followed Marissa off the van. Wet snowflakes swirled around them. A guy in his late thirties, with thinning sandy hair-tall, lanky, the kind Sterling ’s mother would describe as “a long drink of water”-called to Marissa and waved vigorously.
“Over here, honey pie. Hurry. No hat on? You’ll catch a cold.”
Sterling heard Marissa groan as she ran toward a beige sedan parked in the midst of a half-dozen vehicles that looked to Sterling more like trucks than cars. He had noticed a lot of this kind of vehicle on the highway. He shrugged. Just another change in the last forty-six years.
Marissa said, “Hi, Roy,” as she hopped into the front seat. Sterling squeezed himself into the back between two tiny seats that were obviously for very small children. What will they think of next? Sterling wondered. When I was a toddler, my mother used to drive with me in her lap and let me help her steer.
“How’s our little Olympic skater?” Roy asked Marissa. Sterling could tell he was trying his best to be pleasant, but Marissa wasn’t having any of it.
“Good,” she replied without a trace of enthusiasm.
Who is this guy? Sterling wondered. It can’t be her father. Maybe an uncle? The mother’s boyfriend?
“Fasten your seat belt, princess,” Roy cautioned in a too-cheery voice.
Honey pie? Princess? Olympic skater? This guy is embarrassing, Sterling thought.
Give me a break, Marissa sighed.
Startled, Sterling looked for Roy ’s reaction. There was none. Roy was staring straight ahead, paying rapt attention to the road. His hands were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, and he was driving ten miles below the speed limit.
I could skate home faster, Marissa moaned.
Sterling was inordinately pleased to realize that he not only had the power to make himself visible to her on demand, but when he tuned in, he could read her thoughts as well. The Heavenly Council was obviously making certain tools and powers available to him, but leaving it up to him to discover their extent. They certainly weren’t going to make it easy for him.
He leaned back, aware that even though he was not there in the flesh, he nonetheless felt crowded and uncomfortable. He had had much the same reaction when he’d bumped into the woman at the skating rink.
The rest of the seven-minute ride home was spent mostly in silence, except for the radio, which was tuned to a station playing particularly bland music.
Marissa remembered the time she had switched the station in Daddy’s car to the one that played this stuff. He had said, “You’re kidding! Haven’t I given you any taste in music?”
“This is the station Roy listens to!” Marissa had cried triumphantly. They had laughed together.
“How your mother went from me to him I’ll never know,” Daddy had marveled.
So that’s it, Sterling thought. Roy is her stepfather. But where’s her father, and why, now that she’s thought about him, is she both sad and angry?
“ Roy went to pick her up. They should be here any minute, but I don’t think she’ll want to talk to you, Billy. I’ve tried to explain that it isn’t your fault that you and Nor have to stay away for a while, but she isn’t buying it.” Denise Ward was on her cordless phone, talking to Marissa’s father, her ex-husband, and trying to keep her two-year-old twin boys from pulling down the Christmas tree.
“I understand, but it’s killing me that-”
“Roy Junior, let go of that tinsel!” Denise interrupted, her voice rising. “Robert, leave the baby Jesus alone. I said… Hold on, Billy.”
Two thousand miles away, Billy Campbell’s concerned expression cleared for a moment. He was holding up the receiver so that his mother, Nor Kelly, could hear the conversation. Now he raised his eyebrows. “I think the baby Jesus just went flying across the room,” he whispered.
“Sorry, Billy,” Denise said, back on the phone. “Look, it’s pretty hectic here. The munchkins are all excited about Christmas. Maybe you’d better call back in fifteen minutes, even though it’s going to be a waste of time. Marissa just doesn’t want to talk to either you or Nor.”
“Denise, I know you’ve got your hands full,” Billy Campbell said quietly. “You have the packages we sent, but is there anything Marissa really needs? Maybe she’s talked about something special I could still get for her.”
He heard a loud crash and the sound of a wailing two-year-old.
“Oh my God, the Waterford angel,” Denise Ward nearly sobbed. “Don’t go near it, Robert. Do you hear me? You’ll get cut.” Her voice taut with anger, she snapped, “You want to know what Marissa needs, Billy? She needs you and Nor, and she needs both of you soon. I’m worried sick about her. Roy is too. He tries so hard with her, and she simply won’t respond.”
“How do you think I feel, Denise?” Billy asked, his voice rising. “I’d give my right arm to be with Marissa. My guts are torn out every day that I’m not with her. I’m grateful that Roy is there for her, but she’s my kid and I miss her.”
“I think of how lucky I am to have met a dependable man who has a nice steady job, who isn’t out till all hours playing with a rock group, and doesn’t get himself into situations where he has to hightail it out of town.” Denise did not pause for breath. “Marissa is hurting. Have you got that, Billy? Her birthday is in four days. Christmas Eve. I don’t know what she’ll be like when you’re not here for that. The child feels abandoned.”
Nor Kelly saw the expression of pain
that came over her son’s face and watched as he clasped his hand over his forehead. Her ex-daughter-in-law was a good mother, but was nearing the end of her rope out of frustration with the situation. She wanted them back for Marissa’s sake, but would be frantic with worry that Marissa might be in danger if they were around.
“So, Billy, I’ll tell her you called. I’ve got to hang up. Oh, wait a minute. The car just pulled into the driveway. I’ll see if she’ll talk to you.”
A nice house, Sterling thought as he followed Marissa and Roy up the steps. Tudor style. Evergreens covered with blue lights. A small sleigh with Santa and the eight reindeer on the lawn. Everything pristine. He was sure Roy was a neatnik.
Roy unlocked the door and flung it open. “Where are my munchkins?” he called playfully. “Roy Junior, Robert, your daddy’s back.”
Sterling jumped aside as two identical sandy-haired toddlers raced toward them. He could see into the living room where a pretty blond woman, looking extremely harried, was holding a phone with no cord (obviously another innovation since Sterling ’s departure). She gestured to Marissa. “Your dad and NorNor want to talk to you very, very much,” she said.
Marissa walked into the living room, took the phone from her mother, and to Sterling ’s astonishment, replaced the receiver on the cradle, and, her eyes brimming with tears, ran upstairs.
Wow! Sterling thought.
He didn’t yet know what the problem was, but he empathized with the helpless glance Marissa’s mother exchanged with her husband. It looks as though I’ve got my work cut out for me, he decided. Marissa needs help now.
He followed Marissa up the stairs and knocked on the door of her room.
“Please leave me alone, Mom. I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to eat.”
“It’s not Mom, Marissa,” Sterling said.
He heard the lock turn, and the door opened slowly. Marissa’s eyes widened, and her woebegone expression changed to one of astonishment. “I saw you when I was skating and then when I got in the van,” she whispered. “But then I didn’t see you anymore. Are you a ghost?”
He Sees You When You're Sleeping Page 2
