Miracle on 49th Street

by Mike Lupica

  Sam was waiting for her in the lobby of his building when Molly finally got there about six-thirty. He said that as soon as Jill the hated housekeeper finished talking to someone else from the Planet Ditz on her cell phone, she’d walk the two of them to Molly’s.

  “Does Jill even know I haven’t been with you all this time?” Molly said.

  “Just because there are so many things Jill doesn’t know, you mean?”

  “I was too polite to put it that way.”

  “Jill barely knows I’ve been with me the last few hours,” Sam said.

  Jill came downstairs when they buzzed her, doing what she did every single time she had to walk Molly home—acting as if they’d interrupted her in the middle of brain surgery.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Jill said. “I’ve got some calls to make.”

  “There’s people you know you haven’t talked to yet today?” Sam said.

  She gave him a look like he was a fly she couldn’t swat.

  “Love the orange streaks in your hair,” Molly said.

  “Whatever!”

  That was pretty much it for conversation the rest of the way. Before Sam left Molly at the front door, he whispered, “I’ll call you when I get home.”

  Molly whispered back, “I don’t think a lot is going to happen between now and then.”

  “You never know,” Sam said.

  Molly walked inside 1A Joy Street. Or 1A Joyless Street, which is the way she really thought of it. Not because of the Evanses. They seemed happy enough there and did their best to make Molly happy.

  It just wasn’t happening.

  Barbara Evans was in the front hall, portable phone in her hand, looking totally bored at whatever she was hearing on the other end, making a spinning motion with her free hand like she wanted the other person to wrap things up sometime before Christmas.

  When Molly walked in, Barbara looked as if the cavalry had just shown up.

  “Listen, dear,” Barbara said into the phone, “Molly just showed up, so I’ve got to run. I’ll call you about the book fair tomorrow.” After she clicked off, she said to herself, “Unless I change all of my phone numbers first.”

  To Molly she said, “Have a good time at the park with Sam?”

  “It’s always a good day when I’m with Sam,” she said.

  “Now, you know I love Sam Bloom,” Barbara said. “But I do wish you’d expand your range of friends.”

  Molly said, “Why?”

  “As a way of expanding your range of interests,” Barbara said, though she never really explained what those interests should be.

  “I’m working on it,” Molly said.

  “And you know that without forcing the sister thing on you”—she made little bracket marks around the word sister, the way she always did—“I would love it if you and Kimmy would spend a little more time together away from school.”

  Kimberly Anne Evans. Bill and Barbara’s twelve-year-old daughter. And only child in the house until Molly showed up.

  Kimmy, Molly had to admit, had been pretty great about Molly rocking her world this way, even though deep down she had to have liked things a lot better the way they were when there was only one little girl at 1A Joyless Street.

  “Kimmy and I are cool,” Molly said.

  “I’m just going to assume that’s a good thing.”

  “It is.”

  “Now, about dinner,” Barbara said.

  It was a game they played almost every night, as if Molly was helping Barbara plan that evening’s menu. She’d ask if such and such a dish was okay, and Molly would say fine.

  “Pasta with broccoli all right, hon?”

  “Fine.”

  “We’ve got some new chocolate low-fat ice cream that tastes just like the real stuff for dessert.”

  Barbara assumed that everybody in the world counted calories as ferociously as she did.

  “Can’t wait,” Molly said and started up the stairs just as Kimmy Evans came bursting through the front door the way she always did, as though she was about to tell you there was fire coming from an upstairs window.

  Molly was halfway up the stairs to her room when she heard Kimmy say the following to her back:

  “Molly Parker, I can’t believe you got to watch Josh Cameron practice without me!”

  CHAPTER 4

  It had never occurred to Molly that somebody else from their school—it was called the Prescott School, but Molly thought of it as the Precious School—would be at Celtics practice.

  Or that if they were at practice, any of them would notice Molly underneath her Red Sox cap.

  Except.

  Except Andrew Safir’s mom had taken him after school.

  He had spotted Molly somehow, way at the top of the bleachers on the other side of the court. He’d tried to find her when it was time to go on the court for autographs, but she was gone.

  When he’d gotten home, he’d called Paul Reilly.

  Whose sister Caroline immediately instant messaged Kimmy Evans and asked why Molly had gotten to go watch the Celtics practice and she hadn’t.

  Which is why Molly stood there now in the Evanses’ front hallway, having been told to march down those stairs right now, young lady, and was totally and screamingly busted.

  “You went to see Josh Cameron?” Barbara said. “On your own? Without asking? Why in the world would you do something like that?”

  “I wanted to tell him about Mom,” Molly said.

  “You couldn’t ask me to do it? This wasn’t something you felt you even had to discuss with me?”

  Molly said, “You knew him in college, too. I figured that if you thought it was important—telling him my mom had died—you would’ve done it already.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was all Molly had.

  Kimmy had already gone to her room by this point, whispering, “I am soooooo sorry,” as she walked past Molly.

  Just Barbara and Molly now, Barbara not even wanting to take the scene into the living room. She wanted to have it out right here and right now. Molly half expected cartoon smoke to start coming out of her ears any second.

  “So there was no need, in your mind, for us to even talk about this.” Barbara hugged herself, like that was going to keep her from exploding all over the front hall. She started pacing in front of Molly, talking to herself as much as she was talking to Molly. “Good God. Josh Cameron.”

  “You sound madder that it was him than you do that I went up there without telling,” Molly said.

  Barbara stopped. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not sure what I’m in more trouble about,” Molly said.

  “You’re in trouble for all of it!” Barbara said, shouting now. “I’m angry about all of it.”

  Molly had never seen her this angry about anything.

  “I’m sorry,” Molly said. “If I had thought—”

  “You didn’t think, that’s the problem,” Barbara said. “Did you?”

  “I just saw where it was Kids Day at the Celtics practice place, and I couldn’t take the chance you wouldn’t bring me.”

  “So now you make up the rules for yourself around here?”

  “I thought you said you liked Josh Cameron when you were all in college?” Molly said.

  “No, I don’t recall as how I ever said that, exactly.”

  “You weren’t all friends?”

  “He was your mom’s boyfriend,” she said. “I was her best friend. Let’s just say we all made that work until he—until your mom went away. I hate to even say this to you, but it’s something you’re going to understand a lot better when you’re older.”

  “So you didn’t like him,” Molly asked.

  “It wasn’t that I didn’t like him,” Barbara said. “I just didn’t think he was right for your mom.” She shook her head now. “Why are we even talking about this? The issue isn’t what I did or did not think of Mr. Josh Cameron. The issue is you, young lady.”

  It was Molly’s ex
perience that “young lady” was never, ever good.

  “I’m just trying to understand.”

  Barbara said, “Understand this: You don’t just follow the rules you like around here and then make up the rest on your own.”

  Molly put her head down, wanting to get off the merry-go-round now, just wanting this to be over. She had known Barbara would rock her world once Kimmy spilled the beans. She just never expected it to be like this.

  “Do you have anything else to say for yourself?” Barbara said now.

  Molly shook her head.

  Barbara said, “You’ve passed on your message to Josh Cameron. You’ve had your little adventure. Let’s just have that be the end of it, please.”

  Molly thinking: If it wasn’t just the beginning.

  But keeping her mouth good and shut.

  “How did you get there, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Trains and buses,” Molly said. “If you can get around London on the tube, you can get to Waltham, believe me.”

  “You know I’m going to have to tell Bill about this when he gets home.”

  Her husband. He had a big job with a Tokyo bank based in Boston, and because of the huge time difference between Boston and Tokyo, it sometimes seemed to Molly as if he were working twenty-four hours a day. But he was nice to Molly when he was around, even if he didn’t go out of his way, the way Barbara did, to make the whole situation at 1A Joyless seem completely wonderful and normal. Molly respected him for it, actually. He didn’t try to play the part of her dad. He had told her that once, not long after her mom had died, stopping in her room before she went to bed.

  “I can’t be something I’m not,” he’d said. “So I’m not going to even attempt to be the father you never had. The best I can hope for is to be your friend.”

  Molly said that was fine with her. It was the closest thing to a heart-to-heart talk they’d ever had. Ever since then, Molly always sort of thought that she and Bill Evans were pretty squared away on things.

  She wasn’t really his daughter.

  She wasn’t Barbara’s daughter.

  She wasn’t Kimmy’s sister.

  That was the deal. And being a real family wasn’t ever going to be the deal, no matter how hard Barbara tried.

  “The two of us will decide what an appropriate response to this should be,” Barbara said. “It’s not even this crazy…adventure. It’s the lie, Molly. I just can’t tolerate lying.”

  “I know,” Molly said. “That’s the part I’m sorriest about.”

  Almost over now.

  She even started inching back toward the stairs.

  Barbara walked across the hall and gave Molly a hug, then quickly pulled back. “You’re a member of this family now,” she said.

  Now there was a whopper.

  “I know,” Molly said.

  “You’re here because your mom and I both wanted you here,” Barbara said. “I promised her I would take care of you. But I can only do that if you let me.”

  Molly looked down at her Converse basketball high-tops, the same ones Josh Cameron wore, with the green Celtics trim on them.

  “It won’t happen again,” she said.

  Not exactly a whopper.

  Maybe a chicken nugget.

  CHAPTER 5

  I am soooo sorry,” Kimmy said again. “If I had thought about this for, like, as long as it takes to dry my hair, I would have been able to figure out that if I didn’t know you were going, then my mom couldn’t possibly know you were going.”

  “No biggie,” Molly said. “I knew I might get found out when I got up there.”

  Kimmy had been waiting in Molly’s room, in the middle of her bed, hugging one of Molly’s pillows and looking as if she might cry.

  “I’ll clean your room for a week,” Kimmy said. “Two weeks. You name it.”

  “It was an accident,” Molly said.

  “I’ll talk to my dad when he gets here,” Kimmy said. “Do my daddy’s-little-girl number on him. Never fails. What do you say to that?”

  What Molly Parker desperately wanted to say: If you leave my room right this minute, I’ll call the whole thing even, no matter what kind of punishment I get from your father.

  But there were no short visits from Kimmy. There were no short conversations. Kimmy could talk, Molly was thinking now, the way Josh Cameron could play basketball. She wasn’t a clone of her mother. Kimmy actually looked more like her father and had his blue eyes and his long legs, but she had definitely inherited her mother’s need for drama.

  After all her years living in London, it sometimes made Molly think of the royal family.

  She was living with the royal family of drama today. Queen Barbara and Princess Kimmy.

  Molly said, “It’s all right. Really.”

  “I waited my whole life to have somebody I could feel was like a sister,” Kimmy said. “And now I pull something like this because of my big stupid mouth.”

  “You didn’t mean to, that’s what I keep trying to tell you.”

  Kimmy, she couldn’t help but notice, was showing absolutely no signs of leaving the room.

  “It doesn’t matter. Nope. No way. You’re not letting me off the hook that easy,” Kimmy said. “You’ve got to let me make it up to you somehow.”

  Molly walked over and hit the On button on the PowerBook that Barbara had bought her at the start of the school year. Hoping that Kimmy would take the hint that maybe, just possibly, there might be something like homework about to break out here any second.

  Not a chance.

  “Well,” Kimmy said, continuing to hold up her end of a conversation only she was really having, “I owe you one.”

  “Deal. We’ll come up with something, I promise.”

  Now, please just…go.

  Molly just wanted to talk to Sam.

  “Soooooo,” Kimmy said, “now that that’s out of the way, tell me everything about the insanely cute Josh Cameron.”

  Molly sighed and turned down the sound on her computer, wishing there was a button like that for Kimberly Anne Evans sometimes.

  Molly said it was pretty much the way she’d explained it to Barbara, that she just went up there to tell Josh Cameron face-to-face about Jen Parker dying.

  “Nothing more to tell,” she said.

  Kimmy wasn’t buying it. “There has to be more to it than that.”

  “Why?” Molly said.

  “Are you sure you don’t have some kind of, like, secret motive for wanting to meet him?”

  Molly turned back around toward her computer, as if making sure she’d turned it off. Just so Kimmy couldn’t see her face. Sometimes Kimmy talked so much, she made you forget that she didn’t miss much around 1A Joyless Street.

  Could she possibly know?

  Molly casually opened the middle drawer of her desk. The blue metal box—with the lock on it—was still there. The box that contained the letters her mom had written Molly the last month of her life.

  Now she turned back around. “A secret motive? What does that mean?”

  “I mean, you could have sent him a letter. Or gotten some kind of e-mail address.”

  “Right. I’m sure e-mails get through to him right away, no problem. He’s probably checking his mail constantly.”

  “Oh, come on. There are ways you could have gotten the message to him.”

  Molly said, “Like I said, I wanted to talk to him in person. Really talk to him. My mom said it’s the way people used to do it before all they had to do was push the Send button.”

  “I guess that’s the part I’m not getting,” Kimmy said.

  Stuck on this now, probably forever.

  “I mean, I know what you told my mom. But what made this such a life-and-death thing all of a sudden?”

  It was a dumb enough thing to say that even Kimmy realized it as soon as it was out of her mouth, like something she had spilled all over the bed.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “No problem.”


  “All I’m saying is, Josh Cameron and your mom hadn’t seen each other since college. That’s what my mom said. They broke up, your mom went off to London, end of story. It was, what, twelve years ago?”

  “Something like that,” Molly said.

  “So how come you thought this news about your mom—as awful as it is—was suddenly, like, something he had to know?”

  Molly had figured out in just a few months how important it was for Kimmy to know stuff. Even the silliest stuff about Molly, about school. About Sam, whom she didn’t even like.

  But there was no way she could know the truth about Josh Cameron. Sam had scared Molly about how easy it was for people to hack into your e-mail if they knew how. Just one of those things he knew that most kids their age didn’t. The only time they ever talked about Josh was either in person or on their cells, and even then they never used his name. So there was no extension Kimmy could have been listening on. And Molly was always ridiculously careful to have her door closed when she and Sam were talking on the phone.

  This had to be just a fishing expedition, in the constant fishing expedition about other people that was Kimmy’s life. It seemed to make her crazy that Molly didn’t share every single detail the way Kimmy did, every single day.

  “Your mom must have told you that Josh and my mom really were like this great romance,” Molly said. “Like in a movie. First love for both of them and all like that. Come on. Adults say all the time you never forget your first love.”

  “Even if you’re Josh Cameron? The world’s most eligible?”

  “Well, I thought it was worth it,” Molly said. She’d had enough. “And now, Miss Kimberly, I’ve got to get some homework done before I get the old hammer dropped on me.”

  “What was he like?”

  Sigh. Getting rid of Kimmy was like telling the wind not to blow.

  Maybe if Molly gave her what she wanted, she’d leave.

  “What was who like?” she said. “Josh?”

  Kimmy said, “No, the new substitute teacher in English. Yes, Josh, you goose.”