Miracle on 49th Street

by Mike Lupica

  Barbara said, “My daughter’s not stupid. Neither is my husband.”

  “So they must have a pretty good sense of what this little girl is all about by now,” Mattie said. “Just tell them that Josh Cameron is a sucker for a story like this.” She gave him a look. “The way most normal people would be.”

  Josh looked at Barbara. “This hasn’t been an easy thing for me to find out,” Josh said. “Now I need to figure out the best way for me to handle it.”

  Barbara Evans stood up.

  “Well, it’s nice to see one thing hasn’t changed,” she said. “It’s still all about you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  You knew all along,” Molly said when they were outside. “Didn’t you?”

  “I knew the minute I set eyes on you at the airport,” Barbara said. “It was like looking at Josh. The young Josh, anyway.”

  “Did you ever say anything to Mom?”

  “Your mom and I always had the same arrangement, from when we ended up roommates freshman year,” Barbara said. “If she wanted me to know something, she told me. I have a feeling it worked that way with him, too. If she’d wanted him to know about you, she would have told him.”

  They were cutting across the Public Garden, past the big statue of George Washington that just said “Washington” on it, as if asking everybody, Is there another Washington worth talking about?

  “This is a bad idea, Molly,” Barbara said. “A monumentally bad idea.”

  “How come you didn’t say that back there?”

  “I told him I’d think about it,” Barbara said. “Now I have.”

  “For ten minutes?” Molly said.

  “I could have given him an answer in ten seconds,” Barbara said. “Your mother was the smart one to the end, obviously. He wasn’t good enough for her, and he isn’t good enough for you.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not your decision to make.”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  Molly stopped near Washington.

  “No,” she said.

  She’d been saying that a lot today.

  “Molly—”

  “You’re not not letting me do this.”

  Barbara motioned for them to sit down at the long bench with the tiny statues of ducklings marching along the path in front of them. Molly liked the ducklings as much as she liked old Washington.

  And she loved this park. Though not so much right now, with Barbara.

  “Hear me out,” Barbara said. “There’s more to this than you know.”

  “No,” Molly said, “you hear me out.”

  “This doesn’t even sound like you.”

  Molly said, “Why? Because I don’t sound like the good orphan girl everybody wants me to be?”

  “He won’t be the father you want him to be. He can’t.”

  “But he is my father,” Molly said. “He’s the only real family I have in the whole world.”

  “He’s Josh Cameron,” Barbara said. “Who frankly hasn’t changed much since college, except that he’s a lot richer now.” She reached over and took Molly’s hands before Molly had a chance to stick them somewhere. “Do you really and truly believe he’s going to make room for a child in his life? You think he won’t hurt you? Nobody ever hurt your mom the way he did.”

  “I’m not a child,” Molly said.

  “Really.”

  “Next year I’m a teenager,” she said. She took her hands away so she could brush imaginary hair off her forehead. “And I already feel older than everybody in my class except Sam.”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  “No, I really don’t,” Molly said.

  A Frisbee landed at their feet. Molly looked up to see that a girl about her age was coming for it. In the distance, she could see the man who was probably the girl’s father, yelling, “Sorry.”

  Molly stood up, made a perfect throw back to him, and sat down.

  “You’re going to get your heart broken,” Barbara said.

  Molly shook her head, hard. “If my heart hasn’t been broken already, it’s not going to get broken.”

  “I meant more broken,” Barbara said. She stopped now and made a sound that was about halfway to a scream, causing a couple who’d just walked past them turn to see what the problem was. “God, there is just too much going on right now.”

  Molly said, “You okay?”

  Barbara smiled. “Not exactly.”

  “You said before there were things I didn’t know,” Molly said. “You didn’t mean just me and Josh, did you?”

  “Something’s come up in the last week with Bill’s job.”

  Molly waited.

  “I was going to tell you last night, you and Kimmy at the same time. But then you told me we had to go see Josh today, it was important…” She clapped her hands together. “Out with it, Barbara.”

  “Out with what?”

  “We’re moving,” Barbara said.

  “Moving,” Molly said.

  “At the end of the year.”

  “Where?” Molly asked.

  “Los Angeles.”

  She might as well have said the moon.

  Bill’s bank had originally wanted someone from Tokyo to open the office in Los Angeles, but that man had left the company suddenly. It was a big promotion for Bill, but the timetable had stayed the same.

  “That’s what all the phone calls late at night have been about,” Molly said.

  “It’s a huge moment in his career,” Barbara said, “and they promise it will only be a few years, tops. But he has to be there by the first of the year, and we’ve made the decision that we don’t want to be separated.”

  “So you’re going.”

  “Right after Christmas,” Barbara said. “We’re all going.”

  “No!” Molly said. “Not now. You can’t. I can’t.”

  “It’s another reason why the whole you-and-Josh thing is a bad idea,” Barbara said. “I can’t let you start something neither one of you can finish.”

  “But he’s my father,” Molly said, knowing she was repeating herself, not caring.

  “Molly,” Barbara said, trying to make her voice as gentle as possible. “You can’t possibly think that you are going to live happily ever after as daddy’s little girl.”

  “But…if I leave now, I’ll never even find out what could have happened.”

  “Which might be a good thing.”

  “You have to let me at least try,” Molly said. All-in now, she thought, like one of Sam’s poker shows. “I’m not saying I’m going to live happily ever after, or whatever,” she said. “But you’ve got to at least give me the chance to get to know him before we go. Please, Barbara.”

  “I don’t want him to hurt you the way he hurt your mother.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Only because I mean it.”

  So Molly hit her with the line from her mom.

  “My mom always said that if you were afraid to get hurt, you were afraid to be really alive,” Molly said.

  Barbara stared at her a long time and then said, in an even quieter voice than before, “Still the smart one.”

  They had the family meeting about Los Angeles at dinner. Kimmy didn’t even act surprised. Then when her dad pressed her a little, she admitted she might have been listening outside his study door one night when she came to say good night to him, so she’d had a couple of days to think about it.

  Even more surprising was Kimmy’s excitement about going.

  “Boston’s all you’ve ever known, honey,” Barb said.

  “Knowing and loving are two different things,” Kimmy said.

  Tell me about it, Molly thought.

  “First of all, I hate the Prescott School for Snobs,” Kimmy said. “And, like, are you kidding? Who wouldn’t want to go to Hollywood? I am going to be soooooo OC.”

  “You watch that show?” Bill Evans said. “You’re twelve.”

  “Dad, get real,” Kimmy said.

  “Yeah, Dad
,” Barb said, putting her hand on his. “Get real.”

  Molly sat there and watched them building excitement about the move, talking about where they might live. Barb told Kimmy and Molly about two schools she’d checked out for them, both willing to accept them at midyear. Molly remembered how different it was when her mom told her they were going to Boston, trying to make it sound this exciting for Molly, even though both of them knew they were going because this was her mom’s last chance.

  “You’re sure you’re okay with this, Molly?” Bill Evans said. “You were just getting used to Boston.”

  Molly decided the best thing to do was fake it.

  “If Kimmy’s ready to go Hollywood,” she said, “so am I.”

  “Wow,” Bill said, “I thought this would be harder. We really are good to go then.”

  She wasn’t going, of course. She wasn’t leaving Boston, and she wasn’t leaving Josh, and she wasn’t moving to the other side of the country.

  But there was no reason why they had to know that.

  “You’re moving?” Sam said, the words coming out more like a groan.

  “They’re moving,” Molly said. “Not me.”

  “Do they know that?”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t worry, you can live with us,” Sam said. “I’ll fix it with my mom.”

  “I’m not going to have to,” Molly said, then she told him about going to Josh’s apartment and how Barbara had finally agreed afterward to let Molly and Josh take things in baby steps in the little time they had left in Boston. Sam asked what baby steps meant, exactly, and Molly told him.

  She could go to home games as long as they weren’t on school nights. She could go to Saturday afternoon games; Barbara had checked the schedule and noticed that the Celtics had a handful of them early in the season. If there was a late practice and Josh said it was all right for Molly to attend, Mattie could pick her up after school and drive her up to Waltham, on the condition that she finish her homework first, during study hall.

  And if anybody asked about this sudden friendship between Josh Cameron and young Molly Parker, they were to all stick to the script that Mattie had pretty much laid out for them in Josh’s apartment: Josh Cameron had developed a soft spot for the daughter of an old school friend, one who’d come up with all these colorful ways to finally meet him.

  “It’s like Annie,” Sam said. “Except that Daddy Warbucks plays point guard for the Celtics.”

  “And he isn’t bald,” Molly said. “And I don’t have the cute dog.”

  “Would it kill you to work with me once in a while?”

  “And I don’t have curly hair,” Molly said. “And I can’t carry a tune to save my life—”

  “You know what’s sad?” Sam said. “People think you’re the quiet one.” There was a pause, and Sam said, “Are you going to tell Josh?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “That you’re moving.”

  “I’m not moving.”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  “No,” Molly said. “I told Barbara not to say anything. I’m not even telling Mattie.”

  “The thinking on this being?”

  “I know Josh Cameron is famous for playing under pressure,” Molly said. “But he’s already under enough pressure from me.”

  There was another pause, and then Sam said, “You think you can do this?”

  “What?”

  “Win him over in six weeks.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Molly said. “Do I have a choice?”

  CHAPTER 15

  They were waiting for Mattie to come pick them up and take them to the Celtics-Knicks game that night at the new Garden. A Friday night game. After the game, they’d all stop for pizza and then Josh would bring them home. When Molly had asked if Sam could come along, Josh had said, “Tell the partner in crime he’s always welcome.”

  Sam wanted to know if “partner in crime” was going to be permanent, and Molly said it was better than the other nickname Josh had for him, which was “Sam the bad actor.”

  For some reason, Molly expected Mattie to be driving. Instead, she showed up in a shiny black Town Car. When she got out of the backseat, Molly saw she was wearing the same coat as before, the same black beret.

  She gestured to the car and said, “Welcome to his world. If it wasn’t for him having to play the games, I worry the boy’s feet would never touch the floor.”

  “Is Josh already at the Garden?” Molly said.

  “Drove himself over there a little while ago,” she said. “Him and his agent. Least he calls him an agent.”

  Sam said, “What do you call him, Mattie?”

  “The squirrel getting four percent,” she said.

  “I take it you don’t like him very much,” Molly said.

  “You’ll probably meet him tonight,” Mattie said. “Check out his eyes while he’s talking to you. They’re always looking every which way, in case somebody drops a twenty-dollar bill and he has to pounce on it.”

  “Are you insane?” Bobby Fishman was saying.

  “You’re shouting at me again,” Josh said.

  “Not at you,” Bobby said. “I am just shouting in general. General managers I shout at. Owners I shout at. Sportswriters? I live to shout at them. But shout at a client? Never. On my mother’s grave.”

  “Your mother lives in Boca Raton and plays golf four days a week,” Josh said.

  “It’s an expression,” Bobby said.

  “You called me insane.”

  “Only because you are.”

  Bobby Fishman was in the passenger seat of the Navigator, holding his BlackBerry in his hand as if it were a grenade he thought might go off at any second.

  “I’m not insane,” Josh said.

  “Crazy people never think they are.”

  “I can’t be nice to this kid?”

  “Nice is sending her an autographed picture and tickets to the game,” Bobby said. “You want to be nice? Buy her a pony. But please don’t start bringing a kid around, one who may or may not be your daughter. You think the press might find a story like that interesting? Because I sort of do.”

  He looked out his window. “Where are we, by the way? Providence?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Josh said.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Bobby said. “I have enough to worry about with Little Miss Marker.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind, you’re too young,” Bobby said.

  “Her name is Molly.”

  “Before you do another thing with her, you and Little Miss Molly are taking one of those tests.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Hello?” Bobby said into his BlackBerry now, like it was a microphone. “Earth to Josh. Of course you can take one of those tests. You go to the hospital, they take a little blood or hair or saliva or whatever they do, and then we eliminate the guesswork.”

  “We can’t,” Josh said. “At least not yet.”

  “And this is because?”

  “Because Molly doesn’t want us to.”

  “Oh,” Bobby said, “of course, that explains everything. I mean, why wouldn’t we want the twelve-year-old to call the shots here?”

  “She wants me to believe her on my own,” Josh said.

  “Just to be sporting, let me ask you a question,” Bobby said. “Do you believe her?”

  Josh was surprised at how easily the word came out of him. Like he was on the court. Not thinking. Just reacting.

  “No,” he said to Bobby Fishman.

  “No?”

  Josh said, “I don’t believe Jen—that’s her mom, the one who died—would have kept this from me all these years. And when she found out she was dying, I can’t believe she thought I was that much of a loser that she couldn’t even tell me then.”

  “I could have told her,” Bobby said. “You don’t even lose at cards.”

  “I mean a loser as a guy,” Josh said. “As a person. The guy she was in lo
ve with once, even if she’s the one who dumped me.”

  “She dumped you?”

  Josh Cameron turned the radio back on. Loud. “Long story,” he said. “And you know how you hate long stories.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Bobby Fishman said. He was happy now. He could talk in his normal loud voice, above the music. “You don’t believe her, but you’re going to hang around with her anyway?”

  “She’s a nice kid,” he said, “for a kid.”

  “Whether she’s yours or not.”

  “Whether she’s mine or not,” Josh Cameron said. “I’d only say this to you. But even if she is mine, I’ve got no place for her in my life.”

  “But you’re going to keep her around until…?” Bobby Fishman let his voice disappear through his open window.

  “Until,” Josh said, “I can find a nice way to get rid of her.”

  Bobby Fishman smiled.

  “I love it when you think like a big-time sports agent,” he said.

  CHAPTER 16

  Kimmy hardly ever took the same bus home that Molly and Sam did, because of ballet. But she was with them today because her ballet teacher, the one trying to make the Prescott School version of The Nutcracker look at least something like the real one, had called in sick.

  Now she was trying to act excited that Molly and Sam were getting to go up to Waltham for the Celtics practice.

  “There’s something I’m not getting,” Kimmy said.

  “Out of the many, many things you don’t get?” Sam said from the seat behind her.

  He couldn’t help himself when Kimmy was around.

  “Wasn’t talking to you,” she said.

  “Just making an observation,” Sam said.

  “If you say mean things to me, I’ll say them back to you,” Kimmy said.

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve run out of things to say about the way I look,” Sam said. “I just look at it as somebody shooting spitballs at a battleship.”

  “Well,” Kimmy said, “you are as wide as Old Ironsides—”

  Sam grabbed his chest with both hands, as if he’d been shot. “Oh no,” he said, looking down in fake horror, “I’m hit.”