Miracle on 49th Street

by Mike Lupica

  Molly noticed the only time he was with other people, really with them, was when he was playing basketball with his teammates, and Molly didn’t count that. That was basketball. The rest of the time, he seemed happiest when he was alone, even the kind of alone he had going for him when he was with somebody.

  It was weird, Molly had decided. Here was somebody the whole world thought of as the best team guy going, the one everybody else held up, even from other sports, as the ultimate team player.

  But as soon as the game was over, all he wanted to do was be by himself. It’s why Molly wondered if her mom had been right about him, that Josh Cameron couldn’t really be with anybody. That all he needed to be happy was himself.

  Molly was going to New York with the Celtics.

  She had spent the night in the guest room after the Celtics had won their Friday night game against the Washington Wizards. The plan from there was for Josh to go to a late-morning practice in Waltham, leave with the team for the airport, where the team’s own plane was waiting for them. Molly and Mattie would take the shuttle down to New York about the same time.

  When Josh finally got up about ten, Mattie fixed them all pancakes. He said that since they were all going to get to New York about the same time, anyway, he’d have a car waiting for them at LaGuardia to take them to the team’s hotel. Then they could all go out to an early dinner somewhere, or just have room service. He said the hotel, the Sherry-Netherland, had what he described as some la-di-da restaurant right off its lobby.

  “Sounds like a plan, right?” Josh said.

  Mattie said to Molly, “That okay with you, hon?”

  “That’s what I was asking Molly,” Josh said.

  Mattie winked. “We’re just doing what us girls do all the time,” she said. “Eliminating the middleman.”

  Molly said to both of them, “The shuttle with Mattie sounds like fun. I’ve never been to New York in my whole life.”

  Mattie said, “Done deal, then.”

  She put out her hand for Molly to give her five.

  “Road trip,” Mattie said.

  After breakfast, Mattie walked her back to 1A Joyless Street. Molly picked out some clean clothes, packed them in her duffel, then called Sam to tell him about the road trip.

  “Cool,” he said. Then he asked how much money she was bringing with her. “No money,” Molly said. Sam said, “What?” and told her she sounded like a rookie, that you couldn’t go on the road without what he called “mad money.” Then he told her that he’d meet her in front of Two Commonwealth in fifteen minutes and explain.

  He was waiting at the corner of Commonwealth and Arlington when Molly and Mattie got back.

  “Here,” he said, handing Molly a wadded-up roll of bills that he said added up to a hundred and twenty dollars. Out of what he called his “emergency fund.”

  “Now are you going to tell me what mad money is?” Molly said.

  Sam said, “My mom said that when she was single, she always took money with her when she’d go out on a date, in case she got mad and wanted to go home.”

  “I don’t need this,” Molly said. “I sort of don’t see that happening in New York.”

  “You never know,” Sam said.

  Molly said, “I’m going to think of it as glad money.”

  “Glad?”

  “Glad to be going,” she said. “Maybe I’ll buy you a present with your own money.”

  “Wouldn’t that be like me buying myself a present?”

  Molly gave him a quick hug, which she knew always embarrassed him, and said, “It’s the thought that counts,” and then told him she’d give him a full report on Monday.

  As she was running into the lobby of Two Commonwealth to catch up with Mattie, she heard Sam’s voice behind her.

  “The present doesn’t have to be expensive,” he said.

  The Sunday game was scheduled for seven o’clock at Madison Square Garden. Josh explained it was done that way so that every pro football game except the Sunday night game would be over. Normally Molly wouldn’t have been able to go to a Sunday night game, even in Boston. But this Monday would be one of four or five during the school year when there were teachers’ conferences at the Prescott School. So when the Celtics flew on to Detroit after the game, Molly and Mattie would stay over in New York and take the shuttle home the next morning.

  She was going to have half of Saturday with Josh in New York City and a lot of Sunday afternoon.

  “Even though this is your first trip here,” Mattie said during the ride to the hotel, “you’ve probably seen about as many sights in the big city as he has.”

  Molly had the guidebook Mattie had bought for her at the airport open on her lap.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Mattie shook her head. “His idea of sightseeing is looking out the windows of the bus on the way to the Garden.”

  Molly pointed to her book. “He hasn’t seen the Empire State Building?”

  “Nope.”

  Molly turned another page. “Statue of Liberty?”

  Shake of the head.

  “He has to have seen Central Park.”

  “If he hasn’t, we might have a shot,” Mattie said.

  The Sherry-Netherland was right across the street from the entrance to the park, Mattie showed her. Mattie described it as the Public Garden and the Boston Common times a hundred. She said that Josh had actually helped pick this particular hotel for the Celtics. He liked the idea that it really didn’t look like a hotel in front but more like an apartment building, and because of where it was located on Fifth Avenue, it was hard for people wanting autographs to hang around on the sidewalk without the doorman rousting them.

  “I know they let him call the plays,” Molly said, grinning at Mattie. “But he gets to make the call on hotels, too?”

  “You never heard people talking about the Cameron Rules?” Mattie said. “Sportswriters write that up all the time, saying they’re more golden around the Boston Celtics than the Golden Rule.”

  For today, as much as she ever had, Molly felt like a golden girl, like the girl in The Princess Diaries, one of those happy-ending fairy-tale movies she liked to watch. Like she’d been picked out of the crowd and turned into some kind of royalty. Getting driven to the airport in a limousine. Getting met up by another limousine at LaGuardia Airport, the driver holding a sign with her name on it. She and Mattie staying in a suite that was right next door to Josh’s suite, on a separate floor from all the other Celtics players. Looking out from the living room window at Central Park, which really did seem to go forever, wondering if somehow Josh Cameron had a view of a park wherever he went in his life. There was even a skating rink in this park, Wollman Rink, bigger than the one in Boston Common, so big it even had bleachers around it.

  Molly pointed. “What’s on the other side? Of the park, I mean.”

  Mattie said, “The West Side.”

  “Then what? I’m just trying to get my bearings.”

  “After the West Side comes what people here think of as the real West Side,” Mattie said. “Of the whole darn country.”

  Josh had just called on Mattie’s cell, telling her that the team had just landed, a little after three o’clock. Mattie talked to him for a minute, then motioned for Molly to come get on the phone.

  “What do you want to do when I get to the city?” he said.

  Molly thought about busting him a little, just on account of what Mattie had told her about his history with sightseeing. She might say she couldn’t decide what she wanted to see first, the Statue of Liberty or Yankee Stadium.

  Or maybe she’d just tell him she couldn’t decide which museum she wanted to see first.

  For once, she just came right out with it.

  “I just want to be with you,” she said.

  It was so quiet at his end of the phone, she thought he’d run out of minutes.

  CHAPTER 18

  No hugs when Josh got to their suite.

  The firs
t thing he did was look at his watch.

  He told Molly he’d made a reservation for them at a restaurant he liked a few blocks away, called the Post House. Saying there was a back door he could use, and a table tucked in the back of the restaurant.

  “Sounds like going out to have room service,” Molly said.

  Mattie said, “Girl’s got a point.”

  “Nobody will see us,” Josh said.

  “Whew!” Molly said, making a motion like she was wiping sweat off her forehead. “We wouldn’t want that to happen.”

  “I thought we were losing the sarcasm.”

  “Slipped out.”

  “I’ll see you back here about seven,” he said.

  It was five.

  Molly said, “Wait, where are you going?”

  “I’ve got a team meeting,” he said. “And then some stuff I gotta do.”

  Molly looked at Mattie for help. But Mattie was frowning at Josh Cameron, like people do when they’re trying to remember whether they recognize somebody or not.

  “I thought we were going to get a chance to do stuff between now and dinner,” Molly said.

  “I’m sorry,” Josh said. “This other stuff came up.”

  “But today’s our one day in New York,” Molly said.

  “We’ve got tomorrow,” Josh said.

  “Gee,” Molly said, “do you think it could be any better than today?”

  Mattie, Molly saw, was still staring at Josh. He gave her a quick look and then turned away from her, almost like he was afraid.

  “I can’t help it if I’ve got things to do,” he said.

  “No,” Mattie said. “You can’t help it.”

  Molly didn’t know what else she could say. So she went back over to the window and stared at Central Park, the skating rink in the distance she’d noticed before. Thinking about the day she’d imagined for herself in New York.

  For the two of them.

  “We’ll have a great dinner,” he said. “I promise.”

  Molly didn’t even turn around.

  “Whatever.”

  He made a sound like he was hurt, trying to make a joke out of the whole thing now, staggering backward. “I’m hit,” he said. “By the whatever word.”

  Molly tried to give him the same frown Mattie had. “Is that supposed to be, like, funny?”

  Josh reached into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out his wallet, took out a thick wad of cash, and handed it to Mattie. She looked down at the money and then up at him. “What is this, a tip?”

  “More sarcasm,” he said. “I thought you and Molly could go out. Go shopping or something.”

  “You just go,” Mattie said. “We’ll see you when you get back from that big meeting of yours.”

  “Seriously, take the money and shop,” he said.

  Molly wanted to tell him to take his money and do something with it, even if the suggestion wouldn’t be very ladylike.

  When he was gone and the suite was quiet again, Mattie said, “So what do you want to do, girl?”

  Molly motioned her over to the window and showed her where the skaters were in the park.

  Jen Parker had thought about being an Olympic figure skater someday, until she landed wrong at the junior nationals in Cincinnati when she was thirteen. She told Molly that knee surgeries in those days weren’t as sophisticated as they became later. So you didn’t come back, even at that age, as good as new from torn ligaments. She never got her chance to be one of those little ice princesses who were the stars of every winter Olympics.

  But she still loved to skate, even though she used to tell Molly she was glad that they played loud music at most rinks, so people couldn’t hear her bad knee making the kinds of noises only squeaky doors were supposed to make.

  Molly would tell her, “You’re still the best one out there by far.”

  “You’re very sweet,” she said. “Let’s just say I’m the best one out there who’s going so slow she looks like she’s skating underwater.”

  In London they would skate at the Kew Gardens Ice Rink, at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Or at the Hampton Court Palace Rink, practically next door to Henry VIII’s redbrick palace. Most of the time, they’d go to the Greenwich Ice Rink at the Old Royal Naval College, on the River Thames. Just the two of them. Molly never had any interest in competing. She would see some of the serious little-girl skaters at those places and wonder why they were even out there. They all had the same face on them. Like they’d all been sent to their rooms.

  But she loved to skate. And got better at it, just by watching her mom. She even got to the point where she could do some basic spins and very tricky twirls, moves she’d only try if the Greenwich rink wasn’t too crowded and she didn’t feel like too many people were watching. When her mom’s knee would start to bother her, she’d stop, go sit up in the small bleachers, and applaud silently when Molly would manage to get up in the air, pull off a spin, and land like a champ.

  Anytime her mom said to Molly on a Saturday, “Okay, shop or skate?” Molly would always say the same thing.

  “You even have to ask?”

  She told Mattie all that after they crossed Fifth and made what felt like a pretty long walk to Wollman Rink. She was glad Mattie had ordered her to dress warmly, because it was getting colder now, winter cold, even in the last of the Saturday afternoon sunlight.

  Molly skated in Central Park then, with Mattie watching her from the bleachers. She started off slowly, not having skated since she’d gotten to Boston. Not really wanting to skate ever again, until now. But slowly she picked up speed and confidence, to the point where every time she passed Mattie, she’d try something. A jump. A spin. Some kind of flashy stop. Mattie would occasionally give her a thumbs-up, or just wave. She’d wave back.

  She flew around Wollman Rink, and one time when she came around to where the bleachers were, Mattie was gone.

  And Josh was there.

  She started to skate over, but he made a motion for her to keep going.

  “You’re doing great,” he said.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Mattie has a way of yelling at me even in a note,” he said.

  “I didn’t know she left you a note.”

  “She has secret powers,” he said. “I thought you knew that by now. Now, go skate. I’ll be the one in the stands for once.”

  Now he was her audience. She showed off as much as she possibly could, telling herself not to fall and end up looking like some dorky goof. She didn’t want to look like a total klutz in front of him. She did even more spins and twirls and jumps than she’d done for Mattie. Josh was the one giving her the thumbs-up in approval now. Sometimes a double thumbs-up. She did one spin and looked up at him, and he made the motion like the players did sometimes, like he was trying to pump up the volume. All around her, she could see the lights of New York coming on.

  An hour ago, he couldn’t wait to get away from me, Molly thought. Now he looks like he’s having more fun than anybody here.

  And boys were always saying they couldn’t understand girls.

  She skated until she thought she was going to drop. Picked up one more head of steam, like she was going to go right through the sideboards in front of him, put on the brakes like a pro, spraying ice everywhere.

  He stood and applauded.

  She did a skater’s curtsy.

  “Let’s bounce,” he said.

  They walked back across Central Park and back down Fifth Avenue on the park side, toward the Sherry-Netherland. If people were noticing who he was, even in his knit-cap disguise, they didn’t show it by bothering them. Maybe because Molly was with him.

  He didn’t seem any more comfortable with her here than he was anyplace else.

  Molly thought, At least he’s here.

  He asked her what she thought of New York so far.

  “I think I might have seen the best part of it back there,” she said.

  “I can’t believe you and your mom never got here.”r />
  “She kept saying we’d do it at Christmas,” Molly said. She felt her voice catch a little bit, like a sleeve she’d snagged on something. “She said when she was better we’d come to New York because I had to see the tree at Rockefeller Center at Christmas.”

  “Yeah,” he said in a quiet voice. “She would say that.”

  “How come?”

  “Because we were there once, the last Christmas before she went to Europe,” he said.

  “She never told me that.”

  “She told you everything you know about me,” he said. “Just not everything she knew.”

  He pointed to a bench. “Sit down for a second,” he said.

  UConn was in New York to play a tournament called the Holiday Festival, between Christmas and New Year’s. Just four teams, but still a big deal, because it was in New York, and in Madison Square Garden. If you won your first game, you made the final. UConn’s first game was against Wake Forest, and if they won, they’d play Kansas, the number-one team in the country that year. Jen Parker wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near New York. Her parents were still alive then, and she was supposed to spend the whole Christmas break with them.

  Only she didn’t want to.

  “Why?”

  “Because she knew how scared I was of coming to New York,” he said.

  “You?” Molly said. “Scared about basketball?”

  “This wasn’t just basketball,” he said. “This was basketball at the Garden. They call it the Mecca. The Celtics have won a lot more than the Knicks ever did, but somehow it’s still Madison Square Garden that’s the capital of hoops. And I was sure that I was going to fall on my face. I kept telling that to your mom, and she kept telling me I was crazy, that I was going to be great and then everybody would know about me.”

  “But you didn’t believe her,” Molly said.

  “Listen,” he said, “when you’re a kid, you always think there’s somebody better. I thought I was good enough for my school then. But even if we got lucky in the first game, we had to go up against the number-one team in the next game. Which is where I’d really be found out.”