by Mike Lupica
“So what happened?”
“She left her parents a note, told them she was coming to New York to watch me play, jumped on a train.”
“Sounds like something I’d do, kind of,” Molly said.
“Just like Mattie says,” Josh said, trying to imitate Mattie’s voice. “Wonder where she gets it from?”
She smiled. He smiled. It was like somebody had cast a spell on them, just for this one day and night. She didn’t want anything to break it. She didn’t want the traffic noise to break it, horns that kept blowing every few seconds or the roar of the buses from the bus lane right in front of them. She didn’t want anybody to recognize Josh Cameron, especially right now.
He told her how the UConn team was staying at the big Hyatt hotel near Grand Central Station. He got back there after practice, the day before the Wake Forest game, and there was a message from her mom in his room.
“It just said, ‘Meet me at the tree,’” he said.
“What?” Molly said.
“Meet me at the tree,” he said. “That was her message.”
Molly looked up at him now, eyes wide. “Wow,” she said, almost laughing.
“Wow what?”
“When she was getting sicker at the end,” she said, “that’s what she’d always say to me, to still make me think things were going to be okay. Meet me at the tree.”
“In New York, there’s only one,” he said. “It goes up pretty soon, actually, but they don’t light it until after Thanksgiving. They even make a TV special out of it now.”
There had been a huge snowstorm overnight, he remembered. He said the only thing that would have gotten him out of his room that day would have been basketball.
Or her.
“Remember,” he said, “no cell phones back then. She hadn’t left me a number, or where she was staying. I had to go meet her if I wanted to see her.”
He hadn’t brought any boots. Just his one pair of high-top Converse sneakers, the blue-and-white version in those days be-case UConn wore blue. He had them, a sweatshirt, and the leather jacket she’d given him.
There he was, he said, slogging up Fifth Avenue in the snow, feeling his sneakers getting wetter and wetter. His gamers, he called them. Knowing he wasn’t going to be able to find a pair that looked like them in New York in the next twenty-four hours, wondering how he was going to get them dry before the game.
He finally got to Rockefeller Center, soaking wet, freezing. Molly asked him where Rockefeller Center was. He said only about ten blocks down Fifth from the Sherry-Netherland. Which was roughly the same distance from the Hyatt that day, just coming from the other direction.
“I felt like a snowman by the time I got there,” he said. “Looked like one, too.”
“Was Mom there?”
“Of course not,” he said. “That wouldn’t have had any drama.”
“She wasn’t at the tree like she said?”
He said, “Let me finish.”
There were all sorts of places, he decided when he got there, that could have technically been “at the tree.” So he looked on Forty-ninth Street and Fiftieth Street and went back to Fifth. No sign of her.
“I figured I got stood up,” he said. “It’s still snowing like crazy, remember. So I’m not even paying attention to the skating rink underneath the tree, across from the NBC building there, the one they call 30 Rock.”
“She said it’s the coolest,” Molly said.
A few blocks down, she could see the light from the big clock in front of the Sherry-Netherland. She didn’t care what time it said. It was like they were in a whole different year now.
“All of a sudden I hear the Zamboni machine that cleans the ice,” he continued.
He looked down. Somehow she had convinced the driver to clear a path for her. She had given him some story about how her boyfriend, the big basketball star, was coming and couldn’t he please do this big favor for her, please, please, please?
So there the Zamboni guy was, driving up and back and clearing the snow while Josh wondered what the heck he was doing. Who in New York wanted to skate in weather like this?
“I found out who,” Josh said. “Because out comes this crazy girl, arms out, going fast, like she was trying to fly.”
“My mom,” she said.
“Your mom.”
He leaned over the fence and shouted to her that she was crazy. But he couldn’t stop smiling at the sight of her. She yelled at him to get down there, look who was calling somebody crazy, the guy who was about to be the star of the Holiday Festival.
So he made his way downstairs and clumped across the ice in his wet sneakers, which felt as heavy as snowshoes by then.
She skated over to him. He said, “What are we doing here?”
And she said, “We’re here because this is exactly where we’re supposed to be. You. Me. Us. You’re going to play the best two games you’ve ever played, and I’m going to watch you.”
“You’re sure of that?” he said.
Sure she was sure, Jen Parker said.
He wound up scoring forty points to beat Wake Forest and thirty-five against Kansas two nights later on the night at the Garden when UConn beat the number-one team in the country.
After the game that first night, Josh told Molly, he and her mom walked all the way back to Rockefeller Center from the Garden, snuck down to the ice. She said they had to do it for luck. He said they’d already won the game. She said she wasn’t just talking about basketball.
They went to the same spot where they’d been in the snow and she told him that all happy endings had to have a place where they started.
“This is ours,” she said.
Then she made him promise that he’d bring her back someday.
“Did you?”
Josh Cameron’s eyes landed on the ground like some deflated ball.
“No,” he said.
“No happy ending, huh?” Molly said.
And he said, “I stopped believing in those a long time ago.”
CHAPTER 19
In the morning, Mattie said she was going looking for the nearest church.
Molly told her she was going to stay in the room until Josh got up. They had made a plan to have breakfast at a coffee shop around the corner, then for Molly to ride over to the Garden with him on the team bus. On the day of a game, the Celtics always had a light morning practice, called a shootaround. Josh had said he wanted her to see what New York’s Garden looked and sounded like when it was empty, because it sure wasn’t going to be that way later on.
“Don’t go anywhere until Josh wakes up. Promise?”
“Promise.”
Then Molly said, “I had a great time with him yesterday, Mattie.”
There was a look on Mattie’s face that was almost sad, even though Molly had told her what she thought was a happy thing.
“Know you did, little girl,” Mattie said, then made sure she had a room key in her purse and left.
Molly watched a rerun of Full House on television, the show from when Mary-Kate and Ashley, the Olsen twins, were little and cute. She was about halfway through another Full House when she decided to call Sam. The show always made her think of him because he was the one who had gotten her hooked on it, not because he liked the Olsen twins, but because he said the actor who played the dad was cool.
“Bob Saget is a god,” he would say every time they watched the show together, and every time he did, Molly would mention that she didn’t know what planet Sam Bloom was living on.
Molly called Sam now, telling him she couldn’t wait until Monday. She gave him pretty much a full play-by-play of her Saturday in New York with Josh Cameron.
“You’re wearing him down,” Sam said, “just as I predicted you would.”
“It’s not a fight,” Molly said.
“Didn’t say it was. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be in there swinging.” Then he said he couldn’t believe she’d called in the middle of this particular Full Hou
se. It was the one where the great Saget got a cool girlfriend.
It was ten o’clock when the show ended. Time to get sleepy-head Josh up if he wasn’t up already. She remembered the glad money in the back pocket of her jeans and decided she’d buy breakfast this morning and pay Sam back when she got home.
She made sure she had her key and walked across the hall, ready to ring Josh’s doorbell.
Then she noticed the door was already open a little bit. She could hear loud voices from inside.
“You don’t know what you’re doing! That’s the problem. Well, one of the problems.”
“Bobby,” Josh said. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack. That’s provided we can find your heart.”
“Oh, that’s a good one. Ha ha ha. Look, I’m clutching my chest already.”
Molly knew “Bobby” had to be Bobby Fishman, Josh’s agent. Molly had talked to him a few times on the phone when he’d called the apartment at Two Commonwealth. The only thing he’d ever said to her was, “How you doing, kid? Is he there?”
Now, inside Josh’s suite at the Sherry-Netherland, Molly heard him shouting.
“You’re the one who’s going to give me a heart attack. You not only bring her here, you take her for a walk in Central Park? So maybe somebody can take a picture of the two of you and put it on the front page of the Post?”
“You’re making too much of this.”
“Wait, I’ve got a better idea. Next time just take an ad in the papers. I’ll even write the headline: ‘Me and My Gal.’”
Molly knew she was eavesdropping, knew how much she hated it when she caught Kimmy trying to do the same thing outside the door to her bedroom when she was talking to Sam, especially lately.
But they were talking about her.
Josh said, “I’m going to ask you to do something I know is really hard for you, Bobby.”
“What?”
“Lower your voice.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No, but you are sometimes.”
“I am not funny when I am creating an image for you more wholesome than milk,” he said. “I am not funny. I am money, my friend. And in case you have forgotten, I am about to sign you to the biggest sneaker deal in history because of your image, because you are anti-everything that sports fans don’t like from all the bad boys. You are the good guy. Now, you tell me how it’s going to look to the world if it finds out that Josh Cameron, single basketball star, never-married basketball star, has a kid?”
“When you put it that way, it doesn’t look too good,” Josh said.
“Thank you,” Bobby said.
“Give me a rough estimate on how much this could cost me.”
Like they were talking about buying a car or something.
“With what we’re going to get if we switch to Nike? And the way they plan to promote you as the complete, total opposite of all the bad boys in sports? Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
Josh said, “I believe you.”
The two suites, hers and Josh’s, were both at the end of the hall. Molly looked down the hallway now. Nobody coming from the direction of the elevators. Nobody coming through the doors from the service elevator. She decided that if she saw somebody coming, she’d just whip out her key and go back into her own room.
Bobby Fishman lowered his voice slightly. “This isn’t the way it was supposed to go.”
“There was no way it was supposed to go,” Josh said. “It is what it is.”
Molly felt like she was hiding in the back of the Navigator again.
Bobby said, “Listen, I can tell you like the kid.”
Molly couldn’t hear what Josh said next.
Bobby said, “I’m sure she’s going to grow up to be cuter than Hilary Duff.”
Josh said, “She’s not just cute. She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s even got a mouth on her. She gets it.”
“Well, here’s what I don’t get. If you don’t think she’s your daughter, how come you’re treating her like one?”
Molly could hear herself breathing in and out, feel her head pressed against the cold door frame.
“I’m just treating her nice.”
“No, pal, you’re doing more than that. You’re leading her on, is what you’re doing. And making more trouble for yourself than I make you in endorsement money.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“You pay me to know what you’re doing.”
“You’re good, Bobby. But not that good. I can’t just blow the kid off.”
“So instead you act like you’re trying to adopt her?”
Molly couldn’t move, was frozen where she was, eyes closed. For a second, she pictured what it had been like at Wollman Rink every time she’d skate in front of him and he’d wave, the walk home on Fifth Avenue, the two of them sitting on the bench while he told her about meeting her mom at the tree….
“Let’s play this out,” Josh said finally. “Say I tell her that I like her a lot, but I can’t have her hanging around full-time.”
“I could live with that.”
“I’m not done. Say I do it in a way that makes her mad. Let’s remember who her best friend’s uncle is for a minute.”
“A sports columnist for the Globe.”
“You don’t think they could run to him and tell him that she’s my kid?”
“She says she’s your kid.”
“You know what I’m saying, Bobby.”
“You told me you don’t believe she’s yours.”
“I don’t.”
Molly bit down hard on her lip.
“But you admit she could be,” Bobby Fishman said.
“I told you that from the start,” Josh said. “I gotta brace myself for that possibility.”
Molly thought, The way people brace themselves for really bad news. Or a punch. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe this was some kind of fight, and Molly didn’t know it.
“So for now, just my opinion, I gotta be nice to her,” Josh said. “That way, it might not be as bad later when I tell her that the life I lead now and plan to lead for a long time, the one without a wife, it’s not set up to have a family.”
In her whole life, Molly had never once heard the word family sound like this.
Like a bad word.
Until now.
Amazingly, Bobby Fishman didn’t say anything. Maybe he had finally run out of breath.
“Maybe that way,” Josh said, “she’ll understand better when I explain, if I have to explain, that the only thing that makes sense is shipping her off to boarding school.”
Molly still wasn’t moving as she started to cry, not even bothering to put a hand up to her face to get rid of the tears.
It was then that she heard Mattie’s voice.
“Hey, little girl, what you doin’ out here by yourself?”
Molly whipped her head around and saw Mattie at the other end of the long hallway, starting to take off her coat.
All Molly could do was shake her head. She didn’t know whether Mattie could tell she was crying. She didn’t care. She wasn’t going back to her room. She didn’t want to be in this hotel. She didn’t want to be in New York.
She didn’t want to be anywhere.
She turned the other way and noticed the door with the bright, red “Exit” sign over it.
Molly ran through the door, saw the stairway right in front of her, started taking the stairs two at a time, and jumped to the landing when she was halfway down the first flight.
Flying.
CHAPTER 20
She didn’t know if Mattie, who was slow-moving even when she thought she was going fast, would go back to the elevators and try to beat her to the lobby that way. But after just one day at the Sherry-Netherland, Molly knew you usually had to wait for an elevator to come, especially if you were on one of the high floors like they were.
Or maybe Mattie had gone right into Josh’s suite, thinking that something had just happened in there.
Either way, Molly had time to get away.
She wasn’t going to let them catch her, Molly had made her mind up about that. She wasn’t mad at Mattie. Mattie hadn’t done anything. Mattie had already become her second-best friend in the world, after Sam. But Molly didn’t want Mattie putting her arms around her today and telling her that things were going to be all right. Or that things were going to get better, child. That’s what she called Molly in her sweet way sometimes. Child. But Molly was tired of being treated like one. And she hardly ever felt like one. She was tired of adults telling her that things were going to get better. They had been telling her that since her mom first got sick. First they said her mom was going to get better. That’s what their friends in London said. Then Barbara told her that when they first got to Boston so the specialists at Mass General could take care of Jen Parker. She’s going to beat this thing, that’s what everybody kept saying.
Until she didn’t beat it.
So her mom didn’t get better, after all.
Then it was things that were going to.
What things? Molly wanted to scream at them sometimes, at the top of her lungs.
Because they couldn’t possibly mean the things she was never going to get to do with her mom. Or the things she was never going to get to share with her. They couldn’t mean the trip to the stupid tree in Rockefeller Center they were never going to make when she was better, because she never got better.
Now she didn’t want anybody telling her that this was some big misunderstanding, that things were going to get better with Josh Cameron, who only wanted to be with her until he could figure out a way not to be with her.
She didn’t want any adult, not even Mattie, the best adult she’d ever met outside her mom, telling her that she hadn’t really heard what she knew she’d just heard from the father she now realized she was never going to have.
Whether he was her real father or not.
Maybe he planned on sending her back to Europe for boarding school. Maybe that was far enough away for him. Maybe he knew that worked since her mom had gone that far to get away from him once.
It was what Molly wanted to do right now. Get away from him. He didn’t want to be with her? Okay. She didn’t want to be with him. She didn’t want anybody, and she didn’t need anybody, not even Mattie.
