Miracle on 49th Street

by Mike Lupica

  Molly held her sides and put her head back as if she were laughing, except no sound came out.

  “Okay, kid, I get it. You don’t like me. I get a lot of that. So we can dispense with the small talk.”

  Molly waited.

  “You want to know why this is going to be the biggest shoe deal in history? Because Josh Cameron isn’t like the other guys.”

  “What other guys?”

  “The bad guys.”

  “What bad guys?”

  “The other stars of our NBA. Not all, mind you. But enough.”

  “L. J. Brown is a star, and he isn’t a bad guy.”

  “Nope,” Bobby Fishman said. “But he isn’t in the upper echelon of stars, either. I’m talking about all those other guys with their attitudes.” He bracketed attitudes with his fingers. “All those guys who tell you that they want you to love them and buy their stuff, but they don’t want to be your role model, they’d rather act like a rock star or a rapper or some bling-bling thing.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Molly said.

  “I think you do. Because you’re smart. Josh Cameron, from the day he got to the pros, has been marketed as the opposite of all that. The last boy next door. He doesn’t get into trouble. He doesn’t brag. He doesn’t smoke or drink or cheat on his wife.”

  “He doesn’t have a wife.”

  Molly looked at the front door again, begging it to open, wanting this to be over.

  “I’m making a point, kid, about the world’s greatest point guard.”

  “What does this have to do with me?” she said.

  “Everything,” Bobby Fishman said. “Josh Cameron can’t have a daughter nobody ever knew about without having a wife nobody ever knew about to go with her.”

  In the distance, Molly heard church bells play “Silver Bells.”

  “Do I really have to draw you a picture?” Bobby Fishman said.

  “People will understand,” Molly said.

  It was what she always told herself. Now she tried to tell Josh’s terrier agent.

  “No, they won’t,” he said.

  Now all Molly could hear was the ticking of the grandfather clock from across the room.

  “You know why his girlfriend hasn’t been coming around? Because she knows about you. Because he told her he had to take pity on this kid belonging to an old girlfriend. Wait till she finds out you’re his kid. You really think she’s going to understand? And if she doesn’t, how’re his millions of fans going to understand?”

  Before Molly could say anything, he kept going. “You will hurt him if you keep hanging around. Shake your head all you want, kid. Stick your fingers in your ears, for all I care. You’re still hearing what I’m telling you. You will hurt him financially, and you will hurt his reputation. People will forgive him, sure, because people do in sports if you’re a great enough player. They’ll forgive you for robbing a bank. But you will hurt him. He won’t tell you that, so I’m telling you.”

  “You’re wrong,” Molly said. “You’re twisting everything around.”

  “No,” Bobby Fishman said, “I’m not. I’m actually trying to get everything straightened out here. It’s time somebody at least told you the truth.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you now?” Molly said.

  “You want to know what my full-time job really is these days? Keeping the media away from doing some heart-warming little feature on Josh and you. Telling them he’s not doing this for publicity. You want to know the real reason? Because I’m not gonna let him look like a liar if the truth about you ever comes out.”

  He leaned forward so far that Molly was afraid he might pitch right over on the carpet.

  This was what he must be like when he’s closing one of his stupid deals.

  “Oh, he’ll try to do the right thing,” Bobby Fishman said. “That’s the kind of guy he is. But it will be the wrongest possible thing for Josh Cameron.”

  In a voice not much more than a whisper, he said, “Are you that selfish that you’d let him do something that will let people bring him down?”

  Molly kept shaking her head. “It’s not like that, what you’re making it sound like.”

  Again in that soft voice he said, “You know it is. You’re a smart kid, remember?”

  He stood up.

  “Do the right thing, kid. And get out of his life.”

  He walked over to the door, the one that never opened in time, and said, “I’m gonna leave now and let you think about what we’ve talked about.”

  “What you talked about,” Molly said. She could feel angry tears pooling up in her eyes, she couldn’t help it. She looked out the window again, trying to blink them away, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing them.

  “Somebody needed to tell you the truth. He knows this could never work, I know it could never work, now you need to know. It could never work. The press will have a field day with a guy they’ve treated like a hero his whole career. All because of you. It’s why you gotta be the one who walks away from this. He never will. It’s not his style.”

  Molly wanted to come up with the right words, find a better way to tell him how wrong he really was.

  But she couldn’t.

  “You can blame this on me if you want,” he said. “But the best thing for everybody, you and me particularly, is to act like this little chat of ours never happened. Keep this our little secret.” He bracketed secret now and gave her one last scary smile. Even his teeth were small. “This is my job, kid,” he said. “Making everybody see what’s best for everybody concerned, even when they don’t want to. Getting everybody on the same page.”

  Bobby Fishman, hand on the door handle, still not quite gone, said, “Don’t get me wrong. He likes you, kid, he really does. But he doesn’t want you around. Can’t have you around, not for the long haul, anyway. He just hasn’t figured out a way to get rid of you without hurting you. But don’t you hurt him because of that.”

  Then he left.

  Molly did the same thing five minutes later, breaking the rule about leaving, not caring about the house rules now. She left a note in the kitchen saying she was going to have Thomas the concierge walk her home and another note on the coffee table next to the presents that said “Merry Christmas.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Josh called the Evanses’ house when he got back from Children’s Hospital, wanting to know why Molly had left. Molly didn’t come to the phone, just stayed in her bed and had Barbara say she’d eaten way too much junk at the game—too much junk always worked—and had gotten sick to her stomach.

  Barbara wasn’t buying that, Molly could tell, but did what Molly asked her anyway.

  When she got off the phone, she came and stood in Molly’s doorway.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Something happened.”

  “No.”

  “I know you don’t like opening up to me,” she said. “Or anybody, with the possible exception of Sam Bloom. But could you make an exception just this once?”

  “I’m fine,” Molly said. “Other than my stomach, I mean.”

  “Sure you are,” Barbara said. “I’m sorry I can’t get a picture of your face right now. We could use it for Christmas cards next year. This is the way you looked when you got back from New York City.”

  Molly pulled the covers back up. “I was going to tell him we were moving,” she said. “I guess it just put a big old knot in my stomach.”

  “I see,” Barbara said, making a gesture with her hand that tried to take in Molly’s whole room. “And speaking of moving, you haven’t done much packing yet.”

  “Not much to pack.”

  Molly saw Kimmy scrunch into the doorway next to her mother. “I’ll help, if you want,” Kimmy said.

  “Thanks,” Molly said. “Maybe tomorrow. Right now I think the best thing would be to get some sleep.”

  Barbara hit the light switch next to the door, then came over
and did something she hardly ever did, kissed Molly good night on the forehead.

  “I’m sure he’s in Los Angeles more than you think,” she said. “Doesn’t he have some kind of actress girlfriend out there?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I know another move must seem hard,” Barbara said. “But maybe a new city is the best way to start a new life. And like I said—”

  “He’s out there all the time,” Molly said.

  Barbara and Kimmy left. Molly lay there and stared up at the ceiling and tried to do what she used to do when she was little, tried to pretend that she was staring through the ceiling and the roof and all the way to the stars in the sky.

  But she was tired of pretending.

  Tired, period.

  She wanted to hate Bobby Fishman more than she already did, make this all his fault.

  But she knew what she really hated was him being right. It always stunk when grown-ups were right, about anything, especially a grown-up like him. All the pretending in the world couldn’t make this work. She was going to leave him, go far away from him, the way her mom did. Maybe that’s the way the story always had to end.

  She had forgotten to turn her phone off. She heard it buzzing on her nightstand. Molly reached over and opened it up and saw Sam’s name and phone number on her caller ID.

  She hit the power button to turn it off and then tried her hardest to sleep until she finally did.

  The next day, Sunday, was December 22.

  Three days until Christmas.

  Four until Los Angeles.

  When she thought Josh would be awake, she screwed up her courage and called over there. Mattie answered.

  Before Molly could ask if she could come over, Mattie said, “You all right? He said you were sick.”

  “My stomach’s better,” she said. “I’m fine now.”

  “Don’t sound fine to me.”

  In a voice that sounded like she’d borrowed it from somebody else, some mean version of Molly Parker, Molly said, “I said I’m fine, Mattie.”

  There was a quiet at the other end of the phone that Molly could almost feel swallow her up, like she was Jonah getting swallowed up by the whale in the Bible story her mom used to read to her.

  “Sorry,” Mattie said finally.

  “No,” Molly said. “I’m sorry.”

  She tried to brighten up her voice. “So, can I come over? I’ve got some pretty cool news for you guys.”

  “Gimme about twenty minutes to wake the dead,” she said.

  Then Mattie said, “I’m waiting to open your present so I can give you yours at the same time.”

  Molly said “cool” again, not even asking if Josh had opened his yet.

  “I waited as long as I could to tell you guys,” Molly was saying in his living room. “But how cool is that, me getting a chance to go live in Hollywood?”

  She had told them. Now she was telling them again, making this sound like the most exciting thing that had ever happened to anybody ever.

  “LA,” Josh said, like somehow he couldn’t process the information Molly had just given them. “When?” he said.

  Mattie didn’t say anything.

  “End of the week,” Molly said.

  “You’re leaving…this week?” he said.

  “Yup.”

  She looked over to the coffee table. There were two presents next to her presents, green wrapping paper instead of the red the Evanses used. It looked like a successful enough wrapping job on both of them that Mattie had to have done it.

  “How long have you known?”

  “I don’t know. Not too long. Maybe a couple of weeks.”

  “You’re moving to…LA?”

  Molly tried her best to still be Miss Smart Mouth. “Is there an echo in here?” she said.

  “How come you waited so long to tell us?” Josh said.

  Mattie still wasn’t saying anything.

  “I guess I didn’t want it to get in the way of anybody’s Christmas, or whatever,” she said. “But then I kind of figured I couldn’t just leave, like, a note under the tree.”

  Their tree was upstairs, in Mattie’s living room.

  Now Mattie got up off the sofa and came across the room and put her arms around Molly.

  “I can’t say good-bye this close to saying hello, little girl,” she said into Molly’s hair.

  Josh said, “You can’t do this now.”

  “Guess our timing isn’t so great, huh? Another one of those things that must run in the family.” She swallowed hard and said, “But this is what I want. So be happy for me, okay?”

  Josh nodded slowly, staring at the floor. He was sitting in his television chair, the one Bobby Fishman had sat in the day before. For a second, Molly thought about how happy Bobby Fishman was going to be when he heard the news. Molly thought, It’ll feel like Christmas every day to him.

  She clapped her hands, trying to look happy. “Let’s open presents!” she said.

  “Ho ho ho,” Mattie said.

  Mattie loved her beret, Molly could tell, but she wasn’t any better at faking happiness than Molly was. She only liked the real thing. It was basically because Mattie was the happiest person Molly had ever known, at least this side of her mom.

  Molly went next, opening Mattie’s, yelling with delight—more fake happiness—when she saw Mattie had gotten her the new iPod nano that had been advertised all over the place during the Christmas season.

  Molly knew the ad by heart.

  “One thousand songs…,” she said.

  “Impossibly small.” Mattie finished the thought for her.

  “I love it,” Molly said.

  “Glad I got it now,” Mattie said. “Don’t want you to be the one girl in Hollywood doesn’t have one of these at the mall, or wherever they go out there.”

  Two presents left on the table.

  Molly’s and Josh’s.

  They agreed to unwrap at the same time.

  Framed photographs.

  Of Jen Parker.

  They had each gotten each other the same thing.

  It was like one of those times when you were with somebody and you both said the same thing at the exact same time. But the only thing Molly could say now, sounding like she was out of breath when she did, was, “Whoa.”

  He’d given her a picture her mom had given him when they were in college. Her mom in his leather jacket, that day he’d told her about, standing at the foot of the Rockefeller Plaza tree, the snow coming down.

  She was laughing.

  “Didn’t know what to get you,” he said. “Then I found this the other day, at the bottom of this box of college stuff I kept meaning to toss out and never did. Now I’m glad I didn’t. The only thing different is, I got a new frame.”

  Molly said, “It’s perfect.”

  “Not the best photo quality in the world,” he said. “I had to run that day we met at the tree and get a cheap camera, ’cause she insisted I take her picture. When we got it developed, she went and had it blown up to this size and gave it to me as a late Christmas present.” He put his hands out. “It was better than anything I could think to buy you.”

  “I love it,” Molly said.

  “Not as much as I love this,” he said.

  The one Molly gave him was one of her and her mom skating. Molly was pretty sure it was the Greenwich rink in London, her mom wearing a red beret like the one Molly had gotten Mattie, trying to laugh it right off the top of her head. She and Molly had posed like ballerinas for the woman from the rink who they’d asked to take their picture, both of them up on their toes, arms up over their heads.

  She had found it a couple of weeks ago, one of those nights going through her mom’s letters and some other photographs. After she did, she took it over to FedEx Kinko’s and had it blown up, then had it framed at this place Barbara liked on Charles Street.

  Josh looked at it a long time and said, “That’s her, all right.”

  If Molly didn’t get ou
t of here, she was going to start crying again. She felt like crying a lot these days. When she was with Mattie. When she was with Sam. Even with the hated Bobby Fishman.

  She turned like she was looking at the big clock so she could close her eyes, hold the tears back one more time.

  “Oh, man, look at the time,” she said. “I’ve still got a ton of packing to do.”

  Josh said he had some time before practice, and then he had to meet with a few Nike guys who were in town, but that maybe they could grab some lunch right now.

  “You know about this crazy sneaker deal, right?” he said.

  Molly nodded, like, You bet. “Biggest in history,” she said. “Bigger than LeBron’s.”

  “So what about lunch?” he said. “You can pack later.”

  Molly said she’d love to, but she promised Sam she’d come over and help him with this big school project that was due tomorrow and he hadn’t even started yet.

  Lie. Whopper.

  “But we’re gonna see each other before you go, right?” he said. “Figure this out?”

  “Absolutely!” Molly said.

  Whopper number two.

  She could feel Mattie’s eyes on her now, like high beams from a car.

  Mattie came over and hugged her again, as if she knew somehow that this was good-bye.

  “Gonna miss you, Miss Miss,” she said.

  Molly said, “Barbara said I could come back a couple of times a year. And maybe you can come out when the Celtics play the Lakers. You’ll probably get sick of me.”

  “Sure,” Mattie said.

  “Bobby says I spend any more time in LA than I do already, I should buy a place out there,” Josh said.

  Good old Bobby.

  “And there’s always summers, right?” Molly said.

  “Right as rain,” Mattie said.

  Molly pulled back from her. “I really do gotta go,” she said. “You know how impatient boys get.”

  They both offered to walk her down Beacon to Sam’s. Molly waved them off. “Barbara gave me cab money because it’s so cold out,” Molly said. “So I’m good.”

  She put the picture of her mom back in its box.

  I’m good?

  That was a good one.