The city was quiet, at least as quiet as it was weekday Could Be, With The cabs fighting the cars fighting the buses fighting the bikes and the pedestrians and the dogs and the kids on their way across town on 6th avenue . As I sat in the coffee shop, slowly calming myself, my hands wrapped around a bowl of latte, I savored this return to normalcy. The vacation was finally over, I had left the twins at school and somehow managed to tear myself away from them in record time.
I had tried everything, read all the books I could find. When they were 4, after I realized I could teach a class on fear of abandonment but could not reassure my own children, I even consulted a child psychiatrist who, after meeting them, simply told me that the twins would outgrow their insecurities when they had “sufficient experience” of me returning when I had said I would. I asked, What is sufficient? He shrugged. I didn’t like the shrug. I resented it. I thought a doctor would have something to offer, tips, exercises. I was willing to accept any blame coming my way to explain my children’s behavior. Maybe I ate too much fish while pregnant. Or didn’t drink enough water. Or didn’t sing enough songs while they were infants. He shrugged again, simply suggesting that my children may have suffered a small trauma while in the womb. Or they were experiencing vicarious trauma, for something I had not properly dealt with in my own life. I could think of no such thing. Nothing “significant” enough to explain why two 4-year olds needed to be hand-held for every single activity, even when their play dates couldn’t run fast enough from their own parents.
I left the doctor’s office none the wiser and attempted to weather the storms.
I had now lived through 6 years of this dictatorial regime, condemned to pee with a child on my lap, to sleep knowing that the smallest noise, even a snore, could unleash the two-head monster that had bunk beds in the other room, 6 years during which I scarcely had a moment to myself because no babysitter would come twice. After going through an alarming number of undergrad students to look after my girls, I realized quickly that the babysitters had even started speaking among themselves and none would dare answer to my calls for help. So after all this time, I had come to the realization that nothing I could do to make my children feel safe and secure would be enough. I would, always, come short. Always, or until they had, how did the good doctor put it, “had sufficient experience” of my faithfulness to my word. I still stayed with the babysitter until the girls were starting to wander around the room. I still worried about what I would find when I returned, or the report I would get from whomever was in charge. But I had, somewhat, come to terms with my failings, and understood that it would take time. And that the best I could do was, aside from being a good mother, to make sure that no adult left with my girls suffered too much. So this morning, the fact that it took me only 20 minutes to settle the girls well enough for me not to feel guilty for leaving them with their teacher made me feel like celebrating. It was getting better. All summer I had seen small improvements, brief moments when the girls forgot to be scared and enjoyed themselves.
I entered a coffee shop and sat down with the students and the artists working at the other tables. I could not do this often; it implied having free time, which had become scarce since Chuck had left us. That lack of time, or relief, was the only downside to our separation. Ever since we had found out that I was expecting twins, Chuck had been an asshole, as if that extra baby that Mr. Planning could not foresee had pushed him back into his adolescence. He left after their first birthday party, simply telling me it — meaning the kids, the noise, the lack of downtime, the burden of responsibilities —would only get worse.
As I sat drinking my coffee and eating a pastry, I smiled at the private joke: it was finally getting better, and I alone would get to enjoy it! Chuck had decided to see the girls only in family gatherings, where he could dump the care of our daughters on his mother, sisters, sister-in-laws; even his brothers where better at this than him. I had his guilty conscience to thank for the fact that he paid, however, his child-support like clockwork, and very generously, I might add, and did not want to formalize our separation by a divorce until either one of us needed it. It was, therefore, the best of both worlds: I didn’t have to move or find cheaper babysitters, and he was free of the care of our children. Free moments, like now, were nevertheless few and far between. Soon, I would have to go back to work. But, I still had an hour.
It didn’t happen suddenly. A murmur started in the coffee shop, and it took a while for it to become strong enough to reach me. A young man stood up, and said in a shaking voice that the World Trade Center had been hit by what was believed to be a plane. I asked him what kind of plane. Where on the tower. Which tower. He didn’t know. He knew nothing, in fact, aside from the small fact that an object hit a tower on a day where you could see for miles. In the back of my mind, I figured either it was a joke, or it was not an accident. A joke, in this oh-so-politically-correct time, seemed unlikely. An accident would have made much more sense had it involved one of those tourist planes over the many midtown buildings concentrated on a small block. Or way downtown, close to Wall Street, in those old streets. But… but no, there was no way that a pilot could forget or lose track of the towers. Not those big monsters. I left $10 on the table, took my bag and left.
I made my way onto the street. There was a hush on the corner of 12 th street and 6 th avenue, even with the screeching of the fire and rescue trucks going downtown. I stood on 6 th , looking at the smoke pouring from the tower. I could not see much, I mean aside from the smoke, and the faces of the other onlookers as we stood there. Around me, there were a few cries, and yet most of us where mostly curious. A plane, there. Why not crash in the river, instead, if a crash was inevitable? I started walking down 6 th , planning to get closer, to get a better view. Somewhere around 4 th street, the vibrations of a sound above me made me, instinctively, crouch. It happened fast, too fast for me to even register it, as if the sound and the vibrations had lingered in me longer to allow me to associate them with the sudden explosion of reds and blacks and white feathery papers that filled the sky.
Now I knew. I knew it could not have been an accident. And I was not alone in the understanding: all around me, the chattering that had united dozens of bystanders stopped and was replaced by a cry, a gasp, and a few curse words. My mind was blank, still inhabited by the vibrations and sounds and papers, still filled with the sudden knowledge that something had shifted, some quiet balance that had kept the world at bay and protected us from the bombs of the others. It had not been peace. Nor had it been, after all, our might. It had, only, been a truce.
I started backing up, unwilling to look anywhere else, yet aware, deep in my mind, that getting away from the buildings could possibly be something along the lines of sanity. I kept bumping on people who merely mumbled instead of the rude words I would have normally received, had I attempted this delicate maneuver on any other day. People were sobbing now, frantically dialing on their cell phones, pointing at the towers. The voices were coming back, hitting higher notes, as the people related to newcomers what had happened. I could not see their faces, as I walked backwards, yet I envied the new guys: they didn’t know. They could still live in that time before the end of the truce, they could still delay the realization. We couldn’t. We, the people who saw, could not tear our collective gaze from the smoking guns ahead of us. I suspected that the images had been seared onto our retinas.
Suddenly, as I was expecting something else to happen, I thought of the girls. I had forgotten them, for a few minutes, and it appeared like an unforgiveable act. If my going to the bathroom scared them, what would this do to them? I turned away from the towers and started running, my bag hitting the crush of people still gathering on the street corners, my mind suddenly filled with one thought: getting to my kids before… I didn’t know before what. I couldn’t finish the thought. Something else, something even worse could happen, would happen, was happening, right now, and I had been stupid enough to attempt to get closer to the buildings, forgetting I had responsibilities, two lovely, so lovely girls.
I saw the streets run by me, 7 th , 8 th , 9 th , 10 th , and finally found myself in front of the school. I was not alone there. Parents where arriving from every direction, talking nervously to one another. Most had been on the subway when it happened, or making their way towards their desks. A few, like me, had seen it from a street corner. Others had just arrived at the school with their excited children, expecting a normal day, protected, by some magical enchantment, from the knowledge that united all the others. I didn’t know these people. My kids were only starting first grade, so I had not made many friends among the parents. Yet, as we stood waiting by the doors for our sons and daughters, knowledge created a bond, however fraught by the differences in understanding and witnessing of something that lacked, at least for now, a distinct meaning. We didn’t know, aside from the little that we knew and could fit in one sentence (two planes hit the towers of the World Trade Center), what it all meant. Was it over? What was happening, high in the towers?
I had left the girls at school less than an hour ago. During that hour, I had seen planes and papers doing things that made no sense. All I wanted was to hold my kids, and promise that I would never leave them to deal alone with all that. I expected them to be scared, troubled, even traumatized by the sounds of the explosions and the sudden change in their routine caused by my arrival at school around 9:30. I expected them to punish me, in a way, for that. I expected them to cling even closer to me now, and it made sense, after all. I suddenly welcomed it. I may have been 36, but if my mother were alive, I would hide on her lap, with her hand stroking my hair, the other one on the small of my back, her voice soothingly telling me that everything would be ok, that we were safe. I wished my mom was still there, because she would have taken us in, my daughters and me, and hugged us until the images of the plane being swallowed by the tower receded from my burnt eyes.
But I was the mother now. So I walked into the school, and stood in front of Mrs. Pauls’ first grade class, expecting to witness some unrest in the classroom. Surely, they had heard. Or at least felt the turmoil that was taking the city. Yet, all 25 kids were sitting in a circle, listening to Mrs. Pauls read a story. Julianne and Katherine were not even side-by-side. Katherine was giggling in the ear of some blond little girl, while Julianne, sitting between a redheaded boy and a sturdy girl, had a serious frown on her face. Mrs. Pauls stood up when she saw me in the doorway. She walked towards me, and though my girls saw me, they didn’t move an inch, simply looking at each other. She asked if I was sure I wanted to “disrupt” the children. As if my coming there to rescue my kids and bring them to safety was more disruptive than what was going on downtown! I was gearing myself for an argument when we heard some yelling. Mrs. Pauls, ever so stoic, walked slowly in the hallway, towards the sound. The principal was standing in front of a TV screen, his hands on his mouth. He turned to face us, and simply said “It’s gone”. What could be gone? “The tower, the other tower. It disappeared.”
As if what I had seen so far made sense, this new level of impossibility struck me to my knees. Where could it have gone? I looked at the images, attempting to decipher the dust and the cloud of debris. Surely, something would be left, at least half of the tower, the one half that wasn’t touched by fire. Mrs Pauls had put her hand on my shoulder. Quietly. If that tower can go, she murmured, then the other one will too. You can’t leave. The children can’t leave.
And so we waited. I sat in the girls’ classroom, watching them listening to Mrs. Pauls’ stories, Katherine and Julianne, giggling girls who now looked nothing like the crying babies I had left 2 hours before. They didn’t even come to sit with me; they stayed in their place, Katherine beside the blond girl, Julianne with the redheaded boy. Until the parents of the other children came, we stayed. And then, around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, when it became somewhat clear that the worst was over, we left. The twins asked for ice cream: it smelled too bad to eat outside, so we bought it and walked home. There, they ran to their room, unfazed by the sounds and smells, and left me alone in the living room. I offered to read them a story, to play with them. I asked if they needed to talk about their day. They shrugged.
They didn’t even realize it when I stepped outside, on the landing, to discuss the day with the neighbors.
I know
It would, for they understand, that his portrait is as true as possible, he would like to say that she was still crying after. That was what had attracted more than his eyes, more than passion waving his hands over his body swimmer although she hated the smell of public pools. After love, she was crying, quiet tears, on either side of her cheeks, at the end outside of his eyes. He was worried the first time, then he realized that it was at that time, when the tears flowed, she enjoyed.
He had known several women during his adult life, women sometimes feel the need to support their orgasm noises, sounds and words, and spent his early years when he needed evidence to suggest adequate fit to give pleasure, he began to distrust noisy. It was so easy, even Peter had to pretend he began to look for other signs in its partners, more discreet signs. The tremor in one hand behind his back. A sound in the back of the throat. Eyelid opening suddenly. Peter loved to follow the rise and the enjoyment of women he met, but some feared the watchful eyes at a time when they would have desired so absorbed in their bodies than their eyes were lover disturb something.
Their first night could be described as an error. A flirt lift too much alcohol. A bed. Peter and Eva. The mess of clothes thrown behind them as they staggered into the room. The cavalcade of hands, heads may face, moving an arm, a leg, to make room for this other thing, this sudden movement unified. A cry, no, not a cry, a sound came from the bottom of the gorge of Eva, and a deeper panting Peter. Sounds as indistinct as their movements. As concentrated as the sensations.
But it was only after things started, after that first night Peter did not notice anything special about Eva, and Eva did that when she had to do, felt what she felt, and went home at dawn with the number of Peter on his Palm Pilot.
He tells it this way, the handrail on the hot metal banister. Here are some stories now that the feet are struggling in the water coming from sprinklers, as useless as a small tea cup to bail the Titanic. He knows that, while he advances, he knows without seeing something that thousands of sheets of paper flying from the top of Tower, confetti for a Tuesday party.
Eva cried. A tear on either side of her face. He knew how she enjoyed. He repeats that he, Peter Thornbridge, 38, as if a foretaste, he kept it alive, it stayed alive. Steps, one after another, the surf on water levels, the sweat on his back and his hand, the heat of the stairwell. With the enjoyment of Eva, small, very small details that prevent it from shaking down ant, wise and row, while his whole body cried out that he must, out now, without delay. Time is not waiting, and yet that is all Peter is now for 49 minutes.
When stops to let another company of firefighters, Peter reads the safety of a fire extinguisher. As if the prospect of fire eating his body, the average man with the concentration required to integrate the rules for using a fire extinguisher. To measure the distance between itself and fire, aim correctly, press the trigger. Peter asked about the number of fire extinguishers in the tower and wondered if anyone up there, working to attack the fire. He begins to descend.
Strange is not it, in a city like New York where, at rush hour, do not hesitate to push to enter the subway, while that to gain a few minutes to arrive earlier at their destination, strange that someone somewhere expects that thousands of people use the stairwells in a calm way and asked. Apparently yes, if it believes the relative calm with which the feet follow the flow of water now continuous sweeping. One step at a time. Politely. Wisely. A little more, and they would take all by the hand, two by two, singing songs from school.
She dreams take off his shoes, his socks, his jacket, his bloody ID card which continues to press on its shores. She dreams mostly repeat his morning back up there. She sat at his desk while his colleagues was frightened, calm, composed, repeating to them that followed them here, right now, do not expect me. Jeered the bill a bit, but the smell of smoke, noises on the upper floors, that would suffice for that left alone, after making her promise that she would find the bottom.
The woman before she goes down with an iron determination. Leah envy, thinking to put a hand on her shoulder and ask, naively, as it does to be so confident when the gypsum falls and towers tremble. She hears roughly and find it strange these words into the mouth of a woman in the stairway of a tower in a New York populated by guessing that Leah and sirens television camera.
On rising, morning after the marriage of Eleonora, Leah felt calm. For the first time since May, insomnia had not tortured. She took it for a sign, confirming that his decision was correct. She knew it would take several weeks to turn around in his things, give items, set the paperwork, make sure that nobody discovers incriminating secrets. It was not much to hide. But Leah had always been keen to preserve her privacy. When she laughed again, and Leah think of this as she is guided by the Chieftain before her, Leah said that growing up in a house with no doors and rooms populated by 5 boys had made her the wild it was. Not surprisingly, she recounted, when girl is caught with his pants the first time she really tries to discover what the girls talking at recess.
The problem, says Leah as she feels behind it the pressure of hundreds of marchers, the problem is that I do not know why I have to rebuild myself. One morning in May, she stood up and everything was complicated. The day before, nothing, no real problem, some financial troubles, a little trouble at all. And then the next morning it was as if the sky had fallen on his head, and she could not get out of bed for two days. Unable to move. Unable to do anything but cry, cry tears that she came from nowhere, who swallowed, choked him. She thought she would die there in his bed on a Saturday in May, while the outside looked like spring to summer. She left the blankets and take over the tears ceased to hold the hoarse cry that shook his body and waited death.
But death did not come. And Leah found momentum, enough to go to the doctor, between bicycles and taxis.
She's better, certainly. Do not spend hours curled up in bed to settle her room and crying sounds she can not recognize. They came from so far. For a few weeks in July, Leah hoped that appeasement announced the end of the vacuum. She wanted to find, look in the mirror without scorn, without seeing the emptiness in her eyes that waved again. But since August, since August 17 in fact, Leah realized that the drug cocktail and the calm smile of his psychologist did hide the fact that big hole that replaces it.
August 17, Leah put on her best dress, the one that always gave him the urge to turn on itself to feel the smoothness and wrinkling of the fabric. The wedding of her friend Eleonora, on a ship, cruising the Hudson River, Leah smiled, while her dress tossed to the wind and the photographer looked into her telling him to settle a bit on the left. She danced, drank a little, ate well. His friends told him she had finally looks better. She nodded, grabbed a glass of champagne. Smiled. It was not a fake smile. But She did not smile for what they all believed.
Leah has never liked to leave things in plan. She came home very late marriage of Eleonora, drunk of sun and sea air. The mind clear, cons, for the first time since that May morning.
Leah fights. Entangled with the jacket in the bag wedged between the ID card and the wallet it has not had time to put in the right compartment. She also fights with shoes too new and too tight, with the desire to sit there, not to move, to cry or to laugh or to cry. Most importantly, Leah fights with itself. This is not new, this struggle, Leah knows her well, it seems that she has lived since his birth. No, this is nothing new. Except that if the fight is the same, the cause this time is different. And it is with this that Leah is struggling, while its not swallow his shoes, that threatens to empty wallet on the floor, and she wondered why she always keeps advancing. The others, she understands. They want to survive. But she?
Leah came to work at 8.30 specific for what she knew his last day of work. Not only for the company. Tuesday would be her last Tuesday, she had decided to end it. His life was not so sad, if not empty. But it brought him nothing. Leah, since May, feels empty. Neutral. That's the good word: neutral. She wants to cry, scream, yell, she would dream to feel something, something other than silence in it which leaves him no respite. She does not smile even when the sun heats it or face the laughter of a child appears out of nowhere. All summer, she waited, hoping that something woke her. Saw a psychologist. Taken drugs, pills yellow, blue, white, who were bewildered and did not put more than the silence in her muted. Be patient, he said both the doctor that the psychologist. It takes time to rebuild.
The problem, says Leah as she feels behind it the pressure of hundreds of marchers, the problem is that I do not know why I have to rebuild myself.
To think much, spend so much time to think the morning of Sept. 11, perhaps it is inevitable that every airport I visit, each airplane in which I find myself either stained by the events of 2001. This morning, waiting for a flight to Toronto. While I try frantically to finish the lecture that I give in a few hours, a woman comes to sit near the window, like me. She has three children: a daughter in a stroller, two boys under 4 years who settled on the windowsill. The woman is a pro at airports in less than two, she opened the bag of children, and spread the floor a few toys: two books, a Pooh Elmo red a Nintendo, a blanket, etc.. Children are at home in this waiting area near the gate 47 from Dorval Airport. In a few minutes, we will enter all the plane, a Boeing 747 that will lead us in Toronto.
I look at this quiet family, the children well behaved, and I imagine them on the plane over Canada. Overlaps another image: the same children, one mother and me, somewhere along the Hudson River, preparing us to die somewhere in the World Trade Center.
Not that I make the flight anxious. Instead, over time, I become increasingly calm and confident air. I am surprised this morning to pack my bags in less than two, and I spent security checks with an efficiency that is comparable to that of George Clooney in Up in the Air . This is not fear that this happening again. It is, rather, as if I saw us, preparing us for an airliner, as well as those who left Boston a September morning.
Lately, I sometimes dream about the next book, to design her in my sleep subject. I wake up, and I forgot everything. Leaving only the current book, this collection filled with characters some of whom, like me this morning, waiting for their flight in the anonymity of an airport lobby. Contamination, it is this: there can be no question that this tour are those of the World Trade Center. He can currently be no question of an airplane without it that I see allow me to continue to imagine the passengers of four flights on September 11. Perhaps this is because the project'm still whole. Perhaps it is because my reinvention of September 11 is not yet complete.
As for trucks that can no longer, after the death of my brother and my own accident, be innocent, perhaps it is also, finally, that September 11 has confirmed what I already knew: a Once aboard the plane, settled more or less comfortably in those seats, we must make, we give up, and know that no matter what happens, we can do nothing.
