A Broken Sky

A Broken Sky: A personal recollection of September 11th

We wake before sunrise, grief in our throats. “It’s time,” my husband whispers.

Faint light spills through the slats of our shutters and I wonder if the sky will be thick with weather. Please just don’t let it be that blue – the kind of blue you get when the sky is so clean, so stripped of damp and of remains, that it pierces your eyes with color. 9/11 blue.

It is 2011, September the 11th. God, can it be ten years already?

My husband and I dress without a word and walk out into the brisk Paris early morning. We tread silent streets, hand in hand.  A cool mist prickles my face and I am comforted that the sky will wake behind a cover of clouds.

This is the way we’ll honor today, in the still of morning at Trocadero, standing beneath two makeshift towers. We weren’t supposed to be in Paris. We wanted to return home, as if being there would somehow heal us, standing inside that giant hole in the skyline – that skyline I fell in love with as a little girl, looking to me like a crown of glass and steel. Now, it looks like a face without eyes.

That morning, a decade ago, I am late – messy haired, bleary eyed and aching for caffeine, in a row of silent cubicles and still-sleeping phones. The giant Lucent Technology headquarters building I worked in was fairly empty, seated peacefully in the foothills of Central New Jersey. Nothing had happened yet; it was simply another Tuesday morning. And two men I know were there, in the sky, in a tower, still, at that moment, alive.

Just after nine, the phone rang. It was my ex-fiancé, Ray. It had been weeks since the last call, five months since I had left, and I had just started to feel peace, to feel free, to discover myself again. Our six years together had been a rollercoaster of love and hate, of good times and hell. It had been a desperate love, and for most of those six years I was certain that the only way I could end the pain was by killing myself. After a litany of threats, a few half-hearted attempts, and a shitload of therapy, I finally had walked out and never looked back. When I saw his number on the phone screen, I felt my stomach rise towards my chest.

“Jennifer Douglas,” I had said in perfect indifference.

“Have you seen the news?” he asked. Funny to think how relieved I was at his words. Thank god he’s not calling again to beg me to come back. “I can see it from the roof,” he said. “Some kind of a plane crashed into the towers.” His office was directly across the river; it looked straight onto the World Trade Center.

My office was singing now with phones and talk. Each small grey cubicle was its own news feed. We all travelled back and forth between them; exchanged information, suppositions, excited looks. “Prop plane, I heard.” “This happened before, right?”

God, we didn’t know anything then. We knew absolutely fucking nothing.

For some, work had stopped in our office, and for others, the news was relegated to insignificance, just another story to watch on the evening news. My boss continued his meetings with vendors; discussed streamlining, automating processes, systems glitches, driving for lean. I asked him if we could turn on the television in his office.

Truth be told, aren’t we all waiting for a disaster? For a crisis? For some distraction from the mundane? We love to watch the monster, as long as it does its business far enough away that it’s claws can never reach us. And most of us believed that it was far enough away – believed that we were safe. I know I did.

I think that day my mom was the one that told me how bad it was. I hadn’t seen any accurate news reports yet. Her voice shook with fear. “Jimmy’s there. At Oppenheimer.” My uncle. I had forgotten he worked there. Jimmy, with the boxer build and the Elvis twinkle. My mom’s baby brother Jimmy, never without his dry and punchy sense of humor. My favorite uncle Jimmy, always with an edgy squint, a cigarette and a glass of scotch.

Between the moments I found out about Jimmy and when the towers fell is a blur for me. The phone kept ringing with work; as if no one cared that our city was in flames. I know I answered emails and made appointments and sent system reports and printed documents. I know I raced between televisions and cubicles and conference rooms, trying to keep up with work and with news. I know that I had seen the smoking buildings, had heard a joke made about the telecom lines in lower Manhattan, had started feeling like I was going to puke.

It was at the door of my boss’s office when I saw the second one fall on the television. I don’t remember the first one falling. I don’t think I had known. How can that be? I’m not really sure now, I just know that it didn’t hit me until then. I felt the blood leave my veins and flood into my heart, felt my knees melt and my head become numb. Someone caught me, I think my boss. “My uncle’s dead. He’s there and the towers are gone. They’re all gone.”

Driving home that morning, there wasn’t a single car on the highway. I couldn’t have stayed another second in the office and I couldn’t get home fast enough – home where my mother’s embrace waited, home where I would be safe. I either was driving a million miles an hour or I was barely pressing the gas. It felt like I was in a dream. The voice of the radio newscaster sounded frightened and stumbled over words no one would want to ever have to say.  I scanned the sky, searched for planes that might be headed down towards me, but it was empty, planeless – a barren, blue, broken sky.

Six months after the towers fell, we had taken a helicopter over Ground Zero. It was my birthday present from my boyfriend, Francois – a quiet, morbid celebration. I don’t think I was really prepared to see the empty ground, the dust, smell gravel or tin or heat and wonder if I was breathing in someone’s ashes. From the sky, I remember I could see nearby planes lined for landing. I could hear the rush of the jets that leapt from the ground. Even at a distance, it made me cringe.

I can never look at a plane the same way. Now I always close my eyes as I board. The face of the plane, the sight of its window eyes and giant nose frightens me – it’s size and candor – looking like it’s hungry for buildings and desk lamps and men.

That day, Francois was in Pennsylvania, that other side of the world. It had just been weeks since he had left Lucent and moved there from Jersey City, from the shadow of the towers. Like he almost knew. He had been offered a job in the World Trade Center and had turned it down for one in Philadelphia.

We had only been dating a few months, barely solid, but already using words of love, already feeling comfort in each other’s presence. It was nightfall before he arrived. It was then I found out that Nick was there.

Nick Rowe: Francois’ best friend; my friend. Like Francois, Nick had come to America from South Africa to find the “American Dream” and to flee the violence of Johannesburg. He was somewhere between a boy and a man in that wonderful kind of way. Floppy-hair, honest eyes, dolphin-smile. He laughed like no one was watching, like a child laughs, like he didn’t know he was beautiful.

On that afternoon in September, in my mother’s kitchen, I discovered what was worse than fear: waiting. My mother had spoken to my Aunt Lisa, Jimmy’s wife, several times. Everyone turned to my mother when they needed strength. My mother’s words were like a tonic; she always had the right thing to say when you needed comfort. She had learned those skills the hard way: watching your twelve-year-old daughter die gives you strength, perspective, and a kind of wisdom you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.

Aunt Lisa was certain Jimmy had arrived at work by 8am. He worked in the South Tower on the 107th floor. She hadn’t heard from him since he left for work. She tried to reach him on his cell phone, but it only answered in a flat repeated busy signal.

As the sharp blue of the sky turned soft, then pink, then muddied with dusk, the silence of the phone grew louder. We sat beside it, willing it to ring.

It took forever for Francois to arrive. I called him quickly; I didn’t want to busy the phone line. The turnpike was empty, he said. A procession of black town cars had sped past him like bullets, flanked by state police vehicles, their lights blaring mutely. But nothing else. The world has stopped. We asked him to pick up bottled water.

I remember the first anniversary of September 11th. We had breakfast on the veranda of the Ritz Carlton, around the corner from Ground Zero. Mimosas and pancakes, as I recall. (How could I taste anything but death that day?) Francois took a conference call at 9am. I snuck into a banquet hall where a massive presentation screen played the Ground Zero ceremony. The room was dark except for the glow of the screen. On it, giant faces were streaked with giant tears. A young woman with old eyes spoke. “And my father, William Ralph Raub. I love you, Daddy.” The listing of names.

I swallowed tears all morning, but with each name, the grief swelled inside me, I could feel it swimming in my stomach, hard, loud and violent. As his name grew near, I could feel myself about to explode. Yet, when they reached it, it seemed to pass so quickly, like a drop of rain that races past your eyes. I wanted more. I wanted a pause or a picture or something. But he was just a name on the list. Just another victim. Just another feather lost, floating down in a storm of birds.

I wonder now: what will his name sound like ten years on? Who will say it? Will it be spoken softly? Will it pass by again like nothing? Will it flood my ears like an orchestra, so that I can hear nothing else?

The evening of September 11th, 2001, in the kitchen of my family’s New Jersey home, while a dense fog of ash is still breaking the sky over Manhattan, the news is on the small television on the counter. It plays over and over: the crash, the crowds, the smoke, the collapse. My mother stands on a chair. She throws dishes from the hutch. And I am the target of her rage: me, and my suicide-talk and half-ass attempts. When life is all around us, and death so close. A dish shatters. “What do you want?” She is screaming tears. “What is wrong with you?” A crash on the ceramic tile. I sit on the floor, crying too, loudly. The towers are gone. The towers have disappeared and men and women have disappeared beneath them.

“Why can’t you just fucking appreciate life and everything you have?” The curse stings, because it is a valve, a burst valve inside my mother. Her face is hot and wet and her words are razors, fists – they crash down like dishes, shattered, fragile, sharp and broken. “Wake the fuck up!” she cries. And I am wailing. They’re there. They’re there. My uncle is buried beneath planes and desks, lying amongst murderers. “Why can’t you wake the fuck up?” Then my mother collapsed into the chair, crumpled, deflated, a shell now only filled with tears, empty of words and strength.

I crawl to her and put my head on her lap. She lowers her trembling face onto mine. Our tears find each other’s skin and feel warm and soothed and safe. “God, I love you, Jennifer.” There is still anger that splinters her sobs; it sits resolutely in her voice. There is so much love that it is angry, raging in the face of loss. Our family has had enough loss.

“I love you too, momma. I love you so much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She knows what I am saying, though my words, muddled with tears, are indistinguishable.

And then, at last, the phone rings.

My mother reaches desperately for it.

“Hello?” A breath, and then, “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God, Lisa.” My mother’s eyes closed and she exhaled loudly. Her shoulders dropped. More tears appeared from beneath her closed lids. But these, I somehow knew, were the good kind. “Oh thank God. Thank God!”

My Uncle Jimmy had appeared at six o’clock at the door of their home: dusty, jacketless and in shock. He had seen falling limbs and crumpled bodies. He had seen flames and watched as a giant winged missile punctured the office from which he had just escaped. He had ran and ran as people were trampled beside him and he had crossed the Hudson on an empty ferry and made his way home as a hitchhiker, a ghost passenger in some benevolent car.

Headlights reached in through the front windows of our house and we heard the grind of loose gravel in the driveway. Francois had arrived. I ran out the front door, and dropped into his arms. He held me tight against him, painting me with kisses and tears. Maybe it was that day that sealed us together. He is my husband now.

“Jimmy’s ok,” I said. “He made it home.”

“Thank God.” He said, squeezing me and kissing me on my forehead. Then he pulled back and looked in my eyes. “We haven’t heard from Nick. Nick was there. I think he’s there.”

My stomach sank. Nick. Beautiful, charming, floppy-haired Nick. I could see him winking at me with that boyish smile. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. He told Francois the night before that he was scheduled last minute for a client meeting with the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. No one knew if he had arrived before the planes hit. No one had heard anything from him and his cell phone went directly into voicemail. The waiting process began again.

How long did we sit that night in front of the glowing TV, silent? Did we fall asleep there, in each other’s arms? Did we wake still crying? I don’t know. It was all so long ago. I only know that by morning we knew Nick was dead.

They found Nick’s wallet the day after the towers fell, sitting on top of the rubble. He had been in a conference room next to Windows on the World, waiting for the CEO who never arrived. He fled to the roof with the others from the top floors, and he made several calls from his cell phone, the last of which, we saw on his phone bill, was to 911.

Now, a decade later, Francois and I stand at Trocadero, the vast square of marble and cement that sits in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The square echoes with the sounds of early morning: sweeping, rolling of bottles and crunching of glass, the quiet French mumblings of the cleaning crew. Three soldiers in camouflage patrol the square in a triangular format. They each carry large black machine guns. Behind us, two towers have been erected, made of scaffolding and covered in white canvas. On one, in large black print is written: Le Francais N’oublieront Jamais. On the other, the English translation: The French Will Never Forget.

So will we forget? Should we? Somehow it feels wrong to let go. It feels like it deserves nothing less than a lifetime of mourning. For I live, for I love, for I smile, and they cannot. He cannot. All he can do is sleep his forever sleep.

I read an article recently that contemplated whether or not 9/11 changed the world. Well, I know it changed New York, the sky, my life. It changed the way a plane looks, how safety feels, what a building means, the color blue. It broke the heart of a nation, of a generation, of countless families. It left empty places at thousands of dinner tables, empty halves of thousands of beds. It taught me about love and about anger – and how the one always makes the other more acute.

The grey of the sky lightens and the square fills with tourists. A few drops of rain start to fall on us, standing there, still. Francois kisses me on my cheek and says, “Let’s not be sad today.” I remain silent, memory blocking my throat. I’ve lived ten years with this pain in my heart, with so much anger and rage and love. It’s not because I was close to Nick. It would make my grief feel so much more justified if I was – but, truth be told, he was just my boyfriend’s friend.

So why do I carry this grief like a badge? Is it the scale of tragedy that day that magnifies the singular? Does death cleanse us, clarify our emotions? Or is it just a trick of loss that makes us fall in love with ghosts? I don’t think I want to know the answer. But what I do know is that he was innocent and kind and so alive. And he was murdered in a profound crime of hate.

“Today’s about life.” Francois says. “Let’s appreciate life.” I nod indifferently and watch him turn and start to walk away – away from the towers, away from the mourning, leaving me standing alone, still clutching my grief.

I look up at the two crude towers, looking so small, so inadequate, their covers swelling with the wind. Beneath the English translation, I think I see something. Something is behind those large black letters: words, tiny and barely visible in fine, grey print.

“I think it’s the names,” I call to him. The rain pelts my squinted eyes, desperately straining, searching for ‘Nicolas Rowe.’ “I have to see his name.”

The names are written so faintly, I can scarcely make them out. Only the last few lines are legible, covered by giant block letters. Francois comes back to my side and looks up. “I can’t read anything beyond ‘Forget,’” he says.

For a moment I try to figure out a way that my eyes can reach his name. If I could only see further, get closer, climb the scaffolding, rip down the canvas.

“Let’s go home.” Francois grabs my hand and leads me away from the towers, towards home. And I drop my head and follow – without tears and without reading his name.

And maybe it’s about time. We shouldn’t ever forget, but maybe it’s okay to move on. It is, after all, what we do.

We remember. We struggle. We heal. We persevere.  And life, the cruel and constant time plow, rolls on.

                        For Nicolas Rowe: a boy that I once knew.