I squeezed back but didn’t say what I was thinking: Even in this throng of people—even with David holding my hand—I felt so alone.
“Here, from Pat,” Shelly had said, smiling, a week or so before, referring to the paper’s publisher, Pat Purcell. She thrust two tickets for the Herald’s private box into my hands. I had a feeling she understood my strong desire to attend a concert at Fenway Park had nothing to do with it being the first-ever concert held in the famed home of the Red Sox. What drew me was who was featured in it and the theme of his album: Bruce Springsteen on tour for his 9/11 album, The Rising.
I’d kept a poster of Springsteen on my bedroom wall in high school and in my dorm room in college, but, for the most part, I was a casual fan, not one who attended concerts and knew every song by heart. That changed after I read somewhere how The Rising had come about. I read that one day after the 9/11 attacks, Springsteen was seen in his native New Jersey. A motorist pulled up and rolled down his window. He said, “Bruce, we need you, man.”
I immediately went out and bought the CD. I listened to it over and over again. “Empty Sky.” “Mary’s Place.” “The Rising.” Each word, each melody offering an assurance that the loss wrought by 9/11 was both universally felt and understood implicitly. I even had pressed a copy of the CD into Anne MacFarlane’s hands when I met her for another lunch. “Listen to this,” I told her. “He understands.”
“Bruce, we need you, man.”
I needed him. Somehow, in some way, I hoped his songs would speak to me, that hearing the lyrics firsthand would assuage the loneliness, my sense of isolation from most people’s experience of 9/11.
“You’ve been sued for wrongful death.”
I needed him.
As David and I entered the Herald’s skybox, a handful of people were already there. I noticed a young, muscular man with curly brown hair standing near the window. He seemed to be studying the ball field below.
“I’m Matt West,” he said, reaching out his hand, first to me and then to David. It was only then that I noticed the camera equipment placed next to him on a chair.
I tried to hide my surprise. For months, I had wanted to—and feared—meeting him. But seeing him here was completely unexpected.
David moved away to give us a few minutes alone. I said quietly, “I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks,” he answered, and turned to gaze out at the field below.
“This must be a hard week for you.”
“It’s no different than any other. There’s just more attention on it.” His pain didn’t follow any calendar or anniversary. It was with him always.
Mine, too, I wanted to say, but I didn’t want him to think I equated my grief with his, so I said nothing.
David rejoined us and we made small talk about how he’d snuck the camera with a telephoto lens into the box, a coup for the Herald’s coverage of the event. The concert was about to begin so we moved to the seats outside. Matt settled on the stairs, his camera aimed at the stage below.
The haunting picking of the guitar strings. The minor key. Of all the songs Springsteen could have started with, it was this one that brought me immediately back to Logan that 9/11 morning: “Empty Sky.”
As he sang about the “empty impression” in the bed, wanting a kiss from his lost lover’s lips, wanting an eye for an eye, and waking up to an empty sky, I found I, too, could hardly breathe.
“Two planes are off the radar.”
“A passenger had his throat slashed.”
“Can you give the official okay to open the family assistance center?”
I heard Springsteen sing of blood on the streets and in the ground. But I was no longer at Fenway Park.
The second plane.
The ball of fire.
Black smoke.
Bodies falling.
“They are suggesting she had a duty to warn.”
“Abelman. His name was Daren Abelman.”
I laid my head on David’s shoulder. Tears freely flowed down my face. Nearby, Matt aimed his camera, trying to capture an empty sky.
Chapter Sixteen
A Promise
September 7, 2003—Marblehead
David and I had decided not to tell anyone about the pending legal action. It hadn’t been picked up by the media and we didn’t want it to be. We particularly didn’t want our parents to know, sparing them the worry over what it might mean. While it didn’t appear that a successful suit could have tangible financial ramifications for me, given the airport’s legal indemnification policy for employees, its emotional consequences would be devastating. So when my friend Ann suggested she and I go out one evening, for what had become our tradition of ending the summer season with a drink on the porch of her waterfront club, I agreed. A night of not talking about the lawsuit seemed like a good idea.
As we entered the wide veranda, I saw the familiar tan wooden rocking chairs, gently worn by the sun and sea air, set along the edge of the porch. Ann and I claimed two, facing the changing colors of the sky. The swells in the harbor moved the boats, up and down, up and down. I unconsciously rocked back and forth in unison with them, sipping cold chardonnay, and talked to Ann about our kids and the school year ahead, her youngest son and Jack both entering their last year of preschool.
A good number of people had come onto the porch to enjoy the fading warmth. Ann stood to say hello to a friend talking with a group nearby. I followed her and introduced myself to an older gentleman also standing there, out of courtesy rather than any real desire to engage in conversation. He leaned toward me, the music making it hard to hear, and asked me to repeat my name.
“Ginny Buckingham,” I said, more loudly this time.
“9/11,” he responded.
It sounded like a declaration, as if we were playing a word association game and that was the first thing that had come to mind: “Ginny Buckingham—9/11.”
I took a protective step backward. If the man noticed, he didn’t give any sign.
“We owe you our thanks,” he said. “You did a very good job.”
He touched my arm as I answered, softly, “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say.” I moved away toward Ann, who had sat back down in the rocking chair.
“Ginny Buckingham—9/11.” Whether this linked identity was suggested in kindness as this gentleman meant it, or in anger or sorrow as the plaintiff who sought some recognition of her loss in court, it was an association I so desperately did not want that I almost felt a physical aversion to it, like my body was rejecting a new organ, my own cells attacking who I had become.
The sky was now a mix of vivid pink and slate blue. As I looked at it, I was struck by the jarring juxtaposition of my internal pain and such exquisite beauty. I forced my gaze away and nodded when Ann offered to get us another round.
I had spent years, since I came to Boston at the age of seventeen, building a “Ginny Buckingham” whose name would be associated with good things, with strong things. “Hard worker.” “Smart.” “Successful.” “Competent.” “Loving.” “Good.” Yes, “good” above all else. Through the black-and-white prism of my Catholic upbringing, I accepted a clear paradigm of good versus evil. I endeavored endlessly to fall on the right side. Yet would a “good” person have failed in her duty to warn? Would a “good” person have failed in her fundamental obligation to keep the people using the facilities under her purview safe?
David was already asleep when Ann dropped me at home. I restlessly tossed and turned in bed, the linked identity “Ginny Buckingham—9/11” transformed into an internal debate of “good or evil?”
Which was I? I had spent hundreds, possibly thousands, of hours wrestling with that question, but had come no closer to an answer.
I held my right hand up in front of my face. I couldn’t see it clearly in the darkened bedroom, but I knew what I was looking for w
as there. It had always been there. In the exact middle of the back side of my right hand. A beauty mark. It was perfectly round, dark brown, set against a sea of white skin.
When I was about ten years old, I stood in front of my mother’s light brown wooden bureau, distinguished from my father’s by its large attached mirror. There, in the lacquered tray where odd things collected—pens, a safety pin, a memorial card—was a tube of her foundation makeup. Gently at first and then more vigorously, I rubbed it on my right hand. I was trying to completely cover the beauty mark. I wanted to see what my hand would look like without it. I wanted to be the girl without the hand that had a beauty mark. And even then, as I focused on rubbing the foundation even deeper, I knew there was more to it. I wanted to be someone else. Someone other than the seventh of eight children in a stress-filled, cash-strapped home. Someone recognized as “good” for more than simply not causing her parents any trouble.
I don’t want to be a person who was sued for wrongful death. I don’t want to be the person being held responsible for the death of two little boys’ father. My silent pleas rang in my head.
I want to erase that person. I want to cover her up.
Ginny Buckingham—9/11. I want her to disappear.
September 9, 2003—Devereux Beach, Marblehead
I drove past my street and turned into the beach parking lot. David thought I was still at a meeting downtown. I glanced at the clock: 9:00 p.m. Maddy and Jack should both be asleep by now.
I noticed a handful of other cars as I parked at a slight angle, my headlights pointed toward the water. I had expected the beach to be empty at this time of night. I glanced around. In one car, the driver appeared to be alone. In the other, I saw a couple turned to each other talking, enjoying the romance of a deserted beach on a late-summer evening.
I was here with a different purpose. Could I do it? Did I really want to? There was a certain peace to it. To having the waters close around me. Yet, the water was cold. I involuntarily shuddered. Would it hurt?
I looked around. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to me. No one was going to stop me.
Could I do it?
Jack. Maddy. I pictured their sweet faces. Imagined their eyes gently closed in sleep.
Would they be better off without me? Without my brokenness?
Springsteen’s voice seduced me from the car’s speakers. He seemed to be calling me, reminding me I couldn’t breathe with an empty sky. Ginny, put the car into drive. Press the accelerator.
Make the pain go away.
I turned the key to start the car.
Could I have stopped 9/11? There was nothing I could have done, was there?
I looked toward the water. It was high tide. Maybe twenty yards of beach to the edge of the surf.
Even if I couldn’t have stopped it, some people would always think I could. Ginny Buckingham—9/11.
Springsteen sang on, taunting me.
Jack. Maddy. They didn’t do anything wrong. How could I do this to them?
“If I listen to those words again, I will,” I said out loud, fiercely squeezing my hand around the gearshift. The moonlight on the water seemed to have drawn a path for me to follow. “Go,” I ordered myself. “Go.”
Drive over the sand straight into the waves until the car was enveloped, until the car was swallowed, until I could not breathe.
Go home. Go home. In my mind, I fought back. Pull out of here and go home.
Jack. Maddy.
Like pulling my body out of quicksand, it took all my strength to put the car in reverse, press the gas pedal.
I entered the house. It was dark except for the light in our bedroom and the light in the bathroom at the top of the stairs. I looked in at David. He still had his glasses on. A book was tumbled forward on top of the covers, evidence that he had fallen asleep while in the middle of reading a sentence. Maddy was in her crib, her daisy-shaped night-light glowing steadily in the corner. I could hear her breathing as I passed her door on the way to Jack’s room. It struck me that her breathing was deep, in and out, even and effortless because that is what you do when you are alive, breathe in and out without thinking about it. I was conscious of my own breathing as I entered Jack’s room.
He was sprawled in the middle of the bed, boyish arms and legs claiming every corner of the mattress, stuffed animals spilling out all around him, as if he had dropped down asleep in the middle of a game. I gently placed Special Doggie, the favored black-spotted Dalmatian, on the rocking chair and lay down next to him. The movement disturbed him for a minute, and he squirmed until he found a soft spot in the pillow, then settled back into a deep, peaceful sleep.
I brushed back the lock of blond hair that had fallen across his forehead and reached for his hand. Gently I stroked his palm with my thumb. “I love you, Jack,” I whispered. I didn’t want to wake him up.
But I also wanted him to know I was here, that I want to stay here.
I need something to hold me here, I thought. Like an anchor holding a boat as it is tossed in the waves.
I suddenly realized an anchor was right in front of me.
“Jack, I will never leave you,” I whispered to him. “I promise I will never leave you.”
Deep down I understood that it was a promise I could not keep, not really. We all leave one another sometime. But I wouldn’t choose it. I couldn’t choose it. No matter how desperate I was to escape my own torment. No matter that every time I took a step forward, it seemed I was pushed back two. No matter if the future held only pain. I would not choose to die.
“I promise.”
September 11, 2003—Marblehead
On the second anniversary, the sky was a beautiful, cloudless blue, like in some cruel version of Groundhog Day. I lay in bed under the covers, wishing I could stay there. I wondered if the rest of my life would be like this. Simply surviving from one anniversary to the next. Until I didn’t.
Stop. Jack. Maddy.
I finally got up and robotically went through the morning ritual. Showering. Drying my hair, picking the kids’ clothes out, packing their lunches.
I had finally told David last night about my struggle at the beach. He tried to be supportive. But the idea of wanting to end life was so foreign to him, I wasn’t sure he believed me.
“Don’t you want to see the kids grow up?” he asked. “Don’t you want to dance at their weddings and hold your grandchildren?”
I tried to explain that wasn’t the reality of the choice. It wasn’t between living a life of joy or accepting oblivion. It was living a life of unbearable pain or oblivion. David’s blue eyes radiated concern and kindness, but they also betrayed a hint of frustration. We quickly fell into the pattern of our recurring argument.
“It wasn’t your fault, Virginia,” he said. “If you had made people wait in long lines and take off their shoes to get through security, they would have put you in a straitjacket and taken you away.” He repeated the same points he had made many times before.
“I was blamed for it,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m not making it up.”
“That was just politics,” he said.
We went on like that for a while, each clinging to our own certainties. Anger and stubbornness kept me from voicing this silent plea: Please understand, David, how afraid I am that I am not strong enough to choose a life of pain. But because I stayed silent, he did not understand. And because he didn’t urge me to speak—didn’t really want to know—a distance between us grew.
As I helped Jack into his jacket, I sensed I was clinging to the promise that I made to him like a life ring.
I will never leave you.
“C’mon, honey, time to go to day care.” I picked Maddy up, carrying her on my hip as I took Jack’s hand and led him to the car.
The allure of putting an end to the pain was like a powerful magnet. It drew me
toward it even as I desperately tried to pull myself away. I wondered if this was how suicide happened. Was it something you thought about and carefully planned? Or was it a powerful impulse you couldn’t overcome?
The other magnet that was drawing me on this anniversary was Logan Airport. A couple of weeks earlier, Jose, who was still Massport’s media director, had suggested I come to the memorial service in the airport chapel. “People want to see you,” he said.
The invitation appealed to me. After the lawsuit notification, I’d started to feel being there might be an answer to my loneliness. Maybe at Logan, among the people who had been through 9/11, too, I would find some secret to how they did it. How they got out of bed in the morning and went to work and raised their children.
How they “moved on.”
As I neared the Logan chapel in Terminal C, a TV news crew waiting by the entrance stirred to life. “Hey, isn’t that . . .” I heard one of the crew say, but I didn’t slow down long enough for anyone to shoulder a camera.
I quickly found a seat near some of my former colleagues, whispering a quiet hello, as the service began. Representatives of United and American Airlines stood at the front of the darkened chapel and read a poem written in memory of their airline colleagues, called “American, United.”
As they spoke about the shock of that September morning, I reached back to the pew behind me and grasped the hand of Betty Desrosiers, who had headed the Massport Care Team tending to families after 9/11.
Betty and I tightened our hold on each other, openly weeping, as the poem described the surreal turn our collective love of aviation took, in just minutes, at the hands of hate.
As the poem ended, the airport chaplain, Father Richard, said he would conclude the service by playing “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood.
Oh no, I thought. I can’t do this. As comforting as it was to be with Betty and my other former colleagues, I suddenly wanted to flee, conscious I was just yards from the gates where passengers and crew had boarded United 175 and American 11.
On My Watch Page 15