The Heavens

by Sandra Newman

  In the living room she found Sabine and Ben and Martin and Martin’s ex-boyfriend, James. They were all hunched forward toward the TV. On the screen, there was a scene of wreckage and smoke and a reporter talking rapidly, intently. Then it cut to an image of a skyscraper, steely, gray, and anonymous; a little airplane ran into its flank with a puff of fire.

  There was a war going on in this world, Kate guessed, a war in which airplanes were used as weapons. The skyscraper seemed to be a major development, but she couldn’t tell how long the war had gone on. She didn’t know if she should already know about the skyscraper. She couldn’t guess what a normal person would say.

  At last she said, “I just woke up. Has anything important happened?”

  19

  Ben had arrived at work that morning knowing nothing. It was Midtown and the towers hadn’t fallen yet. When he got out of the train, the sky was blue. He came into the office and found everyone gathered round a television set, their backs tense, and a man saying nervously, “We ought to get out of here. We’re sitting ducks here.”

  First, Ben thought something had happened to ExxonMobil. Then people noticed him and manically explained, talking over each other, contradicting each other. On the television, planes flew into the towers, again and again, from different angles. Tiny figures leapt and dropped from windows. Ben’s body understood and was high on fear, sweating and needing to punch something, while his mind kept insisting it couldn’t really be as serious as it seemed. Someone else straggled in late and, as Ben joined in the manic explanations, behind his back, the news reports changed. The Pentagon had been attacked. After that, he was afraid to look away from the TV.

  Then it seemed to go on a long time, with all of them stalled, in a static hysteria, pacing to the window where they couldn’t see anything, jabbering and hushing each other and jabbering. A few people kept trying to make phone calls, again and again, until their repetitive poking at their phones looked like an OCD ritual. Some people were holding hands, and it made Ben feel left out, although he’d only been working there a couple of months. He joined a group that was trying to guess who the attackers were. One man said a Palestinian group had claimed responsibility. Another said they’d disclaimed responsibility. Ben’s head of PR said in an overbearing tone that Osama bin Laden’s people had bombed the World Trade Center before. A marketing woman said, “Lightning strikes twice?” and laughed shrilly, covering her mouth. Ben said, trying to participate: “I think they’re called al Qaeda,” and everyone looked at him, then looked away. There was an awkward pause in which Ben was aware of looking vaguely Middle Eastern; it was the qualm he always had, approaching airport security. He added, “I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right.”

  At that moment, on the TV, the South Tower fell. They all took a step back and covered their faces. The tower crumbled silently and turned into a giant pillar of smoke, while the anchorman incongruously calmly stated that there had been a horrific explosion. They swore and hushed each other and swore; one man threw his cell phone into a wall. Then a subtle odd chill: in the office’s Thirty-Fourth Street windows, the sky had blurred and dimmed, although the windows on Madison showed the same blue day. Ben felt sick but weirdly relieved, thinking, Now the other tower has to fall, and that’s it.

  After that, people began to disperse. Ben left with the second wave and couldn’t help noticing he was left out when people hugged each other. Well, he was new there. He hadn’t made friends yet. He didn’t have to take it personally.

  But it was one of the reasons, when he found himself alone in the strange bright street, he ran uptown to Kate.

  He hadn’t seen Kate in the weeks since the breakup. The psychiatrist had said to give Kate space, and she was staying with Sabine, she was being looked after. He’d had no real excuse. But now the rules were suspended. You were clearly going to run to your emotional center. Even if it shouldn’t be your emotional center, you would have to run to it, and you couldn’t be judged. He’d only been to Sabine’s place twice, but the address was unforgettable: 86 East Eighty-Sixth, the penthouse floor. It felt effortless like something he’d already done.

  So, his satchel in his arms and the simple athletic problem of running that way, the liberating feeling of running for a reason, dodging people and cars and it felt superhuman. Once, a cluster of women broke up and gaped at Ben as he passed, thinking (Ben imagined) he was a terrorist fleeing from the scene of the crime, that the satchel in his arms was a bomb. Then he was filled with a glorious hatred of everyone, and an exalted love. Ben was one of them, American, and running on a rescue mission and still the fools wanted to hunt him down. And Kate was Iranian—half-Iranian—she could fall under suspicion too. He was transported by endorphins and the awe of the day to a mythic lunacy: he would save her, they would swim across the Hudson to safety (and any petty shit like schizophrenia forgotten) and he imagined them standing on the river’s far shore, looking back to see New York City falling in a sky-eating tumult of smoke and flame and Ben holding sobbing Kate and saying, “It’s all right, baby. I’ve got you.”

  So he ran through the streets while sirens cut into the sky from all directions, and he ran from the sirens and he just ran. Sometimes he couldn’t bear it. He felt sick; he remembered the little people falling from the towers, and he wanted to collapse in a doorway. But it wasn’t that far. He was in good shape. Sooner than he even wanted to, he got to Eighty-Sixth Street. Then it was two short blocks from the park. He sprinted through the last intersection. Brakes screeched, and Ben laughed breathlessly, high on it, not even looking back at the furious horns.

  Then he saw Sabine’s building and slowed down gratefully, happy for the first time in weeks, and was coming up the steps when it struck him like an anvil that Sabine worked at the World Trade Center. He tripped on the step, he almost fell. His head went funny. He wheeled back as if he could see downtown and spot Sabine in the wreckage and know.

  Then it all cleared like cold clear water: Sabine didn’t work in one of the towers. Credit Suisse was in a short, uninteresting building: 5 World Trade. It would have been evacuated, certainly evacuated, and she must be safe.

  Still he couldn’t calm himself. He kept seeing the South Tower falling and Sabine dropping, crushed, in that gargantuan calamity. He saw the little people leaping out of the windows. He saw himself running from the scene of the crime.

  But he walked into the foyer, and there was Sabine. She was standing by the elevators with a tall man Ben didn’t know. They were both wearing business suits, coated head to toe in dust and detritus, in a way Ben had only seen in movies where the heroes fly a biplane through a chicken coop and then through a construction site and then the plane crashes and they stagger from the wreckage with every form of excrescence clinging to them. They were talking to the doorman, who was wringing his hands and offering help in—Ben realized with a rush of foolish gratitude—an Indian accent.

  Sabine noticed Ben and said, “No way. You’re fucking kidding me. Ben?”

  Ben walked up, light-headed, and explained why he was there, and Sabine said, “Yeah, yeah. Kate’s upstairs.” Then Sabine and the man in the business suit (a Credit Suisse guy named Ian who was British and stared at Ben in a glassy, hilarious way that was probably shock) explained how they’d been evacuated from their office as soon as the first plane hit, but then they stood rubbernecking in the street like assholes until the whole fucking tower fell down on their heads. Then they were running with shit pinging off their faces and the air just white, and they clambered underneath cars and ran again and clambered underneath other cars. They couldn’t fucking breathe. A van was crushed right next to them. They thought they were going to die.

  “So we’ve learned a valuable lesson,” said Ian, and he and Sabine laughed until tears came to their eyes. Ben grinned along with them, thinking: Shock.

  When they’d calmed down, he said, “You weren’t injured?”

  “Fuck, yeah, I was injured.” Sabine held up her fist, whi
ch was patterned all over with blood.

  “She cut her palm open diving under a car,” said Ian. “It was probably just broken glass. But it’s a hideous gash.”

  “We got a ride uptown in an ice-cream truck,” Sabine said. “The guy dropped us at Mount Sinai, but my cut hand wasn’t a real big priority today. I’m going to call the veterinarian.”

  The doorman said, “You must put alcohol on it. You do not want septicemia.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” said Sabine.

  Then the elevator opened. Sabine and Ian and Ben got in, and when the door closed and it shifted upward, Ian cringed back against the elevator wall and grimaced and shut his eyes.

  Sabine said to Ben, “Ian’s all fucked up. He had friends in the towers, on the upper floors. We’re pretty sure they’re dead.”

  Ian said with his eyes still shut, “Sabine’s being my family today. Which is very fucking much appreciated.”

  “Anyway,” Sabine said, “tall buildings.”

  “Never mind,” Ian said. “You have to get right back up on the horse.”

  Ben leaned against the elevator wall as if in sympathy. Then, as if in sympathy, he was afraid. The elevator seemed to vibrate more than it should. He was adrenal and sweaty. He was conscious that he smelled, though he guessed Sabine and Ian smelled, too, and it wasn’t important today.

  The elevator opened. They all stumbled out. Sabine unlocked the door, and Ian pushed in past her, saying, “Going to take a shower.” Sabine went straight to the landline phone. Ben wandered haplessly down the hall toward the sound of a television set. At first he couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from; he opened a door and found a coat closet compactly stuffed with coats. Then the next door was the living room: Martin and Martin’s ex-boyfriend, James, were there on the living room couch in pajamas. They were watching the news and crying.

  Ben said, “Hey. Are you okay?”

  Martin got up without saying anything, came immediately to Ben, and hugged him. Even though Ben didn’t like hugging men, he felt a flood of relief, as if he’d been welcomed back into the fold. He hugged Martin back; he felt as if he could have cried. Over Martin’s shoulder, he watched the TV, which was reporting that a fourth plane had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Ben had a fleeting fantasy in which he was a hijacker convincing the other hijackers to land the plane safely and give themselves up. He was stuck in it until it concluded successfully; then he sighed and detached himself from Martin without any conscious intention. Martin looked back at the TV and said, “We can’t stop watching. It’s so fucking awful.”

  “Are you staying here?” Ben said.

  James said, “Martin’s staying here to make the transition from rehab. I’m not staying here.”

  “James came over to make sure I don’t drink.” Martin laughed. “I think that’s what the whole country is most concerned with today.”

  “Nevertheless,” said James.

  Sabine came in and said, “The vet’s coming over in an hour and bringing pet sedatives, if anyone wants pet sedatives.” Then she said to Martin, “Not you.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Martin with a martyred air.

  They all turned back to the TV. There was an update on the whereabouts of President Bush, and Ben compulsively listened even though he didn’t care about Bush. Then the now familiar clip of a plane flying directly, undramatically into a tower, the outsize explosion of orange flame. Ben found him self watching intently as if some crucial clue might be revealed that only he would notice. He was staring that way, in a pinpoint daze, when Kate’s voice said behind him, “I just woke up. Has anything important happened?”

  Ben whirled around. Kate was squinting at them with her provisional face, the face she always had now when she woke up. In the weeks since he’d seen her, she’d gone from pleasantly rounded to awkwardly pregnant. Her face was puffy, her hair unwashed. She wasn’t looking at Ben.

  So he stared at her while James and Martin explained, talking over each other and getting choked up. Kate’s eyes became more complex, more fraught. She had begun to scowl and bite her lip when Sabine said, “Kate, just don’t.”

  Kate flinched and looked guiltily at Sabine. Her eyes immediately filled with tears.

  “I mean it,” Sabine said. “Don’t get started. This is nothing to do with you.”

  Kate shook her head and hastily wiped her eyes. She was trembling.

  “I’m serious,” Sabine said. “I don’t have the energy, so please just believe me: you didn’t do this.”

  Then Ben got it. He said, “Kate, how could you have done this? How could terrorists be your fault?”

  “Oh, you know.” Kate made an indeterminate gesture.

  “Because you fell asleep?” Ben said. “Because you had a dream?”

  “It’s okay,” Kate said. “I know I’m being crazy.”

  Martin said in a studiedly calm tone, “Just don’t focus on it. Label it as a mad thought and try to distract yourself.”

  Kate said, “I should call my parents. They’re downtown, they could be—”

  “No,” said Sabine. “We’re not doing the parents thing. Kate, do you see what’s happened today? Do you see how this isn’t about you?”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Ben said to Sabine.

  “Talk to me about what?” Kate’s voice cracked. “Are my parents dead?”

  James flinched, and Martin put a hand on James’s shoulder.

  “They’re not dead,” Ben said hastily. “It’s fine.”

  Sabine said to Ben, “Tell her in the other room. I don’t want Ian walking in. He’s got enough to deal with today. It’s just a bad fucking time.”

  The other room turned out to be a library, complete with rolling ladder and Chesterfield armchairs and green-shaded lamps; the sort of library (Ben thought) where you expected to find Captain Nemo. He’d had to tell Kate about her parents before, and he’d tried different ways of telling her, but there was no good way. This time he just said plainly, “Do you remember that your parents split up?”

  “No, I don’t remember that.” Kate took a deep sharp breath. “When did that happen?”

  “A long time ago. When you were two. And your mother isn’t downtown. She lives in Ohio, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Ohio.” Kate laughed. “I can’t imagine her in Ohio. And my father?”

  “We don’t know where your father is now. The last time your mother heard from him, he was living in Berlin. But Kate, you don’t know him. You shouldn’t imagine the person you remember is your father. That’s what the psychiatrist said.”

  She was nodding as if to reassure him she was absorbing this. “And my brother? Petey?”

  “You don’t have a brother.” Then Ben added inanely, “It’s okay.”

  Kate stopped nodding and turned away. She went to an African drum in the corner and laid her hand on its skin. “I don’t see how this could happen. I’m not saying you’re lying.”

  “It didn’t happen, exactly. All that’s happening is that your memory isn’t reliable.”

  She said in a strained voice, “But you met my parents. We went to their apartment together.”

  “I know you have a memory of me meeting them. I’m sorry, it’s not real.”

  “No, you used to go and see them without me.” She flinched and laughed shortly. “Oh, I see. That’s just a memory of mine. It’s as if we’re coming from different pasts. In your past, you never met my parents.”

  “Try not to think in terms of different pasts. This is just something your brain does when you’re asleep. It manufactures false memories. It’s as if you haven’t fully woken from a dream, and the dream people still feel real.”

  “My father is not a dream person.”

  “Okay. But the psychiatrist thinks—”

  “Ben. Could you give me a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  Kate spread her hand on the skin of the drum, as if she were drawing strength from it. She stared at nothing. Ben assumed
she was processing the loss of her father (whom she’d never really known) and her brother (who had never existed). The other times this had happened, Ben had felt it, as he might if she’d lost a real father and brother he’d never met. This time, it was hard to engage. He kept wanting to go back and check the TV. Something might have happened, and he was stuck here, talking Kate through her delusions again. Of course Kate mattered, but in this context, it felt Sisyphean and trivial. He didn’t know what he’d expected when he’d come here.

  At last, she said, still staring at the drum, “Can I check something with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry, I know I should know this. But is this yours?”

  At first he thought she meant the drum; but she turned to him and touched her pregnant belly.

  Ben smiled. “No. It isn’t mine. It’s Martin’s.”

  “Martin’s!” Kate laughed breathlessly. “He’s paying me?”

  “He wanted to pay you, but you said no.”

  “I did? Did he know I was crazy?”

  “No. We didn’t know you were sick then.”

  “He should have known I was crazy when I didn’t take the money.”

  Ben laughed, but now Kate didn’t laugh. She took her hand off her belly and placed it by the other hand on the drum. The pregnancy had spoiled her posture, once so weightless it had seemed a kind of physical candor, and now Ben realized she was using the drum to lean.

  “He’d still pay you if you asked,” said Ben. “He feels responsible. The doctors say the hormones might have triggered the illness.”

  “The insanity, you mean,” Kate said. “Poor Martin. He always has a crazy woman having his child. Do you think he’ll abandon it?”

  “The baby? Of course he won’t abandon it. He’s buying a house.”

  Kate laughed and shook her head, still looking at the drum. “A house.”

  “It isn’t just the house. He quit drinking. He takes it very seriously.”

  “Well, it’s nice I did that for Martin, but I’d rather it was yours. Though I guess … we’ve broken up?”