by Hannah Paige
He hit the garage door button and glanced at Grace, “You sure you got everything?”
She hit play on The Beach Boys’ CD, “Yep. Let’s rock and roll.”
The drive to the Newark Liberty International Airport was only about twenty minutes, thirty with traffic on a regular Tuesday morning. It was busy, but Rick couldn’t think of a time when Newark hadn’t been nearing a fire hazard breach. He parked the car in the lot across the street and guided Grace into the main building, nudged her into the check-in line. A middle-aged man got in behind them, quickly followed by an elderly woman who bumped into him. He took a step forward, jostling Grace’s backpack and she sidestepped closer to Rick to give the man behind her some space. Rick glanced behind them as the man—who looked to be late thirties—started arguing with the woman in a language Rick couldn’t understand. The old woman couldn’t comprehend him either and kept apologizing for bumping into him, but the foreign looking man—maybe middle-eastern, but Rick couldn’t be sure—wouldn’t calm down.
Rick turned around to face him, “Sir, sir,” he called the man’s attention, “Why don’t you go in front of us? That will put some space between you two, and she won’t be able to bump you.”
The man nodded and lifted his bag onto his shoulder to move up. Rick placed a hand on Grace’s shoulder and brought her closer to him to let the man pass in front of them. The old woman shot Rick a grateful smile and Rick returned it with a casual wave.
Once they’d reached the front of the line, he checked Grace in and they made their way back to security. Rushing through the hallway to Grace’s gate for boarding, they followed the path lit by fast food booths on either side. Security had taken an exorbitant amount of time that morning—Rick always did have the opinion that there were too many people crammed inside airports—but luckily, Grace’s flight had been delayed to depart at eight-forty-two instead of eight.
Rick pulled her over to the window, so that people could file through to board.
“Alright, you got everything? Backpack, duffel, boarding pass?” he checked, kneeling down in front of Grace.
She nodded, “Got everything I need. Have fun on your interview. Don’t forget to bring in the newspaper every morning while I’m gone, even though I won’t be there to read any of them until I get back.”
He smiled at her, “I won’t. Grace, have a fun trip, okay? Promise me you’ll try with your mom.”
She wiggled her lips around a bit, contemplating a way around this, before giving him a half smile, “I promise.” She threw her arms around his neck, “Love you, dad.”
He held on to her, probably too tight, but he didn’t know how many more hugs he was going to get; puberty was a fast approaching train with a 4–5 years long impact, “I love you too, Grace. Be safe.”
He relinquished his grip around her shoulders and she pulled away, her eyes catching on someone behind him.
“Hey, that’s the guy, the unruly one from the security line.”
Rick pivoted on his heels and, sure enough, the foreign man whom Rick had allowed to cut in front of him, was digging his boarding pass out at the counter.
“Maybe he won’t be so unnerving on the plane,” Grace reasoned with a shaky voice.
“Hey, you’re going to be fine, just don’t talk to him. Don’t talk to strangers. I know you know that, but you’re getting on a plane and going across the country, so be careful,” Rick gave her another pat on the shoulder and stood up.
Grace nodded, repositioned her backpack on her shoulder, and gripped her duffel in the other hand, along with her crinkled boarding pass. She started over to the boarding counter and then stopped, turning her neck to face Rick again.
“Hey, Dad, if you do see the President…will you tell him hi for me?”
Rick wanted to laugh but Grace’s face possessed not an ounce of humor in the question, so he smiled broadly and nodded, giving her a thumbs up. “I will, Grace.”
Her lips parted into a grin and she returned the thumbs up, handed over her boarding pass to the steward at the gate, and trampled down the tunnel into the plane.
Rick stood by the window and waited for all the passengers to board. He imagined Grace’s heart-shaped face in one of the open windows on that morning flight.
At eight-thirty, the steward at the boarding counter called into his microphone, “This is flight United 93 from Newark to San Francisco, last boarding call. This is flight United 93 from Newark to San Francisco, last boarding call.”
When no one else came, he radioed something through his earpiece and Rick saw the plane start to creep onto the tarmac. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was eight-forty, which meant he didn’t have time to stand there and watch the plane take off. He left the gate and was in the parking lot and unlocking his car within minutes. At 8:45, he cranked his truck on and the news blared through his speakers. Rick reached forward and switched to the CD player, not wanting to hear about whatever tragedy plagued the news that day; it was always something.
“Well, it’s been building up inside of me for oh I don’t know how long,” sang through the cab of the truck: track four. Rick pulled out of the parking lot and twisted the volume knob, singing along in his own off-key voice, “But I keep thinking something’s bound to go wrong,” his voice strained on the word ‘bound’ as he struggled to reach Grace’s octave. He laughed at himself as he turned out of the airport lot and pulled back onto the highway.
“And she says ‘Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry, baby. Everything will turn out alright.’”
The helicopter ride to the Pentagon was far more plush than the last one Rick had taken. But the army didn’t pride itself in providing its soldiers with luxurious flight accommodations. At 9:30, the helicopter descended onto the landing pad of the Pentagon. It was bigger than Rick imagined, like a giant city all of its own.
A crisp-looking woman in a pantsuit stood on the landing pad. Her bun was so severely shellacked down with hair spray that every hair was tightly secured in place, not daring to waver even in the violent gusts of air from the chopper blades.
Rick hopped out of the helicopter, his tie whipping around his neck, and the woman extended her hand to him, “Mr. Griffin, I presume?”
Rick shook it, noting how firm her fingers grasped around his, challenging his own easy handshake, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I’m Rhonda Simmons; we spoke on the telephone earlier.”
She added as Rick followed her inside the monstrous building, “You’re late.”
“Sorry, but it was kind of out of my control, you know, with traffic up there,” he chuckled but the steely woman stopped so fast Rick thought he heard her high heels squeal on the ground. She looked at him as if he had made a Holocaust joke in the middle of a synagogue during service.
Rick cleared his throat, “Sorry, just a…joke…since I came here in a helicopter there couldn’t—”
“Yes, I understand, Mr. Griffin. The fact that you were in the air made it impossible for you to have ‘hit traffic’. I just don’t remember a sense of humor being listed on your resume, and frankly, I don’t recall mentioning that it was needed for the job you are being considered for. On a more serious note, I hardly consider this morning a time for humor.”
She swiped her key card through a security door and repeated the gesture at the glass door behind it.
“Beg your pardon?” Rick asked as they entered the glass room with desks and government employees in neat suits at every one of them.
Ms. Simmons led him past the desks and up a short set of stairs to a closed door, “Mr. Griffin, if you are to be working here, I implore you to turn on the news. Paying attention to current events is mandatory for this job on even an ordinary day. I find it ludicrous that you are unaware of what is going on in your own country as of, approximately, an hour ago.”
Rick touched her arm before she could tug open the next office door, “Excuse me? To what are you referring, Ms. Simmons?”
; She shook her head in disbelief then nodded towards the television positioned on one of the crowded desks in the main room below, “See for yourself, Mr. Griffin.”
“We’re going to take a look at the videotape just a minute ago of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center. Those are spectacular pictures. I don’t know if you could see the plane, and that too was a passenger plane. Perhaps some type of navigating system or electronics would have put two planes into the World Trade Center within…it looks like about eighteen minutes of each other,” the man on TV said as—Rick wouldn’t call them spectacular—horrific pictures were flipped through on the screen.
Smoke billowed out of the twin towers in New York City. Rick was taking a step forward, leaning over the railing when the screen changed to President Bush walking on-stage in Sarasota, Florida.
I saw on the news the other day that the flag was down at his home, so he could be anywhere.
Grace’s words pulsed in Rick’s mind as the crowd on TV quieted for the President to speak, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America…”
“What the hell happened!?” Rick demanded, but was immediately hushed by Ms. Simmons. The Pentagon had fallen silent.
“Today, we’ve had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.”
Rick covered his mouth, not believing what he was hearing. It was Tuesday, just a Tuesday. There was terror overseas, where kids learned how to disarm bombs at age ten and mothers hugged their children a little tighter because they didn’t know if they would make it off the school bus home. There wasn’t terror here; here, where parents worried about their kids sneaking out to see an R rated movie, not about them getting shot on their way to buy something to eat.
It was New York: the city that never slept, never worried, the Big Apple. It was where businessmen fought over money and tough citizens fought over cabs and baseball games, not where planes crashed and buildings burned.
“Terrorism against our nation will not stand. And now if you would join me in a moment of silence. May God bless the victims, their families, and America. Thank you very much.”
The room held silent for a minute, or an hour—Rick couldn’t tell. He turned back around to face Ms. Simmons, “What…How…Why…Here?” His mind filtered through all of the questions, the possibilities that he could think of. Then reason grasped him by the brain and shook him.
Planes. Planes were crashing.
“They’re being hijacked? Planes are being hijacked?” Rick asked.
Ms. Simmons, for the first time that morning, didn’t have a snappy remark, but a simple nod as her response.
Planes.
I’ve never flown before, so I’m no expert on the whole process, but it doesn’t sound too safe to me.
Rick ran his hands through his hair, then brought one down to cover his mouth once more, maybe to keep himself from screaming, he couldn’t be sure. “What flight numbers?” his voice was muffled and Ms. Simmons strained to hear.
“I’m sorry, wh—”
Rick threw his hands down at his sides and faced the woman head-on, “What were the flight numbers! What planes were they!”
“American Airlines flight 11 and United flight 175,” Ms. Simmons answered flatly. She didn’t have a daughter on a plane. She could remain calm.
“Well, what’s being done about this? I mean we can’t just—” Rick didn’t know what he would have said that morning if he hadn’t been cut off by an explosion erupting in his ears. He didn’t have a plan, he didn’t have an idea. Who did at a time like this? His lack of mental direction didn’t matter, since a deafening white noise flooded his eardrums and within seconds the wall to his right imploded, sending rubble and heat into the room. Something propelled the blast inside the building, something crashed into the building large enough to have been a city.
Pam
Pam was a good wife. She made the best potato salad at the annual Fourth of July barbeque that her closest friends always gathered for in Central Park. She kept her home in Tribeca tidy, not immaculate, but tidy. She went to the grocery store every week, ironed her husband’s shirts every other weekend, and kissed him every morning when he went to work and every night before they went to sleep. Pam loved her husband with everything she had. She was lucky. She had married her best friend. Because of that, it was easy to be a good wife. She genuinely enjoyed it.
Pam, however, was not a good mother. She had lost five children before she had even seen their faces: three girls, one boy, and one that Pam, to this day, still wondered if pink or blue footies would have been most appropriate. The doctors assured her that it wasn’t her fault; it was simply the way that her body functioned. Pam found that explanation ironic. The problem was her body physically wouldn’t function the way other women’s did.
Darin, the sweetheart that he was, never let her see that it bothered him that they would never have kids. But Pam was a good wife. She knew. She knew that Darin had wanted kids for a long time, since they’d first started dating. She knew that his father, a traditional man, to say the least, expected Darin to have kids, expected him to give him a couple of grandkids to hold on his knees at Christmas time. At thirty-three years old, Darin’s twin sister wasn’t even married, let alone ready to have kids. And as the mature, minutes-older brother, Darin felt the responsibility to have a family fall on his shoulders. The thin, braided, gold band on Pam’s finger reminded her that responsibility had fallen on her shoulders as well.
That Monday afternoon at their favorite park, only a few blocks from the Engine 7 station, the reminder could not have been more vivid in Pam’s mind as she watched a couple of boys pretending to sword-fight each other with sticks. She’d agreed to meet Darin here for lunch. He was about ten minutes late but she didn’t mind waiting. She knew that he was late for a good reason. He always got sidetracked helping someone out, offering to clean the kitchen, or doing some extra paperwork, when he was supposed to be taking his lunch break from the FDNY.
When Pam married Darin seven years ago, she knew that she was signing on to become a firefighter’s wife, and all that entailed. One of her closest friends at the time had asked her if she was scared of losing him one day,
Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be widowed before you’re forty?
Of course she was afraid of losing Darin. No firefighter’s wife, or any wife for that matter, could say that they didn’t dread the day of losing their husband. But the pride that Pam had for her husband devoting his life to something so selfless, so meaningful, and the amount of satisfaction that the dangerous job brought Darin on a regular basis, outweighed the fear that crept around in the back of Pam’s mind. The thought of losing him wasn’t going to stop Pam from indulging in the kind of life that she could have with Darin. The last time Pam had spoken to that friend, she was thirty-five and still wasn’t married. If that didn’t prove Pam’s theory right, she didn’t know what would.
A tap on her shoulder drew Pam away from her thoughts and back to the sunny autumn day in the park. Her husband leaned over her other shoulder and kissed her cheek as her attention was pulled in the wrong direction. She laughed, turning back to him and kissing him, properly this time, on the lips.
“I know, I know. I’m late. But it was a life or death situation,” he took the seat on the bench next to her, draping his arm around her shoulder.
She laughed and laid a hand on his chest, “You’re such a liar.”
He sighed dramatically, “Yes, yes I am, a hungry liar too,” he smiled boyishly at her, knowing that would soften her.
Pam shook her head at him and reached down beside her, grabbing the lunch that she’d brought, and plopped the bag on her lap. She withdrew the roast beef sandwich she’d packed for him—with extra jack cheese and mustard—and handed it to him.
He rubbed his hands together, “I knew I made the right choice marrying you.” And he unwrapped it, taking a bite. Tipping his hea
d back, he moaned, “Yum. Yes, absolutely validates my decision.”
Pam chuckled, pulling out her own turkey sandwich, “Oh? You’re telling me you married me for my deli-skills? It might have been easier to invest in a job at Togo’s. I hear they give employees a free sandwich on their breaks.”
Darin took another bite, swallowed, and shook his head, “I couldn’t pull off the whole green apron and visor.”
She whacked his shoulder.
“And…how could I live without my beautiful wife? Who is stronger than she looks, I might add,” he rubbed his arm.
She wiggled her eyebrows at him, “Quit sucking up and eat your sandwich.”
He winked at her and Pam was starkly reminded of why so many women hated her when she always attended the firefighter benefits on Darin’s arm, “Yes ma’am.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes, and Pam was only halfway through her sandwich when Darin crumpled up the wax paper from his and reached back into the lunch bag for an apple.
“You should see what some of the other guys’ wives pack them for lunch. They show up with salads, these kale wrap…things. I don’t even know what kale is, but it looks dangerous to me, might be toxic.”
Pam crossed her legs and leaned back against the bench, “No, that’s called healthy.”
“Oh. Well, either way, I much prefer the lunches you pack for me.”
Pam shrugged, “I guess I could start packing you those kinds of foods. It’s probably better for you.” She thought some more on it, “Those wives must be smarter than me, aren’t they? Looking out for their husband’s cholesterol and…whatever kale does for you. I bet it helps them live longer, keeps them healthier.”
“I don’t care how good it is for your health, I’m not eating it. And I’m certainly not giving up roast beef. Ever.”