by Hannah Paige
Pam frowned, “What if they live longer than you?”
Darin bit into his apple, “That may be, but I’ll die happier.”
Pam laughed and shook her head at him, taking another bite of her sandwich. He chomped away at his apple until she remembered what she wanted to talk to him about.
“What do you want to make for dinner tonight?”
He laughed, “Not Chinese.”
“Why not? Last Monday you made your fried rice and your sister loved it.”
He bit into the juicy apple, wiping his chin, “Yeah, but April’s been trying to learn to cook on her own now, apparently I inspired her.” He rolled his eyes, “It’s not going well. Her last recipe was some egg drop soup, or something. According to her, it looked like dishwater and didn’t taste much better. So then, she tried to make her own spring rolls. She said they tasted like wet tissues. She called me yesterday begging me not to make Chinese for tonight’s dinner.” Pam laughed and Darin added, “She’s only slightly scarred by her own inability.”
“Is your dad coming?” she asked, finishing off her own sandwich.
Darin shook his head, “No. I talked to him the other day; he’s going on a camping trip with a couple of his buddies.”
“Is there anyone under the age of sixty going? What about that young guy your dad knows? Ryan?” Pam asked, unscrewing the lid on her water bottle.
Darin thought a second, “Rick? I don’t think so. But they’ll be fine. They’re all vets, they can handle themselves.”
“Oh yeah, a bunch of old men out in the woods by themselves. What could go wrong?” Pam joked.
Darin finished off the apple and tossed it into the trashcan on the other side of the bench, “It’s not like I could argue with him that much. You know my dad.” He glanced at his watch.
“Do you have to go already?” Pam asked and he shook his head, to her relief.
“Soon. Anyway, back to dinner. I could make tacos? You loved it the last time I made that guacamole. Oh, and April wanted me to ask you if you could make those lemon bars again. She said, and I quote, the extra mile that she had to run to work those things off was totally worth it.”
Pam shook her head, having no problem at all imagining Darin’s sister saying that, “Sure. You cook, I’ll bake.” She batted his arm again, sitting up on the bench, “We could have our own show on TV!”
Darin laughed at her, “We’ll get right on that.” He kissed her cheek and stood up, “I gotta go. See you at five?”
“Hey! I believe that your sandwich-provider deserves a far better reward than that,” she pouted and tilted her chin up at him.
He gave her a heartbreaking half smile and planted his hands on the bench seat, on either sides of her legs, leaning forward and giving her a proper thank you; there had to be a few perks for not having small kids around.
She smiled at him as he stood up once more, “Much better. I’ll see you at six, then.”
“I said five.”
She brushed the sandwich crumbs off the bench, “I know. But you meant six. You say five, but that means you’ll plan on heading out of the station at five, and then someone will ask you for something else, because ‘it will be quick’. Then you’ll offer to help someone clean up the locker room, and then at five-thirty you might be pulling out, and that’s a big might.” She stood up and slung her bags back on her shoulder, “It takes you about twenty minutes to get home, depending on traffic, so I round up and say you’ll be home at six. When April comes over at five-thirty, as per usual on Monday nights, she and I will open the bottle of merlot that I bought the other day and we’ll catch up on girl talk.”
“You act like you’ve done this before,” he smirked at her.
She stepped closer to him and shrugged, “What can I say, April and I have developed our own routine to accompany the weekly Monday night dinners.”
“Am I that predictable?”
“Only all the time.”
He shook his head, blushing just the slightest, “I love you.”
She teetered up on her tiptoes, giving him one last kiss for the road, “Love you too. See you tonight.”
“I’ll be there!” he called, turning around and walking out of the park.
“Alright, if he’s not here by six-thirty I’m ordering Taco Bell just to spite him,” April grumbled after draining her glass of wine.
It was six-fifteen, the veggies for the toppings were cut, the ground beef was defrosted—Pam didn’t bother cooking it; Darin never wrote down his recipe for seasoning it, making it impossible for her to recreate his culinary masterpieces—and the cheese was grated. She and April had eaten close to half of the batch of lemon bars already. Darin still wasn’t home. Pam collected the wine bottle—about two thirds of it missing, thanks to her and April—and her own wine glass, and brought them both over to the kitchen sink. She swirled some water around in her glass and corked the wine bottle for now.
In an instant, the front door flew open and Darin stepped in, breathless, “I am so sorry.”
April frowned and hopped off the couch, sauntering over to the kitchen where she helped herself to some more chips and salsa, clearly unimpressed with her brother’s belated entry.
“I swear I—”
“Yeah, yeah, you meant to get out of there on time, but, wait, don’t tell me…” April brushed the salt off her hands and held her index finger up, “There was a cat in an old lady’s tree that just had to be saved. Poor Mittens couldn’t make it down!” She clasped her hands together in a dramatic pantomime, “Please, sir, won’t you help me? It would be a tragedy if I went home to ten cats instead of eleven.”
“April—” Darin started but April planted both her fists on her hips, taking a Superman stance and giving her best imitation of Darin’s voice.
“Don’t worry, Ma’am. Firefighter man is here! I’m missing tacos and social hour but saving another feline’s life is far more important!”
Darin glared at her, hanging up his coat by the door and kicking off his heavy work boots, “Who invited you?”
April’s mouth drew into a smug smile, “Your lovely wife, of course. I still can’t figure out why on Earth she puts up with you.”
Pam smiled at Darin as he came towards her, pulling her into his arms and swaying her back and forth. “Hmm, I can’t either,” he teased.
Before Pam could answer, April piped in again, “Oh, wait, I’ve got it now—Patrick Swayze was already taken, wasn’t he? Damn that Lisa Niemi!”
Pam kissed her husband, “That’s a pretty good reason. I’ll have to remember that one,” she toyed, joining April in the kitchen.
“Hey, April, if I take ten minutes to shower and change will you promise not to eat all the chips while you wait?” Darin hollered, starting down the short hallway that led past the kitchen and into the master room.
April didn’t take a second to think on it, “Absolutely not. I already threatened to order Taco Bell if you took too much longer.”
Darin poked his head back around the corner, “You wouldn’t.”
April looked seriously at her brother, “Oh I would. Enjoy your shower, big brother. Tic-toc.”
Pam loved Monday night dinners. When her husband and his twin sister were in the same house, it was as if there wasn’t enough oxygen to go around. Pam hardly got a word in all night, between the two of them joking around with each other, competing to see who could talk the fastest or tell the funniest story. Alone, Darin was simply talkative. By herself, April was bubbly. Side by side, those two were supersonic. They built on each other, their own energy doubling when their other half walked in the room. It was the most fun night of the week, watching the two of them bond over whatever meal Darin had prepared that week. The food wasn’t important. It was the company that Pam’s house held and the laughter that radiated through her until her sides hurt that made the night matter.
Pam had grown up an only child, with two full-time working parents and an au pair that knew her better than he
r own mother did. From the time she’d first met Darin, she’d been envious of how close his family kept to one another. To her benefit, his sister and dad had welcomed Pam into the family with open arms. When Pam had asked Darin one day if his family had always been like that, he’d shrugged and said, “I guess not.”
It took a while to unearth the truth from his ambiguous explanation. When Darin’s parents divorced and his mother left right after the twins graduated high school, the stunted family of three banded together to face the world. Darin and April became closer than ever, embracing the similarities that they shared, instead of shunning them out of embarrassment. Mr. McCann (lovingly referred to as Mickey or Mick by his fellow vets) became heavily involved in his children’s lives, especially Darin’s. He loved his daughter, that much was clear even to Pam, but there was a certain bond that he and Darin shared that was unparalleled by relationships that Pam’s father-in-law had with anyone else.
The evening passed too quickly, and before Pam knew it, it was just her and Darin once again. It was about ten by the time April finally giggled her way back out to the cab Darin had called for her. Darin shut the front door after calling his last goodbye to her and joined Pam back in the kitchen, where she was cleaning up. She swirled some hot water and soap into the pots and Darin sealed up the leftovers into bags and containers.
“I still don’t understand why she’s taking that new job tomorrow. She’s going to hate it. You and I both know that,” Darin muttered, tossing the bag of extra cheese into the fridge, along with the rinsed lettuce that they hadn’t used.
Pam finished washing the last pan and handed her husband a towel so he could help her dry, “Darin, it’s her decision. Maybe she’ll be alright. She has such a big heart; she could be perfect for the job.”
“A 911 operator? April? No, no, that is going to end horrifically. Something’s going to happen and it’s going to break her heart. She can’t handle a job like that. It’s going to crush her.”
Pam tried to suppress her smile, “It’s sweet that you’re worried about her, but April is a big girl. Obviously, something in her is telling her to take this job; you know she just wants to help people. And if you’re so sure that she’s making a mistake, why didn’t you say something to her?” Darin returned the cast iron skillet to the cupboard beside the oven. “Because my sister has, unfortunately, inherited my dad’s stubbornness. She’s set on starting this job tomorrow and nothing I say will change anything. She hates it when I get all—”
“Overprotective big brother on her?” Pam offered.
Darin looked offended for a second, his hands pausing on the dish he was drying, “I don’t do that.”
“Yes, you do, but continue. She hates it when you…?”
Darin sighed, “She hates it when I try to tell her what’s best for her or point out her childlike innocence and optimism. She says that I’m babying her. This time wouldn’t end any differently. I just have a bad feeling about this. Tomorrow’s her first day of on-the-job training and I don’t want it to be her last.”
Pam shut off the faucet, having finished the last dish. She laced her fingers around Darin’s neck and he set the last pan on the counter. “Darin, I love you, but I think you might want to take a page out of April’s book and borrow some of her optimism. She’s going to be fine. I agree that she lives her life with a fuller glass than the rest of us and she might get hurt doing this kind of job, but I think there’s a little piece of you that knows she’s doing this, partly, because of you. She looks up to you, her hero brother. Let her have a chance to make as much of a difference as she knows you do. Okay?”
He closed his eyes, pulled Pam’s head into his chest; she could hear his strong, steady heartbeat against her ear. “Okay,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head, and the two of them shut off the lights for bed.
Darin was gone by the time Pam got up the next morning. It was Tuesday: laundry day. She stripped the bed, carried the laundry basket with her to the first floor of their loft, and dumped its contents out in the laundry room. She smelled freshly brewed coffee wafting towards her from the kitchen. Once the washing machine was going, she shuffled across the hardwood floor to see a half-full pot of coffee ready for her. She smiled; he’d been brewing the morning coffee for the two of them since she’d fried the coffee pot in their first apartment. She’d blamed the shoddy electrical circuits for the coffee pot sparking to a bubbling halt and smoking for no apparent reason. But, in hindsight, it was probably a joint effort on her part.
Pouring herself a cup of the steaming brew, she turned on the morning news then went to the fridge to grab a yogurt and the milk for her coffee. There was a report on about some drunk driver that had killed two kids last night, hit their car in a head-on collision. The news station flashed two pictures of teenagers on the screen, but they looked more like children to Pam: a boy and a girl, a son and a daughter to someone out there. The girl lived a few blocks away from Pam and Darin’s apartment, and she was barely eighteen, probably going to NYU. The boy had just started at Stuyvesant High; he still had braces on his teeth.
Pam reached for the remote on the kitchen counter and shut the TV off. She returned the yogurt to the fridge; her appetite was gone after seeing children so carelessly taken from the world, and she headed back upstairs, coffee in hand. She turned on the radio, hoping for less depressing results than the television had given her. It was an ‘oldies’ station, which she found slightly offensive since she knew all the songs that played on it. A Bob Dylan song was just finishing up as Pam opened her closet door and started flipping through her shirts. She picked out a pair of jeans, a blue blouse, and her favorite black sweater. She was tugging on her faded jeans when her and Darin’s song came on. They’d had it played at their wedding, though she’d argued with him relentlessly, pleading that The Beatles far outplayed The Beach Boys. He’d eventually won the argument and ‘God Only Knows’ became the one and only Beach Boys’ song Pam enjoyed hearing.
She buttoned the jeans and pulled her blouse over her head, jogging over to the stereo and cranking the song up. The trumpets blared and the piano picked up as the chorus approached. Pam swung her hips back and forth to the jazzy, beach tunes, singing softly along, since no one was home. Darin was always the one who would belt out a song, no matter who was around to hear it, but not Pam; she was usually more comfortable with humming to herself.
“If you should ever leave me, though life would still go on believe me, the world could show nothing to me. So what good would living do me? God only knows what I’d be without you,” she murmured, swinging into the bathroom and pulling out her makeup for the day. She tapped her toes to the piano trilling along, and picked up her volume, “God only knows what I’d be without you! If you should ever leave me, oh life—”
It took several rings before she heard the home phone over the song. She chuckled at her boisterous moment, turning the stereo down and plucking the phone from the base on her bedside table.
“Hello?” she said into the landline.
“Pam? Where’s Darin?” a familiar voice spoke over the line.
“Mr. McCann? Hi, I thought you were on a camping trip! Is everything—”
His tone was uncharacteristically sharp with her as he cut her off, “Pam, damnit, where’s Darin? Did he or did he not go into work today?”
Taken aback a bit, she mumbled an answer, “Yes, he left early this morning. Why? Is everything okay? Did something happen on the camping trip?”
There was shouting on the other side of line, someone called for a doctor and there was a collective gasp from a crowd of people.
“Mr. McCann, are you in a hospital?” Pam asked, looking for her car keys, “Do you need help?”
“He went to work…Oh my God, he’s there…” Pam’s father-in-law muttered over the phone.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Turn on your TV, Pam. You’re going to want to come to the hospital as soon as you can.” The line wen
t quiet.
Pam dropped the phone and sprinted down the stairs to the living room, her hands fumbling to hit the power button on the remote. The words ‘Special News Report’ flashed across the screen, then a newscaster came on.
“It is 8:52, here in New York, and what you’re looking at here is the World Trade Center. As we understand, a plane has hit this massive building. As you can see, a major fire has started. We don’t know what kind of injuries have occurred to the citizens inside. Yes, yes, this is live coverage. We have an eyewitness here, would you share a word with us?” the newscaster asked and another voice came on the line,
“Hi, yes my name is Maria.”
“Hi, Maria, will you tell us what’s happened today?” the newscaster asked.
The woman’s muffled voice came on while the picture of the World Trade Center smoking like a chimney in January remained on the screen, “I, I don’t know what’s happened. I had just gotten to work, I work at a restaurant nearby and I saw…I saw the plane—” her voice cut in and out from the poor reception, “The plane bounced off the building and then…smoke, windows…the smoke, so much smoke, it just blew out of the building. All I could hear…screaming from outside I couldn’t—” An ear-shattering explosion pierced through Pam’s TV, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Another plane…plane just hit!”
The newscaster came back on as the live camera angle shifted to include the other tower, now with matching billows of smoke pouring out, “Oh my God. Another plane has just hit the second twin tower, flew right into it. The explosion has hit the center of the East tower. Rita, can you see, can you tell us what the ground below the towers looks like?”
Static followed, then a female reporter’s voice came on, “I can’t, Don. My position is too far away from the World Trade Center.”
“My God, this is cause for concern. I can only imagine the number of people that have been hurt on the inside of the buildings, considering the World Trade Center is one of the busiest office buildings. There’s so many people there, especially at a time like this, I can’t…”
The news reporter’s voice droned out as the sound of sirens blared outside of Pam’s own apartment and she was yanked back to reality.