by Eli Hai
Amir put down the page he was reading from and took a deep breath. The emotion was evident in his face. In a moment, he’d start sobbing, but he screwed up his face with all his might and kept the tears in check. He wanted to fulfill his grandmother’s instructions to the T. Rivka, who stood facing him, could no longer handle it. She laid her head on Yoav’s shoulder and wept silently. Pam, who stood on the other side of Yoav, started crying, too, even though she didn’t understand what Amir had read. She’d also become very attached to the kind old lady.
“No wonder Grandma asked us not to cry,” Amir continued, while sending the two of them a semi-rebuking look. “She was an amazing woman. Somehow, she’d given me this letter sealed in the envelope, and asked me to read it after she died. I knew she’d ask us not to be too sorry for her. That’s how Grandma was. She always wanted to make us happy. Now, even though only several hours have passed since she died, I already miss her. I’ll miss our heart-to-hearts, our traveling together, I’ll even miss the Yiddish, which really annoyed me.”
Amir smiled, and the rest of them smiled with him. After a short pause, he added, while looking directly at the small body wrapped in a sheet laid before him, “Yes, Grandma, we’ll miss you terribly. May you rest in peace.”
Amir finished his eulogy and got off the little podium. Slowly, he walked back until he took his place at his mother’s side, who rushed to hug and kiss him. After the short funeral procession, Rachel was buried in the small kibbutz cemetery. Her children said kaddish, and then the quiet funeral ended.
Rachel returned to her fathers. She died of natural causes. On Thursday, she went to sleep and didn’t wake up the next day. Every morning, a member of the family would accompany her to the dining room. On Friday, Osnat, Amir’s younger sister, came to her house and found her dead. The doctor who was summoned immediately pronounced her dead.
“At night, when she slept, her heart stopped beating,” he stated assuredly.
The minute she was notified of Rachel’s death, Rivka hurried to notify Ahron and Jeff, despite the late hour in New York.
“God gives, and God takes. Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore,” Ahron murmured after he heard the news. Ahron wasn’t too sad. Not that he didn’t love the aunt from Israel, God forbid, on the contrary. However, the way he saw it, his aunt had passed from an empty, unimportant world to a world full of good.
On the other hand, the sad news hit Jeff hard. A heavy sadness descended upon him. During the days they spent together, a special bond formed between him and his young-at-heart aunt. The bond had grown stronger, and the two would talk on the phone almost every day, as though they were lovers. He felt that Rachel was the perfect grandmother and mother figure, which were so missing in his life. The minute he returned to New York after visiting her, he started planning his next visit. He would’ve found the time to go visit her again, but Eve’s advanced pregnancy cut the plan short. Now that he heard of her death, he had a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t see her again.
But that wasn’t the only reason her death had landed on him out of the blue. The terrible attacks of 9/11 and the ordeal he suffered after them, had made him more vulnerable and fragile than ever. Jeff would never forget the terror of those days until the day he died. He recalled the terror that gripped him when Jessica told him that Eve had attended a meeting at the Twin Towers. Before he’d discovered what had happened to her, he felt the loneliness, the yawning abyss that had opened it jaws, threatening to suck him in. He realized the chances of Eve escaping the inferno were slight.
“Where exactly was the meeting? Tell me!” he urged Jessica, trying to grasp at straws of hope.
“The meeting was in the north building, at the Hodgson’s law firm. The firm is on the twenty-first floor,” she said, following his expression worriedly.
“And the building hit was the north one, right?” Jeff tried to reconstruct in his mind the sights broadcast over and over again on television.
“What, didn’t you know?” she asked in surprise and stopped crying.
“What?”
“The south building was also hit. Ten minutes ago, another plane hit it, and they said on the news that another plane hit the Pentagon.”
“Then, the first building hit was the north one, and then the south?” Jeff wanted to be sure of the information.
“Yes.” She nodded and looked at him in terror.
“God save us!” Jeff buried his face in his hands. “The twenty-first floor,” he mumbled, calculating that if the plane hit the higher stories, there was a chance that the people in the lower ones could escape without a scratch. Ten minutes had passed between one attack and the next, enough time to get out of the building and run far away, without the fragments of the second plane hitting the fleeing people. Was it possible that Eve had survived the inferno and escaped the building? If so, how could she have escaped while so heavily pregnant? And even if she had escaped from the burning building, had she emerged unscathed? Did the toxic black smoke, which must have spread through the entire building, reach her lungs and cause damage to her or one of the babies?
“I have to find out what happened to her,” Jeff said.
“How are you going to do that?” Jessica posed the difficult question.
“I’ll try to go wherever I can. I’ll search the hospitals. Whatever it takes. I can’t just sit around doing nothing,” he explained and turned to go.
“I’m coming with you,” Jessica stated, grabbing her bag and following him hurriedly.
For hours, Jeff, Rico, and Jessica searched the streets of New York for Eve. First, they tried to get close to the buildings, but the rescue forces spread in a wide radius around the area prevented them from doing so.
“It’s too dangerous to go close. The buildings are burning, and we’re afraid they’ll collapse,” one of the police officers explained to him. No more than several minutes passed when they realized the man had been right.
The buildings collapsed as though they were a tower of cards. Like a volcano vomiting its loathsome content, the building spat humongous clouds of dust, containing stones, metal rods, various objects, dirt, and black toxic ash. When the deadly mass met the ground, tsunamis of destruction rose from the street, as though they were a fountain, and rose to a tremendous height, then fell with a deafening crash, and galloped in dizzying speed along adjacent streets, destroying in their rage everything in their way. Panicked people fled frantically in an attempt to escape the dust tsunamis chasing them, and when they realized they wouldn’t be able to escape, they found shelter in houses and behind trees and parked cars. It didn’t help some of them. The enormous gusts of dust reached the hiding places; trees were uprooted; and cars, with their passengers, were lifted in the air as though they were nothing more than pieces of paper.
Even though the three of them were very far from the towers, one of those clouds reached them. Luckily, it lost momentum and sank slowly, covering their bodies with a thick layer of dust that made it difficult for them to see and breathe.
“Let’s get out of here quickly!” Rico yelled. The dust that infiltrated his mouth choked him, and he started coughing. Jessica also started coughing incessantly, and Jeff hurried to cover her face with a handkerchief in order to ease her breathing.
After despairing from searching the vicinity of the towers, they went to the information center set up in the municipality offices but had to admit defeat as the place was full of hysterical crowds. They started scanning the hospitals to which the casualties were admitted, but there also, their searches were in vain. In most of the hospitals, there was utter confusion and chaos, to a point that they couldn’t even reach those injured or find out their names. As they searched, Jeff tried calling Eve’s cell phone again and again, but in vain. No sign of life came from Eve. The only phone call he made that day was to Eve’s worried parents, and he managed to talk to them only after calling them repeatedly. He updated them lengthily regardi
ng the day’s events. Eve’s frantic father promised to do everything he could to find out what had happened to his daughter.
“Update me regarding any development whatsoever. Don’t hesitate to call me at any hour,” he demanded of Jeff just before they ended the conversation.
Evening fell on an exhausted New York, which was suddenly empty of people. The stunned residents that had filled the streets only hours before started to slowly absorb the events of that horrible day. They went home and left the huge streets orphaned. The few that still remained outside were relatives of the people missing, who continued frantically searching the many hospitals, vacillating between hope and despair. The rescue vehicles that tirelessly continued with their rescue attempts, continued driving along the abandoned streets. Their sirens were a shrill testament to the terrible tragedy that landed suddenly on the effervescent city. New York held its tongue and carried its pain with a dignified silence.
Jeff, Jessica, and Rico sat on a bench at the exit of one of the hospitals. Grief and destruction overwhelmed them, and they sat there, unable to talk or move, for a long time.
“She was right,” Jeff broke the silence.
“Who?” Rico asked.
“My aunt.”
“Your aunt?” Rico tried to understand.
“Yes! My aunt was right! We argued where it was safer to live, in Israel or in New York. Eve and I said Israel was a dangerous place to live in because of the wars and terror attacks there. She claimed that there was no safer place in the world, and certainly not New York. How right she was. She must be watching television now; she probably can’t believe her eyes. She’s probably trying to call us and going crazy with worry.”
Jessica and Rico nodded in agreement. Silence fell again.
“Maybe she got home by herself?” This time, Rico was the first to break the silence.
“She would’ve called me,” Jeff dismissed the idea.
“Not necessarily! It’s been hard to get a signal since the attack this morning. Did you see how long it took you to contact Eve’s parents? Let’s go there, Jeff. Don’t bar the possibility. We have to try everything,” Jessica cajoled.
With no other option, the three of them drove to Jeff’s apartment.
“No! I haven’t seen her since you left this morning,” the doorman replied when Jeff questioned him as to whether he’d seen Eve.
“Let’s go upstairs anyway. We’ll have a cup of coffee, regroup, and head out to continue searching,” Jeff said.
When they entered the apartment, Rico’s phone rang, and the three of them jumped.
“It’s my wife,” Rico said before he answered.
“That means communication is returning. We should try calling her again,” Jessica suggested.
With a shaking hand, Jeff took the phone and tried his luck again, but to his disappointment, all he got was voicemail again.
“Damn! Who invented that crazy voicemail! I hear her voice, and I don’t even know if she’s alive!”
“Jeff, calm down!” Rico demanded after he finished soothing his panicked wife.
“Rico, it’s been eight hours since the attack. It’s already dark outside. If nothing bad did happen to her, where is she? And why the hell doesn’t she call?” Jeff insisted angrily.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a clear-cut answer. There are a lot of possibilities. Let’s just wait patiently. I’m sure we’ll find out during the course of the night. Someone will call or come over,” Rico said, confident that the mystery would soon be solved.
“Yeah. Someone will call and say, are you Jeff? We found your wife. Dead,” Jeff said pessimistically.
“On the contrary! My logic says that every phone call that has anything to do with her will be positive. I don’t think that if something, God forbid, happened to her, someone will be able to find her in the rubble, call here, and announce that she’s no longer alive. Don’t forget that she doesn’t work in the World Trade Center, and apart from the fact that we passed her name on to the information center, no one knows about her presence there. If someone does call, it will only be her. Wait a bit, and you’ll see that I’m right.”
“Your analysis is logical, although there’s no certainty that this is how things are. Let’s assume she left the building, inhaled smoke, and died. According to what we saw, a lot of bodies were taken out of the building, and their families were notified. I wish someone would call. At least then, we’d know where things stand. The uncertainty is driving me crazy!’ Jeff said in frustration.
“Try your mail! Maybe there’s a message waiting for you there! Maybe she couldn’t call and sent you an email,” Jessica raised an assumption that sounded logical to Jeff. He ran to the computer in the home office, and to his surprise, discovered the inbox contained numerous mail. He scanned them all but was disappointed to see that they didn’t shed any light on the mystery. He chose to ignore them, apart from a mail from Rivka in which she asked if everything was okay. “No, things are not okay,” he wrote back. “Eve is missing since this morning. We’re still looking for her.”
After that, they returned to the living room.
“Maybe I’ll make you something to eat? You haven’t eaten since this morning,” Jessica suggested in an attempt to ease the dark atmosphere.
“I’m not hungry. You can make something for yourself and for Rico. I’m good with a cup of coffee. I have a feeling we’re in for a sleepless night,” Jeff said, and Jessica rushed to the kitchen to do his bidding. Several minutes later, she returned with a tray with three cups of coffee.
“Let’s think logically,” Rico tried to put matters in order as he took a cup of coffee and sat in the armchair in the living room. “Eve was on the twenty-first floor of the north tower, right? From what we saw on television, the damage was to the top stories, maybe sixty floors above, and that’s quite a distance, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Jessica agreed, as Jeff followed with interest what Rico was saying, as though the man held the power to change reality.
“So, that means that when the building collapsed, it’s obvious that she wasn’t hurt. Is that right?”
“Right!” Jessica confirmed again.
“This means that she had to walk down twenty-two floors, using the stairs, not a simple feat for a pregnant woman, but definitely possible. I think she needed something like ten to fifteen seconds for each floor. Which means that after four to five minutes, she should’ve been outside. The rescue forces outside probably—” The phone rang, cutting off his calculations.
“Now, we’ll know if you’re right,” Jeff said as he leaped up and hurried to answer the phone.
“Jeff, what’s going on? We’ve been trying to call for hours. Anything new?” Eve’s father asked worriedly.
“I’m sorry! I’ve been out searching for her all day long. I’m losing it. I don’t know what to do,” Jeff replied, disappointed by the caller’s identity.
“Stay at home. There’s no point in you running around the streets. We’re on our way.”
“Okay.” Jeff ended the call.
“Continue, Rico,” Jessica prompted.
“Before you continue, I think you’re wrong about the time required to go down the stairs and go out. Don’t forget that the conditions weren’t normal. Maybe it was dark? Maybe the stairwells were dark? We have to take into account that Eve is in an advanced stage of her pregnancy,” Jeff corrected Rico’s calculations.
“Okay, so not five minutes. Let’s assume that she needed double that time. When she came out, she saw the rescue forces waiting outside and probably—” The phone rang again, cutting Rico off at the exact same sentence. Jeff ran to the phone, which had become so important that day.
“Am I speaking with Jeff Farmer?” a feminine voice was heard on the other end of the line.
“Yes, that’s me,” Jeff replied, his heart pounding hard. The voice was an unfamiliar one, a voice he hadn’t heard in his life. His body turned cold, and his heart continued pounding. Deep inside, h
e felt the conversation would determine Eve’s fate, for good or for bad. Was Rico right? Would this be the call notifying him whether Eve was alive, or was Rico wrong?
Life holds in store many surprises. In the unknown future, there are many mysteries, and no one knows what the day will bring. This is the secret of life. Every second may bring a knock on the door or a phone call, bringing news. Sometimes, that news will be good, bringing someone joy, and sometimes, it will be bad, bringing someone sadness. As was the news Rivka told him when she told him his beloved aunt had died.
Chapter 24
The band stopped playing, its musicians remained standing, helpless and embarrassed at the sight of the empty dance floor. The Hebrew songs they sang did create a pleasant atmosphere, but it wasn’t enough to rouse the guests who remained sitting in place. A somewhat sleepy atmosphere had taken over the large venue, and Rivka was well aware of it. The profound feeling of disappointment was evident on her sad face. She felt as though she’d burst into tears in a minute. This wasn’t how she wanted her wedding to look. It was only expected, she thought to herself sorrowfully. A celebration in which such an assortment of people participated, from such different worlds, was bound to fail. The profound fears experienced by her and Yoav—during the eve of the wedding and during the wedding itself—regarding the success of the party were realizing themselves before her eyes.
“I don’t believe your brother’s suggestion will succeed,” Yoav expressed his fears one day before the wedding.
“So, what should we do?” she asked.
“There’s nothing we can do. It’s enough that we’re getting married,” he replied with a forced smile and kissed her forehead.
“From the day we announced we were getting married, nothing has gone to plan,” she complained.