* * *
SON’S ILLNESS SPARES TWIN TOWERS MOM
NOTHING was lucky about last Tuesday, but one Hillbrook, New Jersey, family has at least something to be thankful for. Bart Rangely’s mom, Corinne, was due to go to work on the ninety-fifth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. But because Bart, 13, a Hillbrook Middle School eighth grader, was running a high fever, his mother decided to stay home from work.
Bart’s dad, Jim, wasn’t so lucky. He also worked on the ninety-fifth floor, where he and Corinne had met at their jobs and had remained for more than fifteen years in the same office.
That morning he went in to work and is still among the missing. A somber mood hangs over the Rangely home as they wait for news of their loved one.
But at least, thanks to Bart’s sudden illness, total disaster was averted.
* * *
Total disaster was averted. That’s what my relatives seemed to feel, when, one by one, they called up. Gran and the aunts dialed our house first, on blind instinct, even though they were perfectly aware that Mom (and Dad, for all they knew, even though they hadn’t seen much of him, or even asked about him, for quite a while) would have left for work earlier. So Mom and Dad, unless some miracle had happened—if, for example, they had missed their trains or the trains were running late—would already have been in the buildings that were now burning.
When Mom told them that she hadn’t found anyone to stay with me and she’d stayed home, I could practically hear them thinking that it had been a miracle, my saving her life with my cold or flu or whatever it was. Then I’d hear Mom telling Gran and the aunts that, no, she hadn’t heard from Dad—which was true. Then she’d tell them not to cry, that he’d probably got out in time, that everything was probably all right. And then they would all start to cry, because nothing was all right, and wouldn’t be, ever again.
Was it a miracle? I didn’t know. I didn’t think so. It seemed more like something halfway between a lucky break and a coincidence. Every time I thought about my mother being in that building, I felt as if I was about to throw up.
Of course, we didn’t know where Dad was. At first there was only confusion, and phone calls from cops, and then a call from someone in the firm who said that he was sorry to tell us, but Dad had probably been inside the tower.
And then, amazingly, Caroline called to say she was almost a hundred percent sure he’d been in the office. He’d left the apartment ahead of her. They’d stayed up late the night before and she’d wanted to sleep in.
“You stayed up late? You wanted to sleep in?” My mother kept saying that over and over, her voice getting louder and shriller each time until she finally made herself thank Caroline for calling, and hung up. Neither of us said what we were both thinking: that we couldn’t help wishing it had been Caroline who’d been killed instead of Dad.
After Mom got off the phone with Caroline, neither of us knew what to say. We couldn’t speak. Mom walked over to my bed with her arms already outstretched to hug me. And the strange thing was that before I even felt sad or sorry for myself and Mom, I felt sort of…embarrassed by the whole thing. It was bad enough that Dad might be dead—that he probably was dead. But it was worse to still feel my anger at him mixed in with the shock and the sorrow. I started cursing out Caroline, but Mom said, “We should thank her for wanting us to know and for having the courage to tell us.”
“Right,” I said. “Thanks a million.”
Mom put her hand on my forehead.
“You’re burning up,” she said. And though it was totally bizarre and inappropriate, I thought: Like Dad.
Like before, we didn’t talk about Dad. But now, obviously, everything was different. And we almost didn’t have to mention him, because we had this secret that partway protected us from our own grief, and from the river of grief that was flowing all around us, and everywhere, in those days.
In the parking lot of the railroad station in our town were four cars that no one drove home that night. Plus there had been some carpooling. So I guess that Hillbrook should have been declared a national disaster area. Which it basically was.
Reporters were swarming all over our town, and most of them wound up at our house when they wanted a feel-good moment to wrap up their terrible day. My dad was dead—most likely dead—but the fact that I still had a mom counted as a feel-good moment.
There was black bunting everywhere, black and purple and American flags. It looked as if they were giving the entire town a military funeral. At 10:28 each morning, the mall flickered its lights. No one knew who started that, just as no one noticed when the freaky new custom ended.
And in the middle of it all, I was the Miracle Boy, the lucky orphan. The kid who lost his dad but saved his mother’s life. I had everything, grief and hope, tragedy and consolation, wrapped up in one neat package. Me. I felt like a total liar, except that I wasn’t lying about the most important thing, which was that my father had been killed and I would never get over it. Ever. It was hard enough trying to get my mind around what had happened to me—to us—without the added strangeness of my dad’s death being part of some major, public, historic event that had happened to thousands of other families, and to the city, the country, the world.
The flu or whatever it was lasted three more days, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. Still, I could make myself sick all over again by letting myself think about what a tiny window—a few degrees of fever, my fever—had made a difference between having a mom and not having a mom. So I tried not to think about it, and Mom and I didn’t talk about that, either, though we probably should have.
We didn’t have time! The phone was always ringing, someone was always at the door, someone was always apologizing for intruding at such a sad and private moment. Someone was always bringing a casserole or asking for an interview. The kids in my school took up a collection and bought me three new PlayStation games that my friend Mike Bannerjee dropped off while his dad waited outside in their Volvo with the engine running.
It was strange, seeing Mike like that. He’d been the funniest of all my friends. But no one was joking around now, and we didn’t know what to say. He kept looking over his shoulder, as if he couldn’t wait to hop back in his dad’s car and drive away. I thought: At least he still has a dad! I didn’t like how that made me feel, and suddenly I realized that going back to school would be hard and painful and weirdly…embarrassing.
I wasn’t sure I could do it. Maybe I’d never have to go back. Maybe I could talk Mom into homeschooling. But I knew that wasn’t an option. With Dad no longer sending us money, she had to go back to work as soon as there was somewhere for her to go back to. And I didn’t want to make her feel worse by letting her know how much I dreaded returning to Hillbrook.
Meanwhile, we could hardly go out, because someone had to be home to accept all the presents. First came the flowers, the chocolate, the cheer-up teddy bears that I couldn’t even let myself hate because I knew the people who sent them had meant so well. But did they really think a stuffed bear would help make up for not having a dad?
Then the big presents started arriving. The UPS man, Carmine Genovese, became our new best friend, as he showed up, looking properly stricken, to deliver the hams, the breads, the baskets of soap, the year’s supply of laundry detergent. The gift box of books that ranged from picture books to YA novels, as if the giver didn’t quite know how old I was or what my reading level might be. It didn’t matter, I couldn’t read any of them, I couldn’t concentrate for that long. Someone sent us a certificate for a free water-purity test. Some other kind person thought our loss might make us aware of our need for a free termite inspection. But we didn’t have termites—or anyway, this wasn’t the moment when we wanted to find out that we did.
Mom handed most of the gifts over to Gran and my aunts and said to keep them, or to give them to someone who needed them. The worst part was that Mom thought she had to thank everyone who sent us a note or a present, and it took up a
lot of time. Or maybe that was the best part: It took up a lot of time. Mom wrote lots of notes, and when we ran into people on Main Street, we thanked them in person. We thanked the butcher, the girl in the soap store, the guy who owned the bookshop. Everyone said they were sorry for our loss, and we’d all bow our heads and look tragic. And then almost everyone found some way to say how amazing it was that I’d been sick, how lucky for my mom, and then everyone got happy again. Or halfway happy.
Before, our neighbors had been friendly, but now they couldn’t do enough for us. Suddenly Mom and I were like the mayors of the town. And I was the Miracle Boy. I was half afraid that, if I didn’t watch out, people might start praying to me.
Some mornings, I had to go out and clean up the flowers and candles and notes that people had left at the end of our driveway. They even brought their kids’ drawings of how they imagined Mom and me: two stick figures holding hands with the towers blazing behind us. We became local celebrities. Everyone knew who we were. And when people saw us in the street, or in a shop, sometimes even in the mall, I could see them trying to arrange their faces into what they thought was the correct way to express their sympathy. Usually it was a sheepish smile, as if they were looking at a newborn baby or an extremely cute puppy.
Every so often distant relatives would send us a newspaper clipping from their hometown paper in which we were described as the family whose kid had had that lucky case of flu. But I didn’t feel lucky, not even a tiny bit lucky. My father was dead. How could any sane person have called that lucky?
At first when Dad had left us, I’d been so mad, I’d tried not to think about him, the way Mom and I tried not to talk about him. Then I let myself miss him a little, and until he actually got killed, I’d pretty much gotten used to missing him. It was something you could get used to, like everything else.
But now I was shocked by how different this was. Because in the back of my mind I’d always secretly believed that he’d realize—he’d have to realize—that Caroline was a mindless twit, as Mom called her. And he’d get sick of how young and pretty and stupid she was. Then he’d come back, and Mom would forgive him, and we’d all be together again, with Dad and Mom bickering like before, like any normal parents.
But now this new…I didn’t know what to call it. Now this new development had totally ruined any chance of that ever happening. That dream was over. Definitely. And I was really really sad. I kept remembering little details, tiny things about Dad—the way his glasses used to slip down his nose; the clumsy, flat-footed run he had when we played catch; the way he’d pick me up and swing me around when he came home from work until I got so big that he’d groan and complain that his back hurt. When I let myself think about that, I’d go in my room and cry. To tell the truth, it didn’t help all that much to imagine how much worse things could have been if I hadn’t run a fever that morning.
After a week, I went back to school, but it was like one of those bad dreams in which everyone you know is there but they all seem to be in the wrong place, and nothing that they do or say makes any sense. Everything was a blur, until some kid’s face would come into focus just long enough for him to tell me how sorry he was. The girls were superkind to me, and some of them even cried when they saw me, but it just made me feel weak, like some pitiful freak loser. None of my friends, or the kids I knew from before, treated me like the same person, and the new teachers hadn’t known me long enough to know what kind of person I was. My old teachers were nice enough, really nice. Too bad I wasn’t in their classes.
I made it through two days. Then I asked Mom if I could stay home from school for a while longer. I said I still wasn’t feeling that great. Though she looked concerned, she said, “Sure, honey, let’s let a little time pass, and then we’ll see what’s what.”
Being home was like staying home sick, except with no TV. Because every time I turned the television on, we had to watch the towers burning. And neither Mom nor I could stand to see that.
My mother didn’t go back to the office. There was no office for her to go to. She seemed to spend all her time filling out forms and talking to lawyers. Her mom and sisters kept urging her—and me—to join a support group so we could get together with the other 9/11 families. But we didn’t want to. It would have been hard to find the right group—the group made up of kids and parents whose moms or dads (or husbands or wives) had abandoned the family six months before that September.
Later it occurred to me that, in any group we joined, there might have been people in our situation, or at least something like it. Why not? With so many people, so many different lives, things like that had to happen. But by the time that occurred to me, it was already too late. We’d gotten used to toughing it out, to going it alone.
Every so often, I’d read the “Portraits of Grief,” those mini-obituaries of people killed on 9/11, in The New York Times. Mostly I looked for the ones in which you could tell that the person wasn’t all that popular or cool. This one had overcome what his survivors called “some problems”; that one had obviously been hard to work with, or difficult to live with. Most of the victims sounded as if they’d been lovable and saintly, but the screwed-up ones, the creepy ones—those were the stories that made me feel better. For about a minute.
After the Times reporter assigned to Dad’s “Portrait of Grief” finally called us, the piece that appeared was the same old, same old about my saving my mom by being sick that day and how it would have made my dad feel better to know that I wasn’t all alone in the world, that Mom had survived to take care of me. But how much better could he feel, considering that he was dead?
Already they’d started busting people for lying about losing family members, either so everyone would feel sorry for them or so they could collect the compensation money that we were supposedly going to get. Every time I read a story like that, I wondered if Mom and I were guilty of something sort of like that. I told myself we weren’t. My real dad had really been killed. I hadn’t made it up. The fact that he wasn’t living with us hardly counted, compared to how horribly he’d died, and the fact that he was gone forever.
My mom had started tucking me in again at night, like she used to when I was little. And once, when I was half asleep, I heard myself sort of mumbling, asking Mom if she thought we should tell someone…
I didn’t have to finish my sentence. She knew what I meant.
She said, “We don’t have to do anything. Except get through this and take care of each other. That’s all. That’s our job now.”
It crossed my mind that now I might never have to tell anyone that my dad had left us before he got killed. I wondered about when I grew up and got married. Would I have to tell my wife and kids? Or would I take it with me to my grave like some terrible deep dark secret?
Time passed in a strange way, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. One day I woke up and it was October. That was the day my mother got a letter from the headmaster of Baileywell Preparatory Academy.
Sometimes, when the mail was piled so high that it threatened to topple off the dining room table and take over the whole room, Mom and I would rouse ourselves just long enough to sort through it and at least throw out the junk mail: the credit card offers, the charity drives, the disgusting letters from realtors who had read about Dad and were wondering if we’d be wanting to sell our home. I hid a lot of mail from her: notes she’d think she had to answer.
I was the one who first saw the letter from Bullywell Prep. I didn’t even open it. I tossed it straight in the throwaway pile.
But there was something about it: the heaviness of the paper, the smooth cream of the envelope, the raised letters, and the crest. The crest! Something signaled authority and called out to Mom across the distance that separated the throwaway pile from her stack of unopened mail.
“What’s that?” she said. “What’s that fancy-looking envelope?”
Right from the start, it was as if I heard a voice inside my head, screaming: Don’t let Mom see it! Maybe it was
because whenever the subject of my not-so-great grades had come up, she’d talked about Baileywell in a sort of dreamy way, as if it were a paradise pretending to be a school. As if it were the answer to all my problems.
That was back when not-so-great grades were problems, back before we knew what problems were. She’d tell Dad that if only I went to someplace like Baileywell, if only we could afford to send me there, I’d be interested in school, engaged (her word). Harvard would be practically begging me to go there. And when I pointed out what everyone in town except Mom seemed to know—that it wasn’t heaven at all, but actually a hell full of vicious demon bullies—Mom had said, “Those are the kind of stories people always make up when they’re jealous.”
“What’s that envelope?” she repeated now.
Don’t let Mom see it!
“Nothing,” I said.
“Let me see it,” she said.
CHAPTER THREE
DR. BRATTON CALLED and made an appointment, and actually came to our house. I watched him from the window, parking and getting out of his big-assed Yukon. I was a little surprised, because all the teachers and administrators at my old middle school drove crappy little Toyotas or (if they had families) minivans, mostly because that was what they could afford but also supposedly to teach their students a lesson, by example, about fossil fuel consumption. Dr. Bratton’s giant steroidal SUV was sending another kind of message, and it sent it all up and down our middle-middle-class block in our upper-middle-class suburb. It wasn’t so much the size of the truck that was making the big impression. Several of our neighbors had shinier, even more luxurious cars. But something about Dr. Bratton made it seem as if he was a messenger bringing news from a shinier, more luxurious world.
I said, “I didn’t know high school principals drove serious SUVs.”
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