Twenty-Four
I arrived at the ferry house in my green-striped shirtwaist and Nellie’s borrowed hat with only five minutes to spare. I found Dr. Randall pacing at the gate, waiting for me.
“I was about to come to your quarters looking for you,” he said, breathless.
“That would be against the rules. Mrs. Crowley wouldn’t like it.” I pushed past the gate to stand with him in the queue of people already boarding. The air in the ferry house was stale and warm, and I felt a trickle of sweat form at my neck.
“I’m serious. I was worried about you.”
“I’m here now. Stop talking about it.” I reached back to my neck and touched the beads of sweat with my glove.
“Give me your hand.”
I looked up to say I didn’t need him hovering over me like that. I just needed to take it one second at a time. He was making it worse. But he didn’t appear to be sweating. No one else was. Without speaking, I clasped his arm. We began to move forward.
“Close your eyes if you want. I’ll make sure you don’t run into anything.”
“I’m not going to close my eyes, for heaven’s sake.”
But a moment later I did. As soon as my foot touched the gangplank, I felt a heavy weight inside me surge up my throat. I clamped my other hand over my mouth and let Dr. Randall guide me.
“You’re doing fine. Just fine.”
“Stop talking!” I rasped between my fingers.
I leaned into him as I felt my body leave the gangplank and arrive on the ship’s slightly undulating deck.
“Wait!” I whispered as the barely discernible movement under my feet set me off balance.
“I’ve got you. You are doing fine.” He tugged me forward, and I could feel people behind me wanting to move much faster.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I said, more to myself than to him. My legs felt like iron and there seemed to be no oxygen on the ship at all.
“Yes, you can.”
More gentle tugging. I felt as if something heavy inside me were clanging like a bell, wanting out, wanting to explode.
“We’re almost there.”
I peeked then and saw that Dr. Randall was propelling me toward a long row of red upholstered benches, away from the windows and the open doors. He led me to the corner of the expansive interior room and set me down, taking a seat right next to me.
“All right?” he asked.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I feel sick. I can feel my pulse in my head.”
“Give me your hands.” He took my hands and yanked off my gloves, so abruptly that I snapped my eyes open and pulled my hands away.
“What are you doing?”
“Give me your hands.” He grabbed them back. At that moment the ship’s whistle blew and I felt the ferry begin to move away from the dock. I clenched my hands into tight fists as we picked up speed and I could feel the water under us pushing us away from safety. I imagined the ferry house falling away from us, getting smaller. . . .
“Clara! Listen to me. Close your eyes and listen to me. Listen only to me.”
I wanted to bolt. I wanted to jump overboard, in Nellie’s beautiful hat, and swim back to my island. I could see the railing. I could see my island. I could swim that far. . . .
“Close your eyes, damn it! Listen only to me.”
I swung my head around to Dr. Randall. I knew I must look like a feral child to him, or a lunatic. But he just held my hands and told me again to close my eyes. It took everything in me to do it.
“You are safe. You are safe,” Dr. Randall said, and as he said this again and again, he stroked the backs of my hands with his fingers, gently and with obvious rhythm, like a metronome. And then he turned my hands over and gently pried my fingers out of the curled fists, stroking my open palms the same way he had the backs of my hands.
At some point I realized I was no longer struggling to breathe. The heavy thing inside me had stopped its lurching and now hung suspended in my chest, not altogether gone but not pressing up against my lungs either. My pulse, which had felt like a freight train only moments before, was now skipping along, far faster than it needed to, but not so fast that I felt as if I might explode.
I opened my eyes slowly. Dr. Randall’s kind face was intent on mine. He appeared ready to heave his body over mine if I were to make a mad dash for the railing.
“You all right?” he asked tentatively.
“You called me Clara,” I squeaked.
He smiled and I felt his body relax somewhat. “We aren’t at the hospital. We’re not in uniform. You’re just Clara. And I’m just Ethan.”
The gloves he had yanked off lay on the deck at my feet.
“May I have my gloves back?”
He let go of one of my hands as he bent down and retrieved them.
“I’m not going to jump overboard,” I murmured, taking the gloves with my free hand.
“I know you’re not.”
“I promise.”
Ethan slowly let go of my hand and I steadied myself on the bench.
“I’m really sorry about . . . about all that,” I said.
“Don’t be. It’s nothing to be sorry about. You’ve just taken a huge step. You should be proud of yourself.”
“I guess I did.”
“No guessing. You did.”
“Where did you learn the trick with the . . . the hand stroking?”
“I studied psychology before I went into general practice. I had a professor who used that technique on his patients. It’s not so odd really. Gentle rhythmic stroking is how mothers calm agitated children. It’s how you calmed that little girl the first day I saw you in the children’s ward. You made her feel safe.”
I chanced a glance out the windows across from us, wishing I didn’t feel like that child and yet knowing the ordeal wasn’t over. Not by any stretch. “I still have to get off this boat when we dock.”
“And you will.”
We were silent for a moment. “I was never like this before,” I said. “Never. I could be in my dad’s surgery and watch him reattach a nearly severed limb or cut dead skin away from a horrible burn and I never had to turn away. My mother and my sister? They ran gagging into the house. But not me. I was never afraid.” I looked down at my bare hands in my lap. “I wasn’t afraid of anything.”
Ethan paused before answering. “Everybody’s afraid of something, Clara. You can’t be human and be afraid of nothing.”
I sighed heavily. “I don’t want to be afraid of this anymore.”
He reached for my hand. “That’s half the battle right there.”
I let him hold my hand in his. And then in that tender moment, I began to tell him why I had exiled myself on the island. I thought he deserved to know. “It’s my fault Edward died in that fire. He asked me to come up to the sewing room just before the workday was over. He wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t. He would’ve been on the tenth floor, where there was a way out. I saw him jump. I saw his body hit the pavement.”
For the first time since it happened I didn’t feel about to burst into tears at the retelling of that horrible day. Ethan squeezed my hand.
“And I could do nothing,” I continued. “I had known him for only a couple weeks. You probably think that’s too short a time to fall in love with someone, but I did love him. And I think he loved me. We just . . . we just didn’t have the time to tell each other. We never got the chance.”
“I really am sorry, Clara. But I’m sure deep down you know it was not your fault he died. You know that, don’t you?”
“But it feels like it was.”
“You can’t listen to that voice in your head that says it was your fault. That’s not the voice of truth, Clara. And for your information, I do think two people can fall in love right away. My parents did. It happens all the tim
e.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“That’s why I felt some kind of kinship with Mr. Gwynn. He had just lost his wife and they had been married just a few days. He had known her for only two weeks before they were wed. I understood his loss and the depth of his love for her. I understood it better than anyone. I understood more than he even knew.”
“I know you did. And . . . and I know about the letter you found. Dolly told me.”
I gasped inwardly. Why would she do that?
“She didn’t want to involve me, but she was ordered by Mrs. Nesbitt to help another patient send a telegram right at the time Mr. Gwynn was to be discharged. She needed someone to make sure he got the belongings you had kept for him in your room. She asked me to give them to him.”
“Did she tell you everything?”
“Enough for me to know that you wanted to do right by Mr. Gwynn. That is admirable. But . . .”
Something in his voice spoke of disapproval. “But what? You don’t agree that he should have that letter?”
“I don’t think we can say which is right and which is wrong in this case. I don’t see how any decision you could make would be the right one. Which I guess means neither choice is wrong. There is no happy solution to be had here.”
“For the longest time I didn’t want him to see it,” I said. “Mr. Gwynn thought his wife loved him. I know how marvelous it is to feel that way.”
Ethan looked away, almost as if I had struck a tender spot. When he turned back to me, though, his expression held no evidence that I had. “You’re right. It is wonderfully marvelous. I am indeed sorry you lost someone you loved. Perhaps, if you would like, we can visit Edward’s grave after lunch today. It might be very comforting to you. I lost my grandmother to influenza some years ago, and when I visit her grave, I feel less sad. I know that sounds contrary, but it’s true.”
“I don’t know. . . .” It hadn’t occurred to me find out where Edward was buried. And now, the suggestion that I might find comfort in visiting his grave was a completely foreign idea.
“We don’t have to. It’s just a thought.”
“Well, I . . . I don’t know where he is buried.”
Ethan didn’t seem surprised by that. And I was glad, because I didn’t want to explain why.
“I’m sure the newspaper that carried his obituary would have the cemetery listed. If you want to find out where he’s been laid to rest, it won’t be hard. But you don’t have to.”
The caution in his voice both surprised and touched me.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe you could look up his obituary while I am with my father.”
“Or we can go look it up together after your lunch. If you still want to.”
“All right.”
The ferry slowed and when I looked out the window I could no longer see the city skyline. It was above me. We were at the dock.
Ethan reached for my other hand and held them both tight.
“I think I might need to close my eyes again,” I whispered as the boat shuddered to a stop and the weight in my chest swung heavily against my heart. I screwed my eyes shut.
“I’ll get you safely off this boat,” Ethan said as he pulled me gently to my feet. “Let’s just let everyone else off first so you can take your time.”
I felt the bustle of people around me, and I heard the sweet storm of immigrant languages as newcomers to America prepared to step onto her shores.
Someone bumped into me and I cracked an eye open. But the boat seemed to sway on its moorings when I did. I toppled a bit and Ethan closed the distance between us and wrapped an arm around my waist.
“It’s okay to keep them closed,” he said.
Finally, the many voices that had been all around us seemed far away and I realized everyone was off the boat except us.
“Here we go.” Ethan began to walk and I leaned into him and matched his movements. I felt the sun on my face when we stepped onto the gangplank and smelled the tang of harbor air. That odor was soon followed by the heady fragrance of the city slamming into me. I came to a halt on the gangplank.
“You’re doing fine. We’re almost there.”
“That . . . that odor.” I felt tears stinging the backs of my eyes.
“That’s New York. That’s all it is. The good and the bad in New York. You’re doing fine.”
I took another tentative step and then another, breathing in short gasps.
“Bigger breaths, Clara. Come on. Big breaths.”
Ethan began to breathe deep beside me. I felt his rib cage expand next to mine and I endeavored to match it, concentrating on that. Air in, air out. Air in, air out.
And then my foot hit pavement. As solid as rock.
The place where everything had changed for me.
I paused for a moment to take it in. The sensation of solid ground beneath my feet, the odor of horses and cars and peanuts and hot coffee and dead fish; the sounds of motors and birdcalls and voices raised in absolute joy and utter annoyance; the taste of salt and steam and September morns.
And then I slowly opened my eyes to the arrogant beauty and bustle and bravado of Manhattan.
Twenty-Five
TARYN
Manhattan
September 2001
IT was the silence that most surprised me.
After the roar of the tower’s fall and the first screams of terror, there was a massive hush that nearly seemed appropriate, since no words could describe those moments. There would have been cries for deliverance but our mouths and lungs were filled with a million fragments of former lives and purposes. No one could move air past their vocal cords.
Perhaps it was the absence of human voices on those crowded streets that made it seem as if the wall of destruction were without sound.
In that heavy silence where no light shone, the florist and I fumbled for survival like two children who didn’t know how to swim, flailing in a rushing river.
I don’t know how long or how far we staggered to break the surface; I only knew the longer we surged forward the more aware I became that my body was stinging, my hands and forehead were sticky with blood, and my throat ached for water.
I heard breaking glass as others in the same desperate plight shattered windows to get inside buildings. Several people pushed past, and as I started to pitch backward, I felt the florist grab me. More windows were being broken.
He turned us away from the stampede of people wanting shelter and water, and then I heard the sound of metal sliding on metal. I saw a shimmer of colors in this sea of nothingness and the florist pushed me toward them. I banged my knees on a shelf of some kind and started to fall. He jumped ahead of me, grabbed my torso, and pulled me toward the rainbow flecks. A metal door slammed shut against the gray wall behind us.
We were inside a van, surrounded by flowers in buckets of water.
He and I dived for the buckets, yanking out the blooms and savagely tossing them aside. I sputtered and coughed as I lapped at the water, cupping my bloodied hands to get as much as I could into my mouth and down my parched throat.
For many long minutes we just knelt at the buckets and drank. When we weren’t drinking, we were spitting and coughing up a mush of pasty rubble. When I finally felt the strong return of air in my lungs, I turned to my rescuer. He was covered in ash, as white as a ghost, and was wiping his face with a roll of paper towels.
“Are you hurt?” he said.
I looked down at my hands, stinging from the water. A narrow gash had opened on one hand and a few scrapes on the other. I didn’t know how I had gotten the wounds.
“Your head’s bleeding,” he said. And he tore off a length of paper towel, folded it, and held it to my forehead. I reached up to hold it with the hand that hurt the least.
“Let me see your hand.”
&nbs
p; I held out my other arm and he wound two paper towels around the injury. He reached into a rubber tote behind him and grabbed a spool of florist tape, winding the Christmas-green adhesive around the makeshift bandage.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I think so.” My voice was raspy and barely recognizable as mine. I coughed.
“I don’t think we can stay here.”
I took in where we were huddled, two specters sitting among strewn flowers while a nightmare pulsed outside. “What?” I said, though I had heard him.
“We shouldn’t stay here. It’s not safe. As soon as we can see our way outside, we have to get out.”
I was numb and strangely calm, as close to shock as I have ever been.
“Miss? Did you hear me? What’s your name?”
But my attention was on the tossed tulips in my lap: soft, rose hued, and wet. As pretty as the woven ones on my dress, which I could no longer see.
“Miss, what’s your name?” He leaned toward me and touched my arm. Gentle, but firm.
“Taryn,” I whispered. My voice sounded like I’d pushed my name past gravel.
“Karen?”
I didn’t correct him. I fingered a petal, so supple and beautiful.
“I’m Mick. I don’t think we should stay here. We’re too close. If the other tower falls . . .”
But he didn’t finish. The other tower was Kent’s tower.
I raised my eyes to him as the numbing of my body continued to spread warm and thick over every inch of me. “Is this real?”
“Yes.” Again, the gentle tone.
“Why is this happening?”
“I don’t know.”
A buzz began to hum in my ears, increasing in intensity as the seconds ticked away: the sound of reality reestablishing itself. I didn’t want to hear it.
“Karen, I think we need to get ready to go.”
“He’s dead,” I blurted, the buzz in my ears hot and grating.
“I . . . I’m really sorry about that.” Mick reached for my hand again, touching me just above the bandage he had made. “Very sorry.”
A Fall of Marigolds Page 19