A Fall of Marigolds

by Meissner, Susan

  “If it wasn’t for me, he’d be alive.”

  Mick paused for only a moment. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  I shook my head and continued my confession. “I left him a message to meet me at Windows on the World at a quarter to nine. I was going to tell him we’re having a baby. We’ve tried for so long. He wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for me. He would have gotten out.”

  Mick grasped my hand firmly. “It’s not your fault.”

  But I could only picture where Kent would be at that moment if I had not called him. He would have made it out of the smoking building and sped to safety like thousands of other evacuees had. “He would have gotten out.”

  “Look, we’re going to have to go.” Mick lifted the paper towel away from my head, and then pressed it back.

  But I sensed no urgency. I sensed nothing beyond the crushing weight of the choices I had made. “I should have called him the moment I knew,” I mumbled. “If only I had called and told him right away. If only . . .”

  Mick sat up on his knees to look out the windshield, no doubt gauging the condition and visibility of the streets we needed for our escape. He knelt back down to my level.

  “I’m not going to be able to drive the van. We’re going to have to get out of here on foot. Can you do that? Can you run?”

  I couldn’t process what he was saying. The disconnect between what had happened, which was obvious, and what was still to come in our bid for survival, which no one could predict, rendered me mute.

  “Hey, you aren’t to blame,” he said emphatically. “You did nothing wrong. Evil people did this.” His eyes turned glassy. “Terrorists killed all those people.”

  My eyes sought his as emotion slowly returned to me, raw and cutting. Fresh tears slid down my face. “Those people jumped.” The three words tumbled out of my mouth, sharp edged.

  “Yes, some jumped.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  Mick blinked and the glassy wetness pooling in his eyes dislodged. Two tears slid down his face. “No.”

  I grabbed his arm. “How do you know? How do you know it didn’t hurt?”

  “Because it happened too fast! It was too fast. We have to go.”

  He tore off two long lengths of paper towels and plunged them into the buckets. After squeezing out the excess, he handed one to me.

  “Cover your nose and mouth. Keep your other hand on the paper towel on your forehead.”

  “Are you sure it was quick?” I had to be certain that despite what I had done, Kent’s death had not been agonizing.

  “Yes. I’m positive.”

  I needed one last assurance that I deserved to live before I headed back into the thin space between death and survival, coincidence and destiny. “I was supposed to meet Kent up there. I was late.”

  Mick placed both hands on my shoulders, pulling my gaze to his. His hands were wet from the water in the bucket. “Then I’m sure he died glad that you’d been delayed. If I had been him, that would have been my last thought. That you were safe.”

  And with this new idea to give me strength, I put the covering to my mouth and Mick opened the door.

  The scene outside the van was like a nuclear winter. A blizzard of yellow ash and pulverized concrete still swirled down. An acrid odor rose up from the moonscape that we set our feet on. A faint, pearly light at the edge of the stunted horizon hinted that the sun still shone somewhere beyond us. The muffled whine of dozens upon dozens of sirens and alarms struggled to be heard.

  I had no idea where we were. Mick took my arm and we hurried down a street that didn’t look like a street or feel like a street, but there were hulks of vehicles all around us, so it had to be. The air burned my eyes and lungs despite the wet towel I held to my face. I saw a few other shapes moving in the fog, shuffling toward the rim of pale light that seemed to hover ahead of us.

  Mick stopped at what appeared to be an intersection. I could vaguely make out the street signs. We were at Maiden Lane and William Street. He turned to me and leaned in close.

  “I think I should take you to the hospital so someone can look at your hand and that wound on your head.”

  I didn’t argue. I just nodded and he took my arm again and we headed north to NYU’s downtown hospital three blocks away. The closer we got to the hospital the more we could see a steady stream of refugees making their way out of the horror we had left. A thunderclap sounded behind us and instinctively we turned toward it. We could not see what had made the sound, but the boom had the same tone and timbre as when the South Tower fell: a roar, deep and guttural.

  “The other tower is falling!” A man wearing a safety vest coated in white ran past us. “Keep moving!”

  “Come on!” Mick yelled. He pulled me along, yanking me into a hazy half-light. We staggered toward a building that was the hospital, although I could not make out the signage. Hospital employees, some wearing street clothes, were ushering evacuees into a triage center that been set up just inside. We were given water and cool cloths to clean our faces. I was only half-aware that Mick was telling a nurse that I had a gash on my hand and a wound to my forehead. I was lowered into a chair. A woman applied antiseptic to my hand and face, and then covered the wounds with salve and gauze. As she worked, Mick knelt beside me.

  “Is there someone I can call for you?” he said. “My cell phone’s not working, but there are a couple of pay phones over there. If there’s someone I can call for you, I’d be happy to wait in line and do it.”

  I didn’t answer right away and the nurse filled the silence. “No one’s going to be allowed in to get her,” she said, as she hurried to tape the bandage on my hand. “Only emergency vehicles can come downtown. The tunnels and bridges are closed, too. And the subways. The two of you will have to walk out of here.”

  “But she’s . . . Can I talk to you for a minute?” Mick and the nurse stepped away from me and I noticed that the previous silence had been swallowed up by a cacophony of human sounds, all of them dreadful and wild. I covered my ears to shut them out.

  Mick returned and knelt next to me. “Karen, they are going to take care of you here, okay?”

  I let my hands drop to my lap.

  The nurse knelt down beside me, too. “I’m going to go find a doctor. I want you to wait right here.” Then she sprinted away, disappearing into a sea of hurry.

  “Will you be all right?” Mick said.

  “I don’t want to stay here.”

  He covered my uninjured hand with his. “The nurse thinks you might be going into shock. You really should stay here and let them take care of you until someone can come for you.”

  “I don’t want to stay here.” I did not want sit in that crazed place where no one knew how to make sense of what had once been a beautiful morning. The only hope I had was that Kent might have left the restaurant when I was late. Maybe he decided to meet me in the lobby and ride up with me. Maybe he had been detained, just like I had. Maybe he had tried to call to tell me he was running late. When he got no answer on my cell phone, he would have called our landline.

  I had to get home.

  Mick squeezed my hand. “They will take care of you here.”

  It occurred to me then that I had not said Mick’s name aloud. He had pulled me out of the clutch of hell and convinced me to crawl away from it. He’d made me realize that if a random phone call had made me late, the same thing could have happened to Kent.

  Kent might be on his way home at that very moment just like I should be. And it was this man who had brought me out of the nightmare so that I could awaken and realize this.

  I pulled my hand out from under Mick’s and touched his name tag on the once-green apron that was now a sickly pale yellow. “Thank you,” I said.

  The weight of having taken responsibility for me was evident in his demeanor. I could see how it lifted a litt
le when I thanked him. I think he knew I was thanking him for more than his help in leading me out of the cloud.

  He clasped my hand in his for the last time, not in the grasp of runners to safety or encourager to the defeated, but in farewell. We both knew we would likely never see each other again.

  “Will you be all right?” he asked. He wanted the assurance that he could leave me. I had not until that moment considered that he might be worried about someone who had been in those towers, or that he was anxious to get to a phone to assure his loved ones that he was okay.

  I nodded.

  Mick lingered only a second longer. He rose to his feet, squeezed my hand, and left. He turned back once and our gazes met. A bustle of people moved in between our line of vision, and when they finally parted, Mick was gone.

  I didn’t wait for the nurse to return.

  It was easy to lose myself in the panicked crowds and be absorbed again into the mass of humanity moving toward the Brooklyn Bridge, only a few blocks away.

  The lanes for cars were now a pathway for thousands of walkers fleeing downtown. Many stopped as they walked to look over their shoulders at the smoking, marred landscape of Lower Manhattan. I didn’t. I looked for Kent among the walkers; that was the only reason I turned to look behind me from time to time.

  On the other side of the East River, we evacuees were welcomed by a crowd of sympathizers who offered us water and hugs and rides to our homes or theirs. I accepted a lift to my apartment from a silver-haired reverend who took five of us away from the bridge in a church van.

  When I got home, I couldn’t get to my front door fast enough. I was already calling Kent’s name as I ran down the hallway of the fifth floor, amazed that I still had my purse with me and could unlock my door.

  I burst inside, but the rooms were empty. He wasn’t there. I ran to the landline in our kitchen and there was my cell phone on the counter by the window. I had set it there when I had used two hands to close the stubborn thing earlier that morning. The landline blinked with eight messages and my cell phone showed I had seven missed calls and six text messages.

  Three calls from Kent on my cell.

  One from him on the landline.

  Two text messages from him.

  With shaking hands I pressed the button to hear his voice mails.

  The first call was at eight forty-eight and for just a moment I thought he had called me from his office, and not the restaurant. “Taryn, there’s been an explosion. Don’t come up the elevator. If you’re not already on your way, don’t come yet. Something’s happened. Call me back the minute you get this.”

  The second one, at eight fifty-one, swept away the infant hope I had latched onto at the hospital: “It was a plane. A plane crashed into the floors below us. There’s a lot of smoke up here. God, I hope you weren’t in the elevator. Please call me back. I am calling the landline just in case.”

  The third was at nine o’clock. “We can’t . . . we can’t use the stairs. I don’t know why I’m calling. I’m afraid you aren’t answering because . . . It’s getting hard to breathe. I need to let one of the waitresses use my phone to call her family. Please let me know you are safe.”

  I crumpled to the floor. The text messages were sent at nine-oh-seven, nine fourteen, and nine twenty-seven.

  “Did you get out? Text me!”

  “Can’t get to the roof. Too hot. They are breaking windows. Are you safe?”

  “Only one way out now. I love you, Taryn. I’m coming.”

  I don’t know how long I lay on the floor with my cell phone clutched in my hand. Time ceases to have substance when you are flattened by despair.

  At some point the phone trilled and I managed to lift it to my ear.

  My mother’s relieved cries pierced the hollowness of my grief.

  “And Kent is okay, too?” she asked.

  “No. No, he’s not.”

  Later I was glad that that was all I needed to say.

  She didn’t ask a dozen questions, thank God. Just the one. “Oh, Taryn! Are you sure?”

  My parents called Kent’s family, relieving me of that horrible job. And they called Celine in Paris and a few other close friends here in the States. While I was still sitting there, numb in the apartment, Celine’s brother and his wife arrived to take me home with them so that I would not spend my first night without Kent alone.

  It took my parents three days to get to New York from Wisconsin. Kent’s parents had an easier time, arriving by train from Connecticut two days later.

  But I don’t remember much about those first few weeks of my new life as a widow.

  I do remember telling my parents and in-laws that I was pregnant, and that when I did tell them, the heavy cloak of mourning felt lighter. At least for a little while.

  And when Celine returned from Paris many days later, I remembered that I had been holding a scarf the day Kent died. A very old and beautiful scarf, which didn’t belong to me, but that had saved my life nonetheless. I had no idea what had become of it.

  What I remembered most acutely from those early days—and remembered still—was the burden of Kent thinking I was dead, because his calls and texts to me went unanswered.

  Another unfortunate happenstance, that forgotten phone?

  Or the willful hand of providence?

  The magazine photograph, Kendal’s questioning eyes, the impending tenth anniversary, the calls from the reporters and producers, the compassionate stares from customers and neighbors who recognized me in the photo—all of these served to remind me that I didn’t know which it was.

  I could have shut my mind and heart against that burning question except for Kendal, who still waited for an answer as to why I’d never told her I was across the street from the World Trade Center when the towers fell and her father was killed.

  Celine had no doubt talked to Kendal, because she didn’t ask me about it again. And yet this unspoken subject between my daughter and me felt dark and heavy. I knew she had questions that needed answers.

  After all these years, sweet Jesus, so did I.

  Three days after the photo was published, on the morning of the ninth of September, Kendal asked me whether I was going to go with her and Kent’s parents to the memorial ceremony on the eleventh. It was obvious she very much wanted me to go.

  I could tell her only that I was still thinking about it.

  That same morning, after Kendal had gone to school and during a lull between morning and afternoon, the store’s phone rang. Celine and Leslie were with customers, so I answered it.

  “The Heirloom Yard. This is Taryn. How can I help you?”

  “Taryn Michaels?” I didn’t recognize the man’s voice. Another reporter perhaps?

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  The man hesitated before he spoke again. “This is Mick Demetriou.”

  I didn’t make the connection in my head. Not at first.

  “I’m sorry, who?”

  “Um, from the photo in People this week.”

  For the second time that week I had to reach for a cutting table to steady myself. “The florist?”

  “Yes. I’m so glad I finally found you. I have your scarf.”

  Twenty-Six

  CLARA

  Manhattan

  September 1911

  THE pier was a frenzy of activity, so much so that moving through the crowds, the gates, and the buildings kept me from concentrating fully on the fact that I was no longer in my in-between place, but back where life can seem like a madman’s carousel. Ethan’s tight arm around my waist and my hunched form earned us stares. People couldn’t help but gape at me, as if I were a just-apprehended fugitive or an ill person about to vomit or a mental patient bent on chasing after everyone with an ax. And this, too, was a distraction, albeit an unkind one.

  When we finally emerged onto
the street in Battery Park, Ethan insisted on hailing a motorized cab. He assisted me inside and shut the door, cutting out the street noises and some of the grip of the city. I leaned back against the squeaky leather seat as the motorcar lurched forward.

  Ethan took my hand again, holding it with gentle reassurance. “The Hotel Albert. And take Broadway, please,” he said to the driver, and then he turned to me. “Big breaths, Clara.”

  “I’m fine,” I whispered.

  “You’re pale. Big breaths.”

  I obeyed.

  The driver turned onto Broadway and we headed north toward Greenwich Village and my father’s hotel. I hadn’t been to the Hotel Albert before—indeed, I hadn’t been to many places in the two weeks I had lived in Manhattan—but after a few minutes of my breathing and the cabbie driving and Ethan holding my hand, the scene out my window began to look familiar.

  Too familiar.

  I leaned forward in my seat, my gaze intent on the world outside my window. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s all right, Clara. We won’t be going past Washington Place. We’re skirting it. If you want, just close your eyes and you can open them when we get there.”

  I knew where we were. We were close. Something fell outside the window and I backed away from it into Ethan’s chest.

  “It was just a bit of newspaper on the breeze. That’s all.”

  But it looked like a swatch of ash and Ethan knew it. “We’re three blocks away. You can’t see the building from here.”

  I nodded, attempting to press down the heavy weight in my chest, wanting to crush it with everything I had in me. “Why does it have to be like this?” I murmured.

  “It will only be so today. The next time you come, it will be easier. And the time after that, easier still.”

  I took him at his word and sat back against the seat, willing the panic that seemed on the edge of consuming me to dissipate. A few minutes later the cab turned left on Tenth, a street I wasn’t familiar with. And then we were pulling up alongside the curb and the Hotel Albert loomed above me, twelve stories of brick and granite.