I hurried to the back room and shut the door so that I could talk to Mick alone. Even before the photo, Celine knew that a florist had helped me escape the tower’s fall, but she didn’t know everything that Mick Demetriou had done for me in the single hour that had defined our relationship. No one knew.
“What did you say?” I asked, when I was safely behind the closed door.
“I said I have your scarf.”
Mick’s voice sounded different than it had on the day I’d met him. Deeper. Softer. I would not have recognized it.
“I found it in my delivery van,” Mick continued, when I said nothing. “I went back for my vehicle after the roads opened again. Your scarf was on the floor by the buckets where we . . . where we waited. I almost didn’t recognize it, it was so covered in dust.”
“Oh.” I willed away the mental images of those remembered moments. The buckets. The water. The flowers. The searing pain in my chest. The ghostly figure next to me guzzling water like an exile in the desert.
“I have tried for years to find you. I thought you said your name was Karen. I couldn’t find you on any list of surviving family members. I kept looking for someone named Karen.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry about that,” I mumbled, remembering clearly the moment he had asked for my name.
“No, it’s my fault,” he said. “I didn’t hear you right.”
“There was a lot going on.”
He paused. “Yes. Yes, there was.”
Another moment of silence stretched between us.
“The reporter told me you’d been identified. I’d like very much to give you your scarf back,” he said.
“I should probably tell you it’s not even mine,” I confessed.
“Pardon me?”
“I was supposed to match it for one of my customers. I had just picked it up that morning. That’s why I was late.”
A third stretch of silence followed before he said, “But you want it back, don’t you?”
His tone was distinctly hopeful, as if he needed me to want the scarf. After all these years trying to find me, it was important to him that I have it. As I contemplated his question I could sense that the scarf was near him. Perhaps he was holding it in his hand as he talked to me.
Mick’s question hung between us, unanswered.
It was the wrong question. What I wanted didn’t matter. It never had. None of this was ever about what I wanted.
“Are you still there?” Mick asked.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t you want it?” Sadness coated his voice as he repeated his question a third time.
His tone hinted to me that he had ascertained the weight of what he was asking. To an outsider it would seem such a simple inquiry: Did I want a lost scarf returned to me or not? But Mick was no outsider. I answered him with the one question that had obsessed me for a decade.
“Do you think everything happens for a reason?”
“Do I what?”
A door inside me seemed to fling itself open and the ponderings of more than three thousand days flew out. “Do you believe it was just a fluke the photographer found that memory card, and that there was a photo of you and me on it? And here you’ve kept the scarf safe all these years while you looked for me. Do you think that was a coincidence?”
“Well, I . . . No, I guess I don’t.”
His quick confidence in providence awed me. “You think the photographer was meant to find our photo?” I insisted. “That it was meant to be published? You were meant to see it? You were meant to keep the scarf all these years so that you could get it back to me?”
A second or two passed before he answered.
“All I can say is I’ve looked for you for a decade. At every 9/11 event, inside every subway station, in the face of every woman on the sidewalk who reminded me of you. And yes, I’ve asked God to help me find you.”
“To give me back that scarf.”
“Well, yes. But it’s not just about the scarf.”
He was right. It wasn’t just about the scarf. It was about what I was willing to live with. If fate had twice orchestrated the whereabouts of an insignificant piece of neckwear, surely fate didn’t stop there. It was far better for me to believe that chance alone impacted my choices.
I didn’t want to play destiny’s game anymore.
I didn’t want the scarf back.
“I told you it’s not mine,” I said. “It was never mine.”
“Yes, but—”
“I will see if I can locate the woman it belongs to. I am not altogether sure she is still living but I will find out.”
“But—”
“Look, I can’t play the game anymore.”
“Game? What game?”
It was time to end the conversation. “I will always be grateful for what you did for me. Really. I have to go. Someone will be in touch with you if we can find the owner of the scarf.”
“Wait. There’s something else—”
“No. There’s nothing else. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Taryn, please don’t hang up!”
“Good-bye, Mick. Thank you again. For everything. But please don’t call me back.”
I pressed the button to end the call and pulled the phone to my chest, which was heaving now with anger, sorrow, and trepidation.
Surely I had made the right choice.
The reasonable choice.
I stayed in the back room until I had thoroughly tamped down the tide of doubt that had swelled inside me.
• • •
KENT’S parents arrived the next day, Saturday, to attend the anniversary services on Sunday. As a treat for Kendal, I let her stay with them at the Marriott downtown, just a short walk from the newly opened memorial grounds. I decided at the last minute to attend with them but I arrived just as the service began and left before it was finished. I stayed long enough to achieve a measure of peace. Kendal and I found Kent’s name on the North Tower’s shining, watery monument, and we ran our fingers over the letters etched in granite. We stood for a moment under the shade of the lone surviving pear tree and marveled that it had been loved back to health and replanted there. The grounds were hallowed to me, but also private. I knew it was selfish of me, but I didn’t love the idea that Kent shared a final resting place with so many, because that meant I had to share it, too.
Yet I knew this day was important to Kendal and I wanted to have the memory of the event to share with her, even if its very public nature was still too much for me. I didn’t want to be recognized as the woman in the photo, and I didn’t want to run into Mick, though the crowds were in the thousands, and it was easy to stay in the shadows.
It was a moving ceremony, even from an emotional distance, and I was glad I went, though I didn’t know whether I would ever be able to commemorate that day without wishing I could just fall asleep before midnight every September tenth and wake up on the twelfth. When Kendal and I returned to the apartment later that day I was exhausted.
Kent’s parents stayed through Tuesday, a welcome distraction for me. By the time they left, the city had returned to its normal day-to-day hum.
I tried to return to mine.
I found I could not.
Restless and moody, I was unable to concentrate on anything. Mick’s phone call kept replaying itself in my mind. The hope in his voice when he said he wanted to return the scarf and the disappointment when I said I didn’t want it haunted me. It was as if he, too, was struggling to comprehend what to make of our intersected lives, and he had hoped I would be the key to his making peace with similar thoughts.
The worst part was, I still owed Kendal the truth. She deserved to know why I was on the street on 9/11 instead of at the Heirloom Yard, where she and nearly everyone else thought I had been.
I lay awake every night on the e
dge of sleep, wanting the ease of thinking that everything that had happened on the day Kent died was mere coincidence.
But I woke every morning hungry for more than a random life for me and for my daughter.
As the month bent toward the beginning of autumn and the first leaves began to blush with a tinge of color, I knew that I had been kidding myself. The steady cadence of the seasons was proof enough that I still believed there was divine order in my world. And yet I continued to let the days go by, one by one, without sitting down with Kendal and without making inquiries about Rosalynn Stauer.
I thought about telling Kendal the truth.
I thought about trying to find Mrs. Stauer.
I thought about the scarf.
I even dreamed about the scarf.
But day after day went by and I chose to do nothing.
I was helping a customer choose fabric for a quilt on the last day of summer when the most remarkable thing happened. The woman had in her hand the quilt pattern for a Tangled Irish Chain, one of my favorites, and she was struggling to choose between a blue or green color palette. There were hues of both colors that she loved and hues of both that she hated, and the pattern, which was the same for everyone who bought it, did not dictate which color she must have.
As the woman stood there contemplating her options with the pattern in her hand, clarity suddenly fell upon me. The answer I was looking for had been right in front of me the whole time. I had the power of choice, just like the woman who was now faced with choosing which fabric to buy. I could believe that a photographer had been destined to come upon a lost memory card, or that Mick Demetriou was destined to find me after a decade, or that I was destined to be a phone call away from being reunited with the scarf and yet chose to do nothing.
That was the beauty and terror of choice.
I chose to love Kent. It had been my greatest joy, choosing to love him. I hadn’t understood the beauty of this freedom to love until I began to understand, at that very moment, that it was countered by the freedom to hate.
This was what Mick had meant when he told me, as we sputtered and coughed in his delivery van, that it wasn’t my fault that Kent was at the top of the North Tower when the first plane hit. My choices that terrible morning had been prompted by love. What others had chosen had been prompted by hate. The effects of our choices had spilled onto each other. They always did.
Which must be why, in the midst of all this freedom to choose, a scarf had been sent my way. So that Kendal could be born and so that I could continue to hope love would triumph.
• • •
THE next day, the first of autumn, I told Celine that the man in the photo had Rosalynn Stauer’s scarf and that I needed her help in finding her. A decade ago, Mrs. Stauer had been quick to forgive me for losing her scarf, considering the circumstances, but we had not seen her in the store for a long time. Celine, initially surprised that I had said nothing of Mick’s phone call until then, thought she could find Mrs. Stauer, if she was still living. Celine seemed to understand rather quickly that I’d needed time to process the scarf’s sudden reappearance in my life—and Mick’s, too, perhaps. I was still in the midst of that process when I told her. If I was meant to have the scarf returned to me, then I needed to find out why. Perhaps the reason was bigger than me, just as it had been the first time. Perhaps it wasn’t about me at all, but about Mrs. Stauer. The scarf had been precious to her. Maybe the scarf was reappearing now for her sake, not mine.
I wanted to share the scarf with Kendal before I handed it over to Mrs. Stauer. Kendal’s life had been spared because of it. The scarf was a key part of the story I owed her, the only beautiful part. If she could see the scarf and touch it, perhaps it would soften what I had to tell her about the rest of that day.
Mick would surely bring the scarf to me if I asked him, but I wanted to go to it, just like I had done the first morning I saw it.
A few minutes after ten, I tapped his phone number into my cell.
A male voice answered. “Athena Florist.”
“Mick?”
“Speaking.”
“It’s Taryn.”
• • •
I made arrangements for Celine to pick Kendal up from school.
Before I left for the subway station and Greenwich Village, I went upstairs to the apartment. I had a sudden and surprising urge to feel pretty. I changed into a honey-hued blouse, linen capris, and coffee-brown pumps. I pulled my hair out of its ponytail and clipped a gold barrette into it.
It was a Friday afternoon and the sidewalks were already teeming with people heading out early for the weekend. It still felt like summer. I boarded the number one train to the Village and twenty minutes later emerged onto the sidewalk at Christopher Street, just a block away from where I needed to be.
I walked slowly, preparing my heart and head to see the scarf again.
To see Mick again.
I saw the blue awning first and then the stylish sidewalk arrangement of flowering plants in pots.
His shop was small like mine, but bursting with color that no other store on the block could match. The tinkling of a little wind chime tied to the door handle announced my arrival. I breathed in the scents of a dozen different kinds of blooms.
Mick was at the register just a few feet from the welcome mat, ringing up a purchase. The last time I had seen him he was covered in ash. But the first time, he had looked very nearly like he did now. Even his apron looked the same. A slight sprinkle of gray that had not been there before touched the black hair at his temples. He raised his head when I stepped in and a smile broke across his face.
A dark-haired woman who looked a lot like Mick, but much older, started to come toward me.
Mick finished with his customer and stepped out from behind the register. “I got this, Mom,” he said to the woman. “Do you want to take the register for me?”
She smiled at me and took Mick’s place. I had not moved from my spot just inside the door. Mick came to me with one arm outstretched, his hand open. I moved toward him and tentatively placed my hand in his. He pulled me gently toward him and kissed my cheek.
“So good to finally see you again,” he said.
I nodded dumbly, my eyes filling with tears for no reason that I could think of.
“Here, let’s go to the back.” Mick led me past wrought-iron displays of African violets, potted bamboo, and cyclamen, past shining glass doors where flowers of every color stayed cool and fresh. We entered the workspace used for creating the arrangements. A young woman who looked college-age was working on a centerpiece, but she excused herself and left. He thanked her. Mick had obviously told her beforehand he’d be needing the room and that privacy would be appreciated. He indicated a corner where shelves held vases and ceramic pots, spools of ribbon and netting, and boxes of florist’s wire and tape that loomed over a little table.
He pulled out a chair for me.
“Thank you,” I said.
Mick took the chair opposite mine. “You are well?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You . . . you look great.”
“Um. So do you.”
“I’m so glad you called me back.”
“I am, too. Look, I’m sorry I was so harsh when you first called me. I . . . I needed to sort some things out.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “No, I do. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t in a good place mentally until that photo was published. I . . . I was in a weird, in-between place where I didn’t know what I believed and I didn’t even know I was stuck there. And then you called me out of the blue and said you had the scarf.”
I stopped to gather strength, and Mick reached across the table to squeeze my hand.
“I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “I wasn’t the same after that day ei
ther. And my losses weren’t nearly as huge as yours. I was in a weird place for a long time, too.”
For a moment we just sat there, looking at each other and remembering what had bound us together then and kept us bound now. Then he released my hand and stood. He walked over to a desk in a far corner of the workroom, opened a drawer, and drew out fabric as brilliant as sunlight.
The scarf.
He walked back and I could not keep my face from erupting into a smile. He handed the scarf to me and it was as if he were handing me a bouquet. The marigolds were practically shouting a greeting to me. The scarf was just as beautiful as I remembered it.
“You can’t even tell what happened,” I said, fingering the bright threads.
Mick retook his seat and laughed. “It took several washings to get all the dust and debris out. My wife—ex-wife, I should say—said I’d never get it clean. But I was determined to have my way. The marigolds insisted I not give up. They are very resilient flowers, you know.”
I laughed lightly, too. It felt good. “Are they?”
“Oh, yes. They aren’t fragrant like roses and sweet peas, but they can stand against odds that the more fragile flowers cannot.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “They can bloom in the fall, even after a frost. Even after other flowers have given up.”
“No wonder I couldn’t stop thinking about them then,” I said, attempting to sound nonchalant, but my words must have hit Mick in a deep place.
For a moment he said nothing.
“I tried to find you. God, I tried.” Mick’s voice was noticeably apologetic. He sounded as if he wanted my forgiveness. “My . . . my ex-wife said I should get rid of it, be done with it. She said it was stupid to hang onto it when it was obvious I would never find you.”
“Ex-wife?”
Mick sighed. “We were already having some issues and I . . . I had a hard time after that day. A cousin who was a firefighter, and whom I was very close to, died in the North Tower—”
A Fall of Marigolds Page 27