That was it. Like a lightning bolt, sanity hit me. I’ve gotta get the hell out of here and go see Joy.
I thanked Boozer for his incredible friendship and generosity. What better wise man could this wanderer have chosen?
John and I started back out on foot and soon after caught a bus heading uptown on 5th Avenue. The driver was not accepting fares. He took us as far as the corner of Central Park South, right in front of the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street. I remember thinking about the bizarre opulence of this New York City landmark juxtaposed against the cataclysmic wreckage I’d been inside not long ago.
There were twenty-nine more blocks and several avenues to go to get to Joy on 88th and 2nd. With John and me back on foot, I got another call from corporate saying that a reporter from USA Today wanted to interview me. “Yeah, fine, whatever,” I said. My mind was in a million places. I couldn’t think straight. “Is it all right if we give out your cell phone number?” they asked. I was apprehensive but had no time to evaluate this. “Yeah, sure. Look, I gotta go.”
Two blocks later, at around 4:30 p.m., my cell phone rang. It was the guy from USA Today. He said, “I heard what you did …” Blah, blah, blah. “Is it all right if we talk now?”
I don’t care. Fine. OK. The reporter was very nice. He patiently asked questions. He listened. He seemed to really get it. According to my cell phone records, it was a forty-five-minute interview. I passed the phone to John, and they talked for a while too.
He asked me some personal questions about my religion. I told him I was an altar boy for seven years. He asked about my physical ability, wanting to know how I could carry the woman down sixty-eight flights. I told him I played college football and rugby. He was pretty thorough.
The next day, Tuesday, September 12, the interview ran prominently in the front page of the Money section in USA Today. I can only guess he found out about us from the video clip that ran that day. The article didn’t mention whether the woman we carried out was alive. He didn’t know, and neither did we.
Billy
As soon as the interview ended, the phone rang again. It was another college pal from Brown, Billy Hayes. “Harry, what do you need? Where are you?” Billy lived on the Upper West Side.
“Billy, I need a shirt, a jacket, and a hat.”
“I don’t care where you are, Harry. Whatever you need, I’m bringing it to you.”
I gave him my location and told him my final destination: Joy at 88th and 2nd.
“You keep going where you’re going,” Billy said. “I’ll catch up with you.”
At 72nd Street, John and I cut over from 5th Avenue to 2nd Avenue. The phone never stopped ringing. It felt like all I was doing was walking and talking.
We hit 88th and 2nd. I turned the corner to go to Robert’s building, and I ran smack into Billy. He was there with a hat, a jacket, and a shirt.
“You OK?”
“Yeah, I’m OK.”
“C’mon, come with me to this bar over here,” he said, pointing to Cronies on 2nd Avenue.
“I’m on my way to see Joy. She’s waiting for me, Billy.”
“Here, take this stuff. We’ll wait right here for you.”
As I walked away from Billy, things went a little numb. I didn’t feel fatigued or pumped with adrenaline. Now I was just moving. It didn’t matter what direction. I’d see Joy in a minute— in thirty seconds. My fiancée. My Joy. I will touch her hand and connect back to myself, back to something else, back to clarity and decisiveness and sanity and equilibrium. I’m moving, and I will not stop moving until I see Joy.
We entered the building lobby. Joy came bouncing down the steps. She couldn’t wait to see me. I wanted to embrace her. But I didn’t. Or I couldn’t. She wanted to give me a big hug, but I pulled back. To this day, I don’t know what came over me. I was aloof, almost formal. “How are you doing?” I asked her. I made stiff introductions. “This is John. This is Joy.”
Joy says she looked in my eyes, and there was nobody there. I was gone.
This was supposed to be like a scene out of the movies, where the music swells and the man and the woman have that big emotional reunion after being apart for the entire heart-stopping ordeal. I don’t know if I wanted it to be that way. Maybe I didn’t want to feel some things. I didn’t want to accept the madness I’d witnessed, the severity of where I’d been. I didn’t want to feel the reality. It was too much to relive right away, too much to reflect on. I didn’t want to accept that I was that close to death and almost didn’t make it. Showing great emotion would be to acknowledge that great emotion was warranted, which meant accepting the thing that caused it—the hell I had been through. It meant I had to accept the terrible feeling I had while trapped under that truck, in the blackness, suffocating and thinking I might not see Joy ever again. Hours had passed since I was under that truck. I had had time to put it out of my head. I couldn’t reverse the slight peace of mind I had found. I couldn’t relive this thing emotionally with her right then and there. I wanted normalcy. I wanted distance from it—distance from my true feelings about what I experienced. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed anymore. I didn’t want another moment today where I would be relinquishing control. By fending off my own emotions, I disabled myself from feeling and showing emotion to Joy, the person with whom I truly wanted to share my deepest feelings. At that moment, I began to build walls. It was a building project that would continue for years.
We went upstairs. Robert had prepared lovely crudités—delicate finger foods—and champagne. He lived in a studio apartment. He never kept much in his apartment anyway. He likely put together whatever he had in the fridge.
Of the innumerable surreal moments of the day, this one topped them all. I took a napkin and began to eat. I felt myself swirling in a daze. I could barely follow the conversation in the room. John was doing a lot of talking. I collected myself for a minute and noticed I was drinking a glass of champagne. My god, what the hell was happening?
I took a shower. John took a shower.
I put on a pair of Robert’s pants; the shirt, jacket, and hat Billy brought me; and a pair of Boozer’s sneakers. “Let’s go out,” I awkwardly suggested. I badly wanted out, mostly out of my own skin.
We met up with Billy Hayes and his friends at Cronies, a loud sports bar with a large, open front window area and what seemed like a TV for every patron. There stood Billy, at the corner of the long bar that stretched almost to the entrance, looking at me the same way he had the last twenty years, with a wise-ass grin that made me feel like I’d known him all my life. I had for most of it anyway. It seemed as though fate conspired to always keep us together.
Billy and I were freshman roommates at Brown, but we’d actually met a year earlier at a coin toss on the 50-yard line of a high school football game. I was a captain for Immaculate Conception High School, and he was a captain for Chatham Borough. It was a tough, close game. My team won.
We both got accepted to Brown. Schools often try to match up jock roommates. I got a note over the summer that my roommate was another football player, but at the last minute, he switched to another school. So they placed me with someone on the waiting list. He and I were complete opposites. Let’s just say he was a bit more interested in his studies than I was. Billy lived in a better dorm on the other side of campus. His assigned roommate got killed in a boating accident off Long Island over the summer before school started, so Billy lived by himself. Days into the fall semester, my roommate got in a car accident. The poor guy took it as an opportunity to move out of our room to a dorm closer to his classes. In the locker room during the first week of freshman football, Billy approached me and said, “Aren’t you Mike Benfante who I played against in high school?”
“You mean who you lost against in high school?”
Before either of us got stuck with new roommates, Billy moved in with me. We played football and rugby together and became best buddies. Billy was always a funny guy. He had a good heart and always knew how to hav
e a good time. Our parents kidded each other. Mine hoped Billy would rub off on me. His hoped I would rub off on him. We did rub off on each other, much like two experienced bank robbers sharing the same cell. But we had fun. I learned to count on Billy for whatever I needed, whenever I needed it—no matter what the circumstances for either of us. 9/11 was no different. Who else would I run into that night but Billy?
The bar offered little relief. TVs in all four corners replayed the horror of the day over and over again. I watched every bit of it. And I drank and drank and drank—not for pleasure or for thirst, but because it was there. I consumed whatever was in my path. I was so charged up, and I couldn’t come down. I was surrounded by people who cared about me—people I knew— yet I felt like an alien, isolated. I felt on edge. Before I knew it, the clock said 2:00 a.m.
Robert had already gone back to his apartment. John rose to leave. He said he could stay with a friend. I told him he could stay with us but that it was a small apartment. (Robert actually gave Joy and me his bed, and he slept on the couch.) We looked at each other like one-hundred-year-old friends. We hadn’t been separated since we met on the stairwell early that morning. What was there to say? We were beyond words, beyond emotion, and beyond our own comprehension of what we’d been through together. “I’ll call you tomorrow, first thing,” I said. “I know you will, Mike,” he said. And he left. We all left soon after.
On the walk back to Robert’s, I started feeling woozy. Not drunk, but spent. I sat down on the building’s stoop. I didn’t want to move. Joy urged me to come upstairs. I finally obliged. I lay down and mumbled, “Hey Robert, if you have a bucket, put it by the bed.” My head rested against the pillow, and I looked at Joy, her gorgeous brown eyes looking down at me. The next thing I knew, it was 5:00 a.m. I snapped up, totally awake. I never wake up like that, not that early.
I felt completely awake, clear, and conscious. Joy lay sleeping beside me. The forces of memory and disbelief mixed uneasily in my head, formulating a sad, simple question: Could this all have been real? I was also feeling upset, as if suddenly awakened from a nightmare. Finally, one thought so strong and definite blared at the front of my skull: I gotta get out of here. Now.
PART III
NOW WHAT?
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2001
I tapped Joy, quietly. “C’mon, let’s go get coffee.”
Robert was still sleeping. We left the apartment and walked east toward 1st Avenue. I’d never been in New York when it was so quiet. No cars, no horns, no buses, no planes. Nothing. It was like the Twilight Zone. All you heard was the occasional hum of the fighter jets flying above, patrolling the city.
It was early. A morning haze dulled the sun. We grabbed some bagels and coffee and walked all the way to the East River promenade, where we ate our breakfast and talked. I tried to express my feelings. I told her how happy I was that we were together and safe. I tried to explain that I was still feeling a bit overwhelmed by all that had happened. She said she understood and was very sympathetic. Then, quite suddenly, I was overcome by the urge to see my family. I wanted to leave the city as quickly as possible and go to them in New Jersey.
We returned to Robert’s, gathered our things, thanked him, and left. It was 6:30 a.m. We heard that nothing was running— no trains, no buses. But the desire to see my family became all-consuming. Nothing was going to keep me from finding a way.
I flagged down a cab on 3rd Avenue. The cabbie rolled down his window to talk. I said to him in all earnestness, “This is very important. I need your help. Can you drive me to New Jersey?” He started screaming at me in broken English, “Do you know what’s going on? Do you have any idea what happened yesterday? The tunnels and bridges are closed. What’s the matter with you? I can’t go to New Jersey!”
Joy and I laughed. So much for a Kumbayah moment. Did I know what happened? he asked. Yes, my friend. I know what happened.
We learned the PATH was running out of 33rd Street, so we made our way down there.
Nobody talked on the PATH that morning. Everyone had this far-off look in their eyes. It felt like we were all saying the same thing: “Did yesterday really happen?”
We got out of the PATH in Jersey City and walked directly to my car. It was parked outside of my apartment, but I wasn’t going in. I walked right by it.
Joy went to her place to gather some things. Then we hopped in the car and drove to Verona. I pulled up at my parents’ house around 8:00 a.m.
Wednesday in Verona
At my family’s house, my parents occupied the lower half, and my sister’s family lived on the top floor. I entered downstairs and caught my dad walking through the folding doors that led to the living room. Our eyes met. And he just shook his head. He was worn out, emotionally spent from the previous day’s hell. He wrapped his arms around me, and we gave each other a big bear hug. With tears welling up, he held me by my shoulders. “You don’t know how great it is to see you,” he said. We cried some. We didn’t speak much. He just shook his head a lot. And we stood there, together.
I can only imagine what he went through after speaking to me while I was on the 55th floor and then watching the Towers go down and having to sit back and wait and watch and not know and not be able to do a thing about it. My father was shaken up.
In some ways, I went through less than my family did. I knew they were safe. I knew about my own safety. But when I woke up that morning, the urge to see my family was overwhelming and immediate. By Wednesday morning, it had begun to sink in how close I came to never seeing them again. Also, I thought about what they were going through because of me. I felt responsible, like I put them through it. It hurt me to imagine their pain. It still hurts me to think about that.
Television news was on round the clock in my parents’ living room, just like it was in every other house in America. As the day progressed, I slowly pieced together a more comprehensive picture of what happened the day before—the enormity of it, the loss of lives, the firemen, two planes, the Pentagon, the plane going down in Pennsylvania. My feeling responsible gradually gave way to feeling grateful. This was a historic event. While it was happening, I wasn’t thinking, This is one of the most devastating events in American history, but it’s now considered the worst-ever attack on American soil. It’s compared to Pearl Harbor because it was a surprise attack, because of the number of lives lost and the frantic hurry to save people. But I saw no historical, political, or monumental significance. As I sat there and watched news commentators and politicians place the event in context—the whys and hows of it—all I could think was, This was a terrible thing, and I happened to be in the middle of it. That’s it. There have been other disasters like this—both natural and man-made—in which people found themselves as involuntary participants. That’s just the way it is. I just happened to be one of those people for this disaster. I also happened to be one of those people to get out safely. I’m still amazed at how lucky I was.
My father and I sat on the couch for a little while. I questioned him about what he knew. We watched the endless loop of destruction footage. He stood up in front of the TV and said, “There it is. You want to see it? There it is.” Oh, how it must have made him go mad watching it over and over and over again. And they just kept showing it. He didn’t want to see that image anymore. But you couldn’t turn on the damn TV without seeing it.
When he watched those images on TV, he watched it from the perspective of a father who saw both towers collapse and knew his son was in there somewhere. He listened to the reports of how many lives were lost, how many firemen died, endless stories of individual loss and grief. Once I gave him a hug, I began to feel better, but I wanted to make sure he was OK, and that he could move on. 9/11 was a traumatic experience for him.
I went upstairs to see my oldest sister, Susan. I don’t know if she fully grasped the situation, but it didn’t matter. I hugged her, and I was so purely happy to see her face.
My mother was at Verona High School, where she
worked managing the cafeteria. I drove up to the high school with Joy. Mom was right there as soon as I walked through the back doors of the school. She tried to be strong, but she cried as soon as she saw me. We gave each other a long hug, and then we walked around a little bit. She proudly introduced me to some co-workers. I stayed only a short time and then drove back with Joy to my family’s house.
I saw my sister Maria later in the day. She had been at work and was emotionally exhausted. No melodrama. This was too heavy for that. You just had to be in their shoes. It’s still hard for me to tell exactly what my family went through, but they went through more than anyone should.
As much as they might’ve wanted to know about me, what was important to me was to know about them. I wanted to know what everyone else was doing when it happened. “What were you doing when you heard? How did you react?” Mostly, it deflected their attention away from asking me questions. I didn’t want to explain it all then.
My parents didn’t probe me about that day, and I didn’t want to tell them too much. My parents were world-class worriers, and they didn’t need to know how close I came to such horror and death. I didn’t want them to have to think about what I had gone through. Just being together was all any of us wanted or needed to know.
Angelo’s House
That afternoon, I took a ride over to my brother’s house. Angelo lived a half mile from my parents. He was in Upstate New York on business and wasn’t due back for a couple more days. I saw his wife, Lisa; my three-year-old niece, Amanda; and my godson, Angelo Jr., who was just four months old. Lisa gave me a big hug and cried. Little Amanda was glued to the TV. She couldn’t understand why we were acting so funny. She’s thirteen years old now and still has never asked me about 9/11. None of my nieces or nephews do. I sat down on the couch in my brother’s living room. Lisa handed me my godson. And then from nowhere, a calm washed over me. This child in my arms made me feel sane for the first time since it all happened. I sat still with him. I just sat. Joy says that was the only time the look in my eyes changed from distance and blankness to the look in the eyes of the person she knew when she first met me.
Reluctant Hero Page 9