Chapter 1 #4
That night, when Jesse and I made love, I admitted that my hesitation had never been about him.
It was the wedding I didn’t want. I didn’t want the happiest day of my life compromised by the idea that my biological mother wasn’t there to see it.
I didn’t want a weird candle to be lit for her, and I didn’t want any guest bringing up her name and inadvertently hurting Evie, as if she wasn’t the real mother of the bride.
“I can fix that,” Jesse said, and the next morning we went to the courthouse.
We didn’t tell our families until a month later, when we were all together on the Fourth of July at India Point Park for the fireworks, and a fireman who used to work with Jesse’s dad came over to say hello and asked Jesse how married life was treating him.
Evie had been devastated, but my father had just grinned.
“Your mom and I got married in secret, too,” he said.
Now, Jesse leans back in his chair and folds his arms. “I could go with you to New York,” he says.
Tomorrow—-Friday—-I am taking a personal day I take every year, to go to New York City for the annual commemoration ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial. It’s a four--hour drive; and I’ll leave at 3:00 a.m. to make sure I’m there in time.
Jesse doesn’t like the thought of me doing a round trip to the city by myself, or being at the mercy of the hoopla that is sure to surround the twenty--fifth anniversary of the event.
I shake my head. “Thanks, but I’m good.” He understands.
It’s the same reason that he goes out the night of his dead sister’s birthday, holding some private vigil for Anna that keeps him away from home till nearly dawn, then crawls into bed and grabs onto me as if I am a life preserver in a shipwreck.
“Besides,” I say, “don’t you have to run a polygraph tomorrow?”
“Yeah. The bank teller embezzlement case. But I could reschedule.”
I stand to gather the plates. “No need. By the way, the shower’s still wonky,” I tell him.
“It’s on my list,” Jesse promises. He gently catches my wrist. “Hey,” he says softly. “You know the deal. You get to take care of everyone else, and I get to take care of you.”
With one tug, he pulls me onto his lap. “I love you,” I whisper, kissing my way to the freckle on his ear that looks like a piercing and—-amazingly, given his wild child past—-is not. “But you smell like flop sweat.” Then I bite down on his lobe.
He yanks away from me, but he’s laughing.
I hop off his lap and instead of stacking the dishes, I frame his jaw with my palms. I stamp my smile against his, hoping I can convey all the words I don’t know how to say—-the gratitude and the good fortune and the tenderness of knowing that even though I could survive on my own, I am so happy that I do not have to.
Jesse and I have a ritual before we fall asleep: each of us confesses one of our worst fears and we decide whose is the most devastating. Tonight, Jesse is pressed up against my back, his arm banded tight around my waist. “Worst--case scenario,” he whispers. “Flesh--eating bacteria.”
That is a good one. Necrotizing fasciitis is truly vile.
“Spread by mosquitoes,” Jesse qualifies.
I shudder, having flashbacks of Zika. The Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry Zika had been geographically contained before they suddenly showed up in Connecticut.
With global warming, insect--borne diseases have become more of a threat.
It’s why a dengue outbreak in Brazil is something I have to pay attention to also, and why climate change affects public health.
His fingers drum on my stomach, a prompt. “Electromagnetic pulse,” I offer.
I hear Jesse’s soft huff of laughter in my hair. “Say more.”
I turn so that we are facing each other.
In the dark, I can barely make out the curve of his jaw.
“It takes out everything that uses a battery, and all big governments have the ability to throw one at each other. Just think about it—-every device you own becomes a paperweight. No refrigeration, no computers, no electronic communications. How do you get news, or send it? How do you travel, or store food, or get water? There would be blackouts. Hospitals couldn’t function. Emergency services would be crippled.”
Jesse rolls onto his back. “Jesus,” he says.
“I win,” I tell him.
He strokes my hair. “Pretty sure I did,” he murmurs, and I know he’s not talking about our game. His voice is striped with the wonder that he sometimes expresses about how many millions of choices and moments had to fall into exactly the right order for the two of us to ever have met.
I roll on top of him. “I can think of something to do during an electromagnetic pulse blackout,” I murmur. I’m only a breath away from him when my phone rings on the nightstand. Immediately I answer. It’s Toby, who’s on call tonight. “Hey,” I say, answering. “What have you got?”
“Five--car pileup with mass casualties on I--95,” he says. I wait, as this alone would not typically merit a call. He continues, “One of which is an oil tanker on its side and leaking.”
“Okay,” I reply, already mentally running through how to get more ambulances to the scene, figure out cleanup for a potential oil spill, and put hospitals on alert. I switch Toby to speaker and start braiding my hair into submission.
Jesse is already padding into the kitchen. “Coffee’s on,” he says.
When I was growing up, my family received an invitation every year to the 9/11 anniversary commemorations, but we had never gone.
They got my father too riled up with his conspiracy theories, and Evie said it made her too sad to think about how her best friend had died.
So it wasn’t until I was sixteen and a freshman at Columbia that I attended. And I went alone.
The ceremony had started at 8:30 a.m. on the Memorial Plaza.
It was already packed when I arrived, because somehow I had missed the memo that families would be allowed access an hour before.
I showed my invitation letter for entry as I watched crowds spill across the plaza—-many people holding posters or laminated photos or ID tags of the person they’d lost. There were people wearing American flag trucker hats and never forget tees.
Others wore suits and ties, squeezing in the memorial before work.
Almost everyone held up a cellphone to film the tribute.
As I passed the memorial pools, I noticed that people had stuck flowers and notes and a global rainbow of flags into the carved names of the dead.
I’d managed to find a spot close to the area where the news cameras were corralled just as the honor guard carrying the flag began their march.
Spit--polished NYPD and FDNY and Port Authority officials held it stretched between them, trailed by a corps of drummers and bagpipers who provided a solemn beat.
They had walked past lines of military, all saluting, and the dignitaries—-the president and vice president, the mayor, the governor.
A flag was turned to face the crowd as a girl sang the National Anthem and then was marched off with ceremony as Emerald Society and Port Authority pipers played.
Beside the podium in the front was a bell, which was rung at 8:46 a.m., the moment that the first tower was hit, and which would be rung again to commemorate the moment that the second tower was struck, and the times of the attacks on the Pentagon and Flight 93.
In between, family members stepped up in twos, reading the names of those who had died on 9/11.
It would take over four hours to recite them all.
Most of the names were simply stated, but sometimes when a reader reached their own loved one, they added some personal details: He was my cousin, and he was known as Mr. Ladder 24 at Engine 1 on West 31st Street.
He was last heard from on the 44th floor of the South Tower.
And: I wear my father’s initials over my heart, so every day I remind myself of the impact he had on my life.
God bless the military and first responders; the FDNY, the NYPD, and the United States of America . . .
My own mother’s name had been Eloise Ambrose, and because of that, she was in the first batch to be read.
I found myself leaning forward. The names kept coming, like the flow of a river.
And then, I heard hers. The melody of syllables, swiftly followed by someone else’s name.
I wanted to tell them to stop. To tell everyone that Eloise Ambrose wasn’t just one of 2,977 gone, indistinguishable from the rest. That she was my mother, and worth knowing for the attributes that made her her.
Except I did not know firsthand what those things were.
Suddenly I was crying so hard I could not catch my breath. I had to put my hand on the railing around the press box just to stay upright.
The blinking black eye of a television camera swiveled to capture me, caught in a web of grief. Stop, I said, or I wanted to, and I put out my hand to shield myself.
By then, others around me were turning at the disruption. I tried to back away from the crowd, but it was too thick around me. “Hey,” a voice said. “Asshole.” A skinny brown girl with pink hair, ripped tights, and combat boots leaped onto the railing that cordoned off the press. “Leave her alone.”
In response, the camera zoomed in closer.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the girl said, and she grabbed a fistful of the cameraman’s shirt and punched him square in the face.
He howled as blood streamed down his chin. “You little shit,” he cried.
“Bite me,” the girl tossed back, slinging her arm around my shoulders. “Let’s blow this place.”
Through my tears, I said, “That’s a really bad choice of metaphor today.”
Tabs grinned at me, and we’ve been friends ever since.