Chapter 1 #12
Except I have no intention of going into that building, or to that appointment. Maybe I will open the cab door when it’s driving and throw myself out in front of a truck. Maybe I will jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.
I have done what I can to convince Evie I’m behaving. I braided my hair with my red ribbon and put on a dress and sandals and ate a yogurt. Now, I look down at Molly in the arms of my best friend. “You’ll take care of her?” I ask.
“Of course,” Evie says. “Don’t worry about us.”
I reach out my hand to touch Molly’s cheek—-that impossible softness—-one last time, but Evie draws back.
Then, relenting, she brings the baby within reach.
I lean down and press my lips to the fontanelle at the top of the baby’s head, pulsing with life.
Her skin is too warm. “Call the pediatrician when the office opens,” I say. “The number is on the fridge.”
It is a heartbreakingly blue day, the sky so crisp and clear that it almost hurts to stare at it. Even the temperature is perfect, cool and bright.
As soon as I get into the cab, the driver flicks his eyes toward me in the rearview mirror, and then away. The radio announcer is recapping the news. “Andrea Yates, the mother who killed her five children in Texas, will be in court today to determine her competence to stand trial—-”
I close my eyes. “You lied,” I whisper.
The driver glances at me. “Come again?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” This time, I speak in the silence of my head. I did what you wanted, and you lied to me.
(I am the father of lies.)
(And you did not finish the job.)
We turn off the West Side Highway onto Chambers Street. When my chest gets too tight with anxiety, I roll down the window for some air.
The high--pitched whine sounds like a cartoon, like the slide whistle when an anvil drops or a torpedo is launched. I look out the window just in time to see an airplane smack into the World Trade Center.
The cabbie slams on his brakes. “Holy fuck,” he gasps, jerking to the side of the road. We are only a few blocks away. He gets out of the car—-everyone else is getting out of theirs, too—-and shields his eyes as he stares.
When I step out, a sonic boom rolls over me. An inferno of flame and billowing clouds of black smoke roll into the sky. One wide strip of the building looks like an iron in a forge, glowing with fire.
There are shouts, screams, cries. “Those morons at LaGuardia fucked up big--time,” the driver scoffs. “Air traffic control there is a mess.”
For a moment, the entire city goes still.
Even at this distance I hear the glitter of breaking glass, the pop of embers, the roar as flames consume the structure.
After a few moments, the breeze blows a rain of paper toward us, a macabre ticker tape parade.
Fire trucks and police cars rush down the West Side Highway.
My gaze is drawn to the birds. There are three of them, silhouetted black against the impossible blue of the sky, distancing themselves from the heat.
Then I realize they are not birds.
One person, in suspended motion, upside down. Two people in tandem, clasping hands.
I am close enough to see the outline of their limbs, the ballet of their fall.
Hollow bones. I think of robins, of first flights, of phoenixes rising. I have not prayed in years, but right now, I do. I pray for wings to spread, for wind to lift, for them to fly.
I start hearing muffled thuds as they strike the pavement.
Are they being shoved out by crowds gathering at windows? Are they trying to escape smoke or searing heat? Or is this one last, brave, intentional decision—-if they have to die, they will choose how.
Adam. Oh God. Did he get here early? Is he somewhere in that blaze? I thank God that Evie and Molly are miles uptown. That they, at least, are safe.
Then a firebomb explodes from the South Tower—-the tower I should be in.
“It’s another plane,” someone yells. “We’re being attacked!
” The silence gives way to chaos—-first responders trying to get closer, police trying to keep observers away, bystanders running in every direction.
And through it all, the sound of gravity—-flesh hitting concrete.
A man behind me starts praying in Spanish. The world is ending, and all we can do is watch.
I don’t know when I start moving, but I do.
I push through the throngs of people until I am at the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Suddenly, all the hair stands up on the back of my neck.
I turn to see utter chaos—-as a building made of steel and stone and glass disappears from the neck down, an inverted mushroom cloud, a wall of dust and debris swelling toward me.
The smell of charred rubber and ash and burning flesh surrounds me. This is clearly Hell. For a moment, I think, It’s happened; it’s over. The army of people funneling around me with blank shock on their faces are the dead.
Then I realize it is a steady stream of evacuees, covered in that same white dust, moving away from the collapse. We are not dead. We are zombies.
If I were any closer, I realize, I might have died.
I should have died.
Satan is everywhere, embracing the pandemonium, too busy to bother with the likes of me.
Clarity cuts through the fog in my thoughts.
I see what those doomed men and women trapped on the top floors of the North Tower see: we may not be able to change the ending of our story, but we can decide how we reach it.
I had believed that protecting my daughter meant staying with her at any cost, even if that meant hiding what was happening to me. But now, I see that it’s the opposite. If I’m gone, I can’t hurt her. Satan can’t force my hand.
There will be so many casualties today. What is one more?
I melt into the shuffling crowd, becoming one of many. We move at a snail’s pace, but I feel the stretch of my wings, the surprise of flight.
This is not the first time I became someone else.
Ironically, it is Eloise Ambrose’s last day on earth.