“AFTER-MATH”
After
we had eaten all the chocolate and the bridges had been re-opened for the first
time that week, June and I made it back to our apartment. Just over the
Manhattan Bridge and this neighborhood showing tell-tale signs of the nonstop
gentrifying beast, was our Clinton Hill. A view of the Twin Towers out of the
kitchen window, now a view of circling fighter planes and fire. My first joke,
and yes it was days later, to the next door neighbor college kids on the fire
escape, was about BBQ. Some joke. We wandered down the narrow hall apartment.
The same apartment that June was terrified to leave for two weeks after moving
into this neighborhood once again seemed like not much of a sanctuary. Too
close. When I Ebayed a mini-DV camera the first thing I shot was the wondrous
view of the Towers out the kitchen window. Zoom in. Zoom out. When I was
working at the Trade Center, the Towers chuckled among themselves as I peered
out at them. Now, who got the last laugh? Nobody, nobody at all. We were
staring out that window, where the world was still burning brightly to listen
to the answering machine. Friends, relatives all left messages of “Brian, June
…are you okay?”. Who knew? Then the
first really panicked voice. Distraught. Demanding. “Brian, are you okay?
Brian, call me the second you get this! Brian, call! Brian, are? Brian Brian
Brian!”. This was from Colleen; maybe my first love if an eighteen year old can
know love. This wasn't one of those random calls from out of the past and the
blue. Colleen was still my friend. Colleen was still June’s friend. They went
to High School together. The first time I met June, I was leaving the Ritz with
Colleen to get in a fuck when we knew that her roommate was out; she was still
in the Ritz too. I can tell from Colleen’s voice and from her often less than
full on grip of keeping current, that she believed I was still working at the
WTC. I still had my key, but we had closed up shop two months prior. June hears
the message and something about it stops her cold. Colder than her already
reduced body temperature. Maybe if she had been out on the streets today
instead of hidden in the relative safety (because now everything was relative
to what was on September 10th and before and what was now) of her
classroom, babysitting until all her students’ parents or guardians could be
contacted. Maybe if she had seen a little bit more, things might have been a
little different. Maybe if she hadn't arrived at Helen and Steven’s after the
situation was under control – UNDER CONTROL? –
maybe the next few day’s design would have been drafted differently. But
she arrived for the chocolaty aftermath. How else could she have replied to the
panic stricken voice of anguish and love and concern? How else could she have
replied to yet another voice screaming among the millions needing to not have
this hit home so close? If no one you know was in that massive pit of steel and
bodies and fire, then it could still be a TV show, a summer blockbuster.
June
said “you and Colleen make a good couple”. And then she went to bed.
September 11th, a day
that will go down in infamy, September 12th was maybe even worse.
The 11th was exciting, right? There was no time to stop and think.
There was the terror and the fire of biblical proportions. If the world was
going to end, this is how they told us it was gonna go down and damned if they
weren't right. But on September 12th, we were still here. On
September 12th, we thought there were tens of thousands of bodies
cooking down there. On September 12th, all the cliches came home to
roost. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was this the calm after the
storm or the just the eye? CNN didn't help. Watching any television for
thirty-six hours straight can never be good but we all did it. Eyes peeled like
blood oranges, transfixed on that screen. The same footage over and over, then
the things that our naked eyes hadn't seen. I could have lived the rest of my
life without having to see people holding hands, jumping to their deaths from
the Towers. But maybe that’s just me. And maybe I over-reacted, at least in
June’s mind. We all have to deal differently. I kept watching CNN; she popped
“The Matrix” into the DVD-player for the fortieth time, cranked the sub-woofer
to the maximum vibrating, annoy the neighbors setting and disappeared into a
world that wasn't real. But was this one, the one of terror and fire and people
jumping hand in hand to their certain death, the real world? Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe I should have crawled beside her into the big, black chair that had made
the migration back and forth and back again to Brooklyn. Maybe I should have
sat at her feet, with her hand in my hair. Maybe I should have silently taken
that same hand and led her to the bedroom and made love instead of consuming
CNN-sized bits of death and destruction. That is what I would do now. It
probably wouldn't have mattered in the long run. But it would have been better
and everyone who died would still be baking out my kitchen window.
Thursday
was a school day and business as usual. Business as usual my ass. I got into
work myself, got one panicked phone call telling me that they were shutting the
subways back down. Planes weren't flying. What the fuck was I doing at work
trying to sell plane tickets to the people who sell plane tickets to people? I
had no business being there. I needed to be home, in front of the TV, in front of
CNN, where I belonged. So that is where I sat as the bomb threats piled high as
if someone opened the door to the arsenal and the looting had begun. I wanted
June to come home. I wanted her beside me. I wanted comfort and security where
these commodities were even more rationed than the water at the Lower East Side
supermarket. She stayed at work. She stayed in the city. She and the other
teachers went out for drinks as teachers do after school more than you would
really want to know. More likely to be red wine spilled on Johnny’s homework
than anything else. I watched CNN. I rang her cell phone. Maybe I slept a
little, probably very little. The world was full of fear and fire and June was
out in the middle of it. She finally came home at four o’clock in the morning.
She didn't want to talk about it. She needed to get a few hours sleep and go
back to work. If she could grasp a wisp of how angry I was, how scared for her
I had been, it wasn't showing in her dark, brown eyes. I made myself as clear
as I could be. This was not acceptable behavior and I don’t mean that in any
‘my wife must be home to put dinner on the table’ kind of way.
The
next day, she came in at ten o’clock the following morning.
And
that, was that. Deny it as she might at the time, this was the ‘fuck you’ that
someone had to say to end this thing. At least in my mind, that was what it
was. You cannot love somebody and put them in hell. And you cannot love someone
who could do that to you. There had been love left at that point. It doesn't all
ever go away, but every usable, serviceable iota of it, left me then and
there. I would say it was over but the shouting, but there was none. I told her
she needed to find someplace else to live. I told her she wasn't welcome in
this apartment any longer. The biggest tears came when I flash-forwarded to a
years’ later imagined phone call, when one of us would need to inform the other
that Poe, our cat of as many years and lives, was dead. But the rest of it had
just been thrown on the fire burning out the kitchen window and took to the
flame like kindling. It burned there like something hollow. It didn't burn
brightly and it didn't burn long. It just went up and then it was gone.