United We Stand (4 page)

“Without our son I wouldn’t have made it,” he said to my mother. “It was because of him that I made the decision to go down.”

“You would have done that even if I hadn’t been there,” I said.

“I don’t think so. But even so, there was no way I would have made it down in time without you. Think about Ting.”

“Ting? Did you say Ting?” my mother asked.

I looked at my father. I’d gone to sleep almost as soon as we got home. Obviously he hadn’t told her about Ting, either.

“There was a message this morning, before you got up.” My mother went to the counter and started
sifting through a pile of message notes. “There were so many calls … so many people wanting to speak to me or to you or—”

“Did Ting call?” my father asked.

“I think so … maybe … but I had trouble understanding her … I didn’t really understand what she was saying because she didn’t speak English very—”

“Ting doesn’t speak much English,” I said. “But how did she get our number?” I asked my father.

“I gave it to her when we left her to be taken to the hospital. I just didn’t think she’d call so soon.”

“Here it is.” My mother handed a little yellow slip to my father. I could see a number and name on the paper. Ting had left her number.

“Who exactly is Ting?” Suzie asked.

“We met her on the way down the stairs,” my father explained.

“We
carried
her down the stairs,” I said.

“You did what?” my mother asked.

“We found her on one of the floors,” my father said.

“The
seventy- fourth
floor,” I added.

“She was hurt. We carried her down on our backs.”

“Down seventy- four floors?” Suzie asked.

“She wasn’t big,” my father said. “She couldn’t have weighed any more than a hundred pounds, wouldn’t you say, Will?”

“Not much more. She didn’t weigh much at all.”

“And we took turns,” my father said. “It wasn’t like I did it by myself. I
couldn’t
have done it by myself. Not without resting every few floors. If Will hadn’t
been with me then neither Ting nor I would have made it out in time.” He turned directly to me. “That’s what I mean about your saving
my
life.”

“I just can’t believe that you carried somebody down seventy- four floors,” my mother said.

“
We
carried her down,” my father said. “Besides, can you believe that we’d leave an injured person behind?”

“No,” both Suzie and my mother said at the same time.

“Her leg was hurt,” I said. “That’s why we had to carry her.”

“I was more worried about the head injury,” my father added. “I’m glad she called. That must mean she’s feeling okay. Maybe I should call her back.”

“After you finish the story,” Suzie said.

“I think we have finished. We got out of the tower, it fell down, and we got home.”

I could tell my father was trying to minimize things and not let anybody know how close we came to not getting out.

“Where were you when it collapsed?” my mother asked. She wasn’t going to let him off again, and he knew it. She’d figured out what he was doing.

“We were there. Right there,” he said. “I was one of the last people who got out. When the building came down the force of the air rushing away just picked me up and tossed me like a rag doll.”

My mother gasped.

“But Will was farther away.”

“It knocked me over, and I was hit with all sorts
of stuff … Now I know what it’s like to be a sock in a dryer.”

“A sock in a dryer with a handful of nails, a drawerful of knives, and a couple of doorknobs thrown in for good measure,” my father added.

“That’s where you got all the cuts and bruises,” my mother said.

I nodded. “We were lucky that’s all we got. The way everything was flying around we could have gotten …” I stopped myself. “But mostly the problem was with the dust.”

“You were
in
that cloud that I ran from?” Suzie asked.

“Right in the middle. It blocked out the sun, and it felt like there was no air. It was like breathing sand, like I was being suffocated.”

“I heard on the news that most of the concrete from the floors was pulverized into that dust,” Suzie said.

“Not all of it,” I said. “There were chunks falling all around us.”

“Maybe that dust explains why the two of you are coughing so much,” my mother said. “I want you to go and see Dr. Tamari. I want him to do a full physical on both of you.”

“We were seen yesterday when they stitched us up,” my father said. “Besides, Dr. Tamari is probably over whelmed today. Let’s give it a day or so.”

“Okay, a day or so, but I’m calling to set up appointments for you two for later this week and we’re not going to have any arguments, understand?”

We weren’t going to disagree. I knew there was no point. Besides, I thought seeing a doctor wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I was really okay, but I did want to stop coughing.

“First things first,” my father said. “Suzie and I need to make some phone calls.”

“And I need to go and see James.”

“I’ll drive you over.”

“Thanks. I’ll get ready.”

I knew I could wash up. I knew I could get clean clothes on. But I didn’t know if I was going to be
ready
. I had no idea what I was going to say when I got there.

My mother slowed the car down as we pulled up to James’s house. There was no space in the driveway—there were already four cars there—and there were tons of cars parked on the street. School had been cancelled and most businesses had shut down for the day, so nobody had gone to work. It looked as though there were people there already at the Bennetts’. Maybe a lot of people. I wondered if that would make it easier. Or harder. What did I know?

We pulled into a spot in front of a house a bit farther down the street. My mother turned off the engine, and we both sat there. Neither of us made any
move to get out. It was like we thought if we didn’t get out of the car we wouldn’t have to go into the house and face whatever was happening there.

“We can sit here as long as you want,” my mother said. It was like she was reading my mind.

“Thanks. I just need a few minutes. I’m not sure what to say to anybody.”

“Sometimes it isn’t necessary to say anything. Just being there is comforting,” she told me.

“Really?”

My mother nodded. “It made me feel better to have people with me yesterday … when I didn’t know about … about what had happened to you and your father.”

She looked as though she was going to start crying again.

“Let’s go in, then. I need to see James. I just wish we could have picked him up and taken him home yesterday like we promised his father.”

“You tried.”

James had gone to work with his father that day, like I’d gone with mine, as part of this “take your kid to work” thing they wanted us to do at school. When the plane hit, the call came in for his father’s fire crew—every crew in the whole city—to respond to the emergency at the World Trade Center, and James had to stay behind at the station.

We’d found that out on the way down the stairs. There, in the middle of everything—us heading down, carrying Ting, and firefighters heading up, loaded
down with equipment, looking for people to help—we ran into Mr. Bennett. It was one of the most strange, bizarre moments in a day full of strange, bizarre moments. We stopped for just a minute—less than a minute—and he asked us if we could drop by his station and get James and take him home. We promised we would, and then he hurried up the stairs, back toward the danger, and we started back down. I remembered watching him as he caught up with the other firefighters. I saw one last little glimpse of him as he turned the corner and was gone. Other than his crew, we must have been the last people to talk to him. Not his wife or his kids. Us. Me and my father, there in the stairwell.

If I’d only known, I would have asked him what he wanted us to say to his family, or … That was stupid. If I’d known what was going to happen, that the whole tower was going to fall, I would have told him and he would have come down with us. Wouldn’t he?

After we got out of the tower and away from the collapse the first thing we did was get medical treatment. But right after that we tried to call the fire station to talk to James, to tell him we were coming to get him. We couldn’t get through at first. And then when we did finally get a line we were told that the department had arranged a drive home for James and he wasn’t there any more.

At first I was grateful. I was exhausted, and I just wanted to get home myself as fast as possible. That was part of it. But there was more. I didn’t know what
I was supposed to say to him. Was I supposed to be the one to tell him that his father had probably been in the tower when it collapsed? That I didn’t see any way he could have survived?

Now, a day later, I still didn’t know what to say. At least I didn’t have to tell him what had happened, because by now he already knew.

Maybe my mother was right and I didn’t really have to say anything. Maybe just being there would be enough. Either way, I’d soon find out.

“Okay, let’s just go,” I said.

We lived outside the city—a thirty- minute train ride from my father’s office … where his office used to be. There were sort of two sections to the neighborhood, one with big houses and the other with houses that were … were … less big. James lived in the second section. Not that the houses weren’t nice. They were almost all neat and well cared for, but they were much smaller than ours—tidy little bungalows and houses that had had second stories built on. The people who lived here were teachers, nurses, tradespeople, and police and firefighters. I wondered how many more people on this street were waiting for a call they hoped wouldn’t come.

We walked up the front path. The grass was cut and the flower beds well tended. James’s father liked doing yard work. He used an old push mower. He’d told me once that it just made the grass look better, that the push-mower blades didn’t “bruise” the grass. I could just picture him out there, working, waving to me as I
walked up, a big smile on his face, earbuds from his iPod in his ears, listening to music—old school Zeppelin, Stones, and AC/DC. Even if I couldn’t hear the music I could often hear him singing along as he worked.

He was always so friendly, happy. All the guys liked him. He would come out to toss a ball with us or play road hockey or shoot some hoops. Sometimes when a bunch of us were down in the basement he’d just order a pizza for us, bring it down, and hand it over—of course, minus the two pieces that he’d eaten.

Just the day before yesterday he’d come down when we were jamming in the basement, picked up an old guitar, and started playing along. He was pretty good—mostly old school, but he knew his stuff.

It wasn’t unusual for him to be around the house, which made him really different from most of our dads. Firefighters lived at the station house for a bunch of days in a row and then got days off, so he seemed to be home a lot. It would make it that much stranger for him to not be around any more. Somehow it didn’t seem possible that he wouldn’t be there. I had to stop thinking that way—I shouldn’t just be writing him off in my mind. That wasn’t right.

Coming up to the front door seemed strange. I usually went around the side and in through the kitchen door. It was never locked. I’d just walk into
the house, yell out a hello, and head either into the basement or up to James’s room.

My mother pressed the doorbell. There was no turning back now. I heard somebody coming to the door. Would it be James or his mother or … ? The door opened. It was some strange, older woman I didn’t know.

“Hello,” my mother said. “We’re here to see Becky and James.”

“Becky’s not really accepting visitors right now,” the woman said.

“I think … I think she’d want to see us. Could you just tell her that it’s Samantha and Will Fuller … please?”

She nodded. “I’ll ask her. Please wait.” She closed the door, leaving us standing on the front stoop. I was stunned. My mother looked surprised as well.

“I guess they want to make sure that the family isn’t being bothered by people who just—”

The door swung open, interrupting my mother. It was Mrs. Bennett!

“I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. She gave us a big smile. She was happy to see us, and I was already glad that we’d come. “Please, please come in … I’m so sorry … my aunt is just trying to protect us. She didn’t know who you were!”

“We understand completely,” my mother said.

She ushered us in and gave both of us a hug. She looked at me, hard, surveying me up and down. “Were you injured?” she asked.

“No, not really. Just my hands, a little.”

She reached out and took my hands to examine them. “That looks painful,” she said, referring to the stitches.

“It’s nothing, really; it doesn’t even hurt.”

“I’m sure it does, but you’re being brave.” She let go of my hands and looked at my mother. “And your husband?”

“He got it a little worse. Three fractured ribs, a concussion, and a separated elbow.”

“Sam has had the first two, but not the third. Men can be such babies when they’re hurt or sick.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” my mother agreed.

I guess I was being insulted, but what could I say?

“Will, James is going to be so happy to see you. You know how it is when you’re surrounded all day by nothing but a bunch of silly adults.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Normally he’d at least have his father around, and that’s like having another kid,” she said. “But you’d know that.”

I’d heard her say that more than once, but really, he was like a big kid. He never seemed to be worried about things like my father was. I’d never even seen him in a suit and tie.

“Please come into the kitchen. I just put on a fresh pot of coffee and I baked some muffins. And, of course, people have brought food.”

There were a dozen people in the kitchen already. Some older women—like her aunt—a couple of men, a
neighbor I recognized, and James’s little sister, Amanda. But there was no James.

We were greeted with a few quiet words and solemn nods. Many of these people looked as though they’d been crying. They looked distraught, upset, and scared all rolled into one. The only one who didn’t look sad was Mrs. Bennett. She didn’t look—or act—the way I’d thought she would. She was smiling and her voice was all cheery, and if she’d been crying she’d fixed her makeup so well that you couldn’t tell.