September 12, 2001

SEPTEMBER 12, 2001

It was 10:30 in the morning. The tunnels were closed. I was in Hoboken. This will be a story about the facts because even now I cannot put into words what those days were like. The whole town sat outside at Frank Sinatra Park all day, with the view of downtown Manhattan. Smoke still poured up into the sky. I had a mask. Lots of people did. I had just moved into a new apartment – 9 days before – and I still had stuff at my old apartment. We weren’t moved in at all. We had no television, no phone, no computer. To have none of those things on a day like September 11 put us back into the 19th century. It would be a month before I saw the actual footage of that day. It would be a month before the phone company had enough time to deal with us. We were cut off. We didn’t need to “watch the footage” since we saw the whole thing first-hand. On September 12, I didn’t know what else to do – I couldn’t go anywhere – I couldn’t sit in front of the television – there was going to be a blood drive later that afternoon (a police car trolled through the streets of Hoboken, and a cop had shouted out to the town the time and place through a bullhorn) – and I was planning on going to that. In the meantime, I walked over to my old apartment to get the last remaining things. Nothing was normal. I wasn’t in a panic, but nothing was normal. I grabbed whatever I had to grab and left. A block away I passed an Irish bar, a place I’d never been. It was open. There were people inside. So I went in. People were drinking. It was 11 am, and normally it would be winos sitting belly-up at that time of day, but not on September 12. The bartender was a nice-looking guy who reminded me of all of my cousins. That type of Boston Irish with black hair, pale skin, blue eyes and a bit of pudge. He was around my age. Everyone was soft and friendly with one another in those days. The individual had disappeared, in a way. We were all one. So if you saw someone struggling, you stopped and asked if they were okay. You were kind. He was kind to me, when I sat down. Kindness like that has to do with being aware that the other person is probably going through a trauma, just like you are. It’s not random kindness. It’s being gentle with the human race, because it’s been through a lot. The bartender was kind to me like that. There was more to it when he said, “How are you?” He really wanted to know.

I ordered a beer. There were a group of guys at the end of the bar. Many were on their cell phones. Cell phone coverage was still spotty that next day – I hadn’t spoken to my parents yet, my sister Siobhan who was downtown when it happened – I knew she was okay, after running away from the collapse – she walked 80 blocks north to my cousin Liam’s … but I hadn’t spoken to anyone, seen anyone. I think my friend Beth might have randomly gotten through to me – or maybe it was Betsy – but cell phone connections were a huge problem. I had gotten word out, via email (I went to a Kinko’s on September 11 … because I had no computer at home, no phone working nothing) – , that I was all right, and word passed on to those who knew me – The same thing happened with word about Siobhan, who was MIA for a couple of hours and we all knew that she worked on the same block as the towers.

I sat and had my beer. The bar was dark, mahogany, gleaming taps, Irish flags, the sun outside streamed towards the front windows – but stopped there. The interior of the bar was shadowy, dim … the sunlight didn’t make it in somehow. I talked with the bartender. Conversations in those days always went like:

“Are you okay?”
“Is everyone you love okay?”
“What happened to you yesterday?”
“Where were you when it happened?”

Stories told, stories shared. It’s what we do, us humans. It’s what we’ve always done.

Still, to this day – when I meet someone new – and we have any extended conversation – a “getting to know you” conversation – ‘where were you on september 11″ inevitably comes up. We are still working through it, still interested, still need to tell and listen.

I was there. Were you there? Where were you? Did you know anyone? How are you?

So he and I did that. Where were you? Are you okay? Are your friends okay? He said he came to open the bar at 10 am because he knew people would need it today. He told me he was getting married in a month. I teared up. Humanity…. pushing forward. He would still get married. Life was, indeed, going to go on. I took a wild guess, based on his looks, and said, “Are you guys doing pre-Cana and everything?” He started laughing and said, “I need to write a book about my experiences at pre-Cana.” We both started laughing – to laugh felt so odd, so … ALIVE … I said, “Tell me some stories.” So he did. In that dark bar on a bright morning. I still remember the stories of some of the other couples he met at pre-Cana, and the counselors – and how goofy they were – how un-cool. “Like you would hope the church could find people who were, you know, sort of COOL to show how cool marriage is … but no, we get these goofballs …:” Laughing, again. I wanted to keep laughing. It felt so fucking good. “But you know,” he said, shrugging, a philosopher like all good bartenders, “It’s what you do.” Meaning: follow tradition. If you’re Catholic, that’s what you do. “Yes,” I said, “It’s what you do.”

The conversation was soft and lovely and kind. A wash of gentle water, easy, gentle. We assumed the BEST about each other. We gave each other the benefit of the doubt. We assumed that the other person was doing his or her BEST in life, rather than the opposite, assuming that other people are morons, and NOT doing their best – which is so often how interactions work in “normal” life. He met me assuming I was good and kind. I listened to him talk assuming he was honest and nice. I remember it so clearly, that conversation about pre-Cana.

Behind me, pacing in the dark bar, was a guy on his cell phone. He had obviously gotten through to someone. Finally. I only heard snippets.

“So he called you? ….. When? …. Had he gone downstairs yet? …. What time was that? Yeah … he called me when the first plane hit … I told him to fucking get the hell out of there … So he was on his way out when he called?”

Snippets. Fragments of a story. A life.

A man missing. Like so many people were missing in those days. Every empty wall covered in “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?”

I heard the pain in the cell phone guy’s voice. But he was trying to keep it together. It was almost like when you know you need to cry, but you feel you can’t – and what happens to your voice when you’re holding all of that back. It gets tight, like a wire, rigid – but occasionally what’s going on inside you betrays you. There’s a waver in the voice, or you take a deep shaky breath … and there’s a tsunami there. Hovering above your head. Waiting for an opening.

Cell phone guy was trying to figure out what had happened to a friend. I assume it was a friend. His friend was in the second tower. He had called someone after the first plane hit the other building. No one had seen him since.

So little time had passed since the day before – and there was still sooooo much hope in those days that THRONGS of people would be found. You’d have to have been here to remember that hope. It’s hard to imagine myself back to those days now. Like I said. The destruction was so total. Yet still there was hope.

The bartender had moved on to deal with other customers, and Cell Phone guy paced behind me, holding back his pain – talking on the phone. But I felt like I got the full throttle of his pain. I wasn’t even looking at him. He was behind me. But the pain in his voice – “hidden” behind the matter of fact language and the “so what are we going to do” practicality – hit me in the back. It was almost a physical thing. I felt it like a physical thing, not an emotional one. I sat and drank my beer. Closed my eyes. Listening to the snippets from behind me. And the pain was coming. I could feel it.

I put my head down into my hands.

And sat that way for a long time.

Until I felt a soft touch on my shoulder. I turned, and it was Cell Phone Guy. No longer on the phone. He had dark circles under his eyes, a backwards baseball cap, he looked like anybody. Nondistinct. A regular old jocky Hoboken guy. But I can see his face now in my mind’s eye.

He said, “Are you okay?”

I said, because that was the kind of day it was, “I’m feeling your pain.” Such a silly cliche – such a Bill Clinton cliche – but if you take away the cliche, if you forget the cultural silliness of that statement – and hear how I said it … I was saying it literally. I meant it literally.

And maybe it was because I was a stranger. Maybe it was because I’m a woman. I was the only woman in that bar. Maybe it was a mixture of those things, I don’t know. But when I said that, I saw Cell Phone Guy’s face contort into a horror-mask, a grimace of agony – he couldn’t even speak – the emotions were so strong and horrifying he couldn’t even be with them. It was like a Tragedy Mask. No tears, though. No tears. I reached out and grabbed his hands, tight, in my own – and he stood there – taking it, allowing it – and I remember then something happening in him, something collapsing. He didn’t burst into tears, or start sobbing – but his whole posture changed, his shoulders went down, his head dropped, his arms lost their rigidity – he just sunk into it. Into what was beneath. I don’t know who was missing. I don’t know their relationship. I don’t need to know. He was grieving.

His head was down on his chest and I still had his hands in mine, and he said, “He was in the tower. Someone talked to him about 10 minutes before it collapsed and he was still up on his floor.”

No words.

He kept talking. “I keep trying to get through to local area hospitals – maybe he was taken there – maybe he’s alive somewhere – but you know – you can’t get through to anyone.”

“I know.”

He was gripping onto my hands. It was like that was the only remaining tension in his body. Everything else had gone slack. His head down, his shoulders soft and collapsed, but he was holding onto me for dear life.

His phone rang then. A feeble signal getting through. He leapt back into action, dropping my hands and clambered to get to the phone to his ear – and then he was back to pacing, and sharing fragments, and trying to get things done.

I left the bar maybe half an hour later. The bartender and I said our good-byes and I wished him much much happiness in his married life. He said thank you. In a normal time, I would have left without finding Cell Phone Guy but this was not a normal time. He was sitting in the back, at a table, with some friends – and they were all on their cell phones. I went over there, he saw me coming – and stood up – this strange heartbreaking openness washing all over his face. I reached out for his hands and said, “I hope you find him.”

He nodded, tightly, controlled. A moment of great dignity and honor. Acknowledging my words. Keeping himself all together.

And I turned to go and suddenly he leapt across the space between us and grabbed me in his arms and held me so tight that my jaw bumped against his chin, and I was all squished up in his embrace.

It was a quick one. Over in 3 seconds. He grabbed me, got me into a body lock, suffocated the breath out of me, like – he wanted to kill me – he wanted to crush me – and then let me go.

Neither of us were in tears. But there was a fullness between us.

A fullness that can only occur, in such moments, between strangers.