I can feel myself uncurl, like the cells in my body had been magnetically bonded together and have been granted release.
“Jesus, Mom, thank God.”
“I know, I know, but those poor people,” she says, as I find CNN on the dial, the reality of the images worse than I could have imagined even when the DJs were shouting in their mics. “Oh, Ben, call waiting. Let me take this.”
I can see a monstrous, foreboding plume of smoke rising from each tower, like a death knell, like the black plague. My dad’s firm is on the ninety-ninth floor. I lean over and squint, trying to assess where the planes hit, if he’d know anyone inside.
The commentators are saying things likeintentionalandterrorist, and they already have a reporter on the ground. There is debris flying and terrified New Yorkers running, and though the reporter is trying to stay calm, her voice is quavering, and she is coughing into her elbow.
“Get out of there!” I shout to the screen, as if I know her, as if she can hear me. Then I remember: Tatum. She’s downtown in class, not too far from the Towers. She doesn’t have a cell phone because she is foolish (and tells me she doesn’t want another bill to pay). I call her beeper number. I call it again. I try Daisy, but they’re not sharing a course load this semester: Daisy is focusing on stage, Tatum on film, and their schedules rarely overlap now.
The CNN anchors press their fingers to their ears. “We are hearing that these were not small planes,” one of them says. “They were major airliners. We are talking about a possible hijacking situation.”
I feel my stomach rise to my throat, my pulse quickening in my neck.
My dad is on a major airliner.
No. No, no, no, no, no. I just spoke to my mom, and she said he was fine.
I call Tatum’s paging service again.Where is she?
I rise and open the front door, poke my head out, looking for ... I don’t know, someone, Tatum, a neighbor, to confirm that this is real, this is actually happening, and I’m not completely losing my shit. I should call Leo. I close the door. I should call Leo, and he will tell me that I am being overdramatic and paranoid, because Leo is never overdramatic and paranoid, and he’ll make me laugh because I’m such a worrywart of a baby. I’ll probably wake him. Fucking college students and their ability to sleep until noon. But I’d promised my dad over the weekend that I’d call him anyway, have a heart-to-heart about his future, try to “get his head on straight.”
“He’s barely pulling Cs; Bs if he’s lucky,” my dad said. “Forget about the LSAT, a decent law school.”
“That’s just Leo,” I replied. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m trying to get him an interview on the trading floor at Merrill.” He sighed. “Calling in some favors. He needs to have a plan. He’s graduating in nine months. He can’t live on our dime forever.”
“No law school at all?” I asked. My dad had always wanted him to come on board his firm, especially when it became clear that I wouldn’t.
“Maybe a year or two as a trader, then he can transition. He needs to grow up, Ben.” I could picture my dad shaking his head like he couldn’t imagine how Leo had gotten this far in life without being drafted into clown school.
“He’s all right, Dad.”
He was silent for a beat. “I know,” he said finally. “Of course I know that.” He didn’t sound like he did, though. “I know I push you hard, Ben, and I know you don’t always appreciate it ...”
I laughed, but not really in a joyful way.
“Anyway, you’re making something of yourself,” he said. “That’s why I do it. And now it’s time for your brother to do the same. He’s slid by for too long.”
“It’s because he’s so fucking charming,” I said.
My dad laughed at that, but this time with true glee, because it was the truth.
I grab the phone now, sink back onto the couch. Just as I start to punch in Leo’s number, the CNN reporter starts shouting, running; then a black cloud like nothing I have ever seen rushes toward the camera and overwhelms it. I drop the phone, cover my mouth, let out a scream that bounces off Tatum’s small studio walls.
No.
The first tower falls, crumbling like a fragile set of pick-up sticks. I sit there, paralyzed, completely disbelieving what my brain is attempting to register.
Tatum. I need Tatum so very much right now.
The door unlatches behind me, and she steps over the threshold, as if she could hear my spirit calling out.
“Jesus,” she says, which comes out more like a wail. “Jesus,” she says again, this time crying for real.
The phone rings on the couch where I’d left it. I look at her, she looks at me.
