ninth-floor workers.
Edward might have been with the owners at the top of the building when the fire started had he not made plans to be on the sewing floor at that moment. He was a bookkeeper, not a seamstress. There was only one reason he was on the ninth floor at twenty minutes to five.
He was waiting for me.
Ten
TARYN
Manhattan
September 2011
THE first reporter found me in two days.
I hadn’t taken Celine up on her offer to call the magazine and tell them I didn’t wish to be contacted. That would merely identify me.
“The magazine is going to find out it’s you,” Celine had countered. “It’s a phenomenally emotional picture. Other publications are going to want to print it; I can guarantee it. You’re going to get a call, probably several. A quarter of our customer base knows you lost your husband that day.”
“Well, then I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
Celine had been right. With the tenth anniversary only a week away, the dailies had the most interest in hearing how bystanders on the streets had escaped the collapse of the South Tower, the first one to fall. The photo had reacquainted the public with its horror of having witnessed the slaughter of so many innocents. The two faces in the photograph—one male and one female—resonated with every person on the planet who remembered that day, so the editorials said.
I politely turned down the first interview request, then the second, and then the subsequent morning TV talk shows. No one in the media pressured me to reconsider; that was one of the kindnesses extended to those of us who lost someone we loved on 9/11. We were not made to feel guilty for declining to speak of our heartaches.
But Kendal had questions that I did feel compelled to address, though I didn’t know where to begin. For ten years I’d been able to crouch in between reality and regret and pretend neither had any influence on me, never moving forward, never looking backward. Residing above the Heirloom Yard was like living above the stuff of other people’s dreams, not my own. It took the photograph for me to realize that.
The photographer who had happened upon the memory card said it had been a fluke, a chance rendezvous with a camera bag she didn’t think she still owned.
But this wasn’t the first time that what some would call a coincidence had shattered my notion that life is composed of mere random events, both lovely and terrible. It had happened to me an hour before the photographer snapped that shot.
As I lay in bed on the fourth night after the photo was published, I knew my flimsy truce with chance and destiny was gone. That in-between place had never really existed.
People who say everything happens for a reason usually say that only when they agree with the reason.
Those people are not the ones who wish they could fold back time and make different choices. They don’t lie awake at night and whisper,
If only . . .
• • •
THE sky that Tuesday morning was the sweetest shade of robin’s-egg blue, cloudless and smooth.
Rays of a promising saffron sun were creeping over the bedspread as Kent walked across the bedroom to kiss me good-bye, a red travel mug in his hand.
His dress shirt was celery green, and his tie a silky charcoal.
I remember that day by its colors.
My yellow polka-dot pajamas as I lay in bed waiting for him to leave the apartment.
The white-and-sea-foam package I had hidden under my side of the bed.
The gray of waiting for several tense minutes.
The pink plus sign.
After so many years, a pink plus sign.
And then later, the marigold scarf—the last beautiful thing I saw that day.
I used to spend the nights when I couldn’t sleep re-creating that Tuesday in different colors. The sky not so blue, the sun coy behind puffy clouds, Kent in a yellow shirt and no travel mug. Me in my purple pajamas, telling him my period was late and did he want to stick around for a few minutes to see the test results even
Edward might have been with the owners at the top of the building when the fire started had he not made plans to be on the sewing floor at that moment. He was a bookkeeper, not a seamstress. There was only one reason he was on the ninth floor at twenty minutes to five.
He was waiting for me.
Ten
TARYN
Manhattan
September 2011
THE first reporter found me in two days.
I hadn’t taken Celine up on her offer to call the magazine and tell them I didn’t wish to be contacted. That would merely identify me.
“The magazine is going to find out it’s you,” Celine had countered. “It’s a phenomenally emotional picture. Other publications are going to want to print it; I can guarantee it. You’re going to get a call, probably several. A quarter of our customer base knows you lost your husband that day.”
“Well, then I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
Celine had been right. With the tenth anniversary only a week away, the dailies had the most interest in hearing how bystanders on the streets had escaped the collapse of the South Tower, the first one to fall. The photo had reacquainted the public with its horror of having witnessed the slaughter of so many innocents. The two faces in the photograph—one male and one female—resonated with every person on the planet who remembered that day, so the editorials said.
I politely turned down the first interview request, then the second, and then the subsequent morning TV talk shows. No one in the media pressured me to reconsider; that was one of the kindnesses extended to those of us who lost someone we loved on 9/11. We were not made to feel guilty for declining to speak of our heartaches.
But Kendal had questions that I did feel compelled to address, though I didn’t know where to begin. For ten years I’d been able to crouch in between reality and regret and pretend neither had any influence on me, never moving forward, never looking backward. Residing above the Heirloom Yard was like living above the stuff of other people’s dreams, not my own. It took the photograph for me to realize that.
The photographer who had happened upon the memory card said it had been a fluke, a chance rendezvous with a camera bag she didn’t think she still owned.
But this wasn’t the first time that what some would call a coincidence had shattered my notion that life is composed of mere random events, both lovely and terrible. It had happened to me an hour before the photographer snapped that shot.
As I lay in bed on the fourth night after the photo was published, I knew my flimsy truce with chance and destiny was gone. That in-between place had never really existed.
People who say everything happens for a reason usually say that only when they agree with the reason.
Those people are not the ones who wish they could fold back time and make different choices. They don’t lie awake at night and whisper,
If only . . .
• • •
THE sky that Tuesday morning was the sweetest shade of robin’s-egg blue, cloudless and smooth.
Rays of a promising saffron sun were creeping over the bedspread as Kent walked across the bedroom to kiss me good-bye, a red travel mug in his hand.
His dress shirt was celery green, and his tie a silky charcoal.
I remember that day by its colors.
My yellow polka-dot pajamas as I lay in bed waiting for him to leave the apartment.
The white-and-sea-foam package I had hidden under my side of the bed.
The gray of waiting for several tense minutes.
The pink plus sign.
After so many years, a pink plus sign.
And then later, the marigold scarf—the last beautiful thing I saw that day.
I used to spend the nights when I couldn’t sleep re-creating that Tuesday in different colors. The sky not so blue, the sun coy behind puffy clouds, Kent in a yellow shirt and no travel mug. Me in my purple pajamas, telling him my period was late and did he want to stick around for a few minutes to see the test results even
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