Never Forget
The lasting effect of September 11, 2001 on my family.
For almost two decades I’ve dreaded the first week and a half of September. All of the tributes and remembrances and shared sad stories; the media’s attempts at poignancy that always fall flat. It’s difficult for me to enjoy Labor Day and end of summer celebrations because I know this depressing anniversary is right around the corner. This year marks the 20th. I didn’t really lose a loved one on that day, at least not directly, but the events of September 11, 2001 in New York City and at the Pentagon did cause irrevocable damage to my family. It was the catalyst to a series of events that changed so many things for my mother and for me. These events brought me closer to my mom in many ways while simultaneously making us more distant and controlled with each other. We became extremely careful with what we shared with each other. We chose the stories we told each other with care.
I’m the only one left to sadly remember what damage that all wrought. I’m the only one left to tell any stories and share the pain. It’s my burden. And my privilege.
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She never bragged about working in one of the tallest buildings in the country like a lot of her coworkers did. Her office was on the 9th floor. Why brag about that? It was like when you’d splurge to stay at a fancy high-rise hotel and the judgmental concierge put you on a low floor with no view just because they didn’t like the look of you. It felt lame and like a waste.
When she was having one of her “fat feelings” days, she’d take the stairs exclusively. Sure, she’d go slow those last couple of flights and have to pause and catch her breath on the landing outside of the door marked with the huge red “9”, but it made her feel like she’d accomplished something; she thought it maybe gave her a serotonin or adrenaline boost. And anyway, she was alone in that large stark stairwell, so there was no one to be embarrassed around or worry about who might see her huffing and puffing or sweating in her pantyhose.
That was one of the things she liked about taking the stairs, they were blissfully empty for the most part. She’d see a few folks jogging up the first couple of flights; poor schmucks who worked on even lower floors than her, or a couple of the young brokers who would take the stairs to the deli on the 2nd floor to justify the loaded bagel they bought for breakfast, but for the most part the stairwell was all hers. She liked being alone; sometimes felt like she thrived on it. This had been one of the hardest things to get over about being in a relationship with Tom – her desire and need for alone time. Tom loved her madly and wanted to move in together, either into his larger apartment in Tribeca or maybe even find a nice house in the Connecticut suburbs. But she wasn’t sure she could do it.
Tom’s loft was large but too open; there weren’t any real walls and she never felt that she could truly “get away” and find a nice corner to read, do her crosswords or listen to music without Tom interrupting her in some way, whether he intentionally did it or not. And the idea of living in a house in the suburbs ugh, Connecticut at that!, was laughable to her. She and Tom were so different. He was weekends in upstate New York at a cabin on the lake; she was more a tennis on the outside courts at Washington Market Park, then getting coffee and doughnuts from the corner bodega. Sometimes when she pictured a “future Tom” she saw him hiking in the forest with like a golden retriever or some hound, while her future felt more like curling up with a fluffy cat on a window seat in a sprawling Manhattan apartment reading a book while sirens screamed by outside. Her and Tom’s differences could maybe be summed up simply as he was a dog person, and she was a cat person. She wasn’t a dog fan at all and even though she hadn’t had a cat since childhood, she could see herself adopting another one someday. Cats were good animals to have in a bustling metropolis because they were so self-sufficient. With dogs you had to walk them several times per day and deal with their unconditional love no matter how shitty a person you were.
Tom was like that too, too loyal and loving for his own good. She scolded herself for continuing with the Tom = faithful dog analogy, it wasn’t like Tom had ever mentioned dogs or wanting to get one, but it felt so accurate. She was being mean again. What was wrong with her? Why was she making up difficulties in their relationship where there weren’t any? Was it because Tom and their love seemed too good to be real? Too good to last? Sometimes she’d look over at Tom and just stop to admire him and wonder how she got so lucky. She’d never been lucky before and didn’t understand how or why things were going so well for her now. Tom was amazing and she knew that she should give in and agree to buy a place with him, even if it meant moving to the dreaded suburbs. She’d been in Manhattan for over 20 years and even the thought of moving to another borough felt odd.
Somehow, she’d find a way to do it for Tom. She was a City Girl through and through, but she’d change for Tom; he was worth it. She would suck it up and try to adjust and be more positive, less pessimistic and cynical, because she finally had a man who loved her for exactly who she was, flaws and all, and didn’t want to change her. She’d been searching and praying for this type of happiness for far too long to give it up on something as silly as her annoyance that her wonderful boyfriend wanted to spend time with her. She was being ridiculous. She loved Tom more than she had ever loved almost anybody else and he deserved to have his wants and expectations respected and considered. But she still felt anxious that she was “giving in” and losing some of her hard-fought independence by thinking of cohabitating with him.
All the anxiety she felt about Tom and losing her alone time and maybe a part of her independence meant that she found herself taking the stairs at work more often than not, sometimes even eating her lunch there in the stairwell even though she had a perfectly good office with a door that closed and a great view. Despite the view of the city and the Hudson beyond, her office was all glass facing the office floor and she felt like she was in a fish tank. The stairwell with its cool and thick concrete walls, allowed her to play her music on her Walkman (she favored late 80s hair metal and was sort of embarrassed about it) while she read one of her romance paperbacks and ate the salad that she packed in her tupperware container every morning. Yes, she knew those stairs like the back of her hand. That’s why she knows that if she’d been there that morning she would’ve survived. Maybe she’d even have been able to save a few others in the process. Maybe by some miracle she would’ve been able to save Tom.
She knows in her heart that this isn’t true, but she tells it to herself and others anyway. Maybe if...maybe…if only I’d been there…
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I loved going to New York City to spend time with my Aunt Nita and her boyfriend Tom. The trip when I got to meet Tom for the first time was one of the most memorable. They both seemed wildly sophisticated to my 25-year-old self who had just quit grad school and dropped all of her dreams and basically flushed her future down the toilet. I felt untethered from the real world. I’d lost practically all of my sophistication in Florida. My skin was the brownest and freckliest it had ever been after years spent doing research work on boats taking algae samples from the Atlantic Ocean and trudging through the murky waters of the mangroves in the hot Everglades heat. My hair was a curly, split-ended, salt and sun cured crunchy mess. I’d forgotten how to apply makeup, wear proper shoes, or real clothes. When was the last time that I’d worn anything besides shorts and flip-flops? Even when I “dressed up” in Florida I just wore fancier shorts and flip-flops. I no longer remembered how to dress for October in Manhattan, but I jumped at the chance to go spend time with Nita when she called my parents’ house and asked me to come. I had done the one thing that I’d promised myself I’d never do – I’d come back to DC a sad pathetic loser with no job and no prospects, and even more mortifying - I’d been forced to move back in with my parents and grandfather. And while it was nice to be able to eat my mother’s delicious cooking again and play tennis with my grandfather on a regular basis, I was also feeling like a useless loser who was never going to amount to anything. I had only been back living at home for a little over a month when Nita called with her invitation. And since I was unemployed and so far, unmotivated to do anything about it, spending a week in New York city seemed like a great idea.
I could hardly contain my excitement on the Amtrak train up to Manhattan. I think the man beside me, clearly on his way to NYC for business in his fancy suit and expensive looking briefcase, thought that I must have hemorrhoids or something because I could not sit still. This was going to be my first time being in New York City by myself, and although I’d be hanging out with my aunt in her apartment and doing a lot of fun stuff with her, I was going to be in the city for over a week and there would be plenty of time to explore the city on my own AS AN ADULT, and I was beyond delighted about it. I’d gone to the library the week before and looked through the brand new edition of the Fodor’s NYC travel book to jot down all of the places I wanted to see and experience.
I arrived at Penn Station just at the end of the mid-week morning rush hour and Nita met me at the big clock in the rotunda where she always met my mother and me when we came up on previous trips. Nita looked different when I finally spied her, waving her sunglasses at me. She’d lost weight for one thing; she was almost back to the size and shape she’d been when she’d played professional tennis two decades before. She greeted me wearing a mustard yellow belted dress under a dark green full length wool coat. She looked glamorous and I felt even schlubbier in my faded jeans and old cable knit sweater. It was like she’d read my mind or could tell my thoughts from my face because she whispered in my ear as she hugged me, “don’t worry, we’ll do lots of shopping and getting pampered while you’re here.” She linked arms with me and walked me out of the station, my small duffel bag banging against my other side, and then hailed us a taxi and told the driver to take us to 1 World Trade Center, where her office was.
“I’ve taken the rest of this week off to hang with you, but I need to go back to my office and finish a couple of things and grab some papers that I’ll need to work on a bit this weekend. And then I’ll take you up to Tom’s office so you guys can meet. The three of us might get lunch somewhere downtown if Tom doesn’t have any afternoon meetings. Oh! I can’t wait for you to meet him, sweetie.”
Nita said all of this in a rush of animated breath and the happiness just beamed off of her. I couldn’t recall ever seeing my aunt this filled with joy and it was a bit disconcerting. Where was the wise cracking cynical woman who made me laugh with her sardonic and sarcastic remarks and outlook on life? Who was this fabulous lively woman who had replaced her? The cab pulled up in front of the Twin Towers, soaring buildings that seemed unfathomably tall from standing in front of them on the street. Nita grabbed my hand and pulled me into the lobby of the North tower (Tower 1) and waved to one of the security guards and pointed to me calling out that I was her niece, as she swiped her ID card and got us through the turnstile and into one of the waiting elevators. Instead of pushing the button for 9 where her office was located, Nita pushed a different one in the huge panel of buttons – for floor 94. When the elevator doors opened, we stepped out into a reception area with “Guy Carpenter”1 hanging in huge metal letters on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk.
[1It’s amazing the weird details that your brain retains. Why do I remember the stupid name of the company that my aunt’s boyfriend worked for? It's a place that I went to exactly once.]
The woman at the reception desk looked up as we approached, and it was clear that she knew Nita.
“Hi Margie, this is my niece Kat. I’m just taking her down to Tom’s office to meet him before I run downstairs and grab some things. She’s up visiting from DC and I can’t wait to spend some quality time with her. I haven’t seen her since last Christmas.”
Nita said all of this over her shoulder as she waved at Margie and dragged me down a hall past several office doors, some closed and some not. I was beginning to be a little weirded out about my aunt’s peppiness. Was it too much coffee? Could it be cocaine? I wasn’t a little kid anymore and had done my fair share of drug experimentation down in south Florida, and Nita was exhibiting some of the telltale signs. I wasn’t a square though, and I tried not to judge and just roll with whatever she had planned. A few days later while looking through her purse to borrow some lipstick I saw a small box of diet pills which I surmised were the cause of all of Nita’s “enthusiasm”.
Tom was different than I had prepared for. I’d only seen photos and heard stories about him from Nita and my mom. He was taller and broader than I expected; easily 6’3” with an athletic body that you could see even under his slightly cheap suit, which reflected the laps that I knew he swam each morning at the Y. He was more soft-spoken and had a higher pitched voice than his stature alluded to. He had a big genuine smile and shook my hand with a firm grip that I appreciated. I wasn’t a hugger, and I could be especially cold when meeting new people, but Tom put me at ease immediately. Nita excused herself saying that she’d be back up to get me in about 15 minutes and Tom invited me inside his office and to have a seat on the small couch in the corner near the large windows that drew me like a magnet. Being 94 stories up the air is hard to describe. From Tom’s window I could see the south tower but all the other skyscrapers around looked like toy models. It really did feel like we were up in the clouds.
“Tom, I don’t know how you get any work done. I think that I’d be looking out this window the whole day.” I jokingly said.
“The ironic thing is that I’m deathly afraid of heights, so I had them move my desk away from the windows and placed here, even though it takes up more space in the room this way.” He gestured with his hands towards his L-shaped desk set up more in the middle of the room than I assumed was typical.
“Well maybe people with a heights phobia are the perfect folks to put in offices on high floors because they’ll be more focused on their work than the view?”, I suggested with a shrug of my shoulders.
Tom just smiled at me with a nod of his head. Then his phone rang, and he excused himself and took the call while I drifted back towards the window and looked down again. I couldn’t remember what my aunt had said that Tom did for a living and I certainly couldn’t figure it out from his half of the conversation that I was overhearing. I knew generally that all of the businesses at the World Trade Center had something to do with money and the stock market? Financing? Trading? I was a young scientist who took pride in the fact that I didn’t know anything about such matters. This type of work was for conservative schmucks who wanted to strip the resources that I was working to protect. Or at least this is what I’d been telling myself for years. My aunt came back into Tom’s office just as he was ending his call. The three of us left to go to lunch and the last thing I remembered as I was pulled away from that glorious view was that maybe succumbing to the corrupt corporate world wouldn’t be all that bad if I got to have an office in the clouds like this with a picture perfect perspective of NYC below me.
Later that afternoon after a fancy lunch at Lutece, where I felt horribly uncouth and under dressed, Nita took me shopping at the famous Century 21 clothing store. Century 21 was like super fancy TJ Maxx; designer clothing sold at huge discounts because it was from a few seasons ago, or was a weird color that didn’t sell well etc. I had been a tomboy my whole life and could count the number of times I had worn a dress on two hands, but my aunt encouraged me to try on a bunch of sweater dresses in lovely fall colors that somehow weren’t itchy against my skin. Maybe quality materials did make a difference. And my figure looked surprisingly good in the soft material that clung to my curves. I left the store with two bags filled with what my aunt called “interview clothes”, including one of the sweater dresses in a sage green.
The rest of my time on that trip was spent having fabulous and expensive dinners where I still felt inappropriately dressed and out of place, and where Nita and Tom taught me the importance of drinking quality vodka (Belvedere if available), the proper way to order a dirty martini (Bombay Sapphire gin, the driest of vermouths and THREE olives), and the locations of the best places in Manhattan to get a good bagel (Russ & Daughters or Ess-a-Bagel).
I returned to DC feeling a little older, a little more worldly, and a lot more open to considering a job in the corporate world if it could give me a life like my aunt’s. I was beginning to understand that I maybe didn’t need to save the world in order to have a life that I could feel proud of. I got a job with the American Psychiatric Association about a month after I returned from that October trip and started what I considered my “real” life, eventually moving 3,000 miles away to live in Seattle. I went to New York several more times after that 1996 trip to see Nita and Tom, usually also accompanied by my mom, but I never again got to visit either of their offices in the Twin Towers.
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In the early morning on September 11, 2001, I was making coffee and some toast in the small kitchen of the apartment on Yale Ave. that I shared with my best friend Doug. It was a little before six in the morning and I had just turned the Today show on. Doug and his boyfriend Chris were up but still in Doug’s bedroom getting ready for work. Matt Laurer was on the tv talking about something that no one remembers when suddenly he stopped and said that there’d been an emergency. Within seconds NBC was showing live video being taken from a helicopter of the World Trade Center. A commercial passenger airplane had flown INTO the North Tower just about ten minutes before. The plane had hit the building towards the top and the first thing I thought of as I looked at the live footage of the smoke billowing out of the tower was – that’s Tom’s office. My lungs and diaphragm pushed a sound out of my body that I had no control of that sounded like a moan. Doug’s bedroom door flew open, and he emerged, half dressed and holding his toothbrush with a look of concern on his face.
“Kat, what’s wrong?”
All I could do was point to the television and continue making these weird moaning sounds that were involuntarily coming out of my mouth. Doug turned and looked and let out a small squeak of disbelief.
“Is that the World Trade Center? On fire?! What the fuck happened?”
“They’re saying that an American Airlines flight crashed into the north tower.” My voice sounded on the verge of hysterical and I knew that I was breathing funny.
Chris came out of the bedroom still rubbing a towel through his just showered hair, saw the two of us staring drop-jawed at the tv and asked us what was wrong.
“Somehow a passenger jet crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York City. The one with the huge antenna on its top, so I don’t know how the hell a pilot could even do this.” Doug sounded almost angry.
“Are commercial passenger jets even allowed to fly over Manhattan?” Chris, ever the practical and logical one asked incredulously.
“You’re right Chris, I don’t think they are…” I started to answer but then Doug was shushing us and turning the volume up on the newscast. The anchorman speaking was overwrought as he said the words that seemed impossible to comprehend – a second commercial passenger plane had crashed into the other tower. Because so many news helicopters had already been in the air filming there was real-time footage of the second plane crashing into the south tower and it was horrifying to watch.
The three of us sat in stunned silence on our couch, breakfast and work long forgotten. All I could think about as I stared at the screen was “that’s Tom’s office” over and over again, even as I knew that I should probably be calling my aunt Nita and seeing if she was okay, or at least calling my parents. Instead, I felt strapped down onto the couch cushion I was sitting on. Doug had lived in New York for a few years and had worked at 7 World Trade Center, so he was acting more emotional than either Chris or I, even though I technically had more at risk. Doug went to get his cell phone from his bedroom and came back into the living to start going through his address book and trying to call old friends and coworkers in New York. He was only getting voicemails or strange busy signals. I just stared at the tv and felt like I was separated from my body. It was as if my subconscious was screaming that I needed to call and check on Nita and Tom, but my brain refused to send signals to the rest of my body to move.
People forget that although Tower 1 was the first hit, it was Tower 2 that fell first. I don’t forget it. Doug, Chris and I watched live as the south tower came collapsing down at just a minute or two before 7AM Pacific time. That’s when my tears started. That’s when I finally grabbed my phone and started making calls to my aunt’s phone (to no avail; phone lines in and out of New York City were wrecked for days after the attacks). Many hours later, after I’d finally spoken to my father who had inexplicably been on the subway near the Pentagon metro station when that third passenger flight had been flown into the Pentagon building and had been stuck on the train safe but underground for hours before they’d been able to be evacuated, I allowed myself to fully feel and understand the impact of what had happened that morning. I still remember my father’s panicked voice when his call finally came through, “your mother went to New York this weekend to be with Nita. Your mom was supposed to be driving back this morning! I don’t know if Nita was at work this morning. I don’t know anything”! I didn’t know how to comfort my dad. I didn’t know how to comfort myself or begin processing all the information that had been thrown at me that day. All I could remember was Tom’s kind face and nice smile, and the beautiful view from the 94th floor that I’d been envious of five years before.
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Whenever my mom Paula and her sister Nita got together, they were a force to be reckoned with. They were both tall, striking women with beautiful brown eyes and lovely smiles with sparkling white teeth. Even as older women they still made an impression when they entered rooms together, whether a fancy party in an Upper East Side apartment or a hole-in-the wall deli in the Bowery. The few times a year that my mom would travel up to New York City to see her baby sister, either by car or by Amtrak train, were long weekends spent exploring the wonders of Manhattan and the other boroughs, long nights staying up too late gossiping and drinking wine, and generally letting themselves feel like teenagers again. My aunt Nita was a big drinker while my mother was not, but somehow Nita could always get her to imbibe much more alcohol than she ever intended especially if my mom was traveling by train back to DC and didn’t need to be alert on the highways. There were many times that my father would tell me funny stories of picking a hungover Paula Hazzard up from Union Station, wearing sunglasses even though it was long past sundown. So it wasn’t a surprise that on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 my mom and aunt woke up after four days of drinking too much red wine and eating too much rich food, feeling less than well. Nita had taken the Friday and Monday off from work and had originally planned to return to her office Tuesday morning while my mom hit the road and made the 5-hour drive south back to DC. But early that Tuesday morning they both decided that Nita should call in sick and take another vacation day so that she and my mom could relax and recover. They made plans to order in take-out from Wong Brothers and Nita thought about putting real clothes on, or at least a trench coat over her pajamas, and going down the street to grab some pastries and coffee from the Pret A Manger at the corner.
Mom said that she’d fallen back asleep on the couch bed when she heard Nita’s phone ringing a little after nine in the morning. My mother sat up abruptly with her heart beating fast when she heard her sister’s screams. Nita came racing out of her bedroom and turned on the tv, falling onto the couch next to my mom who kept on asking what was wrong. When the screen came on with images of the burning top of Tower 1, my mother had the explanation for my aunt’s behavior. Nita dressed immediately and it wasn’t until she was lacing up her tennis shoes that my mom asked her where she was going.
“I have to go down there! I have to find Tom! I’ve got to find out if he’s okay.”, Nita said through tears.
My mother was the type of person you wanted around you during a crisis. She was calm, collected and logical. She explained that there were police and fire response there now and that that part of lower downtown and Wall St were probably madness. She suggested instead that she would also get dressed and they would figure a plan out together.
“Who was that on the phone just now, Nita?”
“My boss. She said that the building was being evacuated. That they were probably going to start evacuating the south tower and 7 as well.”, mom could hear the anguished panic in Nita’s voice, “but Paula, Tom…he…the plane crashed…Barbara said the plane crashed into his floor! Paula, it crashed into the top floors of the tower! Do you see where it’s burning and broken away?! Tom’s there, Paula! What if that plane crashed right through his office? What am I going to do?”
My mother caught her sister as she lost control of her legs and started to fall to the floor. She half carried Nita to the couch and gave her some water to sip. A million things were flying through her head like the fact that she should probably call her husband and father to let them know that she was okay; they were BOTH okay and safe in Nita’s upper east side apartment. But her sister was sobbing inconsolably on the couch and needed her more, so she quickly got dressed and got planning.
I only know some of what my mother and aunt went through that day. Both refused to talk about that day except occasionally with each other. I know that they were still watching the news and trying to reach Tom cell’s phone or get through to any number of Nita’s coworker’s and friend’s phones when the second tower was struck. I know that they were in a cab trying to get as close as they could to the World Trade Center site, when that south tower came crashing down. I know that my mother was holding onto my aunt’s hand and trying to pull her back and prevent her from running the rest of the way when Tower 1 came tumbling down to the ground. One of the only things that my mom did tell me was that moment, when Tower 1 fell, was the loudest sound she ever heard. She felt deaf for hours afterwards. And even though they were several blocks away when it happened, they still managed to be covered in ash. My mom also revealed that when the north tower fell, my aunt went mute. She stopped talking, screaming, and moaning altogether. Nita was completely silent. Tears continued to stream down Nita’s face for days afterwards, but it took days before she uttered a word. My mother was finally able to get them back to Nita’s apartment by the late afternoon of that terrible day. They walked the entire way, zombie-like along with thousands of other people. Once they were back at the apartment my mom packed her things up and packed a bag for her sister. She was able to finally get a call through to their father and her husband and told them that they were both fine and getting in the car to drive to DC. My dad warned her that the news was saying that all of the roads leading out of the city were blocked for miles, but my mom just said that she’d figure out a way. And she did. She pulled up in front of her house 8 hours later exhausted and numb and still covered with a coat of ash, leading her near catatonic sister by the hand.
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Nita never really recovered from the pain and loss of that fateful September day. She moved on, literally and figuratively, but she didn’t get over what happened. She sold her Manhattan apartment and moved to a suburban neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. She couldn’t really explain why she chose Cleveland, just that it was a city that she remembered liking as a child whenever she and her sister Paula would go with their parents to visit her mother’s sister Peg and her family. Bank of America had basically promised her and all of her coworkers who had survived that nightmare that they would have jobs for life with their company and Nita took them up on an offer to become a branch manager at a small location in Cleveland. She’d literally picked Cleveland off a list of cities that the bank HR lady had given her, without a second thought. She was done with city life; she purposely avoided ever going into downtown Cleveland and stayed within the area of Shaker Heights and her house. Friends and family could hardly believe that she had made the decision to leave Manhattan, her home for almost 25 years, but it had been an easy decision. Tom wasn’t the only thing that had died that day. All of the things she loved about New York had died too. What good were any of these places when the person she loved sharing them with the most was gone? Now she liked living in a suburban neighborhood where there was no traffic sounds or sirens. The sound of sirens gave her panic attacks now. Now she could only handle hearing lawn mowers and children playing outside. She had bought a one level ranch house because she didn’t want any stairs. She was done with stairs. Those stairwells that used to give her such comfort and protection were now a source of terror for her.
The house she bought was cheap. Anything in Cleveland was going to be cheaper than Manhattan, but the Union Hills house was particularly inexpensive because it hadn’t been updated since it was built in the 1960s. The kitchen was a nightmare of avocado green appliances that only tentatively worked. She didn’t care because she no longer cooked. She was living entirely off drive-thru fast food and vodka, so as long as her freezer was working, she was fine. She cringed when she looked at her liquor delivery bills; if she was still going to therapy, she assumed that her alcoholism would be a big topic of discussion. Her Burger King and Arby’s diet and her lack of exercise had contributed to a 40-pound weight gain in just a little over a year. Who did she need to stay fit for? She hadn’t even picked up a tennis racket in 11 months; but she suspected that had as much to do with her father’s death as much as anything else.
That had been the final blow to her fragile state of mind – her dad’s sudden passing. Paula admonished them for feeling like their dad was always going to be with them. Just because he was young looking, active and relatively healthy, he was still an 80-year-old man who was just as susceptible to things like pneumonia like any other elderly person. He’d entered the hospital on Halloween 2002 and had left in an undertaker’s van just before Thanksgiving. Paula had taken his death the hardest; Nita had accepted it as just one more tragic thing that evidently deserved to happen to her.
His death just caused her to isolate even more than she already had before. Despite her sister’s suggestions and asks, Nita hadn’t invited Paula up to visit. The fact that she hadn’t seen her sister since the week after their dad’s funeral was shocking considering how much time they typically had spent together. Nita knew that she was pulling further and further away from Paula, but she couldn’t stop. The truth was that Nita didn’t want Paula to see how she was living. She knew that the house was too big for just her; she really only used her en suite bedroom and the small study next to it where she had a large television set up. There were a couple of rooms that she literally had not set foot in since she’d toured the house with the realtor the first time. She adopted two cats to keep her company; sisters from the same litter. Despite Nita’s decades long ban on owning any animal that needed to depend on her, her sister had continued having cats for pets all through her adult life and Nita got along well with all of Paula’s cats whenever she visited them in DC, so she figured she’d get one eventually “in her old age”. It was just that old age had come now, about 30 years too early.
Having the cats in the house with her was just the level of responsibility and intimacy that she could handle, and it was nice to have their warm comforting presence in bed with her at night. So yeah, she had her cats, and she was attempting to start over. Again. It didn’t work. Just like it hadn’t worked during that first 6 months after the event. That’s what she’d taken to calling it – The Event. Not “9/11”, not the terrorist attacks, not the World Trade Center collapse. The Event. Because it allowed her to remove herself from the equation; after all she wasn’t involved. She didn’t like to share this opinion with her sister because Paula would always vehemently disagree.
“Of course you were involved! You lost friends, coworkers, someone you loved! I could’ve lost YOU. I’ve never been happier for a hangover in my life than I was that day. Nita, please talk to me about what you’re feeling. It’s not good for you to keep all of this bottled up.”
That’s the thing, Nita couldn’t talk to Paula about this part. They could discuss and analyze each moment of that day over and over again, but Nita couldn’t really share what she thought of as her “scary feelings”. She was so unbelievably sad and lonely and missed Tom. Nita laughed when she thought back to how she struggled to balance her need for alone time with Tom’s desire to spend every moment outside of work with her. She had all the alone time she could ever need now, and she didn’t want any of it. Not one single minute. But she also couldn’t imagine trying to be social or making new friends; the very idea made her nauseous. Her survivor’s guilt was crushing, and she had confessed to Paula more than once that she wished she had died with him. It didn’t do any good when my mom reminded her that all of the employees on her floor had made it out of the building and therefore Nita most likely would have too; Nita could only think of Tom being trapped on that high floor, 94 soaring stories in the sky when he was so afraid of heights.
She couldn’t tell Paula that she thought about ending it all. She thought about it all the time. She couldn’t share that she didn’t want to be alive anymore. Nita didn’t feel like she had much of a life left to give up. And she knew she was letting Paula down by pushing her away and not sharing things. It was another reason why she hadn’t invited her sister up or accepted any of her invitations to come down to DC. It hurt to think about how awful it would be for Paula if she were gone. She knew she needed to tell someone that she wanted out of this life; knew she should go back to therapy. But she hadn’t found a therapist in Ohio yet and she couldn’t bring herself to even try. So she went on getting up, going to a job that didn’t challenge her and comforted her in its boringness, coming home, feeding her cats, and thinking about when she could give up. She wanted to give up.
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Paula’s baby sister Nita took her own life on April 30, 2003. Strangely she hanged herself, which only about .03% of female suicides do, so the Cleveland police treated Nita’s death as a potential homicide because they couldn’t locate a note at first. By the time Paula flew up to Cleveland and was meeting with the two detectives assigned to the case, a short note in Nita’s handwriting had been located in the kitchen on the counter. It simply said that she had let her cats out and had put bowls of food and water for them on her deck, but she hoped that someone nice would take care of them. One of the detectives said that the cats were now staying with a neighbor temporarily. Paula had been shocked by this revelation. Nita had cats? Since when? The detectives asked her if she knew why Nita had done it. Paula could only answer that she guessed Nita missed Tom more than she cared about living. More than she cared about me, Paula thought bitterly. This led to the detectives asking about Tom and then the inevitable tears as she related the circumstances around his death.
When Paula finally got to go inside Nita’s house it was like the home of a stranger. Her sister had lived here? In this ugly house with large empty rooms with terrible drapes and void of almost all furniture? She now sort of understood why Nita had refused to invite her to visit; she would’ve definitely dragged her kicking and screaming back to Manhattan and the closest therapist’s office. Paula recalled how annoyed she’d been when Nita had said she’d sold her condo and was moving to Cleveland. There went her free place to stay and free parking space in Manhattan! She remembered being pissed off that needing a hotel meant that she could only afford to see one Broadway play or musical a year. She felt embarrassed and angry at her selfishness now and ached at the thought that she’d squandered opportunities to spend time with her sister and be there for her when she clearly needed her. Paula slid down the wall she was standing next to and sat on the carpeted floor of the empty living room. Her back ached so she did some yoga stretches to try and relieve some of the pain. She was proud of herself for the way she was holding it together; Paula had spoken to her daughter the night before and had told her not to fly out from Seattle. She could hear the uncertainty and worry in her daughter’s voice and knew that she was expecting Paula to become the same catatonic zombie that she had been when her father had died so unexpectedly. No, she wasn’t going down that horrifying road again. She was still trying to make up for all of the added stress that she put her family through by falling apart with grief so completely after her dad’s passing. With Nita’s death she just felt numb. And a little angry. And she also felt like maybe Nita had been trying to prepare her for this inevitability for months. She stood up slowly, stretching her hamstrings and lower back some more. As she stood to her full height Paula looked around her and thought – I don’t care what happens to this stupid house. She supposed she’d need to hire a real estate agent and put it on the market. Would they need to disclose that Nita had committed suicide in the master bedroom? As Paula walked through the sad kitchen again, she saw a can of cat food and remembered the cats that were supposedly living temporarily next door. She thought of the note that the police detectives had shown her; recalled her hand reaching out to trace the words written in Nita’s looping cursive through the plastic of the evidence bag holding the note. “I hope that someone nice will take care of them” the note had read. Paula had a moment of clarity and knew for certain that Nita had meant her; she was the “someone”. Nita knew that Paula would want to take care of these animals that her sister had cared enough about to give them a home, albeit a temporary one. She wiped her tears that had begun to fall and set out across the yard to bring her sister’s babies home.
Paula went back to DC a week later. When she met her husband in the baggage claim area of National airport’s terminal C she was holding a box containing an urn with Nita’s ashes in her right arm, and in her left hand she was holding a large soft sided cat carrier with the two newest members of their family, two ragdoll cats named Millie and Riley.
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September 1, 2021
Have you ever listened to the song “Let The River Run” by Carly Simon? Have you seen the movie Working Girl for which this song is its opening and ending refrain? What would you say if I told you that in the 46 different times I’ve watched this film since September 11, 2001, I’ve cried each and every time during the first and last three minutes of it?
Working Girl opens with a scene on the Staten Island ferry and a beautiful widespan shot of the Manhattan skyline, lovingly panning across the city with the twin towers soaring proudly into the air and looking out on the Hudson river.
Carly Simon and the choir she has backing her begin singing a melody that is hopeful, longing, loving and a little triumphant.
It’s asking for the taking, trembling, shaking
Oh, my heart is aching.
We’re coming to the edge, running on the water, coming through fog
Your sons and daughters.
Simon is talking about New York City being the “new Jerusalem” where people come to make their dreams come true. It was certainly the thing that lured my aunt Nita to Manhattan in 1975 when she was coming to the realization that she wasn’t going to have a successful professional tennis career but also understanding that she was still plenty young enough to find and reach new dreams.
Silver cities rise, the morning lights the streets that meet them,
And sirens call them on with a song…
Listening to “Let The River Run” since September 11, 2001 has become something sacred and spiritual for me. And it never fails to make me tear up. And I know I’m not the only one. Explain this: why is it that Carly Simon refuses to license the original version of the song to any streaming service? Go to Spotify, Apple music, Pandora etc. right now and try to find it. You can’t. There’s only a soft slow lullaby version that Simon recorded in like 2009, the poignant and reverent Scottish Boys Choir version that’s used in various interludes in Working Girl, and an acapella version with an African drum beat that several choirs around the world, including my own, have performed. Did she make this decision because she hates what streaming has done to the music industry? That can’t be it because every single other song that she’s ever recorded is out there for anyone to hear. So why this song? I personally think it’s because Carly Simon has decided that the original version is too much to handle; it packs too much of an emotional wallop. The tears that stream down my face while I watch the closing credits of Working Girl, as the camera pulls back further and further, and you see the World Trade Center in all of its glory, certainly attest to this. I wonder, do other people who lost family and friends in the towers collapse have as hard a time as I do watching the last few minutes of this film? Maybe these people pointedly never watch the movie at all. That would make sense.
For me, besides the film being an excellent “downtrodden smart worthy girl gets the guy, the gig and fells the evil witch” story, it shows off a lot of what I love about New York City, and acts as a balm when I’ve been missing it as I have been for the past 2 years. Yes, two years. The last time I was in NY was September 2019. It’s so hard for me to fathom because before COVID wrecked the world, I had made at least one trip to Manhattan every year since 1995. I can’t quite get my head around it. Or the fact that unless something dire happens, I will be in NYC again at the end of October 2021. I think it will feel very strange.
I don’t look forward to the next several weeks of discussions and tributes regarding the 20-year anniversary of 9/11. The fact that two decades have passed since the attack on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon seems impossible, especially since the effects that it had on my family still feel tangible and a little raw. I can only hope that writing my feelings down here and sharing them, even if it’s only to a few people, will help me heal a little more. And for the record, I’ll never stop watching Working Girl.