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Each Wednesday, I used to go to the 103rd floor of the World Trade center
to see about the greenery. There were more than thirty plants at Sandler
O’Neill - silvery ones in the conference room, small twisting trees in
the lawyers’ offices and a shedding bamboo on the trading floor. The receptionist’s
name was Vivian, and shekept M&Ms; in her top drawer. She was from Staten
Island and seemed always to be on the phone, her long curling nails clicking
against the keyboard as she typed. There was a corn plant behind her that
always looked a little wilted, and every week she would, in a concerned
voice, ask me how it was doing.
Now a friend in Manhattan tells me that the sky above World Trade is dark
as night, swirling with ash, billowing with smoke. I can barely hear for
the helicopters - the howling sirens. A wild-eyed bike messenger says that
there are bodies all over the place down there.
The offices at Sandler had huge picture windows, running from floor to
ceiling. You could stand right up against the glass looking down at the
city’s grid, intricately wrought like filigree, like a soapstone carving.
The sun trawled the horizon, too bright to look at, the centerpiece of
each panorama, each throbbing cityscape.
In Manhattan hundreds and thousands of people in suits, in summer dresses,
walk north. They are bewildered, confused. Nobody understands yet. Nobody
wants to understand.
There was a guy named Jimmy in the fourth office down from reception. Jimmy
ranted and raved in an obnoxious (yet good-natured) sort of way keeping
his door wide open so that everyone could hear. What’s with the coffee
today? Tastes like freaking jet fuel! So my kid got into trouble at school
again - talking back to the teacher. Jesus, he’s just like his old man…
When the bridges open people begin to trickle into Brooklyn, then stream,
and then pour.Nobody speaks. All that can be heard is the steady tramp
of marching feet. Some people are covered with ash and soot. Some are bleeding.
An elderly man in a tattered Brooks Brothers suit asks where he can find
a taxi.
Jimmy had a “JC” (Janet Craig plant) which always looked awful. No matter
how much attention I gave it, the leaves persisted in turning brown, and
the stalk slouched against the window. Jimmy took to calling me the
“murderess” and once accused me of touching his plant with my “kiss of
death”. I was in a particularly humorless mood that day and so I turned
and scowled. Jimmy laughed. And I had to admit, I sort of liked him.
A redheaded girl hunches over on the sidewalk, screaming. She is covered
with blood. Rescue workers throw bodies into a FedEx truck to get them
out of the way. There is broken glass, concrete - rubble everywhere.
I once got stuck in the elevator in Tower 2, and ended up whizzing up and
down over and over between the 78th floor and the first. My ears popped,
my head rushed. Two mailroom guys were there and an irate little man with
three strands of hair combed over his bald spot. He said “fuck” a lot,
and apologized to me (being a lady and all) each time he did - but I was
saying it too. We all were.
A fireman sits in the rubble, tears pouring down his cheeks. “A hundred
of our brothers are missing,” he says. “They’re gone.”
I used to meet my father at the World Trade Center when he came to New
York. We’d have a cocktail somewhere, in one of the towers. He helped me
file my taxes once, sitting in the lobby of the Millennium Hilton. The
marble floors there were polished smooth as ice.
Firefighters and paramedics come from neighboring cities, other states.
And by now it is clear that we have already lost far too many of our own.
At home there is a photograph, taken in the early 1980s, of my family at
Windows on the World. My sister and I were wearing sundresses. My sister’s
had strawberries on it. Mine had flowers. The light was so bright we squinted
too much to really smile, and our hair caught - whipping in the wind. My
brother was a child of three or maybe four, clutching at my mother’s hand.
Evening comes and I receive a phone call from a friend in Brooklyn.
“My apartment’s full of smoke,” she tells me. “It’s been blowing across
the river all day. We can smell the burning. We can smell people
burning.”
What was most striking about the towers was their silence. Standing up
there, so ridiculously high, so insanely high - it was as if all sound
had been sucked into vastness. Engulfed by the enormity of the moment,
leaving you to hover on the periphery - suspended in space.
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