On My Watch

by Virginia Buckingham

  I clicked on the next message. This reader corrected me on my commonly misattributed Sir Edmund Hillary quote. It was actually British climber George Mallory, the email pointed out, who said “because it’s there” when asked “Why climb Everest?”

  I opened the next email from “Evelyn.” She wrote, “Today’s article about jumping into the ocean on New Year’s Day was delightful. . . . What I liked more than anything was no politics!” I made a mental note to pass that one on to Shelly, who preferred hard-hitting political columns. I smiled as I clicked on the next email, expecting more of the same from “J. Paul.”

  “Ms. Buckingham: Contrast the cold Atlantic Jan. 1 with the intense heat people at the upper floors of the WTC were feeling 9/11; hot enough to jump 100 stories if that’s hot enough for you. . . . Thanks for giving the world and civilization half of 9/11.”

  I stared at the words, at first not comprehending them. I breathed in, conscious of drawing the air in through my mouth, but I couldn’t expand my lungs. The words of J. Paul pressed like a weight on my chest.

  David came into the kitchen after checking on the kids, who were asleep upstairs. I turned away from the computer screen and looked toward him, not meeting his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Wordlessly, I turned back to the computer and pointed to the email. He read it, standing behind me, one hand gently resting on my shoulder. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Will this ever end?” Then he added quietly, “I’m sorry, hon.”

  “I know,” I said, as I shrank from his touch.

  “Do you want to talk?”

  “No,” I answered, too sharply, pushing him away with my tone. I moved to the refrigerator and filled my glass to the brim with cold white wine.

  I set it on the marble table next to the couch in our sitting room and lay back against the pillow.

  “Are you going to sleep down here?” David asked, his face creased with worry.

  “I guess so,” I mumbled.

  The sound of David climbing the stairs faded. All I could hear was the soft hum of the refrigerator. The quiet was oppressive, J. Paul’s words all I could see.

  “Ms. Buckingham: Contrast the cold Atlantic Jan. 1 with the intense heat people at the upper floors of the WTC were feeling 9/11; hot enough to jump 100 stories if that’s hot enough for you.”

  I had heard about a recent documentary being released containing never-before-seen footage of the World Trade Center that day. You couldn’t see the bodies falling, but you could hear them hitting the ground. The idea was too horrible to even think about. I knew I could never see the documentary, but at that moment I could hear them, the bodies hitting the pavement.

  “Thanks for giving the world and civilization half of 9/11.”

  I sat up abruptly, jostling the wineglass. I drank it empty and then set it down on the side of the sink. I switched off the kitchen light. Reaching the top of the stairs, I turned into Maddy’s room. The light from the hallway gently fell over the jumble of covers and books and stuffed animals strewn across the big-girl bed she’d started sleeping in when she turned three. I pulled the pink-and-yellow blanket she had kicked off up and over her shoulders. She squirmed under it and turned on her side before settling back into a deep sleep. I kissed my fingers and placed them on the top of her curly brown hair. “I love you, angel,” I whispered and turned to Jack’s room.

  Jack was still awake, waiting for the rest of his bedtime ritual. I had sung “Edelweiss,” from The Sound of Music, to him almost nightly for the past seven years, starting when I was pregnant with him. Instead of the actual ending—“bless my homeland forever”—I always substituted “Bless my baby Jack forever.”

  It was a tradition we both loved. Usually after I was done and had rubbed his back for a few minutes, Jack tried to extend our time together—or more accurately, forestall sleep. “Mom, what galaxy is Earth in?” was a typical stumper that kept me in the rocking chair for a minute or two. But tonight I didn’t have anything left to give him.

  “Mom, what’s a practical joke?” Jack asked, as I got up to straighten his covers and leave. I sat back down.

  “Well, it’s when you make someone laugh by doing something to them rather than making a joke with words,” I tried to explain.

  “I don’t understand. Mom, have you ever done a practical joke?”

  “Yes, back in college. There was a group of guys who lived near our dorm, and we were always playing practical jokes on each other.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, silly things like they’d steal our underwear and hang it in a tree.”

  Jack giggled.

  “But the best,” I told him, warming to the subject, “was when we were sophomores and we borrowed a bunch of chickens from a farm. We snuck into the boys’ dorm and left the chickens. When they opened their door, you could hear clear across upper campus, ‘There are chickens in our room!’”

  Jack collapsed on his pillow in laughter, and I started to laugh, too, caught up in the joy of pulling off a doozy of a practical joke. “I have some pictures of the chickens that I’ll show you sometime,” I promised. “Now go to sleep.” I kissed him gently and turned out his light.

  J. Paul’s email receded into the darkness now gently illuminated by Jack’s smile.

  January 1, 2006—Marblehead

  They are terrified. I can see the faces of the people inside, pressed up against the window. I can’t hear them but I understand what they are saying. “Let us out. Please help us.” Their mouths are moving, their fists pounding on the glass. Dozens of people. Looking right at me. Waitstaff in uniform. Businessmen in suits. A woman about my age. Their eyes pleading for me to do something. I am just on the other side of the glass. Suspended somehow outside the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center. I am motionless as they mouth, “Help us. Help us.”

  There is nothing I can do.

  I woke with a start. Sat straight up in bed. Panting. Just a dream, it was just a dream. I looked over at David and extended my hand to shake his shoulder. I stopped myself. I didn’t want to tell him that the nightmares were back. I lay back down but didn’t close my eyes. If I did, I was afraid I would see them.

  Just as they had in the days and months after 9/11, the nightmare cast in sharp relief the subconscious burden of guilt and shame I still carried, guilt that I may have contributed to the events of 9/11, shame that I could not help the people affected. I also started to be more aware of being ashamed that I wasn’t “over it.” One ugly email still had the power to send me right back to where I had started. I didn’t yet understand the role of triggers in PTSD. J. Paul’s email was clearly a trigger. And I didn’t have the mental tools and perspective to be able to figuratively shrug, not in nonchalance but in self-awareness, an understanding that, of course, the email was a trigger, of course the nightmare was a result. I didn’t have the power to depower the trigger with that simple act of self-kindness.

  Later that morning—Devereux Beach

  It was 10:03 a.m. when David, the kids, and I pulled into the beach parking lot. The waiting group gestured for me to hurry. The twenty-two-degree air temperature made every extra minute feel like ten. “C’mon, Ginny!”

  My friends and I stripped down to our bathing suits on the ice- and snow-covered sand. A blast of cold air hit my exposed skin. All week, I’d considered canceling, haunted by the fresh accusation in response to my column.

  We posed for our traditional picture, shivering, arms around one another.

  I need this, I thought. Giving up this new tradition would be more than letting go of a quirky annual bit of fun and camaraderie. It would be akin to giving up hope.

  “One! Two! Three!” I counted down, loudly yelling to the others, “Let’s go!”

  With shrieks and screams and laughter, we ran to the water’s edge.

  Keep
going.

  I was about in the middle of the group. Two or three people were already in as deep as their waists. I saw Kate gracefully dive beneath a wave.

  I realized then: This hurts. The icy cold of the water cut through the familiar emotional numbness.

  I wasn’t a great swimmer and was about to drop to my knees underneath a breaking wave when suddenly I was picked up off my feet.

  Hold your ground.

  The freezing water filled my ears and I felt rocks and sand scratch my right thigh as the wave dumped me onto the ocean floor. I scrambled to find my footing, my hands pushing me up. The wave passed and I got to my feet, sucking in air and rubbing water out of my eyes. The air hitting my skin felt like a thousand fingers pinching me all at once. I turned back to the beach and stumbled out of the water. David was waiting with a towel. He wrapped it around me.

  “Are you okay, hon? How was it?” he asked.

  “It was great,” I answered, looking back at the water.

  I could feel.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Subpoena

  February 2006—Marblehead

  “Mommy, why did you leave your old job? I liked it when you were at the airport.”

  I put down the plate of half-eaten chicken fingers I was about to clear from the table and sat back down next to Jack. I looked over at David, who was researching ski conditions at the computer for an upcoming trip to Vermont.

  “Well, honey, I’m going to give you the kid version of my answer,” I finally said. “And when you’re a grown-up I promise I’ll answer any questions that you have.”

  So far, so good. David nodded, looking impressed, unaware that I had no idea what to say next.

  “Some people got mad at the airport, and now I have another job that I love at the Herald,” I said.

  Jack looked off to the side, like he did when he was pondering one of his life’s more typical questions, like which episode of Star Wars was his favorite. I looked imploringly at David, who intervened. “C’mere, buddy, let’s look at a trail map.”

  My reprieve was brief. About a week later, Jack and I pulled into the Starbucks parking lot, a favorite after-school treat—cookies for him, coffee for me. As I shut off the engine and started to unbuckle, Jack said from the backseat, “Mom, I don’t understand, why were people mad at the airport?”

  I turned to look at my forty-three-pound inquisitor.

  Okay, you can do this.

  “Well,” I said gently, “there were some bad guys at the airport and they stole some airplanes.”

  “They did?” he asked, wide eyed. “What did they do with them?”

  “They crashed them.”

  “How many?” he asked.

  “Four.”

  “Where?”

  “Two in New York and one each in Washington and Pennsylvania.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, they hurt,” I paused. He deserved the truth, as much of it as I could tell him. “No,” I started again, “they killed a lot of people.”

  “Why?” Jack asked. “Why would they do that?”

  Why.

  “Well, you know how you love me, and Mommy and Daddy love you so much and Maddy, too?” I ventured.

  Jack nodded, uncertainly.

  “Well, these bad guys didn’t love anyone. They just wanted to hurt people.”

  I opened my car door, hoping my simple explanation was enough.

  “Mom?”

  Not so fast.

  “What, honey?”

  “Were you at the airport when the bad guys were there?”

  “No, sweetie. I was on my way there but not there yet.”

  “I’m glad,” Jack said, his concern making my eyes prick with tears.

  “But Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “I still don’t understand. Why were people mad at the airport?”

  How did I explain to a child what I wasn’t even sure I fully understood?

  “Well,” I started slowly, choosing my words carefully. “Sometimes when people are scared, they get mad. And instead of thinking about what makes them scared, they blame someone for making them feel that way.”

  A few days later

  What a great day, I thought to myself as I pulled in the driveway. I had taken the day off and driven about forty-five minutes north to a small ski area. I had skied only a few times before but figured I should try to improve since David was a strong skier and Jack had been skiing since he turned three. I spent three hours at nearby Bradford, taking the rope tow to the top of the learner’s slope and slowly making my way down. Tiring, but fun, I thought. I opened the front door to the foyer. A letter-sized envelope was on top of the stack of mail. It looked official, like a tax document or something. I took a closer look and saw the return address: “United States District Court.”

  I dropped the rest of the mail and tore open the envelope. “Subpoena in a federal case,” it read in the right-hand corner. Typed in what appeared to be some kind of form letter was “Re September 11 litigation.”

  There was no postage on the envelope so I must have been served in person.

  “You are commanded to appear at the place, date, and time specified below at the taking of a deposition in the above case.”

  An office in downtown Boston was specified. The date just one month away.

  I stood frozen in place. No one at Massport had warned me the subpoena was coming. My wrists ached dully as I dialed my lawyer’s number. He explained the subpoena was for a deposition in the remaining wrongful death cases, for the families who had not either reached a settlement or taken part in the federal fund set up to compensate victims.

  Unable to sleep, at about two o’clock I sat cross-legged on the dining room floor and began going through a box I hadn’t looked in since I’d left Logan.

  I lifted out a file and pulled out a sheaf of legal documents.

  One of the few disagreements I’d had with members of my senior staff at Massport right after 9/11 was over a decision to retain outside attorneys in the eventuality that the authority would be sued. Massport’s chief legal counsel made the case to me within days of the hijackings to hire experienced lawyers on behalf of the agency’s potential defense. I rejected his advice. I felt we should be focused on the airport’s safe operations, not future legal wrangling. At the direction of the Massport board chairman, however, he had hired a law firm anyway. When I found out, I was furious. Yet, soon after the disagreement, notices of intent to sue began arriving in my in-box. I obviously knew about the one wrongful death case I had been notified about in 2003 that had named me personally. But it looked like several other families had also considered a lawsuit against me.

  I don’t remember getting these.

  Each of the legal notices, a half dozen or so, were stamped in the right-hand corner “Received. Massport Authority Executive Director.” I knew this was the procedure for any incoming mail to my office at the time. Each of them was addressed personally to me. Yet, I had no memory of having seen them.

  Maybe Julie sent them right to the legal office without showing me? I wondered, thinking my assistant may have tried to protect me. Or maybe I had completely repressed the memory because it was so painful.

  October 10, 2001

  Dear Executive Director Buckingham: The following constitutes notice for a formal demand for damages arising out of the wrongful deaths of Sarah Siffitz and her viable unborn child who died on American Airlines Flight 11. . . . Ms. Siffitz was seven months pregnant at the time of her death and eagerly awaited the birth of her first born.

  Oh God. I pursed my lips tightly to try to keep from crying out loud. I would have been nine or ten weeks pregnant with Maddy when I received the letter.

  The Siffitzes believe that the circumstances surrounding the ease with which the hijackers were
able to smuggle weapons on board the aircraft compel a conclusion that the Massachusetts Port Authority was negligent in its failure to provide adequate security and breached its duties to Ms. Siffitz and her viable unborn child and that this breach of duty was the proximate cause of their deaths. In addition to the Massachusetts Port Authority, suit will be commenced against Ms. Virginia Buckingham.

  I put the notice back in the folder. I rocked back and forth, my face buried in my hands.

  At the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero, the name of every victim is carved into the reflecting pool walls marking the base of each tower. Next to some women’s names is “and her unborn child.” I didn’t know how many unborn children were killed that day, how many people like the Siffitzes lost not only their loved ones but someone they would never have the chance to love.

  I also remembered that sometime after 9/11 People magazine had published a story about the babies born to widows of 9/11 victims. On the cover was a picture of some of those babies, gathered for a photo shoot. The picture and story were meant to be hopeful. To give the sense that life miraculously followed the death and destruction of the terrorist attacks. Impulsively, I bought a copy I saw in the checkout line at the grocery store. I put it on the seat next to me as I drove home, casting sidelong glances at the picture. Instead of the hopefulness intended by the publishers, all I could think about were their fathers. For months, I kept the magazine in my car under the passenger-side seat. A reminder. Knowing it was there, a kind of penance.

  February 2006—South Londonderry, Vermont

  “God dammit, Jack, then next time I will just stay home!” I said and stormed out of the ski house bedroom, as Jack began to sob. I’d been trying to get Jack and Maddy to sleep for an hour. Neither wanted to stay in the bunk room down the hall from the master bedroom. Jack kept insisting on sleeping in the bed with David, like he had done when the two of them had come up for a ski trip earlier in the winter. My frustration grew as I came back into the room for the fourth time after turning out the lights, and I finally snapped at him in anger.