The Woman Who Wasn’t There

by Jr. Robin Gaby Fisher; Angelo J. Guglielmo

  “Linda, I need you!” she cried. “These people are so mean to me. They’re screaming at me. I need you to come right now.”

  “Stay right where you are,” Linda said. “I’m on my way.”

  Linda flew out of her apartment. She hailed a cab and went directly to the St. Regis, where she found Tania curled in a ball on the sidewalk outside the hotel.

  “Oh my God!” she cried, leaping out of the taxi and running to her friend. “Tania! Tania?”

  Tania didn’t seem to hear. She rocked back and forth, crying and shaking. “I tried to get them out,” she wailed. “I tried to save them. I tried. Really I did. I didn’t want them to die.”

  Linda was terrified. Tania was having flashbacks, just as she had during the flooding exercises. Linda pulled a wad of tissues from her purse and mopped Tania’s forehead. She needed to get her inside, to get help. She took Tania’s arm and gently coaxed her to her feet. Guiding her into the hotel lobby, she put her in a chair and marched to the front desk, demanding to know where the Merrill Lynch meeting was taking place. She was going to give those people a piece of her mind. How dare they treat her friend like that? Didn’t they understand what she had been through?

  The desk clerk looked baffled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Before she had time to think of a retort, Linda saw Tania beckoning her. The poor woman looked desperate. Linda threw up her hands and went to her. “It’s going to be okay, Tania,” she said, speaking quietly and reassuringly. “No one can hurt you now. I’m here with you.”

  “I want to go to Dave,” Tania said, her voice thin and wobbly.

  Linda knew what that meant. During Tania’s lowest moments, she often visited the Marsh & McLennan Memorial Wall outside the company headquarters in midtown. The glass wall was etched with the names of the 295 people the company lost on September 11. Tania would go there and sit on the granite bench and be with Dave. It always seemed to comfort her.

  Linda took Tania’s hand, and they walked the ten blocks to the memorial wall. They stood together in the plaza, and Tania brushed her hand over Dave’s name. Before long, her tears stopped, and she seemed to be calming down. Linda stroked her friend’s hair, knowing that Dave was bringing her peace.

  “You can go home now, Linda,” Tania said slowly. “I’m going to be all right.”

  Linda felt nauseous all the way home. When would enough ever be enough for her poor, tortured friend? she wondered. How could those people have been so mean to Tania? How could they have attacked her that way?

  It was midafternoon when she finally got back to her apartment. Her telephone answering machine was blinking with a message. A reporter from the New York Times had called. They were doing a story on her friend, Tania Head, he said. Would she please give him a call?

  THE NEW YORK TIMES

  Every year, on the eve of the anniversary, Tania threw a party. Close friends gathered on the rooftop of her Manhattan apartment building to celebrate life before a somber day dedicated to reflection. It was supposed to be a festive event, and it always was. Dozens of people from the network, along with survivors from the Oklahoma City bombing, who in a show of solidarity traveled to ground zero every September, packed into the glass-enclosed party room overlooking Central Park. Tania was always the perfect host, mingling among the guests, filling empty wineglasses, and making sure that everyone’s plate was piled high with picnic food. Like Linda always said, if a tragedy could spawn a celebrity, Tania was the World Trade Center superstar. It was never more evident than at her annual gathering, when guests angled to have a moment with her, and she basked in the attention.

  This year was different.

  The days leading up to the sixth anniversary were a spiral of emotion for Tania. She was increasingly agitated and withdrawn, snapping orders at people and sometimes not showing up where she was supposed to be. She often didn’t take phone calls or return emails, and she wouldn’t answer her door, even though it was obvious from the murmur of the TV that she was home. She was phoning her survivor friends three and four times a day, complaining that the New York Times reporter was stalking her for a story. As often as Tania had made it clear that she wasn’t interested, she said—especially with her brother’s death, and the anniversary looming—he was still snooping around, and she couldn’t understand it. When Linda mentioned that a Times reporter had left her a message, Tania flew into a rage and made her swear not to return the call.

  The whole thing confused Linda. She wondered why Tania was so upset, when she had certainly talked to reporters before. But even more perplexing was that, the way Tania told it, the Times reporter was circling around her like a blood-smelling shark. How could he be so insensitive, so cruel? Linda wondered. He might as well be pulling on the wings of a wounded bird. What the hell for? A fucking anniversary story?

  Each time the Times called, Tania seemed to take another step backward. She began calling Richard Zimbler and Lori Mogol, her friends on the board, sometimes at two and three o’clock in the morning, carrying on about the invasion of her privacy. She complained bitterly that she felt the newspaper was on some kind of vendetta. They were probably piqued because she had changed her mind and backed out of interviews, she said. Now the reporter wouldn’t stop calling, asking the same questions she’d already refused to answer. What was Dave’s last name? Where was he from? How had they met and when? She didn’t understand his insistence that she answer personal questions. Why did Dave’s last name matter? He was her husband, and he was dead. End of story. None of the other reporters had pushed her to identify him—especially after she’d explained that his parents wanted to protect his privacy and their privacy. She had never gone against the wishes of her in-laws, and she wouldn’t now, not even if the reporter called a hundred times a day.

  By the night of the party, she was crippled with anxiety. While her guests were eating and drinking and admiring the sprawling view of the city, she was hunched alone in a corner outside on the terrace, clutching her cell phone. Every time someone approached her, she glowered and waved the person away. The guests began whispering among themselves:

  “What’s wrong with Tania?”

  “It must be the anniversary.”

  “What can we do to help? Should we leave?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Linda said.

  If ever there was a steadfast friend, it was Linda. Tania’s cruelty toward her just kept escalating, yet she somehow managed to smile through the sarcasm and the mean jokes. Tania criticized her endlessly, from her choice of clothes, to the red color of her lipstick, to the way she wore her long, platinum blonde hair. Just that day, when she arrived early to help prepare for the party, Tania looked her over and asked with a sardonic grin, “Blondie, you’re not really going to wear that tonight, are you?” Like all of the other times, Linda shook it off. She never knew whether she would find Tania the sweet, loving friend or her evil twin, and she’d learned to handle both. Some of the other survivors had criticized her for being a doormat for Tania and for fawning over her, but Linda didn’t care what the others thought. As long as Tania needed her, she was going to be there. That’s what friends did.

  “Tania, honey, what’s going on?” she asked, as Tania huddled in the corner of the terrace by herself.

  Tania waved Linda away. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she hissed.

  “Did they call again?” Linda asked. Tania glared at her and didn’t answer. Speaking tentatively, Linda tried again. “Sweetie? Is that what it is? Did they just call?”

  Linda sidled up to Tania and tried to console her, but Tania swatted at her. “Get away!” Tania cried. “Don’t you know when to give up?”

  Linda just sat there, watching Tania stare at her phone.

  “Yes,” Tania said finally. The reporter called again, and she’d hung up when she heard his voice. She barely had time to snap her cell phone shut when it rang again, but she let it go to voice mail. Tania was trembling. She couldn’t take any mor
e, she said, her thin lips quivering. She’d had it.

  “Why are they doing this to me?” she wailed, while startled guests tried to act as if they hadn’t heard her. “They’re harassing me. After all I’ve been through, and they’re harassing me!”

  “What can I do to help, honey?” Linda asked, reaching for Tania’s hand a second time.

  “Leave me alone!” Tania cried, pounding her fist on her thigh. “Just leave me alone! I have to figure this out!”

  Janice watched the scene between Tania and Linda from across the terrace. She had never seen Tania so hostile and recalcitrant. Watching her rocking back and forth, with her teeth clenched and her hand balled in a fist, she worried that Tania was finally cracking under the pressure.

  “What’s going on?” she asked as she approached Linda and Tania.

  Linda explained about the Times and how aggressive the reporter had been calling Tania several times a day, pummeling her with questions, even after she had cancelled interviews and told them she was no longer interested in participating in their story. Tania was certain that he would call again any minute, and she was petrified.

  “They’re harassing her, Janice!” Linda said. “We’ve got to do something.”

  The survivors were always more susceptible to depression around the time of the anniversary, when images of the planes hitting the towers and the buildings falling down were replayed in the media and the whole world refocused its attention on the attacks. People who suffered from trauma often reacted in unpredictable ways, and Tania had experienced significant setbacks recently, such as the loss of her brother, and that terrible confrontation at the St. Regis Hotel with the angry families of her former coworkers. Her reaction to the reporter’s phone calls was bizarre, Janice thought, until you took into consideration all of the other feelings she was coping with. Her overreaction was probably a culmination of emotions stemming from all of those things. Janice had always been Tania’s voice of reason, and there was never a time she hadn’t been able to reassure and console her back to composure. She was confident that this time would be no different.

  Rubbing Tania’s back, Janice spoke softly. “Why don’t you just tell him that you’ll talk to him after the anniversary is over?” she asked. “Just explain that this is a stressful time, and you’ll be glad to call him when you’re feeling better.”

  Tania erupted. “Because I don’t want to talk to him, and I’m not going to talk to him,” she said, seething. “Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

  She had never snapped at Janice before. She was always reverential, in the way that a patient is with a counselor, or a child is with a parent. Her enmity told Janice that the woman was at her breaking point, and she had to do whatever she could to protect her.

  “Give me the reporter’s number,” she said. “I’ll call him and tell him to leave you alone.”

  As Tania sat there, rocking and crying, Janice dialed the Times. She explained to David Dunlap that she was with Tania and that Tania was very disturbed by his calls. Dunlap said he was sorry to have upset Tania, really he was, but he just didn’t understand her reticence about answering basic questions he had. She had talked to other reporters on other anniversaries. What was so different now? The Times’s motive was no different than the others had been, Dunlap explained. They just wanted to write a profile of this brave, courageous survivor. The reporter’s conciliatory tone did nothing to appease Janice. All she knew was that Tania was coming unhinged, and the Times apparently wasn’t going away.

  “You need to understand what these people go through,” Janice said. “This is too stressful. The timing is bad. What is the purpose of this?”

  “Why can’t she just answer the questions?” Dunlap asked.

  The telephone conversation quickly turned into a shouting match, with Janice ordering the reporter to back off and Dunlap insisting that Tania answer his questions. “I’ll make a deal with you,” Janice said finally. “If you leave her alone for now, I’ll ask her to talk to you after the anniversary, and she can answer your questions then. We just need to get her through tomorrow. Okay?”

  Dunlap promised he would be back in touch.

  “Fuck him,” Janice said, flipping her phone shut. “If he bothers you again, let me know.”

  Tania breathed a sigh of relief. She could always count on her inner circle to protect her. What Janice didn’t know—what none of the others at the party knew except for Tania—was that a day earlier, Dunlap had a similar conversation with Jennifer Adams, who had suggested Tania in the first place, and the focus of his story had taken a dramatic turn. Dunlap indicated that what began as an anniversary profile was turning into an investigation. Without giving away too much, the reporter explained that Tania had cancelled three in-person interviews, which seemed strange, and now she was refusing to concede answers to the most elementary questions. His preliminary reporting had turned up inconsistencies in her biography, and the discrepancies needed to be cleared up whether the Times published a story or not. Adams’s instinct was to try to protect Tania, and she told the Times to back off. She asked Dunlap to send her his questions, and she would try to get answers. He did, that same afternoon, and he had copied Tania on the email.

  “Thank you so much for fielding these questions and for understanding that I mean no disrespect for Tania,” the reporter wrote. “With your help, I hope to put my concerns to rest and proceed with a profile of an extraordinary, courageous, and generous survivor. The details I’m asking here will simply fill in the background of her compelling personal narrative.”

  What followed were two pages of probing questions. Dunlap had obviously done his homework.

  “What was Dave’s full name?” he asked. If Tania was, for some reason, squeamish about having Dave’s last name appear in print, the reporter explained, that was an unusual request that he would have to justify to his editors and readers.

  “Was Dave her husband?” Dunlap asked. There was some confusion, he said, because Tania had, at various times, to different people, referred to him as both a husband and a fiancé.

  “How long had Dave worked in the World Trade Center?” he asked. “Where had she gone to school and what degree had she earned? Did she attend school under a different name?”

  Dunlap inquired as to whether Tania still worked for Merrill Lynch, and asked whether her title was senior vice president for strategic alliances, “as noted on the WTCSN profile?”

  “What was Tania doing in the south tower on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001?” he asked. “Also how long had she been hospitalized for her injuries and where? Is there a doctor or nurse who might attest to Tania’s remarkable resiliency?” he wondered.

  Dunlap concluded by apologizing for the intrusion into Tania’s life, particularly on the eve of the anniversary. But, he explained, most of what he was looking for was basic biographical information that could be easily answered and would enhance the story he was writing.

  Tania’s party broke up early that night. Angelo was out of town, but his partner, Gabriel, was there, and when he tapped Tania on the shoulder to say good night, she swung around and looked at him as if he had struck her. Then Janice, whom he had always known to be a gentle spirit, lashed out. “It’s not a good time,” she snarled.

  Inside, Linda thanked the guests for coming and explained why Tania was too distraught to say good-bye. The New York Times was harassing her for an interview, she said. The guests were aghast. How dare they do this on the eve of the anniversary!

  A heavy, gray sky promised a grim backdrop for the sixth anniversary. It was the first time the anniversary had fallen on Tuesday, the same day of the week as the attacks, and the first time the ceremony had been held away from the site where the twin towers had once stood, across the street in Zuccotti Park. Tania wasn’t going to attend, but, at the last minute, she decided to show up. She sat quietly with the other survivors, clutching a single pink rose that she had grabbed from one of the buckets of colored roses provid
ed for the mourners. She was sulking. Every year, she had brought with her to the ceremony a toy yellow taxi in recognition of her first meeting with Dave and placed it near the reflecting pool in the footprint of the towers. This time, Elia, the survivor from Cuba who had escaped from both the 1993 and 2001 terrorist attacks, was supposed to get the car. There was a little place in Chinatown where she could buy it, and she’d promised to go there the day before. But that morning, in the Survivors’ Network offices, just before they were ready to go to the service, Elia confessed that she had forgotten. Tania looked as if she’d stabbed her in the heart.

  She summoned Linda, who volunteered to try to find one. Even though it wasn’t yet eight in the morning, and most of the souvenir shops downtown had yet to open, Linda ran up and down Broadway searching for a toy yellow taxi. The best she had been able to come up with was a tiny cab dangling from a key chain. When she presented the key chain to Tania, sheepishly explaining that it was all she could find at that early hour, Tania growled and grabbed the key chain, throwing it against the wall in a fit of rage. “This is not what I wanted!” she screamed. Linda and Elia both jumped back, startled by her reaction. They feared that their leader was about to shatter, and there didn’t seem to be anything anyone could say or do to shake her out of her funk.

  The ceremony began as it always did, with the unfurling of a torn American flag that had been salvaged from ground zero, and a moment of silence at precisely 8:46 a.m. when the first plane had hit. People jammed together in the drizzle, holding framed photographs and other mementos of lost loved ones. When a children’s choir finished singing the national anthem, Mayor Michael Bloomberg walked to the podium and stirred the crowd with thoughtful words.

  “That day we felt isolated, but not for long and not from each other,” he said, as dignitaries such as Senator Hillary Clinton, former mayor Rudy Giuliani, and New York governor Eliot Spitzer looked on. “Six years have passed, and our place is still by your side.” The program commenced with the reading of the names of the 2,750 dead by some of the firefighters and rescuers who had helped save thousands on that day. Tears streamed down Tania’s cheeks when Dave’s name was read.