All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found

by Philip Connors

  Yes, I’m ready, I said.

  Walt turned out the lights.

  The image projected to the screen was more horrific than any I’d imagined, and over the years I’d imagined a lot. I’d expected a grainy black-and-white snapshot, but the color saturation was as lush as a tropical sunset, the reds as vibrant as the seeds of a pomegranate. A giant chunk of the left side of his head was gone. His left eye and ear were still intact, but barely—above them was a gaping red cavity where his brain used to be. A piece of skull appeared to hang as if on a hinge from the top of his head, and what remained of his right forehead was crumpled inward. His eyes stared implacably at the camera, and his mouth hung ajar, as if he’d been in the middle of saying something when he pulled the trigger. The doctor showed several more pictures, some of them close-ups of the entrance and exit wounds, but it was the first that stayed with me—the force of the bullet evident in all its ferocity, the visual confirmation of the laconic language in the report: Portions of the cerebral hemisphere are submitted in a separate plastic bag.

  Not surprisingly, Seidel had seen it all in advance:

  The wind lifts off his face,

  Which flutters

  In the wind and snaps back and forth,

  Just barely attached.

  It smiles horribly—

  A flag flapping on a flagpole.

  I took copies of the photos, thanked the two men, and headed north for the backcountry of Bandelier National Monument, where for three days I did something I hadn’t done since my time in Montana. I lived in silence, in the out of doors, moving through mesa country with a pack on my back past no more evidence of human life than adobe ruins and scattered potsherds, lost in a tactile world of stone and wood and clay, sleeping beneath the stars in a land as foreign to me as the moon. I didn’t see a soul. I didn’t want to leave. But duty called.

  I’d been back in New York for two weeks when I came home from work one night and found a fat envelope in my mailbox. The return address—Albuquerque Police Department, Criminalistics Division, Forensic Photography Unit—warned me what I’d find inside.

  I poured myself a glass of bourbon and sat with it, turned it in my hand, sipping now and then, savoring the smoky burn, telling myself there was nothing to fear. He was dead. The documentation wouldn’t change a thing that mattered.

  I finished the glass of bourbon and poured myself another and then I opened the envelope.

  Among the images it contained—a photo from the front of his apartment, down the long hallway to his living room, a slumped body faintly visible on the couch in the corner; a photo taken from partway down the hallway, the slumped body now more prominent, pale arms, pale legs showing through the gloom; a photo of his bedroom, two white cowboy hats upside down on the bed, as if he’d tried them on and tossed them aside; a photo of his kitchen counter, coffeemaker on the left of the frame, a hunk of bloody viscera pooled next to it, twenty feet from the body; a photo of the wall above the couch, spattered with blood and yellowish bits of brain matter; another like it from another angle, and another like it, and another like it; a photo of his body from above, right arm pointed downward, left arm bent at the elbow, gun cradled between them at an angle, stock resting on the floor next to his right leg, barrel pointed toward his left shoulder; a photo still closer of just his head, eyes open as if in shock, portions of his skull peeled back from the force of the bullet, the entire left side of his head all red and wet like a watermelon crushed with a baseball bat; a photo of a big chunk of his brain, disgorged but still intact, lying next to him on the couch all glistening and salmon-colored, like a skinned cat; a photo of a bullet hole in the ceiling; a photo of a rifle cartridge on the floor, nestled in the carpet; a photo of a box of cartridges on the floor, PMC brand, prominently stamped with the words WARNING: KEEP OUT OF THE REACH OF CHILDREN—I came across a photo of his left foot, clad in a white ankle sock, and next to it the telephone, its cord pulled taut across the room, its keypad stippled with a mist of blood.

  That was the one I couldn’t get past.

  I put down the photos and picked up the bottle.

  For weeks afterward I walked the night streets of the city, caressing the bitter estrangement of my secret knowledge, my glimpse at the tableau of his end. I drank myself into furious oblivion, alone in my new neighborhood bar at closing time, and in the morning I stared at a blank piece of paper in the typewriter before I dressed for work.

  I should have called him. I could have called him. That’s what I kept thinking, staring at that empty page. I should have called him. I could have called him. My mother had suggested as much, and I’d put it off. I’d figured it could wait. The sight of that telephone in the police photos only confirmed my conviction that I’d had a chance to save him and missed it. There was no way around it. The phone was right there, within arm’s reach. Its ringing could have changed the course of his day. My voice could have given him a reason to live. I’d never have known it, of course. Hard to imagine him saying, months later, So, bro, that time you called me after the breakup . . . you saved my life.

  Instead he was gone, still and forever gone.

  I spoke to Bob Bartley for the last time on the day he announced his retirement as editorial page editor. Dow Jones & Company required senior executives to retire at the age of sixty-five, so Bob Bartley would be replaced as editorial page editor by Paul Gigot, who’d won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary and often appeared on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS. Bob Bartley would still write a weekly column called Thinking Things Over, in which he would say the same things he’d been thinking for thirty years all over again.

  We boarded the elevator together, just the two of us. His hair was mussed, and his shoulders were slumped. He had the doleful look of an injured horse aware it’s about to be taken out to pasture and shot.

  Big day, I said, trying to sound jocular.

  Yes, he said.

  Now Paul gets to see how hard you work, I said, staying jocular.

  That’s right, he said. And I have to figure out how to disengage. Not sure how to do that. Maybe stop coming into the office every day.

  Yes, I can imagine that would be a challenge after thirty years.

  He didn’t respond.

  I tried to think of something else to say to him—something big-picture or consequential, now that his reign was up. I thought of asking him how he felt about an in-depth study of his editorials by the Columbia Journalism Review, which found that his page “rarely offers balance, is often unfair, and is riddled with errors—distortions and outright falsehoods of every kind and stripe.” I thought too of asking him whether he felt in any way responsible for the death of Vincent Foster, the White House counsel to Bill Clinton who’d killed himself shortly after Bob Bartley published a series of attacks on his integrity. Foster’s suicide note, discovered in his briefcase six days after police found his body in a suburban Washington park, expressed frustration that “the WSJ editors lie without consequence.” After Foster’s death, Bob Bartley’s editorials insinuated that Foster may have been murdered for knowing too much about Whitewater, and called for a special counsel to investigate. “The American public is entitled to know if Mr. Foster’s death was somehow connected to his high office,” Bob Bartley wrote. I thought the American public was entitled to know if Bob Bartley thought Vince Foster’s suicide was somehow connected to irresponsible journalism, and I wondered whether Bob Bartley had considered, for even a moment, the family of the dead man when he wrote those words. They made it difficult to think of Bob Bartley as a man who no doubt loved his wife and kids, was generous with colleagues, tithed the appropriate amount at his church of choice, and did kind things for his friends. Though I detested his politics, it was this sin that disfigured him so grotesquely, turned him into a caricature of a human being in my mind, an obsession I would even dare say: that nothing was off-limits in the pursuit of a political vendetta, including paranoid musings on a man’s tragic suicide.

  In my heart
I knew it was the wrong day for such questions, and anyway I was a coward when it came to asking tough questions of anyone but myself, and even often of myself—one of the reasons I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a reporter.

  We parted ways in the lobby, him heading for his limousine to Brooklyn, me for the subway to Queens.

  Well, I said, enjoy your newfound freedom.

  I’ll try, he said.

  I never spoke to him again.

  I held mornings sacred, time entirely my own, in my own space, with my own music on the stereo. Alone in my bed I’d wake to the alarm and the day’s first light, make a pot of coffee. A hot shower and a shave, a shirt, a tie. An hour at the typewriter, coffee at hand, jabbing the machine to make a sound like a thing being built. I wrote and rewrote the story of my brother’s end that summer, based on what I’d once been told by my aunt Ruth, who’d spoken to all the principals. It was the one story that never got old in the revision. I’d compile new versions, new variations, improvisations on a tune I couldn’t quite seem to hear; I’d give it a rest when the versions started changing one word at a time instead of blossoming in new directions. Then I’d strip away anything extraneous, cut it to the bone, aiming for the very minimum I could say for certain plus a little I could not. I wanted to fashion an ice pick out of words. I wanted concision, dispassion, an accurate accounting of a man’s last moves on the brink of a self-willed death. Despite my best effort, I couldn’t help thinking it stylized and incomplete:

  He spent his last afternoon with friends, this much was known. One of them had a hot tub. They soaked and drank beer and told stories and laughed. They were all hot air balloonists, and their stories tended to circle around dubious flying conditions, botched landings, hairy takeoffs in squirrelly winds.

  The afternoon passed toward evening. Someone suggested they go out for a drink, to a neighborhood place they liked in Rio Rancho, a place called Phil’s Bar. Dan said he wanted to go home and get his darts so he could play some cricket. Seven o’clock, it was agreed. They’d meet at seven. They’d see him then.

  Back in his apartment, he picked up the telephone and dialed his ex-girlfriend. She’d been his girlfriend for eight months, his ex since the previous day. She had two kids, a boy and a girl, with a man from whom she was separated, not divorced. The kids were ages seven and eleven and both had begun to dress in a cowboy hat and boots, in imitation of Dan. Final custody remained uncertain, property yet to be divided, papers yet to be signed. It was a messy situation, and Wendy had insisted on a break while she got her life in order. A break and then they’d see where things stood.

  He was drunk when he called. They spoke briefly, talking past each other, saying things they didn’t mean, as sundered lovers will.

  You’re not thinking straight, she told him. Sleep it off. Call me tomorrow.

  This was his last known contact with another human voice.

  From then on it’s all conjecture. Maybe he went to the couch with his lowball glass, working it around in his hand, swirling the ice, not even noticing the taste when he drank. Maybe he couldn’t sit still. Maybe he was up and pacing the apartment. Maybe he was thinking that the only thing to do was hurt her back. Maybe he was thinking that the only thing to do was hurt himself.

  He stepped out on his deck for some fresh air. Or maybe he went again to the freezer, put another chunk of ice in his glass, poured himself another finger of scotch. Or maybe he opened a beer. He paced from one room to the next. Or maybe he sat on the couch and worked the glass around in his hand some more.

  There it is, he thought. Right there, behind the closet door, the answer for everything.

  He opened the closet. He reached for the gun. He felt the barrel, smooth cool metal. Maybe he caressed it with a kind of loving tenderness. Maybe he simply connected the clip, snapped it in place with a grim satisfaction. He drank a long swallow of scotch. Or maybe he cracked another beer. He walked from one end of the apartment to the other, brandishing the gun, getting a feel for it. Or maybe he sat and tested it against his temple, savoring the chill of it on his skin, testing the membrane between life and death. Maybe he leaned into it, relieved by the onrushing prospect of freedom. Maybe he was calm. Maybe he took his time. Maybe he was itching to get it over. Maybe he was furious. Maybe he felt as if his head were entrapped in a goldfish bowl. There was no one else in his diminishing world, nothing but the vise grip of despair, squeezing him without mercy, reducing his options for escape to the flash from the mouth of the gun.

  This was my continuing dream that summer, the locus for my imagination, a voyeuristic wish to inhabit the scene of a suicide, to see the carnage firsthand and taste the smoke in the air, the smoke from the heat of the bullet.

  My commute, door to door, typically took fifty minutes on the N train. It was another part of my day I cherished, a three-quarter-hour journey in benevolent captivity, an in-between time. On the train I came back to the world outside my own head. Boarding near the end of the line, before the cars became crowded, I usually managed to find a place to sit. I used the time to read or, when my attention faltered, to survey the kaleidoscope of city life in the faces of my fellow New Yorkers, the galvanic friction of young and old, rich and poor, black and white and every shade between. Bound in a fragile intimacy sustained through studied nonchalance, we were acutely aware of those near us but discreet with our attentions lest we send a creeper vibe, most of us anyway. There were always creepers and I tried not to be one of them. Nonetheless about every other day I swooned for a woman I would never see again, a one-way romance consummated in a sideways glance and lasting mere minutes, poignant in its transience and futility, in the sickly purity of my unexpressed longing.

  I had one commute more memorable than all others by far. It was election day, the mayoral primary—a day on which the city painted itself in red, white, and blue, posters and placards taped to light poles and subway-stop railings, an upbeat but languid mood in the streets, as people played hooky from work to do their civic duty. I intended to vote in the evening at my polling place in Queens, for Mark Green, whom I felt sure would be the city’s next mayor if he survived Fernando Ferrer.

  As it happened, neither man would be much heard from again.

  At a little after nine a.m. my telephone rang. It startled me. No one ever called me in the morning. I had a bad feeling before I even answered.

  My friend Sarah wanted to know if I’d heard the news. I told her I hadn’t heard any news. She said two planes had hit the World Trade Center towers. It looked like terrorism.

  You probably won’t be going to work today, she said.

  Damned if I won’t, I thought.

  On my way to the subway, having just missed a train pulling out of the station, I stopped in a bar and looked at the television, saw the two towers framed by the camera, both of them smoking, not white smoke but black, a hint of the tremendous heat at work. It looked bad, but I couldn’t begin to imagine how bad. I made a vow that sustained me through the next three hours of travel by train and by foot to an office building I would enter for what would turn out to be the last time: I would not be reduced to a stunned spectator. I would not sit in a bar and stare at a screen. This was the biggest story in the world all of a sudden, and it was happening just across the street from my employer, a newspaper regarded as a secular bible by some of the people who worked in those towers. I didn’t care what I had to do, I was going to work, straight to the managing editor, to whom I’d offer myself for whatever was needed, phone dictation, rewrite, you name it. It was strange to feel this way—preemptively purposeful. I’d become so jaded with the limitations of journalism that I no longer thought of myself as a journalist but as merely another drone in the hive mind of Lower Manhattan, trading eight hours of each weekday for cash at a paper whose editorial stance I found not just wrong but dangerous. Some habits die hard, I guess. I’d spent seven years, off and on, and many tens of thousands of dollars on an education that taught me three major things: stay curious, be
dogged, run toward the story. Old instincts kicked in like a muscle memory.

  So I went to the story, which turned out to be many stories, depending on how you looked at it: a heinous crime, an audacious act of mass murder, a made-for-TV spectacle, a catastrophic fire, an airborne toxic event, and the most successful terrorist attack in the history of terrorism. September 11 was a lot of things and the beginning of many more: refugees and civilian dead in foreign lands, killed and wounded soldiers, TSA gropings, the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, CIA black sites, waterboarding, a linguistic squabble disguising a moral question about the meaning of the word torture, the prison at Guantánamo Bay, sadomasochistic photo shoots at Abu Ghraib, Total Information Awareness, drone assassinations, border hysteria, NSA data collection . . . a full accounting is beyond my ken. But before all that, before it became a rallying cry for war and state surveillance, it was a drama of suicide. Nineteen men on a mission demanding death on a day chosen for them. An untold number of jumpers from the towers who faced a choice of deaths on a day not chosen by them. A chain reaction of suicides. The hijackers believed their reward awaited them in the afterlife. The jumpers, who can say what they believed? When it came to the afterlife, they must have believed dozens of different things, but the one thing they all believed was that ten final seconds of flight was preferable to the inferno they fled.

  Later I tried to imagine their final moments, as I had with my brother’s, but how far inside another man’s death can we truly see? Even our own is a mystery until it’s upon us, and for the people in those towers it can only be guessed at in the most superficial way. The thunderous explosion from the impact of the plane. Instantaneous fire erupting with a searing heat, the fire quickly growing. Panic as all exits close off. Smoke and flames swallowing all hope of survival, breathing excruciating, lungs overwhelmed. Suffocate or roast to death or jump, those were the choices, the last set of options, the question of how to die. There wasn’t much time to mull it over. It wasn’t a philosophical exercise. Die now—but die how? It was a question whose horror you couldn’t inhabit.