As I said, I’m sitting in Calc AB supposedly trying to pay attention but I have this perverse feeling, what with my dad and all, I just don’t give a fuck. It is a beautiful day, clear and warm, and I want to be outside—not looking out at downtown Manhattan or even across at Gina’s boobiful boobs. (She’s very smart, and popular, and aloof, at least she comes across to me that way. Also a kind person. At Stuy—Stuyvesant High School, this hot-shit public school in New York City that you have to take a test to get into but the hype is better than the school—Gina started the Big Sib program, seniors looking after freshmen.) Anyway, she is looking intently at the board and taking notes, while I have put my pencil down.
Suddenly everybody feels the building shake and the teacher looks at the students for a minute as if they did something and a couple of kids actually look at each other and roll their eyes like maybe they went a little too far this time and then the teacher shrugs his shoulders and tells everyone “Pay attention” and goes back to writing quadratic equations on the board. And everyone pays attention because everyone’s mother is nagging them and most kids at Stuy don’t need anyone nagging them.
I think I actually fall asleep for a few minutes because when I open my eyes and look out the window, I see something that I never saw before. There is an immense fireball two thirds of the way up the North Tower of the World Trade Center, red and orange flames bursting out of the building, out of some kind of huge living hole, and I think, what is this? I never saw a big fire up this close before! Just a few blocks away. It is startling and horrifying and beautiful, and I want to tell everyone in class to come over to the window and take a look, what could be going on? But I can’t get myself to disrupt the class because I want so badly to disrupt the class. Still I can’t stop looking at this humongous fire and then I hear sirens, which you hear a lot in the city, it’s no big deal. But this is one fucking fire, and that building must be full of people, everybody at work, a lot of people are going to get hurt, this is not an art exhibit. Smoke starts across the bright blue sky. Kids are talking in the hall outside, which you don’t hear much at Stuy, and now nobody is paying attention to the teacher at all because everyone is staring out the window. And then Mr. Lee, the teacher, this pretty unflappable Asian guy (well, Asian American), is staring out the window, too. “Good God!” he says. One lone man at the bottom of the big hole is waving a white handkerchief. I can’t see his face but I know it’s a man, that’s how close we are. And I get this nauseated feeling because clearly people are trapped right in front of us and we can’t do anything. The teacher yells, “Everyone stay put, I’m going to find out what’s happening,” and he leaves the room fast. Somebody thinks to turn on the TV and we all see the World Trade Center on fire on the TV and on fire out the window, and a newscaster says in an awestruck voice that a plane has hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center and then they show the plane hit the tower. I know it can’t be an accident because I have been in the cockpit of a Cessna 172—my dad and I took some lessons when I was thirteen before he got sick, it was very cool—and so I know that you don’t hit the World Trade Center on a clear day unless you intend to, and I feel frightened and enraged. Meantime, an assistant principal comes on over the loudspeaker and says in a wild voice that a plane has hit the tower, and to stay calm. Everyone should go to their next class. And the bell rings to change classes and nobody moves and then at the burning building the man waving the white handkerchief stops waving it. He climbs up across debris to the edge. And he jumps. A few people gasp. Somebody screams. Then there is silence in the room except for the TV. Nobody moves. Everybody is milling around outside in the hall, you can hear them, and one kid in class says, Did you see that, did you see that, and nobody else says anything. I am swallowing and swallowing. New kids start coming into the room, some of them joking and laughing, and one of them is saying, Can you imagine those sand niggers flying into the World Trade Center? And another says, We ought to nuke Mecca. But nobody in Calc AB says anything, and we all get out of the room fast and quiet as if we committed a crime.
In the hall I see Sam, a friend of mine, who is pushing the buttons on his cell phone, really banging them, and I remember Sam’s father works in the World Trade Center and I think should I say something. What’s to say? A girl I was in Pippin with last year, Elena, is crying with two other girls I know and we all hug for a minute and I say I saw this person jump out of the building and they say what, what and nobody can believe it. Nobody can believe anything. Mr. Lee is in the hall hurrying back to class, and he stops and puts out his hand and we shake hands very gravely and I want to tell him, I want to tell an adult about the guy who jumped but I can’t say it again and I go down the hall and to my next class thinking I should have said something. Mr. Lee is a good guy and I am trying not to think how hot it must have been for that man to jump forty floors, fifty floors, a hundred floors, instead of waiting for the fire department. Not even my dad in the situation he’s in would ever do a thing like that, or I don’t think he would, though I wouldn’t blame him.
My next class is AP Physics taught by a real jerk, Mr. Walsh, and he says something unbelievable about how if you use position vectors you can calculate the velocity or the route or something about how the plane hit the building and he starts pulling the shade down and says we’re going to have a lesson. One of the seniors says you must be kidding and another turns the TV on and the teacher turns it off and another kid turns it back on and the teacher says he’ll send him to the principal’s office and while they’re arguing we hear this rumble, which is not on the TV and the lights in the room dip and the TV goes staticky and two kids pull up the shade and in a second there’s another fireball as big as the first one and this one is coming out of the South Tower and then we look back at the North Tower and now you can see more people at the windows of the North Tower. High up in the North Tower. Above the hole. Above the fire. On top of the building. That’s probably where Windows on the World is, a fancy restaurant and nightclub where my parents go dancing every year for their anniversary. People are standing up there waving. Are they workers from Windows on the World? At this hour of the morning? It’s almost as if they’re waving at us. One fellow in the class starts waving back frantically. And then a woman jumps. And then a man. One kid opens up his arms, he holds his arms out, and then he puts them back down by his sides. Another man takes a woman’s hand and they jump together. A girl starts to sob. Another man jumps. And another. Each time a person jumps, people in the classroom scream. And Mr. Walsh closes the shade and he doesn’t say anything. Two kids rip the shade off the wall, which is an act of tremendous violence, and those kids are going to get into the worst trouble, and I try to concentrate on the trouble they’ll get into as if that is real and the people jumping are unreal and two girls have their heads down on their desks. On the TV, the planes are hitting the Twin Towers again and again and I wonder what other buildings are hit, is all of New York on fire, is the whole country on fire? But the TV is showing only the World Trade Center buildings on fire. You can see it better right out the window and you can’t see the people jumping on the TV. More and more people are watching TV and not looking out the window. The announcer talks about terrorists and Arabs and a few kids look at Khalil Rasheem, an olive-skinned, large-brown-eyed kid who always acts dignified, and he holds his head up very straight now too but he doesn’t look at anyone and he doesn’t look out the window either or at the TV and you can see his black hair is wet on his forehead. We hear seven airplanes are on the loose, only four accounted for, the Pentagon hit, and the White House is hit, and the announcer says who knows what will be hit next, the Empire State Building, the George Washington Bridge. That’s where my father is, the hospital is maybe ten blocks from the George Washington Bridge, and I know right away I have to get out of here, my parents have enough to worry about without worrying am I all right, I don’t want my father to have a heart attack. And I try to borrow a phone from the kid next to me who is punching the butt
ons and I explain my dad’s in the hospital I just blurt it out, this thing I haven’t told almost anybody but now of course no one pays attention and after a while the kid gives me the phone and I either get busy signals or no dial tone or anything. I run out of there down to the first floor where there are four pay phones but droves of kids are trying to get to them. I use another kid’s cell phone—no luck—and then I make my way up the stairs toward the third-floor exit that leads you out through an overpass over the West Side Highway. I figure I better just leave and take the subway up to the hospital—are the subways still running—or else I better start walking. My mother’s probably going there too if she’s not there already but there are so many kids with the same idea and the guard won’t let anyone out. You can see through the glass walls of the overpass the West Side Highway down below nearly empty, no traffic. There are always cars and trucks zooming up and down and now some ambulances and police cars are racing downtown, and nothing else. I figure I’ll try a different exit. So I go back through the overpass into the building and downstairs two floors to the front door that faces south but a guard is there, too, the regular guard, George, a big black dude, he is blocking the doors with his body, and he looks pretty panicky himself. He knows me. I had told him a little about my dad because the guard’s mother is sick, too, with diabetes, she had her leg amputated.
He won’t budge.
Sorry, man, he says.
And over the loudspeaker another assistant principal is saying in a preternaturally calm voice to proceed to homeroom.
I go to homeroom. It’s on the ground floor, and as soon as I get in the door, the first thing I do is look out the window. You can’t see the towers from my homeroom, and I realize all at once this is fine with me—I don’t want to be a journalist or anything—what you can see is this street going downtown. And just as I get to my desk there is a long fierce roar. Everybody looks at the TV and the tower is collapsing and out the window suddenly debris is coming down and the bottom of the South Tower must have collapsed down like a sand castle, all this crap flying around and everybody is suddenly backing away from the window and the visibility has gone to zero. All we can see is what’s on TV, that South Tower coming down and down, the announcer saying hysterically the tower is collapsing, and this huge dirt cloud and the North Tower still standing with this awful fire in it. One tower. Like the world is out of balance. And then a lot of banging noises and I wonder are the windows popping out of the school? Or are those gunshots? And all the students move far away from the windows, they stand against the wall by the door. Maybe after five minutes we hear on the loudspeakers the principal telling everybody to proceed slowly to the north exit of the building, they are going to evacuate the building. We are not in any present danger, but everyone has to leave. It doesn’t take a genius to know that we are in very present danger. Because if the North Tower goes down and it doesn’t collapse straight down like the South Tower seems to have done, then who knows how it will fall, and if it falls uptown we are in plenty present danger and everybody just starts walking out of the room and down to the north exit. Hundreds of kids. And nobody runs. There are retarded kids and kids with cerebral palsy who are suddenly also down on the ground floor in their wheelchairs. (I vaguely remember there’s a special ed class on the seventh floor. How did the teachers get them all down to the ground floor? There are only four elevators.) Their teachers are trying to get them out in an orderly fashion and one of those kids is flailing his arms around in his wheelchair like he is a windmill and he is laughing and laughing. Another is wailing and smacking himself on the ears.
The teachers keep telling the students to move slowly, deliberately, and orderly and not to trample anyone but I don’t see anyone trampling anyone not even the retarded kids are trampling anyone although later there are rumors that a few teachers ran away and the principal ran away but I didn’t see anything like that.
Finally I get outside and I start up the paved pedestrian walk by the Hudson River, hundreds of kids are walking pretty fast up that walk north, and a few kids have cameras and are taking pictures of their friends with the World Trade Center burning behind them and this kid Jake I know from American History asks me do I want a picture of myself and I say no. A couple of people are listening to portable radios and telling others what they’re hearing. “No one can find the president, or the vice president. They’re in hiding.” And somebody says that asshole Bush, he should have been in hiding since the Supreme Court stole the presidency for him. And a few peo-ple say “Right on!” But it dies down pretty fast. Then all at once Gina Pappadopolis is standing next to me, she is walking right next to me and I don’t know how it happens but suddenly we are holding hands very tight not looking at each other but walking next to each other pretty fast north. And I almost want to slow down thinking this girl is holding my hand which she would never do if the world weren’t ending, and I want it to end as slowly as possible and I am worried is my hand clammy. I can hardly believe anything. There are businessmen and women (anyway, people wearing suits) running, really running, past us, all dusty and a few have their briefcases with them, which is weird, and one guy has a bloody cheek. Gina runs over to help the guy who is bleeding but he just shakes his head and keeps running. And she comes back and takes my hand again like it’s normal (!) There are two firemen with their black rubber coats full of chalk and one of them is asking for water, his face is streaked black, and I give him my water bottle without letting go of Gina’s hand and somebody asks what’s happening and the fireman doesn’t answer. I look back and I see what’s left of the World Trade Center white crud coming out of the sky and litter and dust and dirt all over everything and I think for those people down there it must be like Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted. We start smelling smoke or imagine we are smelling smoke and one of the guys with a portable radio says we are not under attack a plane has gone down in Virginia or Pennsylvania, the White House has not been hit—one kid yells “Damn!”—and I just keep walking fast uptown next to the river and there are helicopters overhead and two big guys from the football team are running next to us and I nod at them and wonder do they know Gina do they see her holding my hand but they are in much better physical shape and they are moving really fast chatting with each other like they are out on a run trying to get in even better shape and they lose me and Gina one-two-three. Most of us are happy because we are all together. I keep seeing kids I know, and girls, especially from the plays I’ve been in, keep coming over and hugging me but I don’t let go of Gina’s hand and a few people are scared and we are all a little scared at the same time that we’re laughing and some kids keep looking downtown full of pity for those people. At Houston Street students start leaving in packs and Gina says she lives nearby do I want to come to her house and I try one more time to get my parents on the phone, Gina’s phone, and I can’t. But I can see the George Washington Bridge uptown. It looks all right but very far away and I know I have to get there.
So I tell her I hate to leave and will she be all right and can I take a rain check or a terrorist check or whatever kind of check there is in the world nowadays and she kisses me hard sort of half on the cheek and half on the lips and I kiss her back hard but we don’t use our tongues and she darts away and I am alone or no one I know is around for a minute and I am in some kind of ecstasy at the same time as I can see smoke across the downtown sky.
I keep on thinking about Gina and the farther I get from downtown the quieter the streets are: people outside eating ice cream talking to each other and there is no traffic anyplace. It’s like Venice where my parents took me when I was ten and I remember that you heard footfalls and human voices and water and not much else. And I keep on between the park and the Hudson River all the way uptown another three hours and I am thinking what would have happened at Gina’s house if I’d gone there would her parents have been home does her dad sit in the house and write all day like my dad does? Like he used to.
I arrive at the hospital. There a
re many ambulances outside the Milstein Pavilion, and police, but I don’t see injured people. The ambulances are empty with their motors running. I go up the elevator to the ninth floor where my dad is and it is very quiet on the floor no one bustling around, no nurses, no orderlies except you can hear all the TVs going so I knock on my dad’s door and yell at the same time from outside that it’s me and I’m fine and I open the door but I don’t go in because I’m sweaty and dirty, and what with my father immunosuppressed. My mother runs out and we hug like mad even though since I’ve been thirteen I don’t ordinarily like my mother to hug me it makes me edgy and my father comes to the door all hooked up pushing his IV pole with no hair and grinning. Then his eyes go wet. I know it’s with pleasure at seeing me. But I feel if the whole world has changed, why hasn’t my father changed, why does he still have these IVs in him and the pole and no hair and why are his eyes wet.
Two
In the middle of the night Matt sits in his hospital room, leaning his forehead against the window. He wishes the cool feel of the window against his skin were also clarifying, but it isn’t. What is out there? Trying for a longer view, he slides his chair back—very, very quietly; his wife is asleep on a cot the nurses have kindly found for her.
Scary Old Sex Page 8
