by Gae Polisner
The Law Offices of Spencer and Marconi. When the page loads, his face—the face from TV—smiles out at me from a photo inset at the top. Hannah’s breath hitches.
Next to Marconi is an older, white-haired man, heavyset, with a thick round nose and ruddy cheeks.
“That’s John,” she says, touching the screen. “He’s very nice. A lot like an uncle to me.” She sounds so sad, I can barely take it. “I’m guessing he’s gone now, too.” She points to the top of the page, the button that reads: Contact us. “Click on that,” she says, her voice cracking.
When I do, the firm’s telephone number and address pop up: One World Trade Center, 63rd floor. “See? That’s where he works. That’s where he was,” she says.
Now I’m the one who can’t breathe. I want to cry for her. I want to freeze-frame and reverse time, go back before I knew. Before I had any part in making her remember.
I wrack my brain. Cantor Fitzgerald, that big company that Bangor’s uncle and Jenny Lynch’s father worked for, was in the hundreds I think, like the 105th or 106th floor.
“The sixty-third floor is way below…” I start to say, but how do I phrase the rest without making myself cry or, worse, vomit? “Below where … Well, I bet a lot of people made it out of there.”
I realize now from the photo on the website that it’s the same office as the one Marconi was sitting in on Dateline, with the fancy mahogany conference table and the gold law books on the shelves behind him. And when the camera had panned out while Stone Phillips was talking to him? It had shown a wall of windows with a stellar view of downtown Manhattan.
“I know it’s a long shot,” I add, trying to sound positive, “but you shouldn’t give up until we know for sure.”
She nods, but a fresh stream of tears runs down her face. “I wish I hadn’t fought with him, Kyle.”
“You didn’t know.”
“But there’s no excuse…” The tears turn to sobbing again, and she folds into me, lets me hold her and rock her some more. And, just when I think I may have her soothed, she says, “You don’t understand, Kyle. I told him I hated him. I told him I wished he was dead instead of my mother.”
WHERE ARE THE WINGS?
It takes me a long time after that to get her to calm down again. When I do, I say, “Come on, maybe we can find him. If anyone can, it’s my dad. Let’s go talk to him.”
I stand, but she grabs my sleeve. “I can’t do it, Kyle.”
“Okay, then stay here. I will.”
She nods, her lips pressed tight as she fights back a fresh wave of tears. “But first, before you do … I want to show you my mother.”
He types your name,
Danielle Marconi,
the way I ask him to.
I say each letter aloud, though doing so
makes me ache.
It hurts how much I miss you, Mom.
I do what she asks, even though it feels unbearable.
I do what she wants me to do.
I brace myself against the images that will come,
though I’ve done this before, a hundred times since spring,
studied each detail of every photo,
your face,
your smile,
your eyes.
So many of them are copies of photos that hang on our walls
in our home,
line our halls,
rest on the credenza in my father’s office.
An office that is no longer there.
They are the photos of you that look out at me,
your expression tricking me into believing
that you may still
be here.
When the links load, Hannah points to one and says, “That,” so I click on the one that reads: PRINCIPAL DANCER/CREATIVE DIRECTOR, NEW CITY BALLET.
She touches the screen as a photo appears—a photo of her, I mean, it’s Hannah’s face, only older—in a box in the upper right-hand corner. It is uncanny how much she looks like her mother. It’s the same face I’ve been looking at for days.
Soft music plays, and a banner at the top of the page scrolls by:
NEW CITY BALLET MOURNS THE LOSS OF OUR EXTRAORDINARY CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND MUSE, DANIELLE “DANI” MARCONI.
“You look just like her,” I manage.
She nods and bites her lip, causing a fresh spill of tears. She takes a deep breath and points to the words Photo Gallery. “Click on those,” she says.
When I do, she looks away for a second. Pages of photographs slowly load, one after another. Tiny thumbnails that can be enlarged if you want to wait. In one after another, even small, I can pick out her mother, beautiful with her long black hair.
“Mine was long like that, too,” Hannah says, touching the screen, laughing a little through her tears. “I shaved it with her, when hers started to fall out last winter. It grew back some, but I cut it off again. It’s too—” She swallows. “I’ve been so angry … It’s all so stupid,” she says.
I turn and look at her, but, what am I supposed to say? What can I say that will make any of it better? I let my eyes scan the rows of photographs again, picking out her mother in each one.
In one she wears a long red gown, her hair pulled back into a jeweled bun. I touch the photo, and Hannah says, “That was two seasons ago, at her installation as Creative Director. It was an amazing night, after a performance of Sleeping Beauty.” I nod, and she adds, “Not long before she was diagnosed.”
In another, she wears a simple brown dress with a tie at the waist. She bows with a line of dancers at the front and center of the stage. In yet a third, she’s dressed in costume, I think from The Nutcracker. I recognize it from Kerri’s dance-school production, which was lame. But also because there’s that giant red Nutcracker guy behind her.
In still one more, she’s center stage in another fancy gown, but looking thin and pale, her hair short and wispy now. A group of dancers—men in white tights, women dressed in lots of white tulle—stands to each side of her in front of a raised platform designed with cattails and plumed grasses, surrounding what looks like real water.
“That was from Swan Lake,” Hannah whispers.
And then I see Hannah. The one next to her mother curtseying, in the center.
She wears a white costume with a tulle skirt and an elaborate headpiece covered in the same white feathers as the wings. The ones hanging from Kerri’s chair.
I reach out and touch the screen again. “But where are the wings?” I ask, and she does the half laughing, half crying thing again.
“Oh, those weren’t part of the costume, just for promotional purposes. But I liked to wear them … She used to call me her butterfly … You can’t actually dance in those wings.” She shakes her head, pulls a tissue from the box on my desk, and blows her nose.
“She was supposed to play Odette, the swan princess,” Hannah explains. “But she was too weak to do it, so they let me go on for her. She got to see me dance the role. It was the last time she ever saw me dance.”
LE PETIT PAIN
“We’re at our café,” I hear myself say,
touching the photo on the screeen,
the one of
me,
dressed as
Odette.
“In all my dreams, we’re still there, on the lake
on that stage,
or at our little café.
Our favorite French café on Vesey Street.”
I get up and walk to his bed,
lie down,
and close my eyes.
I can’t look at photographs anymore.
“Come sit here,” I say, “and I’ll tell you.”
I’ll tell you it all.
He does, and I let the memories
rush in.
I sit with her and hold her hand, and listen.
“Every Tuesday, we’d go there,
to that little café on Vesey Street.
Le Petit Pain.
Now it’s probably buried
beneath
all that
rubble.”
Her voice trails off, but I get it all now. The whole picture is coming together. Vesey Street is right there. It literally runs into the Twin Towers.
“That was our thing,” she continues, “a family ritual. My mom’s favorite place in the world. They got married there.” She looks at me and says, “In January, in the middle of a snowstorm, they got married in the courtyard there.” I raise my eyebrows, and she explains. “Antoine—he’s the owner—he had this temporary glass dome installed so it would stay warm for the wedding, for her. Of course I wasn’t there, but I’ve seen photographs. The courtyard was covered in fruit trees, blooming in blue-glazed pots.
“Antoine loved my mother so much … For their last anniversary, my father and Antoine hung pale pink laterns from the beams,” she says, her voice filled with melancholy now, “and covered the branches in sparkling white lights, just like at their wedding. It was magical. When I was little, I loved to page through their wedding album. They looked like figures inside a snow globe.”
I see you there,
caught in the flurry,
all rosy cheeks and twinkling lights,
your white dress with the fluffy white trim framing your face,
baby’s breath crowning your head.
I see you there, still,
in your leotard and pink chiffon skirt,
en pointe,
all magic and grace.
A jewel-box ballerina,
twirling forever inside my head.
She squeezes her eyes shut as if she’s trying to keep in the tears, then lets go of my hand, and walks to my window.
“Every Tuesday, Kyle, like clockwork, we’d take the subway downtown from Grand Central together and eat breakfast at Antoine’s café, in the courtyard.”
“Le Petit Pain,” I say, wanting her to know that I’ll remember every detail.
She nods. “It means ‘little bread.’ Well, not little exactly, but, like, sweet little bread. And every Tuesday morning, Antoine, not the waiters, would serve my parents and me breakfast. But it was for her that he did it. He loved her so much. Everyone did.”
“I bet,” I say, my heart breaking for her.
“From there, my father would go to work, and my mother and I would head uptown to work, and to school.”
“At LaGuardia,” I say.
She turns fast, her eyes searching mine.
“How did you know?”
I walk back to my desk, slide open the drawer, and pull out the ribbon with the ballet slipper charm tied to the plastic sleeve with her tattered ID.
I hand it to her. Her face holds a million questions.
“I didn’t know it was in there at first,” I say. “In the washing machine. I washed it accidentally. By the time I realized and found it, I couldn’t make out most of what it said. But I could make out the letters of the school, and, of course, a few of the letters in your name. Not enough of them, but still. Enough to know it was you, when I heard your father on TV … I probably should have told you sooner. I wanted to give you time.”
She takes the ribbon from me and squeezes the charm in her hand. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she says. “I’m glad to have this, though. I thought I’d lost it for good.”
“Oeufs au nid.”
My mother takes a small bite of the egg-soaked bread and smiles, making her eyes crinkle. “No one makes them like Antoine does, do they, Papillon?”
I shake my head, taking a bite of my own. “Except in Paris,” I say, and she nods.
“Except in Paris,” she says.
It’s spring, two years before she will be diagnosed, the morning after I get my acceptance into the dance program. We’re celebrating. Dad is here, too, though he can’t stay as long. He’ll head to work as soon as he’s done eating.
“Tell me again about Paris,” I say. “About the Paris Opera Ballet. Swan Lake, 1984. I love when you tell me your stories.”
“Well now, Papillon, you’ve heard mine enough. Soon you will have stories of your own.”
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a small teal box, tied with a silver-white ribbon. Inside is a pink pointe shoe charm.
“From Tiffany’s,” she says. “Your father and I, we’re so very proud of you.”
As she talks, my mind races. I want to get Dad, tell him what’s going on, and see if he can find out more about her father.
“Give me a second. Wait here,” I say. “I swear I’ll be right back.”
In the hall, so she won’t see, I scrawl John Marconi, Esq., Spencer & Marconi, 1 World Trade Center, 63rd floor on a piece of paper, and run to his study.
He’s on the phone, cups a hand over the receiver. “Sorry. It’s kind of important,” I say.
I hold out the scrap of paper to him, say breathlessly, “Her name is Hannah Marconi. John Marconi is her father. He’s one of the lawyers for those prep-school kids. Harrison Highfront, remember? The Washington Square Park rape case. He worked in the Twin Towers.”
For a second, my father’s face is riddled with confusion, then he begins to register the information.
“I’ll explain better later, “I say. “… there was a rerun … We saw him on TV…”
He holds up a finger to me, uncovers the phone. “Let me call you back, Paulie,” he says.
“Okay, Kyle, tell me.”
I nod, fighting back tears. “Her mom died last spring. Some kind of cancer. Ovarian, she said. And now her dad was in one of the towers. She thinks he’s … I mean, probably he is, right? Because he was in there. But what if…?” I look down, not wanting to say anything that will sound stupid or naive. I keep thinking of Dad saying I was getting too attached to the girl. “It wasn’t those higher floors, though, so maybe … Can you check? I’m hoping maybe you can find him.”
He stares at the paper and narrows his eyes, and I can see him calculating the possibilities. He glances at the clock. It’s already late, well after eight P.M. “Let me call Butch,” he says, “try to reach someone at the station. Maybe a Missing Persons call has come in. Now that we have a name, maybe we can find something.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say. “Let me know as soon as you find him.”
I go back to my room. The girl is standing at the window.
“Are you okay? My dad is looking for—for information. Tell me the rest now. I want to hear.”
“It was a Tuesday, last October, and still summer-warm—warm enough to sit outside—when they told me she was going to die.
“She said the words, not my father. Told me she had stage-four ovarian cancer, and that they hadn’t caught it in time.
“I didn’t believe them, Kyle. I didn’t want to. She was still so young. But it had already spread to nearly every part of her body.
“They gave her three months. She was so strong and brave.
“She lived for almost nine months more.”
“And this Tuesday?” I ask.
“Yes, I’m getting to that,” Hannah says.
“Even as she grew sicker, we continued to go down to Antoine’s—Le Petit Pain—almost every Tuesday morning. Even as she worked less, and danced less, even as the chemo chemicals made her teeth hurt and took away all her beautiful hair.
“It’s not that we were pretending she was okay, because we weren’t. But she loved it there so much. If we could have, we would have spread her ashes there.”
Kyle nods and holds my hand.
His hand feels so perfect in mine.
“And then, after she died, my father wouldn’t go there anymore. He told me he couldn’t bear the place. But I felt closest to her there. So I’d go without him, alone. What else was I going to do?
“I could feel her presence everywhere there. In the cobblestones. In the glazed pots with their fruit trees. In the lanterns.”
“It sounds magical,” Kyle says.
“Yes,” I say. “I think it was.”
“Do you think he’ll reop
en it? Antoine, I mean.”
She shrugs. “I hope so.”
“So that’s where you were Tuesday morning,” I say. “In that courtyard, when the towers went down.”
She nods, bites her lip. “After the second plane hit,” she says, “I ran. I knew he was in there. I needed to get to my father.”
Her voice breaks now, her words choked out by a fresh flow of tears.
I don’t see the first plane hit,
only hear the explosion.
I think—I don’t know—that it’s a gunshot, or simply
a car
backfiring.
The second plane, I see.
It aims … flies deliberately into the windows …
And then I run.
Not away from it all,
but toward you!
I need to find you, Dad!
I need to tell you!
How very much
I love you.
I don’t know how long we sit there after that, just quiet, until Dad finally knocks on my door.
I search his expression for answers, but he’s in detective mode, poker-faced, expression unreadable.
Hannah stands. She lets go of my hand.
“It’s okay, Mr. Donahue, go ahead. You can tell me. I’m ready to know.”
VII
NEWS
As my dad stands there, this lame old joke I once read in some kid’s book runs through my head:
Doctor: I have some bad news and some very bad news.
Patient: Well, you might as well give me the bad news first.
Doctor: The lab called with your test results. They said you have twenty-four hours to live.
Patient: Twenty-four hours! That’s terrible! What could be worse news than that?
Doctor: I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday.
* * *
Dad clears his throat.
Hannah waits, brave and strong.
When he speaks, I’m surprised to hear his voice shaking.
