No shit! And you’re taking away the only thing that makes my life bearable, Madison thought as embarrassing tears formed in her eyes.
Without another word she went to her room and locked the door and cried, really cried, for the first time, with her sobs smothered in her pillow. Normally, it didn’t bother her that she and her parents lived in totally different worlds. She could deal with it.
But it takes a crisis like this to point out how little your parents understand about you.
And now, she’s stuck with nothing to do but watch her mother paint John as some sort of military saint. St. John of Arc. The Angel John. Hard to believe Mom is talking about the same guy who would hold her down and give her a wet willy.
She circles the kitchen again, then goes to the coffeemaker, the only thing in the room showing any sign of life, its red burner glowing. She fills a mug halfway, then peers out to the living room, where cameras are rolling. Dad sits upright, back ramrod straight as Mom speaks earnestly to the camera’s cold eye.
“The loss is difficult,” Sharice says sadly. “Unspeakable. But we are consoled by the fact that our son’s life mattered. John made a difference in this world.”
“We are proud to have been his parents,” her dad adds, his voice strained with emotion.
“We know your son left a promising career in the NFL to fight the war against terrorism,” says the reporter who sits out of Madison’s view. “Did he find satisfaction in his work in Iraq?”
“Absolutely. John’s dedication is clear from his own letters.” Sharice lifts an e-mail printout, now set in a frame that used to contain a photo of Madison’s grandmother. “‘Life here is challenging, but we are accomplishing our mission, and that’s something that I think will be a source of personal pride for me the rest of my life. The Iraqi people need us desperately. They need us to be diplomats, traffic cops, listeners, humanitarians, and defenders, and every day, I pray to God that I might fulfill those roles.’”
Tears glisten in Sharice’s eyes as she lowers the framed letter in pensive silence.
A poignant moment—or, at least, it would be if Sharice hadn’t acted out the exact same scenario half an hour ago for another television interview. Not to mention a similar performance before that. The tears, the quote from the letter, the silent pause, it was all executed on cue, perfectly timed.
Jesus Christ, my mother should have gone into show business, Madison thinks, backing away from the doorway. All the emoting and posthumous praise…John would not want that.
As Sharice and Jim field another question, Madison opens the cabinet beside the stove and feasts her eyes on the array of shiny bottlenecks until she locates the most delicious: Baileys Irish Cream. The bottle makes a “glug” sound as she turns it upright, filling her coffee mug to the brim.
Mmm. The alcohol part burns slightly, but the cream part isn’t so bad.
Carefully, she replaces the bottle, closes up the cupboard, and goes to the window to watch a hummingbird alight on one of the feeders John used to delight in filling with sugar water. The lime-green bird broadcasts its color brilliantly, a beacon against the summer blue sky.
“Did you know that a hummingbird’s heart can beat more than twelve hundred times a minute?” John used to say, and she would remind him that she knew because he’d told her, like, a bazillion times.
As the liqueur begins to warm her from the inside out, she promises to make sure all the feeders stay full. John would want that.
Chapter 21
New York City
Abby
On the plane, Abby unzips her backpack and takes out the red jersey before stuffing her belongings under the seat in front of her. Lovingly, she opens the shirt for a quick glimpse of the number “19” before folding it neatly and pressing it to the side of her face, a reassuring pillow. It smells of soap and citrus. It smells of John.
She settles against the window, unable to believe she is on her way to claim her husband’s body.
Abby is seated on the left side of the plane, which takes off and circles south, allowing a prime view of Manhattan as it rises into the silken blue sky. Her eyes scan the green rectangle of Central Park, over the skyscrapers that once held her in awe, the Chrysler Building with its widgets and twirled ornamentation, the stoic Empire State Building, and others with curled or asymmetrical rooftops, boxes of glass and chrome. She holds her breath as the vista widens to South Ferry and the gaping hole that once held the two towers of the World Trade Center. Without the Twin Towers, the city’s skyline seems broken, like a prizefighter missing his front teeth.
Sometimes it seems her life could be divided by the fall of those towers—divided into the girl who lived before that time, without a grave concern or world consciousness, and the woman who emerged in the aftermath.
She was in her junior year at Wagner College, a small private school on Staten Island, when the attacks happened. Her dormitory, a fourteen-story building aptly named Harbor View, overlooked New York Harbor from Grymes Hill, where students could study in suburban splendor while observing the frenzied energy of the city from a distance. The morning of September 11, 2001, Abby was toweling off her hair and going over notes for a quiz on Shakespeare’s sonnets when she noticed the black smoke billowing out of the tower across the expanse of blue water. A fire in one of the Twin Towers.
When Abby turned the television on and learned that there had reports that a plane had crashed into the North Tower, she couldn’t believe it. On such a clear, sunny day, how could that happen?
Within minutes, students were sweeping down the corridor, knocking randomly on doors, moving from television sets to wide windows as the massive tragedy unfolded before their eyes. Abby never had a chance to dry her hair but sat on the windowsill of her dorm room as Hitch hunched down on the bed and Flint paced the floor, uncharacteristically quiet. Abby called John and got his voice mail, which was no surprise, as he had a mandatory football practice each morning.
When the second plane hit the South Tower, Flint stopped pacing and fell to his knees in front of the small television set. “No!”
Abby slid from her perch and stood behind Flint, her hands on his shoulders little consolation for either of them as the news network switched over to other reporters, none of them able to confirm or clarify much of anything.
“Are we under attack?” Abby asked, feeling suddenly vulnerable on the thirteenth floor of a tall building.
“Who the hell knows,” Flint muttered under his breath.
“Fannie! Oh, Lord!” Hitch bolted up and fished in his pocket for his cell phone. “She’s on her way from the U.K. Not arriving till late this afternoon, but she’s probably in the air already.” He checked the time, pacing the room feverishly as he tried to reach his girlfriend.
At one point Abby looked at the clock and realized she’d just missed her Shakespeare test, which suddenly didn’t seem to matter. If any classes were going on. If this floor of the dorm were any indication, most students were glued to the events across the harbor.
Hitch reached Fanteen’s parents and learned that she was, indeed, in the air over the Atlantic. With all air traffic currently shut off, no one could say what would happen to those flights headed this way.
Abby remained on that windowsill most of the afternoon, unable to watch but unable to look away as the huge white tower crumbled into a cloud of dust. When her cell phone rang, she almost didn’t answer, but it was John.
“John—I’ve been trying to reach you. Are you okay?”
“I can’t believe what we just saw. The South Tower went down.”
“I know,” she answered quietly. She closed her eyes against the images, but they persisted. A commercial jet plunging into a fireball. People hanging out open windows, smoke billowing out around them. And the ones who jumped…
“I feel like such a jerk,” John said. “I’m off running a football and people are dying a few miles away. Right now I know what my father’s been working toward all these years
, serving our country. I get it. Those buildings were attacked, and I’m going in there. I’ll walk if I have to.”
“John, no!” Fear shot through her at the prospect. “Don’t be a fool. They’re trying to get everyone out of there.” She wanted to tell him to slow down, to stop jumping to conclusions, but the day’s events had thrown her so far off balance she couldn’t form the words.
“That was no accident, Abs. America is under attack, and we can’t sit back and let it happen.”
“What can we do?” Abby asked him.
“Fight back,” John said. “Fight for the U.S.A.”
Abby shook her head. In her mind, war was not the answer, particularly when it was not clear who the enemy was. “You’re losing me. But please, promise me you won’t go into the city.”
“If they put out a call for help, I’ll be there. I’m going to give blood now. Look, I’m losing you, too. The cell connections are overloaded, I think. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, not bothering to tell him that more was lost than a cell phone connection.
They rode out the storm together, Abby, Flint, and Hitch.
“Do you think we’re safe here?” Hitch asked.
“Probably not. I don’t think we’ll ever be safe again,” Flint answered without taking his eyes off the television. “Then again, who ever heard of attacking Staten Island?”
Abby shook her head. “You are so not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
Late that night a call came through from Fanteen, whose plane had landed somewhere in Canada. “Some rather pastoral airport. They loaded us all onto buses and brought us to this church, and we’re to sleep in the pews. Someone is bringing us blankets and hot food shortly. Seems there are no hotels nearby, and the closest ones are booked.”
“You…in a church?” Abby teased. “That’s got to be interesting.”
“Indeed. So what’s happened there? They’ve only told us that all the airports are closed.”
Quietly Abby shared what she knew of the horrific events, feeling as if she’d fallen into some surreal nightmare.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” Flint said the next day when they were back at the television, sharing coffee Hitch had made from his secret stash usually reserved for finals week all-nighters. “From here on, everything changes.”
Flint with his uncanny knack for unraveling truths, proved to be right once again, as the following weeks brought about the beginnings of a metamorphosis in the city and the mind. So many families, lives, and dreams would never be the same. Everyone knew someone. A friend traveling on one of the flights. A father who worked in one of the towers. A neighbor who’d been attending an early-morning meeting there. And beyond the personal toll, there were so many questions about the future. Were the fires burning at Ground Zero hazardous? Would the downtown district ever recover? What would the next terrorist target be? Was it safe to fly? Was anything safe? Student life at Wagner resumed, but the tone was somber, all things shadowed by the devastation viewed daily from every harborside window.
As Abby grieved in her own quiet way, she was unable to track John’s reaction—the volatile anger he felt over the attack, and the compulsion to serve his country. It was as if a bell had begun ringing with the attacks, an alarm that was getting louder and louder with each passing day.
“I don’t know how long I can sit back and let the next guy do our country’s dirty work,” he told Abby one day as they stared across the harbor at the empty hole, now called Ground Zero. “If there’s going to be a war on terrorism, I want to be on the front lines.”
The conversation always made Abby’s throat tighten, and lately John was so hot on the topic that her throat was getting sore. “But you’ve spent so much time building a career in football,” Abby said, joining him at the windowsill of her room. “This is your senior year, your time to shine. I don’t know that much about football, but I can read, and everyone’s saying you’ll be one of the top NFL draft picks this year.”
He nodded. “So I’m good at the game. Doesn’t that seem utterly meaningless in light of everything that’s happened?”
“It’s a huge accomplishment. It’s everything you’ve worked for, John. Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Football used to mean the world to me,” he said. “But the world changed when those four planes were hijacked, Abs. This country is under siege, and I’m going to focus all my time and energy on running a football?” He tugged on her hand, pulling her into his arms. “That is pretty lame.”
And then he kissed her, a kiss that drew the breath from her body and sparked life in her heart. She loved this man. She had loved him before the world grew complicated and bleak, and now, his sudden desire to serve bowled her over with a mixture of strong feelings.
He was so bold and selfless. A true hero.
But wasn’t it foolish to think he could make a difference by joining the army? Did guns and bombs ever solve anything?
Abby slides the windowshade of the plane down, closing off the memories. She had fallen in love with a brash boy, a charming football star, and the fall was an endless tumble, head over heels with such momentum that she could only succumb and enjoy the ride.
But what happens when the person you love evolves into someone else? When he makes choices that are hard for you to swallow, puts you into a position you never wanted to be in…an officer’s wife.
A widow.
You still love him, of course. But Abby hopes it’s okay to hate some of his decisions. She hugs the jersey in the crook of her neck, inhaling his scent, which will fade and disappear all too soon, just like her husband.
Chapter 22
Iraq
Flint
“The next sand I see had better be somewhere tropical, like in the Caribbean or the Hawaiian Islands.” Flint holds on to his sunglasses, a shield against the blowing sand as he jogs across the compound alongside Captain Jump.
“Right now, I’d settle for Atlantic City,” Jump says from beneath a hood he’s thrown over his helmet.
Flint would agree if he could talk without getting a mouthful of sand. Even Atlantic City would be better than working as an embed in Iraq. Last night he bunked with Alpha Company, sharing a room with five other men, and that was deluxe accommodations compared to his past few months here. In his time with the 121st Division, he’s slept in the back of Humvees, outside on sand, dust, and dirt, or inside a cramped vehicle where his restless dreams were punctuated by explosions and the grind of the turret turning to search out threats on the horizon.
His time is up here, and his body longs for a smooth, clean bed and clear running water…just as soon as he gets some answers for Abby.
He shifts the packages in his arms to block the sandstorm and follows Charles Jump into one of the many nondescript bungalows of this Forward Operating Base in Fallujah. Since his arrival he has attended John Stanton’s send-off, talked with Emjay Brown, and even had a few minutes to interview Stanton’s brother, Noah, who was not the most forthcoming subject. Like squeezing water from a stone. From Alpha Company he learned that John Stanton was a stand-up guy. “What we knew of him,” most guys said, as they aren’t in the same company.
As his last task, Flint is helping Dr. Charles Jump, Bravo Company’s resident mental health officer, deliver packages to his guys. The platoon has some free time right now, his opportunity to ask and observe.
“They’re really feeling the loss right now,” Jump says as they both bend into the wind, “but when people are grieving it’s good to get them talking, and sometimes it’s easier to open up to an outside party.”
Stepping into the bungalow used as quarters, Flint is reminded of a pitch he once made for a script he wrote in college: Animal House meets Platoon. Eight beds crowd into the small space strewn with Christmas lights. The walls display a fine selection of centerfolds, as well as the obligatory maps, military codes, and a chart explaining body language in Iraqi cu
lture.
“We got mail!” Jump announces in a big voice, a notch too cheerful for the men stretched out on bunks or hunched against the wall in an attempt to relax. Flint notices that all the men have their boots on and their M-16s close—a reminder that attacks don’t always occur on the other side of the wire. “And if you haven’t already met him, this is Dave Flint, a media guy from the states. Did you say L.A.?”
“Seattle,” says Flint, scanning the room. From his bunk, where he’s tuned in to an iPod, Emjay’s dark eyes shine in the shadows, and Flint gets it.
Don’t acknowledge me, those eyes are saying. Don’t tell them we talked.
“Doc told us you were coming,” says a soldier whose shirt reads LASSITER. He is stretched out on his cot, leafing through a magazine. “We’re not supposed to cuss, and he wanted the pictures of the girls down, but he was overruled.”
“Good thing,” Flint says. “I like the pictures.” He had hoped to keep things casual, wing it. It wasn’t as if he was going to start whipping off the questions to these guys. They thought he was here to research a piece about the life of John Stanton, not, specifically, John Stanton’s death. On his way here he decided not to mention that he knew John, that he is trying to gather information for John’s wife, a former college roommate. Sometimes personal involvement muddies the waters.
A buff soldier with a squarish face relieves Flint of his packages. “These are probably for me,” he says. “They always are.”
“Hilliard’s wife keeps us stocked with snacks,” Jump says.
“And sheets.” Hilliard slits open one box with a penknife. “When she found out how hot it was here and that we were sleeping on wool blankets, she got half of Little Rock to pitch in and send us sheets.”
“We got like, a hundred. We gave the extras to Alpha Company,” says a short, boyish soldier who introduces himself as Gunnar McGee from Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. He braces a box between his palms and holds it out to Hilliard. “Want me to open it for you?”
One September Morning Page 13
