by Jackie Hance
“Oh gosh, what are you doing here?” I asked when I saw her.
“Doug told me about Warren’s calls,” she said. “I thought I’d better come here.”
I started to get increasingly anxious. Jeannine, Melissa, Una—why were all these people coming over? Was I missing something?
Everybody seemed to be on their cell phones. Melissa kept trying to call Diane’s cell. Una spoke to Doug and tried to get updates. Meanwhile, Warren was at the police barracks in Tarrytown. At his suggestion, the police were trying to tap into Diane’s cell phone, and they needed Danny’s permission.
Somehow, word came that there had been an accident. More calls, more confusion. I was uneasy, but I still wasn’t panicked. Car accidents happened all the time. The girls would be scared and probably shaken up a bit, but nothing we couldn’t fix.
“I know Emma broke her leg,” I said, hopping around the room. “I know it, I just know it.”
For Emma to have broken her leg would have been karmic. I’m a terrible liar, but I’d needed a dramatic excuse to get out of a commitment a few weeks earlier, and I’d fibbed and said that Emma had broken her leg. I’d felt guilty at the time. Now I was convinced it was coming back to haunt me. If Emma had a broken leg from this accident, it would be my fault. “Emma broke her leg,” I moaned, worried about retribution. But no, everyone was going to be all right. Mild injuries. A broken leg. We’d deal with it.
Then my mind jumped way beyond that. “Please don’t let anyone be brain-dead,” I whispered.
Una patted my shoulder. “Jackie, don’t even think that. It’s going to be okay.”
But she got on the phone, calling a nurse she knew at Westchester Medical Center, hoping to find out some details.
I leaned over Una as she held the phone, grabbing her arm with two hands. “Tell me, is anyone hurt? Is someone brain-dead?”
She had no information. “My friend doesn’t know anything,” Una said. “Stay calm.”
I began pacing up and down the kitchen, into the living room, then around in circles through the den. Back and forth, back and forth, like a dog chasing its tail, I kept going, seeking something I couldn’t find.
“They’re okay, they’re okay, they’re okay,” I chanted to myself, clasping my arms together and moving my hands from side to side.
Someone told me that Warren was racing to the hospital, so we’d know soon enough.
“They’re okay, they’re okay, they’re okay,” I said, continuing my chant. “I know they’re okay.”
Then I saw Brad on his cell phone and I heard him say, “Warren?” Fear and concern resonated in Brad’s voice, as if the person he was talking to on the other end was hysterical.
In the frenzy of the last couple of hours, time had sped by. But now it came to a grinding halt. My eyes were fixed on Brad and all the buzz around me seemed to stop.
As he listened to Warren try to give the full report, Brad stood straight, then slumped against the wall. I saw him drop his head once. Twice. Three times. The wall could barely hold him up. Then he put down the phone and came over to me. His face looked stricken.
“Jackie, they’re all gone,” he said.
“No,” I said evenly.
The words didn’t penetrate. I just kept looking at his tortured face.
But Melissa understood what his words meant.
“Brad, don’t say that!” she yelled. “Don’t say that!”
“They’re all gone,” he repeated. “Jackie, I’m so sorry . . .”
I don’t know what else he said because I ran out of the house shrieking. Screaming, shrieking, yelling. No words, just horror. I ran fast, because maybe if I got away from the house, from my friends, from the phone, it wouldn’t have happened. I charged down the street howling like a wild animal, feral cries resonating in the quiet afternoon. Neighbors started coming out of their houses at my horrified screams and people called out to me, but I kept running and didn’t stop.
Without thinking where I was going, I headed toward Salvina’s house. The matriarch of a big Italian family, Salvina had babysat for Emma, Alyson, and Katie in their first years. I would drop them off at her house when they were small, sometimes three days a week, and she cared for them like her own. Her house always seemed to me like a magical place, filled with cousins and sisters and extended love. Even as tiny babies, the girls never cried around Salvina—she had the secret potions to soothe upset stomachs or calm colic. As she watched my children grow, I watched hers. When Salvina’s daughter got married, Katie walked down the aisle, a flower girl.
Now Salvina opened the door. Since it was Sunday, she was cooking gravy for the big family dinner she served each week. The smell of food that would normally make me feel so good now hit my stomach and a wave of nausea took over.
“Jackie, what’s the matter, what’s the matter?” she asked in her heavy Italian accent. A tiny woman with short black hair, she waved me inside. But instead, I just grabbed her arm.
“Salvina, the girls are dead. The girls are dead,” I said.
“It’s not true,” she said placidly.
“No, that’s wrong. Couldn’t be,” said her husband, coming to join us.
Sal, another neighbor, who was an undercover cop, had followed me but I sat down in Salvina’s living room.
“It’s true, Salvina. There was a car accident,” Sal said. If anybody knew anything it was Sal. Not only a cop, he volunteered in the fire department and as an EMT.
But like me, Salvina couldn’t process the words. She began screaming and rushed over to the couch to sit beside me, holding me and moaning. We rocked back and forth together and I sat there for what seemed like hours. I heard Jeannine come in and say we should go back home, but I didn’t want to leave.
Maybe if I never left the sofa in Salvina’s house, I could make my own truth. Brad would be wrong. The girls would come in the door. Emma would be upset about missing play rehearsal but Alyson would comfort her. They would tell me about the fun they’d had camping and we would hug and kiss and talk about how scary it had been when Aunt Diane got sick. Salvina would give them delicious pasta, and I would tell them that they had been brave and now we were all together, which was all that really mattered and exactly what we all wanted. What I wanted desperately.
Two
I don’t know how I got back home from Salvina’s. Swarms of friends and neighbors had already gathered inside and outside our house, and several of the men had gone to the hospital to get Warren. I was in our living room when he arrived home, and the moment he saw me, he crumbled. His grief was already crushing, but once multiplied by mine, it became unbearable. He put his arms around me and we both fell to the floor, reeling and helpless, grief rolling over us like a locomotive.
Warren had always been my rock, his solidity a perfect foil to my more emotional responses. But now we were both in shock. Even his efforts to show superhuman strength might not be enough to sustain me.
At some point, I looked out the window and saw news trucks and camera crews.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The reporters are all trying to talk to you,” one of my friends said. But she pulled the shades down and kept the curtains closed.
By the next day, the police had cordoned off our street, but television producers and news reporters clambered across our lawn, looking for an interview. Friends went outside to shoo away bookers from Dr. Phil and Oprah and the network morning news shows. Producers from a dozen or more talk shows and local news stations left notes asking for me. Were they joking or just unbelievably callous? My tragedy as a lead-in to Lindsay Lohan on Fox News?
• • •
I got the story in fragments and didn’t fully grasp what had happened until much later. In the immediate aftermath, all I knew was that Diane had put the children back in the car, then driven from the rest area where Warren had begged her to stay. Not answering her phone, she headed north instead of south on the major road, then drove onto an off-ramp for t
he Taconic State Parkway. For nearly two miles, she drove the wrong way on the highway.
Drivers who saw her beeped their horns and called 911.
Many reported that she held the wheel firmly and seemed serene. Even if she had gotten onto the ramp by mistake, there were several places along the highway where she could have pulled over. She didn’t.
After 1.7 miles, she plowed headlong into an oncoming SUV.
Diane and her daughter, Erin, died. Emma, Alyson, and Katie died. Katie was still alive when she got to the hospital but doctors couldn’t save her. The three men in the SUV died. Only Bryan, Diane’s young son, survived, with two severe injuries and broken bones.
Eight people dead. Police called it the worst car crash in the county in seventy-five years.
The newspapers dubbed it the “Wrong Way on the Taconic Tragedy” and splashed it across their front pages. Local TV couldn’t get enough of it, and the story went viral on the Web and got national attention.
But none of it could bring back my girls.
My daughters were gone.
Warren hadn’t seen Emma, Alyson, or Katie at the hospital. Ever the good person, he had gone to be with Bryan, since his father, Danny, hadn’t yet arrived. That’s how close our families had been. Only later would the goodwill become just another source of pain and confusion.
At some point that evening, I slipped away from the concerned friends and neighbors and went to the bedroom Emma and Alyson shared. I retreated into their closet and closed the door. I could hear the swell of voices downstairs, the anguish and the sobs. But I covered my ears and just rocked back and forth in the corner. My girls, my girls. In their dark closet, I could breathe their air and feel their presence. Friends came upstairs to get me, talking to me from the other side of the door. But why should I come out? Why would I ever come out again?
A psychiatrist I had seen in the past came by our house the next day, as did another doctor in town, and suddenly I had a fistful of pills to take every few hours—antianxiety drugs and antidepressants, drugs to help me sleep and others to help me cope. I didn’t know what I was taking and I didn’t care. Anything to dull the pain, the unbearable empty feeling that had suddenly taken over my life. If someone had suggested general anesthesia, I would have clamped on the face mask and breathed deeply.
Our friends marshaled forces and took over whatever arrangements they could. They set up a tent and tables with coolers at the end of the driveway for all the gifts of food that were pouring in. Someone made a schedule in which friends signed up to be in the house twenty-four hours a day. The whole community rallied around us, and even through my haze of shock and grief, I felt the goodness of the people around us holding me together.
Isabelle and Mark, our close friends and back-door neighbors, had been away on vacation, and they rushed back to be with us. Their children, Ryan and Kailey, were the exact ages of Emma and Alyson—and were like two halves of the same puzzle. We never closed the gate between our yards because the children traipsed back and forth, treating both families as their own. I was as likely to find Kailey in my kitchen as Kate. Now Warren whispered to me how terrible it must be for Isabelle and Mark to tell their children that their best friends were dead. A horrible conversation to have, he said. He couldn’t imagine having to give our girls that kind of news.
In truth, we would have given everything we owned to have one more conversation with our daughters, whatever the topic. But we were too shattered to think rationally. I nodded at Warren’s comment, sharing his regret that our friends and their children had to endure such pain. I felt that somehow, it was my fault.
The next few days were filled with questions no parent should have to answer—about caskets and burial plots and eulogies at the funeral. Warren took control, handling all the specific arrangements. Picking where the girls were laid to rest mattered deeply to him. I didn’t know how he was coping, but maybe staying busy helped him avoid the avalanche of grief that would otherwise overwhelm him—and that was currently crippling me.
Two days after the accident he came to me with the news that Father O’Farrell, our local parish priest, was able to get us into Holy Rood Cemetery.
“What? What does that mean?” I asked, not focusing.
“It’s a beautiful place for the girls, Jackie. You’re going to love it there. It’s right near Jeannine’s house.”
“Oh,” I said, still not really grasping what he was talking about. “Okay.”
“It’s good news,” Warren persisted, “because it’s basically sold out and impossible to get a plot. But they took care of it.”
Two days ago, I had been focused on what school I wanted my girls to attend. Now I was competing to get them into a cemetery.
Father O’Farrell had called on the bishop to pull some strings at Holy Rood, and with the path cleared, Warren had been able to buy a double plot big enough for twelve—six for our family and six for Diane’s family, the Schulers. The expense was huge, but we weren’t thinking about that now. Nor did we have enough information in those first days after the accident to realize that burying the girls next to Diane would eventually become a constant source of pain for us.
Once the plots were decided and a funeral date was picked, a friend came and gently asked what I wanted the girls to wear in their coffins. They were going to be God’s little angels. I was dressing them for eternity.
I wanted to scream that they weren’t God’s angels, they were my baby girls. But instead I mumbled something about white sweaters. Pretty dresses. Bows in their hair and their diamond crosses.
Would the girls approve? In real life—only two days before—they were little fashionistas with their own ideas about style. We loved shopping together and talked about the right outfits for every occasion. I knew what they liked to wear to parties, school, beach club, and camp. But we never discussed what to wear for eternity. As with so much else now, I was on my own.
• • •
Nobody would get to see the girls in their pretty dresses because at the wake on Wednesday, the caskets stayed closed. Caskets are usually kept open at a Catholic wake, but everyone agreed that in this case, the sight would be too unbearable. The real problem, though, was that I hadn’t seen the girls, either. Right after the accident, Warren’s father, my brother Stephen, and a police officer friend named Lou had identified the girls at the hospital before they went to the funeral home. Trying to protect me from the unimaginable anguish, friends had kept me away. They didn’t want me to open each Pandora’s box of pain.
But the attempt to preserve my sanity had backfired. My mind conjured horrible images that haunted me constantly; I had to see the girls myself. When at last I saw the girls in their open caskets before the wake, I was stunned. The girls looked perfect. Pretty and unmarked. The accident hadn’t left them marred or visibly injured, and their minor bruises were covered. How could they be so perfect—but so lifeless? The girls had smooth faces and soft skin. Every fiber of my being said it didn’t make sense. How could they be gone? Diane was the only one who looked like she had been in an accident. How could this have happened?
Five coffins lined the room of the funeral home, evidence of a titanic tragedy. The proper term for a wake is a vigil, but if we couldn’t protect the girls in life, how could we watch over their souls in death? All our vigilance had not been enough. A Catholic wake is meant to have a positive spirit, but now that innocent children had been yanked from the earth, all the talk of souls coming home seemed warped and wrong. Home for Emma, Alyson, and Katie should be in Floral Park with the parents who loved them. Nothing else made sense.
Hundreds of people came to the wake, friends and family members and neighbors. The whole community of Floral Park seemed shocked and shaken, and they came to offer whatever comfort they could. Seeing familiar faces, from local cops to shopkeepers to friends from the Mothers’ Club, at least made me feel less alone. As I wandered through the room greeting everyone, I felt like the macabre hostess of the worst
party in the world. Childhood friends from New Jersey and classmates from high school arrived, and several who knew my mother gathered around her. I wanted my mom to take care of me, but she had lost the three grandchildren she adored and could barely handle the depth of her own loss.
Danny came into the funeral home and we hugged. It was the first time he and I had seen each other since the accident, and instead of being comforting, the touch destroyed us both. We fell to the floor in a tangle of tears and screams, holding each other and sobbing. The emotion was overwhelming, but I eventually managed to stand on my feet again and make it through the rest of the vigil.
• • •
I felt the outpouring of emotion from the whole community as people asked how they could help us, so Warren and I suggested donations to the Hance-Schuler Family Foundation. At the moment, it was just a mailbox at Jeannine’s house, but I had a vague sense that great good could eventually emerge. Almost immediately, people devastated by our loss and wanting to express their support sent notes and cards and emails, checks and cash and generous donations. It was the first inkling I had of how generous people can be. The depth of human kindness would continue to overwhelm me again and again in the coming months.
The superintendent of schools arrived at the wake, her expression frozen tight with anguish. She came over and, taking my hand, spoke warmly about the girls—how smart they were and how kind; the great spark of joy they brought into a room.
Many others had expressed similar sentiments, but her memories of my happy daughters were especially meaningful to me. School is where children spend most of their time and feel connected. I pictured Alyson swinging happily across the monkey bars during recess.
“Maybe we can donate playgrounds to the schools,” I said spontaneously.
“That may be a bigger project than you realize,” she said, with a smile that briefly wiped the pain from her face.
“Well, something like that. Maybe I can plant a tree,” I said. I immediately liked that idea. At least I would have something to nourish, something of mine that would grow.
