9/11/01 - THE DAY (Part One Of A Trilogy)
(This is the first of three essays I've written about 9/11, and its aftermath. I'll be posting all three throughout the day.)
There was a thunderstorm earlier. People don’t remember that.
--
In 2001, I was living in the Lower East Side, in a 4th-floor walkup. I was back with temp work, after a summer living off a huge severance package. One of my agencies had left me a message on the 10th about work- but I didn’t get it in time, and they’d given it to someone else. So I was on “standby” - at home, but up and waiting in case my agency got a last minute “our receptionist broke her leg” call, so they could send me straight out. I was supposed to be dressed and waiting, but I usually hung work clothes at the ready and waited in a robe after showering, to see whether I actually had work; if not, I threw on shorts and a t-shirt, and either head to the coffee shop or to the theater I’d joined. At some point, too, I was going to vote.
I was on the couch, half-watching the Today show while I read, when I heard - well, I didn’t know. It was a deep, echoey boom outside that made me jump a bit. A thunderstorm had woken me up that morning - a huge, sudden thing, with violent thunderclaps and torrents of rain - but by now, the sky had completely cleared. Still, the only explanation I had for that boom was that it had been a last thunderclap from the storm. I thought how odd it was that the storm was going on so long after.
A moment later, Katie Couric interrupted whatever fluffy piece they’d been showing with some breaking news - a plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, she said. The camera cut away to video of the Towers, a huge hole in its side, billows of smoke pouring out.
It was shocking, yes. It was unusual. But it wasn’t frightening just yet. For the next fifteen minutes I watched, listening to people calling in live to the studio to talk about what they’d seen, not really knowing what was going on. There was talk about the plane in the 1930’s which had flown into the Empire State Building - a tragic accident, a pilot’s error. That’s what I and the news were thinking first. I watched, feeling pity for the victims, but already going back to listening for the phone.
Then one of the newscaster’s voices cut in over the video feed, saying something about a second plane coming close - and I watched onscreen as a second plane came in from the left, almost gliding in. And I watched as it hit the second tower.
And at the second it hit, I heard another deep boom outside. And I knew.
--
I knew what was happening had switched from “local incident” to “national news.” And that meant my family, all of them outside the city, were going to worry. So I started a round of calls - parents first, then my brother, then Grandpa, then all four sets of aunts and uncles, telling them “you’re probably going to be hearing about this where you are, so for the record, I’m fine….” For many of them, my call was how they heard of the attacks.
Mom was grateful the first thing out of my mouth was “I’m fine and I’m safe.” Dad asked how I was, whether I was freaked out or not. I wasn’t - I was just numb, mostly. I told him I had planned on going to go vote, but with what was happening, maybe they’d close the polls. Dad cracked a joke about how maybe the attack had been launched by whomever was losing. I laughed, grateful; my father’s compulsion to puncture tense situations with jokes is one of my signs that the world is As It Should Be.
I mostly got answering machines for the rest of my family. I was on autopilot, not realizing what I was saying, focused on delivering the news; two planes hit the Towers, but I was fine and safe. When I called my Aunt Susan, the exact words I used were “I was home safe and sound, sitting on my couch in my ratty old bathrobe;” but Susan had heard the news just before, and had been worried until she got home and got my message. She was so relieved that when she heard me talking about “my ratty bathrobe” she resolved to buy me a new robe for Christmas.
The next calls were to friends. Sue was at work in Connecticut; by now the news was getting further out, and I knew she’d be trying to put a brave face on things at her day care center, but would be frantic until she knew I was okay. We spoke a bit; I was still numb. People were bringing their kids by, she said, but not as many, and no one outside New York really seemed to know what to do - should they stay home? Go on to work? What? Sue made me promise to call if I needed anything.
Sue told me that the planes had taken off from Boston, and after we hung up I remembered Richard. Back then he was dating someone who lived in Boston, and his birthday had been the day before. And that meant that they’d spent the weekend together - which meant maybe he was flying back from Boston that day, or she was flying in from Boston that day, which meant…I frantically called Richard, breathed a huge sigh of relief when he answered. Yes, he’d heard the news - his girlfriend had come to New York a couple days before, and was still there, and had been planning on flying back home that day - but now all the flights were grounded, and they were both hunkered down in his apartment, listening to the radio and wondering now what. I babbled out my relief that he hadn’t been on the flight from Boston. “What do you mean?”
“Sue told me the planes that hit the Towers took off from Logan.”
“Oh my God.” I think Richard was realizing how lucky he was. Then I heard his girlfriend’s voice in the background, and Richard asked her a question. Then got back on the phone with me. “Another plane just hit the Pentagon,” he said.
“…Holy shit.” I gasped. “Richard, what the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know. … I’m gonna go listen to the radio more.” We hung up, wishing each other safety.
The news was definitely now INTERnational. That meant one last call to Cliona in Cork. She moved a lot then; calling her parents was the best way to reach her. I spoke with her mother Eibhleen. The news hadn’t reached Ireland yet; I told her two planes had hit the Twin Towers and one had hit the Pentagon, but my apartment was far enough away, so I was safe, and just wanted them to know.
She was horrified, but grateful I’d called. She said she’d call the school where Cliona was teaching to tell her I’d checked in. Then she asked: “The planes….do they think it was sabotage?”
I realized there had been one huge fact I’d been trying to ignore, and doing so well I hadn’t realized I’d been doing it. I’d been focusing on the facts - planes hit Towers, plane hit Pentagon - and not looking at what those facts meant.
For a split second, I sat - knowing that the instant I answered her question, that the world would forever be changed.
I stayed in the old world as long as I could. “Yes,” I finally said. “Yes, it probably was.”
--
Sometime during those calls I remembered Colin. That was when we dated, and had literally just started -- our first date was about two weeks prior. He’d mentioned having a gig at the Javitts Center, and I knew the subway he’d take ran directly under the Towers. He’d just gotten a cell phone, and I’d written the number down - but I could not find it. As called my family, I was tearing apart my desk, upending my bag, shuffling through everything on the kitchen table, looking for the damn piece of paper where I’d written his damn cell number. I called his home number asking him to please let me know he was okay, and even called Verizon and begged them to give me his number because he’d just gotten it and we lived in New York and you know what just happened here and I was worried and I just wanted to check on him, or maybe they could call and give him a message if they couldn’t give ME the number…
Then Colin called me. He was far from the attacks, he’d said - he was at work by 8 that morning, and was hanging lights when a security guard came through an hour later, announcing the attacks and kicking everyone out. Colin’s office was on Houston then, and the subways were shut down, so he walked 35 blocks down Broadway, trying again and again to get a clear line on his cell phone to call his parents. After he reached them, he was only ten blocks from his office, and stopped there to make the rest of his calls to me and his other friends on a land line. I asked if he wanted to come by - I was only about seven blocks east - but he said he needed to be home, and was resting up before walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I told him I’d be in all day, in case he changed his mind, and we hung up.
My roommate Jackie came home then; she’d also walked home. We both made more calls, to people who lived outside the city and worked in it, asking if they were going to have trouble getting home that night and needed a place to stay. My Uncle Peter was commuting into the city from Long Island in those days. I called Aunt Ellen again, saying if she heard from him to tell him he could crash on our couch if need be, but she said a co-worker had a car and was driving him home. Jackie’s friends also were all settled.
Then Jackie grabbed her camera. “I’m going to the roof,” she said. “We may be able to see it.” I got my camera and followed. We didn’t have of a view of the Towers from our roof - there were too many other buildings in the way. But we could definitely see the smoke on that day; a huge angry black pillar to the southwest. We both gaped, then took a few pictures. Jackie took more while I wandered about the roof, peering down at our block, at the people wandering in a daze and looking up and to the south at the same smoke.
I felt ghoulish. “I’m going back in,” I told Jackie, and she just nodded, taking more pictures. She came down a moment later and told me she was going to head south, closer to the site, if I wanted to come along. I declined; I’d seen as much as I needed to. I stayed put, watching the news.
Jackie came back an hour and a half later, with an odd look on her face and a scrap of paper in her hand. She’d gotten as far as Tribeca, she’d said; it was eerily silent and still, but every so often there were these scraps of paper falling out of the sky. When one landed at her feet, she picked it up. She held it out to show me - it was a mundane thing, a page from some financial report. But the edges were all charred.
I don’t remember much of the rest of the day -I watched the TV and listened to the radio, gathering news. By night we’d figured out who was behind the attacks, had seen the Towers fall, and were starting to hear the whines of sirens heading south. But watching and listening was all we could think to do, trying to learn as much as we could. I went to the bar across the street that night - the TV in the bar was on there too, and every person was silent, watching. Even the bartender, after he served each person, turned back to the television, and all of us sat, silently nursing our drinks, watching the changed world.
There was a thunderstorm earlier. People don’t remember that.
--
In 2001, I was living in the Lower East Side, in a 4th-floor walkup. I was back with temp work, after a summer living off a huge severance package. One of my agencies had left me a message on the 10th about work- but I didn’t get it in time, and they’d given it to someone else. So I was on “standby” - at home, but up and waiting in case my agency got a last minute “our receptionist broke her leg” call, so they could send me straight out. I was supposed to be dressed and waiting, but I usually hung work clothes at the ready and waited in a robe after showering, to see whether I actually had work; if not, I threw on shorts and a t-shirt, and either head to the coffee shop or to the theater I’d joined. At some point, too, I was going to vote.
I was on the couch, half-watching the Today show while I read, when I heard - well, I didn’t know. It was a deep, echoey boom outside that made me jump a bit. A thunderstorm had woken me up that morning - a huge, sudden thing, with violent thunderclaps and torrents of rain - but by now, the sky had completely cleared. Still, the only explanation I had for that boom was that it had been a last thunderclap from the storm. I thought how odd it was that the storm was going on so long after.
A moment later, Katie Couric interrupted whatever fluffy piece they’d been showing with some breaking news - a plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, she said. The camera cut away to video of the Towers, a huge hole in its side, billows of smoke pouring out.
It was shocking, yes. It was unusual. But it wasn’t frightening just yet. For the next fifteen minutes I watched, listening to people calling in live to the studio to talk about what they’d seen, not really knowing what was going on. There was talk about the plane in the 1930’s which had flown into the Empire State Building - a tragic accident, a pilot’s error. That’s what I and the news were thinking first. I watched, feeling pity for the victims, but already going back to listening for the phone.
Then one of the newscaster’s voices cut in over the video feed, saying something about a second plane coming close - and I watched onscreen as a second plane came in from the left, almost gliding in. And I watched as it hit the second tower.
And at the second it hit, I heard another deep boom outside. And I knew.
--
I knew what was happening had switched from “local incident” to “national news.” And that meant my family, all of them outside the city, were going to worry. So I started a round of calls - parents first, then my brother, then Grandpa, then all four sets of aunts and uncles, telling them “you’re probably going to be hearing about this where you are, so for the record, I’m fine….” For many of them, my call was how they heard of the attacks.
Mom was grateful the first thing out of my mouth was “I’m fine and I’m safe.” Dad asked how I was, whether I was freaked out or not. I wasn’t - I was just numb, mostly. I told him I had planned on going to go vote, but with what was happening, maybe they’d close the polls. Dad cracked a joke about how maybe the attack had been launched by whomever was losing. I laughed, grateful; my father’s compulsion to puncture tense situations with jokes is one of my signs that the world is As It Should Be.
I mostly got answering machines for the rest of my family. I was on autopilot, not realizing what I was saying, focused on delivering the news; two planes hit the Towers, but I was fine and safe. When I called my Aunt Susan, the exact words I used were “I was home safe and sound, sitting on my couch in my ratty old bathrobe;” but Susan had heard the news just before, and had been worried until she got home and got my message. She was so relieved that when she heard me talking about “my ratty bathrobe” she resolved to buy me a new robe for Christmas.
The next calls were to friends. Sue was at work in Connecticut; by now the news was getting further out, and I knew she’d be trying to put a brave face on things at her day care center, but would be frantic until she knew I was okay. We spoke a bit; I was still numb. People were bringing their kids by, she said, but not as many, and no one outside New York really seemed to know what to do - should they stay home? Go on to work? What? Sue made me promise to call if I needed anything.
Sue told me that the planes had taken off from Boston, and after we hung up I remembered Richard. Back then he was dating someone who lived in Boston, and his birthday had been the day before. And that meant that they’d spent the weekend together - which meant maybe he was flying back from Boston that day, or she was flying in from Boston that day, which meant…I frantically called Richard, breathed a huge sigh of relief when he answered. Yes, he’d heard the news - his girlfriend had come to New York a couple days before, and was still there, and had been planning on flying back home that day - but now all the flights were grounded, and they were both hunkered down in his apartment, listening to the radio and wondering now what. I babbled out my relief that he hadn’t been on the flight from Boston. “What do you mean?”
“Sue told me the planes that hit the Towers took off from Logan.”
“Oh my God.” I think Richard was realizing how lucky he was. Then I heard his girlfriend’s voice in the background, and Richard asked her a question. Then got back on the phone with me. “Another plane just hit the Pentagon,” he said.
“…Holy shit.” I gasped. “Richard, what the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know. … I’m gonna go listen to the radio more.” We hung up, wishing each other safety.
The news was definitely now INTERnational. That meant one last call to Cliona in Cork. She moved a lot then; calling her parents was the best way to reach her. I spoke with her mother Eibhleen. The news hadn’t reached Ireland yet; I told her two planes had hit the Twin Towers and one had hit the Pentagon, but my apartment was far enough away, so I was safe, and just wanted them to know.
She was horrified, but grateful I’d called. She said she’d call the school where Cliona was teaching to tell her I’d checked in. Then she asked: “The planes….do they think it was sabotage?”
I realized there had been one huge fact I’d been trying to ignore, and doing so well I hadn’t realized I’d been doing it. I’d been focusing on the facts - planes hit Towers, plane hit Pentagon - and not looking at what those facts meant.
For a split second, I sat - knowing that the instant I answered her question, that the world would forever be changed.
I stayed in the old world as long as I could. “Yes,” I finally said. “Yes, it probably was.”
--
Sometime during those calls I remembered Colin. That was when we dated, and had literally just started -- our first date was about two weeks prior. He’d mentioned having a gig at the Javitts Center, and I knew the subway he’d take ran directly under the Towers. He’d just gotten a cell phone, and I’d written the number down - but I could not find it. As called my family, I was tearing apart my desk, upending my bag, shuffling through everything on the kitchen table, looking for the damn piece of paper where I’d written his damn cell number. I called his home number asking him to please let me know he was okay, and even called Verizon and begged them to give me his number because he’d just gotten it and we lived in New York and you know what just happened here and I was worried and I just wanted to check on him, or maybe they could call and give him a message if they couldn’t give ME the number…
Then Colin called me. He was far from the attacks, he’d said - he was at work by 8 that morning, and was hanging lights when a security guard came through an hour later, announcing the attacks and kicking everyone out. Colin’s office was on Houston then, and the subways were shut down, so he walked 35 blocks down Broadway, trying again and again to get a clear line on his cell phone to call his parents. After he reached them, he was only ten blocks from his office, and stopped there to make the rest of his calls to me and his other friends on a land line. I asked if he wanted to come by - I was only about seven blocks east - but he said he needed to be home, and was resting up before walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I told him I’d be in all day, in case he changed his mind, and we hung up.
My roommate Jackie came home then; she’d also walked home. We both made more calls, to people who lived outside the city and worked in it, asking if they were going to have trouble getting home that night and needed a place to stay. My Uncle Peter was commuting into the city from Long Island in those days. I called Aunt Ellen again, saying if she heard from him to tell him he could crash on our couch if need be, but she said a co-worker had a car and was driving him home. Jackie’s friends also were all settled.
Then Jackie grabbed her camera. “I’m going to the roof,” she said. “We may be able to see it.” I got my camera and followed. We didn’t have of a view of the Towers from our roof - there were too many other buildings in the way. But we could definitely see the smoke on that day; a huge angry black pillar to the southwest. We both gaped, then took a few pictures. Jackie took more while I wandered about the roof, peering down at our block, at the people wandering in a daze and looking up and to the south at the same smoke.
I felt ghoulish. “I’m going back in,” I told Jackie, and she just nodded, taking more pictures. She came down a moment later and told me she was going to head south, closer to the site, if I wanted to come along. I declined; I’d seen as much as I needed to. I stayed put, watching the news.
Jackie came back an hour and a half later, with an odd look on her face and a scrap of paper in her hand. She’d gotten as far as Tribeca, she’d said; it was eerily silent and still, but every so often there were these scraps of paper falling out of the sky. When one landed at her feet, she picked it up. She held it out to show me - it was a mundane thing, a page from some financial report. But the edges were all charred.
I don’t remember much of the rest of the day -I watched the TV and listened to the radio, gathering news. By night we’d figured out who was behind the attacks, had seen the Towers fall, and were starting to hear the whines of sirens heading south. But watching and listening was all we could think to do, trying to learn as much as we could. I went to the bar across the street that night - the TV in the bar was on there too, and every person was silent, watching. Even the bartender, after he served each person, turned back to the television, and all of us sat, silently nursing our drinks, watching the changed world.