A Fall of Marigolds (8 page)

As I neared the revolving front doors I heard someone say “plane crash” and someone else invoke the name of God. I stepped outside to the smell of smoke and fuel, and a strange sprinkling of paper and fluff.

I looked across the plaza. A fire-tinged scar marred the uppermost floors of the North Tower, high above me. Smoke poured out like a monster being released from the darkest cave imaginable.

“It was a jet!” someone shouted a few feet away from me. “I saw it. It flew right into it.”

“I heard it,” someone else said. “Shook the windows in my room.”

Sirens began to punch the air from far away, and right in front of me as a trio of police cars went by me.

Kent.

I pushed past the people gathering outside the hotel and dashed across Church Street to enter the plaza. But police were already starting to fan out and prevent anyone from getting any closer to the North Tower.

Kent!

I plunged my hand again into my purse, desperate to find my phone. I had to call him. But there was no phone. Evacuees were soon filling the plaza and the sidewalks as bits of plastic and paper and metal continued to waft down. Police and security personnel were blocking all entrances to the complex so that I had to continually reposition myself to see the faces of the people fleeing the building. I had to find Kent among them to let him know I was okay, that I hadn’t been in the elevator on my way to him. And I had to assure myself that he had been able to get to one of the fire exits.

Surely he could get to one of the fire exits.

I walked back to Church Street to try to see the top of the building, where Kent had surely been waiting for me. The smoking scar was below him. If he could just get to one of the fire exits . . .
God, let him get out!

My tear-filled gaze was tilted toward the sky when a roaring whine shrieked above me, and to the left of my field of vision a whoosh of white soared into the South Tower. An explosion rocked the air above us and a fist of fire ballooned out from the upper half of the building. Screams and curses erupted all around me as those on the ground cried out in utter horror.

One plane flying into a building could be an accident. But not two. Something terrible and malevolent was happening. Fear coursed through me as more fragments fell from the sky.

I simply had to use a phone to call Kent and let him know where I was so that he could find me. I was afraid and I wanted him with me. I crossed the street in between wailing emergency vehicles and ran back inside the Millenium, now in a state of mini chaos as the hotel was being evacuated.

The television screens in the lounge were tuned to CNN. As I swept past I heard the news anchor declare that two planes had slammed into the twin towers: the first into the North Tower at eight forty-six a.m. and the other into the South Tower at just three minutes after nine.

“Please can I just use your phone,” I yelled to frantic desk clerks who were attempting to help ten people at once. No one heard me.

I begged two people brushing past me for the use of their phone but they shook their heads.

Mrs. Stauer! I could go back to her room and use her phone. I skipped the elevators brimming with people getting off and headed for the stairs. I was breathless by the time I’d reached the sixteenth floor and pounded on the Stauers’ door, but there was no answer.

It was now twenty minutes after nine.

Still breathing hard, I made my way back down to the lobby and was ushered out by hotel staff who clearly wished to be away as well. Outside, the smell of fuel and sense of destruction were intensifying. I was pushed with the crowd of fleeing people down Maiden Lane toward Broadway, where I stopped to catch my breath and to plant my feet. I would move no farther. I would stand there until every last evacuee ran past me. And I had to find someone who would loan me their phone just for a minute. As I gathered my wits I heard people around me talking and crying and cursing.

“God, what were those?” someone said.

And another one said, “Those are people. They’re jumping.”

I forced myself to swing my head up toward the North Tower as it belched black smoke. I saw a black speck, like a tiny pinprick on a swatch of ugly gray. The speck fell and disappeared from view.

“The ones on the top can’t get out. They’ve been jumping,” the first person said. “I saw probably fifty already.”

I wheeled to the people around me. “My husband is in the North Tower!” I shouted. “For the love of God, can I please borrow someone’s phone!”

“Here.” A man in a florist’s apron bearing the name Mick thrust his phone toward me. “But I don’t know if you will get through.”

I grabbed it and mumbled my thanks but my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t punch in the numbers. Tears blurred my vision. I could not stop them and I could not stop shaking.

The florist covered my hand with his. “Let me do it,” he said gently. “What’s the number?”

I was weeping now, unable to whisk away the vision of the falling speck and knowing it wasn’t just a speck. It was a someone. A person. I handed the florist his phone and sputtered Kent’s number. Then I reached into my purse for a tissue, knowing I didn’t have any. My hand closed around the bag containing Mrs. Stauer’s scarf, and it seemed that it reached for me, caressed my fingertips, urging me to draw it out. I pulled it free and brought the ancient fabric to my face to catch my tears. I caught a thousand different scents in its threads, some, it seemed, as old as love itself. At that moment I wanted to fall into those marigolds and never emerge. Had I been more aware of the other people around me I might have noticed the click of a camera shutter at that moment, but I heard nothing except the sound of my own anguish.

“I’m afraid it’s not going through, ma’am,” the florist said. “You can try texting him, maybe.”

My hands were still shaking too badly. I started to reach for the phone but it was obvious I could not tap out a message.

“What do you want me to say?”

Was this to be my last communication with Kent? Was he still alive to even see it? I had to believe he was. “Tell him I am safe. Tell him I love him. Tell him . . . tell him he’s going to be a father.”

The florist was typing the message as I spoke, tears filling his eyes even as my own grief spilled down my cheeks.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He nodded and looked away from me while he flicked away the wetness at his eyes.

I turned my gaze back toward the smoke-filled sky.

“Maybe he’s already out. What floor did he work on?” the florist said, a few minutes later.

“The thirty-fourth,” I whispered numbly.

“Oh, well, then he probably got out.”

“But that’s not where he was.”

For the next span of minutes, I don’t even know how long it was, I saw the florist checking and rechecking his phone and I wanted to believe he was checking for me. I turned toward him a time or two, and he shook his head.

At some point, I heard someone tell another that it had been confirmed that terrorists had hijacked the two planes and deliberately flown them into the World Trade Center towers. Someone else said the Pentagon had also been hit. I put my hands over my ears to shut out their voices.

I continued to watch the faces of the people rushing past me, hoping against reason that I would see Kent among them.

Then there was an unearthly growl, a wrenching screech that split the tattered sky above us and the littered ground beneath our feet.

“The South Tower is falling!” someone shouted.

“That’s not possible,” another said.

“Run!” screamed a third.

I was knocked to my knees as a sudden press of people pushed me down, and then a wall of dust and rubble, like a tidal wave from the shores of hell, screamed toward us.

I was still struggling to rise when the wall of debris reached me. For a second there was only the movement of the wall. There was no light, no other sound, no cries for mercy.

No air.

I could see just a tiny tendril of the scarf clutched in front of my face, a last bit of something lovely as the abyss yanked me down.

I couldn’t breathe.

Give me your hand.

The wall slammed against my chest.

Give me your hand.

I felt fingers reaching for me and there was a moment when I considered letting the wall have its way instead. If Kent was gone, then what was left for me?

The fingers grabbed hold of the scarf in my hand and pulled. I felt myself being raised. I only needed to let go of the scarf to be where Kent was. As a searing pain filled my lungs I wondered how much it would hurt to die this way.

But then I remembered the little pink plus sign. The wall could not touch the life tucked there.

Kent would want me to live.

I didn’t let go.

With the scarf as my lifeline, the florist pulled me to my feet and we lurched away from the darkness.

CLARA

Ellis Island

September 1911

I
had discovered early at Ellis that a hospital nurse performs the same tasks day after day after day, and that an odd solace can be found in the monotony of those duties. Were it not for the steady thrum of the routine, the spectacle of unending human suffering would be a hospital nurse’s undoing. There’s only so much physical affliction the soul can witness. Concentrating on the task at hand and only the task kept me and my colleagues from being swallowed whole by what we saw every day.

As Dr. Randall prepared to leave the ward after the conversation about the fire, I sought to reclaim my equilibrium by reminding myself of this: Concentrate solely on the simple duties that lay before me. Dr. Randall’s gaze on me was achingly apologetic as he and Dr. Treaver finished up their notes. I pretended not to notice.

Not long after the doctors had moved on to another ward, aides arrived to help me with sponge baths and bedpans. The men who were able walked to the toilet room just outside the ward as we steadied them. Andrew watched as one of the aides helped the man across from him, with only the smallest of privacy curtains, use the bedpan. Then he sat up slowly and swung his legs over the side of his bed. He started to stand and I rushed over to him from where I was changing sheets two beds away.

“Careful there, Mr. Gwynn.” I reached for him, putting my arm around his back. I could feel the heat of his fever through his bedclothes. “What do you need?”

“I need to see if I can do this.” The lilt of his words made me think of a faraway place with half-timbered cottages and thatched roofs.

“Do what?”

“Walk to the toilet.”

“Let me help you.”

“I don’t want to trouble you.”

I tightened my grip around his waist. “Let’s just stand for a minute and see how that feels.”

“I don’t want you to help me . . . use the toilet.”

His modesty was strangely alluring.

“How about we get there and see how you feel?” I said.

Andrew nodded and we made our way down the corridor in between the beds. He eased himself away from me a bit to test his steadiness.

“How are you doing? Feeling all right?”

“Yes. Yes, thank you.” He paused, swallowed gingerly. “I’m very sorry about that fire.”

The careful equilibrium that I had salvaged from the earlier conversation with Dr. Randall wavered a bit. But I did not feel the same blast of hot embers that I had felt before. It didn’t seem to matter as much that Andrew spoke of the fire. I nodded.

“So many people died,” he added.

“Yes.”

“Were they not able to get out?”

“No. They couldn’t.”

“Were some of them your friends?”

I hesitated a moment. “One of them was.”

He reached up to rub his throat. “I’m very sorry.”

“I am sorry, too. Rest your voice now, Mr. Gwynn.”

We reached the doorway and crossed the main hallway to the toilet room. I asked him whether he felt strong enough to go in alone.

“Yes. Thank you.” He stepped into the room but then he turned toward me, held my gaze for a moment. “I’ll be fine.”

He shut the door gently.

•   •   •

AT
my lunch break I found Dolly, Ivy, and a few of the other nurses at our usual table. I put down my tray and took the empty chair beside Dolly.

“Having a good day?” Dolly wanted some kind of cryptic message that would let her know whether I had made any headway with my secret quest.

“Busy,” I answered. “I’ve ten men in the throes of scarlet fever.”

Dolly frowned, but knew enough not to tell me that was not what she meant.

There would be no veiled conversations at the table about Lily Gwynn and her letter. Not with all the girls there.

Especially not with Ivy.

As if on cue, Ivy put down her fork to address our table. “Did everyone meet the new intern this morning? Isn’t he dashing?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Dolly said. “He’s too skinny.”

Ivy laughed and turned to me. “Don’t you think he’s handsome, Clara?”

I swallowed the bit of potato I had in my mouth. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Margaret, a frequent member of Dolly’s Saturday-night dancing entourage, piped up. “I’ll fight you for him, Ivy. He’s from Boston and he’s a doctor. I wouldn’t care if he had three eyes and a harelip.”

“I heard he took a shine to Clara,” another one, Nellie, said.

I snapped my head up. “What? He did not!”

“He came to the women’s measles ward after yours. My ward. I heard him ask Dr. Treaver what your first name was.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I protested.

“He’s just interested in the fire, that’s all!” Ivy chimed in, obviously wanting to claim the Boston doctor for herself and deflect any attention that might have erroneously fallen on me.

And, of course, she had to mention the fire.

“You told him about the fire?” Dolly was aghast, bless her.

“For heaven’s sake, everyone knows about the fire. And he mentioned it first, not me. I told him there was a nurse here who was there that day.”

“What did you do that for?” Dolly demanded.

“Do what? The fire was months ago.” Ivy turned to me. “Right, Clara? Before I even got here.”

“Right.” I shoveled a piece of meat in my mouth and found I could not chew it. An awkward silence fell around us.

I stood and gathered my tray. “My meat’s tough. I am going back for the soup.”

I sensed the girls watching me. And I heard Dolly scold Ivy in a whisper as I walked away. “Just because it happened before you got here doesn’t mean you can go tellin’ people about it. That poor girl watched people jump from a burning building to their deaths! Dozens of them. She saw it all!”

I deposited my tray and kept walking.