Remember Me (46 page)

RemembeR me

terrorists had learned to fly, though the how was still a long way off of becoming more than just an idea.

Stacy asked me this question in early nineteen ninety-nine:

“Seriously…answer me as a historian, looking back on the attack and the world’s overall reaction to it. So far, everything you have tried to prevent has happened anyway. What’s to say that you can even prevent it, or by just trying to stop it you won’t end up making it worse than what originally happened?

It might not show up at the onset, but down the road it might be magnified? Maybe what you try to stop twists around and puts America into a new World War III!”

I was dumbfounded by her question, and my anger was

something I could barely keep in check. It was my duty, my solemn responsibility to protect all the lives at stake, no matter how much it would cost me. I told her so and not in a nice way. She was hurt in many ways by my outburst. I did the one thing I should never have done—I attacked her patriotism. It would be six long months before we even spoke again. My isolation from her didn’t help my frame of mind. It took a toll on me mentally, so I used her as the scapegoat for my hurt and anger. I now knew that anything I decided to do would have to be done on my own. I continued to plan on my own, and to resent her for walking away. She accomplished one thing by her comment; it ended up taking me nearly a year to recognize it for what it was though. It began as a tick in my neck; then became part of my bad dreams; and eventually soured the taste of the food I ate. I finally came to understand it: it was the voice of uncertainty, doubt, and ultimately, “What if!” Stacy made me open my eyes to more than the event itself. I needed to see it in the perspective of “time.”

Y2K came and went, the world moved on. The sale of bottled water, canned goods, and generators made some people a small fortune. I had to admit, because everything wasn’t quite S 351 S

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the same as it was before, that I did have a little uncertainty of my own. In March of two-thousand, the start of the internet collapse began. I was safely on the sidelines in Government bonds, as were Stacy and my parents. I have no idea how far my parents spread the knowledge of impending doom. I’m

sure Tami and Andrew were convinced to make changes by my parents and Stacy. By October of two thousand, I finally made the call.

“Hello?” my sister’s voice answered.

“Hi Sis,” I said into the phone.

“What’s up Andrew? You and Tami still planning on coming to Cedar Rapids for Thanksgiving?” she asked her voice full of excitement.

“Wrong brother,” I quietly said into the phone.

There was a very long pause before she said, “I’m still mad.”

“And I’m still stupid, and sorrier than I have been in my entire life. Please forgive me.”

“Why?”

“I think you were right,” I finally said it out-loud for the first time. I knew it in my heart, and my mind was finally getting a grasp on the foundation Stacy had once put before me.

It was not a certainty, far from it, but it was a consideration to be discussed…adult like.

“And…” she tossed back at me, her voice conveying the

doubt she still harbored.

“I understand that every decision has to have two sides to it. You were right to ask the question you did. I was wrong to erupt the way I did. Furthermore, I now question my own

motives and rationale. I really need your help…no I’m begging…I want your help. I’m sorry.”

“I see. And do you believe I should just toss away all the criticism you spewed at me, forgive your immense ignorance, and jump back into the fire with you?”

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“Absolutely,” I said, the smile already beginning to spread on my face.

“Okay, I’m in,” she said laughing.

The next six months were ones of retrospect, research

and preparation. There were many discussions between Stacy and me, this time nothing was left out of the conversation. It wasn’t one person; it was the two of us. By early summer, I was losing weight and Stacy had aged dramatically. Every day that brought us closer to the actual happening took more and more of a toll on us. In July of 2001 I had a minor heart-attack. It could not have happened at a worse time. I couldn’t slow down and take it easy, as the doctor strongly suggested.

I didn’t have time to change my eating habits and get more exercise, and I most assuredly didn’t have any way to curb my stress.

Before I was released from the hospital, Dr. Muldew laid it out for me, straight and narrow. “Keep doing what you are doing, and you’ll be dead within the next two years.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him, forgiving the pun, that I might be dead in the next two months. Two years would be considered, “icing on the cake.” My collapse nearly did Stacy in as well. It didn’t help my mental state to see her affected so rudely. No one would ever be able to comprehend the physical weight of the knowledge we both carried around. The physical and emotional burden it enacted on our minds and bodies aged us dramatically. In two months, nearly three-thousand people would die; not counting the number of soldiers who would die in the continuing War on Terror. When you added in the additional weight of letting it happen or failing to stop it, it was no wonder we found ourselves knocking at death’s door.

Stacy once asked me to be an historian and observe the

events looking backwards. It was nearly impossible for me to do, but I understood that I had to view the events with an S 353 S

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unemotional detachment. You can’t be an American without wanting to get the bad guys, or protecting America’s citizens no matter what the personal cost. It was the knowing that if I failed or if I even made things worse, the number of children who would lose a parent…or both parents would fall squarely on my shoulders. I couldn’t give them the excuse… “Oh, I didn’t know.” I did and that was the crux of the problem! In the end, it was pure American patriotism that ruled my final decision. Not the patriotism that we sometimes feel at the appropriate moments, like the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner,” or when America does well at the Olympics, and we walk around with our heads held a little higher. It’s the kind of patriotism that brings us all together, regardless of our personal heritage and petty everyday problems, to unite under one common emotion. It creates an unbending alignment as all Americans put themselves firmly behind what is right and justified. It is the singular moment when we finally step away from ourselves to become a meaningful part of the whole.

I would let the true historians debate the question of justification and responsibility. Stacy hadn’t lived through those moments when the towers fell and the world watched. She

hadn’t felt the disbelief, the anger, the tears for each and every person lost that day. She didn’t know the pride of flying the American flag that followed, and the love that was shared between every spouse and family member, every neighbor

and stranger. Nor did she begin to comprehend the coming together of the country, the prayers and holding of hands at church. She didn’t see the revitalization of the pastors, preachers, and ministers who comforted the distraught and hurting.

She could only understand what her mind could fathom, and by taking in all my broken stories and what they could only poorly convey. It was somehow enough, and I thanked her for being there for me as the weight pulled me down into the S 354 S

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abyss, and she held on to the life-line.

America changed forever on that day. It had been a while since Americans came together with such a unified emotion. It had risen to a level that was similar to the intensity we felt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Stacy had the optimist’s perception, that America came together and stayed that way. She could tell by the look in my eyes after several of our talks that it wouldn’t last. It broke her heart, and she had to turn away from me to hide her personal frustrations. I said, “Everyone still remembers it, talks about it, and learned from it, but the goal of our country has always been to protect our way of life by promoting a feeling of safety. The sooner America could get back to the normal everyday problems, the better for everyone it would be. It didn’t take long, and even the media quit showing the towers’ coming down. After a year, politics returned to business as usual. Mistakes were made on many fronts, and the blame game thereafter ensued.” I told her the cold sad truth, “The media did their jobs too well…America moved on.”

We were all guilty, not because we turned back to our

safe and protected ways, but because we wanted to, and we were eager to. It shamed me to remember my own progres-sion towards indifference as I stood on the brink of disaster for a second time in my life. Stacy could see the anguish I felt, and maybe, she understood me a little bit more for my devotion in trying to stop the tragedy from occurring a second time. Stacy said to me as she wrapped her arms around me in a comforting embrace, “It’s okay Little Brother.” I buried my head into her shoulder and let her ease some of my burden.

The restlessness of August gave way to the panic of

September. There was nothing anyone could do to help us and no one for us to turn to anyway. Stacy and I had promised each other not to tell our parents or anyone else. In it was a dual S 355 S

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rationale; one; it saved them from the mental stress it would cause them, and two: plausible deniability. Should Stacy and I be unsuccessful in our attempt to escape without detection when our plan was put into play, they would be none the wiser and completely unaccountable for our actions. After Labor Day it was time to act. Stacy flew to Los Angeles from New York City, and then to Tallahassee, Florida. I flew to Maine and rented a white GMC panel truck under one of my carefully fabricated aliases. It took me a full day to make my way into the heart of New York City. Stacy rented a car and drove North over the next couple of days, using her own alias. In Virginia, she turned in the rental car and then took a train, using yet another different alias, into Pennsylvania where she rented her own panel truck.

On September sixth we rendezvoused at the safe-house

in New Rochelle. It was an apartment complex that our off-shore corporation had purchased nearly ten years earlier. My only hope was that when, and I knew without a doubt there would be a when, that my use of so many different alias would throw investigators sideways and allow us to melt into the background. I had no doubts they would eventually find me.

I only hoped it would not be to put me away…and I prayed Stacy would come out of this with a chance to live in peace.

We housed the two panel trucks in separate parking garage units. They were as near the two thoroughfares into Manhattan Island as we could get them. We had done our best to keep all traces of our DNA out of the vans, but it was a certainty that some missed part of us would ultimately be found, “Murphy’s Law 101.”

On the morning of September tenth, we drove both panel

trucks to the underground parking ramp for each of the towers. Since the bombing of nineteen ninety-three, the security at the parking ramp had become much tighter. We had been S 356 S

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prepared for this day for quite awhile. Stacy, under a different alias once again, had been hired as a bookkeeping employee for one of the investment firms located in the North Tower. Her firm was preparing to move client records off-site to a new warehousing location. At the entry gate, the security officer scrutinized her documentation and, after confirming her identity, he allowed us to drive in. She let him know the two vans would both be parked overnight as the move was planned for the next morning. Surprisingly, it went much more smoothly than either of us anticipated. They checked both the vans inside and under. The vans were completely empty inside. They jot-ted down the vans’ license plate numbers and wrote down all the pertinent information from our driver’s licenses. If security had checked any further that day, neither of us ever knew.

We had studied the underground parking maps and chose two distinct areas to park in below the towers.

Stacy’s alias had her playing a resident of Oakland,

California. The reason she had flown out there was to attend her mother’s funeral. She even booked her ticket under the same pretense. She then flew back here under alternative aliases, renting the van. She’d been back to work at the investment firm the last four days. Her personal car was parked underneath in the ramp as well. After parking we met at her car to pick up the cleansing materials stored in the trunk, to give the vans one more going over. We did our best to eradicate any traces of ourselves. Only if our plan didn’t work would all of our efforts even be necessary. And by not working—I meant that something in this time altered 9/11 altogether so that it never happened. It was possible too, that the vans could be moved before the actual event transpired. We finished wiping down the vans and then left them so we could begin the next phase of our plan. I took a taxi to Staten Island and then had a long train ride back to the apartment. Stacy rode the elevator S 357 S

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up the North Tower and went to work. She gave me a call later that morning to say that everything was in place. The security guards hadn’t bothered to ask any question about the vans or their intended usage. They only called to confirm that Cindy, (Stacy) worked at the firm.

There would be no sleep for either of us that night. Other things had also been put into motion the last couple of days.

We’d sent letters to the White House and to the major newspapers and television stations. They had been crafted to be both believable and as a possible hoax. The only fingerprints anyone would find on them came from the clerks at the post offices.

Each of us had worn different disguises and wax over our fingertips when we mailed the letters. With the right amount of luck, they would be collectively reaching their designated destinations on the tenth. We watched the evening news that night and were not surprised when none of the stations reported receiving our letters. Stacy spent most of the night in the bathroom throwing up, not that she had eaten anything in the last two days to upset her stomach, nor did she have the flu. Tomorrow, she would face the toughest jury that she ever would. I hoped it also wouldn’t be her last. For me, I was now a svelte one seventy-two—a weight I hadn’t been at since the first few years of my marriage to Tami. Instead of appearing healthy and fit, I looked hollow and ghostly. I didn’t let Stacy know that I had also been feeling that tingly feeling again in my left arm. I just swallowed aspirins like “Tic-Tacs.”