The Woman Who Wasn’t There (13 page)

While Linda and Janice watched from the front row, Tania and Angelo were tucked away on the far side of the storefront. Giuliani was the first to speak. On the morning of September 11, Mayor Giuliani and his entourage rushed downtown when he got the call that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. He’d been holed up in an office nearby, trying to reach Vice President Dick Cheney on the phone, when the first tower collapsed, and the avalanche of warped steel, crushed concrete, and shattered glass trapped him and his staff in the building. One of the most famous photographs from that day was of the mayor emerging from the cloud of cinders and smoke, his suit jacket dusted with grayish ash. His performance then and in the difficult months that followed had earned him the nickname “America’s Mayor.” Even after his term ended on January 1, 2002, Giuliani spent countless hours at ground zero, and he had an abiding affection for the 9/11 community.

“The Tribute Center is absolutely the appropriate way to deal with this site,” he said, standing on a makeshift dais, as cameras clicked and reporters scribbled in their notepads. “It’s at the core of what has
to be done here. The future generations are going to judge us by how well we do this. Twenty and thirty and forty and fifty years from now, people are going to come back here because they’re going to read about this in the history books and hear about it, and they’ll want to see how we preserved it. If we do it right, then we will have paid part of our debt to the people that we lost here. If we do it wrong, shame on us. And this does it right . . . This is the spirit of September 11 being preserved forever and ever, and there can’t be anything more important that we can do than do it right.”

Tania shifted from one leg to the other, licking her lips and checking her watch. Angelo grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Everything will be fine,” he mouthed. She nodded tensely, her smile forced and tight.

A question-and-answer session was scheduled to follow Mayor Bloomberg’s address, after which the tour would begin. “These tours will offer an honest and compelling understanding of what happened to our city and our country,” the mayor said in his concluding remarks. “The volunteers leading these tours will give the experience of visiting ground zero the dignity and the respect that it deserves. That’s something we owe not only to history but to the thousands of hard-working New Yorkers who gave their lives here . . . With the help of this new volunteer guide program, it’s heartening to know that the story will be told with accuracy, with honesty, and with a great heart.”

As the reporters started lobbing questions at the officials, a New York radio commentator leaned in and asked Angelo if he could snag an interview with Tania before the tour. Tania shook her head feverishly. “No!” she said, grabbing Angelo’s arm. A Tribute Center staffer rushed to the rescue, pointing the two to a pizza place next door, the designated holding area for the dignitaries to wait for the tour to begin. No one would bother them there.

Taking a seat by the door, Tania and Angelo ordered two Diet Cokes and chatted about movies they liked and places they’d been—anything but what was ahead. Moments later, the politicians sauntered in and stood at the counter nearby. For the next few minutes, the three most powerful men in New York talked about their golf
games, pretty women, and other guy stuff. Did one of them really razz Bloomberg about being short? Tania and Angelo sipped through straws, communicating with their eyes, stifling giggles, and trying not to let on that they were devouring every word. Angelo always knew how to make Tania laugh. For the first time that morning, she seemed to have forgotten her fears. And then Ielpi announced that the tour was about to begin. As the honored guests were ushered outside, Tania took a last sip of her soda and looked at Angelo, her eyes wide behind her trademark burgundy-framed glasses.

“Wish me luck!” she said, trying to sound cheery.

“You’re going to be awesome, sweetheart,” he said.

Tania stepped out of the pizza joint and into a media circus. Hungry journalists clamored for a picture and a few words with the inaugural tour guide. The most aggressive of them thrust cameras and microphones in her face and barked questions at her. “What floor were you on?” “Who were you working for?” “What did you see that day?” Angelo could see the fear in Tania’s eyes. She looked so fragile. He wedged himself between the pack and her, and he swore he could feel her body quaking. He was about to shout at the crowd to move away, when, in the midst of the chaos, Tania pulled a cell phone from her handbag and began dialing. She was calling her mother in California, she told Angelo. Before he had a chance to suggest that she make the call after the tour, Tania was chattering in Spanish and waving him and everyone else away.

As it turned out, the call home seemed to renew Tania. Her mother must have said all the right things because when Ielpi waved to her, signaling that it was time for her to meet the honored guests and start the walking tour, she obediently joined him, looking confident and ready to go.

“This is Tania, and she is one of our guides,” Ielpi said, placing a protective arm around her.

Tania nodded and smiled.

The governor and two mayors formed a semicircle around their hosts. Ielpi gave a brief overview of the abbreviated tour they were about to take—two short stops along Liberty Street and ending in
a gated area at ground zero—and the group began walking. With the politicians flanking her, Tania led the way. She was talkative and animated. Janice and Linda watched with wonder. Tania had been a basket case. Now she was taking charge. The dignitaries listened attentively as she explained about the docent program. She explained how the guides had been trained well and were able to speak about not just 9/11 and the towers but also the attack on the Pentagon, the brave but failed attempt by passengers to commandeer United Airlines Flight 93—the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania—and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She was excited for the public tours to begin, she told the guests, and she had given several practice tours that had gone well. Her personal favorite tour stop was the Winter Garden Atrium. The ten-story glass atrium, which was connected to the World Trade Center by a pedestrian bridge and had shattered when the towers fell, was the first structure rebuilt after the attacks.

“There’s one of the stops where I tell my story,” she said, pointing toward the glittering glass dome. “When I look around, I see a lot of teary eyes.”

Giuliani pursed his lips and nodded reverently.

Everything was going so well. Not only had Tania seemed to have conquered her nerves, but she seemed to revel in the attention from the officials. However, as the tour moved from Liberty Street and along ground zero, the path narrowed, and reporters pushed in from all sides, like cowboys herding cattle. Tania was trapped in the media crush. An NBC reporter stuck a microphone in her face, and she turned away. Her cheeks were crimson, and her eyes darted from side to side. Soon she was being swept along like a raft in the rapids. She forced herself to stifle a scream and warned the politicians to tread carefully. “Guys! Guys! Watch yourself!” she cried. Ielpi saw her struggling to break free from the mob.

“Walk quick, Tania!” he shouted. “Walk quick!”

Tania picked up her pace, staring down at the ground. She lifted her head for a moment and glanced around, as if she were searching for a way to escape. Her white blouse was soaked with moons of perspiration. By then the crowd had eaten up Linda, but Janice was still
close enough to see what was happening. Janice shouted to Tania, but she couldn’t hear over the din of the crowd. She was panicking. At one point, she attempted to walk away from the pack but was herded back by a member of the governor’s security detail. She looked back and saw Angelo, but he couldn’t break through the wall of people that separated them. All he could do was shrug. The tour stopped at the observation platform, and Janice managed to catch a glimpse of Tania. She was chalky white.

With the cameras pointed into ground zero and Ielpi talking more about what the public tours would be like, Tania attempted to catch her breath. No one seemed to notice that anything was amiss, only the people who knew her well. A breeze blew up from the basin and over the crowd, and she closed her eyes and turned her face to the sky. Why had she ever come here? she wondered. She had almost cancelled at the very last minute, and Janice had talked her out of it. If she was going to get through this, she had to get hold of herself. The sun warmed her face, and she took a few deep breaths.

Ielpi finished his talk and reached out to her.

“I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to hear Tania’s story,” he said, “but she was a survivor of the south tower, up on the ninety-sixth floor. Tania? Please?”

Ielpi moved to the side, and Tania took center stage. No more than two feet separated her from the dignitaries, and their eyes were riveted on her. Maybe it was the encouraging words, or maybe it was that she knew the tour was nearly over, but with her back to ground zero, and the officials forming a human shield between her and the swarm of media, she described what happened to her on that awful day four years earlier. Speaking quickly but matter-of-factly, she hit on every heartbreaking aspect of her story, sparing no detail. She was back on her game.

“My story is I was on the ninety-sixth floor . . . We walked down to the sky lobby . . . I was with other people on the seventy-eighth floor, waiting for the elevators, when we realized another plane was coming . . . I was badly burned . . . Two angels took care of me that
day . . . I didn’t know who they were. My fiancé died in the north tower.”

The politicians were mesmerized. Pataki, his mouth turned down in a frown, shook his head from side to side. Giuliani smiled paternally. Bloomberg’s brow furrowed as he listened stoically.

Tania spoke for a while longer, as comfortable as if she were chatting with friends. “So that’s it, that’s my story,” she said finally, standing on the precipice of that great chasm of grief, shrugging her shoulders and smiling like a little girl who had just performed in her first school play.

The reporters had strained in vain to hear what Tania was saying, but the politicians heard every devastating word.

Tania knew she was a hit. She stood there beaming. Janice, Linda, and Angelo were bursting with admiration. They were so proud to be Tania’s friends. What a strong woman she was. Even during her worst moments, when she felt overwhelmed and the challenge seemed too great, she somehow always pulled it off.

The tour moved to the gated area above ground zero, where it ended. Pataki was the first to thank the guides. The tour had clearly moved him and the others. “We’re very proud of you, and we’re very grateful,” he said, patting Tania’s arm.

Giuliani leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Tania, you did a great job,” he said. “God bless you.”

“Thank you for coming,” she said, shaking his hand and smiling demurely.

Ielpi looked on like a proud papa. Tania had been the perfect choice. It had been a shaky start, but she’d hit the ball out of the park.

The officials said their good-byes, and the crowd began dispersing. Tania asked Janice to stay with her behind the gate until all of the reporters were gone. Of course, replied Janice. As they watched the maze of press disappear, Tania broke down.

“Why do the reporters have to ask so many questions?” she asked, crying bitterly. “Why couldn’t they just leave me alone?”

Janice was startled. Everything had turned out so well.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

She was sorry, Tania said. The tour had been exhausting, and she didn’t want to have to face another reporter or answer any questions. If it hadn’t been for all of those meddling journalists, she said, she might have actually enjoyed giving the tour.

“I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” Tania sobbed.

Janice patted her back and tried to comfort her. She said she understood Tania’s frustration. She saw her being jostled and had tried in vain to get close enough to tell the reporters to give her space. But asking questions was the media’s job, Janice said, and the only reason they pursued her was because her story was so important. Tania didn’t care. She had talked to the people who mattered: Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and former mayor Giuliani. She had done her job, and now she wanted to go home.

“You did great,” Janice said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

The women stood inside the gate to ground zero for what seemed like a long time, until they felt fairly certain that everyone was sure to be gone.

“What do you think?” Janice finally asked. “Is the coast clear yet?”

“Let’s go,” Tania said, stifling a yawn.

When they walked out of the gate, a very weary Tania found Lee Ielpi and Jennifer Adams waiting on the other side.

“Did I do good?” Tania asked.

“Very good,” Ielpi said enthusiastically.

Tania’s eyes lit up.

A few feet away, a Spanish reporter was waiting. He had asked the Tribute staff if he could have a few words with Tania, and they’d promised to try to accommodate him. Tania spoke Spanish, and courting the foreign press was important in promoting the Visitor Center in other countries, so that tourists from abroad knew to make a stop on their trips to New York City.

“It’s up to you,” Adams said.

Tania didn’t answer at first. She stood there, biting her lip and
twisting the top on her bottle of water. Janice knew that Tania didn’t like disappointing people, and, after an uncomfortable silence, she decided to step in. If there was one thing about the survivors and their ranks that could be stated unequivocally, it was that they had one another’s back.

That trauma-driven devotion was multiplied a thousandfold when it was Tania’s back. She was, by dint of her place at the top of the hierarchy of suffering, their exalted leader. She didn’t have to do anything that she didn’t want to do.

“She’s had enough,” Janice said, making the decision for Tania and taking her arm.

“Maybe I’ll do it later,” Tania said sweetly, looking at Ielpi. “Is that okay?”