Unrevealed (2 page)

Ellen looked at me. “No. She called Frank.”

“Not you.”

“No. She called Frank.” Ellen hung her head. “He told me what she said. She called him right after 10:00 a.m…. right after tower two collapsed. She told him how she saw the debris hit the windows, obscuring everything outside. And the way the ground shook, like bombs were goin' off all around her. And…how they should have evacuated right away but she was scared.” Ellen's hand trembled. “She told him she wasn't sure if she'd get out alive. And that she loved him. That he'd been the only good thing in her life. And that this was a sign from God.”

There must have been some serious rift between Ellen and her sister, I thought, for Marge to say that Frank was the “only good thing” in her life. “Wait a second,” I said. “She had twenty-five minutes or so from when she called Frank to get out safely and walk down sixteen floors — ”

“Maybe she figured she wasn't worth saving.” Ellen seemed to be in another world.

I sat back. “What are you saying? She made a split decision to commit suicide in the tower?”

Ellen was silent for almost a minute. “Her life was so messed up. Maybe she decided at that moment that Marge Challis needed to die.”

I watched Ellen's face fight the words she just said. But I also knew that even when people say they don't want to live, it doesn't necessarily mean they want to die. The will to survive is programmed into our DNA. I knew from my own
dark past that just because I'd wanted to check out a few times, it didn't mean that the driving force to sustain my life hadn't taken over. You may hate life but you may fear death even more.

“So, she tells Frank that the terror attack is a sign from God and then what?” I asked.

Ellen's eyes filled with tears. “She told him she loved him and that she had to make a difficult decision.”

“To live or die.”

Ellen nodded weakly.

“Then what?”

“She hung up. And no one ever heard from Marge after that.”

“Ellen,” I said cautiously, “I don't mean to be insensitive. But why are you here?”

“I needed you to hear my story. We're anonymous at the meetings. But I wanted you to know about me and what happened to Marge. I've never told anyone about it.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm not. They tell us at AA to make amends for past wrongs. To face people you've hurt and let them know that you weren't thinking clearly when you were using and that,” she choked on her tears, “that I shouldn't have let Marge die.”

“But you didn't have any control over that. Marge called Frank from the tower. Not you.”

“What I mean is I should have helped her more. I should have believed in her more. I should have filled her up with hope instead of…” Her thoughts drifted.

“Instead of what?”

“Making her think she wasn't worth saving!”

And that, I decided, was why Ellen looked like she was fifty. She and her sister obviously had a falling-out, with
probably minimal contact toward the end of Marge's life. Although, I recalled, Ellen said she did talk to her a few days prior to the job interview. I ruminated on it and deduced that the inevitable guilt and all the what-if's had flooded Ellen's head for six painful years. At that moment, I realized that Ellen wasn't talking to me because she needed a PI. Ellen needed someone to confess to. I was a priest and Ellen was confessing her sins. I took a breath and did my best to assume the role. “So, if Marge was alive today, what do you think she'd be doing?”

Ellen looked at me with soulful eyes. “She'd be clean and sober. I'd make sure of that. She'd still be searching but she'd be trying to get her life together. She'd be…reaching out to people, like I'm reaching out to you.” Ellen considered the question further. “Frank wouldn't be dead either.”

“How's that possible? He died in a car crash.”

Ellen's gaze moved from me to the side. “Well, after Marge died, Frank got preoccupied a lot. His mind wandered and, well, her death impacted him. I'm sure that's why he wasn't paying attention when he slid on the ice.”

“Where'd he live?”

“Vermont.” Ellen smiled at a pleasant memory. “He was an
award-winning photographer
.” She said that to me almost like she wanted to make damn sure I heard her. Tears welled in her eyes. “So, if Frank wasn't dead and Marge was alive and clean and sober, I know he would be so proud of her.
So
proud. And he'd know that all those late-night phone calls with her finally paid off and that she was figuring out that she
did
deserve to have a good life.” Ellen looked at me with near desperation. “I wish to God Frank could know that, Jane. It'd mean the world to me.”

“If there's a heaven, Ellen, then they're together and he knows how much he helped Marge.” Shit, now I really
did
sound like a goddamn priest.

“Right,” she whispered, as if she didn't believe that Marge and Frank were shooting the breeze in the afterlife. “I just wish…”

“What?”

She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “I just wish.”

It was an odd statement, but I let it go. Ellen closed the blue binder and put it back in her bag. “Thank you for listening to me.” She squashed out the spent cigarette in my ashtray.

“Sure.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

Ellen looked a bit shocked. “Wow. Thank you.” She got up and walked toward the door, let out a nervous long breath and then turned back to me. “What if she got out? What if she walked away from the towers and kept walking? What if she's out there, scared to death and wishing she could make everything right?”

Ellen sounded delusional at that point. But I was also sure that the same thought had crossed the minds of others who lost family on 9/11, since they never saw their loved one's body and had closure. For them and for Ellen, there was the comforting fantasy that somehow their nearest and dearest were out there, lost but alive.

She stared at me, and it seemed she was trying to get me to understand something with her mournful gaze. But all I could see then was regret and sorrow.

I couldn't shake Ellen's visit for five days. There was something about her that haunted me. I picked up the AA member phone list once with the idea of calling her but she wasn't on it. Maybe she didn't have a phone, although that would complicate her life when she had to reach her sponsor. But sponsors certainly weren't mandatory. I didn't have one. I figured by the looks of her, she was probably so broke that she didn't own a cell phone.

By Sunday afternoon, I was obsessed with Ellen's story. I thought about the tragedy of losing both her sister and brother so close together and I understood why she chose to disappear into a bottle. I wondered, briefly, if the story of the brother and sister's death might have made it to some news show. I'd seen plenty of post-9/11 human interest stories on TV and in the newspaper — stories that followed victims' families and revealed everything from suicides to new relationships. Call it curiosity, but I opened my laptop and searched “Frank Challis photography Vermont” based on the limited information Ellen had given me. The very first website was “Frank Challis Photography” and mentioned “In Memoriam” in the brief description. I clicked on the link and read about Frank's work. There was a beautiful shot of Vermont in the wintertime. I looked closer at the photo and saw the copyright. It was 2007.

I went through photo after photo and found current dates on most of them. Finally, at the bottom of one page, it read, “To contact Frank directly…” and gave a number. If Frank was dead, he sure as hell took great photos from the grave.

My eyes drifted to the “In Memoriam” link at the top of one of the pages. I clicked on it. It loaded slowly. First I saw the name “Marge” and then “Challis” appear. The
photo took longer to load. But once it did, I stared in stunned silence. It was Ellen.

Sure, she looked younger and fresher, but it was Ellen. There was the striking brown mole by the right side of her bottom lip and the same haircut, with less gray. Even entertaining the idea that she and her “sister” were Irish twins, the chance of both of them having a large mole in the same location was a billion to one.

“Fuck,” I said out loud. Not so much angry as confused. I thought back on the conversation I'd had with her. Little by little, the jigsaw puzzle started to make sense. I had wondered why “Ellen” knew so much about Marge's private thoughts and — how an estranged sister was able to tell me what Marge was going through and how it was affecting her. When she described the phone call that Frank allegedly told her about, she was really telling me what
she
saw out that window of tower one and what
she
felt at that critical moment. And when she told me, regretfully, that she shouldn't have let Marge die, that she “should have helped her more,” believed in her, and filled her with hope instead of making her believe she wasn't worth saving, the poor woman was actually talking about herself. The addict she used to be. The one Frank tried so desperately to help.

I think I understand why she killed off Frank in her head. Once she “killed” herself, she had to “kill” him as well to assuage the loneliness. If he weren't dead in her mind, she might get weak when she was drunk and call him up to hear him tell her that everything was all right and that she wasn't a bad person. But as each year passed, and Marge Challis remained on the 9/11 victim list, the chance to resurrect her “dead body” and come clean became more unfeasible. Even though that's what she wanted more than anything. After she got sober and the cobwebs cleared, she came face-to-face
with herself. She didn't want to be “dead” anymore. So she reinvented herself, like we all do when we shake loose the shadows of addiction. She became Ellen Brigham, went to more meetings, and finally got the guts to approach me and partially reveal her stained soul. She was on step nine in AA: making direct amends to people, whenever possible, for past wrongs. The problem was, the “dead” can't make direct amends.

I played back the visit to its conclusion, and I remembered the look she gave me right before she left — the look that almost pleaded with me to read her mind. “
I just wish
,” she stated. It had seemed odd to me then but not now. I was pretty sure that what she wished more than anything was for Frank to know she was okay. Like it was up to me to be a good PI, put the pieces together, maybe contact him, and… what? What in the hell was I supposed to do? I couldn't call Frank out of the blue and drop that bomb on him. Fuck that shit. It's called
direct
amends for a reason, not amends via a third party who also happens to be a drunk. No. I'd talk to her first at the meeting. Somehow, we'd figure out how to make it all right.

So, right now, I'm sitting in my Mustang sucking down my twenty-second cigarette of the day and I'm about to go inside the Methodist church for the weekly meet-and-greet with the Basement People. I've been keeping an eye out for Ellen — I mean, Marge, but I haven't seen her. The meeting starts in five minutes, and I want to get a good seat close to the bad coffee and bowls of shitty hard candy.

I walk down into the basement and the mood is grim. There're a few people crying and shaking their heads. I walk over to Joe, the guy who runs the meeting. He's not looking great either.

“What's going on?” I ask him.

“Sad news. I got a call yesterday. Ellen B. died.”

“Fuck,” was all I could muster. “What happened?”

“Car accident.”

“What?”

“She fell asleep at the wheel and ran off the road. Died on impact.”

I felt the walls start to cave in around me. Marge took the bus to my office. She didn't own a car. “How did you find out Ellen died?”

“I got a call from her cousin,” Joe offered. “She said she found my number on the members' phone list.”

It suddenly made sense to me. “Right. Her cousin. Marge Challis?”

Joe nodded.

 

And so the cycle of life and death, reinvention and resurrection continue for Marge. I contemplated calling Frank, but I figured I'd need a stiff drink before I did that. To preserve my sobriety, I opted out.

Like I said, in AA, you have to delve into
why
you drink and what triggers your need to disappear. Once you stop killing the pain with the bottle, you're supposed to come alive and find out who you really are and why you choose to exist. But some of us…some of us choose to walk out of a burning building that is twenty-five minutes away from collapsing, and before we get to the end of the street where the debris isn't so thick and the smoke has cleared, we've become someone else. And we believe in our hearts that the long shadows that stand just behind us will magically disappear just like the person we slaughtered. But those damn shadows are as uncompromising as we chose to be when we believed we could kill the past. They grasp us even more relentlessly.

Somewhere out there right now, Marge Challis thinks she's again shaken off the darkness. But when she wakes up tomorrow, there will be a little less light to guide her.

I want to be up-front with everyone who is reading this. I had to be talked into writing it. You see, I'm a very private person, and I'm not someone who readily opens herself up to others. I've always been like that, ever since I was a kid. When somebody showed a passing interest in me or in my life, I'd wonder why he cared and what his true motive was. Chalk it up to having a hardcore cop for a father. I'm suspicious of people in general and more than a little cynical. But I bet any cop would tell you the same thing.