We All Fall Down (15 page)

The firefighters—all of the emergency people—were rushing up the stairs, toward what everybody else had been rushing away from. Just like James’s dad. What made a person do something like that? What kind of person had that sort of guts? I looked at my father, moving down the stairs in front of me. He’d wanted to be a fireman. Could
I picture him doing that, risking his own life for other people? I didn’t have to look—or
feel—
beyond Ting on my back to know the answer to that. He would have been a very good fireman.

As we’d continued down we’d also come across some of the people who were still straggling out of the building. There was the very, very large woman who was sitting on the stairs when we got to her. With her was a younger woman, trying to convince her that she needed to go on, that she could reach the bottom if she only got up and tried.

There were two older men, guided by a younger man, who were coming down very, very slowly. One of them was friendly and joking around and talked to us as we passed. He offered to carry Ting
and
my father, if we needed help. The other was just old and cranky and complained about how they should let him use the elevator.

Then there were four men, taking turns in pairs to carry a man in a wheelchair. They’d go a floor at a time, then trade. The man wasn’t small, and between him and the chair it made carrying Ting seem like nothing.

I was tired, and it wasn’t like I didn’t know she was there, but I also knew we could do it, we could make it.

“I’d love to have a cold beer right about now,” my father said.

“Me too.”

He gave me a funny look.

“Just kidding, but a cold Coke, on ice, in a big chilled glass would go down real well,” I said.

“Actually, that sounds better than a beer. A glass of water would be best. I’m really thirsty.”

“I could go for that,” I said. “I’m glad you told me to take that drink of water up in your office.”

He looked back up at me and smiled. “You know, when I see you, I’m almost a little shocked. You just seem so big, so old. It was like one day you were this little boy and I turned away for a few seconds and when I looked again you were a strapping young man.”

I wanted to tell him that he’d turned away for years, but I didn’t say anything. This wasn’t the time to pick a fight. I knew he was trying to say something.

“I guess, really, I turned away for more than a few seconds,” he said.

I was thrown by that—it was as though he had just read my mind.

“Business has taken me away more than it should have,” he continued. “And I don’t just mean on business trips or long hours at the office. Sometimes even when I’m home my mind is somewhere else. I guess I could have been a better father.”

I didn’t answer.

“This is where you’re supposed to say that it’s okay and that I
was
a good father,” he said.

“You were a good father … especially when I was little.”

“I guess you’re right, I was better when you were little. And you know what? I’d rather you were honest about that instead of lying. It would have been easy to lie, so I’m glad you didn’t.”

I knew my father was waiting for me to say something, but I really didn’t know what to say.

“Do you know why your mother thinks you and I fight and argue?” he asked.

“Because we’re so much alike.”

“She told you, too, huh?” he asked.

“More than once.”

“And do you agree with her?”

“How could we
not
have some things in common?” I asked.

“One of the biggest things I see is that we’re both really competitive,” he said.

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Sometimes there is. I think that need to compete is what got in my way. Business isn’t about money. Money is just how you keep score of who’s winning. There was always some deal that had to be done, something that seemed so urgent, so big, that I lost sight of the really important things.”

I knew my father was trying to apologize, but this was really hard to talk about. I needed to change the subject.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“When we started to carry Ting you always thought, right from the beginning, that we were going to carry her all the way down, didn’t you?”

“Am I that predictable?”

“I just knew. That’s part of you being competitive.”

“I guess it is,” he admitted. “And that’s just like you making sure you always carried her more floors than I did.”

I felt myself blush.

“Not that that was bad either. It helped us keep moving.”

“I guess so,” I admitted.

“Besides, doesn’t it say something that I knew how many floors we were each carrying her?” he asked with a chuckle.

“I guess it does. Can I ask you one more question?”

“Shoot.”

“Did you have a deadline in mind—you know, were you trying to get out of the building before a certain time?”

“At first,” he said, “I was just hoping we
would
get out of the building. I really had my doubts we could get past those floors.”

“I know,” I said.

“I tried to hide it. I didn’t want to worry you any more than you already were.”

“I don’t know if that would have been possible,” I said, although his being calm had
certainly made me feel better. “But after we got past the flames and we found Ting,
then
did you have a time that you were trying to beat?”

He smiled. “I was shooting for ten-thirty.”

“We’re going to beat that easily. We’re going to be out by ten.”

“We will if we hurry.”

“Not we. You.” I stopped at the eighth-floor landing. “It’s your turn.”

I helped slide Ting off my back and onto her feet. I looked at my watch. It was eleven minutes to ten. We
could
do it before ten. I helped Ting up and on to my father’s back.

I started down the stairs. All we had to do was travel one flight per minute and we’d beat 10:00. I deliberately set a fast pace. My father was right on my heels. We hit the seventh floor and I looked at my watch. Less than forty-five seconds. That made me feel good.

My legs felt light. The sense of being tired, of wearing down, was all gone. This was the end. Just a few more flights and it would all be over. I almost felt like laughing out loud.

The sixth floor flashed by, then the fifth, and I turned for the fourth. At the corner we came across a group of police officers climbing up.

“How’s it going?” the first cop said as he passed by.

“Good. We’re almost out,” I said.

“You want one of us to help with her?” he asked my father.

“No,” my father said. “It’s all under control.” He didn’t even break pace or slow down.

The officers passed us on the left. The last in line was older and more than a little overweight. He was already puffing and huffing and falling behind the other three. I didn’t want to think of what might happen to him. I had visions of that fireman being given oxygen and wondered how he was doing. He was still up there somewhere, although he might only be a few floors and a few minutes behind us.

“We’ve come this far,” my father said to me. “We started and we’re going to finish.”

We passed by the third-floor landing. The door was open. I glanced in as I passed. The lights were on and everything looked normal, as if nothing had happened. I continued down for the second floor. We were actually going faster, as though we were gaining momentum as we got closer to the ground.

“Am I going too fast?” I asked as I hit the landing.

“Just the right speed.”

I made the turn at the next landing and stopped. Down below was a long, long, straight flight of stairs. At the very end was an open door and there was bright light. It was the lobby!

“Wait,” my father said. “Do you want to carry Ting the last few steps?”

“I can if you need a break.”

“I don’t need a break,” he said. “I just thought you’d like to finish.”

It was a nice offer. “It doesn’t matter who’s carrying her at the end,” I said. “We did it together. Let’s just get it done.”

We started down the stairs—the last flight of stairs. It was long and straight, and as I neared the bottom I could hear voices, lots of voices. I could almost visualize a ribbon stretched across the doorway, the finish line. Just a few more steps. I wanted to raise my hands into the air and scream and—I skidded to a stop. I couldn’t believe what I saw.

We were standing on the terrace above the lobby, the mezzanine. Twenty or thirty feet below us was the lobby.

“Oh my God,” my father said as he stopped beside me.

This couldn’t be the same place we’d walked through just a couple of hours before. Had it really been only a couple of hours? It seemed more like days. The whole lobby was littered with shattered glass and chunks of marble and concrete. All around the debris were police and firefighters and paramedics. They were talking on phones and radios, treating injured people, helping other stragglers, directing them out of the building.

Two paramedics and a police officer rushed over to our side.

“Here, let us help you,” one of the paramedics said. The other helped Ting down and the two of them started to move her.

“No! No!” she protested, fighting them, struggling to get back to where my father and I stood.

I hadn’t expected her to do that, to fight against them. She looked scared, panicky.

“It’s okay, Ting,” my father said. He moved to her side and she threw an arm around his shoulders, breaking free of the paramedics.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” one of the paramedics said to her.

“We just want to get her on to a stretcher and into one of the ambulances,” the other said.

“She doesn’t speak much English,” my father explained.

“Can you translate for us?” the paramedic asked.

“I don’t speak whatever language she speaks,” my father said.

“I don’t understand anything except English, but I do understand that she doesn’t seem to want to leave the two of you,” the other paramedic said.

“We’ve come a long way together,” my father explained. I thought that was a pretty big understatement.

“How about if you go a little bit farther. Can you stay here, let us do a preliminary examination, and then you can take her to one of the
ambulances? They’re waiting just outside across the plaza.”

“Sure,” my father said. He turned to me. “What time is it?”

“Two minutes to ten.”

He smiled. “Tell you what. You go out and give your mother a call. She must be worried sick. I’ll meet you right by the ambulances.”

I hesitated for a split second. I didn’t want to leave him behind, even for a minute, but I did want to finally get out of the building, and we did need to let Mom know we were okay, let her know as soon as possible.

My father handed me his cellphone. “Go … don’t worry,” he said, reading my expression.

I nodded my head. “You’ll be right behind me, right?”

“Right behind you. Go, call your mother, she needs to know we’re coming home.”

“Come this way,” the police officer said.

The officer took me by the arm and led me along the mezzanine. I looked out at the plaza and saw a scene as devastated as the lobby. There were hunks of metal and concrete peppering the plaza.

“Don’t look,” the officer said. “There’s no point in looking.”

He led me down the escalator. It wasn’t working and it felt awkward stumbling down the unevenly spaced stairs. He guided me across the lobby.

“Come on, kid, this is the way out … the safe way out. Too much falling from the sky on the other sides.”

We stepped out through what had been a floor-to-ceiling window, the remains crunching under our feet.

“Wait,” the officer said. There was another officer standing just outside the window. He was looking up.

“Is it clear?” the policeman with me yelled out.

The second officer didn’t look our way. He just nodded. “Go and go fast.”

The officer took my arm and we started across the plaza. I knew better than to look up. I knew what could be coming down from the sky. I hurried along with him and then tripped over a piece of the building that had fallen and created a divot in the concrete of the plaza. His hands kept me from falling.

And then I thought about those two people, flying past the window. They would have landed—not here, but between the two towers. I couldn’t even imagine what would happen to a human body that fell from that height … or a human body that was hit by somebody falling from that height. I tried not to think about any of that. I looked straight ahead of me.

There were emergency vehicles everywhere. Fire trucks and police cars were haphazardly parked with flashing lights blazing. Behind them was a
row of waiting ambulances, their lights flashing too. With each step I was getting closer to them, closer to safety. We had to be far enough away now to be free of anything falling.

For the first time I looked back, over my shoulder, and let my eyes follow up the smooth glass skin of the towers. It all looked unremarkable until the very top, where thick black smoke poured out and stained the sky. There was a helicopter—no
two
helicopters circling around. For a split second I thought they might be pulling people off the roof. Then I remembered what I’d heard, and what I was seeing with my own eyes. There was no way they could set down through all that smoke. They weren’t there to rescue but to witness, watching the scene and probably beaming out TV signals that were circling the globe. How unreal would it seem to those people watching from their homes? How unreal it seemed to me, and I was right there, living through it … living through it … that was right … I
had
lived through it.

“It’s like a war zone,” the officer said.

“What?” I asked, turning toward him.

“A war zone, like something from a movie, not something that could be happening in New York.”

“Not something that could happen anywhere. I just can’t believe it.”

“Me neither, kid, me neither. The ambulances are right there. You head on over and I’d better get back inside. You make your phone call. Your mom
must be scared to death, worrying. This is going to be the nicest phone call she ever gets in her entire life.”