Traveling to Ground Zero Plus One
16 September 2001
Sunday
The call was a brief one, but everything seemed to change by the end of it. Matthew had only been away from home for a few weeks. School had just begun. But now his school, Eugene Lang College, was temporarily not a school. The slightly worn paper sign on the door said "Triage St Vincent's Hospital". The college became the place you could go to find out if a loved one was in one of the area hospitals. If their name was not on the list, then you would go to the Lexington Avenue Armory to fill out the missing per-sons forms - those are the forms that create the steadily rising number of "missing". But I'm getting ahead of myself. First there was the phone call.
Are you all right?
Everything is OK. I'm with some friends from school.
No. I asked you if you are all right.
Well, mostly. I'm a little freaked out. This morning there was a body in the street in front of the dorm. I went out and talked to a policeman and he said that the man died of smoke inhalation. Pops, I don't think it is a good idea for you to come up here. It's too dangerous.
As parents we secretly try to prepare for this day. With each ritual, each rite of passage - large or small, from moving up to the bluebird reading group, and each pencil mark on the door jam, right through to prom pictures and graduations - we prepare for the day when our children are no longer chil-dren. I suspect deep down we know it is futile, but we do it anyway. The day comes and it catches us by surprise. That day came for me when my son tried to protect me from the horrors that he had seen, instead of me trying to shield his eyes in one last equally futile attempt to hold on to the child that is already becoming a memory. In that moment it was as if the hand I held not so long ago to cross a busy street had suddenly become larger than mine, and was now gripping my hand. It all happened in an instant.
But I went anyway.
The train ride from Philadelphia to New York was eerily uneventful. It was like every other one I have ever taken. Until we got past the Newark Sta-tion. I sat at a table in the club car on the right side of the train. That's the side facing the city on the northbound route. Friday morning was gray and overcast. Nevertheless, the Manhattan skyline suddenly appeared off a bit in the distance. The outline of the city was barely visible, but then as I looked closer - the way you look at a face that seems almost familiar, and then you recognize an old friend who seemed to have changed over time - I could see the smoke billowing up through the hole where the towers used to be.
I remember thinking how the sky and the skyline now seemed to be oddly intermingled. Then I thought of that cartoon character, the one who kept saying the sky was falling. Only this time it was no cartoon. The sky had fallen into the space that had opened up.
The first thing I noticed approaching Seventh Avenue up the stairs from Penn Station was the smell. It was a subtle smell of smoke, but more like the smell of burnt charcoal with too much lighter fluid. The smell that is barely noticeable, yet impossible to ignore. Of course, I thought, it's the jet fuel. And then just as quickly I grew accustomed to it, and the smell seemed to recede quietly into the background.
And then there were the sounds of sirens. They seemed to be everywhere. Police sirens off in the distance. And then the sirens from two fire engines traveling against traffic on this busy one-way street. In any other place this scene would have seemed bizarre. On this day, in this city, it already seemed normal to me.
The cab ride to the Lower East Side was uneventful except for the radio, which was set to a religious station with someone reading from the Old Testament. The driver's dashboard was filled with small religious icons. It looked as though they had been there for a while. This was not some fox-hole conversion. This dial was probably permanently set to that station. I was already beginning to feel some of the familiar sights and sounds that compose this city.
Matt and I met outside his friend's dorm. It was wonderful to get my arms around him again. To feel his substance, the thickness of his back and shoulders. To feel how easily he bends his tall frame to meet me without in any way diminishing me. I've seen him do it from afar to others. For the first time it occurs to me that this has been happening with me for a long time as well. Everything is changing.
He took me over to his new place, his new home across from Union Square. We were about a mile from Ground Zero, as they were calling the site of the disaster. It occurred to me that we must be at Ground Plus One, but I doubt if anyone else there counted that way. On the way we came upon a shrine - one of many we would see this day. Off to one side in the park an impromptu collection of momentos lay in display as a large group of people huddled together in the cool drizzly morning. I went over, as if I were a visitor to a church I had never been to before. Not sure of the right thing to do. Not sure if I belonged. And then someone made room for us and we folded into the circle effortlessly.
Some of the candles were still burning - defiantly almost in the dampness. Others had gone out, the water having pooled in the wells submerging the wicks. It's only temporary, I thought to myself, as soon as it is dry, some-one will relight those candles. Then I began to look at all the various objects within the circle. Besides the candles I saw a woman's black shoe. How fitting, I thought, just one shoe. Even now I don't fully understand the truth of that thought, but it still stands. Several books lay open. Several were bibles, others looked like favorites someone wanted to share. I wanted so much to go into the collection to see what pages they were opened to, but I didn't. Leaning against a makeshift monument draped in a flag was a red teddy bear, nearby another hand made sculpture, a sprinkling of beads and bangles. Each one individually would have looked like so much litter strewn about the city streets, but clustered together as they were, I marveled at how pro-found the mundane becomes when it is in such sharp relief. Bits of stuff that have been left behind, that had been touched just a few days before, nestled there as a way to let the living say good-bye to their dead.
After prayers, lunch. A short walk from the park led to John's Deli, a wonderful little corner place made deceptively larger with strategically placed mirrors. The owner, the latest iteration of "John" I suspect, is a delightfully rotund Greek gentleman. He greeted us as if we were regulars. I had the sense that if we return again, next time we will be regulars. He greeted others - the real regulars - as they straggled in during lunch. Each time was a quiet reunion, an unspoken prayer of thanks that another one had made it, another was safe.
We ordered sandwiches.
Have it on rye, it's best with rye.
Thanks.
Fuggeddaboudid...
In some cities a "thank you" is followed by a "your welcome", or a "my pleasure", but in New York it is fuggeddaboudid. Some things even crises can't affect.
There was talk about how the Lexington Street Armory had become the place to file missing person's reports and that there were grief counselors on hand. I know from personal experience how draining this work can be and had the thought that they might need some help. So after lunch Matt and I took a cab up to 24th Street to see if maybe I could lend a hand.
Everywhere we looked outside the armory we saw leaflets and flyers with pictures and descriptions "Missing... 5'10, 160 pounds... last seen leaving the WTC..." Loved ones walking about the street with larger pictures. It seemed as if every inch of wall space was papered with such posters. I thought immediately that the fatality estimates are way too low. Then I thought maybe this was a good thing, to slowly allow us to let the enormity of it all to sink in.
What I didn't see was an angry face. Just oceans of sadness and concern. What I didn't see was stinginess. Instead we were met with kindness and civility everywhere. People were taking an extra minute with each other making sure they were getting to the right place. Not sure who was who, everyone was treated as the vulnerable beings they were and are. It was a strange contradiction - this city that was founded on a real estate deal and, in addition to the incomprehensible loss of lives, a city that has suddenly lost so much of its real estate, is acting with generosity and a sense of abundance. I wondered what this city (or any other one for that matter) would be like if it sustained that way of being with each other even after the pile of debris is removed, even after the last body is recovered.
A police officer gave me a phone number to call to volunteer. I called from the street. It rang about thirty times with no answer. It seemed as if they had plenty of help, so we thought it best to leave the area to make room for the people who were slowly migrating up from Matt's college after not finding the names they were searching for on the hospital lists.
So off we went back to the Lower East Side to meet up with Jim and Jane, my brother and his wife. We packed up for the trip down to Philadelphia. As poignant as the scenes were on the streets, I was relieved to be leaving, to give them a break from all the reminders around them.
We snaked our way north to the bridge - the George Washington I guess it was. Then before I knew it we were on the New Jersey Turnpike. Traffic slowed as people looked over to the east as the smoke rose as if from some gigantic, invisible eternal flame. Matt was in the back seat next to me. I couldn't resist the urge to put my arm around his broad shoulders. The sounds of the drumbeat of war were slowly receding from my mind. The fears I have about the two facts I know for sure about war - that young people get killed and that civil liberties get curtailed - were put away for an-other time. Perhaps for another letter. Right now, I thought, my New York family is a bit frayed around the edges, but they are safe and sound. For now, I thought, and that's all I can hope for.
Then as we left the city behind us the conversation began again. Talk of family and friends and food. A few jokes. It all seemed so normal.
*Originally published in The Journal of Creative Non-Fiction in 2001