Nearly Midnight

 

 

            Andy had awakened suddenly, as if by the thundering of a passing subway train, jolted awake by he knew not what. All was quiet outside now, no sounds but the vermin gnawing on the other side of the wall. Not long now, he thought as he listened, until they chew through. He laughed to himself as he realized they could scurry freely down the hall instead of wasting their short lives chewing the plaster.

            He reached out impulsively for the night table lamp, but found none. There would have been no power to light it, anyway. Just where was here anyway, he wondered, lighting his lighter. A rather large rat looked back at him for an instant, then ambled on its way. Andy caught his breath, and jumped off the tattered bed, making his way cautiously into the living room. This had been his apartment, he realized, when he'd lived in New York, although the tattered bits of furniture bore little resemblance to anything he had owned.

            Good Lord, what am I doing here, he asked himself, having no recollection of coming, much less any reason for doing so.  Another blackout, another of those interminable segments of his life when he did something totally unreasonable in a state of semi-consciousness. Don't panic. Bearings. Bearings are essential.

            Name: Andrew Justin Graham. Occupation: Actor. Age: 35. Place of residence: Los Angeles, California. Current place of existence: Manhattan.

            Why? Why had he come here at all? Why now? Did he have a death wish? 

            They had warned him. All of his friends had talked of the vague stories they had heard about some health or environmental problem. Something. Nothing had been more than rumor. He'd even decided not to go, even if it meant not seeing Lisa. Now, standing here in the middle of an abandoned tenement, he wondered if he were dreaming or merely losing his mind.

            Pacing, he tried to get some perspective on this. He'd gone to the airport to get his money back for the ticket, blacked out, and later found himself on the plane bound for New York. With no alternative, he sat back and waited for New York and Lisa. But she'd escaped the week before. No messages but the obvious: she wanted to leave New York while she still could, before the sickness caught up with her.

            The sickness. He'd heard about little else since he landed. When he asked about it, people shook their heads and wondered why an outsider had come when so many of the residents were leaving.

            He left the rats to the apartment, and went outside for a breath of air. Air, that precious commodity. If the stark reality of the situation hadn't hit him in the face when he woke up, the outside certainly would have. The wind blew tattered newspapers around his ankles, making him stagger a few paces into the desolate street. He'd never felt such emptiness, amidst the clutter of abandoned cars and loose garbage. How strange to see Manhattan like this at all, let alone on New Year's Eve.

            He looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. Too late now for any thing, he thought, as he started toward Times Square. He knew there would be no crowds this year. On his walk toward 42nd Street he passed one lonely, half-dead wino, perhaps one of the few remaining inhabitants. No shelter tonight. Not even a bottle left to make the going easier.

            The nightmare had started Christmas Eve, when Andy arrived in this mysterious hell. He'd been forced to stay until the day after Christmas, the earliest flight available. Then the blizzard hit, the two-and-a-half feet of snow no one had heard forecast because the truth had finally gotten out about what happened, and people only wanted to know what the government would do about New York.  For five days nothing moved. Every time the snow was removed, more would fall to clutter the icy streets and runways. On the 30th, planes started moving, and even die-hard native New Yorkers didn't want to wait to see if the government would change its mind.

            Last night, Andy had been in the airport, waiting for his flight. He knew no more of anything until he woke up in that god-forsaken apartment. Now, too late, he reached 42nd street, and walked toward Times Square. Two young men clung together in a tender embrace, probably their last.

            The island had been mined, scheduled to be wiped off the map at midnight. The government wouldn't risk contaminating the whole country. People who had been evacuated had been carted off to neo-prison camps for quarantine until a determination had been made that they weren't infected. Even now, agents of the government were searching for those, like Lisa, who had escaped before the danger was realized outside the city. These people couldn't be allowed to spread the contamination. Those left behind were probably dying of the sickness, anyway. Really, even they would be better off.

            The last plane out of JFK airport had gone at eleven, leaving Andy to stand alone on Times Square on New Year's Eve. As he reached the square, he noticed that someone had left the marquee running, perhaps the only electricity left on in the whole city.  Eleven fifty-nine. Happy New Year, the marquee flashed to no one but Andy. Even the lovers from 42nd Street weren't there to see it.  Andy Graham stood absolutely alone on Times Square, drifts of dirty snow swirling around him, abandoned taxies everywhere. In the distance he could hear the beginning rumbles of what would end his trip here. All alone in New York with nowhere to go, and nothing to do, he looked at the ball that would not descend in the traditional way this year, and laughed.

 

                                                                          END

                                                                 23 March, 1986

Lost in Thought

 

There’s a meme about calculating how much sleep you would get if you could fall asleep right now.

Most people connect to that one. For many in our mostly-electronic world, sleep can sometimes be elusive.

One of the most annoying instances of insomnia is when you feel like you can’t keep your eyes open long enough to see the end of a program you’re watching, but you persist, perhaps giving your head an occasional shake, or changing your sitting position so your eyes won’t close. Then, when the show is over, you trudge to bed and pull up the covers only to discover you can’t sleep.

This has happened to me.

Just as sleep comes creeping, I get an idea for a story I’m writing. Sometimes it’s a particularly good line that I don’t want to forget. Of course, I never have pen and paper by my bedside when this happens. So, I try to fix it in my mind.

Two hours later, I finally fall asleep, and the next morning either the line I was trying to save is gone, or it doesn’t sound as literary as it did the night before.

Sometimes, it’s an entire scene. Little bits and pieces keep coming in as I try to fix the order of what I want to write. Of course, I don’t get up to write them because my body is too tired. But the mind just won’t shut up.

One night I finally did what the experts suggest. After trying for about an hour to chase the ideas away without success, I got up, went to another room, and in lighting just slightly less dim than candles, I wrote what I thought was a great next blog. 

It took about an hour and a half. It didn’t really help that much, as other thoughts took the place of the ones in the blog when I returned to bed. But I was not going to give in to any more thoughts keeping me awake while I got up to write them.

I finally fell asleep sometime after 4 a.m.

In the morning, I read my blog. No, this would have to be put aside, never to be published as a blog. It would have caused my friends and readers to ask, “Do you keep track of every mean thing anyone has ever done to you, or are you making this up in order to throw a pity party?”

Indeed, I think my thoughts turn darker in the wee small hours of the night. That blog will never see the light of day.

Sometimes it isn’t a story line. As I relax, a thought comes unbidden. Perhaps earlier I’d seen a commercial for a movie I want to see, and I’m suddenly enveloped in the memory of wanting to see Mary Poppins when I was eight. My “best friend” was going to see it, and was allowed to invite one friend to go with her. Naturally, she asked someone else.

I was crushed, and didn’t end up getting to see that film – on TV – until I was an adult. My parents weren’t about to send me off to the movie theatre alone, and no one else in my family was interested in seeing it.

I also don’t have “best friends” anymore, although I do go to the movies by myself if there’s something I want to see that no one in my circle is interested in.

The self-satisfaction of my own personal growth from that incident should be enough to allow me to sleep.

But no.

Often, one thought leads to another until a cascade of slights and sorrows from my childhood and teenage years keeps me tossing and turning for hours.

I’ve often been told, especially by those of a psychological bent, to just let those thoughts go.

“How?” I ask.

They stare at me as if I’d just dropped onto the planet. But they never answer that question.

I don’t know what sort of junk is in the attic of my brain waiting for a nudge to fall out of its cobwebs and plague me.

I do know there is good stuff, too. I’ve used scenes from my life in my stories.

When I say things like that, there are those who indignantly say, “I don’t want to be a character in one of your novels!”

Oh, trust me, honey, you won’t be!

Generally, people who make those statements aren’t anywhere near interesting enough for an appearance. I will use a line they’ve said or the essence of what they’ve said, but it will come from someone else. Sometimes a scene, a mannerism or a behavior is borrowed without any necessity of recreating the original person. It wouldn’t be creative writing otherwise.

Writers are, after all, observers of the human condition.

Lest you think I spend my nights plagued by the devils of memory prodding me with pitchforks of sleeplessness and desolation, rest assured I spend most nights blissfully unaware of my memories, good bad or indifferent.

And if I fall asleep right now, I’ll get 7¾ hours of sleep before my dog wakes me.

What’s That on Your Back?

 

             What’s That on Your Back?

            To anyone who watches Dr. Who, that question has meaning.

            “Are you my mummy?”

            “Oi! Spaceman!”

            Dr. Donna.

            “Donna Noble has left the library.”

            “What’s that on your back?”

            These are all lines from the modern Dr. Who.

            For those of you who don’t know, Dr. Who is from the planet Gallifrey and travels in the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), which looks like a 1960s police call box from the UK.

            Nowadays, police call boxes are few and far between, and I’m not sure any actually work. They’re even rarer than the red phone boxes that are so iconically British. Still, it’s the Doctor’s mode of transportation.

            In the episode, “Turn Left,” Donna Noble, the doctor’s companion at the time, visits a fortune teller. In the course of the story there’s a giant bug that resembles a giant cockroach on her back that causes her to make an alternate decision from what really happened in her life, and it sets off a chain of events that essentially change history (no spoilers here!).

            While Donna’s ultimate decision is to choose as she had done originally (or did she?), thus saving the universe and killing the massive cockroach, the phrase, “What’s that on your back?” directed at Donna persists through several episodes.

            I didn’t like that episode. For starters, I have always hated cockroaches. Secondly, despite the fact that the story was meant to demonstrate Donna’s inner strength, I felt it was a downward slide of the character into no longer being the Doctor’s companion. She was somehow less than because of something perceived on her back. That’s probably just my take on the story, but there it is.

            Still, it got me thinking about the what-ifs in my life.

            Frequently on Facebook, there are questions like, “If you could do your life over, would you?”

            While most people say no, they wouldn’t want to risk something that might change them having their children or meeting their spouse, I often think about a few different things.

            Given the chance, I would definitely like  to have done better in school, or not dated a few people who were errors in judgement on my part. I don’t think it would have changed my life to have skipped those mistakes. Sometimes turning right is simply turning right (or a banana is simply a banana, as Freud would’ve said).

            While it’s true that better grades might have led to my attending a different university, graduating with a different outcome, getting a job somewhere else in the country than where I live now, and never becoming an OT, it also might not have changed much at all.

            There is the saying that if something is meant to happen, it will.

            Once, on a trip with a friend, I met a guy from Australia while we were in Scotland. We hit it off rather well, and at the end of the evening, he gave me his number, telling me, “When you get rid of your friend, give me a call.” He was, at the time, studying in England.  My friend was leaving a week or so earlier than I was, and he didn’t particularly like her.

I never made that call. I didn’t have the guts. I’ve never been good at phone calls, which is why I prefer of texting people. (But this was before mobile phones.)

            Would it have made a difference?

            Maybe.

            Maybe we would have hit it off and eventually gotten married, and I’d be living in Australia now. That would have started a cascade of changes in my life and the lives of members of my family.

            It might have resulted in my never meeting people who mean a great deal to me since they entered my life.

            But it also might have resulted in fantastic things I could never imagine.

            Or maybe he wouldn’t have been there when I called.

            He might have forgotten who I was.

            He might have decided I wasn’t all that interesting, and what was he thinking, giving out his number.

            Or it might not have been his number. People do that.

            But I’ll never know because I didn’t have the courage to make the call. Instead, I decided to go see Stonehenge.

            There are other things I wish I hadn’t said or done that wouldn’t have changed the course of history. They would have spared me some embarrassment, eating crow, and anxiety. Some lessons shouldn’t need to be learned.

            I often wish I’d asked my gym teacher, back when I was a young, uncoordinated teen, what I could do to improve my athletic ability – or at least be able to pass the President’s Test of Physical Fitness.

            She might have helped, or she might have laughed. Maybe there was nothing. I tried my best, but I’ve about as much athletic ability as I have skill in drawing. Maybe less. I tell people I’m really good at baseball except I can’t catch or hit, and I’m a slow runner. But damn, I am a good pitcher.

            I often wish I had skills or attributes that I don’t. Would it make a difference, or would I even make use of them? Who knows?

            If I were a different person from who I am, things might be better. Or not. Maybe I just have to wait till my next life to find out.

            There are lots of things I wish I’d done, intended to do, but never got to. All the good intentions. And we all know where that road leads.

My Favorite Year

 

            “What was your all-time favorite year?” asked no one, ever.

            However, I think about things like that, and my answer is usually age four.

            Four?

            It seems like an odd age to pick, but, while I was completely dependent on my parents to provide food, shelter and clothing, I was an autonomous individual by four.

            I could bathe myself – except washing my hair – brush my teeth, dress myself including all fasteners except my shoelaces, and feed myself, except for cutting my meat.

I knew the precise code for the perfect bath temperature – three turns of the hot water faucet and the cold all the way on as far as it would go.

I knew my colors, numbers, address and phone number, even though I wasn’t allowed to use the phone because we had a party line and the lady who lived behind us was always on it. I wasn’t allowed to cut with scissors, but I could color – just not inside the lines.

            I also knew the names of the days of the week, although I didn’t know what day it was unless it was Saturday or Sunday because my dad didn’t go to work on those days. And on Sundays we went to church where the guy in the fancy gowns mostly spoke in a foreign language, and at the end we would say that prayer about the knives (to my ears part of it sounded like, “Show unto us thy knives of mercy toward us.”)

            Sometimes on Saturday night we would to go Confession, which consisted of my parents and brothers standing in line to go into a closet while I waited in the pew. In those days, we didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped out of church or murdered in it. Besides, if my mother told me to stay there, the whole heavenly host could not have pried me from the spot until my mother returned.

            I remember I once asked my mother what they did in the church closets. She told me that’s where they kept their skeletons. (Imagine my surprise at seven, when I made my First Confession only to discover there were no skeletons. I had been looking forward to seeing them.)

            Sometimes in the summer, after Confession, my dad would take us for a drive, and we’d magically end up at Greenwood Dairies, where we would get ice cream cones.

            Four was also the age at which I received the only spanking of my life because of a failed attempt to assert my independence.

            At four I knew the rules.

            I could play in the back yard on the swings, sliding board and in the sandbox, contentedly pretending to be my brothers’ friends from school: Ricky, Gerry, Joey, Steve or Wayne. I never pretended to be the ones I actually knew.

            In summer, the lady who lived in the summer house next door, and was about a million years old, would stop and talk to me. She was even older than my grandparents, and had white hair in a bun, little round frameless glasses, and she always wore a dress, even to rake the leaves. She had a teenage granddaughter who invited me over once, and I got to drink lemonade with her on their side porch.

            Mostly, I played in my yard, where I could also ride my tricycle or the pedal car that sometimes went forward and sometimes backwards. I could never figure out how to make it go the way I wanted.

            The people who lived behind us had a dog. He was brown and white or black and white, and his name was Zeke. They kept him tied up in their back yard. There was space between their chicken coop and their outhouse for Zeke to come to the fence. I would stick my hand through the chicken wire to pet him. He seemed to like that. Since we didn't have a dog at the time, I used to pretend he was my dog.

            Sometimes the lady there would come to the fence to talk to me. I never knew what she was talking about, but I would stand there respectfully while she talked, even though I wanted to play. When my mother would see her talking to me, she’d call me in. She would say the lady was gossiping, and it wasn’t the sort of thing small children should hear. She didn’t mind me talking to the million-year-old lady, though.

            Four was about when my mother started talking about my going to school. She would tell me all the wonders of school, like learning to read, making friends, learning math and learning about the world. And all of this would occur once I turned six.

            Of course, I thought it was just one of her stories. I would never be six!

School was where my brothers went with their schoolbags and lunch boxes.  I had a toy lunch box that would fit a half sandwich, and my mother would fill the plastic “thermos” with milk. I used hold my lunch box while I waited with my brothers for their bus to come. They’d dash down the road to the bus stop. I’d go as far as the corner and wave at the bus as it passed. (This caused a bit of teasing once I started school.) Then I would return to the house and play in the yard, my lunchbox safely in the fridge.

Somehow, I thought I would die before I ever made it to six. I had no health issues, but I could never imagine reaching such a great age.

Once I did reach that mighty school age, the next best year of my life was going to be 17. I picked it simply because I liked the number.

But alas! 17 wasn’t as good as four. At 17 I was a senior in high school.

At the beginning of the school year, we received our class rings at a special ceremony which, my school being Catholic, included Mass. Throughout the day friends would turn your ring on your finger as some kind of good luck ritual.

That night there was a dance. My date picked me up, and after pictures at both houses, we were on our way.

Although my date and I had known each other since we started school, we didn’t know a lot about each other, so the conversation was rather halting until we realized that music was pretty much our only common interest. So we chatted about things musical on our half hour drive to the school, where the dance was held.

But a school dance was not to be in our future. About 10 minutes from school, we were in an accident.

This was the ’70s. New cars didn’t have seatbelts or padded dashboards, and no one I knew had a new car. 

As I was hurtled forward into the windshield, the only thing that kept me from going completely through the glass was my knees hitting the bottom of the dash. Rather than death or worse, I ended up with a concussion.

My date wasn’t so lucky. His mouth hit the steering wheel, and the wires from the braces on his teeth broke, causing a bloody mess. When we arrived at the hospital – my first ever ride in an ambulance – they wouldn’t even touch him because his injury was an orthodontic one.

The following Monday at school, my classmates wanted to know where I was Friday night. They looked doubtful when I told my story, and I had to let them feel the lump on my forehead before they believed me. My oh-so-supportive friends assumed I didn’t have a date, and had made up a story about coming to the dance.

The rest of being 17 was non-descript, so I moved on to pick my next favorite year: age 21.

I had my 21^st birthday as the highlight of that year because I spent my birthday in England, the place I’d wanted to go since the Beatles visited America, during a study-abroad semester. 

On my actual birthday, we had a field trip in which we visited Peveral Castle and then on to Chatsworth, the stately home of the Duke of Devonshire, who happened to be the chancellor of Manchester University, the school I was attending in England.

A few weeks later I got to meet some distant cousins who lived in London, and spent Easter with them.

21 promised to be one of the better years, all-in-all. But I stopped trying to pick best years after that, since most years have tended to have their good parts and their less-than stellar parts. Even 2020 the neverending year of Covid-19, held a silver lining. While I didn’t get to go out to celebrate a milestone birthday – who did? – I had a preview of retirement for a few weeks before we resumed work virtually.

And for what it’s worth: I could get used to that.

Love of My Life

             This is an excerpt of one of my novels.

                                                             Lexi

      It’s hard losing your father. Daddy was my standard of what a man should be. Some of my friends had fathers who were always working, always busy, and often grumpy. That was the ones who had fathers, which was still most of them when I was younger, and a lot fewer by the time I was in high school. But my dad was different.

      Dad wasn’t married to his job. He had a good one, but when he left the office, he was finished with work. Mom and I were his whole world. My dad was the one who took my friends and me to the movies, who came to every hockey game, who was proud to take me to the father-daughter dances at school.

      But now he was dead. He won’t be there for my high school and college graduations. He won’t walk me down the aisle on my wedding day. More important than that, though, he isn’t here now, every day, and I miss him. I wish I’d been a better daughter. I especially wish the last words I’d said to him hadn’t been, “I hate you!”

      “Thomas Christopher Morton,” the headstone reads. “March 12, 1954- September 11, 2001. Loving son, husband, and father. Taken too soon.”

      It doesn’t begin to describe him. He deserves more than a couple of phrases.

      I was born in 1985, in the middle of a snowstorm. My mother always said she and dad were ecstatic. They’d been married for six years, and had been trying for four to have a baby. I guess it’s normal, under the circumstances, to spoil your child. I’m not sure that I really was, though.

      I always had the impression they were hoping for a boy, although no one ever said. Still, parents love the child when it arrives, no matter what it is. At least that’s what Gran said. She’s Dad’s mother, so she probably knows him better than anyone. She never gave me any hint that I was anything but the child they always wanted.

      I would like to have had brothers and sisters. I never understood why my parents didn’t have more children. I once asked Dad, and he said sometimes things didn’t work out that way. Then he grinned and said I probably wouldn’t have as many of the things I had if they’d had more kids. Still, I thought it might have been less lonely.

      I remember when I was very small, Daddy would pick me up and swing me above his head, and then hug me close every time he came home from work. I loved riding on his shoulders, too. When he was home, everything we did was fun.

      I did ask him once, when I was about seven, if he ever wished I was a boy, instead, and he replied, “No, I never have. I’m so relieved you’re a girl.”

      I didn’t quite understand that, but I didn’t ask.

      Although he did typical dad things, like fixing drippy faucets and mowing the lawn, at least part of his weekend usually involved going somewhere, either with mom and me or just me. Since Mom didn’t like the zoo, that was a trip for just Daddy and me.

      Of course, once I was in school, the weekend play dates with Dad decreased because I often did things with my friends. But he was usually available to drive a group of us to the movies. Often, especially once we girls were about nine or ten, he would drop us off at the theater rather than coming with us to see the movie. He’d say he had some errands to run, but he was always there when the movie was over. Sometimes he’d treat my friends and me to dinner afterwards. No one else’s mom or dad ever did that, so he was the popular transport parent.

      Dad was a good sport about things. I remember when I was very little, I had a tea party once with my dolls. It must have been on a rainy weekend, because I made Daddy participate. I have the image of him sitting in one of my much-too-small-for-him wooden play chairs, pretending to drink tea out of a tiny, plastic tea cup etched in my mind. He even carried on conversations with my dolls, pretending they answered him.

      Dad was handsome, too. I guess he was close to six feet tall. He was slimmer than my friends’ dads. Many of them had big round stomachs that dripped over their belts. My dad wasn’t built like that. In fact, he was actually thinner than some of the boys in my high school.

      His hair was light brown, and he had green eyes. I had my mother’s blonde hair, but my dad’s green eyes. The thing I liked about him was that he didn’t have hair all over his chest. My friend, Carla once asked me if he shaved his chest. He didn’t.

      It sounds weird, but I think some of my friends in high school had a crush on my dad. The boys I knew weren’t sure what to make of him. On one hand, he was kind of a pal, the one who could discuss sports and joke, but who became a little distant when they wanted to date me. I had only started dating a few months before Dad died, and there were a few times I was afraid he’d scare them off.

      I think Dad never lost his sense of fun. Sometimes once people are grown up they think they have to act serious and important. They have to constantly show kids that they’re the boss. Dad wasn’t like that. Mom would probably be horrified if she knew some of the things he told me about his childhood.

      He told me all about some crazy things he did as a child. His oldest brother was always getting in trouble. Because his parents had to help Uncle Danny a lot with his school work, Dad could get away with things. No one ever noticed that he did because they just expected that he was the “good child.” He was a good student, and he didn’t get into trouble, so I guess they didn’t even pay that much attention.

      He used to sneak out of the house at night after his parents went to bed. He didn’t simply go downstairs and walk out the front door. There was an access door to the attic through his closet ceiling. He’d go up there. There was a window that had a tree next to it. He would go out through the window and climb down the tree. Once he was out, he’d meet up with friends who also were able to sneak out of their houses.

      “So, I already know that trick. Don’t think you can get away with it,” he said.

      He knew there was no chance of my doing it, since there was no closet access to the attic in my room or any tree close enough to the house. And I wasn’t good at tree climbing, anyway.

 

      Whenever I asked about my uncles, Dad would say they were older, and he didn’t do much with them. Because he quickly changed the subject, I sometimes wondered if he liked them.

      “Of course I do. They’re my brothers,” he’d reply.

      I had met Uncle Danny a few times, and my grandmother had pictures of all three of her sons, so I knew Uncle Frank was real, but I never met him. Dad said he lived in Wyoming. Once, when I said I’d like to go out there to visit him, Dad got a strange look on his face.

      “When you’re an adult, you can make that choice for yourself.”

      “Why don’t you want to visit him?”

      “Some things are better left alone. Besides, I don’t know quite where he lives.”

      “I’m sure Grandma knows.”

      “Lexi, just leave it.”

      Dad and I shared so many secrets, I was hurt that he had one about his brother and wouldn’t tell me.

      The only time we ever saw Uncle Danny was when he was at Gran’s when we were visiting. He seemed to idolize Dad, and acted more like a younger brother. Dad would talk to him, but mainly just to answer whatever Uncle Danny asked. Dad never started those conversations. If Uncle Danny didn’t, Dad would only say hello and talk with someone else. I never knew whether Dad didn’t really like Uncle Danny or just didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t imagine Dad not liking someone in the family. He was so kind to people.

      I once asked Mom. She said she couldn’t imagine Dad not liking his own brother. She thought it must be different having a brother like Danny.

 

      Mom and Dad sometimes seemed not to get along. They were okay when I was little, but then when I started school, Mom got a job. She didn’t act happy about it. She worked for a TV station. She started dieting a lot, but I didn’t see any change in her looks. She would complain about the other women who were on air when she wasn’t, and it seemed at times that she took it out on Dad.

      They tried not to say anything in front of me, but when there are only three people living in a house and two of them are arguing, it’s hard not to know it. Dad would try to be supportive, but that just made her mad.

      Most of my complaints concerned Mom, anyway. The first word out of her mouth where I was concerned was usually, “No.” I could usually get Dad to say yes to something she’d said no to, but he always said he’d have to talk to Mom about it first.

      They didn’t fight all the time. Really, it wasn’t a fight. It was Mom complaining. Nothing Dad did was enough.

      When I was little, I didn’t really notice it as much. But as I got to Middle School age, I realized what was going on. I could see Dad wasn’t happy, and I tried to do things with him that didn’t include Mom. I don’t know if he suspected what I was doing, but I know he looked a lot happier when it was just the two of us, or Dad with my friends and me.

      Mom mostly wasn’t self-absorbed. She did things for us. She tried to create a good relationship with me. But you could see that underneath it all, she was unhappy.

      “You have such a nice figure,” she said to me as I entered my teen years. “Always be careful of what you eat so you won’t have to worry when you get older. When you’re a woman, so much of getting ahead is based on how you look.”

      That was so different from what everyone else told me. They’d say education was important, and inner beauty – what comes from being good to others – is what was important. I knew that looks were important, but I wasn’t going to make mine the end-all and be-all of my life. I think Mom was told too much when she was my age that she was pretty, and once she was married, people didn’t tell her that as much. It made her feel like she’d failed.

      She continued to nit-pick, nag and complain in subtle ways. Dad was frustrated. Then things changed. Dad started going to training classes for work. I didn’t know what he needed training in. He was a terrific graphic designer

      He said there were always new things to learn, and he had to keep current with technology. So, he’d go to New York or Philadelphia from time to time instead of to the office. He’d get home a little later, but he’d be home the same day.

      Dad started doing things with me a little more. He said that now that I was in Middle School I was old enough to do things he couldn’t do with me when I was little. He would sometimes go to a movie with me, just the two of us. He would call it our Father-Daughter evening. The evening would involve having dinner together before the theatre. Once in a while we would go to a play instead of a movie. I know he had to leave work early to manage these things, but I guess because he went to his technology workshops, he got to do that.

      When he and I went out, he often let me get something to eat that my mother would’ve objected to, like a large dessert or an expensive main course. Sometimes it was just a junk food meal instead that she never would’ve approved of. I could just hear her telling me I’d lose my figure if I continued to eat like that. Dad would say that we just wouldn’t mention the details to Mom.

      Dad had a knack for making me feel special. He and I had had so much fun together that I sometimes wished my mother never came on our outings. I said that once, and he got very serious and silent. He looked like I’d hurt him.

      “Your mother loves you very much. You’re at an age where you probably don’t see that. She works very hard, and everything she does is for your benefit. If I thought I was raising a diva, I wouldn’t continue to take you places yourself. I don’t like to see you acting like you’re better than anyone else, especially someone who has done so much for you.”

      “She’s always nagging me!”

      “That’s part of her job. And she’s there when I’m not, so she sees things you do that need to be corrected.”

      Lesson learned: don’t say anything bad about Mom to Dad.

      That lesson also let me know how much he loved her. No matter how much she frustrated both of us, he loved her.

      He started once or twice a year going to something farther away, like Boston or Chicago, that kept him away for two or three days. Once he even stayed overnight in New York. It didn’t take long for those overnight trips to become more frequent.

      One of my friends said that maybe Dad was really having an affair. I couldn’t imagine my dad would do that, especially after the way he defended her. He seemed happier for a few days after he returned from one of his trips.

      It didn’t seem to matter to Mom whether or not Dad was happy. She didn’t notice his happiness. I wanted to hit her or something. I was worried that they’d get a divorce. I knew most of my friends whose parents had divorced lived with their mothers. I didn’t want to lose Dad. If I got to choose, I’d go with him.

      “Are you and Mom getting a divorce?” I asked him one day when we were at the zoo.

      “No! What ever put that idea in your head?”

      “You and Mom don’t seem happy. You’re always going away. Mom is always picking on you.”

      He laughed. “Mom is just going through some things. I guess she’s not terribly happy. As for my going away, that’s for work. I honestly need to learn things using the computer and new techniques for design. Things change. If I don’t go to the conferences, I wouldn’t know how to do some things. If I don’t keep up, my boss might think someone younger might be better. You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you?”

      “No.”

      He hugged me. “Lexi, I promise, I’ll always take care of you and your mother. I’ll make sure you’re provided for.”

      Well, then, my friend was wrong. I was glad about that. I just wished my mother would get satisfied with her life.

      I did get my way about that eventually. After years of complaining, Mom came home one day and announced she had a new job with a different TV station, and she’d be on-air. We went out to celebrate. It was good that Mom was finally happy.

      Life got back to normal after that, except something was going on with Dad. He had a conference in New York, and when he came home, he was kind of preoccupied. I knew they were talking about something after I went to bed, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, except when mom said something about not wanting to move and uproot me from school. I wondered if Dad was getting a new job.

      Nothing more was said after that late night discussion that I know of until about two weeks before Dad died. He came home and asked what we thought about moving to New York. His company was merging with one in New York City. Once again, Mom didn’t want me to have to change schools halfway through high school. No one asked me. I thought it would be great, but before I could say anything, Dad said we didn’t have to move, especially since Mom was now in a job she loved. He did say his commute would be longer.

      That was the way he was: Sacrificing for her. She got to be miserable and take it out on us while Dad quietly took on all of the blame without complaint. No one would know if he was annoyed, or if his life had become more difficult. He wouldn’t let on. But by that one statement, I knew. And I hated my mother for that. To me, her sins kept piling up against Dad.

      I longed to experience life in New York, but Mom’s priorities, as usual, came first. They were going to decide without me, just like always.

      Dad was really excited, though, to work in New York City and meet the big wigs in the city. He told me he might get a promotion and a pay raise if everything went well. His boss had told him that.

      “Will we move?” I asked.

      “Probably not,” he said. “If we do, it’ll be after you graduate from high school.”

      “Won’t that make it tough for you?”

      He shrugged as if it was nothing. “I can take the train. It’d be more relaxing than driving to work every day.”

      “Could we visit the city sometime? I’ve never been to New York except on a class trip, and then it was only the Statue of Liberty and Chinatown.”

      “I think I could arrange that. There’s a lot more to New York than that. And you’ll be able to see where I’ll be working. Maybe next weekend,” he said.

      That conversation was on Sunday, September 9. Who knew how much my life would change only two days later.

      Dad was friends with most of the people in the neighborhood. He was always there to lend a hand when someone needed help. He also had friends he kept in touch with from his college days as well as from when he was growing up.

      One friend he’d known all his life was a woman named Marty. I always thought that was a strange name for a woman, but Dad said it was a nickname she used because she didn’t like her real name. As I got older I wondered if it bothered Mom that Dad had a friend who was a woman. She always said it didn’t.

 

      Marty had a son named Christopher who was about seven years younger than I. That meant that, on the rare occasions they visited, he was too young for me to play with. He was a cute little kid, and I was nice to him, but there was very little that the two of us could do together.

      I hadn’t seen Marty and Chris in several years when Dad died. I had actually forgotten about them, so I was surprised when I saw Marty at the memorial service. I guess I shouldn’t have been. Any of his other friends who lived nearby were there.

      Boys and girls I was friends with came to the memorial service, too. Many of the girls cried more than I did. I guess I’d done a lot of my crying when I first heard the news, but as the weeks passed, it seemed less and less real, even though he wasn’t at home. The fact that we were never able to get a body – as far as I was concerned, we didn’t get anything – made it feel more like he’d disappeared than died. Maybe that was just easier for me to cope with. I could keep hope alive if I believed that somehow he’d escaped and was wandering around the country with no memory.

      My father died in the twin towers on September 11, 2001. Why he was there has never made sense to me, but he had been excited to go. He didn’t work in New York yet. Mom said he had gone there with his boss to help with a merger between the company he worked for and another company. I didn’t see why he needed to go. He worked in marketing and design. He wasn’t one of the big wheelers and dealers. But he went, and both he and his boss were killed.

      I forgot my excitement about us eventually moving to the city after I graduated high school. I wasn’t even disappointed that the disaster meant I would have to postpone my trip to New York City indefinitely. Since I wouldn’t be able to go with dad, I didn’t care if I ever went there. I just know that, even though he was killed, too, I’ll never forgive his boss for making Dad go.

      I’ll never forget the night before. Matt Granger, one of my friends’ brothers, had asked me out. I was thrilled. He was a college sophomore, and was going to be home the following weekend.  I didn’t even know he liked me. He was definitely one of the cute guys, and I knew him a little from being at my friend, Janine’s house.

      My happiness was crushed, however, when I announced to my mother that he’d asked me out.

      “No,” she said.

      “What? Why? I already told him I’d go out with him.”

      “Lexi, you’re sixteen. He’s in college. He’s too old for you.”

      “He’s only three years older.”

      “He’s in college. You’re in high school. Why would he want to go out with a high school girl?”           

      “Why? Do you think I’m so ugly no boy would want to be seen with me?”

      “Don’t take that tone, young lady.”

      She always said that when she had already decided not to give in.

      “Mom –”

      “What do you know about him?”

      “He’s Janine’s brother.”

      “And what do you have in common with a nineteen-year-old?”

      “I don’t know! That’s why you go out. To find out.”

      “That’s not the way you do it. You go out with someone because you have things in common. You’re too young. You should be dating high school boys and leave the college boys for when you’re in college.”

      “You make it sound like I’m going to marry him! It’s only a date.”

      “You heard your mother,” Dad said. I was stunned. I was still trying to plan how I could wheedle a yes from him.

      “But Dad –”

      “No. I have to wonder about a college boy who would date a high school girl, especially one he barely knows. It has nothing to do with your looks. Or maybe it has more to do with your looks than you realize. You’re a beautiful girl. We don’t want you getting in over your head.”

      “Dad, I’m not going to have sex on a first date,” I said. I couldn’t believe my fun-loving dad could be so old-fashioned. “Besides, I’ve had high school boys try, and they got nowhere.”

      Instead of them being proud of my level-headedness, both of them looked horrified. I hoped that look wouldn’t make them not let me go out with high school boys, either.

      “You are not going out with a college boy, and that’s final,” Dad said.

      “You’re going to make me call him and tell him I can’t go?”

      “Unless you’d prefer to be rude and wait until Saturday and have me tell him,” Dad said.

      “I hate you!” I said and dashed up the stairs to my room.

      When I had myself composed and had worked out just the right compromise between blaming my wretched parents and being inconsolable over having to break the date, I called Matt to give him the news. Despite my embarrassment, he was understanding and even reassured me, saying that in two years when I was a college freshman and he was a senior, he’d asked me out and they’d have nothing to say about it.

      The next morning my dad was gone before I ever got up for school. I never got the chance to say I was sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

      When I think about my dad, I remember all of the good things: the times we went places together, the way I could confide in him, the stories he used to tell me. I’m sure there were times he disciplined me, but I remember my mom doing most of the discipline things. When I think of the last time I was in his presence, all I can see is what a stubborn brat I was being. My parents were trying to protect me, even though I knew enough not to need protecting.

      I felt I didn’t deserve the consoling I received from family and friends. I had told him I hated him. I didn’t hate him, but now he’d never know that.

      The disaster at the towers was a disaster for the country. But for me it was personal. I was blissfully ignorant all day, only hearing about the events without knowing that was precisely where my dad had gone. Only when I came home from school did I discover that on that beautiful, cloudless late summer day, a nameless enemy had killed my father.

      “He was with Mr. Jackson at a meeting. They had gone up to the observatory in the South Tower,” my mother said. “There was no chance that they survived. There is no way he could’ve gotten out.”

      Mom sounded calm as she told me. Her eyes were red and she looked as miserable as I’ve ever seen anyone look, but she’d done her crying for the time being.

      “You’re sure he was there?”

      “Mr. Jackson managed to get a call through to his wife, which is a miracle. He called after the planes hit. He told her there was no way for them to get out unless helicopters could land on the roof. There was some hope of that happening at the time. He told her he loved her and started to say something about your dad when the line went dead. I guess your dad couldn’t get through on his phone.”

      “He didn’t have it,” I said.

      “What?”

      “I saw it on the edge of the sink this morning and put it on his night stand.”

      The news was full of the day’s disasters, but I couldn’t watch. My dad forgot his phone and couldn’t even call to tell Mom he loved us. Or her, anyway.

      We waited a little over a week before we did anything. By that time there was no chance that they would find more survivors, and it didn’t look like there were many bodies to find, especially ones from the upper stories. Dad hadn’t jumped. He would’ve gone down with the building and likely burned. If they found a finger or a shoe, it would be lucky. I did expect them to at least find his bones.

      Knowing there would be no body, we thought we might have a memorial service. That’s what Mrs. Jackson was doing.

      But we waited. Mom couldn’t bring herself to do it without some absolute proof. We both hoped that maybe what Mr. Jackson was about to tell his wife was that dad had managed to get out, or hadn’t gone up because he’d stopped somewhere. I at least hoped that, if he was in the building, he hadn’t gone up with his boss, and was one of those people taken to a hospital. He could be a John Doe, with no memory. At least, I hoped he could.

      It took several months. The people taken to the hospital had been identified, and Dad wasn’t one of them. The rubble had been sifted through.  They had asked Mom for something with his DNA. She gave them hair from his hairbrush.

      One day, an official brought Mom a package with all that was left of my father: His wallet: charred and dirty, with partially melted credit cards. I wept when I discovered what was in the package. How could that survive when nothing else had? It was something, I guess, something to let us know he had been here.

      I wondered how the wallet could have survived when his bones and other things hadn’t. There was no money in it. I couldn’t imagine that someone had stolen the money out of his wallet. Mom said it had probably burnt. But then, why hadn’t the wallet?

      I still have not been to New York. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the courage to go to see where my father died. But I wonder what he did on that last day. Did he stop in a coffee shop? Did he and his boss ever meet the people he was going to meet? I know he wasn’t in an elevator or on the point of impact floors. His boss called from the observation deck. Dad couldn’t call because he forgot his phone. He couldn’t borrow his boss’s phone because the cell towers went out while his boss was on the phone.      

 

      With her proof, Mom had all of the official documents drawn up. She was given a death certificate, and a few weeks later received a check from his life insurance company. She made preparations for a memorial service and had a plaque mounted on the family plot. I hadn’t even known there was a family plot.

      Dad’s family and friends along with Mom’s family and a lot of my friends came. Anyone who knew dad was there. What surprised me was when Marty came. I had thought Dad had said she lived out west, so I didn’t expect to see her.

      “Of course, I had to come,” she told Mom. “He was my oldest friend. I feel so bad for you.”

      “Don’t you live in Nevada?” I asked.

      “California,” she replied. “But it wouldn’t have mattered if we were in Siberia. I would have come.”

      She was concerned for Mom, asking if she needed anything, if there was anything she could do. Mom assured her we were fine, she had her job and things would be all right. We’d had enough time to get over the shock.

      Marty was upset. She wasn’t so much sad as – I don’t know. It was more like a guilty look than one of sorrow, as if she knew something. Silly, the way people can be misread. I guess everyone’s sorrow looks a little different. Maybe it was just that she wanted to do something for us, and there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t bring dad back, and that’s the only thing that would have helped.

      I would never get over the shock, I thought.

      When the day ended, the friends and family went back to their lives. I’ll never be able to go back to my life. Mine was forever changed on that day. I have to live with the shame of my last words to him. I can only hope he can forgive me, wherever he is.