A Fall of Marigolds (17 page)

I burst inside, but the rooms were empty. He wasn’t there. I ran to the landline in our kitchen and there was my cell phone on the counter by the window. I had set it there when I had used two hands to close the stubborn thing earlier that morning. The landline blinked with eight messages and my cell phone showed I had seven missed calls and six text messages.

Three calls from Kent on my cell.

One from him on the landline.

Two text messages from him.

With shaking hands I pressed the button to hear his voice mails.

The first call was at eight forty-eight and for just a moment I thought he had called me from his office, and not the restaurant. “Taryn, there’s been an explosion. Don’t come up the elevator. If you’re not already on your way, don’t come yet. Something’s happened. Call me back the minute you get this.”

The second one, at eight fifty-one, swept away the infant hope I had latched onto at the hospital: “It was a plane. A plane crashed into the floors below us. There’s a lot of smoke up here. God, I hope you weren’t in the elevator. Please call me back. I am calling the landline just in case.”

The third was at nine o’clock. “We can’t . . . we can’t use the stairs. I don’t know why I’m calling. I’m afraid you aren’t answering because . . . It’s getting hard to breathe. I need to let one of the waitresses use my phone to call her family. Please let me know you are safe.”

I crumpled to the floor. The text messages were sent at nine-oh-seven, nine fourteen, and nine twenty-seven.

“Did you get out? Text me!”

“Can’t get to the roof. Too hot. They are breaking windows. Are you safe?”

“Only one way out now. I love you, Taryn. I’m coming.”

I don’t know how long I lay on the floor with my cell phone clutched in my hand. Time ceases to have substance when you are flattened by despair.

At some point the phone trilled and I managed to lift it to my ear.

My mother’s relieved cries pierced the hollowness of my grief.

“And Kent is okay, too?” she asked.

“No. No, he’s not.”

Later I was glad that that was all I needed to say.

She didn’t ask a dozen questions, thank God. Just the one. “Oh, Taryn! Are you sure?”

My parents called Kent’s family, relieving me of that horrible job. And they called Celine in Paris and a few other close friends here in the States. While I was still sitting there, numb in the apartment, Celine’s brother and his wife arrived to take me home with them so that I would not spend my first night without Kent alone.

It took my parents three days to get to New York from Wisconsin. Kent’s parents had an easier time, arriving by train from Connecticut two days later.

But I don’t remember much about those first few weeks of my new life as a widow.

I do remember telling my parents and in-laws that I was pregnant, and that when I did tell them, the heavy cloak of mourning felt lighter. At least for a little while.

And when Celine returned from Paris many days later, I remembered that I had been holding a scarf the day Kent died. A very old and beautiful scarf, which didn’t belong to me, but that had saved my life nonetheless. I had no idea what had become of it.

What I remembered most acutely from those early days—and remembered still—was the burden of Kent thinking I was dead, because his calls and texts to me went unanswered.

Another unfortunate happenstance, that forgotten phone?

Or the willful hand of providence?

The magazine photograph, Kendal’s questioning eyes, the impending tenth anniversary, the calls from the reporters and producers, the compassionate stares from customers and neighbors who recognized me in the photo—all of these served to remind me that I didn’t know which it was.

I could have shut my mind and heart against that burning question except for Kendal, who still waited for an answer as to why I’d never told her I was across the street from the World Trade Center when the towers fell and her father was killed.

Celine had no doubt talked to Kendal, because she didn’t ask me about it again. And yet this unspoken subject between my daughter and me felt dark and heavy. I knew she had questions that needed answers.

After all these years, sweet Jesus, so did I.

Three days after the photo was published, on the morning of the ninth of September, Kendal asked me whether I was going to go with her and Kent’s parents to the memorial ceremony on the eleventh. It was obvious she very much wanted me to go.

I could tell her only that I was still thinking about it.

That same morning, after Kendal had gone to school and during a lull between morning and afternoon, the store’s phone rang. Celine and Leslie were with customers, so I answered it.

“The Heirloom Yard. This is Taryn. How can I help you?”

“Taryn Michaels?” I didn’t recognize the man’s voice. Another reporter perhaps?

“Yes. Can I help you?”

The man hesitated before he spoke again. “This is Mick Demetriou.”

I didn’t make the connection in my head. Not at first.

“I’m sorry, who?”

“Um, from the photo in
People
this week.”

For the second time that week I had to reach for a cutting table to steady myself. “The florist?”

“Yes. I’m so glad I finally found you. I have your scarf.”

CLARA

Manhattan

September 1911

THE
pier was a frenzy of activity, so much so that moving through the crowds, the gates, and the buildings kept me from concentrating fully on the fact that I was no longer in my in-between place, but back where life can seem like a madman’s carousel. Ethan’s tight arm around my waist and my hunched form earned us stares. People couldn’t help but gape at me, as if I were a just-apprehended fugitive or an ill person about to vomit or a mental patient bent on chasing after everyone with an ax. And this, too, was a distraction, albeit an unkind one.

When we finally emerged onto the street in Battery Park, Ethan insisted on hailing a motorized cab. He assisted me inside and shut the door, cutting out the street noises and some of the grip of the city. I leaned back against the squeaky leather seat as the motorcar lurched forward.

Ethan took my hand again, holding it with gentle reassurance. “The Hotel Albert. And take Broadway, please,” he said to the driver, and then he turned to me. “Big breaths, Clara.”

“I’m fine,” I whispered.

“You’re pale. Big breaths.”

I obeyed.

The driver turned onto Broadway and we headed north toward Greenwich Village and my father’s hotel. I hadn’t been to the Hotel Albert before—indeed, I hadn’t been to many places in the two weeks I had lived in Manhattan—but after a few minutes of my breathing and the cabbie driving and Ethan holding my hand, the scene out my window began to look familiar.

Too familiar.

I leaned forward in my seat, my gaze intent on the world outside my window. “Where are we going?”

“It’s all right, Clara. We won’t be going past Washington Place. We’re skirting it. If you want, just close your eyes and you can open them when we get there.”

I knew where we were. We were close. Something fell outside the window and I backed away from it into Ethan’s chest.

“It was just a bit of newspaper on the breeze. That’s all.”

But it looked like a swatch of ash and Ethan knew it. “We’re three blocks away. You can’t see the building from here.”

I nodded, attempting to press down the heavy weight in my chest, wanting to crush it with everything I had in me. “Why does it have to be like this?” I murmured.

“It will only be so today. The next time you come, it will be easier. And the time after that, easier still.”

I took him at his word and sat back against the seat, willing the panic that seemed on the edge of consuming me to dissipate. A few minutes later the cab turned left on Tenth, a street I wasn’t familiar with. And then we were pulling up alongside the curb and the Hotel Albert loomed above me, twelve stories of brick and granite.

Ethan handed the driver money before I could even think of reaching into my handbag. Then he got out of the car and came around to my side, opening my door and extending his hand to me.

I stepped out slowly, breathing deeply as Ethan had instructed me, and when my feet were firmly on the pavement I gazed up at the hotel. It looked a lot like the Asch Building.

“They all look the same,” I whispered.

“But they’re not.” Ethan closed the cab door and the car pulled away from the curb. “Would you like me to escort you inside?”

I shook my head. “I can make it.” But as soon as I said it I was keenly aware of how much Ethan had done for me that morning. I knew I wouldn’t be standing there had it not been for him. “I am so very grateful for your help. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You just did.” He smiled at me. And then he raised his hand, hesitated, raised it again, and tucked a fallen wisp of hair back under my hat.

His touch unnerved me for only a moment as I realized my cowering and clutching certainly had to have taken their toll on my appearance. “Oh, my goodness. I must look a fright!” I reached into my handbag for a mirror but could not find one.

“You look lovely.”

“I’ve forgotten my mirror!”

“Clara, you look fine.”

I pinched my cheeks and licked my lips.

Again he smiled at me. “I will come back for you at two. And I will meet you in the lobby.”

“Where will you go?”

“It’s Manhattan. I will find a place to haunt for two hours. Don’t worry.”

I was suddenly sad to think of him leaving me, but I also knew I wanted to meet my father alone.

He tipped his hat and started to walk away, but he turned back and I knew he was waiting for me to walk inside the hotel and complete my journey. I took a step toward the hotel entry. A uniformed porter opened the door for me as he greeted me warmly.

And then I was inside.

I hadn’t given much thought to what I would say to my father or what he might say to me. Since I had gotten his letter on Monday I’d been intent solely on getting myself to the hotel. Now that I was making my way through the richly appointed lobby, it occurred to me that my reason for staying on the island had been dealt a blow even as I closed the distance to the dining room doors. I was off the island. I was in Manhattan. I was three blocks away from where hell had opened up right in front of me. And I was able to keep walking. An unfamiliar confidence seemed to rise up from a slumbering place inside me.

My father was seated near a window and he rose when the waiter who’d met me at the dining room entrance brought me to him. He looked just as he had six months earlier, when he and my mother had come to take me home after the fire and were unsuccessful. I wondered whether I looked the same to him.

“Clara!” He took me into his arms and kissed me on the cheek. I could smell the country air on him, and his brand of tobacco, and even a hint of my mother’s cologne, from when she had hugged him good-bye.

“Hello, Father.”

He stepped back from me with his hands still on my shoulders. “You came!”

“You . . . you invited me.”

“But I wasn’t sure you’d come. Henrietta thought you might not.”

I smiled nervously. “Well, here I am. Shall we sit?”

“Of course, of course.”

The waiter, who had idled by while my father greeted me, now pulled out my chair, and as I took my seat I mentally prepared myself for what else Henrietta might have said.

“So how is everyone?” I said. The waiter handed me a menu and I thanked him. “Mother doing well?”

“Everyone is fine. We’re wondering how you are. We’ve been worried actually. I think I mentioned that in my letter.”

I took a sip of water from the cut-crystal glass in front of me. A tiny spiral of lemon slice sparkled in it. “You did. But I am well, as you can see.”

He folded his hands and regarded me, considering me the way I’d seen him study a confounding symptom. “You look wonderful, certainly. But . . . Henrietta mentioned you’d seemed melancholy in your letters to her. And that’s why you hadn’t been off the island since you arrived. Not even once.”

I set the glass down carefully. “Henrietta mentioned nothing of these concerns in her letters to me.”

“But you haven’t been off the island until today. Isn’t that right?” I could see the care in his eyes, how much it pained him to ask me this.

“I haven’t. But I am here today.”

“But it took effort to come, didn’t it? I can see how hard it was.”

One of the benefits of working closely alongside someone for so many years is that you are in tune with their unsaid thoughts and the language of their body. My father read the account of my travail to get to him like he had read the menu at his elbow.

“It was a little difficult, yes. But I managed it, Father. A friend from the hospital came with me to make sure I got here.”

Again he studied my face, searching it for clues as to what I was not telling him. There had to be more; he could sense that much.

As I in turn studied him, I knew that I could probably trust him with the details of Edward’s influence on my life. Having told Dolly, Ethan, and even Andrew Gwynn about losing Edward, I now realized no one had thought me silly for falling in love with a man I barely knew; nor had anyone ridiculed me for grieving his death the way I had.

But it also seemed that every time I shared Edward’s story with someone, his hold on me diminished a little. And I didn’t want him to disappear from me; I had so little of him to hold on to.

“I had a rough time for a while, Father. I will admit that. And the horror of the fire took . . . took a long time to ease into something I could live with. But I am not the same person I was the last time you saw me.”

“So, perhaps you are thinking it is time to move on? Seek another post?”

I shifted in my chair. “I haven’t been looking for another post. I like working on Ellis.”

“But it seems to have kept you from moving on from the fire, Clara. At least, it looks that way to us.”

“Us?”

“Your mother and I, and Henrietta. We all see it in your letters. Henrietta especially so. I agree that you are not the same girl you were when we saw you after the fire, but you’re not the same girl who left home for nursing school, either. You’ve changed, Clara.”

“Everybody changes.”

He nodded. “Of course they do. But not all change is for the good.”

The moment these words were out of his mouth, I heard echoes of the very same thing I had said to Ethan only a few days earlier.

“You seem sad,” he went on. “And that makes us sad. I think you need to get out of New York altogether. We all do.”

For a moment I could not find my voice. When I did, my words surprised me. “I am a grown woman, Father. I make my own choices about where I will live and work. Just as you made yours when you became an adult.”

I had never spoken to my father like that before. It was on the tip of my tongue to quickly apologize, but he spoke before I could.

“You are absolutely right. I am not telling you what to do. I am suggesting something to you, Clara, because I love you and I can see your life from a perspective that you cannot. You witnessed something . . . horrific. More horrific than you are telling me. I think staying in New York, staying on Ellis, is asking too much of yourself.”

“But New York is where I want to be!”

“This is where you
wanted
to be. I don’t think it’s the same place that you’d dreamed of. Not now.”

The waiter appeared then, but he saw we were engaged in a heated discussion and scurried away.

I looked directly at my father. “I am not coming back to Pennsylvania.”

“I’m not suggesting you do.”

A second of silence hung between us.

“You’re not?”

“No. I know you love the city and I know our quiet life back home is not what you want out of life. But there are other places besides New York, Clara.”

He had come to New York to propose something to me. That was clear to me now. “What are you suggesting?”

“I’ve a friend who’s a professor at a medical school, who will be traveling to Edinburgh for a year on a research project at the university there. His wife is in fragile health and needs nursing care around the clock. He wants to hire a nurse to go with them to Scotland. You would have every other weekend off. And you’d be able to travel with them to sightsee the rest of the British Isles, as well as the Continent. I told him I would ask you about it. The post is yours if you want it.”

“Edinburgh?” That one word encompassed a dozen questions. My father seemed to discern them all.

“I know you’ve longed to see Europe, as much as you wanted to see New York. Here is your chance. It’s only for a year. When they come back to the States you can see where you want to go next. They are nice people. She is especially kind, despite her many health problems. And as sad as your mother and I would be to have you so far away, it would get you off that island.”

The thought of leaving Ellis for good was both exhilarating and terrifying. I could barely speak.

“Promise me you will think about it? You don’t need to decide for a week or so. They leave the first week in October.”

“I promise I will think about it.”

He smiled, reached across the table, and covered my hand with his. “I am so glad to hear you say that. And I’m so glad you came today. I’m sure it was harder than you’ve let on.”

I smiled back, unwilling to confirm or deny it.

He let go and we each reached for our menus.