The Woman Who Wasn’t There (20 page)

Tania shook her head. Her eyes darkened, and her lip curled in
disappointment. Or was it disdain? Linda recognized the look. That was Tania when she wasn’t getting her way. She braced for the inevitable tongue-lashing.

“Don’t be such a chicken,” Tania said, mocking her. “You’re scared! Ha! Why should
you
be scared? I’m the one who went through hell. All you have to do is listen to a tape with me.”

Naturally, Tania was right. It was times like this that Linda didn’t even feel worthy of calling herself a survivor. She hadn’t been burned or nearly lost an arm, the way that Tania had. Nor had she lost a loved one in the attack. Who was she to refuse her friend who had endured so much and asked so little? Besides, she could never hear enough about what took place inside the towers. It was a morbid curiosity that her therapist said was a common symptom of survivor’s guilt. If she listened to the tape, she would hear plenty of what went on, perhaps more than she had ever heard before. And, after all, she felt privileged, special, to be the one who Tania had picked to share such a crucial phase of her healing. How could she be so weak when Tania was so strong? Linda felt ashamed.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, hugging Tania. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m such a wimp. I’d do anything for you. You know that. Please forgive me. Come on now, let’s get started with your homework.”

Linda heard the door lock behind her as she walked into Tania’s apartment. It was a beautiful space, open and airy, with floor-to-ceiling windows and dramatic skyline views. Linda was always surprised by how barren it was. Some of the survivors believed the spartan décor was Tania’s way of not committing fully to a new life. Tania jokingly referred to her furnishings as “shabby chic.” The living room was bare except for a flat-screen TV, two beach chairs, and a couple of bookshelves, and the bedroom had air mattresses rather than a bed. The only item on the walls was a framed photograph of Welles Crowther, in the space where Tania had her desk and computer. Tania had plenty of belongings, she had told Linda: rooms full of furniture from the Upper East Side apartment, keepsakes from her extensive travels
around the world, and albums filled with family pictures. But her past was stored at the house in Amagansett because she still couldn’t bear to be surrounded by constant reminders of Dave.

While Tania boiled water for tea, Linda sat on a stool at the breakfast bar and made small talk. The night was clear, and Rockefeller Center twinkled in the distance. Linda saw the tape recorder on a lamp table a few feet away. A shiver ran through her, but she was determined not to let Tania see her squirm. She couldn’t disappoint her friend by backing out, not again, now that they had come this close. The teapot whistled. Tania poured two cups of tea. Linda held hers to her lips. The warmth of the cup in her hands felt good, and swirls of steam moistened her face, soothing her for a moment. If only she could end the evening here, with the wonderful, warm tea and the good company of her best friend. That would be plenty for her.

Tania walked to the tape recorder.

“Ready?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Ready,” Linda said, putting her cup down on the counter and clasping her shaking hands in her lap.

Tania snapped on the recorder, and Linda sucked down a deep breath. The tape began with Tania talking about getting up on that morning with Dave in their Madison Avenue loft. It is sunny outside, but the loft is still chilly from the cold nighttime air. She starts the coffee, and Dave pulls out his favorite frying pan and cooks eggs, two sunny-side up for her, three over easy for him. They share sections of the newspaper as they wipe up the last of their eggs with slices of toast and gulp down the last sips of coffee. While she washes the breakfast dishes, he walks their golden retriever, Elvis. Dave returns, and they shower together, then dress and take the subway downtown to their World Trade Center offices, arriving at just after seven thirty. In a calm voice, Tania describes how, around an hour later, Dave calls her office to ask if she’ll join him for coffee in the concourse. It has become a sort of ritual for them, sneaking in a few more minutes together before launching into the workday. But on this morning, she has an early meeting and can’t make it, so they make plans for dinner, say their I-love-yous, and hang up.

Moments later, the first plane slashes through the north tower. She tries calling Dave but each time gets a fast busy signal and realizes the phones must be out. As she prays for Dave, she sees bodies falling from the north tower. The voice on the tape is quivering. People in the south tower are frightened and confused, Tania says. Should they remain in the building or go? The security staff announces that everyone should stay put; the south tower is secure and safer than the street. She tries to calm her staff, but people are frightened, so she orders them to follow her down the stairs to the seventy-eighth-floor sky lobby, where they can all catch an express elevator to the concourse.

Tania was staring straight ahead and rocking back and forth in her chair.

“Tania, honey, are you okay?” Linda asked. “Tania?”

Tania was in a trance. Linda braced herself. She had heard Tania’s story before, but only in bits and pieces and never in so much detail. She wanted to stop the tape, both because she was afraid to hear any more, and primarily for Tania’s sake. Yet she didn’t dare take charge in that way. Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of the exercise? Tania wouldn’t be pleased. The next sound on the recording is Tania sobbing; gut-wrenching sobs that go on for several minutes. Linda could hardly stand it. Her heart rate took off, and tears filled her eyes. She looked over at Tania, who was still rocking and now sweating profusely. She took Tania’s hand. It was limp and soaking wet. She was relieved to hear next the soothing voice of the therapist: “It’s okay, Tania. I’m right here with you. Take a breath, Tania. Take a deep breath.”

After a short silence Tania is speaking again on the tape. Her voice is weak and small. “I’m afraid,” she whimpers. “I’m so afraid.” Tania says she sees a plane coming toward the windows in the sky lobby. A woman is screaming, “Another plane is coming! Another plane is coming!” Dozens of people are in the lobby, and no one seems to know what to do. The building jerks violently, and the sky lobby is bathed in a blinding white light as the silver wing of a plane slices through it. A rolling fireball is followed by a riotous shock wave. The scene in the sky lobby is surreal, and she can hardly grasp what is happening.
Where is her assistant? Where is Dave? What will Elvis do without her? She can’t die. She won’t die. Not here. Not like this.

Now, while Linda looked on, Tania began sobbing inconsolably. Primal, guttural sobs racked her body. She climbed out of her chair. Hunched over, almost as if she were trying to climb back into herself, she began pacing around the apartment. Tears and sweat poured off her face, like water from a sponge. Her hair and her shirt were drenched. She seemed to have trouble breathing. Linda followed in her footsteps, terrified, trying to console her friend.

“Tania, can you hear me?” she asked. “Tania, are you all right? Tania?”

But it was as if Tania’s consciousness had left her traumatized body. The tape continued to roll.

Tania is quiet for a moment but then lets out a visceral scream. She says she is looking at the lifeless body of her secretary, who is nearly decapitated. “She has no head!” she cries. “Oh my God! Oh my God! I’m going to die. It’s dark! I can’t breathe! My skin is burning! Oh my God. They’re all dead. Everyone is dead!”

Tania was walking back and forth across the living room, dazed and gasping for breath. Linda felt so helpless, but her explicit instructions from Tania had been not to interrupt the exercise, no matter how desperate things got. Linda knew what was coming next on the tape. She didn’t think she could stand to hear Tania speak of it again, but she had to be strong for her friend—that was her role. From the first time Tania had told her about the dying man with the wedding ring, Linda had not been able to get him out of her mind, as if she had been the one who’d encountered him in the sky lobby. There were nights she saw him in her dreams, smelled his burning hair, heard his pleading voice. She took a deep breath and waited.

Tania is describing climbing over burned bodies and severed body parts. Her voice is flat on this part of the recording. Perhaps she is in shock. Who wouldn’t be? As she crawls over the snarl of slaughtered men and women, desperately searching for a way out, she notices a slight movement in the carnage. He is unrecognizable as a man. His face and body are charred black, and his skin is smoking. He has a
few breaths left at most. She pauses, and he reaches for her. “Please,” he says, his voice barely audible. “Please promise me you’ll give this to my wife.” With that, the man places his wedding ring in her good hand.

“I promise I will,” she says.

She then tells how she stood up and could barely fight the assault of the searing fires and bitter smoke, when, just when it seemed impossible, she sees a man holding a red bandanna over his face. His commanding voice and penetrating eyes give her strength. “Please don’t leave me,” she says. With that, the tape snapped off.

Linda looked at Tania, who was now standing, slumped, still. She looked confused and bedraggled. Her neck was blotched with bright red hives. Her shoulders drooped with exhaustion, and large half-moons of sweat had bled under the arms of her blouse. “What happened?” she asked, bewildered.

Linda went to the kitchen and made Tania a cup of tea. They sat together in silence for what seemed like a long while. Finally, Linda tucked her friend into bed and prepared to catch the last train home to Hoboken. But before she could get away, Tania made one last request. She asked Linda to promise that they could listen to the tape again tomorrow. “Please, Linda,” she said. “I need to do this.”

“Of course,” Linda said. “I’ll be here right after work.”

On the train ride home, Linda suffered the first panic attack she’d had in years. As the PATH train dipped into the dark tunnel running under the Hudson, and the lights of the city disappeared, she suddenly felt as if she were suffocating. That awful, familiar tingling crept up her torso and engulfed her head. Her vision blurred, and her breathing got shallower and shallower. She was overcome with terror and fought the urge to get up and run. Where was there to go? She was trapped, just the way those poor people who had hurled themselves from the top floors of the towers had been trapped.

“You all right, ma’am?” the conductor asked. Linda nodded, but the nod was a lie. Being Tania’s friend was a hard job, and Linda was weary. Everything was always about Tania. What Tania wanted. What Tania needed. How Tania felt. For three years, she had catered
to Tania’s every whim. She had allowed Tania’s cruelties to go unchecked and accepted her criticisms without pushing back. Because she didn’t want to lose the friendship. How much longer could she devote that kind of time and energy to Tania, while disregarding her own needs? She needed to maintain her sobriety so that she could have the future she dreamed of, with a husband and children and all of those things that came with a healthy family life. How would she ever be able to move forward if she was constantly allowing Tania to pull her back to the past she wanted to forget? Linda tried to slow her breathing, to steady her hands, to blot out the ghastly images crossing her mind. The fifteen-minute ride was torture. When the train finally pulled into her station, she dragged herself the two blocks home.

That night, Linda dreamed of planes crashing into buildings and bodies falling out of the sky.

F
or nearly five years, Brendan Chellis had listened to Tania’s stories, and she, his. Brendan had been running late on the morning of September 11 and was walking through the revolving doors into the north tower, headed for his thirtieth-floor office at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, when the first plane hit. He froze as the blast blew down the elevator shafts, shooting balls of fire into the lobby, and he turned and ran just as it exploded.

As one of the original members of the inaugural online forum, Brendan had followed Tania to the Survivors’ Network, and they’d spent plenty of time together. For a long time, he had noticed slight discrepancies in the things she told him. Little things, here and there, that seemed insignificant until you added them all up. Several times he held himself back from asking her, Which was it, had Dave been her fiancé or her husband? She had referred to him in both ways. Chellis always chalked up the inconsistencies to trauma or a misunderstanding on his part. But late one night in the spring of 2007, just as he was about to go to bed, something possessed him to search the name David
online. He had scolded himself as he typed the name into the computer. It almost seemed like a breach of Tania’s privacy.

Chellis didn’t have any trouble finding out about David
. The man existed, all right, and he had died in the terrorist attack, just as Tania said. He had been a popular young man. There were websites and memorial forums dedicated to him, and he had been the subject of numerous newspaper stories in his hometown. Reporters and friends had mined his life story, and his biography was full of details
from grammar school to his wish to attend Harvard for a master’s degree. The sites and the stories covered the entire spectrum of Dave’s celebrated life with one exception: there was no mention of a wife or a fiancée named Tania.