The Woman Who Wasn’t There (22 page)

“Just be my friend,” Tania said through her tears.

“Of course, Tania. I’ll always be here for you. No matter what.”

Linda promised to hold down the fort while Tania attended the funeral, and she promptly sent off an email to everyone on the network’s mailing list. Under the subject line “Very Sad News,” she wrote: “I wanted to let everyone know that Tania Head’s (chair/ president of the WTC Survivors’ Network) brother Jay lost his battle
to cancer last Wednesday. She is out in California with her family and I am sure would appreciate everyone’s prayers for her and her family. Godspeed—we love you, Tania!”

Well wishes poured into the network. Tania’s survivor friends took the news hard. They hadn’t even known her brother was ill, and they couldn’t fathom why such a beautiful person had to endure so much loss. When Tania got back to New York a week later, she told Linda that her whole family had gathered for the service, and everyone took turns telling stories about Jay. People had flown in from Spain and England to pay their respects. It was a touching tribute, and she was happy to have been there, but she was glad to be back home in New York, where she could lose herself in her work.

Tania quickly immersed herself in planning for the sixth anniversary, but her friends noticed something different about her. She was irritable and ornery almost all of the time, and she seemed to be trying to distance herself from the others. As always, Linda was on the receiving end of Tania’s moods, and, as always, she tolerated the hurt that came with Tania’s razor-sharp words. She worried that, between regurgitating September 11 during her therapy sessions, and now losing her brother, Tania was headed for a nervous breakdown.

In early September, her worry turned to panic.

Shortly after returning from California, Tania had told Linda that Merrill Lynch was arranging for her to meet with the families of eleven of her coworkers who’d died in the towers. Over the years, she had been besieged with requests to meet the families, and she’d always refused. She knew what they wanted—details about the last moments of their loved ones’ lives—and she had always resolved that they didn’t really want to know what she knew. Those images had nearly destroyed her life, and she still couldn’t get through a night without closing her eyes and seeing a charred or broken body. How could sharing those terrible memories possibly help them? But for some reason—maybe it was having recently lost her brother—this year she had agreed.

Tania said that the meeting was scheduled for the first Saturday
in September at the St. Regis Hotel on Park Avenue. Linda was worried about the effect it would have on her friend. “Call me if you need me,” she said. “Call me if you need anything at all.” At ten thirty that morning, Linda’s phone rang. Tania was on the other end, sobbing. Coming to the St. Regis had been a mistake, she said. She had barely made it into the room at the hotel when the family members started bombarding her with questions. The atmosphere felt almost ghoulish, and she’d started to panic and look for the way out. When she wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, they turned on her, yelling and screaming at her that she had no right to withhold what she knew.

“Linda, I need you!” she cried. “These people are so mean to me. They’re screaming at me. I need you to come right now.”

“Stay right where you are,” Linda said. “I’m on my way.”

Linda flew out of her apartment. She hailed a cab and went directly to the St. Regis, where she found Tania curled in a ball on the sidewalk outside the hotel.

“Oh my God!” she cried, leaping out of the taxi and running to her friend. “Tania! Tania?”

Tania didn’t seem to hear. She rocked back and forth, crying and shaking. “I tried to get them out,” she wailed. “I tried to save them. I tried. Really I did. I didn’t want them to die.”

Linda was terrified. Tania was having flashbacks, just as she had during the flooding exercises. Linda pulled a wad of tissues from her purse and mopped Tania’s forehead. She needed to get her inside, to get help. She took Tania’s arm and gently coaxed her to her feet. Guiding her into the hotel lobby, she put her in a chair and marched to the front desk, demanding to know where the Merrill Lynch meeting was taking place. She was going to give those people a piece of her mind. How dare they treat her friend like that? Didn’t they understand what she had been through?

The desk clerk looked baffled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Before she had time to think of a retort, Linda saw Tania beckoning her. The poor woman looked desperate. Linda threw
up her hands and went to her. “It’s going to be okay, Tania,” she said, speaking quietly and reassuringly. “No one can hurt you now. I’m here with you.”

“I want to go to Dave,” Tania said, her voice thin and wobbly.

Linda knew what that meant. During Tania’s lowest moments, she often visited the Marsh & McLennan Memorial Wall outside the company headquarters in midtown. The glass wall was etched with the names of the 295 people the company lost on September 11. Tania would go there and sit on the granite bench and be with Dave. It always seemed to comfort her.

Linda took Tania’s hand, and they walked the ten blocks to the memorial wall. They stood together in the plaza, and Tania brushed her hand over Dave’s name. Before long, her tears stopped, and she seemed to be calming down. Linda stroked her friend’s hair, knowing that Dave was bringing her peace.

“You can go home now, Linda,” Tania said slowly. “I’m going to be all right.”

Linda felt nauseous all the way home. When would enough ever be enough for her poor, tortured friend? she wondered. How could those people have been so mean to Tania? How could they have attacked her that way?

It was midafternoon when she finally got back to her apartment. Her telephone answering machine was blinking with a message. A reporter from the
New York Times
had called. They were doing a story on her friend, Tania Head, he said. Would she please give him a call?

E
very year, on the eve of the anniversary, Tania threw a party. Close friends gathered on the rooftop of her Manhattan apartment building to celebrate life before a somber day dedicated to reflection. It was supposed to be a festive event, and it always was. Dozens of people from the network, along with survivors from the Oklahoma City bombing, who in a show of solidarity traveled to ground zero every September, packed into the glass-enclosed party room overlooking Central Park. Tania was always the perfect host, mingling among the guests, filling empty wineglasses, and making sure that everyone’s plate was piled high with picnic food. Like Linda always said, if a tragedy could spawn a celebrity, Tania was the World Trade Center superstar. It was never more evident than at her annual gathering, when guests angled to have a moment with her, and she basked in the attention.

This year was different.

The days leading up to the sixth anniversary were a spiral of emotion for Tania. She was increasingly agitated and withdrawn, snapping orders at people and sometimes not showing up where she was supposed to be. She often didn’t take phone calls or return emails, and she wouldn’t answer her door, even though it was obvious from the murmur of the TV that she was home. She was phoning her survivor friends three and four times a day, complaining that the
New York Times
reporter was stalking her for a story. As often as Tania had made it clear that she wasn’t interested, she said—especially with her brother’s death, and the anniversary looming—he was still snooping
around, and she couldn’t understand it. When Linda mentioned that a
Times
reporter had left her a message, Tania flew into a rage and made her swear not to return the call.

The whole thing confused Linda. She wondered why Tania was so upset, when she had certainly talked to reporters before. But even more perplexing was that, the way Tania told it, the
Times
reporter was circling around her like a blood-smelling shark. How could he be so insensitive, so cruel? Linda wondered. He might as well be pulling on the wings of a wounded bird. What the hell for? A fucking anniversary story?

Each time the
Times
called, Tania seemed to take another step backward. She began calling Richard Zimbler and Lori Mogol, her friends on the board, sometimes at two and three o’clock in the morning, carrying on about the invasion of her privacy. She complained bitterly that she felt the newspaper was on some kind of vendetta. They were probably piqued because she had changed her mind and backed out of interviews, she said. Now the reporter wouldn’t stop calling, asking the same questions she’d already refused to answer.
What was Dave’s last name? Where was he from? How had they met and when?
She didn’t understand his insistence that she answer personal questions. Why did Dave’s last name matter? He was her husband, and he was dead. End of story. None of the other reporters had pushed her to identify him—especially after she’d explained that his parents wanted to protect his privacy and their privacy. She had never gone against the wishes of her in-laws, and she wouldn’t now, not even if the reporter called a hundred times a day.

By the night of the party, she was crippled with anxiety. While her guests were eating and drinking and admiring the sprawling view of the city, she was hunched alone in a corner outside on the terrace, clutching her cell phone. Every time someone approached her, she glowered and waved the person away. The guests began whispering among themselves:

“What’s wrong with Tania?”

“It must be the anniversary.”

“What can we do to help? Should we leave?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Linda said.

If ever there was a steadfast friend, it was Linda. Tania’s cruelty toward her just kept escalating, yet she somehow managed to smile through the sarcasm and the mean jokes. Tania criticized her endlessly, from her choice of clothes, to the red color of her lipstick, to the way she wore her long, platinum blonde hair. Just that day, when she arrived early to help prepare for the party, Tania looked her over and asked with a sardonic grin, “Blondie, you’re not really going to wear that tonight, are you?” Like all of the other times, Linda shook it off. She never knew whether she would find Tania the sweet, loving friend or her evil twin, and she’d learned to handle both. Some of the other survivors had criticized her for being a doormat for Tania and for fawning over her, but Linda didn’t care what the others thought. As long as Tania needed her, she was going to be there. That’s what friends did.

“Tania, honey, what’s going on?” she asked, as Tania huddled in the corner of the terrace by herself.

Tania waved Linda away. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she hissed.

“Did they call again?” Linda asked. Tania glared at her and didn’t answer. Speaking tentatively, Linda tried again. “Sweetie? Is that what it is? Did they just call?”

Linda sidled up to Tania and tried to console her, but Tania swatted at her. “Get away!” Tania cried. “Don’t you know when to give up?”

Linda just sat there, watching Tania stare at her phone.

“Yes,” Tania said finally. The reporter called again, and she’d hung up when she heard his voice. She barely had time to snap her cell phone shut when it rang again, but she let it go to voice mail. Tania was trembling. She couldn’t take any more, she said, her thin lips quivering. She’d had it.

“Why are they
doing
this to me?” she wailed, while startled guests tried to act as if they hadn’t heard her. “They’re harassing me. After all I’ve been through, and they’re harassing me!”

“What can I do to help, honey?” Linda asked, reaching for Tania’s hand a second time.

“Leave me alone!” Tania cried, pounding her fist on her thigh. “Just leave me alone! I have to figure this out!”

Janice watched the scene between Tania and Linda from across the terrace. She had never seen Tania so hostile and recalcitrant. Watching her rocking back and forth, with her teeth clenched and her hand balled in a fist, she worried that Tania was finally cracking under the pressure.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she approached Linda and Tania.

Linda explained about the
Times
and how aggressive the reporter had been calling Tania several times a day, pummeling her with questions, even after she had cancelled interviews and told them she was no longer interested in participating in their story. Tania was certain that he would call again any minute, and she was petrified.

“They’re harassing her, Janice!” Linda said. “We’ve got to do something.”

The survivors were always more susceptible to depression around the time of the anniversary, when images of the planes hitting the towers and the buildings falling down were replayed in the media and the whole world refocused its attention on the attacks. People who suffered from trauma often reacted in unpredictable ways, and Tania had experienced significant setbacks recently, such as the loss of her brother, and that terrible confrontation at the St. Regis Hotel with the angry families of her former coworkers. Her reaction to the reporter’s phone calls was bizarre, Janice thought, until you took into consideration all of the other feelings she was coping with. Her overreaction was probably a culmination of emotions stemming from all of those things. Janice had always been Tania’s voice of reason, and there was never a time she hadn’t been able to reassure and console her back to composure. She was confident that this time would be no different.

Rubbing Tania’s back, Janice spoke softly. “Why don’t you just tell him that you’ll talk to him after the anniversary is over?” she asked. “Just explain that this is a stressful time, and you’ll be glad to call him when you’re feeling better.”

Tania erupted. “Because I don’t want to talk to him, and I’m not
going to talk to him,” she said, seething. “Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

She had never snapped at Janice before. She was always reverential, in the way that a patient is with a counselor, or a child is with a parent. Her enmity told Janice that the woman was at her breaking point, and she had to do whatever she could to protect her.