We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer (12 page)

It was 7:15 p.m., the evening of a very long day. It was time to leave the damaged city behind, time to figure out why he was still alive, to figure out a reason for any of what had happened to the world that fateful—and fatal—day.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Finally… Home

“Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward,

and freedom will be defended.”

~ President George W. Bush

(September 11, 2001)

It wasn’t the same city anymore. It was early September, still high tourist season, but there was no noise, no hustling, no crowds. There was very little traffic. A few pedestrians ambled along the sidewalks, but they walked aimlessly. Pasquale watched out the car window with the unreal sense of watching refugees.

Domenica, Phil’s friend, had to work her way around and through blocked-off streets, taking any street that allowed passage. Every once in a while, they passed small gatherings of people, all of whom looked stunned. When their car passed, the confused hordes would turn and stare at them, almost as if they’d never seen a car before. Nobody bothered to hail a cab, and business meetings and dinner dates had lost their significance; the hustle and bustle that New York had always been known for seemed…pointless and halted. Pasquale had never seen New York like that, nor New Yorkers.

As they drove further uptown, they noticed fewer and fewer people along the walks and no children at all. At 7:00 p.m., those very same streets would usually have been filled with traffic, horns, and noise, but now they were eerily clear and silent.

They got over the Tappan Zee Bridge rather easily, as they were the only car. It was still daylight, but there was no traffic going anywhere. It reminded Pasquale of the times when he’d had to work late or had been out with friends and had ventured home in the middle of the night. There was no one on the road; the empty stretches of asphalt across the Tappan Zee Bridge were yet another eerie and bizarre part of the day.

He lay in the back of the car with his leg stretched across the seat. The pain wasn’t bad, as long as he didn’t have to put his weight on his injured foot. What was bad was the anticipation and the waiting. He
needed
to be home. What he needed most of all was to feel that something was normal somewhere, even if he could only find that in his own back yard.

Domenica turned at his street in River Vale. Cars were lined down both sides of the road and up into his driveway, with only enough space left for them to pull in. He bent to look out the window. It was all so every day: the big white colonial and the trees. People stood along the drive and on the porch. His heart began beating in a fierce rhythm, as if he were returning home after years away.

The car door opened, and Louise was there, leaning toward him, throwing her arms around him. She cried, and he followed suit. To feel her in his arms again—that wonderful, big belly—was beyond anything he’d ever felt in his life. Touching her hair, kissing her face, and feeling her skin against his was…Heaven. It was a step back into his life, yet somehow into a new life at the same time.

Brittany, their dog, leapt into the car, pushing Louise aside, licking his face relentlessly with her little pink terrier tongue. They laughed, and the sound was so familiar, but it was also impossible. He didn’t want to let Louise go as she backed out to make room for him to slide across the seat.

He got out and stood on his crutches, ready to face everyone. There were so many people there, so many faces wearing smiles and tears. People yelled things at him. It was real joy all around. Pasquale felt that, to be sure, but there was also something else. As if looking at his life through a haze of smoke, he saw where he’d come from, back in Manhattan. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to shake very quickly—not all of that.

“I love you,” he said to Louise, holding her close for just a minute more.

“I love you too,” she said, her small, lovely face turned up to him.

They stood there crying, leaning on one another. When he could walk, could hold his head up, could bear to let go of Louise, he wanted to see and touch everyone. He shoved the crutches up under his arms and got going, albeit at an awkward pace. Louise helped him, not wanting to trust that he could take care of himself just yet.

When he raised his head, he saw his father standing in the middle of the walk, a quiet, man, just waiting. Pasquale couldn’t remember the last time his father had hugged him.
That hugging stuff is for women. Grown men should just know.
But when his father came toward him, Pasquale limped forward. He saw the tears. He saw his father’s strong arms go wide, and in the next instant, they were around him. Pasquale bowed his head to his father’s, and the two stood there and hugged.

When Ugo stepped back, he grabbed Pasquale’s face and kissed him. “Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes still damp.

Pasquale nodded, unable to speak.

Then his mother’s arms were around him. Antonia held him, then pushed him back and looked hard at his face. “You eat anything? Come on. Come inside! I’ll make you something to eat.”

He could have burst with laughter. That was what a homecoming was about. She had to feed him, take care of him, to see that her little boy, all grown up, didn’t go hungry. As if all the rest didn’t matter, as if it had never happened, he was back to being cared for by his mother. Pasquale Buzzelli had crawled down from that Tower, and he was back with Louise, with his father and mother. Unbelievably and indescribably impossible, Pasquale was home.

His friend Nico stood on the walk in front of him. He’d taken the day off, the lucky guy. He looked directly at Pasquale, waiting for something.

Pasquale knew what it was that Nico was waiting for: news of Pat Hoey and Steve Fiorelli, their bosses and friends. He looked away from Nico at first, then took a breath and said, “Pat and Steve…I-I don’t think they made it.” How bad he felt having to say those words, but as he said them, he knew he was telling the truth. There had been no one around him. There’d been no one left. A deep sadness fell on both of them at the painful realization.

He made it into the house, to the family room and the green-checkered couch. The large TV was on. He sat back and watched for just a minute. It was all the same: planes, Towers, sky, fire; and then Pennsylvania and Washington DC.

Louise sat down beside him and took his hand. “I don’t think you should watch this, Pasquale.” Her face betrayed her worry.

She’s right,
he thought.
I shouldn’t watch. I’m home. I’m safe.
Still, when he looked at her worried face, he felt she could melt away and leave him, and he would be back atop that pile of rubble with the fires coming closer. He turned back to the TV, almost unable to blink, as if he might miss something he had to see.

After that, everything became a blur. He ate whatever his mother put in his hands. He talked to people: Nara, Ralph’s wife, Mike, and so many supporters, loved ones, and friends. Among them were even Uncle Pio Buzzelli and Louise’s cousin Joanne, and Louise said there’d been so many more, coming and going all day.

His cousin Ralph hugged him. The big guy, like the brother he’d never had, even looked like Pasquale; he had the same blue eyes and dark hair and was about the same height. He stared hard into Pasquale’s face while Pasquale stared hard right back at him. “Glad to have you back, cuz. I knew you were gonna be all right.” Ralph’s face changed even while Pasquale was thanking him. A lot of anger boiled to the surface. “Those motherfuckers over in Journal Square were dancing in the street when the Towers fell. I’m surprised they got away with it without any fights breaking out. If I’d have been there and seen that, I don’t know if I could have kept going.” He shook his head.

Pasquale took in what he was being told: His fellow Americans—at least some of them—had the audacity to
celebrate
what had happened, to
celebrate
the deaths of people he knew, to
celebrate
the terrorists who had done it. For the first time, he wondered about his country.
Who are these enemies we’ve allowed within our borders?

“Over in areas of Paterson too,” Ralph said.

What can I say to that?
Pasquale shook his head.
A man in control of himself doesn’t get mad, blow up, or scream at everyone. What good would that do? I must be strong. I will do that. I will not let myself feel too much.
Still, anger spread through him like something red and boiling. For the first time that day, he became acquainted with pure and utter rage. If he could have killed right then, he would have. He would have become like
them
—like the plane-crashing murderers and the people who praised them. He felt it in his fists, in his arms.
If I could beat someone for this…if I could just take somebody by the throat and tighten my fingers and make them pay…
But he didn’t dare let himself think like that. He was home, safe with his family and friends, and he knew that was what he had to concentrate on.

“The phone’s been ringing off the hook all day. Dara called, and so did Patti. They were both in New York at work today. They didn’t want to leave till they heard back about you,” Ralph informed Pasquale. “Jill called, crying and hysterical. She was so worried.”

Jill had been Louise’s childhood friend since they were eight years old; the two were like sisters, but they hadn’t spoken in a while. Life seemed to have drifted them apart, like life does.

Pasquale looked at Ralph, a man who wanted to pilot helicopters. Ralph was a wheeler-dealer who could sell anybody anything, a fun-loving guy who raced remote-controlled cars and idolized Superman so much that he’d named his son Clark. Pasquale noticed something about Ralph: He wasn’t smiling and affable and fun-loving anymore.

The day had changed Bill too, a head mechanic at BMW and as much a friend to Pasquale as he was a cousin. Bill had a dark mustache and goatee, and people said it made him look like a cross between Bruce Willis and Billy Joel—a comparison he appreciated. “Hey, Brian just left,” Bill said, lifting his chin to Pasquale as he spoke of the tall Irishman from grammar school, the one they’d dubbed “The Fighting Irish.”

“He said to tell you that you always come out on top, smelling like a rose.”

There was so much happiness that Pasquale was home, but there was a lot of sadness that others hadn’t been as fortunate. He felt the confusion of happiness and anger and sadness mixing in his stomach. Fatigue and confusion made him feverish from something beyond anything he’d ever imagined.
Yes, I’m home, but what of the others? Oh my God! What of all the people I worked with?

Pasquale looked around the room at his friends, at his parents, at Louise. They were all the same people he’d known, but they were different somehow, as if something had thrown a kind of veil over everything and everyone he’d known—a veil of impossibility that told him he shouldn’t have been there among them anymore. Nothing he believed in told him otherwise.

One by one, the faces of the people who’d gathered to greet him faded away, leaving, they said, to let him get some rest. He nodded, hugged, and maybe even smiled. He felt nothing. He was simply going through rites he’d learned as a child—of gratefulness, of sociability, of holding up his end of a friendship. A chorus of “Thank you” rang out in all directions, and there were answers to questions he couldn’t understand. They were fading—all of them.

~ ♦ ~

Pasquale was exhausted, more tired than he’d ever been in his life, but he couldn’t think of going to sleep. It wouldn’t be possible to make it up the long stairway to their bedroom, not on those crutches. The only place he could sleep was the couch in the family room.

“I’ll stay with you,” Louise offered, “in case you need anything.”

But he pushed her away, toward the stairs. She was pregnant, and there was no place for her to sleep comfortably downstairs. He knew she needed to be in bed. Sleeping had been hard enough for her over the last months, as their baby had grown.

After she reluctantly went, he realized it was the first time he’d been alone since being pulled from that burning pile of rubble. He lay down in the dark with his eyes wide open. Scenes flashed again and again in front of him: the flying debris; the darkness followed by the stillness; and the blue sky over his head. Things flew around him. He was there, but he could hold on to the sofa where he lay, clutching that green-checkered fabric, and bring himself back to his home. As if none of it had been real, he was there, not atop a burning pile of rubble. The smells were still in his nose, maybe embedded into his skin.
Certainly it’s all in my head
, he reasoned. If he shook himself violently for a minute, he could mix up the pictures. But then they settled, like the dust that had settled around him, and he had to see it all, over and over again. So many things crossed his mind—things he didn’t want to ever think about.
Where are Pat and Steve and Lisa and Franco? Where are all the others?
He could hear them, coming down the stairs behind him. He could hear their voices echoing in the stairwell. As if for the first time, he sensed the fear that had accompanied them down the stairs. Then he heard that screaming siren and saw the lightning-like blasts of that strobe light in his eyes.