Absent Friends

BOYS' OWN BOOK

Chapter 18

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The Invisible Man
Steps Between You and the Mirror

September 11, 2001

Jimmy folds his T-shirt and shorts into his gym bag, slings it over his shoulder as he leaves the basement apartment that's been his for twenty years. Since spring he's been going to yoga classes at a place around the corner from the firehouse, will be heading there today at the end of his shift. Needs to stay flexible, Jimmy does: he's forty-six, and though he's got his eye on a Battalion Chief's spot in the next year or two (and been told over the back fence he has a good shot at it), at Ladder 62 he's Captain. He's got to be ready, when the bell rings, for the ax, the flames, the smothering smoke and heat like a wall. He's got men depending on him, men who follow him.

Some of the guys, they rag on him about it—Hey, when you do the stork one, they give you a baby to deliver?—but the guys rag on the officers anyway, it's part of what makes the firehouse what it is, your brothers yanking your chain. And Jimmy has to admit, you need a good laugh, you could do worse than watch him try to stand on his head. But, he tells the guys, there's a dozen twenty-five-year-old girls there standing on their heads, so maybe it's not so bad.

And delivering babies, he's done that seven times already since he came on the Job.

Jimmy's up early today so he can take the long way, down around the tip of the island. This is something he does sometimes, just walk and look and think. He's got a lot on his mind, nothing he can't handle, but he needs to think what to do, make a plan for each thing. Two of his guys are out for a couple of days—Doherty's sick, and Logan's wife just had twins—so he's got to work their replacements into the rotation. He's got a probie, Adams, three months out of the Academy, green like Kevin; Jimmy'll have to come up with some drills for the kid, doesn't want him just sitting around. And Gino Aiello: Jimmy needs to call him, to see how the Deputy Chief's coming on that favor he promised, getting Kevin assigned to 62 for a few months. Kev asked for 168 in Pleasant Hills, same as Jimmy did out of the Academy, and Jimmy thinks that's great, a good place for him. He can serve out his whole time in that house the way Jimmy'd been planning to before; but first he needs experience, he needs knowledge. Kev's up for the transfer, and Jimmy wants to get him here, show him, teach him, before it's too late. Because when Jimmy moves to the Battalion, he won't be running a house day-to-day anymore.

Jimmy's picked up coffee from the Pakistani guy at the newsstand. He peels back the lid, sips it as he walks. It's good; it always is, from that place, a lot better than the guys make at 62. Either he's got to get some Italian guy transferred to 62, Jimmy decides, or he's got to detail one of those micks to learn to make decent coffee.

This early, New York's still shaking off sleep, getting started on the day. A neighbor, walking a funny yellow mutt, greets him: Perfect weather, she says, and strolls away smiling. As Jimmy passes the Y, he hears the thud of a basketball on the hardwood; God, those guys must love that game, to come out at this hour. He crosses the highway to the path by the Hudson, watches the sun glinting off the silver water. A bird and an airplane cross high overhead, going in opposite directions, and Jimmy has to smile: they look the same size.

At the tip of Manhattan, Jimmy stands at the rail near the ferry terminal. On a morning as clear as this, he can see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge arching away, see Staten Island across the harbor, see the boat docking there as one approaches here. Watching the ferry come in, Jimmy spots some young guy on the deck, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, not too tall, but standing straight, like Jimmy himself when he was young. Staring straight ahead, like Jimmy himself.



Twenty-five years old: Jimmy's on the ferry. Two hours, back and forth five times already, how stupid is that, but he can't decide.

It's a February day, the sky that hard blue it only gets in winter, everything sharp and fresh. Not like that gray day last week, sitting under the bridge with Tom.

When Jimmy first gets on the boat, he goes to the front. The sunlight glints on the water as Manhattan grows and grows. When he can't decide, he stays there while the boat heads the other way. The towers of the skyline throw bursts of light at him, but they keep getting smaller. After that he goes inside and buys coffee and stares through the window. The glass is so clouded and scratched that he can't make anything out.

Jimmy's thinking this: More than anything, he wants to stop keeping this secret. For months it's been inside him, filling up places that should have been for other things. This secret is changing him, and Jimmy doesn't want it anymore. He wants to stand up and say, This is what happened that night on Coleman Road. This is why Jack is dead, and why Markie.

But if he does that, what happens?

One thing, Sally would find out Markie chose to be where he was. He didn't have to leave her and Kevin and put himself where this could happen to him, but he did. As bad as things are for Sally now, Jimmy thinks knowing that would be much worse.

And Tom goes to prison. Peggy Molloy's lost both sons then.

And if Tom's in prison, he's not giving money to Sally, that idea he had about giving her money. Jimmy could give her some himself, but he doesn't make that much, and he's just a fireman, he never will.

And Vicky. She just had a baby, hers and Tom's second. Vicky and Sally, both raising their kids without fathers, Jimmy thinks about that.

And this, too: Tom says if that's what it takes, he'll go straight. That would be a good thing, God, yes, Jimmy knows. For Tom, for Vicky, for a lot of people.

Through the beat-up glass Jimmy sees sunlight flash off something, it looks like a flame. And again he thinks, what he wants is to not have this secret anymore. He wants to walk into a fire and have it burned away. That's what it would feel like, he thinks, if he told it. It would hurt, like getting burned, but he'd be clean after that.

But if he does that, who's saved?

Only Jimmy.

The other way, it's better for everybody else. Jimmy can't see anyone, besides him, that the other way—Tom's way—isn't better for.

The boat groans into the slip back at home, back on Staten Island. Jimmy goes outside on the side where the Verrazano Narrows Bridge is, and when the boat pulls out from the slip he stands in the wind and the sunlight, so strong in winter it's not yellow, it's pure white but it doesn't warm you. He watches the bridge slide by, watches Staten Island get small.

When they get close to the Manhattan side, Jimmy checks his pocket for Phil Constantine's address. He moves to the front and he watches the towers come close. As the boat slides into the slip, sunlight bounces off the windows at the top of the World Trade Center, the ones highest in the air. It sparkles off the water at the end of the island. It's so bright it even glitters on the pathway stones, worn smooth by so many people over so much time.

The sun's a huge fireball burning in the sky, and Jimmy wants to be the sun. That strong. That clean. That distant.

But Jimmy's a twenty-five-year-old guy standing on the steel deck of a ferry. When it docks, when they lower the ramp, he takes one more minute, like he's still not sure. He's not. But he heads down the slope with the people around him. Jimmy stands for a moment at the rail, looking back. Then he turns, leaves Superman on the boat, and walks out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan.



And at the rail now, Jimmy stands there, in that same place, different, after so many years, but the same. The ferry that docked is pulling out again, carrying people across the water. Jimmy finishes his coffee. He checks his pocket for his St. Florian medal that his mother gave him his first week in the Academy; and for Marian's photograph, the single one he's kept all these years. They're both there, they always are; he's taken them into each house as he's transferred, slips them into the pocket of his dress uniform for ceremonies and funerals. But he's always checked for them as he's heading for the firehouse, and he checks now.

Jimmy glances at the river and the ferry one more time. Then he turns and walks out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan.



SECRETS NO ONE KNEW

We lost voices
Lives
Loved ones
Secrets no one knew
—Sarah Williams, 17, “Voices” (excerpt),
from Wordsmiths: A Teen Poetry Journal
TREE, FALLING

A tree falls in the forest; no one is there to hear it. To whom does it make a difference, then, whether it makes a sound?

COMPLICATED WORK

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?

—Lao-Tse

THE MAN WHO SAT BY THE DOOR

A New York City police officer tells this story: I took my wife upstate to visit my uncle Rob. To get away for a few days, you know? This was maybe a month after 9/11. Rob used to be a warden, one of the prisons up the Hudson. They call them medium security, but, trust me, they're tough places. He retired long ago, kids are all grown and gone, wife died years back. Talks about moving to Florida, but still lives in the same house he used to, across the street from the main gate. So the first night up there, Rob makes lasagna, we talk for a while, then my wife and I are ready to turn in. Rob takes us to this bedroom upstairs, says good night, heads downstairs again. You staying up for a while? I ask him. No, I'm going to sleep, he says. I sleep here. He points to a chair in the living room, facing the door. Got used to it years ago, he says. And damn if he doesn't sit down in that chair, fully dressed—even shoes—and sleep like that until morning. And all I could think was, I thought I was putting in a lot of overtime. You know?

THE OLD MASTERS
(SAILING CALMLY ON)

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along . . .

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure . . .

. . . and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

—W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”

THE WOMEN IN THE TENT

As unidentified bodies and parts of bodies were brought in refrigerated trucks to the morgue tents after September 11, a group of Stern College students—religious Jews in their teens and early twenties—took it upon themselves to ask for rabbinical dispensation to allow them to relieve their male counterparts in sitting with the bodies and reciting the prayers for the dead, who, according to Jewish custom, must not be left alone between death and burial. By Jewish law women may recite prayers over the bodies of women but not those of men. Of many of the remains brought to the morgue, it was unknown whether they were male or female. Nevertheless, permission was granted.

FIRST IN, LAST OUT

Captain Patrick Brown, one of the most decorated firefighters in the history of the FDNY, lost his life in the north tower on September 11. At his memorial service, held at St. Patrick's Cathedral on what would have been Captain Brown's forty-ninth birthday, pallbearers carried an American flag made of flowers, on which rested his helmet. Captain Brown, in the tradition of FDNY officers, was first in and last out at any fire, entering ahead of his men and not leaving until they were all out safely. Ladder 3, the company he commanded, lost twelve men on September 11. Captain Brown's memorial service was the last.

THE WAY HOME

A resident of downtown Manhattan, interviewed on the street, September 12: “My son asked, ‘Mommy, you always told me if I got lost I should just look for the towers and I could find my way home. How will I find my way home now?' That's how we all feel. We'll just have to come up with another way to find our way home.”

A HUNDRED CIRCLING CAMPS

I have seen Him in the watch fires

Of a hundred circling camps

They have builded Him an altar

In the evening dews and damps

You can read the righteous sentence

By the dim and flaring lamps

His truth is marching on.

—“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

SUTTER'S MILL

In California in 1848 John Augustus Sutter tried to keep from the world the knowledge that gold had been found on his land. His motive was not a desire to be the only one to mine this gold, rather a hope of avoiding the mining entirely. The gold might have made him rich. But Sutter had come to the valleys of central California to plant oranges and lemons, to watch the sun ripen the fruits on his trees, and to listen to the birds singing in them in the morning. Mining the gold, which in the end he could not prevent, destroyed all that, as Sutter knew it would.

LEAVING THE CAT

Two women, New Yorkers, old friends, met for coffee sometime during the week after September 11, still talking in the slow, subdued tones of shock. The first said she had packed a knapsack with hiking boots, a sweater, a bottle of water, placed it in the front closet, in the event of evacuation. The second said she'd located the cat carrier, moved it near her apartment door for the same reason. The first woman, eyebrows raised, said, “You're taking your cat?” She paused, looking away; for a time both were silent. “It didn't occur to me,” the first woman finally said, “to take the cat.”

THE WATER DREAMS

A woman who lives near Ground Zero was in the Caribbean on September 11. As a child she had nearly drowned in the ocean, was dragged through the waves to shore by a friend. (They were both surprised at the friend's unexpected strength.) For years she was troubled by nightmares: wild, luminous green water inexorably rising behind glass walls. The nightmares had long since passed, until the night of September 11, when, after an endless day spent alternately staring at the TV in the hotel bar and walking along the seawall, an exhausted sleep finally overtook her. A Caribbean hurricane howled around her hotel room, and dreams of green water and glass walls woke her twice. Since then the dreams have not stopped.

TURTLES IN THE POND

A lifelong New Yorker, walking through Chinatown in August, came upon an old woman selling two live turtles in a cardboard box. The turtles, an illicit dinner delicacy, were over eight inches long. Tightly wrapped in plastic net bags, they could hardly move; but they struggled, tiny, pushing gestures, little twists of their heads. He asked the woman the price; she sold them to him for ten dollars apiece. Sweating in the afternoon heat, he carried them in their cardboard box a mile and a half across town to a pond in Battery Park City, where he released them among the lily pads and the koi. Three weeks later the pond was clogged with debris and dust from the falling towers of the World Trade Center. Everything in it died.

BREATHING SMOKE

. . . I walk uptown chain-smoking, while downtown people are dying from breathing smoke.

—Alison Shapiro, in the October 2, 2001, issue of The Spectator, the student newspaper of Stuyvesant High School

HOW TO FIND THE FLOOR

In the days after September 11, two friends spoke on the phone. Not wanting to break the connection, they searched for topics to talk about, though only one thing was on their minds, the same as on everyone's. One of the two was a man with a disability. “Did you know I'm using a cane now?” he said. “It's not that I can't walk; I can. It's just that sometimes I feel like I can't find the floor.” My God, that's how I feel, the other thought, though she said nothing. I know where it is, I must be standing right on it, where else could I stand? But I can't find it. I can't find the floor.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE PIG

An old story about Abe Lincoln: riding through the countryside in a carriage with a friend, Lincoln spotted a pig stuck in a fence. The pig was squealing and writhing, but it couldn't get loose. Lincoln stopped the carriage, took off his jacket, and wrestled the pig out from the rails. The pig trotted off. Lincoln, covered with sweat, mud, and bruises, returned to the carriage.

“Was that your pig?” his friend asked.

“No,” Lincoln answered, picking up the reins.

“Your neighbor's?”

“I don't know the man who owns this land.”

“Well, that was awfully good of you, then,” said the friend. “To put yourself to so much trouble for a stranger's pig.”

Lincoln said, “I didn't do it for the pig.”

“For the owner, then? Whoever he is?”

“No. For myself.”

“For yourself?”

“Yes,” said Lincoln. “I don't want to have to lie awake all night listening to that damn pig squealing in my head.”

THE BODIES OF THE BIRDS

The fireballs that erupted when the planes hit the towers of the World Trade Center scorched the feathers from the wings of sparrows, finches, grackles, pigeons, and seagulls hundreds of yards away. Small charred corpses were found as far north as Houston Street.

THE INVISIBLE MAN STEPS BETWEEN
YOU AND THE MIRROR

The undead, so legends say, though visible to the eye and capable of great destruction, don't appear in mirrors. The Invisible Man, though, who cannot be seen at all: does his presence, as it is said, distort reflections?