The closet door was ajar as if to suggest that Naomi should open it farther, and hang her things inside. At the foot of the bed was a small cedar chest.
“There’s a bathroom just across the hall, for you.”
“Thank you . . .”
Naomi didn’t know how to address her grandmother. “Madelena” did not sound right, but “grandmother” was out of the question.
As if reading her mind Madelena said, “Please just call me ‘Lena.’ I realize it’s awkward, but you will get used to it.”
“‘Lena.’”
“With more emphasis, dear! ‘Le-na.’ ”
“‘Le-na.’”
Madelena laughed happily, and touched Naomi’s arm. For a moment Naomi thought her grandmother might embrace her again, swiftly and tightly, but that did not happen.
Next, Naomi was asked by Madelena if she had any questions—she could not think of a single question!—except questions she dared not ask of the straight-backed silver-haired woman whose eyes were obscured by tinted glasses. Why am I here, why did you invite me, do you care for me, is it expected that I will care for you?
When she was alone she lay her suitcase on the cedar chest and began to unpack, slowly. Her gaze was drawn to the floor-to-ceiling window of the outer wall, that opened out into pure shimmering light. She was feeling weak with excitement, and had to sit on the edge of the bed.
The coverlet was made of a stiff white puckered fabric, with rough-textured pillows in bright colors and designs that might have been Native American, Mexican. She smiled happily. She was a child who has crawled through a looking-glass and come into an amazing world—like Alice, her old, lost heroine.
WHEN YOUR FATHER DIED I came here to live. I could not breathe in the low place I’d been living, a brownstone in Washington Square Mews.
For a long time then I slept mostly in this room—though it’s meant to be obviously a child’s room. I fell asleep to the view outside this window, at night. I woke to this view in the morning. It was months before I got around to unpacking. I hardly went into the other rooms . . . During the day I was a professor at the University.
I have always been hypnotized by my work and essentially my life is this “hypnosis.” It has not been a personal life, much.
At the Institute it was suggested that I take a semester’s sabbatical but I refused. I took on new responsibilities—a new graduate seminar in the philosophy of linguistics, a new course with a colleague in art history titled “The Art of Estrangement.” A university committee on minority hiring, a selection committee for post-docs at the Institute for Independent Study.
I could not bear a protracted time during which I would mourn my son for there was no thought of Gus that was not an infinity into which I could fall, and fall.
I am not by nature a mourner. That is not my personality. What it was that happened to me, I have never understood. But it was in this room and not the other rooms of the apartment that it happened.
Though I was very tired at this time I was also tireless.
You may find yourself in this state someday. I think it is a woman’s state of being. Your mother would know.
And then, it was September 2001—the morning of September eleventh.
This window faces south—downtown. Of all the windows in the apartment it is this window, ironically, in this small room, that gives the most direct view of what would be called Ground Zero. I happened to be in this room on the morning of September eleventh. I don’t think that I had slept here the night before but sometime in the early morning, at dawn, when I was awake and couldn’t get back to sleep, I came into this room, which has such an extraordinary view of the avenues and streets and their lights and the taxis—on West Houston, the taxis cruise at all hours. To watch the sky change its colors—the clouds change—that is very comforting. And then, later, as I was about to leave to go to the University, there was—suddenly—a few miles away—in the area of the World Trade Center—a patch of something fiery-red.
Was it a fire? An explosion? Out of nowhere it had seemed to come. I had just glanced out the window and now, I could not look away.
One of the tall towers of the World Trade Center tower was on fire, billowing smoke—it was instantly recognizable though miles away.
Almost sometimes, years later I can see the fire there, in that emptiness—the terrible smoke, like boiling black air. And then, as I was watching, the second plane struck . . .
I would not look away for a long time.
At the time there was only astonishment. This is what I recall—there were no words for what had happened, or was happening, only just astonishment. It was like trying to wake from a dream—I could not comprehend what I was seeing—for it had no end, it was continuous, it would not end for hours, for days.