“What are you doing here?” I asked, too frantic and frazzled to worry that my face was, I was certain, a telltale shade of beet. But his was a ghastly white, so we were even.
“This is my boat,” he said. “I just picked it up and brought it to Sheldon to be reconstructed.”
I thought about saying something witty about the boat. Wanted to. Tried to. But nothing would come out. So then I tried for something, if not witty, at least normal. Maybe, “How are you?” But the words were stuck in my throat. I felt lightheaded, like I couldn’t breathe.
All I could think of was the last time I had seen Jack, decades earlier, and the last words I had said to him: You can’t flip the script on me now, Jack. You agreed to this. This is what you asked for. You didn’t want children, I did. We couldn’t be together. Remember? I have Carter. I’m happy. I have a whole life. I won’t let you ruin it.
I’ll never forget the way he looked at me that day, the sun beating down on half of his face. Betrayed. That was the best way to describe it. As though I had taken all of our history, all of our years together, all of our past and used it to slap him across the face.
“I’m not going to ruin your life, Ansley,” he had said, emotion lacing his voice. “I love you far too much to ever hurt you.” I remember sadness being in there, maybe a touch of anger, an incredulousness that made me feel terribly guilty.
That last moment hung between us. No, not hung. Stood. Grew as tall and dense and wide as a cinderblock wall.
All I could do all those years ago was run away. I hadn’t even been able to let him finish talking, to have an adult conversation, because everything in my body was telling me to run. And so I did. I ran then and I knew I would run now. I picked up my phone, which was, predictably, shattered into a million pieces, and rushed past him, walking quickly down the dock.
I could see Sheldon just ahead, and as I passed him, I called, “You’re going to have to find someone else to take the job.”
He didn’t say anything. I wanted to run but I also wanted to breathe, so I settled on the fastest I could walk until I got to my house where, finally, I sat down on the brick front steps, closed my eyes, put my hand on my heart, and focused on deep, slow breaths.
I had almost calmed down when I realized that Jack was here. Jack was in Peachtree Bluff, only blocks away from my house. My girls were coming home, I remembered. Jack and my girls would both be here for who knew how long. And I had only one thought: I had to get him out of here.
FOUR
a normal life
caroline
I was the first person to realize there was something special about Emerson. Or I was, at least, the first person to admit that I knew there was something special about Emerson. She was always so talented. She had this presence about her even as a child. When Emerson walked into a room, everyone turned to look.
But she wasn’t only beautiful; she was smart as a whip, too. We were all good in school, all made good grades, but Em was on a whole different level. Like when I was in high school and had to memorize Shakespeare’s sonnets, she would memorize them, too, much faster than I ever could, and then act them out, preparing her own monologues. I always knew she was going to be famous.
Whenever I would say that, my mom would brush it off. I could never figure out why she suppressed Emmy’s talent, so finally, one day, I asked her.
She sighed, sitting at the kitchen table in our apartment, hands wrapped around a coffee mug. “I just don’t want her out there in the world, in the spotlight. It’s such a hard place to be. A normal life is so much easier.”
“But Mom,” I said, “a normal life is so boring.” I paused. “I know you grew up in the South, and it’s sleepy and quaint and all that. But you’re raising New Yorkers. We are going to be different.”
Ansley Murphy was not the kind to be swayed by her children, but I noticed that when Emerson asked to try out for the school play, this time she didn’t say no. And I noticed that when Emerson got the lead role as the littlest angel, even though she was only nine and there were ten-and eleven-year-olds vying for the part, Mom was proud of her.
So proud, in fact, that she let Sloane and me skip school that early morning to see Emerson’s dress rehearsal. I still can’t think about it without feeling sick. She was up there, acting her little heart out, and even though she was my sister, she wasn’t, you know? She became that littlest angel who didn’t want to leave her earthly home. The only sad thing was that Dad, who was supposed to be there, had an emergency at work and couldn’t leave. But he promised Mom he would go to the show the next night.
It was more of a poignant moment than any of us could have imagined.
When Mom’s phone rang, Sloane and I gave her the evil eye. She wouldn’t let us have cell phones, and hers was going off in the middle of Emmy’s play. She picked it up and rushed out the door.
I looked questioningly at Sloane and started to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
You could hear this murmur in the audience and then people starting to get up. At first, I thought it was so rude, these people ignoring my little sister’s Tony-worthy performance. But then I realized it wasn’t only rude. It was concerning.
I walked out into the front lobby of the school, and everywhere people were on their phones, chattering and gesticulating wildly with their hands.
Mom was saying, “I understand, but I think you should try to get out of there. It isn’t safe. It can’t be safe.” It was the first time I had ever seen my always calm and pulled-together mother on the border of hysteria. “I love you,” she said. “Please come home. The girls and I are going now.”
Then the lights came back on in the auditorium, and I still didn’t know what was happening, but I knew it wasn’t good. I ran up to the stage and grabbed Emmy, who looked bewildered in her wings and halo. She was too big to carry on my hip, but I did anyway, Sloane following close behind. We found Mom, which was when I finally said, “What is going on?”
“A plane hit the World Trade Center,” she said. “But it was the other tower. Dad is OK,” she added, her voice sounding confident, her face betraying that she was anything but. “And we are all going home.”