We could see the Twin Towers while we were still in Jersey. They rose from the New York skyline like the masts of tall ships piercing a morning fog, sun glinting silver over sleepy blue-gray. My wife and I had been to Manhattan many times, but never to the financial district. Goodness knows we had no business being in the financial district! We were going to a Dark Shadows convention at the New York Marriott World Trade Center. (For those unaware, Dark Shadows was an early—and strangely, ABC's most popular—soap opera, airing between 1966 and 1971. Set in the 1960s in the mythical town of Collinsport on the coast of Maine, the protagonist, Barnabas Collins, was a 200-year-old vampire. It has a small, deeply disturbed fan base to this day.)
Both of us were a little afraid of the World Trade Center towers. We had this vision of standing at their base and looking up to see the towers impossibly looming over us like in an old cartoon; grotesque faces bending to the point of collapsing down on us. We nervously laughed about this image as we drove through the exhaust-fumed tunnel to Manhatten.
The Dark Shadows convention was on a lower floor of the Marriott Hotel, which was between and connected to one of the Twin Towers. It would have been an enormous hotel in any other context, but the Towers dwarfed it's 22 floors. We parked in a small lot off Liberty Street.
I remember people and faces from that day, as clearly and as distant as old family photos.
The parking lot attendant's eyes sparkled, closely set within his acne-scarred skin, negating the neighborhood-required attitude frown. He nestled our car safely within the shadow of Tower Two.
My wife and I walked across the street to the hotel. I looked up first. How could you not, no matter what your fears? We were at the World Trade Center! I reassuringly squeezed my wife's hand, and Lynn slowly raised her eyes. The Towers did not loom. They had inarguable necessity and purpose within this big-city landscape. They had to be here, grounded in one of the world's greatest cities, gracefully reaching toward heaven, lifting the spirits of everyone who traced their silver lines skyward.
Ceilings are obscene after such a view and somehow wrong. Once we entered the hotel lobby, it took us a moment to re-adjust to the confines of an interior world.
The petite, long-haired blonde behind the front desk looked through us, her tired eyes searching for someone—anyone—with luggage. The Bellman, Louis Armstrong in uniform, directed us to the restrooms with splendiferous gestures and a pearly smile.
Soon enough, we were lost in the carnival world of the convention, meeting some of the aging cast and watching the many blooper reels. But hunger and a sudden sense of where we were drove us from the Shadows.
The tall hostess at the hotel restaurant, with an honest smile and eyes as blue as a perfect September morning sky, told us the non-smoking section was full.
We left the hotel on the Liberty Street side, turned left, and walked towards Tower Two, looking for a less smoky, less expensive place to eat. We decided to explore the underground mall sprawled beneath the World Trade Center complex.
The Hispanic grill chef barely looked at the burgers he was flipping, his eyes instead watching the colorful girls of summer drifting by through the smoky, wavering heat rising from his grill, his forearms singed by heated years.
We carried our food through the mall and took the escalator to the plaza. We sat alone at a tiny iron cafe table in an alcove of 5 World Trade Center, eating, watching the tourists, trying to remember the name of the artist who'd sculpted The Sphere, dwarfed in the plaza's center, and we marveled at the Towers.
The little Japanese boy, dressed in cliché school shorts, tried—but failed—not to jump up and down as he pointed up at Tower Two while his impatient, gesturing father tried to take his picture. The boy suddenly ran towards the Tower in a fit of glee, arms stretched wide as if to hug it, soon realizing the impossibility as he neared, leaving him staring up, frozen in awe.
I remember the faces, all the faces on that quiet summer Sunday afternoon in New York.
I had taken the day off on September 11th to take my wife to see a neurologist in Philadelphia that morning. I got up at the usual time, sipping my coffee and half-watching CNN, when the first reports of a small plane hitting the World Trade Center came through. I called out to Lynn, but she was in the shower. The small plane soon became an airliner, and the accident quickly turned into terrorism. I seemed glued to the floor, watching the impossible unfold in the place where we'd been just 23 days ago. I managed to pull myself free to tell Lynn what was happening. I helped her quickly down the stairs, and we stared for many minutes. She was still dripping wet, wrapped in a towel. After a time, shivering from her dampness and the chilling images of all those people and frozen faces, she went back upstairs to dress. She was listening to the radio, and I heard her scream when the second plane hit.
Now, years later, the ghosts of buildings have become solid memories. Dark shadows are still cast by a reality more substantial than steel and aluminum, shadows that stretch around the world. I've thought about our Sunday visit to New York many times. Like . . .
The wedding party in the hotel lobby:the bride, her face glowing with the joy of the day, posed for pictures with her entourage on the gracefully arching staircase, there, at the World Trade Center.
We decided a trip to Philly, even to see a specialist, was a bad idea. My wife was disabled, and so wasn’t working. I worked 8 miles from home, and decided to go in to work. Maybe I'd just seen more than I could take in by that point and needed something routine and ordinary. Going to work felt like the natural thing to do at the time, although, looking back through the wavering shadows of a lost future, it seems an odd decision now. I stayed for an hour, long enough to come to my senses and realize we could be under attack, and I should be home.
On the way to work that Tuesday, I traveled my usual route through a construction area—it was more of a destruction area at that point. The skyline I was so familiar with was gone, and a light breeze kicked up a haze of dust against the deep blue sky. I'd traveled this same route for many years now, long before the earth-moving monsters had crashed into this once-living landscape. Progress was happening, we were told: roads were being moved, trees toppled, industries built, civic associations angered.
The construction worker's face was tan and oblivious. He was pulling barriers into place across my lane, which I now saw was destroyed ahead of me. No one else was on the job site. I told him what was happening, but he either didn't believe me or wasn't listening. "This way's closed, man. The road's gone. From now on, you'll have to find another way."