The sun rose that day with extraordinary beauty. The sky was a mix of pink and yellow hues, coloring the city with exquisite splendor. I’d never seen the metropolitan area so warm and cozy before, the sky overtaking the bustling of the space below. The chirping of the birds outside woke me, and I stood to see them perched on the flower bed outside of the apartment window. When moving in here, I had thought that being five stories above the ground would be a burden and I wouldn’t want to be on a main street of the Lower East Side of New York City. But, the city wore on me, and I grew to love the sound of cars passing below, traffic, and yelling pedestrians. Oddly enough, I didn’t see these sounds as noisy or annoying. I loved hearing the sounds of my surroundings, and somehow I managed to make them into a song each morning.
I stepped away from the window and went to the kitchen to make coffee. The scent wafted through the air and my husband followed it back to the kitchen.
“I thought I smelled coffee,” he said with a smile as he entered the room.
“I swear you have the nose of a dog,” I said, returning the grin. He chuckled and reached his arms around me. I nestled my head into his chest and he gently kissed my forehead before lifting my chin and pressing his lips to mine.
It was mornings like these that made me feel like the happiest woman in the world. And in most ways, I was.
“So, Baby, I was thinking that after work today, we can drive up to Central Park for the evening and eat at Fantino?”
“Oh, Mark, that sounds wonderful. I have the day off today- the restaurant’s closed- so I’ll just get some laundry done and I’ll be waiting.”
“Great, I shouldn’t be too late. I have to get some work done at the office but I should be home around four.”
I smiled, my chin leaning on his chest as my eyes melted into his. We stood for a while longer in each other’s arms, not wanting to leave. We remained in our own little universe where it was just us forever. We didn’t need anyone or anything else. All we needed was what we had: each other. It was so easy to get lost in a dream standing in his arms. I could forget the real world in a second and go off to a place of pure happiness; a place where even the best aspects of my reality looked better. My true bliss lay right here in his arms; and looking into his eyes, I knew that this was where I would always belong. Right here, in his warm embrace. And I wouldn’t ever want to be anywhere else.
I reluctantly stepped away, poured his coffee into the mug, and handed it to him with a smile, completing our morning coffee routine.
“I’d better be off. I have a meeting at eight-thirty.”
I nodded and reached up for another kiss before following him to the apartment door.
He opened it and turned around to face me, taking both my hands in his. He looked into my eyes and smiled that beautiful smile. His next melodic words created a song that would forever beat in my heart:
“I may not say it enough, but you mean the absolute world to me. I couldn’t ask for anyone better. Every day with you is a blessing to me, and every minute without you makes me feel as empty as could be. You’re everything I’ll ever want or need. My heart belongs to you, Julie Elizabeth Davis.” He paused and then said, “’How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.’”
A grin spread across my face and I said, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning; my favorite poet. I love you too, Mark.” We reached for another embrace before he backed out of the door, his eyes locked with mine. He smiled that beautiful smile and whispered, “I love you, baby” before turning to walk away.
“Hi Baby, I’m… Baby you have to listen to me.”1
For the next hour I dusted the front room and cleaned the kitchen. As I was washing dishes, the phone rang. Drying my hands, I reached for it and held it between my cheek and my shoulder while I drew a red X over yesterday’s date on the calendar. Today was September 11th.
On the other end was a frantic Sophia, panting as she tried to get across her sentence.
“Slow down! What are you talking about?”
“Just…turn…on the…TV.”
“I just want to let you know that I love you and I’m stuck in this building in New York.”2
I nervously went into the front room and did as she said. My eyes widened as I realized what was wrong. The phone dropped from my hand and clattered to the floor as tears blurred my vision and my screaming drowned out the rest of the world.
The screen showed a building enveloped in a mass of thick black smoke from the middle to the roof. People jumped from windows to escape but only to fall to their death. A crowd flooded from the front door, but it was easy to see that it wasn’t nearly half of everyone in the building. Reporters spoke of how a plane had crashed straight into the tower and it was believed to be a terrorist attack. I brought my eyes back up to the screen, my eyes wide in horror.
On September 11th, 2001, at 8:46 AM, the plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the building my husband was working in. Mark was supposed to be on the 106th floor in a meeting right now. I kneeled down right in front of the television set and put my finger on the bottom of the North tower on screen. I counted the floors and traced my finger upwards until I got to floor 106. It was above the impact zone.
“If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good…”3
“Tell everyone I love them, if I don’t get out of here,”4
“I’m really going to miss you.”5
My neighbor, Amy Williams- a young woman- shook me from my screams. I had ended up remaining on my knees, shaking, and screaming between sobs.
“Julie,” Amy whispered, “Julie, it’s okay.”
After she finally calmed me down, we sat together and watched the news, waiting for an update.
I wanted to go to Lower Manhattan. I wanted to go to the building to see him standing there waiting for me. He would say, “What took you so long?” with a smile and I would cry and jump into his arms. He would tell me that everything was okay and I would say that he wouldn’t dare ever scare me like that again.
“I hope to see your face again, Baby.”6
We watched the building burn, the smoke only getting worse. Occasionally, I would see a person jumping from one of the windows of the North Tower. The news reporter got a call from one of the men in the building, and he spoke live from inside the tragedy. We all heard his screams, his cries for help, and his struggle to breathe with the little oxygen that was left. At 9:03, we saw a second plane crash into the direct center of the South Tower. Although this one hit on an angle, it went straight through the building just as the first plane had. The building exploded in a cloud of debris and flames, shattered glass rained down on the city below. This added to the thick and intolerable smoke that drifted into the sky from the North Tower. The sky started to turn black as if hell had risen over.
“It’s getting bad.”7
“There’s lots of smoke and I just wanted to let you know that I love you, always.”8
It felt as though I was watching a movie, carefully directed with special effects. But this was real, and Mark was there. I went numb. I was watching the news but not really seeing it. Instead, all I saw was my husband’s smiling face the moment before he left me and all I could hear was a whispered “I love you, baby”. My heart attempted to beat to the song of his words from earlier that day, but the words couldn’t keep up to the rapid pace of my nervous heart.
“I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a chance to tell you in person again…”9
“I don’t know if I’m going to be okay here. I love you so much.”10
At 9:58, the South Tower collapsed. The middle gave out and the entire structure came tumbling to the ground in a pile of powder. I couldn’t see the screen, as dust and debris had invaded over Lower Manhattan and had left barely anything visible for the human eye watching on television. When the dust cleared, I could see that the North Building was still burning, and there was a flame of hope inside me that my husband had gotten out alive. I could see that the earth had become covered in a cloud of smoke, cruelly dominating the ground around the towers. They were surrounded with a fatal fog, consuming visibility of what lie beneath.
“I can barely breathe now, I can’t see.”11
“It’s on fire and I’m in it and I can’t breathe.”12
“It’s really bad. It’s black. It’s arid.”13
I grasped the telephone with a shaky hand and dialed his number. Each ring felt like it would never end. All I wanted was to hear his voice. Finally, the rings stopped and I heard a muffle before the call was lost.
“I’m gonna die, aren’t I?”14
“I know we’re going to die.”15
“I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”16
At 10:28 the North Building collapsed. Everyone that had been above the point of impact had no escape. I watched in agony as the building gave out and crumbled to the ground in a heap of rubble. I could just barely hear the screams from inside, and they echoed in my head. My heart cracked in a mess of pain. I could have sworn I heard Mark’s cry for help. They had all been stuck in a smoking building with little oxygen; a building that crumbled to the ground with them inside of it, leaving them with no other option than to go down, too.
“I just called to say goodbye;”17
“Don’t worry about us, it’s going to be quick.”18
I sat glued to the television, even when Amy said she had to go. I flipped to every single channel that had a report of the event, hoping to see his face, hoping to see him in the group of survivors. I waited and waited, but he never showed. Days went by and he never came home. I never got a call. I suppose I knew that he was gone, but I always had the hope. Until I heard his name on the list of victims.
“I just wanted to say how much I love you.”19
There were 2,996 deaths. 2,996 including my husband. That last smile would never be enough to hold me for the rest of my life without him.
“I love you…”20
***
Two weeks later, I found myself sleeping days and awake at nights. Tears had left permanent stains on my pale cheeks. The apartment was cluttered with tissues I never bothered to dispose of. And the sink was filled with dishes I was too lazy to put in the dishwasher. The fridge only consisted of a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a block of cheese, and a couple apples. My dinners seemed to only be pasta; it was the only thing I had energy enough to make. The restaurant where I worked as chef had let me take a week off. That week extended into two and I had a feeling that extension would continue to grow.
I had found a book lying on the dresser. It was a book of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry and a piece of paper marked the page of Sonnet 43, the poem he had begun to recite to me on September Eleventh. His glasses were carefully placed next to the book. He must have been practicing and memorizing just for that one moment. That one moment that meant so much then, and meant so much more now. It was our last moment ever together, and it was one I will never forget.
Leaving the book, I went to the living room where I saw the telephone, perched on a side table, untouched since September Eleventh. I was too upset to answer any calls or texts. The phone was better off away from me anyway. But, now, two weeks after the tragedy, I carefully pressed the button on the answering machine and went through the missed calls. Lying beneath the jumble of missed calls was a single voicemail. The number was Mark’s work office number, dated September 11th, 2001 at 10:12 A.M. I pressed play. I was greeted by static and muffled shouts from the speaker. Then, all of a sudden, I heard his voice with a taunting clarity.
“Hi Baby, I’m… Baby you have to listen to me…”
***
It’s been three months since then. And yet, my days are still never quite complete. I began working again, and cleaned the house. I supposed I had made progress, physically anyway. Emotionally, I was wreck. My nights were lonely and the bed felt cold without him next to me. My heart broke more and more every time I made coffee only to see that he wasn’t waiting for it. He didn’t leave for work and he didn’t come home.
Today is my first day off of work since then. I decided I would drive up to Central Park and eat at Fantino. He wouldn’t be there but he would be watching. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to take on something I knew would break me even more, if that was possible. Slowly getting myself ready for the day, I noticed his shirt that I had left hanging from the drawer a month earlier in one of my breakdowns. I didn’t want to touch it until now. I held it to my face and I could smell his scent and instantly I saw that beautiful smile. I heard his laugh and felt his touch. A tear slipped from my eye. I dropped it on the bed and went to the bathroom to get ready. I tried to keep the idea of him from my mind, but a part of me was empty without him next to me. Looking in the mirror, I saw broken pieces. But it wasn’t the mirror that was shattered; it was the person looking back.
