120: World Disorder

That’s how it happened that on Tuesday morning, I was in the kitchen and had decided I’d turn on the television to watch the new hostess on The Homemakers’ Hour at nine o’clock. What I saw instead were images of the Twin Towers in New York City. Smoke was pouring out of one of the buildings and I couldn’t figure out exactly what was happening. Then an airplane came straight at the other tower and crashed into it.

The World Trade Center. The brokerage where Heaven was waiting for the market to open as her company went public.

She was gone.

“What is it, Papa? Did they wreck that building?” Xan asked. She must have heard my moan as I sank onto the kitchen chair. I picked up my daughter and hugged her to me, holding her head turned away from the television.

“It’s something terrible, Xan. We need Mommy and Aunt Jen and Grandmas and Betts. I need ... I need ... to call Rhonda and Rose.” I stood up and turned toward the bedrooms. Dani was standing in the doorway transfixed. Her eyes were on the television and had already begun to tear. She reached for me and we sandwiched Xan between us.

I pulled them with me and we stumbled back to the master bedroom where Dani, Jen, and I had slept last night. Mom and Anna were upstairs. Xan had slept in Rhonda’s old room and Betts was in the guest room. Xan thought it was wonderful to get to sleep where La Madrina slept when she ‘was little.’ I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Rhonda’s number. She answered on the fourth ring.

“‘Lo?” She must have been sound asleep.

“Rhonda, she’s gone. Dead.”

“What? Your mother?”

“No. I’m sorry. Joanne. Turn on your TV.”

“It’s only six-thirty here. What will be on? What station?”

“It doesn’t make a difference. It will be on everywhere.” I heard the television come on and a few mumbled complaints.

“What’s going on, Brian?” Rose demanded. She’d apparently taken the phone from Rhonda. I could hear the complaints turning to gasps.

“We don’t have details. We’re under attack. They ... I don’t know who ... flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. Both towers have crumbled. Rose, it’s where Heaven’s meeting was this morning. I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to protect her.”

“Oh my god! Look at it! We’re coming home, Brian. We’ll get packed and leave immediately.”

“Another one!” Rhonda screamed. “The Pentagon.”

“I don’t know if you will be able to get a flight, Rose. I need you. The family needs you. We all need to be together.”

“If we can’t get a flight, we’ll rent a car. If we can’t rent one, we’ll buy one. Take care of our family, Brian. Take care of your mothers. Bring them home. We’ll be there soon,” Rose said.

I left the room with Xan still in my arms she was hugging me and petting my face. How could I tell her that her Tante Ciel was dead? I pounded on the guest room door where Betts was sleeping. She didn’t answer, so I just pushed the door open and went in. She was pushing herself up in bed.

“What? What’s going on? It’s early.”

“Betts, listen to me,” I said sitting on the edge of the bed and putting my arm around her. I held her and Xan immediately hugged Betts as well. “We need to be strong and help Mom and Anna. But we need to be strong for us as well. You need to call Allen and just talk to him. Someone has attacked the country. They’ve flown planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. God only knows if that’s all. We all need to call our families and then take care of Moms.”

Before I’d finished, Betts was crying and trying to dial the number on her cell phone. I carried Xan back out to meet Mom and Anna coming downstairs with Jen and Dani. We hugged each other, all of us together. In a minute, Betts joined us.

“Are they okay?” I asked. She nodded.

“They were just getting up and hadn’t heard yet. Allen is staying home with the kids today and making sure that they are safe. School announcements say the schools are open but it is at parents’ discretion to keep their kids at home. I need to go home. I need to be with my babies.”

“We’ll get you back home, sweetheart. That’s what Dad would want,” Mom said. My phone rang and the landline rang at the same time. Jen went to the phone in the kitchen while I answered my phone.

“Brian! Thank god you answered. No one’s cell phone is working down here. We just get messages that the lines are busy. I came over to the office to call. Courtney is calling the landline,” Samantha said. “Are you all okay?”

“We’re fine, honey. Jen just answered the landline. We’re all okay and I talked to Rhonda and Rose. They are all okay. It’s a terrible time for us all to be in so many different places,” I said.

“Have you heard from Heaven?”

“No. She ... She was supposed to be in the Towers this morning. I don’t know which one. I saw it, Sam. No one could live through that,” I said.

“Call her. Maybe she got out. The news says some people did get out. Courtney and I are going into the studio. Armand will meet us there. He’s always there. Rebecca will make sure we make good decisions. We’ll make sure we’ve got a broadcast of the news. I think everything else is getting pre-empted.”

“I love you, Samantha. Give my love to everyone you see. We all need to be loved right now,” I said.

“Come home, Brian. We need you.”

I tried Joanne’s cellphone and then her hotel, but I kept getting messages that the trunk lines were busy. No matter how quickly we wanted to get to Bloomington, we had responsibilities. We drove Betts into Chicago when we found out all planes had been grounded. The trains were delayed, but eventually she boarded the Empire Builder westbound to Seattle.

I held my sister and kissed her. I kissed her like a brother and then I kissed her like a lover. She returned my kiss with fervor I hadn’t felt from her since Matthew was conceived. We both knew it wasn’t the sign of a love affair or of a blossoming incestuous relationship. It was simply our desperation to let our family members know how deeply they were loved. She needed to be with her family—her husband and children. But a part of her heart was with us, and some was turned to ashes at the crematorium.

We went back to Mishawaka for the night. It was hard to sleep. I rocked Xan until she was asleep in our big bed with us. Mom and Anna came downstairs and crawled in, too. We just needed to hold each other.

The world had changed.

My patterns had changed over the past year. Getting up each morning to bake bread in a bakery was an earlier job than my normal four-thirty rising. I knew Matthew would be getting up and I hoped someone went with him to the bakery. I whispered, ‘I love you, son. Bake well.’

I figured I might as well follow that advice myself. I went into the kitchen and started a batch of dough. I’d become spoiled over the past year with my big mixer and my arms felt the tension of mixing the ingredients by hand. I glanced out the kitchen window and noticed a light on next door.

Shit! I hadn’t even thought about Joanne’s parents. I didn’t know if her mother was here or in Paris, but Ford, her father, had never left. I wiped my hands and went across the double driveway to knock on their door.

The man who opened the door was different than the Mr. Barnes I’d always known. He looked ... old. His eyes were deeply lined, his hair gray. Dark shadows turned his eyes into hollow gaps in his face. Damn! He wasn’t that much older than my dad and my dad was only fifty-two. But he looked... Fuck! My dad is dead. Fifty-two or ninety-two. Dead is all the same.

Ford looked at me, taking a moment to recognize me. He didn’t say anything, but left the door open and turned back toward their kitchen. I followed him.

I’d been in here a few hundred times over the years. It always was a place of dread where Drew might be waiting behind any corner, ready to torment me in one way or another. Or Joanne might be waiting there to pull me into the pantry and protect me from her brother and my sister. I glanced toward the pantry door.

“She’s not there,” Ford said quietly. “Neither of them.” I looked at him and saw him pour whiskey into a tumbler of ice and take a long drink. There were dirty dishes in the sink and I decided to just do something useful. I ran water and started to wash them. I reached for a greasy plate and spotted Ford’s old handgun on the counter. A box of shells was sitting next to it. It was dirty and a rubber band held it together. The gun was covered with dust except where it had recently been handled.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I haven’t loaded it yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” Ford said. “Have you heard anything? Anything definite?”

“No,” I said.

“Her mother managed to get through to me about two hours ago. She’s frantic. She can’t get a flight to the U.S. Everything is shut down,” Ford said as he continued to nurse his drink. It was four-thirty in the morning. He had the look of a man who had been drinking all night and was disappointed that he was still conscious, not understanding why the liquor had no effect.

“I got hold of her hotel about ten last night,” I said. “There was no answer in her room and the desk said there was no reason for them to check. They were very busy.”

“They say people are still alive.”

“We have a volunteer fire department in Corazón. Four of our guys and one woman are headed for New York to help in the rescue efforts. I ... I guess they lost a lot of firefighters yesterday.”

“Was she ... in the building?”

“She was supposed to be. They were going public when the markets opened. Only the markets never opened.”

“Ellen and I had a buy order in for five thousand shares.” I finished washing the dishes and started a pot of coffee. I sat down across the table from Heaven’s father and tried desperately to think of something comforting to say in the bleakness of the gray dawn.

“I was supposed to be with her. She didn’t have a bodyguard since she fired Amy over ... over the photos. But Dad ... I had to come here instead of going to be with her. To protect her,” I said. Ford stood and walked to the sink. He dumped the rest of his drink, rinsed the glass and poured a cup of coffee.

“I was angry with you,” Ford said. “I know it was irrational, but I blamed you for taking my son away. When Ellen and I visited him out in Iowa he’d hardly speak to us. Then he joined the army and got run over by a fucking tank while he was asleep. Joanne left us and took Ellen with her. I blamed you for that, too. I know that’s not right. But I couldn’t blame my daughter or my wife, could I? No more than I could blame my son for being a lazy, mean little bastard.”

“I understand,” I said. I’m not sure I did. Who can understand another person’s emotions?

“Your dad and I were friends. It was strained for a while when everything seemed like it was falling apart,” Ford said as he sipped black coffee. He didn’t offer me any so I got up and poured myself a cup. I’d need to go back soon and knead the bread. “Did you know he sold this acre to me to build a house on? Your grandfather threw a fit, but your dad said he and the bank owned this plot now. It might have been the first time he ever really stood up to his father. Not sure the old man ever forgave him. These past couple years, he and I would get together about once a month or I’d go over to play cards with him and Nona and Anna. Funny. I had no one living with me unless Ellen was coming for a visit. He had two beautiful, happy women with him. I guess you’re used to that kind of thing. It still seems strange to me.”

“I know our lifestyle isn’t common. But they loved each other intensely,” I said.

“What are you going to do with her house?” Ford asked.

“Oh. I guess Mom will finish the sale and then she and Anna will still come to Bloomington. She loves being around her grandkids. They were going to live in one of our duplexes while their new home was being built in the village. I don’t know if Mom and Anna will want to revise the plans or not. I just want them down there where I can take care of them.”

“I meant Joanne’s house.”

“I ... I don’t think I have anything to do with it. When we know for sure, I’ll help you any way I can.”

“It will belong to you,” Ford said. “That’s what her will says. You and your family. What do you call it? Casa? Her will says all her assets are to be transferred to Casa del Fuego. That’s what she told me the last time she was here.”

“Ford, I didn’t know that. That doesn’t seem fair to you and Ellen.”

“We have nothing to complain about. Even as strained as our relationship was at times, Joanne took good care of her parents. She paid off our mortgage. She bought Ellen’s apartment in Paris. She gave us a portion of all her earnings. Hell! The money we were using to buy shares in her company was money she’d given us.”

I was stunned with that news. Why would Joanne give everything to us? Was she planning to join our casa?

The memorial service at Hart Funeral Chapel was surprisingly well-attended Wednesday afternoon. It was all friends of the family and Dad’s co-workers. It was really just a reception for folks to give their sympathy to Mom. The few of his friends who were in the know embraced Anna and gave her sympathy, too. And me, of course. And my daughter and ‘wife.’ They all nodded their heads and said they understood why Betts needed to leave early and hoped that ‘God will be with her in these tragic times.’

Most of them were pretty clueless.

At the end, instead of a graveside service, the funeral director gave Mom an urn of Dad’s ashes. We thanked him and left.

Mom didn’t want to stay any longer. She had Dad’s ashes and wanted us to leave for Bloomington right away. So we did. We took my car and Anna’s. Jen and I switched off driving our moms and riding with Dani and Xan. We were all relieved to get to the ranch about seven-thirty.

Courtney, Samantha, and Liz had dinner waiting for us and all the kids came to embrace their grandmas. As soon as they knew we were home, Cassie, Mary, Josh, and our four kids came over with John and Bea. That made three babies under a year old in the house, and Jenny Lynn who was just eighteen months. Ruth and Robert were three years old now and Sharon was almost four. It was hard for the grandmas not to have their grief lightened by so many loving hugs.

It was even hard for me to wallow in my grief with my babies in my arms.

We put Mom and Anna in the master suite and they took Dad’s ashes with them.

Matthew met me at the bakery at three-thirty and we started our familiar routine. A father and son in business together baking bread.

“I think we need soft gooey cookies today,” I said. “What do you think?”

“La Madrina likes chocolate chip,” Matthew said. “And Mama Rose likes snickerdoodles. We could make both.”

“Did you hear that, Rhonda?” I said. “We’re making your favorite cookies. Maybe we’ll make everyone’s favorites. Let’s see. Elaine likes the oatmeal-raisin cookies.”

“Melanie likes peanut butter cookies,” Matthew added.