Story (Round Robin Group A)

[Yondan]

Susan sat watching the t.v. She couldn’t take her eyes from the screen, the images of the wreckage and flame swirling against the brilliant blue sky simply refused to resolve themselves as real events, even while they burned themselves into her brain. She could still feel what it was like to stand on the observation deck and look out over the city, spread out below her in a crazy, magnificent meadow of buildings and rooftops, deeply seamed by streets and boulevards, the point of the Empire State Building needle sharp in the distance.

That had been an unreal experience too. To stand so far above the ground and look down on people walking by, cars crawling along in their chained spasms, like the tiny scales of thread-thin snakes inching between the roots of concrete trees. She could still feel the sun on her skin as she pointed out various bits of detail to her son. There was a bunch of balloons like tiny points in a Seurat painting, incredibly distant, yet brilliant in ivory, cerulean, and emerald. There was a hook and ladder truck, lights flashing. Can we make out the siren? She listened, straining, but the wind at that height erased all distinct sound. It was like watching a silent movie on an infinitely huge screen.

The pictures before her now measured only inches, but still they pulled her in to the terrible story until they had become her whole world. She didn’t even hear her son come in. At two and a half, Toby had no thoughts beyond the toast he was stuffing into his face, smearing butter and crumbs on his fat cheeks.

“Momma? Why cryin’?” Susan didn’t hear him. “Momma? Why cryin’? Momma? Why cryin’?” As it did whenever he had to work for his mother’s attention, Toby’s voice grew louder at each unanswered repetition until he finally shouted “Momma! Momma! MOMMA!” while pulling at her sleeve with a jerk for each syllable. Finally, Susan turned to him, tears running down her cheeks.

“Momma, I’m talkin’ to you!” he said, smiling expectantly.

“Alright, alright, don’t blow a gasket.” Having received the ritual response, Toby turned once more to his toast before he remembered his original question.

“Momma, why cryin?” he insisted.

[Jane_D_oh]

‘Why cryin,’ she thought. The answers flooded through her mind in perfect clarity. About a thousand different answers all at once and that hopeless feeling of being unable to articulate a single one of them. Surely not able to say something that Toby would be able to understand.

He did not understand, really why daddy was only a picture beside his bed. He would not understand that many children were now like him, as they grew and began to understand, they would cling to that picture and every second of video left, never carrying a real memory of his father’s sweet voice and heartfelt laughter. She mourned for this, immediately, inherently, and in a way she did not think possible.

She wanted to speak to each of the wives, husbands, children, sisters and brothers who would soon begin to process the emotions of this day. They will be kindred spirits of sorts, who will go through Thanksgiving and Christmas in a daze of non-reality. Her Toby, dead not ten months, had given her this perspective: had given her this feeling of loss and emptiness that welled even deeper and filled her with an empathy that she would not have believed possible just an hour ago.

Her Toby’s illness was brief, eight months, three surgeries and some chemo from diagnosis to death just days after his 38th birthday and sixteen days before Christmas. She had spent the summer planning strategies to get her through the holiday season: diversions, day trips with lil’ Toby, some scheduled grief therapy. Lil’ Toby mostly draws pictures and doesn’t say much, but she hopes these sessions will help in the long run.

‘Why cryin’ in the flash that was an instant that these thoughts and maybe 996 others went through her head, Susan also put a half frown/smile on her face. She took a deep breath and wiped what would not be her last tear of the day off her face. She turned the tv off (that took more effort than it should have), picked up her son, hugged him like there was no tomorrow and sighed deeply.

[tavalla]

Toby squirmed in her arms, and she let him go, brushing buttery crumbs off his face and her shoulder. “Have you about finished with that?”

He shook his head and stuffed the rest of the toast in his mouth: chipmunk cheeks.

“Good look, kiddo. Go play while I get ready for work, okay?” The normal tone was an effort, but one she was used to. It was something she’d discovered again and again, that the appearance of normality could be enough to get moving, at least for a little while.

It was enough to get her started on the rest of the morning ready-for-work routine. Radio off, television off, though; no amusing chatter from Katie or Bryant, not today. The only noise was Li’l Toby playing with his toy cars, and she squashed a fleeting wish to be that young. If I had a wish to spend, it wouldn’t be on that. If she had such a wish…

Oh, God, spend it wishing planes uncrashing. Or wishing Toby alive again. Spend it undoing tragedy instead of avoiding it or rebuilding afterwards.

Damn mascara wasn’t waterproof after all. She blotted, repaired as best she could, and started again, moving fast so she could concentrate on that. Makeup, hair, shoes. Just another day at the office, nothing wrong here, folks. Collect Toby from his room, quiet the wails of protest because he wanted to take his toy cars and garage with him to the sitter’s, out the door, down the stairs to the car.

Toby was all smiles again while Susan secured him into his carseat. He offered her a toy car. “Momma play?”

“Not just now, hon. Momma’s got to drive.”

She did that minus the radio too, turning it off so hard when the bad news came out of the speakers that she nearly snapped the knob off. Traffic was hell and she was going to be late for work.

Concentrate on that for a while.

She left Toby at the sitter’s, trying not to listen to the toll on the radio there, and headed for the office.

Gavin, the office manager, usually frowned on petty distractions but he’d broken his own rules with a miniature television on his own desk. He looked up, white-faced; his tie was crooked, Susan noticed. He opened his mouth to speak, and then couldn’t say anything.

“I saw it,” she said.

[Tretiak]

“Most everybody else is in the employee lounge. They rolled a TV in there,” Gavin send quietly. Susan suddenly noticed how empty the office seemed. It reminded her of the few times she had been in on the weekend trying to catch up on her work.

She hesitated.

“Go ahead. No one’s checking the clock today,” Gavin assured her.

“No… no, I really don’t think I can,” Susan walked past Gavin’s desk, “anyway I have too much work to do.”

Well, I do thought Susan, but she knew the work wasn’t that important. Not today.

The hallway lighting seemed brighter and colder than it ever had before. A phone rang conspicuously in the eerie silence of the abandoned office and Susan stepped a little faster toward her cubicle of familiarity. This day it was a sanctuary. Here were the pictures of her family, Toby last Halloween in his little dragon outfit with her husband….smiling. That was how she always remembered him, smiling. Smiling through it all, the chemo, the recovery, the recurrence, the struggle. He did it so naturally and unconsciously. The final days. It seemed a thousand centuries ago, yet….

Susan caught herself in her reverie, and silently scolded herself. She had promised herself a long time ago that she would not let herself get off so easy. Even though today, of all days, she might be able to excuse herself, she thought the opposite, Today I must be strong. Because if she wasn’t she knew she would be lost. The line was thin.

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

She could hear the snatches of conversation as folks started to trickle in and out.

“Both buildings…”

“…bastards…”

“…another plane in Pittsburgh…”

She laughed to herself. Did she really believe she could get away from it?

Her phone rang. It was her boss, Alex. “Susan, can you come into my office for a minute.”