IV
Tears drove her out of the house, away from the television images and into the patio. Tears the like of which she hadn't shed in many years-unquenchable, streaming down her cheeks even while she struggled to meet this crisis, not concede to hysteria or despair. Tears triggered by the irrefutable conviction that her country had suffered wounds which would never heal-at least not in her lifetime. And might suffer more before this day ended or before the week was out. Where was the President of the United States? No one seemed to know, news commentators speculating that Air Force One had spirited him to some secret safe bunker, that Washington was no longer the seat of government.
If needing a respite from the tortuous visuals of television, she'd nevertheless left the audio volume high enough to be heard in the patio. The reports droned on. Ariana walked-I'm shuffling, she realized. Am I feeling my age?-the bricked terrace, the garden paths, the perimeter of the coyote-fence girding the patio. The brilliant turquoise sky, so like the one over Manhattan this day before billows of smoke had fouled it, belied the darkness of her heart. Her nation.
Conscious of her labored breathing, she stumbled toward the adobe banco near the garden gate, sat with raised head. The warm sun on her face could not dry tears beyond her control. A single cloud, so like, in form, Michelangelo's God-figure in the Creation panel of the Sistine, hung suspended above Santa Fe. Lord, be with Annalisa, spare her.
I fear, she whispered aloud, not being up to more loss. Until today, her thought persisted, I believed myself at this age beyond defeat by life's surprises, had conquered the passions and despairs which so plagued crisis when I was young. Don't send me back there, back to hurt I can't handle, under which I'll crumble. Back to madness.
You told me more than once, Claus, to grow up, embrace all of life, the sorrows as well as the joys, and I've tried so hard. Believed I'd managed it. But have you seen, wherever you are, wherever your spirit lurks, those shattered towers? Can you, if not I, know if our daughter was there this morning?
She opened the gate, left the patio and wandered into Placita Dominga. Away from the sound of the television. The familiar bloom of hollyhock and cosmos, the sienna-tinted ground she trod, the sculptural contours of her neighbors' homes argued that things remained the same, the world had not changed. But, no, Felipe Sandoval, Marquita's and Eloy's eldest son, was in their front yard with his parents-when he should have been on his job up at Los Alamos. That meant that things had been closed down on The Hill, the Lab off limits. Marquita waved to her, and left husband and son to cross the Placita.
"Have you heard anything from New York?"
"No. I keep telling myself it's because Annalisa's unable to phone, that she will as soon as she can."
"You shouldn't be alone. Let me or one of my girls stay with you."
"I'll be all right, Marquita. I must be all right."
"Come to la iglesia with us this evening. Padre Ricardo's called a vigil, prayers for the country. Felipe and his family will be going with Eloy and me."
"I can't. I need to stay near the phone."
Marquita embraced her. "We're here if you need us, amiga."
Ariana turned and walked back to her house. Entering the kitchen door, she stopped to stare dully at the silent wall phone. The food which Marquita had brought her earlier in the day remained untouched on a counter. Commentaries on television led her back to the living-room, images on the screen of dusk settling on stricken Manhattan, crowds with lighted candles in the streets, people holding aloft photos of loved ones about whom they were seeking information. Live interviews with anguished wives and husbands, parents, siblings assembled in front of hospitals and triage stations. The flashing lights of official vehicles, incessant sirens. And repeatedly, re-runs of the planes piercing the towers, the mush-room clouds above the city, the collapse of buildings and terrorized mobs fleeing them. Every frame of video a knife to the heart.
