The Third Wave Page 4

  You are all precious people and you should smile up at them [the ones who died] once a day to tell them you are okay. Everyone here loves you and if you need me I will come and hold you. I have extra love that I can give you. Do you need it? P.S. Come to Vermont and we will show you the beauty of the world again. I have space in my bedroom.

  The children’s cards were the morphine of Ground Zero, easing our pain. Then, in late September when the Anthrax scares occurred, special government agents came to the Center to warn us that poisonous powder may have been planted inside the letters. By then, Samantha and I had already opened thousands of envelopes. We stared down at our hands and began to laugh, just a bit at first, then hysterically, until tears came out of our eyes. Here we’d thought we had the safest job at Ground Zero!

  I could sense when the workers had recovered a lot of bodies. The air would thicken like concrete. On those days, we’d quietly fuss over the workers even more than usual, making an extra effort to smile and find them special sweets.

  On one particularly heavy day, the ironworkers finally made it to the ground floor of one of the towers, which had been pushed eight stories underground. There they found twenty bodies. The scratch marks on the walls clearly showed that the trapped people had tried desperately to dig their way out by hand.

  On November 4, 2001, the New York Yankees were up against the Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series. If there had ever been a year for the Yankees to win the baseball pennant, then this was the one. It was probably the first time in history when fans outside of New York were rooting for the Yankees, hoping that the win would lift the spirits of a city in mourning. Nobody worked on the pile that night. Everyone huddled around the televisions set up at Ground Zero. The series was tied at three games apiece, setting up a seven-inning pitching duel between the Yankees’ Roger Clemens and the Diamondbacks’ Curt Schilling.

  In the ninth inning, the Yankees seemed poised to capture their fourth straight World Series title. But then Arizona tied the game, and at the last pitch, Luis Gonzalez looped Rivera’s famous cut fastball just over the head of shortstop Derek Jeter. The ball barely reached the outfield grass, but counted for a single and sent Cummings safely to home plate. The game was over. The Diamondbacks had won the World Series. New York grieved with all the pent-up emotions of the past month. What had once been a room filled with excitement fell silent. Grown men cried. Somehow we’d all thought that this win would symbolize great hope for New York. A dark gloom fell over Ground Zero once more.

  Romances sprang up between Ground Zero workers. On the third floor of our Red Cross building, a makeshift “hook-up room” even came into existence—a small, quiet space where couples would go to hang out privately and have sex. Every now and then, I would see a couple emerge from the room, switching the light back on, on their way out. We turned a blind eye because we knew that people needed the release. This was still New York City, after all, and hormones, as usual, were raging in full force.

  The last thing on my mind, however, was sex; the experience was just too horrific for me. I couldn’t look at anyone in a romantic way. It’s true that I was wearing more Chanel No. 5 than usual, but it was only to cover up the smell of death, which filled every membrane of my body. I focused on connecting to others through the unconditional love my mother had always shown to me and to her hospital patients.

  When the American Red Cross building shut down its services in the Red Zone in March of 2002, Samantha and I were not ready to stop working, so we simply moved across the road to volunteer in the Salvation Army’s 35,000-square-foot tent at West and Vesey Streets. Ground Zero was our home, and it felt healing to be there. We felt like the nurses in an old war movie. Our mission was clear: to stand by our brothers to the end.

  And so Samantha and I continued on, handing out children’s cards and sitting for long hours with the workers, listening to their pain and crying with them. Each night when I traveled back uptown, I observed that New Yorkers were a gentler people now. The car horns hadn’t yet started blasting again. Through my own eyes on this tragedy, I glimpsed an inspiring vision of humanity, one filled with hope.

  Around that time, the tribute of lights was created. It had eighty-eight mega-bulbs that formed two commemorative fingers of light resembling the Twin Towers, which beamed seven miles into the sky above Manhattan. One night, I stood right in the middle of the base of those powerful lights and looked up to see a real jet plane flying through them. This time, the towers were invincible.

  On May 30, 2002, the night before the closing ceremony at Ground Zero, Samantha and I walked down into the pit one last time to share a quiet moment writing messages on the only remaining steel beam, which would be removed as part of the celebration the following day. All the other debris had already been cleared and the site was ready for rebuilding. A priest and a rabbi prayed near us, and at that very second a white speckled pigeon flew over and sat on top of the beam. It was the first sign of wildlife I had seen at Ground Zero in the nine long months I’d worked there. I had been looking for the signs, yet not even one creepy cockroach had wandered into the area until that night.

  The next day was the closing ceremony. I woke up at 5 a.m. to meet the other Salvation Army volunteer women on the corner of Murray Street. We walked over to where an unfamiliar SWAT agent clad in black ninja-like fatigues blocked our entrance to Ground Zero. He held up his M-16 automatic weapon and refused us entry. We tried other entrances, but everywhere we went, the Secret Service shut us out. They explained that it was a ceremony only for “the heroes of Ground Zero,” and so the firemen and policemen were the only ones allowed entry. We tried to explain that we had also worked down there, but our protests fell on protocol-stuffed ears.

  We walked back up the street, elephant heads slung low, miserable at being shut out from the much-needed closing ritual. Half a mile up the street, we found some portable toilets and climbed on top of them for better viewing, but we could only imagine what was going on at the ceremonies down the road.

  When the service was over, we were delighted to see the police and fire departments marching in full armor up the long street toward us. We jumped to our feet on top of the port-a-potties and started cheering wildly as the parade sailed by us. I waved to my old friend Paul, and he smiled and motioned for the other firefighters to look our way.

  It was a magical moment. As if on cue in a Hollywood film, the entire fire department turned and saluted us with their white gloves. They gave us that “Ground Zero look” that had bonded us all together for so long. Then they tossed their hats in the air and tears flowed from our eyes.

  Volunteering at Ground Zero was the first time I had worked alone on a mission of my own choosing. Throughout my childhood and young adult years, I had participated in projects that my parents or friends had created. But helping out with the post-9/11 rebuilding efforts in New York City had been my idea and my solo effort. It also showed me that everyone—from an old lady with a tea cart, to a middle-aged lawyer willing to clean toilets, to children with love in their hearts—is needed.

  ACT II

  THE THIRD WAVE

  CHAPTER 4

  After having come so close to death during the cricket bus accident in Australia, I found that I was able to push the boundaries in my life. I discovered that I had a powerful ability to move on and not dwell on the past. I became more adventurous. My heart was a lot tougher, and I became determined never to give up at anything.

  After leaving Australia, I’d moved to New York and decided to make Manhattan my home. I started my new life with barely anything, so the only direction I had to go was up. New York was a competitive town, with the best of the best from around the world all aiming to be top-notch at what they did, and I loved that energy. I was there for the thrill, and I was moving at a different pace than I ever had before. My intellect was stimulated. I felt happy to be alive.

  I found a cheap room to rent from an eighty-eight-year-old man who owned a large apartment on th
e Upper West Side. He treated me like his granddaughter and reminded me of my childhood friends at my mother’s hospital for the elderly. Every morning, I would lead him through a modified exercise class in his living room, instructing him to lift his arms and legs as he sat in a chair. He had no family, so when he was sick, I took him to the doctor and the dentist. It was a wonderful situation.

  Then I started noticing signs of early stage Alzheimer’s, which I recognized from my nursing days. I ignored them until I arrived home one day to find that the old man had changed the front door locks. I couldn’t get into my apartment. The doorman acknowledged to the police that I had been living there, so they allowed me to enter in order to retrieve my clothes and few belongings. But once I got inside, I saw that there were no signs of my ever having existed. All my possessions were gone. The man had forgotten who I was and had thrown everything out.

  I was flabbergasted and alone, with nothing and nowhere to go. I’d been in New York only a month and didn’t have any real friends I could turn to. I wasn’t so bothered about losing my clothes, but the loss of my personal items and family photos made me cry. Also gone were phone numbers I had collected of all the people I had met so far in the United States.

  Just like that, I was homeless. I lived on the streets for four days. I walked around at night talking to safe-looking strangers and fell asleep during the day on the chairs outside the ladies’ powder room at Bloomingdale’s. I had so little money that I would watch people eating to feel full.

  On the fourth day, I signed up for a free day membership at the New York Sports Club and went inside to take a shower and read the newspaper. I found and applied for a job as a nanny on Park Avenue, and was hired straightaway. I went to live with a Jewish family with twin ten-year-old boys, and I was back on my feet. I had a roof over my head and some spending money again.

  Over the next few years, I tried a variety of jobs, from piano teacher to mathematics assistant to a professor at a college. Eventually I landed a job as an investment banker on Wall Street. It was an entry-level job, working in IPOs for a vice president, but I felt excited to be going there every day. I steadily moved up the corporate ladder to jobs with higher pay and more responsibility. I also received a large third-party insurance settlement from my bus accident, and invested it in land and stock options.

  The inclination to be a filmmaker didn’t strike me until I was in my early thirties. I bought a video camera and took it with me everywhere I went, interviewing everyone from taxi drivers to bums sitting in the streets. I loved to look through the lens and capture people going about their everyday lives.

  Thanks to my banking job, I was making a good salary and leading quite a jet-setting lifestyle, but the job didn’t fit my personality. So, when I was in my mid-thirties, I quit my secure job and decided to try to make it at something I was really passionate about. I signed up for an intensive fifteen-week course at NYU film school. I had no background other than the amateur films I had taken with my handheld camera, but I soon discovered that I could draw on all of my skills and life experiences—from teaching, to nursing, to travel, to photography—and combine them into storytelling.

  A few months after the course ended, I helped raise one million dollars from my Wall Street banker friends to make my first comedy feature film. Shot in the streets of New York, it was called High Times Potluck and was written by Summer of Sam author Victor Colicchio. It was a fun, lighthearted movie about a suitcase of marijuana and the mob. I secretly dedicated the film to my sister, Lyndall, who had been busted for growing pot when she was a teenager. I was finishing up filming that project when the September 11 attacks happened.

  In New York, I dated different types of men from all over the world. All of my romantic relationships were long-term. They usually ended when the guy had to move interstate or overseas for work, and I wasn’t ready to follow, attached as I was to New York. I let a few of my soul mates slip away, but I didn’t know it at the time.

  In late 2002, I met Oscar. I was showing my film High Times Potluck in Toronto, where he was also showing his film. We met in the middle of a large crowd at my film party. He reached over and grabbed my arm, gently pulling me over, and started speaking with his charming Italian accent. Toward the end of the night, we kissed passionately against the wall. He was Sicilian and sexy and a fantastic break-dancer. He danced his way into my life.

  Oscar and I were pretty much inseparable after that. He had an unbelievable way with children and animals, but was also always broke, just like most of the guys I had dated. Still, we never seemed to need any money to have fun. Oscar was romantic and a great cook. He would come up with creative ideas about where to picnic around New York. Also, he could fix anything. He found broken bicycles in the street and painted them bright yellow with daisies. We would cycle for hours around the city in the snow, laughing and falling off and getting into stupid situations. He reminded me of my adventurous brothers, with a touch of my quick-tempered father thrown in as well.

  CHAPTER 5

  Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, and no other city I know celebrates it like New York. The Salvation Army donation bells ring out on every street corner and the smell of chestnuts sizzles up my nose. Elaborate window dressings romance shoppers and winter snow fights break out between strangers in Central Park. There are black-tie parties with friends and horse-drawn-carriage rides through slushy streets.

  Christmas 2004 was a slightly bleaker season for me than usual, as Oscar and I were both broke. Oscar was between jobs producing films and had taken up bartending at a local Italian restaurant. Meanwhile, I was a trailing director for the TV drama Law & Order. I had to observe the other directors on set to make sure the show was shot in the same manner as it had been for the past twenty years. Unfortunately, I had spent the past twelve weeks on set shooting at Chelsea Piers—with no pay.

  But we managed to smile through it. Christmas had become way too overcommercialized anyway, we rationalized, so our nearly depleted savings would bring us back to a simpler holiday. We decided that this year, we could buy each other only one gift, which had to be purchased for twenty dollars or less. I gave Oscar gumboots and he gave me his favorite soccer jersey from his beloved Palermo team and a box of chocolates. Soccer is a religion for Italians and most would sell their mothers before giving away their favorite soccer jerseys. I wore my new jersey proudly as I cooked a succulent chicken, golden baked potatoes, and vegetables for dinner.

  We did splurge on a real Christmas tree, which we decorated with photos of our friends and family. I also hung a few of the precious paper angels that I had saved from the September 11 Christmas tree at Ground Zero. The angel decorations had been made by schoolchildren from all over America and sent to the rescue workers to cheer us up. Our tree was mesmerizing. I sat watching it for hours and filmed it on my video camera. At Christmas I became a little girl again.

  I thought of Christmas in Australia, which arrived in the middle of summer. Santa Claus would come on water skis. On Christmas Eve, we would go from door to door singing Christmas carols with friends and visit sick people at local hospitals. We would leave milk and cookies for Santa and wake up the next day to find a stocking full of candy on our beds. We would race downstairs and sit like puppies under the tree ready to rip open the presents, which we had already poked holes in with anticipation. At dinner we ate cold meats, lobster, and salads, and after church we played cricket on the beach.

  On Christmas this year, it was snowing outside. I lay around in love beneath the tree while Oscar hand-fed me Italian Baci chocolates. Inside the blue wrappers were romantic messages for lovers translated into four languages.

  But my bubble burst on Christmas afternoon when I looked at the news on the Internet and saw that a 9.3-magnitude earthquake had struck the sea near Indonesia, triggering a massive tsunami to hit much of southern Asia. The Internet reported that over a thousand people were dead. As each hour passed, that number grew. Soon it reached 5,000, and i
t kept climbing. I thought about how that was 2,000 more deaths than on September 11 and what a serious disaster it must be.

  Oscar and I sat in a trance as events unraveled before our eyes. The death toll climbed to 10,000 and kept going. We were hypnotized by CNN, watching it twenty-four hours a day. The television reports were uncensored. They showed hundreds of dead bodies lying in the streets and wounded people walking around in a daze. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was reporting from a pile of rubble when he stopped mid-sentence to acknowledge a bad smell coming from beneath him. He said he thought there was a body under the very spot where he was standing.

  It was during Cooper’s report that I realized I had to go to Asia to help. I called my mother to tell her about my decision, and she responded by saying that she already knew I would be going. She gave me her blessing.

  Later that night, I turned to Oscar and told him I was leaving to help and asked if he would like to come with me. I said it was okay if he didn’t want to, but I was going anyway. He thought about it for a few hours and then said yes. I was happy he agreed to come on the adventure, but since he had never done anything like it before, I wondered if volunteering together would put a strain on our relationship.

  We began talking about the logistics of getting there and gathering the necessary medical supplies. Money was another problem, but I already knew that if you want something badly enough and summon up all the faith and courage inside of you, the whole universe opens up for you.

  The next day, Oscar called his parents. They were upset at the idea of him going to Asia and advised against it. His mother was so worried that she wouldn’t send any money to help with the journey, hoping to discourage him. Oscar and I started calling our wealthier friends about the possibility of using their frequent flyer miles to get our plane tickets. I also contacted my healthcare worker friends at local hospitals and began collecting basic medical supplies.