Chapter One
We
were drinking iced tea at our favorite sidewalk café when the plastics plant
exploded.
One
moment Ronnie was checking my left hand to see if my wedding ring was still
there, and the next thing I knew she was crawling across the blistered sidewalk
in slow motion, reaching out for me.
Ronnie
and I have been friends since college.
She and Carol were my dorm mates.
The best friends I’ve ever had.
But college was a long time ago.
“How
long do you think it takes to fall out of love?” I had just asked.
Stalling
for time, Ronnie gazed about The Sidewalk Café.
The strong breeze should’ve been cool, but it was dry and hot. Instead of our usual twelve inches of rain
for the year, we’d received just less than two.
The drought in our area of West Texas had been catastrophic; a simple
spark from a piece of machinery could start a wildfire that might burn for days
or even weeks. The weather channel delighted in telling us we were smack dab in
the middle of the worst dry spell since the nineteen fifties.
In
a way, it was fitting. I seemed to be
smack dab in the middle of a drought myself.
My nest felt as empty as the prairie, and my husband, who could’ve been
the spark to light my world, was also
brittle and dry. In fact, he was so dry
he was practically nonexistent, like the prairie grass hiding in the earth,
waiting for moisture.
Ronnie
swished a fly away from her drink.
“What’s going on, Lizzie?”
I
hesitated. She was so good at taking the
wind out of my sails. In fact, I’d swear
she was using “wait time” on me, a technique we had learned in our education
classes at the university about a hundred years ago.
Shrugging
nonchalantly, I forged ahead. I really
wanted her input. I still valued it
every bit as much as when we were nineteen.
“I think he’s screwing around again.”
I sipped my tea. Mine was sweet,
hers was not . She was usually the
sensible one—at least when she wasn’t toasted on Mexican red.
She
smoothed the shiny fall of hair off her face.
It was still the fresh reddish color of a blood orange.
“Are
you sure?” she asked. “Or is it just
suspicion?” She swirled her tea, giving
me a moment to answer. The amber liquid
climbed the inside of her glass like a tiny tsunami. She reached across the table to touch my
hand. We weren’t very demonstrative
anymore, not like when we were in school.
I don’t know why, but I suspected it was my fault. A hug upon meeting was the extent of our
physical relationship. Sometimes one of
us would hug the other when we parted—it all depended upon our emotional
altitude at the moment. But this time,
she wasn’t being demonstrative by clasping my hand, she was simply checking to
see if my wedding ring was still in place.
She turned my hand over and pushed it flat down on the table.
The
emerald-cut diamond was in the same place it has resided—almost
continuously—for over thirty years.
“Well,
I guess you’re still together, so either no proof or you want to stay.” She was
blunt, as always.
I
opened my mouth to explain, but my words were cut short by the tremendous
explosion that blasted my streaky sienna hair into a halo, shivering the plate
glass window behind us. Ronnie was on
her feet in an instant, her own heavy hair standing out from her head like a
fright wig as she stared toward the southwest, toward the Pan-Tex Plastics
plant that has crouched there for years.
“Oh
My God!” Her voice, though it should
have been loud, was dim, as though the blast had flattened her words. Later, I realized it was my eardrums that
were flattened, not her words.
I
tried to stand but my wits were scrambled.
My scarf, the one Quinn bought for me in Italy during our one and only
European vacation, was hanging from the little teal-striped awning. My eyes darted here and there, searching for
something to label. Searching for some
cause. Terrorist? Yes, that must be
it. Terrorist. My eyes continued searching high and low, but
there was nothing out of the ordinary except for the staticky condition of my
hair, the tingling of my skin, and that
pesky scarf hanging inexplicably from the awning above us. And then I realized my insides were
vibrating, tingling just like my skin.
Breakers of air rolled in from the plant, thrashing me like the waves of
tea had thrashed the inside of Ronnie’s glass.
Up
and down the street people poured onto the sidewalks, pointing southward. That’s when I saw a great pillar of black
smoke billowing from the place where there should have been only tall towers,
slim columns, and fat boilers. Inside
the smoke, orange flames were eating the edges of the deceptively serene
noontime sky. Not many folks realized
that raw plastic is made from natural gas.
I shaded my eyes and looked away. It was too much, too surreal. But normalcy wasn’t found when I looked
away. On the ground, dozens of black
smudges caught my eye, grackles knocked out of the air by the concussive blast;
the smaller gray spots were undoubtedly sparrows.
Sirens
began to whoop—both the ones at the plant and the big one atop the nearby
courthouse. The only time I’d ever heard
it go off before was during tornado season, and that was only from a distance. Up close it was like being inside a disaster
movie in surround sound.
Central
Fire Station, three blocks over, began to empty its wide bays of fire and
rescue vehicles. Police cars added their
warbling wails to the cacophony. We
watched, dumbfounded, as the cruisers shot past the intersection in a hurry to
join the maelstrom. The visible sound of
rushing flames perfectly matched the tremor inside my body.
The
second explosion knocked us to the ground.
My
head grazed a table as I fell. I sensed
the concrete rushing up to meet me, but there was no pain; instead, silence
engulfed me like deep water. Everything
slowed. After a moment, I became aware
that my knees were bleeding inside my new white Capri’s, speckles of blood
seeping through. That’s when I spotted
Ronnie crawling across the blistered
sidewalk toward me. Her face was dotted
with red like a Botox-party nightmare.
Slivers of plate glass glittered brightly all across the patio and only
then did I realize I was screaming.
My
husband of thirty-two years was at work in that plant.
“C’mon.” Ronnie had my arm, attempting to pull me
up. My extremities seemed filled with
sand. “Let’s go,” she instructed. “Who
knows what will happen next!”
I
struggled to my feet catching a glimpse of my face in the one remaining section
of the café’s plate glass window. It
looked like a full white moon staring back at me. Touching the side of my head gingerly, I felt
a lump rising where my skull had caught the table when I fell. But Ronnie was the one who really needed
help. The second explosion had knocked
her into the edge of the new brick flowerbed and as a result, she had a large
leaking gash above one eye. This is in
addition to the dozens of pinprick-spots of blood dotting her face.
My
own head was swimmy, my vision blurry.
Together, we were able to gain our feet, and I watched numbly as Ronnie
swiped her hand across her bloody forehead.
Crumpled
napkin still clutched in my fist, I reached out, blotting at her wounds
randomly as we staggered across the street toward the courthouse like a couple
of book clubbers after an afternoon meeting complete with wine.
A
paramedic stopped us near an ambulance (when
did they arrive?), handed Ronnie a thick square of cotton and instructed
her to keep pressure on the gash. He sat
us down on the courthouse steps and told us to stay put until he came
back. Then he ran toward the knot of
people gathered a little further down the street. Was someone injured there? I
couldn’t make out exactly what was going on.
We
sat like stone mice on the warm cement steps, Ronnie’s arm clasped around my
shoulders, her other hand pressing the cotton to her forehead. The leaves of
the live oaks trembled overhead and I recalled a squirrel we’d been watching
from the café. Glancing upward, I half-expected
to see the little creature scampering to safety, surprised by all the noise and
confusion. But it was not there.
Then
I spied my purse hanging on the back of my overturned chair across the street,
and it dawned on me: my phone was probably still there, nestled in its little
phone-pocket on the side.
The
gorgeous day was now filled with so much sound it was like white noise—there
but not there. I found it impossible to
think, and as the cloud of smoke grew heavier and blacker, the notion of fire
reminded me of the tinder-dry fields surrounding the plant. The acrid smell of melting plastic was so
strong it scratched my throat and stung my eyes, and that finally prodded me
into action.
I
disentangled myself from Ronnie and headed back across the street. The owners
of the café were standing on the sidewalk in shock. The little tables and chairs that had seemed
so cosmopolitan only moments earlier were now scattered across the patio like
so much wrought-iron rubble. The table
umbrellas looked like giant turquoise tops upside down in the gutter.
With
great effort, I leaned down and prised my purse strap off the back of the chair
where only moments earlier I’d been sitting, sipping tea, trying to decide
whether my handsome husband was sleeping around—again.
Jana,
one of the owners, hurried over. “You
all right, Liz?”
Nodding,
I dug out my cell phone and automatically dialed Quinn. Nothing.
No ring, no voice mail, nothing.
It was as if I was dialing the very nothingness of the universe.
I
felt myself graying out, the world blowing away from me like the smoke rising
from the plant. My head throbbed, the
ground wavered as if a giant was shrugging his shoulders just beneath the
surface, and I felt myself sinking …
When
I came around I was vaguely aware of Ronnie and Jana lowering me into my
now-upright chair.
“Liz!”
Ronnie was patting at my face as Jana rubbed an ice cube up and down my bare
arms. “Lizzie! Can you hear me?”
I
could feel my eyelids fluttering, but I was powerless to stop them. Is that drool running from the corner of my
mouth? Maybe Jana rubbed the ice cube on
my lips. Then it hit me. I must’ve fainted.
“I’m
okay,” I sputtered. It came out more as,
“I yuh-kay.”
Inside
my eyes I still saw black smoke tinged with fire. Surprising tears welled up and spilled over
my bottom lid—ahh, so that’s the moisture. My eyes finally opened all the way (seemingly
of their own accord) and I was staring into the bloodshot-blue peepers of my
dearest friend. So it’s true, I thought. It really happened: the plant exploded.
The
look on her face told me I was neither dreaming, nor imagining. That one look told me it wasn’t something
that simply appeared in my head because I’d fainted; no, it was the other way
around. The realization that Quinn was
in that explosion was the reason I fainted.
It
seemed like forever before we got clearance to drive to the hospital in my Ford
Explorer. Ronnie wanted to drive, but I
ignored her and got behind the wheel.
The
sirens had become background noise. I couldn’t
keep my eyes from straying toward the fire. Is he in there? Is he
battling the blaze alongside the city firefighters? He qualified for first responder status when
he took fire and safety courses shortly after getting hired on twenty years
earlier. And he’d faithfully attended
the two-week refresher classes each year to stay certified. They’d had a few minor incidents over the
years, and he’d responded to those right away.
But there was never anything like this.
I
glanced at Ronnie. She was sitting with
her forehead resting on her hand. The
4x4 square of cotton was pretty much soaked.
I may have been the one who fainted, but she was the one who needed
stitches.
The
line of cars headed to the hospital was backed up around the corner. I couldn’t get within two blocks. A cop was directing traffic. Slowly we inched forward, air conditioner
blasting. Ronnie’s face was pale, her eyes
closed. As I watched, a fat drop of
blood oozed from beneath the cotton and plopped
onto her beige jeans. That’s when I
noticed a larger stain already there, in that very spot. Apparently the blood had been splatting there
for several minutes.
“Officer!”
I waved my hand out the window at the policeman who was directing traffic.
He
started toward us and then motioned for me to drive forward.
“Problem?” His voice sounded frayed.
I
bit the end of my tongue to keep from blurting out a smart-ass reply. “My friend is hurt,” I said simply.
He
leaned over, looking across me at Ronnie.
“She
need stitches?”
“I
think so. She’s really bleeding.” I
exhaled wondering how long I had been holding my breath.
He
backed away, nodding, and motioned me to maneuver around the car in front of us
and follow his hand signals. My own
hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, my wedding ring digging into the
leather padding.
He
kept motioning me forward.
Suddenly,
new tears overflowed onto my cheeks. I
hoped he didn’t see me wiping them away but a thought had just hit me: what if Quinn is in there? In the hospital or in one of the ambulances queued
up near the ER entrance? For the
tiniest split-second I thought it might be fitting for him to be there. But that was just my negative nature getting
the best of me. After all, the woman on
the phone last week could have been almost anyone.
Ronnie
laid her free hand on my forearm. Her
face was a whiter shade of pale—just like the old song by Procal Harum. I remember playing that record over and over
as a teenager sitting with my first real boyfriend on the floral sofa in our pine-paneled
den on the street where I grew up. We
must have played that song a hundred million times as we sat there, holding
hands and pretending we weren’t. I was
such a kid—I wanted a playmate, not a real boyfriend. We broke up when the other kids at school
learned we had never even kissed. When
he pressured me about it, I backed away.
I’ve never performed well under pressure.
I
tried to pull my mind back to the present.
It kept trying to slither away, like a snake on the road at high
noon. Another old song tried to crowd
into my mind … something by The Doors … something about a snake on the road, or
was it a toad? Idiot. Get a grip! I think it was a lizard; no, Jim Morrison
was the lizard king … oh, God. Maybe I have a concussion.
I let Ronnie off at the curb. “You sure you won’t faint like I did?”
“I’ll
be fine,” she insisted. She didn’t look
fine. She looked frail. But I had to go park the car—it was madness
near the entrance.
“Just
sit down if you start to feel dizzy … ”
“Yes,
mother,” her habitual sarcasm sounded forced.
We both grimaced.
I
scowled at her and crept away, my foot hovering above the brake in case I had
to turn suddenly and go back. The cop
was trying to keep at least one lane open each way. My front tires finally bumped into a curb and
I let the truck jump it so I could park in the vacant dirt lot three blocks
away. The heat seemed to have been
magnified by the fire even though the plant was miles from the hospital.
My
stomach clenched into a slick knot of fear and I knew I was going to be
sick. I threw up all over the curb. The spatters on the gray concrete were
Rorschach-like: What did you see when
your husband was blown to bits in the plant explosion? Just my
life, doc. My life spattering down into
the dust like a nude descending a staircase.
Or something by Picasso. Or
perhaps it was just a butterfly after all.
Hard to tell sometimes. Know what
I mean?
I
almost threw up again when I thought of having to tell Ashley her daddy was
dead for suddenly I knew that he was. I
could tell he was no longer in the land of light and air. How I knew for certain, I can’t say, but I
didn’t question it, I didn’t get hysterical, I just grew nauseous again,
slumped down beside the same curb I had just driven over with my truck.
Sitting
on the ground, I put my head between my knees.
I hoped Ronnie was okay, but I couldn’t help her at that moment. The sun was baking the back of my neck, the
sirens were whooping and wailing; the fire crackling in the distance, and he was
dead. Somewhere, in the universe where
we connected and made love and made our daughter and vowed to love each other
till death do us part, in that universe, there was a sudden hole and he slipped
through. I felt it in my guts, “Till
death,” had arrived.
I
remember thinking: This is shock. It isn’t real. I didn’t even feel any sadness, just nausea
and disbelief. I found out about the
sadness later, though, and the anger.
And when those emotions finally did make their appearance, they didn’t
go away like the nausea. They just
stayed and stayed. And stayed.
Ronnie
was sitting in chairs in the Emergency Department waiting area, still holding
the sopping cotton square to her forehead.
Her skin was pasty, cool. Her
eyes were closed and her head was tilted back.
There were people lingering here and there, coughing. The ambulance entrance slammed open, slammed
shut. Sirens from far away would build
to a crescendo and then cut off abruptly when they arrived in the covered
turnaround—or when they lined up in the ambulance queue to get to the
turnaround.
On
my way inside, I walked past nurses performing what I assumed to be triage.
That word from the old M*A*S*H TV program popped into my mind when I saw
them doing lightning fast exams and using hand signals to direct the gurneys
this way and that.
The
bloodiest patients got taken directly in without stopping by triage, don’t pass GO don’t collect two hundred
dollars. It appeared that every city
ambulance and several private ambulance-transport companies had been put in
service.
I
looked for blue uniforms—the kind worn by employees of the plant—but most of
the patients were unclothed with towels covering their private parts. I recalled that the first thing EMT’s do is
cut off clothing to check for injuries.
Some of the bodies had inflated air bags around their legs like brown
balloon pants. A few appeared to be
severely burned, their skin blackened. I
stepped aside as a gurney was wheeled past me with one charred, fingerless hand
dangling off the side.
I
overheard the head nurse—I couldn’t help but think of her as “Hot Lips”
Hoolihan even though she was at least fifty and heavyset—instruct the EMT’s to
take the two worst victims up on the roof as soon as they were stable. Life-Flight was waiting to helicopter them to
Lubbock’s burn unit two hours away.
I
took Ronnie’s hand and felt for her pulse.
It felt fast and weak, but what did I know? The splotch of blood on her slacks was the
size of a cantaloupe. That seemed like a
lot of blood to me.
My
mind wanted to flick back to the realization that I was probably already a
widow, but I wouldn’t let it. I refused
to let it go there. Instead, I tried my
luck at the admitting counter.
The
clerk behind the window assured me the neediest patients were being treated
first. She glanced in Ronnie’s direction
and then turned back to her computer.
I
tapped the glass again. “Excuse me … ”
She
slid the window open once more, her raised eyebrows appearing to question me
and scold me at the same time.
“I
– I – has my husband been brought in?”
She
waited expectantly for my mind to catch up with the stupid question my mouth
had just asked.
“His
name is Quinn. Rose.”
She
continued to stare at me.
“He
works at the plant.” My voice was surprisingly
strong, but flat, like my eardrums.
She
glanced at the monitor, then at a clipboard.
“No one by that name yet.” Her
hand reached to close the sliding glass again.
Mine
got there first. “But how do you know?”
The
clerk sighed, dropped her hand. People
behind me made exasperated noises. They
had questions too.
“How
can you know for sure?” For once in my life, I was assertive. “Most of the people on those ambulances
didn’t even have clothes on, much less I.D.s.”
I heard the abnormal tremor at the end of my sentence, but I was not backing down—not this time. I had to know. I didn’t know what else to do.
“You’re
right, honey. We don’t have names for
everyone who has come in—you’ll just have to be patient—we’re doing all we
can.”
I
nodded. Her accommodating tone had
disarmed me.
Back
in chairs, a million new people had arrived.
My seat beside Ronnie was now filled with a woman and two children who
had been driving toward the plant when it exploded. Probably
taking their dad some lunch—we used to do that when Ash was younger—she loved
going to the plant to visit Daddy.
The
boy was shaking his head. He appeared to
be about four. “Deaf!” his mother
shouted to no one in particular. The
little girl, younger, clung to her mother.
She had the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen, and they were fixated on
the blood drying on Ronnie’s forehead.
She sensed me looking at her and closed her eyes, hugging her mother’s
arm like a lifeline. Her mom appeared to
be in a wide-eyed trance.
Digging
my cell phone from my purse, I happened upon a peppermint and popped it into my
mouth as I automatically hit redial.
Slime from the earlier bout of vomiting still gilded my tongue.
Quinn’s
number gave me nothing. Or nothingness. Again.
I
thought of the way our kite had flown the day we’d picnicked at Castle
Gap—after the string broke, it had grown smaller and smaller and smaller—until
it was a speck and then, nothing. As if
it had never even been. I suddenly got
the feeling that’s how it was with Quinn—he’d gone far away, perhaps the land
of Nod, as if he had never even been.
Ronnie’s
son, Beck, answered his phone on the first ring. “Aunt Liz?
What’s going on? Where’s my
mom?” His voice was tight with
emotion. “I heard the news. And I’ve been
trying to call. Where are you? Are y’all okay?”
“Your
mom’s okay.” I picked at a cuticle,
wishing for a cigarette, but I’d given them up ten years earlier. “She’s getting a few stitches, but she’ll be
fine.”
I
heard a gulp of air. “Stitches! What happened? The TV says the plant exploded. Were you and mom there? How’d she get hurt? What about Uncle Quinn? Why isn’t she answering her phone?”
The
questions came at me like water through a floodgate, but that was good. I was glad to answer; it took my mind off
possibilities. “We were downtown, eating
lunch. The windows exploded. Your mom fell and cut her forehead—she’ll be
fine. She isn’t answering her phone
because they’re stitching her up now.
That’s why I’m calling you.”
“And?”
My
voice refused to fill the silence.
“Was
Uncle Quinn at work?”
I
sat there, nodding my head at the phone, willing the tears not to fall. Ronnie and I had been friends for so
long. Her kids called us Aunt and Uncle;
Ashley called her Ron-ron.
The
hospital brightness was blinding for a while, and then it also became
nothing. A chair had opened up on the
opposite side of the room and I dropped into it gratefully. After another half-hour, my eyelids fell down
of their own accord; my body slumped sideways in the molded-plastic chair. As I dozed, my exhausted mind tried to
convince me we were in the Amsterdam airport on our way to, or on our way home,
from Italy. We’d toured Venice, snuggled
deeply into the creaking gondola with woolen scarves and a steaming Cappuccino
to share. We’d fallen in love with
Verona, lingering over every detail of Juliet’s home and the incredible view
from the famous balcony. We’d visited
Vicenza—bought gifts for all in the glass factory shops—and then we were headed
home. We’d missed Rome somehow,
lingering so long in Verona, but we vowed to return on our twenty-fifth
anniversary; and now my drifting mind said we were there, in the bright,
sterile confines of the Amsterdam airport, on our way to commemorate the rest
of our lives together, or on our way back home to begin the celebration.
Fur Elise woke me. The song was my personal ring tone for
Ashley.
“Mom?”
her voice was not in my dream. It
belonged in a nightmare. She knew. Somehow, she already knew.
“Baby.” I couldn’t say more. She was calling from Denver.
“It’s
all over CNN. What happened? Was Dad at work? Where are you? I’ve tried calling everyone … ”
I
almost hung up. If I could just hold off a little while longer. Go back to Verona, back to Italy.
“Mom?
You there?”
“I’m
sitting in the ER with Ronnie.”
There. That was a safe beginning.
“Ron-ron?”
I
could hear the confusion in her voice.
She was trying to put Ronnie in the context of the news reports on TV.
“She
fell down. We were downtown, eating
lunch when the, you know, when the umm plant …”
“When
the plant what? Mom? The news says it exploded! Blew up!
Mom, where is my dad?” Hysteria
now.
I
was not doing a good job at all. My
fingernails suddenly became the focus of my attention. They were grimy, broken, ragged. I thought of the nail file in my makeup bag
inside my purse; a diamond dust file from one of those fancy manicure kits you
receive for Christmas every few years when someone, usually a niece or a
nephew, runs out of ideas or has to grab something quickly at Walgreen’s or CVS
on Christmas Eve.
Bile began to
creep back into my throat, and my mouth.
I stood shakily. Only one person
had been allowed to go back with Ronnie.
When Beck arrived, I’d left the two of them in the trauma room and gone
back to chairs. Hal, Ronnie’s husband,
was on his way. I was supposed to be the
lookout. How long had I dozed? Were they
still in trauma, or had they walked by me while I was in Italy?
“I’m
coming out there, Mom.”
I
came back then. Back to the present,
back to the phone. People around me were
bleeding, calling out for nurses. Others
were like me, dozy, woozy, in denial.
“I’m
here, Ash. I’m here. Umm, they took Ronnie back to stitch up her
forehead—she’ll be fine. Beck is here. I – I don’t know about your dad. No one seems to know, or they won’t tell
me. I’m just here, waiting.” A round teardrop plopped onto the hard blue
plastic armrest. I was pretty certain it
was one of mine.
Quieter,
now. I was afraid to break her silence.
“I’ll
be there as soon as possible,” she said.
I
could hear clicking in the background. My baby.
Mine and Quinn’s baby. Our
girl. All grown up.
A
nervous pounding began behind my eyes. I
could hear Ashley’s voice from a distance.
I thought she would hang up before I could figure out what to say. I fished a Kleenex from my purse to blot my
lips, keep the bile at bay.
“I’m
still here, Mom.” She didn’t desert
me. “I’m booking a flight on the
Internet. The earliest I can get there
is tomorrow afternoon—I could drive it and be there in the morning.”
“No,
no. Don’t drive by yourself. Wait—is Tracy coming too?” I pictured my only child coming in alone,
into this crowded awful place with people crying and bleeding and my stomach
tried to clench up again.
“Don’t
worry. Tracy is coming too. Now, tell me … was Dad at work?”
