My story, partial

When Lindsay died, everyone was very practical about it. There were posters all over the city of “missing people” awful charades of false hope--but her family didn’t go in for any of that. She was on the 80th floor of the second tower, and after the first one was hit they told everyone to go back to work and not to worry. She called her dad to tell him she was fine. But of course they started evacuating shortly after that and the halls became clogged with people. A group of Lindsay’s friends hopped in an elevator and urged her along. The main thing they tell you about emergencies in tall buildings is to never take elevators. So she declined. Theirs was one of the last elevators to safely reach the lobby and spit out its occupants.

She called her dad back; I imagine her terrified.

Her family harbored no false hope: he was talking to her before the tower collapsed, and then he was not.

Within hours of our friend e-mailing us to pray for Lindsay who was on a top floor, there was a follow up e-mail telling us that she didn’t make it. ?Of course, I am devastated.? The same e-mail contained tentative plans for a memorial that same week.

We rode up to the memorial, which was in Connecticut, in a yellow school bus. Her parents chartered two to take us all out of the city and bring us back, but only one was needed. It was surreal sitting with everyone, all grown up, with flowers and coffee early in the morning, in formal clothes, strangers, heading out of New York for the first time since, all quiet. I went with friends--closer acquaintances of Lindsay than I--who were later not my friends, and who I think used Lindsay’s death as an excuse for pushing me away, finally.

The day before we went to Connecticut, I went to the Upper East Side to meet up with these friends. It was weird riding the subways again and everything felt off. Two of them came to meet me and one announced that we had to collect DNA. Lindsay’s mom had asked us to go to Lindsay’s apartment and collect a DNA sample “for the authorities” hair from a brush. We were also to find out what size most of her clothing was. My friends, like Lindsay’s parents, were very matter-of-fact and practical about it all, so I was silent and hid the shock that hit my heart like a stone.

We had to argue, crudely, with the doormen to let us up to the apartment. While my friend was explaining everything heatedly to the unrelenting doormen, I studied the makeshift memorial to Lindsay in the lobby: flowers, a poster, signatures. The doormen knew their job, but also looked utterly sad telling us we couldn’t go up. Eventually, things worked out and we made it up.

It was dark and quiet, the other two roommates indefinitely gone from the place. One was Lindsay’s best friend, the other was slightly strange and none of us knew her that well. We did what we came to do: one of my friends found the hair brush, we sifted through her closet (all petite 2, 4. Work clothes: wool skirts and buttoned shirts). And then we were at a loss. Her answering machine blinked with messages.

There was a bag of trail mix on the kitchen counter and I kept going back and taking handfuls, trying to make the food be something normal and pleasurable. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves and went into the weird roommate’s room. One of my friends found her journal and began sifting through it. It was written Bridget Jones style, with calories calculated and exercise documented and sex trysts laid out in emotional and physical detail. We devoured the journal, laughing and finding excerpts to read, gleeful that we were right about her strangeness--she had concrete things wrong with her including an eating disorder. The entries stopped after breakfast was recorded on September 11th.

Eventually we gathered our things and closed the door of the apartment, taking off for my friends’ place. Lingering with all of us was this strange experience of violation and adrenaline and sorrow. Things you can never quite explain properly to anyone, but that keep popping up in your life begging to be examined and found out.