Rebecca Clifford
Summer of Color and Songs:
A
Reflection of 2001
I remember that summer before 9/11 through colors and songs.
First it was R.E.M.'s "Imitation of Life" and its
super-8 like video that looked like it took place at a
party in Los Angeles around 1982, everything bleached
out by age. The song was there on TV as my
boyfriend and I had breakfast in the morning, and as we drove
back from our visits to the hospital in the northern
section of Florence. I remember the white sky, the
white hospital room, the white magnolia blossoms with
their tangy, lemony perfume, and my white dog I
screamed at when he was barking too loud and I
thought I was going to collapse. The stench of death
in all the whiteness -- the smell of cream cheese and
medicine that hit my nose every time I entered that
hospital room and saw my boyfriend's frail father
with his white hair. White nurses who wore white, the
white walls and sheets that would be stained with the
last gasp of his father's death. The sun pouring
through the venetian blinds. The white mozzarella on
the thick comforting pizza that we would
dive into wordlessly after all those visits to the
hospital.
There was red for a while too, although this was
faint and mixed in with the white. Most notably it
came from the pool of blood on the street in Genova
where Carlo Giuliani had been shot. The red of the
flags and bandannas amidst white smoke, white cars, and
buildings. The repeated images of blood on the street
next to the motionless body. I remember being in
the chapel at the hospital waiting for the funeral,
my face red and hot with tears and from the heat of
the early July day.
But then things turned yellow. When I went to New York
in September to organize my apartment (white, ecru
and mauve), my boyfriend was busy painting the walls
of our apartment back in Italy. Walls that were a
traditional white that was in every house, every
apartment in Italy. Color somehow being verboten
except in modern, artistic homes. Colored walls were
deemed a little too "gay". White was solid and
reliable. But in my apartment in New York, full of the grimness left over
from my previous tenant, who, after only one month
there broke down in one fell swoop and almost took the
place with her, depressed me. Old rice from Chinese
takeout under the bed, a random fork. my own dog's
ancient, white hairs, some of them puppy hairs, left
over from years previous when I was still on my
own, still innocent. Before Italy, and before the walls
of my small world fell away to falling in love, moving
far away, the motorcycle accident where I broke my
leg and almost died of an embolism, and being next to
my boyfriend's father as he took his last breath -- all
in the space of a year.
The days were warm and the sky was crystal clear, but
my mood was a mess. I didn't know where I was.
I actually didn't know what was going on. The
brilliant sunlight on those days made everything
gorgeous and golden in the late summer city. But I
was crying myself to sleep some nights, hugging my
stuffed animals I'd had for the past 32 years. The
first night I arrived back in New York, to the
apartment that I had slowly been moving out of for
the past year, when the place felt less colorful and
more off-white than ever, I went to bed with my
stuffed animals. I was crying and missing
my boyfriend. I called him when it was five a.m. in
Florence. "I miss you so much," I said, tears
leaking down the side of my face. He comforted me,
and I finally fell asleep.
Every morning when I woke up I called him.
Before he could even reach for the phone, there I
was, waiting for the long beeps that indicated
European phone ringing. Usually I wanted to savor those early mornings
alone. To sip my enormous cup of coffee with a
cinanmon danish covered in melted butter. Before this time, whenever he
called during this time it was met with a mixture
of hope and exasperation. Desire and repulsion. I
wanted to be on my own, but have him right beside
me. Now, in that golden, breezy week, I just
wanted him there. Always. It was with a neediness I
had never known before that I called him, dialed the
numerous digits, international connection, country
code, city code, exchange and number. All those
five's, one's and three's. Everything ending on a
comforting, even four.
During the day, the sun on my back, a late summer
breeze rustling through the trees, blowing hair, silk
and cotton, I was frantic. I called my therapist
for an emergency appointment after bawling my eyes
out through Moulin Rouge. I hardly paid any
attention to the movie, in fact I found it obnoxious
in all its blood red and garish gold. But I sobbed
uncontrollably for my boyfriend. And then there I'd
be in my therapist's office, yellow room, bright
yellow walls, not knowing what to say. Usually during
emergency sessions I could pinpoint the problem
immediately. This time -- no, it wasn't the apartment, for
I had been saying good-bye to it for over a year.
I missed my boyfriend terribly. So? I was only in
New York for one week. I'd been away from him for
longer periods and, although I always missed him,
was happy to be temporarily on my own, back in New
York. What the hell was going on, then? The same
bewilderment in every non-plussed session. "I just
don't know what it is," repeated over and over again.
But at night with my friends, things were marvelous.
I listened to their stories, not wanting to talk
about my dreadful summer. No, tell me what's going on
with you! The dinners I had, listening to trials and
tribulations, so happy to be out of my head. And
there was one lovely Saturday night, a night I would
look back on as one of the two magnificent points in
my otherwise horrifying, dreary, and sad year.
I took the train out to Rego Park in Queens to a
friend's barbecue. His wife, three kids, his brother,
and some other friends. The potato salad, the steak
that had been marinating all day long, the cheesecake
with chocolate chips. I brought a bottle of red.
They drank it out of large plastic glasses that were
either green, pink, blue, or yellow. They laughed, and I
felt light and happy, imagining my boyfriend right
next to me. How he would have loved this! He and his
symbiotic connection to New York. The wife with her
thick Long Island accent. The home that felt cramped,
but cozy. We watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory after dinner, and the kids fell asleep as Gene
Wilder sang, "There is no place I know that is filled
with pure imagination." My friends talked about
their showbiz childhoods, when they were in commercials
for boardgames or else on tour with Oliver! I felt
happy and safe.
My friend drove me back to Manhattan in his
mini-van with two of the kids seat-buckled in the back. The sun had
set, leaving a yellow golden glow on the horizon,
layered with pink. The lights of the city that had
enchanted me since I was a child, and still enchanted these
two kids now,
glittered from over the bridge. The lights seemed
thrown together, all lively, talkative, full, rich and
clear. They were jewels, diamonds, and crystals.
I had been thinking of buying an apartment in the city. My
friend, a real estate appraiser, told me to wait
until the market crashed. That's what my astrologer
also said a few days earlier, my astrologer who seemed so
unusually frail and thin that she looked like she had
cancer.
On Sunday, I hired a car to take me out to JFK,
fantasizing about teaching my Italian friends how to
speak Long Island-ese. Cwoffey Twalk. I spent an
uneventful plane ride to Paris, and then on to Florence,
watching the landscape below -- the Appenines, the
Pianura, the valleys. As I caught sight of the Duomo
with its red brick and white marble, an unease hit
me. I knew I had to be there, but a piece of me
wanted to be back in New York. A pit was in the pit of
my stomach. I was looking at Florence as hard
lessons, struggling, and waiting for that other shoe to
drop.
My boyfriend looked gorgeous, dark blonde hair
blowing in the wind, glistening in that ever present
golden sunlight. Even here the weather was the same as New York.
They just switched buildings. I was still in
Manhattan. Only this time it was really Italian.
I was thrilled to see my boyfriend again. I felt
that rush of love pour through me every time I saw
him in the airport. They got my luggage, only to find
that one of the pieces was lost. It had my three
stuffed animals in it. But I was assured that it was
on another flight to Florence, the baggage system
being backed-up yet again, on the Milan-Florence
route.
Before we opened the door of the apartment, my
boyfriend said, "Close your eyes." And I did. When
he told me to open them, after he led me up the
stairs and into the apartment, everything was a
brilliant, sunny yellow. Happy, warm, and very yellow.
In fact, every room was yellow. "Is it too much?" he
asked in a worried voice.
Yes, it is, I thought. But I didn't want to go
back to that awful old white. This was a major
improvement. I answered, "Maybe, but I love it. It's
beautiful." And it was, but I knew that my
boyfriend, once again, had gotten overly enthusiastic.
That night, with my lost luggage safely back, I had a
panic attack. One thought after another punched my
head. How aggressive he was in painting the whole
place yellow, without asking me, like he was trying
to control my life! But a part of my brain told me
to breathe, to take it easy and know that I was
overtired and that this was another of many attacks
I had experienced that year -- attacks that hit me
when I was exhausted, in bed and ready to sleep. I
told myself to go to sleep, this never working
before. But that night it did.
I woke up at eleven-thirty a.m. to warm yellow. The
walls comforted me in their hints of gold. The sun
poured through the blinds, forming stripes on the wall
and bed. I put on a pair of black cotton pants, an
ancient blue and white striped L.L. Beane shirt that
one of my sisters had when they were in boarding
school in the seventies. Then I had coffee with my
white dog next to me.
Soon after it was lunch at the cafe down the street.
We couldn't stop caressing each
other. We had cokes and sandwiches while reading La
Repubblica and Corriere dello Sport. I could barely
make out what the articles talked about and instead
focused on the weather, astrology, and entertainment,
ignoring Berlusconi, Bush, and Blair. We left the cafe entwined in each other's arms
and headed back home.
Back home the yellow greeted my with a warm, cheery,
"Hi!" (and I wondered if it was too much, but didn't
want white again). I said good-bye to my boyfriend
who had to go down to the office while I decided to
take the dog out for a walk. I got my cell phone, a
plastic baggie, and the dog's green collar from the
table in the front hallway.
That's when I heard the front door slam with a
ferocity I'd never heard before, and heard my
boyfriend's feet stomp up the stairs in a way that
sounded rushed and desperate, yet heavy. It was just
past three.
He opened the door, his eyes wide, his hair wild, and
he said he'd just heard that a plane flew into the
World Trade Center. I knew his terror of flying,
knew even better the trauma he suffered as a child,
watching a jet fighter crash 500 meters away from him.
I imagined a commuter plane, a little Cessna from
LaGuardia or Teeterboro, losing control and shattering
into the north tower, making a little hole and the
cover of the New York Post and The Daily News the next
day.
We went into the living room and turned on the TV.
CNN. I sat down on the white couch and watched the
image of the glorious blue sky, the black thick smoke
rising from the north tower, elongating it in some
macabre way, watching the plane, another plane,
careen into the south tower, exploding in black,
yellow and orange, but mostly brilliant yellow against
the bright morning blue. CNN said only one plane had
flown into one building, and that it was a commuter.
But even I knew a commuter couldn't make that much
destruction. And I knew, too, that the second plane
seemed too directed, too eager, as it flew into the
south tower, as if in slow motion, to be just another plane
losing control. This all happened within seconds: turn
on the TV, CNN, blue sky, black smoke, second plane
billowing yellow, orange and black. But maybe
something went wrong, I tried to explain away to my
boyfriend. " These things can happen. It's not
surprising." I had watched many planes fly close to
the towers the years I lived in my apartment. I
had a direct southern view that led right to two grey
rectangles sticking up above all the other buildings,
the flight path right next to them. But now we
sat side by side on that couch,
transfixed, knowing it was not so. The planes were too
big. And the directness of that second hit. The
eagerness. The shots were replayed while I heard
someone, who I thought was Paula Zahn at CNN, scream,
"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" The report came in minutes later of
the Pentagon being hit and then the plane downed in the
field in Pennsylvania.
One of the planes was a United Airlines flight from
Boston to San Francisco. My parents were going to
China, and they were leaving that day. From Boston to
San Francisco or San Francisco to China? I knew they
had a stopover in San Francisco, and that they were
flying United Airlines all the way. My heart lept
into my already contracted throat and I zoomed into
my study with its new yellow walls. I felt the
walls saying "Hey! Is everything okay?" as I
grabbed the itinerary my father sent me. September
10th. They flew out yesterday. Yes. Everything is
okay...I think.
I rushed back to the living room and watched as more
billows of grey dust formed a backdrop against the
north tower and listened to reports of the collapse
of the south tower. I figured maybe they were just
confusing all the smoke for the building falling down.
It had to be still standing. There were an estimated
number of deaths. The confirmation that it was an
attack. Where was the President? The Vice President?
We sat and watched as the sun became lower and
moved to the west in Italy and the sun grew higher and
brighter over New York.
A song went through my head. Actually, it was
a song that had been going through my head all
weekend. I listened to it over and over again, in the
airport and on the plane. Another R.E.M. song,
"Losing My Religion," and those first chords that
sounded like everything was falling down, and then
there was Michael Stipe's voice edged in a croak,
singing
Oh life it's bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
And there it was again, the same falling chords
repeating themselves as I heard the grinding steel
in a desperate, industrial scream, and watched the
silver frame of the tower now covered in grey and dark
grey, buckle and collapse. The tower fell like a
waterfall of dust, the way I had imagined so many times
when I gazed at the towers from my apartment. The
waterfall against the clear sky and nothing else. I
burst into tears along with the steel's wailing. I
ran into the bedroom, pulled out my childhood teddy bear,
and hugged him while rolling on the bed bawling.
My boyfriend ran in and yelled, "What are you doing?
Come back into the living room! You can't be crying!"
His eyes were wide open and scared, his towering body
not knowing what to do. "You can't!" he seemed to be
pleading. "You cannot do this to me! Please! I need
you!" We screamed at each other. I couldn't
believe this was happening. I needed his comfort and
he was yelling at me. Hell, sheer hell and horror,
made real.
We drove to his mother's house, finally able to
pull ourselves away from the TV: The sun was setting,
the horizon yellow and lavender. A phone call from a
friend sending his condolences. My boyfriend and I
could barely touch each other. We stared ahead, numb
and silent. At least, this is how I remember it.
His mother greeted us at the front door of the red
house on the hill, surrounded by flowers and pets and
a grand terrace with a sweeping view of the valley.
Silent, sweet and calm. But his mother just cried and
hugged me.
I tried to eat the food his mother made for me.
Homemade meatballs with tomato sauce and spinach. She
knew I had to eat. I ate through my tears, and my
boyfriend couldn't stand still. He turned on the TV,
but I couldn't deal with any more and told him so, and
we fought again. His mother told him to turn off the
TV, but he wouldn't. "We have to see these things!" he
cried. He later apologized, but it came through in
another argument.
We didn't sleep. By now I was used to these
sleepless nights, and watching the sun as it crept
through the shades. I called my sisters, cried into
the phone, and sent emails. Read that everyone was
okay, but always wondered if I'd forgotten someone.
I felt thick and heavy. The image of a turbaned man
weighed on my chest. Everything was stretched out and
numb. Every muscle in my body atrophied.
My boyfriend and I fought and fought and fought.
Fights that ended in tears for both of us, and then soul-crushing hugs. I didn't sleep and got paranoid. I
wanted to see my family, make sure my city was okay.
He wanted me by his side, not to take a plane. Our
nerves were taut and frayed. I took Lexotan one night, but I didn't
fall asleep. In October I finally took a trip to New York, and found that under the chilly grey autumnal sky and the stench of ruins, it was
filled with friendly, anxious people. I
tried Xanax to calm the gag reflex that had been
plaguing me since that week before in New York in
September to help me sleep. But I felt too foggy
and unrealistically happy, in a drugged out way. A
cloud of Xanax helped greet the coolness of autumn, and
I hated it.
The recovery takes forever. It is slow. I dream
about it, with repeating images in my head. When I
see it replayed on TV I get numb, while my
boyfriend gets angry and says he doesn't believe in
God, we're just a bunch of worms.
Everything about that summer -- the white from the
hospital, the red of the blood and flags in Genova, and
the yellow and blue of New York haunt me. It is so scary that I have to keep thinking back on
it, occasionally looking though Here is New York,
listening to R.E.M. songs to tell myself that I,
my boyfriend, and my city went through this and they
survived. And are still surviving.
The blue in my mind is now a pale baby blue -- light
and unobtrusive. Like the color of my boyfriend's new
guitar. Our new refrigerator. The yellow hugs me
every time I come into the apartment. We talk of
changing colors and yes, that'd be nice in some
rooms, but the study and the bedroom must be yellow.
No more white that stands by mutely. The yellow of a
summer sun.
©2004 by Rebecca Clifford
