9.11 - 41. Chapter 41

September 12, 2001

Goodwell, VA

Something was pulling me out of my sleepy morning haze, even as I fought it. I didn’t want to wake up and face today. I didn’t want to deal with the death and destruction these attacks had caused. I didn’t know if I could keep my own emotions contained, much less deal with everyone else. JP and his group had arrived last night, and that had been bittersweet. At times like this, it was good to be around people I loved, but they were all so wounded, it was also an additional burden. But avoiding unpleasant tasks wasn’t like me, so I forced my eyes open; such a simple act that took a herculean effort.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I realized what had been pulling me out of my sleep: Matt was lying on his side, staring at me. “Morning,” I said, forcing a slight smile.

“It’s morning,” he agreed, unwilling to even imply there was anything good about it. A tear fell down his cheek. “Fuck. I hate this.”

“What?”

“I can’t stop fucking crying,” he said, flopping onto his back. “I can’t stop thinking about him, about Robbie. I miss him so much. I didn’t realize how much I loved him.”

“He knew how much you loved him, and I think you realized how much you loved him. You’re just sad that he’s gone,” I said.

He looked at me, and then nodded. “Shit, I even feel bad about your father.” Then he got worried. “I’m sorry.”

I laughed. I actually laughed. “It’s alright. I think that he would really have appreciated that.”

“What, that I miss him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He told me that he could tell you didn’t hate him anymore, and that made him really happy.” I moved close to him and sprawled across his right side, molding my body to his, enjoying how perfectly we fit together. This is the same position I’d been in when we’d spent our first night together, after he’d gotten his concussion playing hockey. Ever since that night, I’d bonded with him like I’d never thought possible. I moved my leg up to brush it across his groin, expecting to find his cock hard as a rock. It usually was. Only this time, it wasn’t.

“We should get up,” he said uncomfortably. Matt never had a problem getting hard, so I knew I had to deal with this really carefully.

“I love being with you, just like this,” I said. “Stay here just a little bit longer, and then we’ll get up.”

He gave me a nice kiss. “I love being with you like this too. I’ll even let you fuck me if you want to.”

I smiled, and kissed him again. “Later. Right now, I just want to be with you.” I felt him relax, with the sexual pressure gone, and I made sure to arch my hips back so I didn’t stab him with my morning erection. I made him lie there with me until it went down, then we got up and took a shower. I was going through my morning routine, which was slower than Matt’s.

“I’m going to go on down to eat,” he said.

“Fine. I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said, as I put some zit cream on my face. You’d think I was old enough that the fucking things would go away, but I had one on my left temple that was trying to transition from a mound into a mountain.

He walked away, then came back carrying an envelope. “What’s this?”

I took it from him and studied the writing. It was addressed to both of us. “It’s Nana’s handwriting.” I opened it up. “Mrs. Eulalie Garrett requests your presence in the library at 10:00am,” she’d written neatly.

“What’s she doing?” Matt asked skeptically.

“You want to argue with her?” I asked.

He gave me a dour look. “Fine, I’ll be there.” I finished up and we went down to the kitchen to find everyone there but Brad, Darius and JJ.

“What’s with the invite?” I asked Nana.

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” she said. “You have thirty minutes.” I looked at JP and raised an eyebrow, and got a slight grin from him.

“Will you go wake up your brothers?” I asked Will. He just nodded, got up, and walked out of the room. He looked hollow. I focused on eating after that, until Will came back with an annoyed Darius and JJ in tow. They looked like shit, having been rousted out of bed.

“The choice was between a shower and food,” Darius said, as if reading my mind.

“You made the right call,” I said.

Brad came in with a bunch of papers. “This is the press release we’re planning to issue. Let me know if it needs changes.” He had been in this mode since he’d gotten here last night, where he was totally focused on dealing with details surrounding Robbie’s death. We all knew what he was doing, that he was avoiding the real issue, but we humored him.

Robert Hayes, President of Anders-Hayes Production Companies, Inc., was killed on September 11, 2001 in the South Tower, World Trade Center, New York. Mr. Hayes was in the Observatory with his family: two of his sons, Darius and William Schluter; their mother, Ms. Jeanine Graves; Ms. Graves’s partner, Sergeant Hannah O’Shea, NYPD; and Ms. Graves’s infant daughter, Madison. Mr. Hayes was helping to plan a commitment ceremony for Ms. Graves and Sgt. O’Shea, scheduled for that evening, when United Airlines flight 175 collided with the South Tower. Mr. Hayes evaluated the angle at which the plane hit the tower and deduced that the stairwell furthest from the collision, Stairwell A, may be passable. Mr. Hayes led Darius and William Schluter, along with Madison, who was being carried by William, down Stairwell A, while Sgt. O’Shea remained in the Observatory as directed by her superior officer. Ms. Graves stayed in the Observatory with her.

Mr. Hayes and his party descended to the 80^th floor of the building, where they encountered intense heat, fires, and smoke. Getting down on his hands and knees to guide them, Mr. Hayes led them through the inferno to the 78^th floor, where the smoke and heat abated. William Schluter wisely covered his sister’s face with a wet washcloth to minimize her smoke inhalation, but the other members of the party ingested considerable amounts of smoky air. After giving his sons instructions to exit the building, Mr. Hayes headed back up through the inferno to rescue Ms. Graves and Sgt. O’Shea. He found them already descending the stairs, and led them back through the inferno again, his third trip through that hazardous section of the stairwell.

Mr. Hayes was talking to his partner, Mr. Bradley Schluter, on the phone as he and his group struggled to escape from the burning tower. Unfortunately, they were unable to exit the building safely before it collapsed. Thanks to his bravery, Mr. Darius Schluter, Mr. William Schluter, and Ms. Madison Graves all survived the attack.

Mr. Hayes’ last directive to Bradley Schluter was that Mr. Alexander Danvers assume his position as President of Anders-Hayes. Mr. Danvers has been with Anders-Hayes for two years. “Mr. Hayes was a driving force in the entertainment industry,” Mr. Danvers said. “It is an honor, and a challenge, to pick up the reins of the company he helped to build.”

I thought it was a bit overdone, but maybe that was just the Hollywood way. Instead of voicing my opinion on that issue, I just reviewed it for grammar. “This will make him a hero,” Stef noted.

“He was a hero,” Brad said, but it came out almost as a challenge. Will had looked uncomfortable as he’d read it, but he just nodded, getting that making sure the world knew that Robbie was a hero was Brad’s motive. “So it’s OK?”

“Here are a few grammatical changes,” JP said, handing Brad back his paper. He routed it around the table, and as it came to me, I stopped and glanced at it, noticing that he’d caught the same things I did.

“I’ll go e-mail these changes to Evelyn, and then I’ll meet you all in the library at ten,” he said.

“Where the fuck is the library anyway?” JJ demanded petulantly.

“Come on. I’ll show you,” I said, trying to be pleasant. We finished breakfast and I led them through the main room to the library, which was my favorite room at Goodwell. It was like an old boy’s club, with dark wood paneling, leather-bound books, and comfortable chairs and sofas. Most of the furniture had been here since the place had been built.

“I like this room,” Will said.

“See this mar,” I said, pointing to a gash in the side of a table. “It was hit by a bullet during the Civil War.”

“Wow,” JJ said, and ran his hand across it. The furniture had been arranged to form a circle, and Nana stood at the far end of the room with a man standing next to her. I didn’t know who he was, but he appeared to be in his late 30’s, maybe early 40’s, and was rather effete in appearance.

I walked up to him confidently, and extended my hand. “I’m Wade Danfield.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Danfield,” he said politely. “I’m Kelvin Baxter.” Everyone filed in and introduced themselves, and then Nana guided us all to the chairs or sofas. I sat next to Matt on a sofa, while Will was on a sofa next to me with JJ, followed by Baxter, and Nana, who sat in chairs. JP and Stef sat on another sofa, while Brad sat next to Stef, followed by Tiffany, with Darius in between her and Matt.

Nana stood up to take the floor. “I love all of you, and you are all part of my family. That is true in more ways than one, because just like the rest of us, you sometimes fight with each other like a bunch of idiots. I guess I’m used to that, but this thing that has happened to our country, and to us, is bigger than we can just handle. And I am worried that if we don’t do something about it, our family will implode, where everyone fights with each other, and takes out their grief on each other.”

“We wouldn’t do that,” Brad insisted.

“No?” JP asked, making us all think about what Nana had said. “What did you have in mind?” JP asked her.

“Kelvin is a grief counselor, the best one in Virginia. I called him yesterday and told him what had happened, and he agreed to come out and spend the next few days with us.”

“We don’t have time to sit around talking all day long,” Brad said, determined to continue organizing his tribute to Robbie.

“It was not my plan for us to talk all the time, at least in a group,” Baxter said, addressing us in his professional role. “I am sure we can work in time for you to deal with pressing issues.”

I could sense that there was almost universal annoyance about this, about being waylaid into therapy, more or less. I knew that Matt, Tiffany, and I would go along with it, because Nana had set it up, but the others certainly could dodge it. “I cannot imagine anything more pressing than dealing with what we have experienced,” JP chimed in, lining up firmly with Nana’s plan, and taking the wind out of everyone else’s sails. He zeroed in on Brad, who was clearly planning to argue about this. “Taking care of your family should be your top priority.”

Brad looked over at Will and JJ, then glanced at Darius, and nodded. “So we’re all in,” I summarized, to move this along.

“It is important that everyone in this group trust each other,” he said. It was a crappy time for him to drop that bomb on us, because if we didn’t, what were we supposed to say?

“Where’s Ella?” JJ asked, strangely enough, implying that he didn’t trust her. We all turned to look at Darius, who sat there fuming at the question, or maybe he was just mad in general.

“I sent her back to New York,” Darius said. “She went with Corey.” Their bus driver had stayed over last night, and he’d headed back to New York this morning.

“You sent her back?” Will asked. He clearly didn’t believe Darius.

“I sent her back,” Darius said firmly.

“Why?” Will asked.

“Dude, I am not going to go into that here,” he said to Will, only his anger seemed to grow with every word. “That’s why you get in all this trouble, because you talk about all this shit.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked, just as angrily.

And then Darius lost it. “You always talk about who you fuck, and tell Dad and Stef all about the dudes you’re with, and even though they get off on it, they freak out because you’re a total slut.” Brad and Stef looked extremely annoyed at his comment, but the rest of us sort of accepted that as a truth.

“Look who’s talking,” Will shot back. The group just watched and took this all in.

“So word on the street is that you’ve done about twenty dudes. When I was fifteen, I was pretty close to your numbers,” Darius said to Will.

“Seriously?” Matt asked.

“Malibu girls are sluts,” Darius said to Matt with a leer, and then refocused on Will. “No one knew that, and no one said shit to me, other than to make sure I had condoms and knew that I was supposed to use them.”

Will just shook his head sadly. “That’s what I told Pop when he was at Escorial. I told him that I couldn’t talk about shit in my life, because then everyone got into controlling it.”

“Did it bother you that your family didn’t pry into your sexual peccadilloes?” Baxter asked Darius.

“Yeah,” Darius said, which surprised me, because I thought he was pretty happy with keeping things under wraps. His eyes had fire in them as he scanned the room. “Mostly because it shows what a bunch of bigots you all are.”

“Excuse me?” JP asked, mortally offended at being labeled a bigot.

“You heard what I said. Because I’m out boning women, it doesn’t matter. It’s like straight sex doesn’t count, and it’s like I don’t count, because I don’t go around blowing other dudes. So you all pat me on the head like I’m a fucking puppy, hand me a condom, tell me to slip it on and have a fucking blast,” he said bitterly. “But Will’s over here having gay sex, doing other dudes, and that’s way more important and interesting, so you’re all into his shit. Hell, I don’t know what’s worse: having no one give a shit about what you do, or having people trying to tell you how to live your life.”

“Neither do I,” Will mused, but that had the impact of calming Darius down.

Darius looked at Brad. “I told you once that I probably bonded with Pop because he was straighter than the rest of you, and that’s probably true. I could tell him shit about the girls I was with, and he’d listen, he’d understand, and hell, he even seemed to find some of the stuff I told him kind of hot. Only now he’s gone, and I feel really alone.” None of us ever expected an outburst like this from Darius, and we sure as hell didn’t expect him to talk about how he felt. We sat there, stunned.

“Dude, you can tell me,” Matt said, winking at him. “I’ll bet I’ll think it’s hot too.” Darius smiled back at him a little bit.

“So will I,” Will pledged. Darius nodded, and wrestled his feelings back under control.

“I told Ella to go back to New York because I don’t love her anymore,” he said simply. “After what happened yesterday, I thought she could help me heal up, feel better. And she kind of did. Sex was good.” We chuckled. “She was the first girl who got my heart. Lots of girls have had my body, some even tapped my mind, but she was the only one who got me here,” he said, tapping his chest. “And I went for it, I fell hard, and I didn’t hold back at all. And then she decided we were over, didn’t really give me any warning, didn’t really have a good reason, she just said that she was moving to New York, and that she didn’t want a long distance relationship.”

“Those can be tough,” Stef said.

He nodded. “I put myself out there, and offered to move to New York with her, so it wouldn’t be long distance. So then she was honest with me, and said that even though she loved me, she wanted her freedom.”

“I’m sorry,” Brad said, in what seemed much too little, too late.

“Thanks,” Darius said to him. “So last night, after we had sex for the fourth time, I realized that I didn’t love her, and that she didn’t love me. Anyone who could do that to me, who could hurt me so bad, couldn’t possibly care about me. So I told her to leave.”

“How did she react to that?” I asked.

“She was pissed off, and hurt,” he said.

“Payback’s a bitch,” Will said.

“No shit,” JJ agreed, as the two brothers backed up their sibling.

“I’m sorry you felt that way,” Brad said to Darius. He was floundering now, dealing with all these different challenges.

Darius shrugged. “I guess that’s what it’s like for most gay dudes. No one wants to hear about the shit they do, and their straight brothers get all the love. Only it’s the opposite for me. It’s only the gay dudes in this family who seem to matter.”

“No shit,” JJ said, the same words he’d used before, only this time with a different tone.

“What do you mean?” Darius asked, turning it on JJ, who suddenly found himself in the spotlight, which he seemed to hate, ironically enough.

“Never mind,” JJ said.

“No one even knows what you are,” Darius said to him.

“It’s nobody’s fucking business,” JJ snapped. “Why does everyone have to be labeled anyway? What’s with that?”

“So what are you into?” Will asked.

“If I talk about that, then everyone’s going to be in my business,” JJ said, really embattled now. But his brothers had been curious about his sexuality for a long time, especially with the molestation nightmare, and they weren’t about to let him off the hook.

“We’re your brothers,” Will said. “You can talk to us. We won’t judge you. We may give you shit about stuff you do, but we won’t judge you.”

“What he said,” Darius chimed. The two of them looked at JJ intently, and he looked at them. It was like they were the only three people in the room.

“I don’t know,” JJ said, and must have noticed the exasperated looks on both of their faces. “I’ve been attracted to both.”

“Cool,” Will said with a smile. “Gives you more options.”

“True that,” Darius said. “Have you done much?”

“Dude,” JJ objected.

“He just wants to know if you’re a virgin or not. I want to know too, so I can try for your boy cherry if you’re not,” Will said, and nudged him. JJ shook his head at his irrepressible brother.

“I’ve just made out with people, except for that other thing,” he said sadly, referring to his molestation.

“That doesn’t count,” Will said firmly.

“Why not?” JJ asked him.

Will shrugged. “I just decided that it didn’t. I thought about that shit I dealt with in Paris, and I was forced to do it, I didn’t want to do it, so it didn’t count.”

“Makes sense,” Darius said. Then the three of them seemed to remember they were having this conversation in front of all of us, and got really quiet.

“I think we have all learned a lesson here,” JP said, filling the void in conversation. “I will work to change that by involving myself more in knowing about your sex life,” he said to Darius. He said it with a completely straight face, and seemed quite serious, but ultimately he grinned a little bit, and we all laughed.

“I’ll tell you about mine, if you tell me about yours,” Darius replied back gamely, making JP blush and the rest of us laugh even more. Then we all fell silent, remembering the people we lost, and feeling guilty for laughing and enjoying life.

“I am impressed with how openly you all communicated,” Baxter said. “It is OK to laugh and enjoy yourselves. Your loved ones would have wanted you to do that.”

“How do you know?” Brad challenged.

“Wouldn’t they have?” Baxter asked.

I thought of all of them, but especially my father, who was always so gregarious and outgoing. He hated grieving. “They would have,” I said. We all digested that, and let our minds wrap around the fact that our loved ones didn’t want us to be miserable.

“This is going to be difficult for all of you. There is no easy way to get over such a tough loss. And as Mrs. Garrett noted, it is easy to lash out at each other. So let me tell you the stages you will go through.” He got up and grabbed an easel and set it up.

“Here, I’ll help,” Matt said. He got it set up and then sat next to me again, only a little closer.

“There are five stages of the grieving process, and you probably won’t go through them in sequence, and you probably will bounce around from one to the other. The first I’ll talk about is denial. Denial is where you refuse to accept what is happening. That’s where you pretend that it didn’t happen, or use work or other activities to distract yourself.”

“That’s what you’re doing now, Dad,” Will said to Brad, but in a caring way. Brad nodded, but said nothing.

“There’s nothing wrong with being in denial, as long as it doesn’t last too long. It’s a normal reaction, where the loss is so extreme, the mind distracts itself to avoid the pain,” Baxter said.

“How long is too long?” Stef asked.

“As if that would ever be a problem for you,” Darius joked, cracking us all up. Then we got somber again, then remembered Baxter’s words about being somber, and tried to get back on an even keel. Baxter gave us the time for our emotions to fly up and down like that.

“I think that if it interferes with your life, it is too long. It is hard to predict, but easier to identify,” Baxter noted. “The next part of the process is anger. I think we just witnessed that a bit ago,” he said, and smiled at Darius.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“No,” Baxter insisted. “Anger is healthy, and important. You should be mad at the people who took your loved ones from you. You should be angry that they are gone well before their time. It is part of the healing process to feel that anger.”

“But?” I asked.

“When the anger overwhelms you, and consumes you, then it is too much. When you lash out at people who did nothing to you, or who are merely convenient targets, the anger is too much,” Baxter said.

“Sometimes we do that anyway,” Will said, as he looked at Brad. Brad nodded, and wiped tears out of his eyes.

“Another stage is bargaining, where you go back and perform all kinds of self-recrimination. When your thoughts can be phrased in the context of ‘if only I had done this, that wouldn’t have happened’, you are bargaining. That is probably the most dangerous stage, because this is where you can inflict some serious damage on yourself.”

“Well isn’t that reasonable?” Brad asked. “If Robbie and I had been on better terms, then maybe he would have been with me and Stef, and not up in that tower.”

“And if he wouldn’t have been in that tower, would Darius, Will, and Maddy be here with us today?” JP asked.

“And if you and Will had not been arguing, delaying us from our conference, we would have perished in the North Tower,” Stef added.

Will got up and went over and knelt in front of Brad. “Dad, when we paused in the stairwell before Robbie went back up, he asked me to tell you that you were the one love of his life. He said there was no one who could even come close to you. He said you made him very happy. Most of the time.” He said that last sentence with a slight smile. Brad reached out and grabbed him, hugging him tightly as he cried quietly on his son’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Brad finally said, as he pulled himself away.

“Letting your emotions show is healthy, not something to be ashamed of,” Baxter said, but none of us who had been trained to be stoic really believed him.

Will ignored him and went on. “He made me promise to take care of you. He said you think you’re so strong and tough, and that you’re all that, but you’re not.” He was being playful about it, and Brad responded.

“What the fuck? I’m not strong and tough?” Brad demanded. We chuckled.

“He said you grab for control when you’re afraid. And he said that’s why you do that with me, because you love me so much.”

Brad stared at him for a bit, and nodded. “Well, at least he was right about that.” They hugged again, and then Will went back and sat next to JJ.

“The next phase, but one that tends to permeate the entire process, is depression. This can get very intense when you leave the denial stage behind, and realize that this person that you loved is never coming back,” Baxter said. That hit us all hard, and I found myself sitting there in a trance until I felt Matt’s arm around me.

“Never,” I said to him, my voice cracking, and then I struggled to get myself under control.

“Never,” Baxter confirmed. “I think it is very important that all of you meet periodically with a psychiatrist while you’re working to deal with this, so you can quickly identify signs of depression and treat them if necessary.”

“You mean put us on drugs?” Matt asked.

“Since when have you had a problem with that,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood. It didn’t really work.

“And the final stage is acceptance,” Baxter said. “That is when you accept that your loved ones are gone, and you move on with your life.”

“You mean we forget them?” Tiffany demanded.

“Not at all,” Baxter said hastily. “It means that you remember them, but you do not let them dominate your current lives.”

“I don’t understand the difference,” Tiffany said.

“I do,” JP chimed in. We all looked at him. “It took me a long time, way too many years, to get over the death of Jeff Hayes. Hearing Mr. Baxter outline these stages, I can so clearly see myself doing all of them. And he is right; the bargaining stage is the worst. I used to spend hours flagellating myself for not doing enough for Jeff, or for all the decisions I’d made. I don’t think I fully was able to recover from that, from his death, until Brad and Robbie’s commitment ceremony.”

“Our ceremony?” Brad asked.

“Do you remember our conversation before Stef and I walked you down the aisle?” JP asked. “You chided me for carrying this guilt around like a suitcase, and asked me if that’s what Jeff would have wanted. You made me think about him before he let heroin rule his life, about his happy nature, and how important it was for his loved ones to also be happy. And you made me realize how pissed off he’d be at me if he were to suddenly appear and take stock of how miserable I’d made myself over the years. You were right. He would have wanted me to be happy, to go on and live my life, and he would have wanted me to think of him and smile.”

“That’s hard to do,” Darius said.

“It is,” JP agreed. “But think about Robbie. I cannot imagine that he would derive any pleasure from seeing everyone miserable about his death. In fact, I think he would be annoyed enough to launch into all of us about it. If he thought that when we recalled him, we smiled and thought about how much we enjoyed him, and how important it was that he was in our lives, I think he would be happy.” He zeroed in on Brad. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do,” Brad agreed, smiling slightly.

“It is alright to be sad that they are gone, but it is more important to celebrate their lives,” Baxter added. “It is approaching noon. Maybe we can take a break for lunch?”

“Food is good,” I said, getting a chuckle. I led everyone into the dining room, and was about to start eating, when one of the servants came up and whispered in my ear.

“Your mother is in the drawing room, and is asking for you,” he said.

“Mother is here,” I said to Nana.

“It’s a damn shame she wasn’t touring the Pentagon,” Nana groused, making Matt chuckle. I got up and went into the drawing room, to find my mother standing by the windows, dressed elegantly in a black dress with a matching black jacket.

“I am surprised to see you here,” I told her.

“I explained to you that this is my home,” she said acidly.

“I would call that an allegation, not a fact,” I told her. “This home has been in the Danfield family for generations. You are no longer a Danfield. It is not your home.”

“This place was a dilapidated shell, and without my money, it still would be,” she spat.

“I think it was Nana’s money, more to the point,” I said. “Besides, you’re divorced, and Dad got Goodwell.”

“In his trust, he explicitly made allowances for me to live here, and so I am going to,” she said.

“I guess we’ll have to see if those allowances survived the divorce,” I told her confidently, even though I had no idea if my father had made any provisions about that at all. “In the meantime, your presence is not desired, and you are not welcome.”

“I am not leaving this place,” she asserted. We were at an impasse, and this wasn’t good for anyone.

“Alright,” I relented. “Let’s stop posturing for a minute. Right now we have a full house, and I am not about to turn out any of our guests. We are all very upset about what happened. In about five days, I’ll bet everyone pretty much clears out. Then we’ll have to have a funeral for Father.” I paused and swallowed hard at that. “After that, we can argue about this property, and if you want to come camp out here to make your point until the argument is over, that’s fine with me.”

“You may not believe this, but I did love him,” she said.

“I do believe you,” I said sincerely, which surprised her.

“And I didn’t want this divorce,” she added.

“I believe that too,” I said.

“Very well, Wade. We’ll try to be civil throughout this process. We’ll have to work together to plan the funeral, and we’ll have to be pleasant in public,” she said. I wasn’t all that worried about being pleasant in public, so I didn’t argue about it. “So a truce, until your father’s funeral is over.”

She held out her hand and I shook it, noting how cold it was. “A truce until the funeral is over.” She nodded, and then left Goodwell. But she’d be back.