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I can’t bring myself to write about mysteries today. Seven years ago, we who live in New York City experienced our own international terrorist thriller, and it was no fun at all. Apart from a few passing storms, we're having the same kind of fall weather as we did in 2001.
September 11 was a beautiful day that year: crystal clear blue skies, sharply etched buildings, the trees in the park still shaggy and heavy-headed with green. In the weeks that followed, we who survived marveled at the heartbreakingly beautiful weather that went on and on as we struggled to get past the shock, mourn our losses, and figure out how to function in a world that had gone suddenly unsafe.I heard the news at about the time the second plane hit. I had been running around the reservoir. I emerged from the park elated from my run, crossed Central Park West at 86th Street, and waved to the little guy who sells newspapers on the corner, who always greets me warmly even though I never buy a paper.
“An airplane has hit the World Trade towers!” he called out. “No, two planes!”
I’m sorry to say that at first, I underreacted.
“That’s terrible,” I responded politely as I continued to jog down 86th Street. I don’t ordinarily get caught up in disaster news. I’m not an avid follower of human tragedies and spectacular trials as televised and hashed over by commentators. And the reason I don’t buy the paper is that I prefer not to start my day with a dose of bad news. But as I gradually realized that normal traffic had stopped, that knots of people were huddled around the radios in cars parked on the street, I slowed down and finally stopped.
“What happened?” I asked. At last, I began to take in the magnitude of what we soon started calling 911, for the ironic convergence of the date and the numbers we dial for help in an emergency. This time, I was not a spectator. This was happening to me.
So deeply were people affected by the attacks that, to my relief, there was no exploitive rush to churn out books and movies on the topic. Five years later, novelists began writing their deeply felt 911 books, and special-effects-heavy disaster movies started to reappear. I know a couple of writers who thought they might never write again. To them, telling stories to entertain, especially stories of violence, seemed trivial and inappropriate in the circumstances.
I had a different reaction. I had not yet completed the first draft of what would become my first published mystery. At that time, I was involved with several songwriting groups, and song was the medium that came to me in which to grapple with the events of 911. I didn’t plan or choose it. The song came pouring through me on September 12 and was complete on September 13. I sang it the same day to fellow mental health professionals in a Red Cross van jouncing downtown to the respite centers where families were still hoping for news of survivors.
Here’s what I have to say about what happened in New York on September 11, 2001.
Two Tall Towers
(Click to hear the song)
