moments he saw the wreckage on television, before the towers even fell, that she didn’t have a chance. Still, he’d spent the first few weeks digging frantically where he imagined she might have fallen. And then, for a disconcerting number of weeks, he’d had an overwhelming desire to taste the ash, to take it into his mouth. The only thing that stopped him was the fear that someone would see and send him to the tent for grief counseling and not allow him back. Finally, he’d gotten himself assigned to the raking fields nearest the north tower, a silly distinction because there was little rhyme or reason as to how the piles of debris arrived at his feet; still, it reassured him. He spent his days with a garden rake in his hands, hoeing for artifacts. His desire made him a fastidious spotter. He’d found countless objects. More wallets and eyeglasses than he could count, faded stuffed animals, keys, backpacks, shoes; he made sure each and every one was tagged and bagged, hoping it would give some other family relief, however anemic.
Still, this one idea persisted: that he would find something of hers, and as long as he was there digging through the carnage it was possible—it had happened, just not to him. Salvatore Martin, retired EMS, who worked the 5:30 A.M. shift seven days a week had drawn his rake through a tangled pile of cable and dirt one bitter, frozen winter day and staring up at him was a photo of his son Sal Jr. on a laminated corporate ID, slightly burned around the edges, picture intact. Sal had quit the following week and everyone thought seeing the plastic badge had been too much, had sent him over the edge. Tommy knew the truth. Sal had found what he’d been looking for—proof, a talisman—and so he was free to leave.
Tommy’s last afternoon on the pile. He decided to find his own souvenir to take that was of this place where Ronnie had last lived and breathed—something easily pocketed to sit on his desk or the windowsill above the kitchen sink, something he could bear to look at every day. As he raked through the rubble, considering his options (a piece of stone, a pebble—it couldn’t be anyone else’s personal effect, he wouldn’t do that), one of his coworkers hollered for him.
“Tommy!” It was his friend Will Peck. Most of Will’s engine company in Brooklyn had been lost when the towers went down; Will had stayed home that morning with the stomach flu. They’d both been there since day one, embracing and exorcising their particular demons. Will waved him over to where an excavator had just dumped a heaping pile of dirt and dust and mangled metal.
“We got something here, O’Toole. Might want to come over and take a look.”
WHEN TOMMY HAD BRUSHED THE DEBRIS AWAY from the sculpture and understood what he was looking at, he could barely contain his glee. Oh, she was feisty that one, waiting until practically the very last hour of his very last day, but she did it! The minute he saw the hulk of metal emerge from the dirt and dust, he knew it was from Ronnie. In spite of its damage, he could see the tenderness of the couple’s embrace. The woman in the sculpture had one of her legs draped over the man’s leg, exactly the way Ronnie used to sit when they were alone, when she’d move in close and swing her leg over his and put one of her arms around his shoulder and draw him close with her other arm.
Am I too heavy? she’d ask.
Never. Even when she was nine months pregnant, she was never too heavy in his lap. He loved the feel of her fleshy thigh on top of his, how she’d press against his chest. The posture was so intrinsically hers, so intimate and familiar that when Tommy saw the statue, even covered with grime and grit, it took all his restraint not to whoop and holler, to tell everyone what its appearance meant, whom it was from. But he couldn’t be that cruel, couldn’t flaunt his luck in front of the others. He closed his eyes for a minute, silently thanked his wife.
The Kiss sat there until Tommy’s shift was over and it was night. The statue was secured to a flatbed cart and he volunteered to wheel it over to the Port Authority’s temporary holding trailer, where the piece would be documented