The Woman with Red Hair
by Charles Sutphin
On a poster at a museum commemorating the fall of the towers, I saw the woman wrapped in light. Teetering on the brink of oblivion, she blazoned my attention with the color of her hair and the exuberance of . . .
. . . my despair?
I worked on the 97th floor of the North Tower for Marsh & McLennan before the eyes of the world turned my way—my 15 minutes of fame.
I was awed by your equanimity in the face of death.
It was an illusion.
Some claim you crumpled, others say you leaped.
Like an acrobat I soared to the other side, which is why we’re meeting here and now in the ether of dreams.
In search of penance?
For what I have done. Not long ago, I awoke in the apartment where I lived with my husband of 20 years. Sunlight slatted through the blinds and striped the bed in vertical rungs. A clear day stretched as blue as the eye could see. Like silver toothpicks the towers rose across the water. I smelled my husband’s aftershave mixing with the aroma of coffee, curled my hair and hopped the A-line into lower Manhattan.
Several facts are known about the person I was—or the person they think I used to be. Some historians contend my name is Karen Johnson, but I don’t see how that matters—or alters the tenor of this exchange.
Dead is dead.
I worked on the 97th floor of the North Tower for Marsh & McLennan before the eyes of the world turned my way—my 15 minutes of fame. In hindsight, I’m grateful I wore slacks: I didn’t worry about exposing myself like some of the girls. Don’t misconstrue, I respect modesty: the humanity of clutching your skirt to conceal yourself from a salacious public before plummeting downward — dignified in extinguishment.
I roll to the other side of the bed and return to the exchange with a woman I have never met.
Providing quotes to a client when the concision occurred—the consequence of cause and effect—I sat right there: see my cubicle with the stapler in the left-hand corner, photos of my niece tacked on a board next to a poem about Innisfree, calculator placed by the computer as I fiddle with a menu from a restaurant on Varick. A concussive gust blew me halfway across the floor.
When the unthinkable occurs, perhaps it’s the result of divine exhaustion. God reaches the limits of who can be saved and falls prey to the conscript of forces against Him.
And you blame God for your predicament?
What people don’t realize, explains the woman with fiery hair, is that the blast created a vacuum of such intensity I was deafened and couldn’t hear the shouts of my colleagues —none of whom survived—or the whoosh of flames consuming everything like locusts. But I had eyes and I saw things that were inexplicable . . . bodies burned beyond recall, appendages strewn like nuts. When I discovered my own limbs intact, I crawled underneath the smoke toward an opening. Heat tried to peel my face so I moved in the direction of cool air, found a gash in the exterior of the building and stood, just so, for more than an hour for the world to see. An entire planet watched me waving wildly as if at a concert or a princess in the homecoming parade.
There I stand: a scrip of life surrounded by immensity. Occasionally smoke clears, a hole opens in the sky and offers a spectacular view. I see past the Jersey shore all the way to Heaven . . .
To the other side.
. . . and feel a resignation that I’d had a good life with a good man who loved me and would retain that love and push it forward until such time when we would meet again . . .
. . . in dreams . . .
. . . where you and I stand clutching a pillar. Deafened, severed, we watch others choose to burn or plummet, like birds without wings—stay or incinerate. It’s the center square, a door on the Joke Wall: left-right, up-down, when the smoke billows people are consumed by flame, or they commit self-murder as gravity grabs. In the photo in the museum the faces stare blank without emotion.
The illusion of equanimity.
There I stand: a scrip of life surrounded by immensity. Occasionally smoke clears, a hole opens in the sky and offers a spectacular view. I see past the Jersey shore all the way to Heaven...
The men approached the final moment differently than the women: they marched forward like boys stepping off the high dive, toes pointed, resolute. Women leaned, heads bowed, and tumbled like gymnasts somersaulting into the abyss. God disapproves of suicide: that’s what the Bible says. Tell me what you have done Abimelech, Ahithophel, Zimri, Judas– wicked men from days gone by who died in violation of the gift of life. Purgatory awaits such men whose actions renounce God’s love . . . and yet a decision needed to be made.
You were compelled between this or that with little choice for compromise.
Many of my colleagues disintegrated upon the impact of the plane, but not us: we watch the flames creep toward the hole, feel the burn blister the flesh, witness people soar into space. We pray as the prayers of others go unheeded. We will miss the warmth of hugs before the commencement of a journey, a kiss at the end of day, the grin of a niece watching pins go BOOM upon collision with a black ball and more . . . and then we . . . and then . . .
What did we do?
. . . an act of bravery, like a soldier emerging to charge into battle knowing the rush of adrenalin will be the last jolt he feels. People do what they must and that is what we did.
And you have fallen from heaven?
We watch the flames: there is no exit. Staying is not an option, so the unutterable is uttered, the impossible drops from beneath our feet, captured on camera: there!—you see me in the midst of a triple gainer followed by a double lindy and a final twist into oblivion . . .
. . . and dreams.
Where I make light of myself.
The brain seizes before impact, implores the panic of air: eyes focus on the impending bottom, hurling upwards as we try to escape by waking before sound deafens the fear in the deep heart’s core. I snap my head, dash from bed and wonder where we are, where she has gone: the woman with red hair—grasping a pillar about to crumble into air.
Charles Sutphin has lived in Indianapolis for more than 60 years. His cobbled career includes editor, journalist, writer, attorney, professor and capitalist. Married for 35 years with two children, two dogs and a sense of humor, he recently published in The Flying Island, Helix Literary Review, Chamber Magazine, Agape Review, and Literally Stories.
