When her daughter’s breathing finally went soft, and Kate had dragged herself back to bed, she thought about that failing and felt defeated.
Now, a year later, as she lay in a new bed, in a foreign city, with everything changed so irreversibly, she had a different idea of what “defeat” meant and a whole other set of regrets. And as she waited with increasing resignation for sleep to come, she wondered.
Would she survive tomorrow, or would it finally be her undoing?
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Subject: Franny Maycombe (FM). Conducted by: Teo Jackson (TJ).
TJ: I wanted to begin by thanking you for agreeing to participate in the documentary.
FM: Of course! I think it’s so important, what you’re doing. This film is going to contribute to our efforts—I can tell.
TJ: So, we’ll be doing a series of interviews over the next couple weeks, covering a broad range of topics, with the tragedy and its impact being the central focus.
FM: I understand.
TJ: Good. Let’s begin with some background questions. What’s your full name?
FM: My name is Franny Susan Maycombe.
TJ: And how old are you?
FM: I’m twenty-four years old.
TJ: Where were you born?
FM: Right here in Chicago.
TJ: Did you grow up here?
FM: No, in Madison. I was adopted when I was a baby, and that’s where my adoptive parents brought me.
TJ: Madison, Wisconsin?
FM: That’s right.
TJ: What was growing up there like?
FM: It was all right. Nothing special. Just life in a smallish city. I’m sure you can imagine.
TJ: Did you go to college?
FM: Only high school for me. I wanted to go, you know, and I had the grades, but we couldn’t afford it. Maybe I’ll go someday.
TJ: Did you work after you finished high school?
FM: Yeah, I did a lot of things. I was a receptionist in a dentist’s office. And I worked in a hardware store. Then as a waitress. You know, the whole nine yards.
TJ: But now you work for the Triple Ten victims’ fund?
FM: I do.
TJ: In fact, you’re the chair?
FM: Cochair . . . Mrs. Grayson is the chair, too. She was the chair first. But yes, I do.
TJ: How did that come about?
FM: I got involved because of my connection to Triple Ten.
TJ: So, let’s talk about that. Where were you on October tenth?
[Pause]
TJ: Everything all right? I know talking about it can be hard.
FM: I’m fine. It wasn’t that; it was just, wow, I had this flash. Like déjà vu or something, but not, you know? And it feels like a million years ago, right? Another lifetime.
TJ: What was that lifetime like?
FM: I was in the diner I was waitressing in, getting crappy tips. Wearing that uniform, you know, the apron, this yellow shirt and skirt that was too short. Anyway, it was just after the breakfast rush finished, right when we can usually take a bit of a break, but then this tour bus stopped in, and so we were superbusy, running around, trying to get everyone’s order right. Then the news came on, took over the TV station, you know, the way it does when there’s breaking news, and we all stopped what we were doing and watched. I stood there for an hour without moving. We all did.
TJ: This was in Madison?
FM: Yes.
TJ: Was there anything else that happened that day? Something that stands out?
FM: There sure was. We had the TV on for hours and hours. We all sat in the booths and kept our eyes glued to the screen. Everyone thought it was another attack at first, like a terrorist attack, and that tour bus never did leave. And then it was dark, night, and they started releasing the names of some of the victims. I began to get this feeling, this shaky feeling, you know, like my life was about to change.
TJ: Why did you feel that way?
FM: I’m not sure. But I had this connection to Chicago, right, and then there it was, a huge tragedy there, and I felt like I knew. I just knew.
TJ: What did you know?
FM: I know it sounds crazy, but I swear—I knew my mother was dead even before they said her name.
3
OUR HOUSE
CECILY
I don’t need any alarms to wake me the next morning, even though I set three and asked my mother to give me a wake-up call, fearful I’d be up every hour on the hour, then fall into a deep sleep around four and miss the allotted time. But instead, I went to sleep easily and dreamed I was skiing—Tom and I used to take yearly trips to Jackson Hole with the kids—and the powder was fantastic and I was laughing the way you do sometimes when you’re having pure fun.
And then I skied off a cliff.
Normally, in one of those horrible falling dreams, you wake with a start, your heart shuddering. Instead, as I was tumbling into a white oblivion, I told myself: This is a dream. It’s a trick I learned long ago, a way to wake up without a flood of fear, to somehow remain conscious enough to push away the panic. This is a dream, I thought again, and pulled myself back from the edge.
I open my eyes.
I’m safe in my bedroom—our bedroom—sleeping on my side of the bed as if Tom’s body is still a barrier to stretching out. The last book he was reading—a thriller by Mary Kubica he took from my bookshelf—is cracked open on the nightstand, its spine broken. I remember how mad I was when I saw him do that. He knew I loved keeping my books pristine, never folding the pages or bending them open, keeping my place with a tissue, or memory, because breaking the spine on a treasured book is a sin, isn’t it?
I used to think so before real sins became everyday currency.
But he’d done it, and we’d had a fight, a stupid fight. We’d gone to bed in angry silence, the air thick with our words. We lay with our backs to each other, two opposing forces in the bed, our anger a reverse magnet neither of us had the strength to
