Last Saturday at this time in the
afternoon I was crammed into a narrow wooden seat at Fenway Park alongside my
boyfriend and two of our friends from college. We were drinking to keep the
beer blankets heavy and cheering our throats hoarse for our beloved hometown
team. Of course, I say hometown, but none of us grew up in Boston. That’s the
thing about this city and its baseball team (not to mention football and hockey
and basketball); if you’ve spent any time here, or went to school nearby, or
had parents who originally came from New England… you think of Boston as home.
“Boston, you’re my home!”
We sing these words at the tops of
our lungs after Mike Napoli hits the sacrifice fly ball to give the Sox the
winning run in a ten inning game that Saturday afternoon. My boyfriend’s hand
finds mine as we file out of the park and move out into the iconic streets
surrounding Fenway – Yawkey and Lansdowne. There’s nothing like the high of
watching such a close game end in a win for your team. Everyone around us is
smiling and laughing and moving in knots of enthusiasm toward their next
destination to celebrate. We are no different, holding out our hands for stamps
outside Jillian’s and finding a spot at the bar together. I down a glass of
pinot grigio with gusto, attempting to keep up with the boys without losing my
balance. Tim leaves, but Ben and Dylan and I eat and drink and try to figure
out what to do with the rest of our evening.
We meet up with two friends who
live in Brighton – in Copley Square. As we walk down Boylston Street together,
I suddenly realize that we are walking directly over the finish line for the
Boston Marathon. I feel a jolt of ecstatic adrenaline to think that I am
walking over the place thousands will be so glad to cross on Monday.
We eat dinner at a nearby restaurant
and then spend the night talking and laughing back at the girls’ apartment.
Dylan and I drive home late that night, brilliantly happy with how great the
day was.
Monday afternoon, my iphone starts
vibrating on my desk.
Holy
shit there was an explosion at the finish line of the marathon is the text
message from Dylan on my screen.
What!
I reply.
Yea-
witness says 2 loud booms
Jesus,
I say, not knowing what else to say. What else can you say? I don’t know anything.
My immediate thoughts are pipe bombs and other minor atrocities. I mention it
in passing to one of my coworkers, but we are always pretty busy in the office
on Monday so we don’t dwell on it. I pull up Google and type in “Boston
marathon explosion” but the internet at this point does not know any more than
Dylan has already told me.
An hour later.
2
dead 23 injured
My
god I text back. Me, the atheist. The words just come automatically because
that is what you say in times when words are beyond you. All I can think is how
relieved I am that Dylan did not go into the city today.
As soon as I get out of work I am
scrolling through Facebook to make sure everyone I know is okay. They are. I
turn NPR up but they don’t know anything. They keep interviewing people who
were close when it happened, but they don’t know anything either. All anyone knows
is two bombs went off, the second less than a minute after the first. They were
yards from the finish line. Dozens of people are injured, many gruesomely so,
and at least two people are dead. It could have been worse, but medical staffs
across the city were already prepared to receive the normal amount of entries
via the marathon runners, so they were as prepared as they could be for the
glut of sudden and war-like injuries that flooded their doorsteps.
I spend the rest of the night
trying to set the events of the day aside so that I can sleep that night and
face the day tomorrow. Acts of terrible violence in my country, especially
something that feels so personally close to me despite all of my friends and
acquaintances being just fine, always hit me in the worst way. September 11th
happened when I was fourteen and I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from feeling
as though all safety and logic in my world were destroyed. Each mass shooting,
each new act of terror and fear mongering brings with it a new wave of feeling
completely out of control, like I can’t trust anything, least of all myself. I
hunker down and distract myself as much as I can and hope that I don’t let it
all build to a point where it comes out in an anxiety attack or something
worse.
Dylan is helpful. He checks on me
every day while I’m work following the bombing. He is on vacation this week, so
he comes to eat lunch with me on Wednesday. The not knowing is the worst. Who
did this and why? Everyone seems to be on edge. On Thursday I listen to the FBI
give descriptions of two suspects they have identified thanks to video
surveillance footage from the area of the bombing. I shudder, but hope this
leads to something else happening, anything else to bring some kind of change
other than this endless waiting.
Thursday night I go to sleep early.
I open my eyes when Dylan comes in to bed and he tells me a MIT cop was shot. I
blink and wonder if it’s connected to the bombing, but he doesn’t know. I go
back to sleep.
Friday morning, I turn on the news.
Total insanity.
A convenience store was robbed in
Cambridge. The MIT cop was shot and died. The bombing suspects hijacked a car
(and let the driver go) and then proceeded to have a violent fire fight with
Watertown police. One of the suspects is dead but the other got away. The
police have shut down all of Watertown and the surrounding neighborhoods and
are proceeding on a massive manhunt to find the escaped suspect. Throughout the
day I pull up the internet, my friends on Facebook listening to police scanners
in Watertown, NPR interviewing people who lived on the same street as the
firefight… I listen as they discover who the suspects are, two brother of
Chechnyan descent who are naturalized American citizens. I hear their names. I
hear their family members and their friends and their employers talk about
them, how none of this makes sense, how neither of them gave any indications towards
violence, least of all violence on this massive scale.
I want to cry, driving home from
work on Friday. I was supposed to go into Worcester and meet my old coworkers
for drinks, but half of them live in the Boston area and are under lockdown so
we have to reschedule. All of the electronic signs on the highway say “Boston
neighborhoods shelter in place in effect”. It freaks me out every time I drive
by one even though I live an hour and a half away. What does that matter though
when they haven’t found the guy and no one knows if he was in a car or not?
It’s weird and scary and instead of
going to Worcester to hang out and party with some other friends who are in
town for the weekend, I drive home and curl up on the couch next to Dylan. He
doesn’t want me to freak out too much though, so we almost immediately get up
and go out to look at some new houses that just came on the market. While we’re
driving, we were the news conference where Governor Patrick cancels the shelter
in place and tells everyone they can go out, but to remain vigilant.
How the hell are you supposed to
feel about that? They haven’t caught the guy, but you can leave your houses
now. I don’t know. I keep driving until we find somewhere to eat dinner.
We’re settled on the cushy leather
armchairs in front of the fireplace at Panera eating soup when Dylan suddenly
says, “They think they found him in Watertown.” And then a minute later, “Sounds
like he’s in a boat.”
NPR has a livestream going that I
bring up on my phone. We listen to it for half an hour while we eat. They keep
describing the scene, cops surrounding the area, a spotlight on the boat, the
trail of blood the homeowner saw that made him call the police in the first
place. Shots go off. Shots gof off again. Nothing is happening because they are
waiting for a bomb squad.
Eventually we drive home. I leave
NPR on but it’s more of the same. They’re waiting. We’re waiting. At home, we
turn on the tv and get a picture along with the sound. I try to read a book.
Suddenly we can hear the newscasters getting excited. Someone on the scene is
saying the cops are clapping and walking away from the scene.
They got him. He climbed out of the
boat and they arrested him and put him in an ambulance.
And then we are watching the cops
leave the scene in their cars. People are packed along the streets and they are
clapping and cheering and chanting and singing songs – “God Bless America” and “Sweet
Caroline” – oh, Boston, you’re my home.
After all of this is over, I call
my mom. We talk briefly about house stuff, more about what we just saw on the
news, and then say good night. I talk to my Aunt Yvette and it is similar.
Dylan is on the phone with his aunt too.
And then I’m left to sit and think.
I find I don’t really want to. Mostly I feel relieved that the tension of the
day is now over. One part of the mystery is solved. It feels like maybe whatever
danger existed might be over. But if I start to think about it for any length of
time all I can think about are what ifs. What if there are others involved in
this? What if more is coming and now we’re really unprepared for it because we’re
so distracted? What if this kid was just a pawn in someone’s game? For some
reason, I feel sympathy and sorrow for him. He’s nineteen and he spent the last
twenty hours hiding from an entire city’s worth of cops and citizens, wounded
and knowing his older brother had been killed. At the same time, I know he
probably helped kill and maim people. He probably had a direct hand in the
terror and pain I’ve felt all week. Still, I feel this horrible sense of pity. I
wish it would go away.
It won’t though, and I guess I’ll
live with that.
