What are we talking about in 2001? A Tuesday morning with a crystalline sky. American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175, also from Boston to Los Angeles, crashes into the South Tower at 9:03. American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles hits the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. And at 10:03 a.m., United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco crashes in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. There are 2,996 fatalities. The country is stunned and grief-stricken. We have been attacked on our own soil for the first time since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. A man in a navy-blue summer-weight suit launches himself from a 103rd-floor window. An El Salvadoran line chef running late for his prep shift at Windows on the World watches the sky turn to fire and the top of the building—six floors beneath the kitchen where he works—explode. Cantor Fitzgerald. President Bush in a bunker. The pregnant widow of a brave man who says, “Let’s roll.” The plane that went down in Pennsylvania was headed for the Capitol Building. The world says, America was attacked. America says, New York was attacked. New York says, Downtown was attacked. There’s a televised benefit concert, America: A Tribute to Heroes. The Goo Goo Dolls and Limp Bizkit sing “Wish You Were Here.” Voicemail messages from the dead. First responders running up the stairs while civilians run down. Flyers plastered across Manhattan: MISSING. The date—chosen by the terrorists because of the bluebird weather—has an eerie significance: 9/11. Though we will all come to call it Nine Eleven.
If there’d been anything else we cared about that year before this happened, it was now debris. It became part of what we lost.
Ursula loves being a mother.
This surprises no one more than Ursula herself. Her pregnancy was difficult. Everything that could go wrong did: she had aggressive morning sickness, she got carpal tunnel in both hands, she had gestational diabetes, and, finally, in her seventh month, placenta previa, which put her on bed rest until her delivery date.
This last development, the bed rest, was not received well at work. Hank Silver did the predictable thing, showing up at Ursula’s apartment and suggesting that maybe her priorities were shifting, maybe instead of relentlessly pursuing partner, she wanted to consider part-time hours, a support role.
“The Mommy Track?” Ursula asked with no small amount of disgust, for that was what everyone called it. “You know me better than that, Hank. I’m going to close this case from bed. And after the baby is born, I’m going to work twice as hard. I will make partner this year. That was my goal when I started. That’s my goal now.”
(Hank knew to tread carefully; the last thing he wanted was a sexual-discrimination suit. But Hank had five children; he understood better than anyone that children changed things. They took priority, as Ursula would soon find out.)
“Okay,” Hank said. “I just wanted to let you know that if you feel differently after the baby is born, we will all understand.”
They would understand? Sweet of them. Ursula had seen the way her coworkers’ attitudes toward her changed with the news of the pregnancy. Ursula had once heard two of the male partners call her a ball-crusher, and privately she was flattered. But gone were her slim tailored suits and her wicked stilettos. She had grown round and soft; her breasts were swollen and heavy, and the only pair of shoes that fit were her Ferragamo flats, and even those were uncomfortable. She took them off under her desk and rubbed her sore insteps.
Once Ursula announced her pregnancy, her decision-making was questioned and people talked over her; even paralegals talked over her. Ursula couldn’t believe the stereotypes that came to life in vivid Technicolor right before her eyes.
Ursula wanted to cut Hank Silver. He had five kids of his own and crowed about their accomplishments—the squash!—but there had been no such conversation in the office with Hank when his children were born, because Hank was a man. Hank had a wife at home to handle the kids, and even if he had been a single father, there would have been his mother, his sister, a housekeeper, a legion of nannies or au pairs, and no one would have batted an eye, no one would have said he was “farming the kids out,” no one would have called him a bad father or suggested that he go part-time, take on a support role.
Incredibly, however, Ursula had one worry more pressing than her career or discrimination in the workplace.
That worry was the baby’s paternity.
Ursula and Jake had had all of the standard prenatal tests done—two ultrasounds, nuchal-fold test to check for Down syndrome, Rh factor and carrier screening—but none of these told Ursula what she really needed to know: Was the baby Jake’s or Anders’s?
Ursula’s emotional affair with Anders Jorgensen started in Las Vegas, but they didn’t cross the line until they were assigned the case together in Lubbock, Texas, where there was absolutely nothing to do in their downtime but go to the rinky-dink hotel bar—aptly named Impulse—and drink. During her first visit to Impulse, Ursula ordered a glass of champagne and was given Prosecco that tasted like a green-apple Jolly Rancher. She switched to vodka (they had Stoli, thank goodness) and soda with a quarter lemon. She could drink ten in a row; they were sharp enough to cut through the heat outside the bar and the cheesiness inside it.
The surprising thing wasn’t that Ursula slept with Anders; the surprising thing was how long she waited. Anders was tall, broad, blond, a Viking—that’s right, descended from actual Vikings. His size and strength were surpassed only by how smart he was, how savvy in negotiations, how ridiculously good at his job. He pushed Ursula to work harder and better; he inspired her. She was energized when he was in the room. Could she impress him? Yes, she saw that she did impress him. It gave her a jolt. She became an addict for his attention.
But what about Jake?
While Ursula was sucking down bright, citrusy Stoli sodas at Impulse, Jake was at home in Washington playing games on his computer instead of job hunting. He was, Ursula thought, in danger of becoming as interesting and influential as a soft-boiled egg. But Ursula had been raised Catholic and she had personal honor. She was not morally flimsy.
Or was she?
The allure of Anders was stronger than Ursula’s innate morality. He broke her code, cracked the safe—whatever metaphor you want to use, the result was Ursula and Anders in bed. A lot.
Ursula reasoned—as she padded barefoot down the hallway of the Hyatt Place back to her own room, her skirt suit hastily donned, hanging crooked, partially unzipped—that the problem was that she and Jake had met too young, and during the times when they had been broken up, Ursula hadn’t sowed her wild oats the way she should have.
Excuses: She despised them. She had been led to temptation, she had not been noble enough to resist, and her bad behavior had resulted in this punishment: she didn’t know whose baby she was carrying.
When Anders found out Ursula was pregnant, the affair ended abruptly. Anders had only this to say to Ursula: It’s not mine. Do you hear me, Ursula? Even if it’s mine, it’s not mine.
He then accepted a transfer to the New York office, and the gorgeous six-foot-tall blond associate Amelia James Renninger, a.k.a. AJ, went with him. They moved into a loft in SoHo together.
Even if it’s mine, it’s not mine. Ursula was, on the one hand, reassured by this blunt statement; she chose to believe that since Anders had categorically rejected paternity, the baby must be Jake’s. Still, she worried the baby would come out blond and oversize when both she and Jake were dark and slender. She feared bringing pictures of the baby to the office and watching everyone at the firm realize that Ursula’s baby looked exactly like Anders Jorgensen.
On January 23, 2001, Elizabeth Brenneman McCloud was born, weighing six pounds, eleven ounces, and measuring nineteen inches. Dark hair, dark eyes, something in her face that echoed Jake’s.
God is good, Ursula thought. Though she knew there would be payback somewhere down the road.
After Bess was born, Ursula hired a baby nurse who slept on a cot in the second bedroom, now the nursery, but Ursula got up for every single feeding. She expressed milk nonstop, labeled the bags, stockpiled them in the freezer. She returned to work after only four weeks. She traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, for a case but flew home every weekend, sleep be damned. She interviewed nannies and found Prue—sixty years old, Irish, the mother of four grown children herself. Prue takes excellent care of Bess, and Ursula watches Prue’s every move, hoping to imitate her calm, sure hands, her ability to be present with the baby, never distracted, never rushed.
I can guarantee you one thing, Prue says. These are days you’ll miss.
Ursula is doing it all, and for months, she’s been doing it all well. She has a thousand billable hours by the end of June. After Omaha, she takes a case in Bentonville, Arkansas. Isn’t there anything closer? Jake asks. He’s helpful, hands-on, every bit as smitten with Bess as Ursula is if not more so—Ursula caught him dancing with her in the nursery to the strains of Baby Mozart—but he has just started as the VP of development for the Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation and he travels across the country to meet with donors. Ursula’s third case of the year is in Washington proper, so she’s able to feed Bess every night and every morning. When summer rolls around and Bess starts eating solids, Ursula goes to the Orchard Country Farm Stand and buys produce to steam, purée, and strain. Jake is impressed; Ursula has never cooked anything in her life.
Bess meets all of her developmental milestones early. She rolls over, sits up, smiles, laughs, coos. She has soft brown hair coming in and large, chocolaty eyes. She has Jake’s smile. What a smile. Ursula has never melted at anything in her life—but that smile.
Jake goes to Nantucket over Labor Day and Prue is away visiting her daughter on Lake Lure so Ursula has Bess to herself for the weekend. She is…the perfect mother! The perfect working mother! She nurses Bess, feeds her, changes her, takes her to the park and pushes her a hundred and fifty times in the bucket swing, reads to her, puts her down for her nap. While Bess is napping, Ursula works, and when she takes a break, she gets on the treadmill and powers out four miles. At the end of the day, she is too tired to even make a sandwich or call the Indian place a block away so she pours a glass of wine and eats an apple for dinner.
As soon as Jake returns from Nantucket, Ursula goes back to work, but it’s harder after such a wonderful weekend than it was even right after Bess was born. Ursula considers Hank Silver’s offer anew. What exactly does she want to achieve by making partner? Money? Prestige? An ego boost? Ursula always had some sense that she would change the world, make a difference—but she’s the first to admit this isn’t happening in the world of mergers and acquisitions.
The following weekend, Bess has a low-grade fever. She’s cranky and gnaws on her fist; she sneezes, her nose runs, her cries are ragged with mucus. Ursula gets home from work Monday evening and Prue announces that it’s not teething, like they all thought. Bess needs to see the pediatrician. Prue has made an appointment for nine o’clock the next morning.
No problem, Ursula will take her, go into the office late.
“Are you sure?” Jake says. “Prue can take her.”
“I am not the kind of mother who makes her nanny take her sick child to the doctor,” Ursula says.
Jake squeezes her shoulder. “I know you’re not,” he says. “I’m proud of you.” The words are meant to be kind, she knows—Jake is as kind a person as God ever created—but they also sound vaguely patronizing. He’s proud of her for choosing Bess over work because he expected the opposite. He’s proud of her, but he isn’t volunteering to take Bess, even though it was fine for him to take last Friday off so he could go to Nantucket on his boys’ weekend.
Ursula could start a fight, but she won’t because they will go around and around and say hurtful things they don’t mean and Ursula will still end up taking Bess to the doctor. She keeps quiet. She’s learning.
She’s smart enough to be the first parent at Dr. Wells’s office the next morning. Ursula doesn’t have a minute to waste—look in her ears, write a scrip, and we’re off. It’s five minutes to nine. The staff is milling about in the back, getting ready to start a day of caring for the children of Washington’s elite. Deena Dick, the receptionist at Dr. Wells’s office, is among the most powerful women in Washington, and she knows it.
Deena sees Ursula enter the waiting room five minutes early and she takes a sustaining breath. These parents. But better early than late, she supposes—her day will end with one of the ambassador wives rushing in at ten past five with her kid in tow, pedicure foam still between her toes. Priorities.
Deena stands up to call Ursula and baby Bess back; the doctor is perpetually late and won’t be here for another ten minutes at least, but they can get the baby weighed and check her vitals. Parents are less impatient once they cross the threshold to an examining room.
Then the emergency line rings.
Ugh, Deena thinks. She picks it up.
“Honey?”
It’s Deena’s husband, Wes.
“What’s wrong?” Deena asks. When Deena left the house that morning, Wes was dressed for work, making Braden and the twins French toast and watching the morning news.
“Something’s happened,” Wes says. “Turn on the TV.”
Deena is confused. A plane hit the World Trade Center? At first, she thinks it’s a small plane, an inexperienced pilot, a rogue gust of wind, maybe. Deena doesn’t have time to turn on the TV—okay, maybe she does, there’s a small one in their lunchroom. She finds CNN. Sure enough…wow, it looks bad. The building is on fire, and people are dead for certain. Deena says a prayer and goes to fetch Ursula and baby Bess.
Bess is on the scale; she weighs nearly fifteen pounds, the nurse, Kim, says. Kim sticks a thermometer in Bess’s ear. Temp is 99.3, so not even a fever. Has Ursula given her any Tylenol drops this morning?
Ursula is distracted by the buzzing of her cell phone in her purse. It must be work. The case in Washington is complicated, with lots of red tape and political ramifications—imagine that. “No,” Ursula says.
Kim eyes Ursula’s bag distastefully. “The doctor will be in shortly.”
Shortly could be four minutes or forty, Ursula knows. Kim hands Bess back. Ursula holds Bess in one arm and rummages through her purse for her phone with the other.
It’s Jake, probably calling to find out how the appointment went. Well, if he was so keen to know, he could have brought Bess in himself. Ursula ignores it.
Ten minutes later, there is still no doctor and Ursula is getting antsy. It’s 9:15. She hears voices in the hallway, picks up on a sense of urgency—maybe they have a very sick or injured child? Ursula checks her cell phone; Jake has left a voicemail. Ursula doesn’t have time to listen to it. She calls her assistant, Marjorie, at work. Marjorie doesn’t answer, which is highly unusual, as Marjorie is the most reliable and efficient legal assistant in the District.
Another ten minutes pass. This is ludicrous, right? Ursula would stick her head out into the hallway but she suspects that as soon as she complains about how long this is taking, she’ll be bumped back even further.
Ursula’s phone rings again. Marjorie.
“You’ve heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Two planes hit the World Trade Center in New York,” Marjorie says. Her voice sounds funny, like maybe she’s about to cry. Marjorie, cry? She’s the daughter of a World War II colonel.
Then Ursula gets it. The World Trade Center.
“They’re saying between floors ninety-three and ninety-nine of the North Tower,” Marjorie says. “I’m not sure about the South Tower. We’re trying to find out.”
“Oh dear God,” Ursula says. The New York offices of Andrews, Hewitt, and Douglas are on the eighty-fourth floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
Anders.
Ursula lays Bess on the table and tries to snap her back into her onesie with trembling fingers. She goes out into the hallway. Where is everyone? Ursula moves down the corridor, deeper into the office. She finds Deena, Kim, and Dr. Jennifer Wells staring at a boxy little TV. On the screen, a plane flies directly into the top of a skyscraper, leaving fiery destruction in its wake. It looks like a movie.
Ursula gasps. Dr. Wells turns around. “I’ll be right in,” she says.
“No,” she says. “I have to go.”
She doesn’t bother with a cab. Her apartment is only ten blocks away, and Ursula wants to walk. Fresh air, sunshine. People on the street are either oblivious or on their mobile phones in obvious distress. There’s a crowd gathered outside of an electronics store that has a flat-screen TV in the window. Ursula peers over a gentleman’s shoulder and sees more footage of a plane hitting a building. Or maybe that was the other building, the South Tower?
The gentleman turns around and fixes his eyes on Ursula. He’s about sixty, bulbous nose, visible pores, kind eyes brimming with tears. “People are jumping,” he says.
Ursula hurries down the street pushing Bess in her Maclaren stroller; it’s the Ferrari of strollers, the ride is smooth, Bess is quiet, Ursula just has to get home. The eighty-fourth floor of the South Tower. Was that hit? Was it below the crash? Above it? Below it would be better, right? But maybe not. Maybe not.
People are jumping.
Ursula pushes Bess into the lobby of their building. The doorman, Ernie, sees Ursula. He’s spooked, she can tell.
“A plane just hit the Pentagon,” he says.
“What?” she cries. She pulls Bess out of her stroller and hugs her to her chest. She needs Jake. Where is Jake?
“Mr. McCloud is upstairs?” she says. “He hasn’t come down?”
“No, ma’am,” Ernie says.
Ursula hurries to the elevator. Is it safe to go up? They live on the eleventh floor. Surely a plane won’t hit a residential building in the middle of town. Will it?
The next two hours are a blur. The Pentagon, a mere three miles away, has been hit. Three miles; if she walked Bess to the river, they would see the smoke. A plane has crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania; rumor has it this plane was headed for the White House or the Capitol Building. The White House is less than a mile away. They’re under attack. Despite this, Ursula wants to go into work. She needs to know how the New York office is faring. Jake tells her she’s not going anywhere. Ursula calls Marjorie, gets no answer.
Hank calls and says it’s likely the law firm lost everyone in New York, or everyone who was in the office by nine that morning. He’s trying to get a list of names. Ursula is shaking. “Anders?” she says.
“I’ll let you know.” But Hank’s voice says he already knows. Anders, like Ursula, always got to the office early. He liked to get a jump on the day.
Jake shouts from the other room. The North Tower has collapsed. It just…sunk in on itself. And then the South Tower collapses.
Finally, Ursula cries.
That night, as Ursula sits in front of the television, potted like a plant, nursing Bess, she makes a decision. It’s radical. Maybe even crazy.
But what qualifies as crazy now? Hank confirmed late that afternoon that Andrews, Hewitt, and Douglas lost seventy-one people in the New York office—attorneys, paralegals, secretaries.
Anders is presumed dead.
The managing partner, a Goliath named Cap Randle, is presumed dead, and his wife, eight months pregnant, immediately went into labor when she heard and delivered their first child, a son.
It’s too awful to think about.
Amelia James Renninger, AJ, is alive. She had an appointment to get her eyebrows done in Chinatown at eight thirty that morning, and as she was walking to work, she told Hank, she watched the second plane hit.
Why couldn’t it have been Anders with some kind of appointment? Ursula wonders. A haircut for his golden locks, or the dentist? Then she feels monstrous.
Jake stands between Ursula and the TV screen. “I think we should turn it off for tonight,” he says.
“But what if something else happens?”
“Nothing else is going to happen.”
Ursula turns off the TV and unlatches Bess, who has fallen asleep at the breast. Sweet, innocent baby girl. She deserves a world better than this—and Ursula is going to give it to her. “Sit with me,” Ursula says to Jake.
“Do you want me to put the baby in her crib?”
“I want you to sit down,” Ursula says. She’s suddenly all nerve endings.
Jake perches on the edge of the sofa. “What is it.”
“I want to leave Washington,” she says. “I want to move back to Indiana.”
“What?” Jake says. He laughs. “What are you talking about? I know you’re upset, Ursula. I’m upset too. The entire country is upset. But we can’t just uproot our lives and move back to the Bend because you think it’s safer.”
“Sure we can,” Ursula says. “My mother is there, and your parents are there. We have family there.”
“Right, I know. But your career is here, Ursula. What on earth do you think you’re going to do in South Bend?”
Ursula gently kisses Bess’s forehead, then smiles down at her. “I’m going to run for office.”