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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
When Seier talks about Billy she remembers his love of the sea, the dreaded cowboy boots that he wore when they met, and the Elvis song he crooned down the phone to her the night before he died. For a long time, she would not change the sheets on their bed, and she still refuses to throw out Billy's toothbrush, his razor, his cowboy boots.
For Penos, recollections of Jimmy include fast, furious rides in his Mustang, watching him play softball with his team, the Barrio Boys, and his big, boyish grin. She wears her engagement ring like a talisman.
Lanzisero turned herself into a walking memorial. On the day I met her -- when Tommy had been missing for six months -- she wore a chain around her neck on which she's suspended one of Tommy's rings. A broach of a winged firefighter was pinned to her lapel. The Guess logo on her handbag had been covered with Tommy's fire badge. At one point she pulled down her sweat pants to show me a tattoo on her backside -- an angel floating above Tommy's fire number -- and for a moment there was a flash of the playful, spirited woman she must have been before Sept. 11.
Lanzisero and Tommy were due to get married on Oct. 13 last year, following a 17-month engagement. More than 300 people had been invited to the wedding. The dress had been made, the honeymoon to Hawaii booked. "I couldn't wait to start a family -- that was what we were going to do," said Theresa. "I'm 30 years old now, and my life is a do-over."
The sense of having to start again is a recurring theme among all the women, as is the complaint that they are expected to start over right now.
Seier dismally recounted being lectured by one of Billy's relatives. "She was fussing at me, telling me I had to move on, had to start dating. It's easy for people to say, but I just can't. I'm not motivated anymore, I don't care about my job, I don't feel good about myself. I sit in my apartment a lot. I like to be alone." Her doctor has suggested it might be a good time to prescribe antidepressants.
But Seier is better off than many of the others in Kane's group. Although they were not engaged, Billy had put her name on his insurance policy with the fire department. He was smart like that, she says. "About three years ago he asked for my social security number and I just laughed, like 'Oh, shut up, nothing's going to happen to you.' She pauses. "But you just never know what's going to happen to you."
She also maintains a good connection with Billy's family and continues to live in his old apartment in Stuyvesant Town, a sprawling estate of tower blocks on the east side of Manhattan. She knows of another bereaved woman living nearby who was asked to leave by her fiancé's family. Seier lives in fear that she may soon be forced out, too. When she locked herself out in June, the security guards refused to let her back in. It transpired that Billy had forgotten to put her name on the key list, and now the owners are threatening to evict her.
Seier cannot bear the idea of leaving, especially since she thrives on the traces of Billy that remain in the apartment. She has kept all his photographs on the wall, and held on to the Chinese takeout containers that he never threw out. Sometimes she opens his sock drawer and tries to reclaim his scent. "He was in my dreams the other night," she says, dissolving into tears. "Sometimes in the dream is the only place you can feel them."
