New York Echoes (4 page)

They had moved three times, from their
original apartment in Gramercy Park, to the East Side on 72nd and finally to
the big high-rise on the West Side overlooking the Hudson.

“I can still smell it,” Rachel said.

“It's not possible. It's been four
years.”

Larry, because he loved her with the
same zeal and passion as when he married her in June 2001, was patient,
although, by then, he was really worried about her. September 11, 2001, had
come and gone. They had considered themselves lucky, secretly celebrating their
good fortune while expressing pity and compassion for those lost.

In the fullness of time, the site had
been cleaned up, the building and body remains carted off to faraway garbage
dumps, and some of the area was restored, although they were still arguing
about the final outcome for the property.

There was no questioning the fact that
it did, indeed, smell for that first year. It was a sickening odor, a mixture
probably of dust, debris, and roasted flesh and bones. When the windows of that
first apartment were opened even a crack, the smell seeped in and was hard to
ignore. Rachel and he tolerated it like everyone else in Manhattan. It was an
understandable byproduct of the horror.

That first move a year later was
prompted by the idea that perhaps they were too close to the site and that
their apartment might be in the path of an air current carrying the smell,
which snaked its way through the high-rises in lower Manhattan and alighted
with great intensity on the Gramercy Park area. That was Rachel's theory, and
Larry believed it credible at the time. Her senses had always seemed more acute
than his. She had a great eye for color and design, and her hearing, as judged
by her musical appreciation, was exceptional. Her nose for scent was
phenomenal, and she could detect perfume and sniff the quality of wine like a
professional.

When she said she could still smell the
pervasive odor of 9/11, he believed her, although he could no longer detect
it. 

“Who am I to question the quality of
your nose?” he joked, often teasing her when she stuck her nose in a wine glass
filled with red wine.

They tried all sorts of air cleaners,
mists, plug-in devices, appliances that promised to clean the air. Apparently
these things did not work for Rachel. After awhile, they began to argue about
it since his own unscientific survey among his colleagues at the office and
friends revealed that no one else had the same olfactory experience.

“I just don't understand it,” he told
her. “You must be the only one in Manhattan that still smells it. Maybe it's
psychological.”

“Are you suggesting I
see a shrink?” she rebutted.

“What I mean,” he
continued, “is that it could be a memory thing. But then, when it comes to that
trauma, everybody in town, the country, the world, is afflicted with that
memory. Who could ever forget?”

“It's the smell, Larry. I do understand
what you characterize as the memory thing. No one will ever forget that
monstrous act by those terrible people. That is an indelible memory. It will be
with us forever. But the smell, it's this crazy byproduct. I can't get rid of
it.”

With the exception of that smell, life
appeared otherwise normal. She worked as a copywriter with one of the big
advertising agencies, and he was an art director with another agency. Still in
their twenties and earning good money, they had friends, kept in touch with
parents and siblings who lived out of town, and planned a future with kids.
They had had a nice garden wedding in her parents' house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and went back each Christmas to visit with one of another set of parents. He grew
up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

If it wasn't for the smell, they were otherwise
unmarked by the event, although there was no avoiding the general fear that it
would happen again someday. It was always in the back of one's mind.

Of course, news of the
cleanup was in the papers daily for months following the tragedy. People volunteered.
Many went down to the site to assist with food service. Others carpooled.
Doctors and nurses volunteered their assistance. Police, firemen, and forensic
experts scoured the site for remains. Some victims were found and identified.
Others were not. Everyone felt the grief of the survivors who had lost loved
ones.

In the immediate aftermath the air
quality, along with the smell, was annoying but not debilitating. Some
predicted that many of those who worked at the site might suffer from lung
problems later in life. But the amazing thing was how New Yorkers coped, hung
in there, lived their lives to the fullest, and prevailed.

There was something intrepid about New
Yorkers. Both Larry and Rachel were proud to be a part of such resilience and
optimism. Three years after the event, New York was booming, bigger than ever.
Cranes building big high-rises were everywhere in Manhattan. Brooklyn, too, was
booming. The Bronx was resurgent.

On the other hand, except for the
conflicts over what to do with the site and compensation for those who lost
loved ones, people were forgetting and growing less uncomfortable about the
possibility of another attack. While everybody recognized the potential threat,
it was losing any sense of immediacy. The Bush administration was reviled by
opponents who thought the fear factor was being used as a political weapon, and
most people in New York City hated the president for invading Iraq, feeling that the invasion only exacerbated the situation. The fact was that except for security
lines at the airports, the presence of police and National Guardsmen at various
sensitive places like Grand Central Terminal, certain public places where
people walked through metal detectors and had their pocketbooks searched, and
the stories in the newspapers, the fear of an attack like the one that had
destroyed the World Trade Center was dissipating.

“I wish it would go away,” Rachel told
him with increasing frequency, meaning the smell. “It's here in this apartment.
I know it is.”

“That's what you said when we lived in Gramercy Park.”

“Okay, so it's a coincidence. But it's
here, Larry. I can smell it.”

Larry checked with the management of the
apartment house to see if anyone else complained about the smell. No one had.
Larry reported to Rachel what he had learned.

“Would I complain if I didn't smell it?”

He couldn't argue with that, and he
tried his best to be patient and sympathetic. In the end, when their lease was
up they moved to the West Side to a brand-new apartment complex that was being
built overlooking the Hudson River. The view was gorgeous, and there were
wonderfully exhilarating breezes that floated over the river and reached their
terrace on the thirtieth floor.

“I'm so sorry, Larry,” she told him
after they had lived in that apartment for a month. “I can still smell it.”

“What is it like?” he asked, determined
to be patient.

“Like the same as it
was when I first smelled it right after 9/11.”

“Be more specific.”

“Like dead people, I
think.”

“Have you ever really
smelled dead people?”

“Not really. But it is
what I imagine they might smell like.”

Of course, he had
asked the question before, but he was beginning to think it might be a physical
thing, something that had to do with complex biological factors having to do
with the sense of smell. Although he had earlier suggested that she see a
shrink, he decided to offer a less threatening alternative.

An ear, nose, and throat specialist
declared, after various tests, that everything appeared normal.

“I suppose that's a relief,” Rachel said
after they had received the test results. “Except that I can still smell it.”

Finally he was losing patience with her
insistence. It was having an effect on their relationship. She was getting more
restless, sleeping less, tossing at night and inhibiting his own sleep
patterns. Sometimes they would discuss the problem of the smell long into the
wee hours.

“I smell it now, Larry. Believe me.”

“You're imagining it.”

He had taken refuge in that idea, since
any other possibility was unexplainable.

“Even if I was imagining it, I can still
smell it.”

“All the time? Is there any time when
you don't smell it?”

He had asked that question repetitively,
as if it might keep hope alive that she was afflicted with the odor at
ever-diminishing intervals. Unfortunately, the answer was also repetitive.

“It never leaves me, Larry. But it is
most intense at home. Maybe when I am thinking of other things at the office, I
can ignore it although it doesn't go away, but when I get back to our apartment
it is constant. No matter what I do here in the apartment it is always with
me.”

In time, it became for her a dominant
obsession. It seemed to pervade everything she did and he sensed that she was
growing more and more desperate about the affliction, although she appeared
fearful of mentioning it. He could tell it was on her mind by the way her eyes
drifted and her nostrils twitched.

Finally, almost in desperation, she
consented to a visit to a psychiatrist. She had contemplated going by herself,
but she decided that since Larry was the most affected by her affliction, he
was entitled to a psychological explanation, if one was available.

The psychiatrist, a pleasant and patient
middle-aged man, offered an assessment that was highly technical. He referred
to that section of the brain that dealt with the sense of smell, the “smell
brain” he called it, and went through a series of possible physical and
psychological factors that dealt with trauma and the effect it had on memory.

He had asked her many questions about her
childhood. Had she experienced any childhood traumas? Did she have nightmares?
What were her principal fears? Had anything happened to her in her lifetime
that suggested some relationship with fear and smell? As to the phenomena of
the terrorism threat, he was more than curious.

“Are you afraid that another attack is
imminent?”

“No more than anyone else.”

“Do you panic when you ride a bus or
subway or go on an airplane?”

“Acceptance. Not panic.”

“Do you have nightmares of death?”

“If you mean death caused by a terrorist
attack the answer is no.”

“Do news reports of terrorism attacks
bother you?”

“Sure they do, but not to the point
where I get too upset to function.”

“Are you afraid to live in New York?”

“Of course not. I'm here aren't I?”

His diagnosis was
understandable and logical, and he did offer her some hope.

“It could be,” he
explained to both of them after her session when they met in his office, “that
your fear of this terrorist danger is so palpable, so intense, that the odor
associated with that tragedy continues to dominate your smell brain.”

“But as I told you, I
don't obsess about a terrorist attack,” she said. “I fear it, sure, but I don't
dwell on it.”

“Not consciously,” the
psychiatrist said. “It is an evolutionary theory that the sense of smell was
the principal defense mechanism of our ancient forebears. They could sniff
danger from predators and poisons. It was their most powerful sense and is
still powerful in our smell brains.”

“And this explains why
I can still smell debris?”

“It's a possibility.”

“Have you seen other
people like me?” Rachel asked him.

“Yes, I have. Fear is
very disruptive to one's mental health.”

“But I don't think
about it much.”

“Except when the smell
reminds you of it.”

She shook her head,
rejecting the notion.

“So you imply that
it's because the fear in my subconscious is too intense that it induces this
sense of smell.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Psychiatry is not a
pure science. It deals with clues, assumptions, and interpretations.”

His explanation struck
both her and Larry as less than helpful.

“It feeds on itself,” the psychiatrist
told them. “The smell induces memory, like a chain reaction. Have you ever read
Proust?”

Rachel and Larry looked at each other
and shrugged. Neither he nor Rachel had read him.

“The smell of madeleine cake when he was
a child,” the psychiatrist went on, “induced in him a lifetime of memory and
served as the trigger to motivate him to write his masterpiece spanning
multiple volumes, all because of the memory of that smell.”

“So what can I do about it?” Rachel
asked him. “Write a book.”

He laughed politely.

“I'm going to prescribe a medicine that
has worked in cases like yours. It was originally used to stop nausea in
pregnant women.”

“I'm not pregnant, not yet,” she said,
looking at Larry.

“It may not work,” the psychiatrist
said.

“And if it doesn't work?” Rachel asked.

“Find a way to live with it,” he said.
“Like titinnitis, a hearing difficulty that is rarely cured.”

“That it?” Larry asked, after exchanging
troubled glances with Rachel.

“One day it might simply disappear,” the
psychiatrist said. It was a very unsatisfactory diagnosis.

“It's already been more than four
years,” Larry said.

“I wish I could be more helpful,” the
psychiatrist said.

“So do we.”

For the next few months in their new
apartment, they tried to lead normal lives. Nothing changed. The pills he gave
her did not work. Once again, she began to make noises about the apartment
being a place where the smell became worse.