We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer (30 page)

As they waited, Pasquale thought back on what would become known as “the belt incident.” He felt those familiar pangs of embarrassment. He had come so close to losing control, and he felt the presence of an all-too-familiar foe: guilt.
I have to get this under control,
he told himself.
No matter what, I have to fix this. Louise…she may not understand, but this is it.

These thoughts comforted him as he did the interview when the time finally came.
Just get through this, and then you can tell her, once and for all, that you are done.
He kept telling himself this over and over as the interview went on. He barely paid attention to what they were saying as he steeled himself for what he knew was ahead.

I almost lost it. I almost hurt the woman I love more than anything. God, help me stop this…and please help Louise understand.

His thoughts were interrupted every few moments by the cookie-cutter questions Aaron Brown kept spewing at him, the same as every other interview. Pasquale answered the questions grudgingly before returning to his brooding. The only thing that managed to snap him out of his malaise was when Aaron Brown repeated a question he should have already known the answer to—a question he’d asked in the previous interview. “So tell me, Pasquale, how did you manage to get out of the building before it collapsed?” Aaron Brown asked.

Pasquale snapped back to reality and looked at him, dumbfounded. “Like I told you, I didn’t
get
out. I fell
with
the building,” Pasquale answered for the second time.

Pasquale completely checked out after that.
If he doesn’t even care enough to keep his questions straight, why should I care at all?

~ ♦ ~

This has to stop,
he thought on the way home from the interview. When the car pulled up in front of the Buzzelli house, Pasquale had hoped it would all be over, but even that was not the end. They had been asked to go inside and gather pictures, home movies, and other mementos to replace the ones CNN had had the audacity to lose. Louise did as they asked without complaining, even though it was 2:00 a.m. on September 9. She did everything she was asked, but it was all for nothing. After the whole disaster at CNN, the interview was never aired. Everything the Buzzellis went through for CNN was in vain.

Pasquale sat alone on the couch, waiting and steeling himself for the difficult things he knew he had to say. Once the car left and Hope was safely in bed, he sought out Louise. “Louise, we have to talk,” he told her.

She knew what was coming, but that did not make it easier to accept.

“You know what happened earlier,” he began. “You saw me. You know me better than anyone, so you have to know I am not right. I am fucking losing it. I am in trouble, Louise.
We
are in trouble.”

“I know, Pasquale,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “I know, but what would you have me do? I can’t stop thinking of those women. I can’t stop thinking that if I do not do something to help them, then I am wasting this great gift I was given when you came home.”

“Louise, I can’t do this anymore. It is killing me, it is ruining us. We can’t keep spending all of our time trying to help others when we need to fix ourselves.” He looked at her. Even then, at his lowest of lows, he could not help but get a flutter in his stomach as he gazed into her green eyes. “Nunu, I love you so much. You know that. I would do anything for you, anything, and I know you know I am telling the truth when I say that. So you must know that when I say I can’t do this anymore—the interviews, the media, the Foundation—I really, truly
can’t
go on. I can’t handle this being our life.”

“P., I-I know,” she said, tears in her eyes, “but I can’t go on knowing those women are out there. How do I stop those thoughts? How do I ignore them?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, ” Pasquale said. He let out a slow sigh. “We need to take time for us. We just…have to.”

“Oh God! Just…what do I do now?!” Louise began to weep. Her shoulders heaved, and she started sobbing uncontrollably. She fell onto the couch next to Pasquale and buried her face in his chest and just cried.

He held her tight and stroked her hair. She could not stop weeping, and he knew he could not take away her tears. They sat together on that couch, her crying, him whispering softly, trying his best to comfort her. Though they both felt alone and abandoned by the world, at the same time, they were truly together again for the first time since the day that Hope had been born.
             

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

In the Sanctuary of an Angel

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.

They must be felt with the heart.”

~ Helen Keller

After the CNN interview, Pasquale and Louise held firm in their agreement to avoid the media. They had a few interviews lined up, but after they fulfilled those obligations, they refused the requests that came in almost daily. They even turned down requests from several titans of the media industry, including the late Peter Jennings; the
ABC World News Tonight
anchor tried very hard to convince them to come into New York on the anniversary to do an interview, but they refused. As a last-ditch attempt, he offered to send a news truck to their home and do the interview via satellite. Still, Louise and Pasquale refused. They wanted the anniversary to be a day strictly for remembrance and family, not one filled with jumping through hoops for media exposure. Even though Louise knew it would keep them from being able to promote The
Song for Hope
Foundation like she wanted to, she also felt some relief in not having to be at the media’s beck and call anymore.

Pasquale refused to do anything on the first anniversary of September 11. For the Buzzellis, it was a sacred day, a day of mourning and to pay respect to the fallen, and that was exactly what they planned to do. The only concession he made was to do an interview in the morning for
The Howard Stern Show
. They wanted him to go into New York City to appear on the radio, but he refused. He told them he would do it over the phone, but Pasquale would not enter the city on September 11.

The interview was planned well in advance, and even though Pasquale and Louise wanted to stay away from everything on the anniversary, they honored their commitment. It was scheduled in the early morning, so it would not interfere with their day of honoring the lost; plus, the chance to have The
Song for Hope
Foundation mentioned on such a widely received show of national recognition was too much to pass up. Not only would millions of listeners hear about the Foundation, but various people with the power to help promote it would be listening and calling in. The producers even tried to entice Pasquale into the interview by saying it would be a great chance for the Foundation to get some exposure, telling him that people like Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, and then-Mayor Giuliani would be listening and hear the song. But yet again, the Buzzellis came out of a press arrangement with the short end of the stick.

The interview went well, but it did not last long. Howard Stern had to cut it short because Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called in. Pasquale understood and had no problem with the interview being shortened, but was upset when they ultimately failed to play the song. While he disliked the headaches that went along with using the mass media to promote the song, he badly wanted to help Louise raise money. This was yet another case where his story was used for ratings, but when it came time for them to help him help the women who needed it, Pasquale was left out in the cold.

“This is unbelievable!” Pasquale said to Louise when the show ended and the song had not been played.

“I know. Why does this keep happening?” Louise said, her head in her hands. “We just want to help, and the people who could help us do that, just…won’t.”

“Fuck this!” Pasquale said, slamming his fist on the table. “I am going to call them tomorrow and let them know that they need to do what they promised!”

And Pasquale did just that. When he called to remind the producers that they’d agreed to play the song and that it was for a great cause, he got Baba Booey. Pasquale told him just how angry he was that they did not do the one small thing they had agreed to when they asked Pasquale to do the show. After some initial resistance, they played the song the very next day. The Buzzellis were grateful for this, but they were also disappointed that the song was not played on the anniversary, because they knew it would not have the same impact a day later.

~ ♦ ~

The anniversary was a difficult day for everyone, but it was especially draining for Pasquale. He spent the day surrounded by family. Louise and Hope were great comforts to him, but there were some things he could only handle alone, mainly paying respect to those close to him who were lost in the attacks one year before.

He drove to their family church alone. When he arrived at St. Pius X, no one was there. He walked halfway down an aisle and randomly picked a wooden pew to sit on. He looked around the church as he absentmindedly fished around in his jacket pockets. Even then, on the saddest of days, he realized how safe a place St. Pius was to him. It truly was a sanctuary. Pasquale was not overly zealous about his faith, but he appreciated the calm that came over him in that sacred building: its white, domed ceiling, held up by earth-tone columns that circled the perimeter of the room; the way the light filled the room big open glass windows; the way that, despite it being a Roman Catholic building, the room felt open and welcoming rather than dark and foreboding. The crucifix displayed on the altar was the center of what the church stood for: Christ with His arms stretched out, welcoming all who came to gather there. The building just made him feel safe, even when the world was not.

He pulled his hand from his pocket and held a scrap of paper. Pasquale looked up at the altar of the church, let out a long breath, and looked back down at the fourteen names, the names of his fallen co-workers. He sat alone for an hour or so, reading each name to himself
Jean A. Andrucki, William F. Fallon, Stephen J. Fiorelli, Barry H. Glick, Rosa Gonzalez,
Joseph F. Grillo,
Patrick A. Hoey, Deborah H. Kaplan, Edward T. Keane, Franco Lalama, Susan Miszkowicz,
Kalyan K. Sarkar,
Lisa L. Trerotola, and Simon Weiser.

Each time he read a name, he thought of a happy memory or good thought he had about that person; if he did not know the person well, he just pictured their face. In between memories he prayed, all the while crying off and on.

~ ♦ ~

Louise also spent the day in reverence. Unlike Pasquale, however, she felt better with people than in relative solitude. Thus, she went to a candlelight vigil that was held in Westwood, New Jersey. She was invited by the Mayor of Westwood, Skip Kelly, and he asked if they could play the song during the vigil. She agreed, and when the time came for the song to play, she went and stood in a gazebo in the center of the town square. As she waited for the song to play, she looked out at the hundreds of people who’d come to honor the people who were lost one year before. The twinkle of the candles seemed to outshine the stars in the sky and the light they cast on the faces shimmered on the tear streaked faces.

When the song began playing, Louise held Hope in her arms and thought about all of the people who were there: mothers, daughter, fathers, sons, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins—all there, coming together to remember what happened a year before on that awful day. They were there to mourn the lives that were lost, but that was not the only reason. They were also there to support and be supported, to come together and stand strong against an unconquerable enemy: terror. They were there to honor the human spirit, the astounding thing in all good people that makes them consider their fellow man, even in the face of great adversity. There may be no greater example of this spirit, this marvelous trait, than the little girl who approached Louise on that very night.

~ ♦ ~

Louise
:
After the song was played, as I held my baby girl, Hope, in my arms, I was approached by someone I had never met before. She had to be no older than twelve or thirteen. She had silver braces on her teeth, wore a sweatshirt, and had her hair in a ponytail. She came toward me in the midst of this whole crowd of people and was trying to hand me something. This young girl gave me a charm that said “Hope” on it. It was hers. She took the charm off her very own bracelet, only to give it to me.

When I looked closely at it, I realized what it said. At that moment, I could do nothing but embrace her. I thought to myself,
Here is this young girl, whom I don’t even know, and she is giving me a gift from her heart.
I can still remember what it felt like to hug her. I didn’t want to let her go. She touched me in such a way that I couldn’t hold back the tears. What I felt inside was pure emotion that I cannot put into words. How could anyone explain to this young girl what happened on 9/11 just a year before? What was going on in the world? At that moment, I felt so humbled that she felt it in her heart to give me something that might make me feel better. It broke my heart.