I'll See You Again Part 4

Una patted my shoulder. "Jackie, don't even think that. It's going to be okay."

But she got on the phone, calling a nurse she knew at Westchester Medical Center, hoping to find out some details.

I leaned over Una as she held the phone, grabbing her arm with two hands. "Tell me, is anyone hurt? Is someone brain-dead?"

She had no information. "My friend doesn't know anything," Una said. "Stay calm."

I began pacing up and down the kitchen, into the living room, then around in circles through the den. Back and forth, back and forth, like a dog chasing its tail, I kept going, seeking something I couldn't find.

"They're okay, they're okay, they're okay," I chanted to myself, clasping my arms together and moving my hands from side to side.

Someone told me that Warren was racing to the hospital, so we'd know soon enough.

"They're okay, they're okay, they're okay," I said, continuing my chant. "I know they're okay."

Then I saw Brad on his cell phone and I heard him say, "Warren?" Fear and concern resonated in Brad's voice, as if the person he was talking to on the other end was hysterical.

In the frenzy of the last couple of hours, time had sped by. But now it came to a grinding halt. My eyes were fixed on Brad and all the buzz around me seemed to stop.

As he listened to Warren try to give the full report, Brad stood straight, then slumped against the wall. I saw him drop his head once. Twice. Three times. The wall could barely hold him up. Then he put down the phone and came over to me. His face looked stricken.

"Jackie, they're all gone," he said.

"No," I said evenly.

The words didn't penetrate. I just kept looking at his tortured face.

But Melissa understood what his words meant.

"Brad, don't say that!" she yelled. "Don't say that!"

"They're all gone," he repeated. "Jackie, I'm so sorry ..."

I don't know what else he said because I ran out of the house shrieking. Screaming, shrieking, yelling. No words, just horror. I ran fast, because maybe if I got away from the house, from my friends, from the phone, it wouldn't have happened. I charged down the street howling like a wild animal, feral cries resonating in the quiet afternoon. Neighbors started coming out of their houses at my horrified screams and people called out to me, but I kept running and didn't stop.

Without thinking where I was going, I headed toward Salvina's house. The matriarch of a big Italian family, Salvina had babysat for Emma, Alyson, and Katie in their first years. I would drop them off at her house when they were small, sometimes three days a week, and she cared for them like her own. Her house always seemed to me like a magical place, filled with cousins and sisters and extended love. Even as tiny babies, the girls never cried around Salvina-she had the secret potions to soothe upset stomachs or calm colic. As she watched my children grow, I watched hers. When Salvina's daughter got married, Katie walked down the aisle, a flower girl.

Now Salvina opened the door. Since it was Sunday, she was cooking gravy for the big family dinner she served each week. The smell of food that would normally make me feel so good now hit my stomach and a wave of nausea took over.

"Jackie, what's the matter, what's the matter?" she asked in her heavy Italian accent. A tiny woman with short black hair, she waved me inside. But instead, I just grabbed her arm.

"Salvina, the girls are dead. The girls are dead," I said.

"It's not true," she said placidly.

"No, that's wrong. Couldn't be," said her husband, coming to join us.

Sal, another neighbor, who was an undercover cop, had followed me but I sat down in Salvina's living room.

"It's true, Salvina. There was a car accident," Sal said. If anybody knew anything it was Sal. Not only a cop, he volunteered in the fire department and as an EMT.

But like me, Salvina couldn't process the words. She began screaming and rushed over to the couch to sit beside me, holding me and moaning. We rocked back and forth together and I sat there for what seemed like hours. I heard Jeannine come in and say we should go back home, but I didn't want to leave.

Maybe if I never left the sofa in Salvina's house, I could make my own truth. Brad would be wrong. The girls would come in the door. Emma would be upset about missing play rehearsal but Alyson would comfort her. They would tell me about the fun they'd had camping and we would hug and kiss and talk about how scary it had been when Aunt Diane got sick. Salvina would give them delicious pasta, and I would tell them that they had been brave and now we were all together, which was all that really mattered and exactly what we all wanted. What I wanted desperately.

Two

I don't know how I got back home from Salvina's. Swarms of friends and neighbors had already gathered inside and outside our house, and several of the men had gone to the hospital to get Warren. I was in our living room when he arrived home, and the moment he saw me, he crumbled. His grief was already crus.h.i.+ng, but once multiplied by mine, it became unbearable. He put his arms around me and we both fell to the floor, reeling and helpless, grief rolling over us like a locomotive.

Warren had always been my rock, his solidity a perfect foil to my more emotional responses. But now we were both in shock. Even his efforts to show superhuman strength might not be enough to sustain me.

At some point, I looked out the window and saw news trucks and camera crews.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"The reporters are all trying to talk to you," one of my friends said. But she pulled the shades down and kept the curtains closed.

By the next day, the police had cordoned off our street, but television producers and news reporters clambered across our lawn, looking for an interview. Friends went outside to shoo away bookers from Dr. Phil and Oprah and the network morning news shows. Producers from a dozen or more talk shows and local news stations left notes asking for me. Were they joking or just unbelievably callous? My tragedy as a lead-in to Lindsay Lohan on Fox News?

I got the story in fragments and didn't fully grasp what had happened until much later. In the immediate aftermath, all I knew was that Diane had put the children back in the car, then driven from the rest area where Warren had begged her to stay. Not answering her phone, she headed north instead of south on the major road, then drove onto an off-ramp for the Taconic State Parkway. For nearly two miles, she drove the wrong way on the highway.

Drivers who saw her beeped their horns and called 911.

Many reported that she held the wheel firmly and seemed serene. Even if she had gotten onto the ramp by mistake, there were several places along the highway where she could have pulled over. She didn't.

After 1.7 miles, she plowed headlong into an oncoming SUV.

Diane and her daughter, Erin, died. Emma, Alyson, and Katie died. Katie was still alive when she got to the hospital but doctors couldn't save her. The three men in the SUV died. Only Bryan, Diane's young son, survived, with two severe injuries and broken bones.

Eight people dead. Police called it the worst car crash in the county in seventy-five years.

The newspapers dubbed it the "Wrong Way on the Taconic Tragedy" and splashed it across their front pages. Local TV couldn't get enough of it, and the story went viral on the Web and got national attention.

But none of it could bring back my girls.

My daughters were gone.

Warren hadn't seen Emma, Alyson, or Katie at the hospital. Ever the good person, he had gone to be with Bryan, since his father, Danny, hadn't yet arrived. That's how close our families had been. Only later would the goodwill become just another source of pain and confusion.

At some point that evening, I slipped away from the concerned friends and neighbors and went to the bedroom Emma and Alyson shared. I retreated into their closet and closed the door. I could hear the swell of voices downstairs, the anguish and the sobs. But I covered my ears and just rocked back and forth in the corner. My girls, my girls. In their dark closet, I could breathe their air and feel their presence. Friends came upstairs to get me, talking to me from the other side of the door. But why should I come out? Why would I ever come out again?

A psychiatrist I had seen in the past came by our house the next day, as did another doctor in town, and suddenly I had a fistful of pills to take every few hours-antianxiety drugs and antidepressants, drugs to help me sleep and others to help me cope. I didn't know what I was taking and I didn't care. Anything to dull the pain, the unbearable empty feeling that had suddenly taken over my life. If someone had suggested general anesthesia, I would have clamped on the face mask and breathed deeply.