A Decade of Hope (57 page)

Marie and I would jog in the morning, because we were both fit. We were staying close to Antipolo and every day we would go to the cathedral and shrine of the Virgin of Antipolo to say a prayer or go to Mass. One day we were approached by a little girl, four years old, who was selling lottery tickets, saying, Please buy, buy, buy. Neither one of us had money, and it broke Marie's heart. We went home and had breakfast and she came to me and said, “Would you go to the bank with me?” She took out five hundred pesos and had them changed to one-peso coins. I didn't ask her why, but the next morning, when we went jogging, she had the five hundred coins. She began looking for the little girl, who soon came, and then another little girl came, and then the mother. Joe, Joe, Joe—they called Marie, and anybody who was white, Joe. We sat there on a wall for about a half hour, everybody touching her hair, because she was a blonde, and she did not stop until all five hundred were gone. I remember her saying at the time, “Someday, I don't know when or how, but I'm going to come back and I'm going to help these kids.” That created such an impact on me, and later on in life it came back to me.

I was the biggest person in her life, and she was the biggest person in my life. We tried to outdo each other with surprises when it came to birthdays. Once I took her on an ecological tour, a three-hour trip on a boat. She was so, so pleased. She thought we were then going home, but no, I had a formal dinner all set up at the same place. When my birthday came I would open at least ten presents from her. Christmas, the same way. She just loved loving me, and vice versa. It grew like that for twenty-seven years. People might often claim, “I love you more today than yesterday, / but not as much as tomorrow,” but I could honestly say that I loved Marie every single day more than I loved her the day before. I made her know that every single night and every single morning. I would tell her how much I loved her. I would tell here two and three times a day. We would call each other; I was never too busy for her. She was never too busy for me. We went to work together to different jobs, and we went home together on the Long Island Rail Road.

Keefe, Bruyette was originally at 165 Broadway, but eventually it moved to the World Trade Center, occupying the eighty-eighth and eighty-ninth floors. Marie was on the eighty-ninth floor of the South Tower.

The week before 9/11 was significant only in the sense that, because of our wanting to be together and in order to lengthen our weekends, I drove Marie to work on Monday morning, instead of her taking the train alone. At the time, I was working in our Melville office and sometimes I would work at home. In the city on Mondays, we would sit down for about five or ten minutes and have our cups of coffee by the World Trade Center. That gave us more time together after the weekend. And it never failed, never ever failed, that when I got home I would have an e-mail saying,
Thank you so much for driving me.
She appreciated every single thing that I did for her and she made sure that I knew that. She would leave me notes sometimes where I would see them, when she was already gone. Have a nice day, or thank you for this, or thank you for that. She was such a darling.

The next day, on September 11, I drove her to the station, like I always did. It was just before 6:00 A.M. We said, Good-bye, see you later. How could I know that that was the last time I would see her?

I was working at home that day, and I was working out in the basement when she called and said, “Don't worry, I'm okay.” I said, “What are you talking about?” She said, “Do you have the TV on?” I said I was watching a movie, and she told me to turn on CNN. I saw the huge hole burning and said, “It looks like a plane went through your building. What's going on?” She said they didn't know—they had heard a very, very large noise, and papers were going in all directions, and that they had no television signal and so had no idea what had happened. She told me they were okay, just wanting me to feel at ease, so I told her I'd talk to her later. After a while she called me again and said that they had started going down but were told to go back, because the building was secure. The fire marshals in the building made that announcement on the PA system: “Your building is secure.” But some of them did not go back. The eighty-eighth floor went down, and some on the eighty-ninth actually left but then returned. I told her, “Your building just got hit,” not knowing what else to say. She said, “I got to go, I got to go.” “Call me back,” I said. And she said, “It's getting very hot up here. The fire marshals are moving us out. I'll talk to you as soon as I can.”

We talked one last time. They had gone to the top floor; it was locked. They had to come back down, she said. They went to the stairway, as there were no working elevators. It was pitch-black, no lights. At one point while we were talking she said, “This might be my last call to you.” And she said, “Rudy, pray, okay? Pray.” And she said, “Good-bye.” I said, “Okay. When you get to a phone, give me a call.”

It never dawned on me that she might die. Just as it never dawned on me that this could happen in the United States.
She'll get down
, I kept thinking. It never dawned on me that the building could fall. If the building didn't go down, maybe eventually . . . But I just saw the building go down....

Marie was afraid of only one thing: She feared death. I don't know why. And as I was watching that thing fall I could feel the building blocks hitting her body and feel what she was going through. I felt the fear of being afraid to die. There was nothing I could do.

From the time I had last spoken to her to that of the building collapsing, I really believed there was enough time for her to have made it down, and I was just waiting for that phone call. I believed she survived. There were things on television, things being published on the Internet. There was one Web site that said they had a survivor list, and mistakenly her name was on it. That made me think even more that she had made it.

Everybody began to call me, but I told them I had to keep the lines clear. Marie's mother was frantic, absolutely frantic. People started coming to the house, and stayed with me. They just stayed—our friends, her cousins, my friends from Merrill Lynch and wherever else. We just waited. The police had been in touch with us, and I made a police report. I became numb, walking around not really knowing what to do. You were just waiting. I was just waiting for the phone call. Which never came.

For two full days I believed she was still alive. Her name was on that survivor list, and so I kept clinging to that. Maybe she made it out with no identification, leaving her purse. Maybe she had amnesia, in a hospital someplace, not knowing who she was. I had a life full of maybes. Maybe I was trying to find excuses and reasons why she had not called yet. But after two full days, after not hearing anything about survivors being taken out, and nothing from any hospital, after no phone call, I said, Okay, no more wishful thinking after that. The Red Cross told me there was help available. But I was not thinking of needing help. I mean, really, what kind of help could they give me? Except to return Marie.

After seeing the building come down that shock was very vivid, and stayed with me. And then the television kept showing it coming down again and again. A few days later they stopped showing it.

I now call it naiveté, for I did not even think that the second plane's hitting Marie's building was an attack. It just did not dawn on me. The first one got hit, a plane crashed into it, okay. But when I saw the second plane hit, it still didn't dawn on me that we were under siege. Who? How could they do this to us? And then the building itself. How did a 110-story building just come down? Burn, yes. But an implosion?

Keefe, Bruyette, and Woods lost sixty-seven people that day, including my Marie. Because of attending social events I was very close with the group that she worked with, and there was one service after another for those who died. Anyone that I knew, I attended. I purposely scheduled hers toward the end, October 13. By then I had already gone to twelve or thirteen services, so at each one of them it was, Yeah, I lost my wife also. It seemed that the others who had lost a spouse or a child did not attend the services. I saw the bigwigs, who were attending as many as they could. But they did not lose somebody. I did. So every time I went to a service I would die, and I died all of those deaths.

By the time Marie's came I had nothing left. I was so emotionally drained from all of the crying, and listening, and seeing suffering families, and knowing that these friends had been in my house and now they were gone. It was very, very difficult for me to go through with Marie's service. But I felt obligated to do it, so I did a service for her without her remains.

Three years later, as I was getting used to her being gone, there was a knock at the door. Two policewomen had come to tell me that they had found her body—not her body, but they had identified some of her body, 79 pounds of her body. The detective had her dress, which I identified. She was 118 pounds. Just 79 pounds of her came back to us. It was almost three years to the day that they figured out the DNA. They found her body a month after the incident but could not identify it. They froze it, and during the next three years the DNA technology got better, to the point where they were able to make an identification.

I had the remains cremated and the ashes divided into four vials. I spread two of them out in Hawaii, because of her love for that place. I kept two vials, which I don't know what to do with. Out of respect for my Orphelia, my wonderful new wife, I did not want another memorial here besides the village I had built. Not that Orphelia would object, but I just don't know what to do.

I did nothing for the first year after 9/11. I was told by professionals, Don't do anything for a year; don't make any major decisions. So I stayed in the house alone. That was very, very difficult. I would see her where she always was. But she was not where I would see her. We lived in that house for twenty-plus years, and in that Long Island neighborhood. I would see her in every place in our memories, be it the grocery store, the drugstore, the train station, the library that she loved so much. Memories were every single place.

Three years passed, and one day I saw a house-for-sale sign on Woodbury Road. I looked up and saw it was my kind of house. It had a 270-foot driveway that went straight up from the street. It was very private, surrounded by rhododendrons and philodendrons, with a patio as big as Texas. I did not see the eight bedrooms, just saw a home that I liked, so I bought it. This was a minor victory for me, trying to find a place to be happy. The house made me happy. But then it haunted me that this beautiful place was not supposed to be just for me—it was supposed to be us two, together. And I could not live there. But I also could not bring myself to sell it. Finally, my agent said, “Your house is going to rot,” so I went ahead and sold it. My Filipino friends had started saying to me, You have a very strong, dominant character, and whatever you are looking for, you are not going to find here, alone in this big house. Go home to the Philippines, they said. Go home. Find a quiet girl who will say yes to you, whatever you want.

So I made it known that I was going home, and that I was looking. When I got to the Philippines my friends set me up with this one, and they set me up with that one. But everybody they set me up with was not quite right. There was one really nice-looking lady, but when I went to her house she had this huge picture with what must have been at least 150 people in it: daughters, mothers, cousins, this, that, all the children. I would be marrying into a tribe. And then I noticed that she was interviewing me—How do you feel about this and that?—and she had her checklist. She liked me and I liked her, but it really scared me when I saw that. I'm very American. Don't come to my house unless you call first.

At that point I had pretty much given up, but it just so happened that I went into this place where all the bachelors go on Thursday nights, all schoolmates from Ateneo. I was going one way, and here comes this lady, the same way. We looked at each other, and, wow, what a beautiful smile—what a beautiful girl. I didn't know who she was, no idea. I said, “Are you coming here?” and she said, “Yes.” Next thing I know she is on the stage. She was one of the singers and had a beautiful voice. So I said, “I want to talk to you afterward,” but she was kind of ignoring me.

That was the first time I saw Orphelia. I soon invested in the club, and then became the manager too. I made two more attempts to see her. I drove her home, but she wouldn't pay attention to me. I drove her home again, and in the car she began [to talk]: “What do I need men for? To be used and abused? Men are all the same.” My driver said, “Are we going to do this again tomorrow?” I said, “No way.”

Then one day she texted me, wanting some help. She was working five days a week and needed her day off changed. I made the change, she was very grateful, and that was that. But one day I was talking to one of my partners, who asked, “Did you know that Orphelia was operated on?” I said, “No,” and I called her up and told her I wanted to visit. She was very grateful. That weekend she told me she was singing in Tagaytay, so I offered to drive her there. In the Philippines more patience is always needed.

I hadn't realized what an influence Marie had been in my life. I began to see the mistakes that I was making—mistakes I had not been making when Marie was with me, because she had taught me in the particulars of that relationship how to deal with them.

 

After losing Marie, I wanted to do something meaningful in her memory. Basically, I wanted to help those who needed help. Naturally, being Filipino and having seen how poor it is for many here, I was directing my desires toward home. While I was still living on Long Island I put out word that I was looking for a project in the Philippines and kept being told, Be careful, there's a lot of fraud out here. You're going to get sued. They are going to steal your money. They are going to kidnap you. One day a friend of mine, one of my classmates, mentioned that he was doing volunteer work for Gawad Kalinga, an organization that provides homes to people in the Philippines who have none. I told him that I had been looking for just such a project and asked him to send me material about it. Their goal is to stop only when there is no one else homeless in the Philippines. I sent them enough to buy fifty houses. My friend had told me that if I bought fifty houses—basically enough to build a village—they would name the village after me. I told them to name it after Marie. It was then that it came back to me that Marie had said that someday she was going to come back and help these people.