“You must move back behind the orange line before the demolition begins!” At this second warning, the crowd begins to press itself tightly together, like a thick knit sweater. I find myself pushed into the soft belly of the larger man. He uses my shoulder as a coaster for his beer.

“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .” the loudspeaker booms.

“Fuckin’ A,” the man says.

“Seven . . . six . . .” Somewhere, a fire engine screams.

I do not hear the final five numbers. The building caves in, in sequence, top down. It is only after the second layer falls that I hear the dynamite howl. The cinderblock crumbles floor by floor.

Boom! We hear the next explosion after the fact, after an entire section has been leveled. They are erasing history in one swoop. It takes no more than five minutes, the blasting, and then nothing’s left but a hole in the skyline.

The crowd begins to jostle and shove, and Rebecca and I get thrown into this flow. People, pulsing like blood, rush beside us.

About halfway to the car I realize why everything looks so different. Dust has settled over everything that has been immobile. Grey-white, like the artificial snow you see on television. Rebecca tries to pick some up but I brush it out of her hand. You don’t know what’s in that stuff.

I don’t even recognize the MG when we reach it: because we haven’t put up the top, it too is chalky. This dust gets on our clothes and between our fingers and we have to blink to keep it from getting into our eyes. The dust keeps coming, drifting over from the demolition site like nuclear fallout. Rebecca and I pull up the convertible top, something we haven’t done since we bought the car.

I know I still have to get Joley’s letter but I am reticent to walk the streets of Minneapolis. What if the other buildings fall? I suggest to Rebecca that we go out for breakfast.

Over bacon and hash I tell Rebecca that we are going to go to Iowa. To the place where her plane crashed. I tell her that I’ve been thinking about it. Since we’re out here anyway, I say. I tell her we can go right up to the ruins. From what I hear, they are still in the cornfield. I wait for her to raise an objection.

Rebecca doesn’t say what I am expecting. There is no resistance, really. Maybe Joley is right; she is ready for this after all. She asks, “Why are they still there?”

Uncle Joley talked my mother into joining the self-help group for abused wives when she returned to California after my plane crash. He said when you’re with other people living the same life as you, you feel better-and as always, she believed him.

In this case, it was a good idea. She never told my father, and since I was still practically a baby she took me along. She’d pick me up from preschool and we’d go to a therapy session. There were seven women. I’d crawl around the floor playing between their shoes with my toys. Sometimes a red-headed woman with bright jewelry would pick me up and tell me I was pretty; I think she was the psychologist.

The way the sessions began was what I liked: women who were almost always crying lifted up clothing to reveal welts and bruises in the shapes of kettles and pelicans. Other women would hum softly, or touch the less tender parts of the bruise. They were hoping to heal. Those, like my mother, who had no physical signs to show, brought their stories. They had been yelled at, put down, ignored. At this early age I could see the differences between physical and verbal abuse. I’d stare at the splits and swellings of the battered women. My mother always told a story. In comparison I thought we were lucky.

Within several weeks my mother stopped going to the group. She told me things were fine again. She said there was no reason to continue. My mother did not keep in touch with these battered wives. As mysteriously as we had met those women, we never saw them again.

Dear Jane-

You may not want to hear this but I have been thinking about why Rebecca survived.

The day her plane crashed, I was in Mexico. I was working on translating some Incan document, I think-part of my Grail ordeal. I knew you were at Mama’s; I had talked to you there a couple of days before. Anyway, I called to see how you were doing and you started to tell me what Oliver had done. He was going to send the FBI, you said, and even though I told you he didn’t have the clout for that you said you had put Rebecca on a plane that morning. “You’re an idiot,” I told you. “Don’t you see you’ve just played your ace?”

You didn’t understand what I meant by that, but then again you didn’t really see Rebecca the same way I did. I’d known it from the minute I first held her as an infant: She belonged with you; she was you. All my life I had been trying unsuccessfully to explain to people the wonderful combination of elements that made up my sister, and then, without even trying, you created a replica of yourself. Sending her back to Oliver; well, that was making the same mistake twice.

I argued with you about whether or not I should drive up to California (I could just about make it by the time the flight arrived) to intercept Rebecca before Oliver got her at the airport. You told me I was being ridiculous, that Oliver was after all the baby’s father and it was none of my business. I am pretty sure that you knew how hard it was for me to put calls through from Mexico, but you slammed the phone down and hung up on me anyway.

This is what I figured out: At the moment we were talking, Rebecca’s plane was exploding over the cornfields of Iowa. And it is my hypothesis that the very reason she is still alive today is because you and I were fighting about her. Only souls that are at peace can go to Heaven.

I tried to call you when I heard about the plane crash that afternoon. But like I said, it was almost impossible to put calls through to the States and anyway, you were on your way to Iowa. I heard through Mama that you and Oliver had arrived at the hospital at the same time. The next time I spoke to you, everything was fine. “We’re back to normal, Joley,” you told me, and you didn’t want to discuss Oliver, or if he apologized, or the fact that he hit you in the first place. You shut me out. You acted just like you did when this kind of thing first happened, when we were kids.

I decided to let sleeping dogs lie. And this is why, Jane: because this time, you had Rebecca to consider. I know that when you were a kid you kept quiet about Daddy because of me, but this wasn’t Daddy and this wasn’t me. Oliver was different; even the way he hurt you was different. More important, Rebecca was different. I kept hoping, silently, that you would want to save her like you hadn’t been able to save yourself.

I have waited years for you to see that you had to get away. I know you think that because you threw the first punch you are at fault, but I believe in histories, and Oliver was the one who started this a long, long time ago. So this is why Rebecca survived that plane crash: she was spared twelve years ago so that she could save you now.

When I first came back from Mexico, before I went to visit either you or Mama, I stopped in What Cheer, Iowa, to see the remains of Rebecca’s plane, and I realized why that farmer had never bothered to remove the wreckage. It had nothing to do with posterity, or tribute. It was simply that the ground was dead. Nothing will ever grow there again.

I don’t expect this will be easy for either of you to see. But it means that you have come more than halfway, that you will be at the apple orchard before you know it. Take Route 80 to Illinois, to Chicago, to the Lenox Hotel. As always, there will be a letter.

With love,

Joley