National Security
(continued)
Months passed. Now that we had the room we hosted our first Thanksgiving. Christmas and Hanukah came and went. Boxes were getting unpacked. I bought a couch and curtains. The threat of the war in Iraq was like wallpaper, a part of the overall scheme of the house and the life we lived in it and in this new town. Burke and I looked through his preschool artwork, and he chose pictures of birds he had drawn in his preschool class for his walls. We looked through that portfolio on several occasions, often before bedtime, something that I regretted each and every time as it seemed to me that the pictures were sad reminders of Burke’s old home that I knew he was missing, and of the bizarre reality of having once lived in an apartment with a view of the Twin Towers, and the move being connected to the fact that those two buildings were knocked down.
The picture that we didn’t find was the one I had hoped we would. Burke’s teacher had taken a Polaroid of the Twin Towers that Burke had built with blocks on September 10th. She hung the picture on the classroom wall where it remained for the rest of year. How strange it was for a single image to be a before and after picture, starting out as a student’s sweet accomplishment and becoming an homage and historical document overnight. The actual buildings came down almost as easily as Burke’s wooden blocks. Somehow, the picture didn’t make it in to the portfolio. When I asked about it, the teacher said she must have lost it.
Esme elected to hang Joan Weaver’s paint-by-number landscape in the children's bathroom.
I had only seen the Weavers in passing over the months, mostly in the mornings as neighbors dug themselves out of knee-high snow. It was warm out when we moved to Rockland, and everyone in our neighborhood was outside with their kids, dealing with their lawn, kibutzing. But here in the ‘burbs, in cold weather, people beat a hasty retreat inside.
It was on one of these wintry mornings, after an unexpected early spring snow, that I opened the curtains in the living room and saw the Weavers standing outside near their car, arguing. Burke was already at school and Esme at daycare. I couldn’t hear what the Weavers were arguing about, though I wished I could. I moved away from the window and positioned myself off to the side so that I could see them but if they happened to glance up, they wouldn’t see me.
Joan was doing most of the talking. Suddenly, Lewis slapped her. I cringed and was about to call the police when Joan slapped him back. Lewis took a step backwards. She advanced, moving right into his face, apparently unafraid. I put the receiver down. I didn’t know where the Weavers kids were, presumably inside their house, perhaps alone or with Joan’s mother, who lived nearby. Lewis’ hand flew out towards his wife’s face. Joan caught his hand in hers and used her other to slap him again. Soon, Lewis drove off and Joan stormed back to the house.
It was the first day of the war in Iraq.
I promised Jack that now that we were more settled in, I would finally schlep out to Long Island and pick up Eddie. Before making the trip, I called our insurance company and added a rider to cover the painting’s potential theft (although something tells me that your average Rockland thief wouldn’t know 19th century portraiture from a velvet Elvis).
It was a two-hour drive from Rockland to Jack’s. I reflexively switched on the news, to NPR, and chewed on a bite about a pregnant women at a checkpoint, the car she got out of blowing up and taking her with it, humans ground away, attrited. The embedded reporter commented that no one knows if the woman was forced to participate in this terrorism or was a willing accomplice.
The news on the radio made the war — or war in general —sound shockingly chaotic. With all the high-tech capability we have, there are certain forces that the military can not control, such as sandstorms and unexpected enemy tactics. War is messy and mostly low-tech.
Since the events of 9/11, followed by my move to Rockland County and the war in Iraq, I have found myself adrift in worry and what-ifs and how-comes, inverted meditations, reverie, the kind of reverie Coleridge’s Albatross yields, a dead-on in your eye passion, fervor nailed, and maybe these are all exactly the right combination, the precise alchemy for art… for the music and the movies and the paintings and the poetry and the novels that have slammed back into my life. I am giddy with art. I have somehow arrived at a party with a piñata hanging from the ceiling that I take a bat to and beat the crap out of until art pours out like candy.
Is this the silver lining?
I was excited about getting Eddie and looking forward to seeing him and living with him again. My old oily buddy.
I turned off the news and chose a CD from the pile of jewel cases I’d strewn on the passenger seat. I loved driving alone blasting CDs. Friends laughed when I told them how much I liked 8 Mile and the soundtrack. “But it’s rap,” they said like old people complaining of that God-awful rock 'n' roll. The last six years had mostly been about singing along with Elmo. I happen to love Elmo, but to be able to listen to grown-up music alone is a really new occurrence, a luxury.
How many people are proud to be citizens of this beautiful country of ours?
The stripes and the stars for the right that men have died for to protect
The women and men who have broke their necks for the freedom of speech the United States government has sworn to uphold
Or so we’re are told…
Eddie would have been down with Eminem.
I take the exit to Jack’s. I am stopped at a red light singing on top of my lungs with the music blasting. The teen parked in the car next to me laughs. I smile at him, thinking he can go ahead and laugh at my 42-year-old white ass rapping along to Slim Shady. It’s all part of the candies dropping like bombs from my piñata. This is my little party and only I am invited.
Word.
A half-hour later Jack and I are packing Eddie into the Toyota, padding his frame with blankets and pillows, protectively. Jack asks me to stay for dinner. “I need to get back in time to meet the school bus,” I explain. He sends the kids and Dan his love and I hug him and Evie and with the masterpiece in the trunk, I get back on the LIE and head to Rockland. On the way home I make the decision to drop by Joan’s and invite her to see the painting on the wall. And then think better of it.
