Sacred Time (33 page)

Where I tore out the poison ivy and filled in the shelter, lilacs and peonies grow now; roses and trumpet vines. I understand that, given its roots and the nature of our land, some of the poison ivy will reappear; but I've learned to identify it during any season—even without its shiny leaves—by the brown centipede hairs on the vines that suckle themselves to trees. I've learned what I must do to destroy it.

Our backyard is safe now: I have made it so.

But it's not that simple with conflict. Here's the prevailing struggle between Ida and me: she wants to climb into my darkness and understand me, while I fight her with silence to shield her from my darkness. Sometimes I still long to go without speaking for days. But I can't anymore. Not as a father. For Joey, I've learned to pull words from myself.

The last time the three of us lived together was after the attack on the World Trade Center, when Ida and I raced to Joey's school, horrified. We took him home, but even there we no longer felt safe. Not in our house. Not in Brooklyn. Not in the world. After a few days we stopped watching the news on television and listened to NPR instead; yet images of the twin towers crumbling—forever and again—replayed themselves inside our minds when we closed our eyes.

Ida and I didn't sleep well, and whenever one of us woke up, the other lay already awake. One night I heard her slipping out of bed, her slow bare feet on the wooden floor, the flush of the toilet. Then she burrowed back under the quilt. Shivered. Four in the morning, and the house was cold.

“Maybe we should,” I said, “you know, get a gun?”

“Maybe…But would we shoot it?”

“I would. If terrorists broke into our house, I would.”

“Terrorists need bigger targets than us. Targets that make the news.”

“Buildings…Bridges…Your feet—”

“My feet?”

“They're like ice.”

“That's why I need to warm them on you, Antonio.” Ida called me Antonio, the way my grandparents used to. She used to say the Italian version of my name was sexy, but I hadn't heard that in a long time, not since she'd accused me that I didn't desire her. And when I'd said I did, she'd insisted she didn't feel any desire coming from me.

“We'd have to keep the bullets in a separate place,” I said. “Hide them from Joey.”

“You believe it's going to happen again?”

I hesitated. According to Ida, I was tentative. Timid. “Some day,” she liked to say, “you may finally have to decide something, Antonio.” Now, as I felt her waiting, I told her with a certainty I didn't feel, that, yes, I would shoot, and that I'd aim for the legs.

“What good would that do?”

“Stop them.”

“Too easy to miss.” Ida used to watch
Cagney and Lacey.
“Besides, if you get one leg, someone can still come after you. Not to mention the other terrorists.”

I thought about hiding places for bullets. Thought about getting shot. Reached down and rubbed my wife's feet between my hands.

Ida sighed. Shifted closer. “What are you…doing?”

I traced the delicate bone spurs above the ridge of her left foot. “Warming your feet,” I said and stroked the tender spots between her toes, the rough skin above her heels.

My mother sets a bakery box with Florentines on the counter, and when I kiss her cheek, she leans into my arm. “Let's just look at him.” She motions toward Joey mowing the lawn, carving his own trails.

He's wearing his red jacket with the decals of all the teams sewn on it, and the red leather cap that goes with it. When he notices us, he waves. Skips. Walks two steps and skips again.

“What a performer,” my mother says affectionately.

“He has that from you.”

“Early training.” She waves back to him, and a whiff of basement pool rises from her—chlorine and mildew and dingy lockers—a smell I used to find on Ida some days, and I'm right back
there in the water, with Riptide Grandma, both of us silly and wild, exuberant, as if we were the same age. She's floating on her back, showing me how to: “Once you believe you can rest on water, you'll never be afraid of sinking.”
My mother inherited the key to the pool from Riptide, who inherited it from Great-Aunt Camilla, and the building is large enough so that others assume my mother lives there, including the doormen, who appreciate the generous tips she gives them the week before Christmas.

“Every week Joey mows a different pattern,” I tell her. “Figure eights; diamonds; a grid.”

“That means he enjoys it.” She's delighted to have a grandchild after years of pointing out to me what she called “daughter-in-law material”—in restaurants or in stores or on the street. “This one is intelligent,” she'd say. Or: “Such a kind face…definitely daughter-in-law material.” Or: “Not daughter-in-law material. Greedy eyes.”

Joey glances over his shoulder, walks taller, faster, as he cuts diagonal stripes into the grass. When we step outside, toward the buzz of his mower, he stops the engine.

“I want to learn kickboxing, Grandma.”

“Kickboxing is dangerous,” I tell him.

“Grandma does it.” Green eyes like mine. Frog-green, my cousin Belinda says.

“It's dangerous for your grandmother, too.”

“Not if you do it properly,” she corrects me. “The instructor uses the best of each form, whatever is most effective.”

“How did you find your instructor, Grandma?”

“The Yellow Pages.”

I groan.

“I called four numbers, and this man was the only one who had a class starting the day I called. He said: ‘Come and watch and try if you like.'”

“What's the urgency?” I ask.

She expands her lean shoulders, frail wings that won't get her anywhere, and I want to wrap her into my arms, keep her sheltered. “I used to think you could leave fear behind if you chose to. But lately I've been feeling afraid again. Of what's happening in our country. Almost every day, we're warned of terrorist attacks, and—”

“But 9/11 did happen,” Joey reminds her.

“Absolutely.” She nods. “And it was terrible. Monstrous. That's what makes this fear so real—9/11 happened, but it has become increasingly monstrous, because the government is using it to take away our rights…supposedly for the sake of our protection. ‘Huddle closer. Only we can protect you.'”

“You need to be careful,” I say. “Saying these things aloud—”

“Let's look at it on a smaller scale, then…at a family where one of the parents—the father, say—beats the child…makes the child afraid. Afraid of him
and
of telling. And all along that father promises: ‘I'm the only one who can protect you.' He teaches the child to fear. Reminds the child of what happened and can happen again.”

Joey is nodding. “Just as we are reminded of 9/11.”

“Right. It's not that terrorists attack us every day. But we're taught to be afraid it will happen again. The government color-codes our fear, tells us how afraid we need to be today. Tomorrow. And we're promised that the only one who can protect us is the person warning us. And so we draw closer to that leader. Let him govern us with fear.”

“It's not wise to say these things aloud.”

“True. And that fact, alone, must show you how many rights we've already lost. Remember those three firefighters who were suspended the week after 9/11 because they wouldn't fly the American flag on their engines? A lot of people are still being harassed for not flying the flag. It means you're not patriotic. Listen, I've lived a long time, but this is much worse than the McCarthy years. And it'll only get worse if we don't stop it. If we don't reclaim that absence of fear.”

I glance at Joey. “Not in front of him.”

“Joey can think for himself. With this whole ‘axis of evil' thing, I'm far more afraid of our government than of terrorists.”

“I don't want Joey repeating any of this in school.”

“If his teachers are any good, they'll get the students thinking…discussing nationalism…its impact on other countries, too, throughout history. Aren't you worried we'll lose freedom of speech altogether?”

“Not really.”

“Well…I am.”

“Do me a favor,” I tell Joey. “Let's keep this discussion in this house, all right?”

My mother laughs. “You sound like your father, Anthony. ‘Whatever the Amedeo family talks about in the car, stays in the car. And whatever—'”

“‘—the Amedeo family talks about in the house, stays in the house.' My father was a man of great wisdom. But really, now…what do those classes of yours have to do with any of this?”

“Learning to defend myself is one thing I can do to protect myself right now.”

“It won't protect you from terrorists.”

“No.”

“Or from the government.”

“No.”

“Then—”

“It protects me from the fear.”

“That man's ethics worry me.”

“Absolutely.”

“He's an opportunist.”

“An opportunist. I'm glad you're seeing that, Anthony.”

“How can I not? Just consider how he pounced on 9/11 to promote himself.”

“He's a dictator.”

“Hel-lo…” Joey waves both hands to interrupt us. “Hel-lo…”

“I wouldn't call him a dictator. But scheduling classes for firefighters and capitalizing on—”

“We're not talking about the same person, Anthony.”

“Hel-lo…” Joey's hands are still up. “That's what I was trying to tell you.”

“No wonder we agreed,” I say.

“Let's keep going like this. Let's talk about government and religion on the same mattress. I know we agree on that.”

“Yes. I'd rather have them fighting each other than combining powers.”

“Agreed.”

“Now let's talk about the
instructor's
ethics.”

“Oh…his ethics worry me, too, Anthony.”

“Finally.”

“No. All along. But I'm not going to him for the study of ethics.”

“It's street fighting.”

“That's what I plan to learn.”

“Cool,” Joey says.

I give him a warning glance. “Not cool.” I have feared for him since his birth. Even before his birth. That's why I waited to be a father. Too long. Ida wanted two children at least; but I know that terrible things happen.

That I cause them to happen.