Saving Iraq

I am standing in my kitchen when I see the two Marine officers in the olive-green car rounding the corner of my street. I grab my coat and run out the back door to the garage. I check my pocket for the car keys on my wallet.

On the car radio, I hear the news. There's a roadside bombing in Afghanistan. Genocide in Darfur. New attacks in Afghanistan. What's news ? President Bush says that we will do what is necessary; Iraq will be terror's devastating defeat.

I turn off the radio.

Seaside Park. Long Island Sound curls in slow motion along the Connecticut beach. Across the road on lush meadows, the students spin Frisbees. Their shouts flag the air. Workmen unpack black lunch pails. Some lie down under the great oaks.

People stride on the seawall. The weather has been cool and they are still dressed for winter. But they open their coats, remove their jackets. They don't know that the world has ended today.

A man on a bench feeds pigeons. They flutter down from trees; rise up from the meadows across the way. A seagull hovers in the air.

The seawall contains the swelling oceans that rises and breaks against the rocks. Rises and breaks.

At the far end of the beach, the wall collapses. When the tide is low, the lighthouse is accessible from the exposed sandbar. Children like to walk there. They feel as though they are walking across the ocean.

That time is Past but my pleas still linger," It's dangerous. You mustn't do it, darling. The tide may turn before you know it."

The sand lies careless as gray silk ...

... and I see the children as they spring up in droves, dozens of them. Plump and fragile, running with their pails of water from the sea. They fill holes, pools, moats, until the sand is clay. They mold with their fists; they bury each other in sand dunes.

I see us, the mothers, lining the water's edge in our webbed beach chairs, bulging from pregnancy or recent delivery, cooling our feet in the water.

"You rest, I'll watch Tommy," my neighbor says.

I am pregnant with my second child, endlessly nauseated, but I shake my head, how can I trust you, dear friend? God is watching. Can I trust Him?

Grief is a private room. Chattering, the world passes. I make life small, squeeze it tightly into a beach bag one sand—colored afternoon.

The beach is studded with garbage; bags soppy with peach juice, Popsicle sticks, broken sandals, cigarette stubs. The tide nips at the children's heels.

They laugh, but we mothers rise as one, gathering towels, umbrellas. hats, infants ...

"COME OUT OF THE WATER!" WE CRY.

My son, my first born, watches the water fill the moat around his fort.

"Come, Tommy, We've got to move back. The tide's coming in"

The moat flattens and swirls. The water rises up the walls. He considers pushing back the ocean, but it is too practical. He abandons his dream.

Sky, Earth, Water. Eternity.

I feel warm, remove my jacket, feel the weight of my wallet in the pocket as I fold it over my arm.

Two girls precede me. Their waists are small, their breast half-revealed. One has hair the color and shape of frozen custard. The other girl has red hair, her head is in flames. Their eyes are caves of color. Their green fingernails rake each other as they exaggerate a point, giggling. The girl with the white hair looks familiar.

The pigeon man dips his hand into a brown paper bag and reads a litany of crumbs; He waits for the girls to pass; for the pigeons to retreat; to return. I stand motionless. The birds settle on the back of his bench, at his feet, on his shoulders.

He puts a kernel of corn on his lips. A bird flutters to his face. Frightened at its own audacity, it flies to the arm of the bench. Another hangs in the air, then with a quick dart of its beak, extracts the corn. The man smiles. His lips are blue.

"Good afternoon," he says.

"Good afternoon."

I am his witness and he feels kindly towards me. He moves over, making room on the bench.

"Sit down very slowly," he whispers. Even as I obey, the birds back away.

"They'll get used to you. They're not afraid of people because they're not afraid of me."

He pulls a smaller bag out of the larger one. It is filled with breadcrumbs. He keeps the corn for himself.

The pigeons are fat and drab. Squabs, Not like the pigeons my father raised on the roofs of the apartment houses when we lived in New York City. These he rebred to perfection with tiny crowns and feather boots. They were trained to land and take off from the runway he built on their pigeon cote. One by one up the blue sky in V formations ...

I rise from the bench scattering the birds. The man rises with me.

"Is something wrong?"

I put my hands against my temples and press hard.

A giant hand has taken all the...