Mallory's Camera

In the middle of the night, I dreamed that Ben had come back to tie up loose ends, shut down an apartment where (presumably) we'd lived together. He was cold, sardonic, demonic; I couldn't quite understand what was going on. RTT was a very young child, not present, but an issue between us.

Then I was in a bar with M____ S_______ (in real life, Ben's very pleasant cousin, the one who told me many years after: We all knew what Ben was. But what could we say to you? You'd made up your mind.)

M____ was very sympathetic: Let me buy you a drink.

And then I remembered the pets, our animals: the two dogs, Milo & Xena, and a cat of whom I was very, very fond—only I couldn't remember the cat's name or even what the cat looked like—

I've got to go back for them, I told M____. Someone's got to walk those dogs. I imagined the abandoned house filling slowly up with shit.

He didn't tell you? M____ asked. And then she described how Ben had poisoned the dogs. With a specially formulated dog food, evidently manufactured for the sole purpose of getting rid of no-longer-loved pets.

I believed her, but still I wanted to get back to the house—my cat would still be there. So, I started wandering through the streets of a city. (I think I've dreamed about this city before, though of course, dream cities always come packaged with extra echoes & deja vu.) The streets were wide and unfamiliar. I thought I saw the building—very grand, made of limestone with imposing pillars—and then I thought, No, that's where Rik lives—

###

Was that a nightmare? I wondered when I awoke. It lacked the grand guignol imagery, the horror movie ambiance.

But it had certainly been disturbing enough so that I never fell totally back to sleep. Instead, I grazed on sleep, a little casual brain nourishment, so my Fitbit would register eight hours this morning.

###

And musing about the dream now, I'm thinking that of all the awful things Ben did—their names are legion, though to counterbalance that, he was the world's best banterer, & I love banter above all things—the absolute worst was reneging upon his offer to take Milo when I left Ithaca.

I absolutely knew the moment I left Ithaca, I would be perfectly fine.

But I also knew there was no way I was going to find a place to live closer to New York City with two cats (Rutger & the Meezer) and a dog.

So I begged Ben: Please, please, please take Milo.

And at first, Ben said he would.

But then he wouldn't.

And I didn't know what to do.

Except then I had to take Milo for a vet visit, & the vet told me, He has a very virulent form of cancer.

And I had to have Milo put to sleep shortly thereafter.

I knew Milo died to let me live.

###

I have a history of pets dying at critical turns in my life.

Like in 1993, a week before I left for Clarion, Dennis Hopper and Hedda Hopper—my two angora rabbits, whom I used to let run around all day long in my wild tangle of backyard—leapt so high, they broke their spines.

Me being me, of course, I entertained a fantasy: I would cancel Clarion! I would find a carpenter who would construct the bunnies little platforms on wheels that they could propel around on; I would pilfer tiny catheters from the NICU and once a day drain their urine. I would live out the rest of my life as the caretaker of my paraplegic rabbits!

Before the rabbits jumped and broke their spines, I had been agonizing: Who will take care of my bunnies while I'm gone???

And then I realized: The rabbits had broken their spines, so that I could get away.

###

Morbid morning thoughts!

Anyway.

Yesterday's Adrienne meet-and-greet was great fun, chiefly because it was held in a historic house built in 1750 by one of the minor Dutch patroons in these parts who threw in his lot with the rebel army.





The house is owned by a billion-year-old psychoanalyst who led multiple tours through its sumptuously appointed interior, regularly stopping at the little nook where he used to see patients & waving airily at the reclining couch: "If you squint hard enough, you can still see all their dark thoughts swirling towards the ceiling!"

All those rewatches of The West Wing have not been in vain! Pretending to be a staffer, I was a fuckin' rockstar!

Even the decidedly ungracious Adrienne texted afterwards, You were a gracious host and an awesome presence as so many people remarked!

Well. Not so many people, I'm thinking. The turnout was small. But the longest journey begins with but a single step, the winning campaign starts with but two people in a room, blah, blah, blah.

Here I am in my newly purchased, high-waisted, floral Pride & Prejudice garb looking suitably triumphant:

They’re dropping like flies, that cohort of mine and those figureheads that defined our moment.

Yesterday, I found out that Cliff F______ had died—someone I hardly knew at all personally, but someone who loomed large in the WELL creation myth. The WELL certainly played a significant role in my own creation myth.

And Ken Starr, the Clinton impeachment counsel, died.

When RTT was the tiniest of tiny boys, I used to make up stories about a trio of naughty creatures called Grumble Trumble, Wicky-Woo, and Ken Starr who were always doing the wickedest things—like trying to stick their fingers in electrical sockets, ripping pages out of books, and attempting to ride on the back of poor, beleaguered Sandinista the dog.

RTT actually shocked me a few months back when Ken Starr momentarily bobbed up in the news: “Wait! Didn’t you used to tell me stories about Ken Starr? You mean he was real?”

###

I think about death a lot these days.

I suppose I am trying to get comfortable with the subject.

Mostly, I wonder how much it will hurt. Like how could it hurt worse than childbirth, which is the most excruciating pain I have ever felt? I don’t actually mind the prospect of extinction of this self; what I mind is that it’s gonna hurt unless I can arrange to die in my sleep or be completely zoned out on morphine.

Sometimes I wonder who’s gonna come out to greet me when I finally make it to the other side. Normal people are greeted by their families: Dad! My God! You’ve lost so much weight! And Mom! Your hair looks great!

But nobody in my family ever liked me very much. I doubt that any of them could be roused from their nectar quaffing or harp lessons to trot on over to that great shimmering, disturbingly womb-like tunnel of light and watch me emerge.

I’m kinda thinking after this most recent incarnation, I’m finally quits with the entity that coalesced as Ben this time round. He was an asshole; I was noble. If ever there was a debt, it’s settled. I never have to see him again. He won’t be there (praise Gawd.)

So, who will?

Maybe Mark?

Maybe my grandfather? (He was the only family member who liked me a little bit.)

Maybe Rik?

Maybe Tom?

Certainly, my companion animals—Sandinista, Fritz, Milo, the Meezer, Rutger.

They will be happy to see me.

And for the first time, we will be meeting as equals.

###

Jean-Luc Godard, as it turns out, died by assisted suicide.

I guess he was in a hurry.

The dude was like 91 years old. It’s not like he was gonna last very much longer, right?

I’m ambivalent about assisted suicide.

I mean, I totally think people have the right to kill themselves. Not even the option to kill themselves. The right.

I don’t get why suicide prevention is such a big institutional push in this culture.

It’s not like there’s any analogous institutional push to help people get more out of their lives.

But you’re just gonna have to repeat the lifetime if you kill yourself.

The metaphor I use for reincarnation is school—like each lifetime is a class where you’re supposed to learn something, and if you kill yourself, you’re gonna have to take the class over, and who wants to do that?

Suffering is hard karma. But it’s part of the lesson plan, no?

###

Plus on the strictly legal end of things, assisted suicide is the first step down a slippery slope. It sets a precedent for taking a life when the right types of red tape are applied. Once that precedent has been set, red tape can be applied in any number of interesting ways. (Yes, I have seen Soylent Green! Why do you ask?)

###

What else?

I came within 3,000 words of finishing the Remunerative Project yesterday, and then my mind went Pftzzz, and little sparks started coming out of my mouth.

I should finish it this morning.

It is presently 27,000 words long. Sixty-two pages!

When I wake up these days, I never quite know where I am. There's always a few seconds of disorientation, and then I think, Right. A house on Long Island. It's a very weird sensation with a distinct overlay of being some place else – where else, I don't know, but I ought to try and find out because whatever that place is, it's home.

Although I suspect it's less a place than a person. Like after four years, it still feels weird not to wake up next to Ben. I've made my peace with it on the waking, conscious level. We're buddies in the day-by-day, but the vines don't wrap around the same tree. There are a thousand things I want to say to him in the course of the average day, and there's no one else to say them to. But I suppose that's just the way it plays out sometimes.

Plus there isn't any guarantee that I'd even be able to say them to him. I mean obviously the cosmic playmate in my mind is not really him.

This is the one year anniversary of the hepatic encephalopathy that put Ben in Cayuga Medical Center ICU for a week.

I honestly thought he was going to die. I'm glad he didn't.

And we are also coming up on another anniversary that will be very sad for me – when I had to put Milo to sleep.

Milo was the best dog ever.

When I win Lotto, I'm buying you your own herd of cattle! I'd tell him.

And he'd hear the merriment in my voice, wag his tail, give that one abbreviated bark that was like the canine equivalent of, "Word!"

Increasingly I gave this sense that everything I've done, I've done before. Dunno whether it's residue from past lives, fallout from all those acid trips I took in my adolescence and early twenties, or some minor depressive psychosis. But it just all feels so eerily familiar, like soon I'll come to and the characters will start taking off their masks in the greenroom backstage in Bardo – Oh! You played Max in this lifetime! Cool! Although I think Iiked you better when you were George Mallory and I was Sandy Irvine on Everest –

I dunno. It's just an odd sensation. Extremely bittersweet.

In other news, I am just working my little tushie off generating revenue.

So. Milo.

I took him for a long walk. He sniffed a lot, but he didn’t run or prance.

Then I brought him back to the vet and they gave him the medication. I held him and petted him, and told him I loved him, and talked to him about Doggy Heaven, which looks an awful lot like Del Monte Beach in Monterey, a place where he can prance, and chase an endless supply of green balls, and there are always other dogs to wrastle. I stayed with him until the end. It was very peaceful.

I didn’t feel as sad as I expected to. I had the sense while we were walking together that he was in some pain, and that that pain would have escalated very quickly.

He was a really good boy. The best boy ever.
I will love him always, and I will miss him.

After all that, I wrote like an angel. Sat down to tweak some minor text around 6pm. A second later it was midnight. First time I was in the Zone for months. Felt good. And the prose was… beautiful.

And B says he’ll take Milo when I leave. Apparently he’s going to move again. He’ll look for an animal-friendly landlord. So Milo will have a home. He’ll be confused. He’ll miss me. But he’ll have a home.

So Irene didn’t do the Katrina number on New York City that we all – well, those of us who live outside Manhattan – secretly hoped it would. Did a pretty good number on the Mohawk Valley though – just for all you Richard Russo fans. The historic hamlet of Prattsville in the Catskills, where long ago, when it was still called Schoharie Kill and a stronghold of Tory sentiment during the American Revolution, Rip Van Winkle’s silent tormenters played nine-pins, was completely wiped out. Thousands of people in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont left homeless.

Closer to home, many of the roads along the Southern Tier, through broken down towns on creeks that empty into the Susquehanna River, are impassable under two feet of water.

I’d say as disasters go, Irene was a success!

And you really can’t blame it on people too stupid to live above sea water like you could with Katrina. These people lived way above sea level. On creeks or rivers, true, but if you don’t live on creeks and rivers in this part of the world, you’re in a homeless shelter: I doubt that you can go two miles in any direction without running into some tiny tributary prone to flooding.

###

Milo found this huge downed tree limb on our walk today and insisted on dragging it home: I added it to his trophy pile. But it gave me a terrific idea for the ultimate heartwarming Disney movie: Beaver and Retriever!!! Loveable if rapidly aging black dog befriends beaver in upstate New York and helps him build a dam that relieves pressure on floodprone town of Blah Blah Blah thus saving town from Category 5 hurricane ravage!!!

###

RTT left for Vienna day before last. Night before he left, I’d had planned to enforce packing, blog set-up – school assignment since he will be missing the first 10 days of Senior Year so this is his homework – communal movie-watching, early bedtime.

But he showed up with his friend Arun – a character in Skins who most improbably materialized in Tompkins County, a Brit with a platinum helmet of coiffed curls who just finished a gap year, will be going to Swansea University to study psychology in the fall. Robin loves older men! And he pointed out that if he stayed up most of the night, he’d be more likely to sleep on the plane.

Some logic to that.

So Robin had a big party all night in the RV. Something like 10 kids at the height of the festivities according to the candid FB pix. Around 5 in the morning, I staggered out to the RV to find 24 empty beer cans, an empty gallon of raspberry vodka, an empty gallon of pear vodka and two humans, one of them clearly Arun, crashed out in the RV. Around 8 in the morning, my neighbor came over to complain: Red car parked in his driveway and drunken teenagers hammering on his door at 3 in the morning. They also blew out my extremely-cheap-but-hey-they-were-functional speakers so now I have to listen to my Brucht Scottish Fantasy without amplification.

His father came over. I packed him, B drove him to town for socks and $$$.

We had a big blowout on the way to the airport when I discovered his expensive Timberline boots had been stolen from camp. “You’ve got to take better care of your stuff!” I ranted. “Funds are limited! Very limited. Don’t you get that?”

“I told you they were stolen. Stolen! I had no control over it!”

“Stolen the last week. But you were there 6 weeks, and you didn’t even wear them once. Why didn’t you just bring them home?”

“Fuck off!” he said. “Fucking get out of here!”

“With pleasure,” I said and told B, “Text me when you’re ready for the pick up.”

Hopped in the Veedub, drove off to the local Tops, bought cat food, read sleazy tabloids. Who are these fucking people? Sleazy tabloids don’t hold the pleasure for me they once did now that they’re filled with names I mostly don’t recognize and couldn’t care less about. Kardashians! They’re the spawn of OJ’s lawyer-cum-best-friend, right? Do they visit OJ in prison? Does anyone actually watch E! Television? Their stepfather is Bruce Jenner – him I recognize from the 1976 Olympics – but these days Bruce Jenner looks like a court eunuch with balls roughly the size of marbles, all those years of steroid abuse catching up with him, I suppose. I’m old, old, old, so old, that I don’t recognize the world anymore…

RTT texted me an apology. We bickered by text for a while longer but ended back on amiable terms.

I am counting on this European trip to be a real eye opener for him. I’m hoping he’ll realize: The world is large… We'll see...

I’m reading a ghost story called The Little Stranger, a gothic horror novel that’s so well written that it’s actually scaring me – the way that famous Victorian short story about the yellow wallpaper scared me. Also a biography of Countess Tolstoy, Mrs. War and Peace, certainly one of the most put-upon ladies in all of literary history. Also some Sandman comic books.

###

I feel like I’m living in an animal hospital. About six weeks ago Milo had a flare-up of his old malady, demodectic mange. He had it as a puppy in the days when I could afford to take sick animals to veterinarians; kindly Dr. Koch informed me its presence indicated a weak immune system. Milo lost 15 pounds and almost all the hair on his hindquarters; developed a scaly skin condition, a staph infection in his eyes – and then all of a sudden he stopped wanting to move. I figured it was his old injury – kindly Dr. Koch had also told me it was only a matter of time before he developed arthritis in that left hip. But it happened so abruptly! One day he was prancing on the green thoroughfare where we saw the snapping turtle, my favorite walk; the next he could barely drag himself from room to room.

Then Meezer got attacked by something – raccoon? other cat? She’s got a dime-sized, bleeding wound over her left eye and her personality has changed – she’s stopped killing moles, she’s become affectionate.

Mizz Z a/k/a Xena the Wonder Russell’s only real malady is that she’s very old – fifteen – and the Master she pledged her doggie heart to doesn’t love her anymore, making her life a kind of passion play of The Velveteen Rabbit.

Nimoy, thank Gawd, is fine. I couldn’t find live crickets anywhere in Ithaca – for sale I mean – so I broke down and bought him pellets at PetsMart to supplement his apple slices and spinach. I take him outside, let him crawl around for half an hour every day or so. Hydrate him weekly in the kitchen sink. He’s quite sassy.

Been bathing Milo every other day, giving him aspirin in the morning, rubbing hydrocortisone cream into his flakey skin, putting triple antibiotic gunk in his eyes. Wormed him using this foul-tasting stuff prescribed for horses, calibrating the dose for his weight. Quite a challenge getting him to swallow the stuff, I practically have to burk him.

He seems to be improving slowly, slowly. Don’t know whether he’ll ever be my prancing beach buddy again though.

Meezer licks off the antibiotic cream and hisses when I try to bandage it. I tried keeping her indoors for a couple of days but that didn’t work.

I try to give the Dowager a little extra attention whenever I remember. In her youth, when she was the Cindy Crawford of the canine world, shallow, a doggie attention ‘ho. I didn’t like her that much. Truth be told I don't like her that much now. I do feel sorry for her – she was Max’s responsibility and he threw her off completely. And she didn't do anything! She just... got old...

When this lot dies, I don’t think I’ll have a dog again. That accelerated lifespan is just too much for me, it’s like being the Highlander or something. I don’t want to see them get old, I don’t want to see them die. I want them to stay young, I want me to stay young.

Cats are another matter altogether. Cats don’t really have personalities, you see. Predispositions, sure. Behavioral patterns. But they’re not organized in the social way the way that dogs’ are. You can project whatever you want on to a cat or you can ignore it completely. Useful properties in a love object.

###

The Milo regimen was Ben’s invention. One of the things I’ve always liked about Ben is that he’s very, very good with animals. When he came over Sunday – Father’s Day – to hang with RTT, he brought along a water turtle he’d found trying to cross Highway 366.

“So like whenever you drive anywhere, you always have an eye out on the side of the road for animals?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” he said. “For snakes and reptiles, anyway. Figure the mammals can take care of themselves.”

The three of us walked up the road together to let the turtle loose in Fall Creek. I tried to fantasize that it was a pleasant little family stroll but really it wasn’t – Robin had had to be bullied to make him leave the house and of course, Ben and I aren’t a couple anymore.

Ben looked good. There’s a kind of elfin quality he has when things are going well. I’d forgotten about that, it was… attractive. That morning he’d driven up to Trumansburg to attend a meeting hosted by some venerable, historic spiritualism society. The chairman of the society is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell, well respected by his colleagues. I was intrigued by the cognitive dissonance.

Robin lagged behind, scowling, texting on his cell. Ignoring the countryside.

“Well, that’s how you get to have invigorating intellectual discussions with strangers,” Ben said. “You see something in the newspaper and you think, ‘That looks interesting.’ And then you show up.”

“I admire that in you,” I said. “I’m so lonely right now I wonder about my sanity. But of course you grew up here. That gives you an automatic social circle.”

“True,” said Ben. “I know practically everyone in town. But it’s not like I don’t know how you feel. I felt that way for fourteen years in Monterey. And I’m not oblivious to the… let us call it irony.”

“Irony,” I said. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

“Oh, I like you fine.”

“But you’re happier not living with me.”

“It’s a great feeling,” he said. “Not being responsible for anybody’s emotional wellbeing but my own.”

“Have you got a girlfriend?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Not yet.”

“So you’ve been out on dates?”

“A few.”

So fucking unfair, I thought. He was the fuck-up. But now he’s happy and I’m not. As if the old mental telepathy still existed, he said, “I’m sorry you’re not happy here.”

“It’s not the place,” I said. “I like it here. I like it a lot actually. It has gravitas, it’s a real place. California seems insubstantial in comparison. It even smells green here. I just don’t know anyone.”

“You have to join groups,” he said.

“I feel too repulsive to join groups,” I said. “Why would anyone who’s not repulsive want to talk to me?”

“Repulsive people weigh three hundred pounds and use those wheelchair things they refuse to call wheelchairs,” he said. “Therefore by definition you are not repulsive. And of course you could join the synagogue. They have to be friendly to you there, right? Otherwise God will smite them. You used to talk about joining the synagogue.”

“Yes, yes, Judaism! The great lingua franca of sarcasm,” I said. “I don’t know though. That Reform congregation looked pretty dippy when they were riding in the Ithaca Day parade, and of course, the Conservative congregation would drum me straight out the door.”

“Why?”

“I can’t keep a Jewish home,” I said.

As if to prove the point, I cooked pork for dinner. Very bland, tasteless, uninspiring pork. Pork is one of those things I never quite know what to do with.

Three of us sat down to eat. Then Ben thanked me elaborately for the meal and left for work. Sent me an email the very next morning thanking me again.

If he only he had gotten a job last winter, we’d still be together I suppose – even with all the bad, bad stuff that’s happened. No, I don’t want him back. But I enjoyed seeing him.

So the Cannery Row street fair was a bust. We made money, some money – maybe marginally more than a regular, no frills Sunday – but was it worth it? All that planning, all that hauling, all that wear and tear on my nerves. For days beforehand, I was La Bitch On Wheels.

True, Milo the dog – frustrated because his post-operative spay instructions include the provisio no off-leash exercise for two weeks – went on a rampage, tore the stuffing out of each and every sofa cushion. Then he started on the throw pillows.

True, Max screwed up his SAT II and Physics subject. He couldn’t be bothered to prepare for them, you see. The girlfriend was over the night before, they holed up in the Max-o-torium behind closed doors with the lights off. At nine o’clock I made Ben knock on the door, tell Max it was time to take Maya home.

The next morning I said to Max, "I have to talk to you about something that’s potentially embarrassing for both of us."

"Go for it," said Max.

"It’s none of my business whether you and Maya have a sexual relationship. And I’m not going to ask. However, if you are having a sexual relationship, I need to emphasize the importance of using protection."

"I’ve got it covered, Mom," said Max.

No pun intended, I’m sure.

Well, of course, they have a sexual relationship. Why wouldn’t they? She’s gorgeous, he’s gorgeous, they’re pumping out hormones faster than the entire research and development department of Levitra Incorporated. And I’m not going to be a hypocrite about it.

However when Max called me at the store a couple of hours later to tell me (A) he was sure he’d fucked up the Physics and (B) that I had forgotten to sign him up for the math, I completely lost it. "You never told me to sign you up for math," I screamed. "What am I – a mind reader? I signed you up for what you told me to sign you up for –"

"Well, you’re supposed to know – "

Bam! I hung up on him.

You cannot have it both ways, I fumed at the dial tone. Either you’re an adult capable of assuming adult responsibilities and that means imparting essential information along the necessary channels or you’re a kid who shouldn’t be boinking his girlfriend in my house without giving me the option of selling the video to Pay-Per-View.

I didn’t talk to him for two days. During this time I talked plenty to Ben about jocks and how much I hated them, arrogant fucking monsters, and wasn’t it ironic that I had given birth to one –

"That’s sad," said Ben, "and I feel for you, I really do, but right now we need to figure out how we’re going to track the sales we make from the street fair booth –"

We made up at the street fair. Max manned the store, Ben and I alternated gopher duties with delivering the hot sauce rap to streetside strangers. I felt like one of those Amsterdam hookers in their glass booths – say Sailor, can I interest you in The Ring of Fire? My jaw muscles ached at the end of the day from smiling so hard.

Max won Ghiradelli’s ice cream eating contest. The prize? A ten pound piece of chocolate. "So, Mom, bet you’re not so mad at me now, now that I’ve won this," he grinned.

"I’m prouder of you over this accomplishment than I am over anything else in your life," I said. "And that includes maintaining a 4.1 grade point average and learning to pee standing up. I think we can both agree that I’ve acted as your agent here and so 15% of that belongs to me –"

"You know what’s weird? This thing is 12.5% of Maya’s entire weight –"

"So, Max, does a life in retail appeal to you? You know son, some day all this will be yours –"

"Mom, it sucks. I’m gonna go to law school."

"That’s my boy," I said. "We better sign you up to take that test over again. And this time you damn well better prepare for it."

Milo the puppy got into my bedroom while I wasn’t looking. Headed straight for the laundry basket. A few minutes later as I was hunched over my accounting ledger, I heard an agonized screech.

Robin.

“Mommy, Mommy – Milo’s got your brazilla.”

“Brazilla?” I said.

I got up and walked over. Milo wagged his tail when he saw me. In his mouth was one of my expensive black lace Italian brassieres. Madam, can I interest you in a game of tug-of-war? his eyes asked.

Now “zilla” has become the suffix du jour around Casa Chaos. The pets are dogzillas. The President is Bushzilla. The store is Slow Zilla.

I knocked off shop-tending early yesterday to go to an ISM auction meeting. ISM, a charter school, spends approximately $1800 per pupil more than what the state of California allots towards education and the deficit has to be made up somehow. I am donating a couple of gift baskets, street value around $600 but really I only spent half that to acquire the goods and they’re all things that moved very, very s-l-o-w-l-y off the shelves. But that’s just a dropzilla in the bucket. Somehow I was volunteered to go hat in hand, door to door, through Cannery Row, soliciting donations.

“What’s the pitch?” I asked.

The organization lady stared at me blankly.

“Well, I mean, there has to be a pay-off for them, doesn’t there? They have to get something out of it.”

“They’re helping our school,” she said. “And they get a tax write-off.”

Lady, get a cluezilla, I thought.

Went home to find Robin involved in an intense phone conversation. Who’s that? I mouthed silently.

“It’s Uncle Jon,” he said.

Right. My brother-in-law came back to the States last week to meet with Colin Powell. Today he’s flying back to the Republic of Georgia. We don’t know exactly what it is he does there. At first, it had something to do with organizing their Coast Guard. Then it escalated into planning their presidential election. We think it’s all very John LeCarre. The Spyzilla Who Came In From the Cold.

“And how many ships do they have?” asked Robin. “Can’t you just take them away from the guys who don’t use them?”

When the phone was finally handed over to me, I said, “So, Jon – I keep having all these Lawrence of Arabia fantasies about you. Like one of these days you’re going to don the native headdress and start storming Aqaba.”

He laughed. “Not very likely,” he said. But I wasn’t convinced.

“What feels like home to you these days?”

“Oh, the States, the States. But it is a little bit odd to come back and see all the stuff people have here. And how wasteful they are.”

We chattered a while longer. The unique properties of the Georgian alphabet and the Georgian language, the weirdness of attempting to bring order to what is ultimately an oversized border town, a transit nation, a place that things must go through in order to end up some place else.

“Listen, I’m always looking for hot sauce for you.”

“I appreciate that, Jon. And I’ll let you go now.”

I felt weird when I hung up the phone. Other people are doing important stuff – covertly running nations, writing bestselling novels. And I’m raising children and selling hot sauce.

I wandered into Robin’s room. He was bent over his computer, deep in the throes of some analog reality game. The television was blaring – Robin’s partial to eighties sit coms, Happy Days, that other weird one that starred the Olsen twins. I seem to recall that Max too had an unwholesome fixation on the infantile Olsen twins when he was Robin’s age. It upsets me that I can’t remember more about Max when he was Robin’s age. Milo was sprawled on the bed, chewing happily on a pair of stained underpants.

I reached over and shut the computer off.

“Mom! What are you doing?”

“Put your shoes on,” I said. “Turn the goddam television off. Round up the dogzillas. We’re going to the beach.”

Carmel Beach at low tide. The sea had receded almost a quarter of a mile, ancient, potholed rocks revealed, pounding waves in the far, far distance. The sun was setting. Wholesome ions floated everywhere. We were members in good standing of the dog-walking tribe and as such, were the beach’s chosen. The dogs raced and played with other dogs. Robin scouted for things to climb. “We should do this every day!” he told me.

“We should,” I said. “Watch the sun. At the exact moment that it sets you’re supposed to see a green flash.”

“Have you ever seen it?” he asked.

“Well, no, I never have. But you’re supposed to. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough.”

We counted down. Ten, nine, eight…

A particle of light shimmered on the far horizon while I held my breath. Then poof! Gone.

“Did you see it, Mommy? Did you see it?” asked Robin.

I shook my head. “Nope. I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough this time either.”

“The trick isn’t to look hard,” said Robin. “The trick is to not know you’re looking. I saw it.” He laughed. “Flashzilla!”

Week has passed in a blur of crashing computers and incontinent pets. It’s kind of like a real-life version of Find Waldo: what animal has deposited which turds where? Milo, the puppy, favors the Purloined Letter approach, depositing his droppings in plain view – under the kitchen table, for instance, where nobody would think to look until we’re all gathered round for the evening meal.

"What’s that smell?" says Robin, wrinkling his nose.

He holds the title as the family’s most finicky eater so I scream at him. "It’s perfectly good chicken! Eat it or I’m going to take that goddam Playstation to a homeless shelter and donate it to some deserving child!"

"Homeless children don’t have electricity," Max points out.

"It smells like poop," says Robin.

Dem’s fighting words. Like many middling chefs, I pride myself on my cooking. Plus I have just spent fourteen hours doing the books, mailing Internet orders and sitting behind the counter of my struggling store, and yet – because I am a responsible parent and would rather die than feed my children frozen food! (however much they would prefer it) – I have cooked this three course meal! Roasted chicken á l’orange! (You stick a tangerine up its whazoo.) Caesar salad! (Okay, it comes in a bag.) Broccoli with Hollandaise sauce. (Hollandaise sauce is easy in a blender.)

I am fixing Robin with my blackest look when Ben says in a strangled voice, "There is something on my shoe."

We draw the curtain over the remainder of this family repast.

Of course I blame myself for the pets’ dysfunctional behavior. I haven’t really been available to them what with all the demands on my time. I resolve to get up at 4 AM instead of 5 AM so I can take the dogs running on the beach before I go in to the store. I don’t know what I’m gonna do about the cat. She doesn’t really like sand.

And I don’t know what I’m gonna do about the children either.

Ben reports a really disturbing conversation with Max in the car on the way home from school.

"I’ve heard Jewish people have a certain look," Max began.

"That’s not true," said Ben calmly. And went on to explain that originally Jews were one of many Semitic peoples living in a particular part of the world, a homogenous population as most were back then save for the occasional rape by marauding Mongols. After two thousand years of exile from Israel, however, through intermarriage and the cuckoo’s nest, there wasn’t any defining look.

"What about Anne Frank?" Max demanded. "She looked Jewish."

Ben went on to talk about Sephardic Jews, Ladino, and how when the Sephardic populations of Spain and Portugal were driven out, many of them sought refuge in the Netherlands. "Hence the Jewish population of Holland tended to have a more conventionally Semitic look," said Ben. "Dark skin, dark hair. Distinctive noses."

Max was silent.

"Look at your great aunt Annie," said Ben. "Remember your grandmother. Think about your dentist. Do they look alike?"

"They came from Russia," said Max.

My son, the neo-Nazi.

I’m beside myself with rage when Ben reports back on this conversation. "You should have asked, ‘Who told you that?’"

"Well, no. The proper means of combating ignorance is with information. And by the end of the discussion, Max agreed with me – there is no Jewish look. And he’ll argue the point with whomever it was that brought it up. Education up the line."

"Whoever brought it up will just respond that it’s a clinical fact that the appendix, while a vestigial organ in most humans, has evolved in Jews as a second stomach, physiologically designed for digesting Christian babies."

"I never heard that one before," said Ben.

"Of course, not," I told him. "I just made it up."

Happy Hanukuh.