War in a Beautiful Country

  Fortunately, in these talks with herself, Regina would always come around again to believe that the real immortality was Art. That even if no one in the future ever heard of you, they could share with you how you saw the world, how your own life felt to you.

  As yet unborn people would be able to see the inner and outer world you saw. They would be able to see it through your same eyes, even when you no longer existed. In a sense, through them, you would go on seeing forever. With Art, the future could see you, or hear you, or feel your heart, understand your mind.

  Her work, not children, would have to do this for her.

  But it never would.

  History was against her. This strange time in which she was born, this period crossing the

  Millenniums--- when even old words she knew…such as menu and concert…could confuse her with additional meanings, and new words threw up a shifting verbal border between then and now as surely as stepping from land to water.

  “I came too late at the end of everything and too early for the beginning of something else,” she told Marius.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Bomb Guy sat down next to her. He looked like a math professor.

  Regina felt foolish that she had half expected him to be wearing a flak jacket.

  “No, I’m not the one who takes the bombs out to the field and blows them up,” he said softly. “My job is to evaluate each incident where there is no immediate danger. If we felt there were real danger involved here, we’d already be working with the postal police.”

  “The post office has police……?”

  “Of course. In addition to tracking down scams, pornography, drugs, hazardous materials, and people who steal checks from mailboxes, they’ve got a lot of experience with this kind of thing…..but, no, we’ll just keep an eye on it for now to see if it escalates….”

  “Escalates…oh, it could escalate….?”

  “Not necessarily…however…..”

  He paused and went on. “I’m sorry that Det. Walker is giving you the impression we are not taking this seriously. The detective uses a practical approach, but we, well, we’re more philosophical. My feeling is that if we are right, we are right, but if we are wrong someone is dead.”

  “Oh....!”

  The Bomb Guy made a calming gesture with his hand, like a conductor taking an orchestra to a pianissimo. “Let me tell you straight off that bomb threats are a dime a dozen, so to speak....there are so many, that they become just background noise……”

  Regina pretended to nod hopefully, ignoring the metaphor he obviously did not intend to make.

  “If you knew about real bombers, you would know that you are not dealing with one.”

  Regina thought it was impossible to be so certain, but she would try to take any comfort she could get from anyone she could.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked quietly.

  She was grateful for a break to breathe.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  With impressive dexterity, he made two cups from the surprisingly neat and well stocked coffee area at the end of the room, and since there was no desk where they were sitting, pulled over another chair to use as a coffee table, although both cups wobbled on it.

  The Bomb Guy took a sip, then studied Regina’s anxious face.

  “Actually, we are a great nation for bomb threats. As well as for just scares and hoaxes. It’s a very American thing to do.”

  “This is supposed to make me feel better?” Regina asked.

  “While it’s true that we have found bombs near Disneyworld, most bombs go off in Internal Revenue Service buildings. People don’t `seem to realize it, but as many people die by trying to mail a bomb as do by receiving one…a would-be-bomber can inadvertently set one off with the static electricity generated from walking across a carpet on his way out the door to the post office, or by the warmth from the palm of his hand before he even reaches the mailbox. Not only that, but you have to be very organized to be a successful bomber. There are many steps involved: selection of a target, surveillance of a target, rehearsal and dry run, construction of device, planting of device, detonation of device, and exploitation of the act, meaning: what does he get out of it?”

  He looked at her. Did he want her to answer? How would she know?

  Regina could not touch her coffee.

  “But don’t you worry. We examined your package. It was empty and we are convinced nothing will happen to you. Who’s doing it and why? Who knows?” he shrugged. “But it may not matter. The good news for you is that most serious bombers don’t usually send a warning in advance.”

  She had heard all this before. Was this the party line? If enough people said it, could it be true? Did she believe him?

  She really wanted to.

  iii.

  Sometimes Regina didn’t mind being stuck in traffic. It gave her a chance to look around. Streets had meaning.

  Tourists could pop out of the subway onto any street and think it unremarkable. They wouldn’t realize what role this street played in the general scheme of things.

  A New Yorker would immediately know the spirit of every street. Know not just its physical location, but its relevance to the rest of the city, and what kind of life it had on its own.

  On the street, New Yorkers were always in the middle of context.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In his little corner of the world, life was careless.

  Inmates being released were searched in a very “relaxed” manner and could generally smuggle stuff out.

  Including threatening letters without any disclaimer.

  He usually pressured one of his out-going buddies to mail his letters for him. He never wanted the threats to come from the same place. Never mind from this place.

  Some inmates refused: “Are you crazy! No way, man. They catch me, they put me right back in. I’m not taking chances for you!”

  But most thought it was a last act of disrespect and revenge to fool the system that had taken away their freedom, and so took the letters and mailed them from their many different home towns, or where ever they wound up.

  Others took them out simply because they were dim-witted.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  i.

  Now, on her way to meet her sister, Regina tried to escape the growing tightness that had begun to pinch her shoulders. It seemed important that she resist it, so she folded it into all the other moribund heaviness with which she beleaguered herself.

  “Why did you wait so long to tell me!?” Nina asked. “I’m your sister. Why did I have to hear it from that what’s–his-name detective guy.”

  “I know. I know.” Regina said as she walked along New York’s fabulous waterfront beside Nina’s wheelchair.

  New Yorkers can spit and hit water. Yet they usually don’t have a clue. Don’t realize they are island people; not just one island, but islands within islands, surrounded by islands. An archipelago. Most are not even aware that if you live in Manhattan you can watch the sun come up on one river and set on another.

  “The police don’t seem to be taking it seriously,” Regina explained to her sister, “so I ‘m trying not to either. I don’t want to.”

  “Maybe they are taking it seriously now. That detective is coming to see me tomorrow.”

  “Actually I’m surprised he called. But he did ask for a list of all the people in my life--actually the closest people. Can you imagine! I told him they couldn’t possibly be suspects. Couldn’t possibly be!”

  “He didn’t say I was a suspect,” Nina told her, “He just said he was trying to paint a ‘rounded’ picture of your life.” Nina paused. Then added wryly, “That ought to be fun for him.”

  Actually, Nina was aware that no one thought Regina was fun these days.

  And no wonder: there was her “art” that no one could figure out; the ex- husband who kept the world spinning but not with her; the too- young man who could not measure up to fill the void; and her tendency to
get lost in the cosmic questions that only disoriented her.

  And possibly getting blown up with no one to believe her.

  “I can’t imagine” Regina said . “Walker is usually so un-engaged by my death, I don’t think my life will be able to hold his attention either.

  You know, it’s kind of funny,” Regina added, “how I thought the package looked so ordinary...it could have been my checkbooks, or make-up from Bloomingdale’s, even prescription refills. Without the previous notes, I never would have given that package a second thought.”

  Regina’s voice betrayed she was more shaken than she seemed.

  “Of course not,” Nina said. “Even so, you would think that after 9/11 they would be on your case 24/7.”

  “Well, maybe that is why they are not. There is a lot going on. And the notes do seem like a game. So far they have come from Texas, Vermont, and Idaho. I guess they need something more specific. And local.”

  They wandered out of the small garden area that looked over the river onto the sunny, open walkway where the path gave way to a long shoreside promenade of trees, benches, outdoor sculptures and built-in chess tables.

  Everywhere there were boats: sailboats, tug boats, barges, cruise ships, container ships, small oil tankers, yachts, sightseeing boats, kayaks, speed boats, Coast Guard cutters, and police boats.

  People on the boats always waved, and on land they always waved back. New Yorkers become better people in a well-kept park.

  And New Yorkers were always trying. How brave they were to plant their wistful groupings of pink and white impatiens around the trunks of puny trees on busy streets, their straggly vines in pots on fire escapes. Even the professionally planted tulips over the Park Avenue subway grates were impossible pioneers of spring, front soldiers in the hope for beauty, shot down by fumes and noise.

  As they reached a bench, Regina sat at the very end so she could be next to Nina, who slowed the wheelchair down, made a wide circle backwards to face the water, got the small front wheels caught on the uneven ground, did the circle again. Then put the left brake on, then the right with her tight hands that the padded gloves only helped a little, all so she wouldn’t roll on the slanting concrete. If she had to move, she would have to start the procedure over again.

  After Nina got settled, Regina said, “I think the scariest part so far was the sign I saw in the post office.”

  “What sign?”

  “Wait. Actually I copied it. It made me feel I wasn’t crazy.” Regina took out of her purse a small lined notepad, mostly used for grocery lists, on which she had hurriedly copied the sign before people waiting on the long post office line could get annoyed. “I hope I can read my own scribble,” she said.

  IMPORTANT CUSTOMER INFORMATION:

  Because of heightened security, the following types of mail may not be deposited here:

  -All stamped domestic mail weighing one pound or more.

  -All international mail and military APO/FPO mail weighing one pound or more.

  Please take this mail directly to a retail clerk at the counter. Thank you.’“

  “So,” Nina asked, “Post office procedure is to blow up the retail clerk? “

  ii.

  Regina sighed. She was ready to change the subject.

  “Look at this,” she said incredulously, waving to encompass all that was in front of them. They were facing the entire panorama of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, the very picture on a million postcards.

  “You can’t buy this,” Nina agreed.

  No, you can’t, Regina thought.

  Instead, she said to Nina, “What you see is not the whole picture.”

  Once she had been out in that river on a funny-looking vessel, something like a backwards garbage truck, called the SWEEPMASTER, the harbor’s version of a dustpan and broom. Its job was to clear the waters of floating debris, mostly to pulverize loose wood that had broken away from the piers and which could get caught up in the propellers of other ships.

  Her job as art director was to oversee a fashion photo shoot where elegant dresses contrasted with the industrial mechanisms of this chewing boat. The boat crew was very excited having all the beautiful women aboard, as well as with the necessary incongruity of photo flashes going off in broad daylight. They were eager to impress the models.

  “It’s not just wood that we pick up,” the Pilot explained, “We get anything near the top of the water that comes along. We get all kinds of things. You can’t believe what we get. General household garbage, of course. Plastic containers, hospital waste, dead fish. dead cats and dogs. Birds. They just get old or tired from migrating and fall out of the sky. Even snakes. Car parts. Bodies and body parts.”

  Just like that: bodies and body parts.

  And now Regina scanned this glorious, peaceful scene, her sister Nina also lost in thought beside her, and knew that the two rivers surrounding this island, that New Yorkers were just beginning to use to heal their frazzled spirits, were not kind. That their lovely melody had an ominous sonority in the lower register, and that right at this moment both she and Nina might be looking at water which held the cumulative bodies and body parts of the toddler thrown in by his own mother; the missing little girl from Chinatown floating under a pier; the body of a woman found under the Brooklyn Bridge by two joggers; the parents stuffed in a shopping bag by their teenage children and shoved into the deep tides; the crew member who slipped off a barge near the Statue of Liberty; the steel worker who fell from a bridge; the kid swimming off sharp rocks who never came up; the foolish man swept away after he dived in to retrieve the disposable camera he accidentally dropped in the water at the South Street Seaport pier; the drunken high school student on prom night who jumped off a sightseeing boat on a dare; the man drowned on New Year’s Eve; the suicides from ferries, piers, bridges; the severed foot found by a dockworker; the soaking suitcase with a dismembered woman, and the smiley faces left on the rocks where a serial killer dumped his victims into the river.

  Sometimes these bodies swirled around in the river near crowded recreation areas at lunchtime. Or showed up at the foot of Wall Street, with no apparent affect on the stock market.

  There were also the souls and bones of those drowned through the centuries, who by now would never recognize the city encircling their watery graves: Revolutionary War soldiers deliberately sunk on their prison ships by the winning British and whose remains bubbled up to the surface for decades following. They were joined, more than one hundred years later, by 900 happy picnickers, when their ferry, the General Slocum, sank between the two nearby shores of the narrow East River. They were all in there, in this splendid scene being enjoyed by Regina and her sister.

  “But it still could be just a prank,” Nina tried to reassure her,” after all the box was empty.”

  “Yes. The bomb guy I talked to said its being empty was very ‘existential.’”

  Then Regina laughed, “This bomber nobody knows seems to have a more interesting personality than I do. ‘Nuts, corny’ and ‘existential’..”

  Nina said, “That’s not so funny.”

  What was funny, as in incomprehensible, to Regina was how the beautiful and ugly, good and evil, happiness and tragedy, unbridled freedom and paralyzing aloneness could be served up so relentlessly by her city on the same plate.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Each time Nina came home and closed the front door behind her, she felt as if she had just outrun wolves.

  So difficult, dangerous, and at least psychologically life-threatening was the world the able-bodied had created for her to live in.

  Nina wondered if places outside New York City had fewer mobility surprises. Her sister Regina thought that New York’s surprises, with their constant physical chaos, were part of its charm, its own reward, its exotic excitement, like Cairo, or Rome, or all of India.

  But for Nina, if her physical world was not completely perfect in every detail, it was all wrong. There was no middle ground. No stunnin
g array of workable options.

  Everywhere there were stairs, revolving doors, too narrow aisles in restaurants and shops, bathrooms she couldn’t get into, or even get to. She was locked out of people’s unworkable homes and apartments. “Eighteen inches is all you need to get around things,” is the interior decorator’s unfortunate rule of thumb.

  As a result she was forced to roll through the world from obstacle to obstacle, like the ball in a pinball machine.

  So Nina loved getting home to the place set up specifically for her, like a dress made to order.

  But rarely was her world perfect, either outside or within, since perfection for Nina could actually be measured in inches. If something was an inch out of reach, or an inch too narrow, or too high or too low, or too far away in the kitchen, if something were moved even a bit, or was dropped, or put in the wrong place, or if she forgot to do it, or get it, while she was in a spot where she was able to, she was just out of luck. For her there were no simple misses; in her personal ecology system every mistaken inch was a mile.

  In an irony she could not find amusing, the less she could move, the more movements it took to do something. So, she used her energies only on things that were significant. She weighed and measured carefully who she saw, where she went. If she had to climb the wall of disability, what was on the other side had better be worth it.

  This shackling, this parsimony of options, was relatively new to Nina. Until recently, she had been up on her feet, walking through the world in her own peculiar way. Strong as an athlete and focused as a gymnast, she did what she wanted, went where she willed. But suddenly it all caught up with her; the old paralysis gained on her faster than she could outrun it. So here she was: instead of up on her feet, looking the world in its eye, she was now sitting in a chair looking at everyone’s behind.

  Still, she was aware that even now she did not have it so hard. She was glad she was not in some poor country where just simple living was impossible and disability was death or worse. Where she could have been crawling through a barnyard on her knees. Or never seeing anything else in all her life but the walls of some dark back room. Considering how good she had it, if she complained, even to herself, she would only see herself as some sort of disability brat.