February 27, 2004, 8:02 a.m.
Pizza: The Passion

The phone is ringing, a car alarm is shrieking outside, Molly's voice is calling plaintively down the stairs, Violet just dropped a glassful of water on the kitchen floor and a shoeless Phoebe is stamping in the spreading pool. Vesuvius is, in short, erupting, but the thing I am required to
focus on, right now, is a small Lego spaceship that Paris has spent the last hour inventing, every fascinating aspect of which he must now explain to me, loudly, with vigorous use of a pointing forefinger. I don't know why, but apparently it can't wait.

"And here," he continues, jabbing at an innocuous gray rectangle, here is where the sensor controller is, and it knows everything, and if there's a baddie? It knows it! And this," — he indicates a tiny red cylinder — "this is a kind of weapon that can travel in any direction, like the rays of the sun, and it goes out and — Pow! — and then it comes back, like a boomerang, and, Mummy? It has everlasting power — "

"Wow," I say, nodding respectfully, ignoring the phone, and keeping one eye on the flood in the kitchen. "Let me just — "

"Mummy, what's a car bomb?" Molly asks, appearing at my elbow with a sheaf of newspaper clippings. She's working on a school project about Istanbul which features a fez, a map of the Golden Horn, Turkish delight, and, alas, al Qaeda's recent depredations.

"It's a car packed with explosives."

"That's weird," Paris says. "In Tin-Tin, bombs are always big black balls, with a bit of string at the top, and a little flame — "

"It's because cars are inconspicuous, there are so many of them around that people don't notice. Baddies use them," I say, adding quickly, "But not here, not where we live."

"They better not."

"Mummy, the pizzas!" Molly suddenly remembers. As the eldest, she is the conscience of the household, a kind of living notepad for the rest of us. You can ask her at breakfast to remind you to call Mrs. Whatsit after school about a thingie and she will always remember. Her mind is not quite so steel-trappish about such banalities as putting her sneakers in her gym bag, but whose, at nine, ever is?

I glance at my watch: Delinquent again! Because my husband is working late, we're bringing dinner to his office. I'm sure it will help him finish sooner to have the five of us camped beside his desk, overturning slices of pizza on the carpet and drawing princesses on his paperwork. We do what we can. The big children jostle down the stairs and out the door.

Violet and Phoebe come stumping out of the kitchen, dripping and querulous.

"My socks are wet," Phoebe screeches.

"We've been swimming in the ocean!"

Phoebe turns to her, immediately concerned. "If a whale eats you, I will save you," she says earnestly, "I will say, "Don't you eat my sister, you whale!"

"I know, Phoebe," Violet says, gratified.

Five minutes later, freshly be-socked, everyone is strapped in the car. Off we go to the pizza joint, I load the pies in beside Paris in the jump seat, and we proceed downtown. The noise inside the car is stupendous. I imagine pedestrians wincing as we drive by, thumping and pulsing, the way people do when a car goes by blasting hip-hop.

"Please can you put on children's music, Mummy?"

"Raffi! Raffi! Raffi!

The smell of pepperoni spreads oilily through the car, as the air commences to vibrate with the sound of every toddler's favorite Canadian.

Boom-boom, ain't it great to be.. crazy? Boom-boom, ain't it great to be.. crazy?"

Violet joins in, "Giddy-up foolish all day long — "

"It's giddy and foolish," says Molly.

"Lead me not into temptation," Paris announces from the way-way back.

"What?"

"A horse and a flea and three blind mice. Sat on a curbstone shooting some dice — "

"The Devil is telling me to eat the pizzas, but I'm not going to work for the Devil."

"Good boy!"

"The horsie slipped and fell on the flea. Whoops, said the flea,
there's a horse on me! Boom-boom — "

There's the sound of a loud, rude raspberry.

"That's for the Devil."

We all laugh, Violet and Phoebe immediately begin blowing raspberries of their own.

"Mummy, when is someone going to rip down all these Howard Dean signs?" Molly asks. "Can we pull them down?"

"Oh, no." I am in the midst of delivering a little homily about respecting other people's right to express their political enthusiasms, especially for the frothing governors of small New England states, when she interrupts.

" — But when is President Bush going to put up signs? What's his slogan going to be?"

"I think it'll be something like 'W. 2004'," I say, recalling a new bumper sticker I'd seen the other day. In the racket of the madding car, Molly is silent for a moment.

Then she pipes up delightedly: "Because he's worth double you, ole Democrats!"

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