October 10, 2003, 8:40 a.m.
Feeling Blue

WASHINGTON, D.C. — "Braahp...mack nong..." a bullhorn-amplified voice drifts down the street to our house. I don't know what they're saying but the protesters are back. Across from the Burmese embassy, one wistful fellow holds up a sign showing Aung San Suu Kyi behind bars in a Burma-shaped jail. Another man is trying to hang a scarlet banner between two trees — the banner says something about dictatorship and freedom but it's hard to tell because it keeps collapsing.

A squad car pulls up, lights whirling, to keep an eye on things. Police officers: One. Onlookers: Phoebe and me. Number of demonstrators: Four. I wonder briefly if the National League of Democracy couldn't do some sort of swap with International ANSWER: The Burmese could provide an actual good cause, the Marxist agitators could supply the crowds. On the other hand, nah.

There is an autumnal tinge in the air, and I don't just mean the weather. After the Bunny's death, the house still feels a little empty. Molly says she's is never going back to school. The girls in her class are going through one of those ugly phases in which eye-rolling becomes a substitute for a punch in the nose, except it hurts more. Even Violet's musical compositions reflect the darkened mood.

"I have a horrible throw-up in my distance...." Violet sings in a tragic vibrato, holding a small plastic princess aloft in the back of the car as we drive home from school, "Help, prince, they're getting me...Indians in the bushes.. they're killing me...."

Later my husband is changing Phoebe's diaper.

"I'm dead," she says, her feet in the air.

"You're not, you're very much alive," he tells her.

"No, I'm Phoebe," she corrects.

Then we have to break the news to the children that a much-admired aunt and uncle have separated.

"Does that mean we won't have an Uncle Ron any more?"

"What about the children, will they split them up?"

"What if you — ?"

"Never!" my husband and I say loudly, in stereo.

"So don't you worry one bit, ever."

"That's right," seconds my husband, and kisses the children one at a time, then me.

My sister-in-law's legal counsel advised her that divorce creates a wave that rolls out and rocks the marriages around it. Apparently it also rocks the cradles. It is around this time that I become aware of an unnatural atmosphere of mutual cooperation in the nursery. Instead of intermittent squalling, and accusations of who snatched what from whom, there are genteel exchanges of exquisite politeness.

Molly: "Here, Paris, you can use my dragon."

Paris: "But don't you want to use him? I have my mandrill."

Molly: "I'd rather you had the dragon. Violet, would you like to wear my nightgown?

Violet: "Thanks, Molly! Can I play with you guys?"

Paris: "Why, sure!"

Clearly, something is wrong.

On the weekend we have errands in Georgetown, the brick-sidewalked, townhouse-crammed portion of Washington known for its trendy shops and exorbitant Federal-era real estate. Molly and Paris and I hold hands and dodge through the pierced navels, cellphones, handbags, and arch, vacant faces that throng the main shopping street.

Suddenly, there's a roar, and a passenger jet banks close overhead, right over Banana Republic — -

Molly's hand squeezes mine, hard. "Mummy, is that — ?"

"No, sweetheart," I reply quickly, "We're in a flight path. That's just a normal plane."

The jet has already disappeared, off across the Potomac towards Reagan National Airport. When I was a child, the sight of a plane brought the delicious prospect of glamorous holidays and pretty stewardesses. Now children think of Mohammed Atta.

"I don't like it here," Paris says, "In this part of Washington. All these terriers."

"Terriers?"

"Dogs?" I ask, looking around in vain.

"Paris," Molly asks respectfully, "Do you mean terrorists?"

"Oh," he considers, "Yes."

What can a mother say in this situation? Don't worry, sweetie, everything is fine? What I mumble, in the end, is something along the lines that there may well be terrorists in Georgetown but since they are in the same appalling traffic as everyone else they are hardly going to be able to get up to any mischief are they so really one shouldn't worry about it and — I know, let's buy a chocolate bar.

We are all relieved to get out of Georgetown's clogged arteries, but when we get home there is blockage of a different sort. In one of our lavatories. Over the next few hours, my husband and I perform a kind of silent minuet of avoidance: a mincing about finding pressing things to do in the conscious expectation that the other person will solve the unfortunate problem so that we, personally, don't have to confront it.

The children are long since in bed, where we suppose them still to be, when I am heard to say, "Look, buster, this boarding-school excuse only goes so far."

"What boarding-school excuse?" my husband asks, all innocence.

"You know," I needle, "You were sent away so young" — he was eight — "that you never had the chance to learn such handy, Mr. Fix-It things as how to unblock a lavatory."

"Darling, I've never used that excuse — " he laughs.

There is a gasp from above. We turn to see Molly and Paris in their nightclothes, crouched and ashen at the top of the stairs. They fix us with a look of stunned horror, then rush away to their rooms.

By the time we climb the stairs, they are flung across their beds, weeping.

"Children, what is it? What's wrong? What's happening?"

"You know!" Molly gasps.

"I don't!"

"You're going to send us away, aren't you?"

"I'm going to what?"

"Send us away — to boarding school!"

Their sobbing redoubles.

"Never!" my husband and I say loudly, in stereo.

The next morning, as if a storm or fever has passed, the children are magically restored to normalcy. They quarrel cheerfully throughout breakfast, snatching each other's dragons and mandrills and reprimanding each other for snatching and invariably claiming "I had it first."

"Eat it," Violet says coaxingly, holding out a Cheerio to a tiny figurine, "It's poison cake."

The scene is really quite jolly, considering.