An Abecedarian Essay on Terror

August at the pond. Beach chairs made of rickety redwood, melamine plates balanced on knees, juice boxes abandoned in the sand when the kids tore off to hunt for frogs. Counting down from 10 to 1, we urge little Zoe to dive off the dock. Dug deep into the five-foot-high mountain of new sand I had delivered but failed to spread, my feet savor the damp grains, their cool pressure, as Christina regales us with tales of Life in Sag Harbor—a Spaulding Gray sighting, a trip to the Barefoot Contessa, the run-down ranch house she and Richard bought because it had a pool. Everything sings of summer. Funny how you can be in a moment and also see a moment, as though you’re looking at yourself on the page of a magazine. Gin and tonics with two limes each sweat in our hands as the afternoon slows and stretches. Heat wafts off Josie’s body as she plants her sandy palms on my thighs and leans in to be sure I am listening: “May we please take the rowboat out now?” “I need to pee,” Zoe says, and Christina tells her to go in the house, the woods, the pond, wherever she likes. “Just don’t let a fish bite you down there!” Ben says, giggling. Klondikes wait in the freezer for when the kids finally settle and decide they’re bored. Last year, we went to their house in Sag, taking three ferries—New London, North Fork, South Fork—and now I think to myself, tipsily, We should go again this year. Maybe Labor Day Weekend? No one hears the silence. Only after a long while do I realize I can see three kids—but not Ulysses. Propelled by adrenaline, I rise and lunge around to the other side of the sand mountain, where two small legs are sticking out, kicking. “Quick!” I scream, “Help me!” Rushing forward, I scrabble frantically at the sand that has swallowed my boy as Denis grabs his ankles and pulls. Sand—so many hundreds of pounds of it—holds him in its fist. Tunneling through the mountain to pop out the other side and surprise the grownups had been the plan, Ulysses tells me later as I sit holding him and crying, brushing and brushing and brushing away the killer sand that is no longer there. Unwilling to let him go, I hold his body to me and gasp for air as though I have almost suffocated. Valiant, tender, recovered, he is the one who consoles me. When I let myself imagine one more minute of our idle banter, my chest seizes. X-rays would show my heart suddenly shrunken into a walnut. You don’t get a second chance if it’s a close enough call. Zeno’s paradox paralyzes me in my too-frequent waking nightmare, the one in which the distance between me and my son is forever infinite and impossible to cross.