100 Proof

My grandmother’s family escaped the Great Famine for the hard land at the edge of the St. Lawrence. Not long before she died, I visited her, and she sent me off to get my own dinner. She wanted to be there to receive the man from town who delivered her Meals on Wheels three days a week. They shared stories of the Ice Storm, of families, of their days. He nourished her with company, then left her to eat, to tuck away leftovers for the next day. She may not always have been full, but she was never hungry.

If someone’s shooting at you, said the instructor, run diagonally back and forth. Never run in a straight line.

I envisioned this happening in a parking lot, someone firing calm and straight, me dashing and pivoting, dashing and pivoting, running toward life itself.

It is only now I see how this works in politics, how running on the diagonal means the weapons fired by the opposition, the watchdogs, the media are rendered inert. I watch the back-and-forth dash. First this way, then that way. First this excuse, then that.

As I approached the bridge, I realized it was completely fogged in, the tollbooth at its base emerging from the mist like a lit ghost. But the sun rose over my left shoulder, and as I crossed the Bay, the fog began to burn off, so subtly it was hard to see it happening, but there was a glimpse of the water, and there was the lower half of a transmission tower, and there the upward arc of the bridge itself, the sun rising, the fog lifting, the road ahead emerging just in time for me to arrive.

Day turned to night. Protestors still walked the street. The helicopters circled over downtown after dark, the thrum loud enough to require elevated conversation as we walked along the sidewalk two miles away. What’s that? asked my son.

He peered up into the dark toward the light, bright as Venus, hovering in the distance. <i>Why?</i> he asked, and I did not know where to begin, how to explain the eyes in the sky, how to explain the thin line between protection and engagement.

I escaped traffic to a side street, and passed a man with a python draped around his neck. With his left hand, he held the snake’s undulating head away from him. Two open-mouthed children stood a few feet away, and a woman in a tight top backed toward the snake, angling her phone for the selfie.

For so long, so many of us drove main roads, comfortable with the usual scenery. We forgot different things were happening just blocks away. But these are days of detours, and we have no choice to see what we were missing all along.

Most mirrors, these days, reflect disillusionment. A slump-shouldered man wipes the steam from the glass above his sink. A woman with a turned-down mouth flips down the sunshade on the passenger side of a car, and pushes her hair behind her ears. On TV, a comedienne’s hilarious impression of a bumbling spokesperson signals the death of decorum.

How does one find the right pose in this time of dissatisfaction? Is there a lipstick that can disguise a frown? What tie is appropriate to wear to a party where every dish on the buffet has gone just a bit off?

Years ago, I stood out with my classmates on the school soccer field on a clear, bright day, cold enough that I remember the feel of the air on my skin, but not so cold that we were miserable without our forgotten jackets.

We waited while the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía searched the school, looking for the bomb called in by someone interested in interrupting the day.

I was only eight, but I still remember the feeling in my belly as we evacuated, the way we milled about nervously wondering if we’d ever be safe again.