God and Guns

“What if,” my friend Michael says as much to himself as to me, “This is as good as it’s going to get? What if this is the future and we just don’t know it?”

The same questions have crossed my mind and I have no answers.

“I hate my life. I hate how I live. I hate where I live. I hate this vile house and this low rent poverty town. I hate that I can’t get out. I hate I don’t see it getting any better.” Each sentence is punctuated by a furious jab at his phone. His tone makes the dogs restless, they sense his misery and hopelessness. “One fucking foot in front of the other,” he growls, “For how fucking long? How much are we expected to stand? How are we supposed to survive? What is the fucking point? There isn’t going to be anything left to get back to!”

I could point out that he has a roof over his head. It’s not much of one, but it is there. I could point out that most of our students are still trying to make their payments, that the two or three we’ve lost weren’t that committed to start with. I could remind him his dogs aren’t going hungry, that the lights are still on, that the emergency loans could still come through, that he’s drawing a very respectable unemployment benefit. He can still afford his Coke and cigarettes and cell phone and cable. It’s all more than hundreds, maybe thousands, have. He can still afford his health insurance, his car still runs, and the man who tends the lawn still comes every couple of weeks. I could say all that and a lot more but I don’t. I don’t have the will or energy to argue with him and besides by tomorrow he’ll think differently. Life with Michael is a series of ups and downs, highs and lows, peaks and valleys. He can go from suicidal despair to violent optimism in 60 seconds flat and it can be exhausting for us both. Today he is ready to take all the dogs to the shelter, set fire to the house and drive his Mercedes into a brick wall. Tomorrow, when the unemployment benefit comes, he will remember that he’s been through hard times before and he’ll persevere. It’s not the life he once had – certainly not the one he imagined or planned for – but hope is a tricky thing. It dances just beyond our reach, disappears without a trace, then returns with sly smile. Personally, I am not persuaded that we deserve it. Personally, I think there is no hope for healing and recovery while the current president maintains his power. His determination to keep the country divided is relentless and his corruption and cruelty know no bounds. He is a petty, jealous and vindictive little man with a pathological need to be center stage. Personally, I believe if he were to contract the coronavirus and die, the entire world would be a better, safer place. I say so to Michael and he gives me a resigned smile.

“Remember who would be in charge then,” he says grimly, “You really think we’d be better off?”

The prospect of a country made up of God and Guns gives me the chills but it wouldn’t be for very long, I remind him, and then maybe we could get back to sanity. He looks doubtful and I suspect if I had a mirror, so would I.

Dear Tricia

Dear Tricia,

I hardly know where to start. It’s mid May and the magnolias are in bloom everywhere you look. Your front yard flowers are out in force – I stopped one day last week to take pictures of them and thought how pleased you would be.

Not too long after you left us, the world we all knew and loved despite its flaws, more or less went to hell. A virus, nearly worthy of a Stephen King novel though I don’t think we knew it at the time, had been born in China and it took over the planet at startling and deadly speed, becoming a pandemic in no time at all. The experts and scientists and doctors who recognized and tried to warn us about the danger were silenced or ignored or simply dismissed and outshouted. We paid no more mind to them in the beginning then we are doing now. And it’s been a heavy price to pay. We went into lockdown at the end of March – schools were closed and all non-essential businesses were shut down. The CDC issued guidelines about what is called “Social distancing” which means staying 6 feet away from everyone, no gatherings of more than 10 people, disinfecting anything and everything you touch, wearing masks and gloves everywhere you do go, but most critically, staying home to try and slow the progress of the virus. It might even have worked if we’d taken it seriously but instead we opted to hoard – can you imagine your old Brookshire’s with empty shelves where toilet paper and paper towels used to be? Or them being completely out of bread? The “I got mine, fuck you” mentality spread like wildfire. Restaurants went to take out only and then to curbside delivery and then to closed. Doctors and hospitals were overwhelmed, the government announced that everyone would receive a “stimulus check”, a one time payment of $1200 and all kinds of programs were set up to loan money. Some had strings, some didn’t but in the best government tradition, the process was rife with corruption and cronyism. Huge hotel and restaurant corporations and republican donors got millions while actual small businesses got nothing. They’re still trying to figure out and fix that. Almost 2 months in from the shutdown and no one seems to quite know where all the money is. State unemployment agencies waived their look for work requirements and said everyone could apply – it took about a day and a half before Louisiana went under water. The last released unemployment figures were at just over 14%.

One of the oddest things was how pleasant the social service people continued to be – inept and unhelpful but relentlessly polite and nice. Newly created and established websites and portals malfunctioned at an astonishing rate and unless you were prepared to be on hold for an average of 2-4 hours, reaching anyone was impossible. There was and still is no way to track a claim of any kind. Uncertainty runs rampant.

Despite the death toll, a staggering number of people still believe it’s a hoax to hurt the president’s chances of re-election in November. Small but vicious and heavily armed mobs are storming state capitals, demanding their rights to get their hair cut or their nails done and threatening the lives of public officials in the name of freedom. And the president, you might ask – what is he doing? After spending months of denying the danger and lying through his teeth, the short answer is …….. nothing. Oh, he has his so called “press briefings” where he gets to brag about how well we’re doing and what a great job he’s done and of course he gets hateful and nasty with reporters unwilling to kiss his ring and storms out if they continue to press him. But every word out of his mouth is a lie – the numbers on testing, the fake cures he’s heard about and promotes, but mostly he wants us to know that none of it is his fault and he still knows best, not the doctors or the scientists or the World Health Organization or the CDC or the infectious disease specialists. His nightly twitter tirades are off the rails and his stupidity is a bottomless pit. I fully anticipate he’ll be re-elected. Neither he nor his republican cult followers give a damn how many will die. On the bright side, all he has is the economy and it’s gone sideways. It’s barely possible it may be enough to get his ass kicked. American lives don’t matter but profit does – he says so publicly and his fellow republicans back him up.

So here are in the middle of May and magnolias and no one is talking about anything except “re-opening”. The medical experts and researchers are warning it’s premature and that it will backfire but no one in power with the exception of a stray governor here or there is listening. The president is leading the charge and anyone who dares disagree is fired or reassigned or accused of disloyalty. In some cases, they’re just targeted for the malicious kind of sarcasm the president does so well. By the time he’s proven wrong, I fear so much damage will have been done and so many more people will have needlessly died or become infected that it will be too late. In many respects and for many people, America will be over,

Of course in the meantime, life goes on. I’m still going in to work for a couple of hours each day although technically the agency closed in March and there hasn’t been any work for weeks. Michael and I are both are both drawing unemployment and the business is relying on various emergency loans to stay afloat. We can’t re-open until the Catholic Center is available for classes and so far they haven’t been able to say when that will be. Some of our people are still managing to make their payments, some are not, one or two have dropped out but most seem to understand that we’re doing the best we can do under the circumstances. We’re planning on make up classes through the summer if the quarantine is lifted and Michael refuses to give up on a December show. Time will tell.

In other news…….Melody found a great home for Lily. I’d have given my right arm to be able to take her but it’d have been a disaster. Rochelle has volunteered to take both my dogs if anything happens to me. I haven’t heard from Lindsey or Kelsey but I know Mel got her unemployment and is doing the best she can. Mothers Day was difficult. We all miss you so very much.

The real estate thing didn’t work out so well for Keith and it may make you smile to know that he is now selling used cars. Henry was hospitalized and died a few a weeks ago – and just last week we lost Dominic to cancer. Those of us still around are muddling through as best we can.

If I told you about how I recently discovered that you can withdraw money with a debit card (and not just use it like a credit card which, as you know, I have never allowed myself to do) you would shake your head and maybe even roll your eyes. I’d give my right arm to have you fuss at me just one more time.

The Siege of '58

I was still half asleep when the factory whistle blew at seven. Five more minutes, I thought to myself and then I heard the heavy tread of my grandfather’s feet on the stairs and smelled the stale cigar smoke. A moment later, the bathroom door slammed shut and I snatched at my clothes and ran for the stairs, thinking that if I was quick enough, I might make it down to the kitchen and outside before he emerged. I never saw the toy dump truck my brother had left in the doorway to the living room or if I did I stepped over it without seeing the potential hazard.

Nana, still in her housecoat and slippers, was at the stove and I flew by her with the dogs at my heels.

“Breakfast is almost ready!” she called to me, “Don’t go far!”

It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes later when I heard the crash – my grandfather had stepped on or tripped over the dump truck and lost his footing – he went down like a ton of bricks, slamming into the doorway, howling in pain and then cursing and hollering like a wounded bull moose.

“SONOFAWHORE!” I heard him bellowing, “ALICE! ALICE! GODDAM IT, ALICE!”

I quickly decided my best option was to make myself as scarce as possible so I grabbed my sneakers, called to the dogs, and headed around the corner and down the front path as fast as I could run barefoot. I kept going til I got to the canteen where I ran headlong into Uncle Bernie with such force that I nearly knocked him down.

“Whoa, girl!” he said sharply once he regained his balance and rescued his spilled morning coffee, “Where’s the fire?”

“He fell!” I managed to say, “He might be dead!”

Uncle Bernie frowned, took hold of my shoulders and gave me a good shake.

“Who fell? Who might be dead?” he demanded but it was all I could do to breathe and the words wouldn’t come. I pointed toward the house and then burst into tears. For a man in his mid-80’s, Uncle Bernie moved with surprising speed, shooing me inside the canteen and telling me to stay put, then setting off for the house at a rapid but irregular jog.

And so began the siege of the summer of ‘58.

Not being a particularly nice human being, it was no surprise that my grandfather did not make a particularly nice patient. In addition to a broken leg, Doc McDonald diagnosed a mild concussion. He sedated the old man, set and splinted the broken bones and left a small bottle of codeine pain pills for my grandmother to administer, helped set up the bedroom off the kitchen as a recovery room and promising to have a bedpan and urinal delivered that afternoon, climbed into his old pick up and went on his way. My grandfather spent his first bedridden day in a narcotic haze and it was the last rest my grandmother got for months. He woke the next morning in pain and in a restless rage, shouting profanity and abuse at the entire world and threatening to whip my brother into the next week. Nothing Nana did or said could calm him and after he had flung the bedpan and urinal and narrowly missed her, she fled and locked the door behind her. Something immediately hit the door with force enough to make it tremble. That was followed by the sound of breaking glass and a stream of obscenity.

“Call the doctor back,” she snapped at my badly shaken mother, “Now! Before he wrecks what’s left of the goddam room!”

Doc had to call in reinforcements – John and Jacob Sullivan were drafted because they were the youngest and the closest – and it took both of them plus the doctor to get my out of control grandfather into restraints and then finally injected with a serious dose of tranquilizers. When he came to later that night, Doc read him the riot act and made it very clear that if he couldn’t adjust and behave, he would find himself incarcerated in Dartmouth for the duration.

“You wouldn’t dare!” my grandfather snarled.

“Your safety and the safety of this household is a responsibility I take very seriously, Charlie,” Doc said calmly, “Try me.”

It was a steel edged threat and surprisingly enough, my grandfather seemed to realize it. Over the course of the next several weeks, he continued to be cantankerous and demanding and tyrannical and the entire household catered to him but there were no more serious temper tantrums. He ran Nana and my mother ragged caring for him (neither my brothers nor I were allowed to see him and I considered us fortunate but kept it to myself) and showed not the slightest appreciation but at least there were no more flying bedpans or shattered mirrors. It appeared that my grandfather, while not brought down, had been reined in enough to be nearly manageable.

When he was able to be up and around in a wheelchair, my grandfather paid one of the younger Sullivan brothers to collect the little dump truck and every other similar toy and smash them to smithereens while my brothers watched.

The siege of the summer of 1958 ended with no one daring to defy him and as often happens in real life, misery winning the day.