Home stretch

Friday, September 11, 2009

Today you wake up to realize that a cat has doused your cell phone with saline solution. And then, for a slightly embarrassing amount of time, you stare at the blank face of the phone, thinking that it’s going to be one of those days. Until it finally kicks in that today is bigger than you. Today – to make a terrible and yet an accurate oversimplification –marks the anniversary of many deaths.

So you’ll go out and do the least you can do; you’ll be thankful for anyone and everyone who loves you. You’ll eat a nice breakfast with your friends in St. Louis. You’ll have a bagel sandwich. You’ll explain why you drink decaf and pose for pictures before the honest eye of an expensive camera. You’ll listen to NPR on the way out of town and wonder what the President’s eyes looked like when his voice cracked during his speech in front of the Pentagon. You’ll drive through cornfields. There will be signs poking up along the edge o

f the corn. One will read Don’t forget, Sonny and the next will read That lucky rabbit’s foot won’t save you and the last will read so get a gun and protect your money. And you’ll try not to let those words speak for an entire state. Then your wife will fall asleep in the passenger seat and she’ll look so nice sleeping there and your breathing will stretch out as if to join hers and your head will jerk and suddenly you’ll hate the road for keeping you awake, for forcing its will on you, for its awful speed and monotonous danger. Then you’ll get stuck in traffic heading into Chicago, but the hour of stop and go and stop will be worth it, because you’ll finally make it to your friend Matt’s restaurant downtown. You’ll sit at his bar. He’ll make you feel comfortable. He’ll smile and make you a cocktail with gin and lemon and thai basil. You and your wife will do what you do so well. You will eat until you are quite ful

l. This time it will be tortilla soup and shrimp and grits and ceviche and braised lamb and chimichurri steak and it really does sound like a gluttonous amount of food when you list it all out like that. Other people won’t be eating like this today. You’ll feel guilt over this. Briefly. Then it will flash away. Before long, you will drive north. You will return to Michigan. You will pull the car into their driveway and the odometer will tell you that it has been exactly 8888.8 miles since you pulled out of that driveway in Michigan two weeks ago. Your wife’s father will be waiting for you in the kitchen even though it is past midnight. You will show him pictures and he will smile. You will go to bed, completely sure that you will wake up.