throngs, is as easy to spotand target as a bluebird in a field of snow. A bomb destroys a loading dock at the post office – no one killed, no one claims responsibility. Another bomb weakens a bridge at the north end of the harbour – but at three in the morning, no one was on it. No word on who might have planted it. These are minor blips in the celebration, reported and then mostly forgotten. It could’ve been drunken soldiers, some bad police, a gang of kids. The Kartouf is quiet, sleeping. Let them sleep.
I phone my son on his birthday. We talk about school and what Joanne bought for him in my name. I sit through an afternoon holding my father’s cigarette while my mother gets her hair done, goes to a movie, reassembles her nerves.
No one from the media calls me again. My meltdown on the national news lasted only a few moments before the link with the famous human-rights defender became “unavailable.” I hear nothing more about it, but no reporters call, I’m not asked for follow-up commentary. Santa Irene largely slips from view again anyway. The drama is over, Suli has won, the angry dogs have skulked away and peaceful days do not make headlines. But more than that, the word has gone out over the unseen network: Burridge is unstable. He’s post-traumatic, can’t be trusted. They brought him to the hospital. It was in the
Globe and Mail
. No letters arrive asking me to speak at conferences. Everyone knows. Derrick hopefully fills out the grant forms, but it’s different now, the name has lost some of its magic. Burridge was like Suli in a way. There was an aura, not of grace but of the integrity of suffering. Now the aura has dimmed, the whiff has increased – mental illness, instability. Do we want to send money to someone who goes goggle-eyed on the national news? Who thrashes about in his chair and then goes blank? Even though everyone knows I was in the hospital before, that I tried to kill myself several times – it’swell known – I went goggle-eyed on television and that’s different. It’s as if it has
really
happened now. Like Clinton apologizing on television. We all knew but now we
know
. The madness is official.
I finally write the note to my wife.
Dear Maryse,
The whole sky is mine tonight, there are no clouds, the last of the airplanes has just blinked by. I think of who might be up there: the young businessman coming back from a hectic day in Toronto, the maiden aunt who has been to Vancouver to visit her sister’s bratty children and is relieved now to be heading back to her cats, to not have children of her own. The alcoholic newsman who couldn’t write another original sentence if his life depended upon it – everything that happens now reminds him of something else that happened when he was younger and the world was more interesting and the details mattered and he wrote about it then anyway. All of them – the young mother with her two-month-old baby and the confused granny who couldn’t buckle her safety belt without help and the professional athlete who’s pissed off because his six-figure salary is in Canadian dollars not American – all of them are a few inches of metal from total oblivion and yet it feels as if they’re sitting in their own living rooms. Or maybe they’re not so relaxed because of Flight III that went down in Peggy’s Cove – there’s been so much coverage, so many of the passengers were U.N. officials and other accomplished types doing important work, and they too were sitting relaxed as if in their own living rooms, veterans of so many flights, no doubt, that went off without a hitch.
For us too the few inches of metal gave way, brought us into oblivion and yet somehow didn’t erase us completely. Improbably, impossibly, we survived the fall, can even walk now, carry on, look more or less normal – at least you do, you still have life and beauty. My fall was further, I suppose, from outer space, but somehow I didn’t entirely burn up upon
I phone my son on his birthday. We talk about school and what Joanne bought for him in my name. I sit through an afternoon holding my father’s cigarette while my mother gets her hair done, goes to a movie, reassembles her nerves.
No one from the media calls me again. My meltdown on the national news lasted only a few moments before the link with the famous human-rights defender became “unavailable.” I hear nothing more about it, but no reporters call, I’m not asked for follow-up commentary. Santa Irene largely slips from view again anyway. The drama is over, Suli has won, the angry dogs have skulked away and peaceful days do not make headlines. But more than that, the word has gone out over the unseen network: Burridge is unstable. He’s post-traumatic, can’t be trusted. They brought him to the hospital. It was in the
Globe and Mail
. No letters arrive asking me to speak at conferences. Everyone knows. Derrick hopefully fills out the grant forms, but it’s different now, the name has lost some of its magic. Burridge was like Suli in a way. There was an aura, not of grace but of the integrity of suffering. Now the aura has dimmed, the whiff has increased – mental illness, instability. Do we want to send money to someone who goes goggle-eyed on the national news? Who thrashes about in his chair and then goes blank? Even though everyone knows I was in the hospital before, that I tried to kill myself several times – it’swell known – I went goggle-eyed on television and that’s different. It’s as if it has
really
happened now. Like Clinton apologizing on television. We all knew but now we
know
. The madness is official.
I finally write the note to my wife.
Dear Maryse,
The whole sky is mine tonight, there are no clouds, the last of the airplanes has just blinked by. I think of who might be up there: the young businessman coming back from a hectic day in Toronto, the maiden aunt who has been to Vancouver to visit her sister’s bratty children and is relieved now to be heading back to her cats, to not have children of her own. The alcoholic newsman who couldn’t write another original sentence if his life depended upon it – everything that happens now reminds him of something else that happened when he was younger and the world was more interesting and the details mattered and he wrote about it then anyway. All of them – the young mother with her two-month-old baby and the confused granny who couldn’t buckle her safety belt without help and the professional athlete who’s pissed off because his six-figure salary is in Canadian dollars not American – all of them are a few inches of metal from total oblivion and yet it feels as if they’re sitting in their own living rooms. Or maybe they’re not so relaxed because of Flight III that went down in Peggy’s Cove – there’s been so much coverage, so many of the passengers were U.N. officials and other accomplished types doing important work, and they too were sitting relaxed as if in their own living rooms, veterans of so many flights, no doubt, that went off without a hitch.
For us too the few inches of metal gave way, brought us into oblivion and yet somehow didn’t erase us completely. Improbably, impossibly, we survived the fall, can even walk now, carry on, look more or less normal – at least you do, you still have life and beauty. My fall was further, I suppose, from outer space, but somehow I didn’t entirely burn up upon
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