30 August 2010
 
Bad Cop

I was cut off this weekend, and missed something as completely as if I was a myopic national political correspondent.
 
But I repeat myself.
 
The Glen Beck thing apparently happened on the Mall downtown on Saturday, and I was blissfully unaware. Mom and Raven knew about it, since they watch Fox News when they are in the apartment, which is most of the time now. Mom is suspicious of Potemkin Village, and won't go out, since she says there is nothing going on there.
 
I told her to contrast that with what was happening back at the house, which is precisely nothing, and has been that way for more than a year, but I will have to get to that in a minute.
 
The only reason I was even dimly aware of what was happening here was that a buddy who had business in town had a problem getting a room Friday night. He told me at Willow on Friday that it was the crush of Tea Party People who had taken every room available. With the lodging capacity inherent in this transient town, that says something.
 
Call me preoccupied.
 
I listened to a book on tape in a desperate swim in the Big Pink pool trying to deny the fact that there are only a few such sessions left in this season, and will have to figure out something else to do. It is a good book, by Nigel Farndale called “The Blasphemer,” a surprise selection of the Daedalus Fly-Too-High Book Club. The morning had burned away in a Board Meeting in a highly-secure facility in Maryland, and the weekend seemed to have run away before it began.
 
I transferred the iPod to land mode after the swim, and consequently missed all the usual shows on National Public Radio, being with Private Kennedy in the Ypres Salient of 1917.
 
I probably would have rejoined reality at some point, but lost power on the property and managed to have the wrong phone charger in the Hubrismobile. The phone died. The internet blinked off. I was, like, cut off.
 
My hands shook for a while as I went into serious withdrawal, like hour seven of a stop-smoking effort. It was disorienting, and did not help to focus my mind, like losing the internet at the hotel in Berlin at the beginning of the summer, and realizing, five days into the trip, that I was actually in Germany and had to deal with Germans.
 
I did not know, therefore, that Mr. Beck and that strange woman from Alaska mounted the podium and exhorted the crowd of fans and activists to embrace religion and the nation’s traditional values, whatever those might be. It was a half-million people, some say, maybe as big as the one that paraded down Pennsylvania last September.
 
A lot of people are not happy, which is something I can sign up for, but can’t find any particular agreement. I had heard the race card being played in the background last week, by both sides of the spectrum, since the whole spectacle was timed to go down on the anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
 
I was at Dr. King’s tomb a couple years ago, the stark white granite of it quoting the one down the street at Arlington, down in Atlanta, and had one of those epiphanies. I could not imagine the courage to take on America itself, with the full knowledge that it would kill him.
 
Apparently the overt political message was minimized, and Turning to God was the theme. I have had quite enough of those who invoke God to slaughter people this decade to feel comfortable with that, but I certainly understand what Mr. Beck is up to. Overt politics or not, Democratic leaders are clearly on the defensive, and running scared.
 
I know the feeling. I thought about being the Bad Cop as I drifted back up to Big Pink from the farm, listening to the words of the British narrator of the book, cut off from communications. It was not unpleasant, though I had to turn it off since my thoughts kept drifting and I could not keep the thread.
 
I was dreading the weekly call to Mom and Raven, since I have been able, to a small degree, to duck my complicity in what sister Anook has done this summer. I won't see the magnitude- be able to internalize the change- until I confront it in person this week.
 
We cannot afford to play the Good Cop-Bad Cop game. I will have to be bad son to follow the bad and bossy daughter.
 
Anook called just as I was searching for the new phone number at Potemkin Village. She said she had got into it with Big Mama. It was that no memory thing, since yesterday had been a good day, with some real appreciation for what she had done this long strange summer. Anook said she had to walk out when my brother called, and Mama went into her grim and determined mode, telling him how awful my sister had been to her, and how much she wanted her car back, and that she was, by God, going to have it back the instant Anook was out of town.
 
My sister said it was that Mama did not understand the way things work there at the Village, and even when she does, forgets that she does. What with Raven’s nightly incontinence (TMI, I thought, Jesus!) she hides the sheets in the closet rather than admit the problem to the staff, who would have no surprise when the laundry is picked up in the morning. Anook thinks she wants to take them to the house and wash them herself, and keep the secret.
 
I told her she was aces in my book, a valiant and good daughter, and that I would steel myself to be the Bad Cop to follow on, and maybe save their lives for a while. Then I punched in the new numbers to Skype and got on with it.
 
It was bad. Mom was implacable, rational in an irrational way, since she cannot recognize what has been lost. She says the State of Michigan has issued her a license to drive, and it is good for four more years, and she is going to damn well use it.
 
I told her that if she and Raven were hurt while driving I would hate myself. If she hurt someone else, I would not only be hurt but morally liable. The time was at hand, I said, and it had to be done. The car is not coming back any more than her memory is.
 
That is when she said she would retain counsel if necessary to protect her rights. She is a tough lady, the only problem being that she cannot remember yesterday. So we will start the same conversation again today.
 
I know where this is going, but I don't know how the road will turn on the way, and twist the gut.
 
Screw it. I am a Bad Cop.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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