My American Unhappiness Read Online Free PDF Page A

coffee break with Minn and H. M., I can already see that April and May are in the front yard, playing some sort of game with a long yellow jump rope. Today is the sort of sunny afternoon in which a soul goes reeling. On one hand, before us is the sheer and dazzling beauty of spring's golden light, the leaves attempting to burst through their buds. And on the other hand we know winter is not gone for good—we know that in seven months, maybe less, we will have to deal, once again, with the endless snow, the days that go dim at four o'clock, and the icy, painful winds.
    Such dualities—pleasure and pain, contentment and longing—plague us in the Midwest. Everything is beautiful; everything is fleeting. Everything warm eventually cools and bitters.
    This afternoon, as I walk toward April and May, their blond hair absolutely magnificent in the waning light, two teenagers, both driving modest American two-doors, race up and down Commonwealth Avenue, engaged in some sort of vehicular flirtation. The first time they come tearing down the block, I ignore them, though I am aware that up the street, April and May have put down their jump rope and April is now creating enormous bubbles with a bubble wand that I bought her at the dollar store. The second time the two vehicles, a blue Geo and a green Neon, appear on Commonwealth, going faster now, chasing each other, I notice that May is dancing after the bubbles, precariously close to the curb. Soon, two doors away from my home, the two speeding cars reappear, on their third lap, and I scream, at the top of my lungs, "Freeze!"
    April and May stop and stare at me as I sprint after the racing Geo. I find a rock on the ground and hurl it. The Geo stops and does a U-turn and I run to the car window, screaming at the teenaged driver who is also screaming at me, a litany of obscenities between us. The kid, this punk, is wearing a black baseball cap with a logo I don't recognize. Some team of sorts, an expansion team I've never heard of from some league I don't follow. At first, he is smirking at me from underneath a weak caterpillar of a mustache, but once I snarl at him, his face grows sober, and his defiant expression fades. My anger is fierce, and I lean into his open window and hiss in his face, "If you ever drive like this on my street again, asshole, I will cut you from your privates to your throat. I will bleed you out right here."
    It's a variation of a line I remember from the movie
Young Guns,
which I watched many times as a teenager, and it suddenly comes to me, but it is sufficiently creepy to scare the young punk, who apologizes and drives off. As a man of average size and limited physical prowess, I have long ago learned that insanity is far more intimidating than size or strength. Nobody, if you will, fucks with a crazy man.
    The street once again safe for my nieces, I head toward my front yard. April and May hug me as we stand in front of the Obama yard sign (my mother also disapproves of this one, though the political rage she showed in 2004 has mellowed, replaced by hopelessness) and begin showing me their various tricks. I look up at the front porch, where my mother is sitting in a chair, smiling. My chest is still heaving and my guts are watery with adrenaline. I shake my hands as if drying them; a jittery wave of electricity still pulses in my fingertips.
    "Zeke," she says, "I didn't know you had that in you."
    I shrug and go back to watching April and May craft enormous bubbles with their bubble wands, my heart still racing as the adrenaline begins to subside. Frankly, I sort of surprised myself, but the image of those speeding cars, careening recklessly so near the spot where my nieces were playing, well, I couldn't help but think, what if, what if something happened to them right now that was irrevocable and tragic? Suddenly, it is as if they were the most important things in the whole world to me, as if losing them would stop time and shatter everything.
    And then I