We should think of rage as a 1979 Chevrolet Corvette, painted lung-cancer black, with a T-Top frame, 195 horsepower engine, and alloy wheels, a car someone bequeathed to you without your asking, in whose backseat you have made steamy love, pushed from zero to sixty in quiet suburban roads, shown, proudly, to your meeker friends, and finally, after twenty-eight years of hard driving, come to feel embarrassed of.
In order to dismantle it, you will have to be strategic, especially during the working week. Plead a migraine and beg your wife to leave you with the lights off. You have a tummy ache. Your middle eye has been struck blind. Lie late abed. Enjoy the silence, for it will pass. At noon, or thereabouts, slip out from under the warmth of the covers into the stiff ruggedness of a pair of overalls, blue ideally, so that while dismantling your rage you will at least look the part. In the kitchen, brew a pot of coffee, then forget about the coffee and get out the blender instead. Salt the rim of your glass. Today will be a special day. You are going to tear apart your rage for good.
Work hard all day. Wield your screwdriver and wrench liberally, like a pirate. Or, cast yourself as a hero of some sort, if this will help. Dig deep into the body of the engine, throwing away the carburetor, the valves, the pistons, the connecting rod, and finally attack the body itself, dismantling it piece by piece. (You will need larger tools for this, of course. Sledgehammer, forklift). When your neighbors pass, raise a wrench in hello. There’s Mr. West again, dismantling his rage. Ignore them. You are used to this kind of talk.
When, later, your wife and child return from school hand in hand, perfectly proportioned beside each other, like cardboard cutouts, and stare at the bones of the car in the driveway, and say, but you broke everything, agree with them and begin to apologize profusely. You didn’t know what you were thinking—exclamation point! You are a fool in middle-class clothing—exclamation point! Well, your wife replies, we will have to get another one, won’t we? Or else how will we get from place to place?
Evening will fall. The dogs, rabid and hungry, will begin to bark. Perhaps it will even start to rain, as in the movies you have seen, although the theatre of this moment will offer no comfort to you. Certainly darkness will arrive, the shadows of the streetlamps lengthening into pools, the lamps themselves hissing and bursting into fluorescence, lowering little islands of light down onto the tempestuous seas.
The rain ends. The clouds part. The universe, above you, wheels like a confusing poem. You find it dizzying, nauseating. Yes, it is all coming back, all of it, as you knew it would. So: open your toolbox and remove your screwdriver and wrench. Notice the way they glint, like knives. You are still a hero, my friend. After all, you have done nothing wrong, nothing that has not been done before. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day, and with your tools ready, bending on your hands and knees, begin to put together what you have broken, and work long through the night.
