The Center Cannot Hold

An American city in the dark before dawn

In the distance, just off the expressway to the south, red and blue lights flash, cutting the darkness in the middle of the night. To the north on an overpass, a block east from the first lights, another set, the same intense colors, the same maddening sparks against black sky.

It is 3:15 a.m. on a Saturday a week before the Independence Day holiday. There might be some significance in that, I consider, but it could be any Saturday at this hour on the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago, any Saturday at all. But on this particular Saturday on my usual drive into the heart of the city where I work a regular early shift for an all-news radio station, my protective shield collapses, the one so many journalists have carefully cultivated as a way to remain apart, separate from what one writes and reports. I say out loud to myself, “The center cannot hold.”

I continue to drive toward the downtown, the flashing lights now in my rearview mirror, and that’s when I hear it, the high-pitched gears of racing motors and the nearly immediate whoosh of air and pressure. Two cars, one only feet behind the other, race by in the left lane. The unsettling energy shakes the car. It steals my breath. And I worry that someone will fire a gun.

People routinely fire guns here. Shootings on and just off the expressway have become commonplace reports, ones I talk about on the radio most Saturdays along with stories of dead teenagers, and missing children, and street parties turned to chaos. Such casualness in the reporting, a terrible disquieting routine.

Off the expressway now, I am at a traffic light in the heart of The Loop, the city’s center. At the corner is a man, sitting on the concrete sidewalk. He is shirtless, his hair long and tangled. No shoes. He’s screaming at the moon. There are words but I can’t make them out. At the next light, three young girls in shorts and t-shirts cross the street. They’re laughing and singing, happy. One holds a can of beer. Last weekend, a man stabbed a young woman to death not far from here.

This is not a city of disorder. The mail is delivered. The garbage is picked up. The pandemic that had condemned us to our homes has waned enough to allow a level of freedom. City summer festivals are planned again. The baseball teams are playing to full crowds. Boats again sail the lake. But uneasiness is all around and yes, the center is not holding. It could be a time of great promise here and across the country, but it isn’t. Not after the attack on the capitol months ago; not after George Floyd; not after police kill a Chicago teenager.

I turn my car onto Michigan Avenue. A police car, its blue lights pulsing, sits in the median, waiting, anticipating. Two blocks north, another police car, same lights, same tension. Idling squad cars have become familiar sights since the riots a few months ago, the ones that left shattered glass on the streets, looted stores, small fires fueled by ignored justice and sustained by helpless lawlessness.

At the corner of Randolph Street, I wait to make the right turn. In the large picture window at street level across the way is a sign, big letters: FOR LEASE. One of the many businesses that didn’t make it, couldn’t hold on, lost everything. I think of at least three other signs I had passed minutes before.

Turning into the parking garage, my phone dings. BREAKING NEWS, the notification reads. CHICAGO POLICE REPORT AT LEAST 10 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SHOT AT AN OVERNIGHT GATHERING ON THE CITY’S SOUTH SIDE. NO ONE IN CUSTODY.

I pull my car into a parking spot not far from the door, shut off the engine, and turn off the headlights. It’s quiet inside the garage at this hour, only the hum of an air venting unit. I sit still for a few seconds, thinking about turning on the radio to hear the latest news. But think again. There will be enough to know later. My phone dings a second time. I shut it off and consider tossing it out the window to smash and shatter on the concrete floor. Instead, I swig the coffee that remains in my mug, grab my bag, and step toward the elevator. A sign there reads: MASKS REQUIRED FOR THOSE NOT VACCINATED. I put mine on anyway. It’s the right thing to do. The safe thing, protection from what one cannot see.

Several hours later on the ride home in the light of midday, I think of Yeats’ poem again, “The Second Coming” and how the center cannot hold and how things fall apart and how the falcon cannot hear the falconer. And I think of Joan Didion’s great essay about San Francisco in 1967 and a generation disillusioned and lost. And just as I drive beyond the city limits, a car pulls up beside me in the slow traffic. At the wheel is woman—maybe in her 40s, hair tied back, large sunglasses protecting her eyes—and from the speakers, tumbling out of the open windows, I hear Prince’s “1999.” The woman is singing the words: I was dreaming when I wrote this, so sue me if I go too fast. The music is too loud to hear her voice, but I can see her lips moving to the words. Her head sways and she taps her fingers on the steering wheel, and smiles into the windshield as if it would always be the perfect summer day.