She was watching the revised CNN, the Citizens News Network. While it had not yet gone full Fox, the once left-leaning channel was bending with the winds. They were doing a segment on the justice system. She rose off the couch and gave me a kiss. “You eat?”

“No. The meeting with Howie went longer than I expected.” The lie rolled out of me as smoothly as a Sade song. “I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to keep going. We’re hemorrhaging advertisers. There’s a lot of pressure on them.”

“Oh, you’ll think of something,” she said confidently. “That’s what you do, reinvent yourself. Want me to make you something?”

The mail was lying on the burnished metal table in the foyer. As I flipped through it, I told her: “No, that’s all right. What are you working on?”

“Just the usual constituent stuff,” she said with a dismissive sigh. “A lot of people are angry and they’re letting her know it. I mean, every single day with Martha it’s the same thing: the president did this, he did that. And a lot of people don’t like it.” She looked at me and smiled. “She’s even worse than you sometimes.”

The snail mail consisted of bills and department store offers. There was nothing of importance, but I continued staring at it, trying to process Jenny’s flippant complaint.

She interrupted my silence, continuing, “Well, you have to be honest—not every single thing the guy has done has been terrible.”

I deftly turned Chair to face her. “Really? You mean, like, ‘Other than that, Jackie, how was your trip to Dallas?’ You’ve got to be kidding me, Jen. This scumbag is taking away our rights. Your rights.” I honestly don’t know how it got there, but my index finger was at the end of my extended arm, pointing accusingly at her.

Well, I figured this probably wasn’t the best time to tell her. She was wound up, though, which truthfully I didn’t think was fair. This was my time to be angry. “You know what, Rollie, my uncle John was on the eighty-ninth floor of the World Trade Center on 9/11. He had to sit there, just waiting to die. He had time to call my aunt and tell her how much he loved her.” Tears followed the path around her cheekbones.

“I know. Look, Jen…”

“I think about it, I think about it a lot. What it must have been like for him. Can you imagine?” She tried to shake the thought out of her head. “I don’t want anyone else to have to go through that. That’s what real terrorism is. And if it takes a little compromising to keep people safe, well, yes, I am in favor of that.”

“A little compromise? That’s what you think this is? A little compromise?” You know that feeling of rolling downhill out of control? And not being able to stop? Like in a parking garage? Well, you don’t, not really. I heard the words coming out of my mouth and there was nothing I could do to stop them. My anger and my frustration had been festering too long, waiting for the right time, the right person. “Believe me, oh please believe me, Jen, I am so terribly sorry about your uncle. I’m sorry about every single one of those people. I’m sorry for what it did to you and to me and to this whole country. But do you really think giving up your rights is ‘a little compromise’?” I went over to her and reached out. “Listen to me, Jen, please. Please don’t use your uncle, don’t use those people who were murdered, to let Wrightman scare you into turning this country into something mean and ugly.” I emphasized that by scrunching up my face in a mean and ugly way, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing I could have done. The smartest thing I could have done was the one thing I couldn’t do: Shut the fuck up.