The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg Read online

  So I'm going back to Paris today. First time since we were there together in our Salad Days. Our history after that trip ruined Paris. My behavior and your behavior, too . . . I think. That lovely 1994 Paris is gone for us. I'm sorry.

  You are a good person, Mary. I know. You are a remarkable, beautiful, strong, good person.

  T.

  Letter 33

  September 23, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Charlie, Kara, and Sylvie,

  I am going to Paris and if I don't return, it will be because I fought the good fight. Imagine me, hunchbacked, wearing a burlap sack, ringing bells in Notre Dame, jumping from wooden beams, grabbing and swinging, riding the ropes up and down all over the immense tower. I will ring bells so they can be heard all over the city. The bells will sing: I love Charlie—Ding! I love Kara—Dong! I love Sylvie—Ding! But this pursuit is not without its risks and I may not make it out. Don't worry. Those bells will have the memory of my love for you vibrated into their metal. My love for you will live forever and ring out over all of Paris whenever those bells are rung. So wish me luck! This will be dangerous!

  I love you all,

  Dad

  Day Eight:

  Transcript 2

  * * *

  Oh, that's nice stuff. Thanks. Thank you for reading them.

  Listen, Barry . . . I got really engaged talking yesterday. I really felt what I felt when I was in Amsterdam and I don't want to . . . Paris was horrible. I can't live it over again.

  Thank you.

  Don't you want to know what happened to me this morning?

  You know?

  I'd say attacked! It was unreal, Barry. I sat down on the couch to finally watch CNN. I heard a preview story as I was walking back from breakfast, so I thought I'd hang in the TV room to watch. Why not? And these poor sick people are all around, and when I sit, the old guy next to me grabs my arm and says, “I know who you are.” He cranes his neck at me and shouts, “I know who you are.” Then he folds over onto my lap and I scream for the nurse . . . I mean . . . I thought he was having a stroke. My other arm is in this cast. I couldn't pry him off me.

  No. He's okay. No stroke. Just so weak he couldn't brace himself on his arm, and he went to sleep with his head in my lap.

  Attacked again. I hate hospitals. So I didn't see any of my coverage on CNN. Still.

  Every time I'm in one of these . . . institutions, I get attacked by the patients. Old people love to have at me, I guess.

  I know. The recorder's on.

  Yeah. Kaatje. She thought she was going to save me with self-help. She brought a book. Ridiculous, but kind of sweet, too. We stayed in this English hotel where one of her friends worked, so we got a good discount . . . and in the morning, Kaatje took out this book. I can't remember its name—Play to Win? And we're in the garden . . . in the middle of this beautiful Paris block, these vine-covered walls around us . . . fall with crisp air and sun . . . it was gorgeous back there. I actually remember thinking “pretty” but not having it affect me, just thought “pretty.” I'd gone cold but knew it was gorgeous. And Kaatje pulled out this book about anxiety and depression and transcending all of that. It made no sense and I didn't listen. And she talked at me for maybe an hour. Kept flipping through pages, saying, “Listen to this. Here. You can retrain your thinking processes.” Stuff like that. I felt like I was packed in cotton . . . or like my whole body was filled with cotton . . . like I was dried out and everything seemed apart from me, watching the world through the eyes of someone I didn't know and didn't care about.

  It didn't go on very long. Kaatje got frustrated, real red in the face. And then, because I wasn't really listening, she said maybe I should go to a hospital, and Cranberry nodded, sort of nervously, but he agreed I should go to a hospital. Then I told them I felt a little dizzy and needed to go get a drink of water.

  I didn't come back for several days.

  I walked, let my mind wander. It was strange to have my memories and thoughts but to feel so separate from them. There was nothing desperate about how I experienced this. I didn't intend to return to the hotel.

  At times . . . sometimes I would sit at a bar or a café and write a little. I carried that backpack everywhere. I sat under a bridge next to the Seine and wrote, too. Mostly I just watched.

  I wrote to Bill Clinton. But I wrote other stuff, too.

  Journal Entry,

  September 25, 2004, under a bridge next to the Seine

  * * *

  What's a pogrom? Remember it means “devastation” in Russian. But is it a slaughter or just a riot? Anti-Jew. Pogrom burned the houses down. Burned down the synagogue. When I close my eyes, I see the fires. Not sure if I'm fleeing or if I'm the one who set them.

  Journal Entry,

  September 25–26, 2004, under a bridge next to the Seine

  * * *

  Dream: Across the street there is the park where kids ride their bikes. They shouldn't be riding in that park. What if someone takes them? You can feel the ground shaking. Those are tanks rolling on cobblestone. Those are gas lamps quivering. You pull a chair to the window, but can't sit down, because you realize you're carrying the girl piggyback style, although she is too old to be carried. So you stand and watch the children riding bikes at twilight while the gas lamps shake. A voice from a bullhorn is shouting. People start pouring from doors all around the neighborhood. They're dragging suitcases and pillows and they're dressed in coats, although it's summer and the trees have leaves and it seems warm. Bullhorn is so loud, telling them all to gather. You turn to your right. Is it your father shouting? Is it you watching your father? The little girl on your back holds your ears. The people get on trains.

  Letter 34

  September 26, 2004

  * * *

  Dear President Clinton,

  My wife was pregnant in the summer of 1992. She was just my girlfriend then. We were both twenty-two and I was trying to finish college. There was another girl in my cultural anthropology class that summer who had the thickest, most beautiful hair I've ever seen. It was thick ropes of dark red. She wore patchouli oil and white hippie dresses that danced around her hips when she walked into class. She had a wide tanned face and thick dark lips and green eyes. Her beauty made no sense. She was amazing.

  My girlfriend lay pregnant in our studio apartment sweating, her stomach swelling, her breasts swelling, my son growing inside of her, and there I am in my cultural anthropology class losing my mind over this girl. It didn't occur to me to feel guilty.

  But one day the patchouli girl came in late. She came in during a lecture on the phallus-driven rituals of the Balinese cockfight. She squeezed past me in the row, her skirt brushing my legs, her patchouli expanding around me. She sat down next to me, and I breathed her. Then she leaned over and asked me if we could meet after class so she could look at the notes she'd missed. I melted. I would kiss her. I would touch her shoulders and her face. I would lie down with her. And then I remembered my girlfriend pregnant on our futon, and for a moment I became enraged that I had been trapped by this girlfriend and this horrible thing inside her. And then such an intense guilt washed over me, such a sadness, I got sick. I stood, told Professor Lewis I was sick, and stumbled out of the room.

  For the first time, the enormity of the situation—I had procreated, I had made a life, I was not a good person—sank in. I stumbled away from class, down Bascom Hill, and because I could not go to my apartment to face my girlfriend, I went to the library, and after hyperventilating and slapping water on my face, and throwing up a little in the bathroom, I picked up a magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, to try to take my mind off things.

  That magazine contained a great interview with you, then Governor Clinton, candidate Clinton. You talked about integrity in that article. You said you were obsessed with the word integrity. Integrity, literally integrating mind, body, and spirit, so that one is ready for any challenge, so that one naturally acts on deep convictions. I was so moved, I trembled.r />
  Here was an answer, maybe. I thought about Balinese cockfighting, beautiful girls on Bascom Hill, the girl in class with her ropes of red hair, and Mary, my girlfriend, pregnant on our futon. Integrity, I thought, could save me.

  Starting that day, I had a burst of positive energy like I'd never had before. I stood up tall and made lists of my values, made lists describing the kind of father I wanted to be. I quit smoking. I started running. I quit my job at the deli in the student union (where night after night I'd stolen beer and gotten drunk) and applied for a job canvassing, going door to door fundraising for the environment, fundraising to save Wisconsin's wetlands. I got the job. I even started meditating to discipline my mind.

  President Clinton, by my twenty-third birthday in August, I felt in control. I felt powerful. I knew who I was and what I wanted. I had integrity.

  But there was a problem. A values problem. What I believed in was not the values themselves but the feel of having integrity, a feeling of power. I liked looking good to others (my mother, my girlfriend's parents). Sure, I wrote on my lists that honesty, kindness, generosity, action, etc., were my values. What does all that mean? Yes, I said I wanted to save the environment (fashionable convictions in Madison, Wisconsin), but I wasn't a true believer. Environmentalism won me friends. If people liked me, that was a sure sign that I was in the right, a good person.

  This is a flawed premise, and it led to trouble.

  Two weeks before your election I was training a new canvasser named Hannah Garrity. We canvassed a college house filled with drunk guys who said they'd give money if we had drinks with them. We had drinks. We talked environmental issues passionately, even though the drunk guys couldn't have cared less. Hannah was amazed by me, by my power, my abilities. She was tall and skinny, and we were completely naked and ready to have sex before I thought about what I was doing and ran away, ran home to my sleeping girlfriend, she so pregnant. I cried next to her and she said, “It's okay . . . It's okay . . . these are hard times.” I bawled.

  Earlier in the fall my girlfriend told me she'd like to kill me and if she had a gun she would gladly put a bullet between my eyes. Hormones are crazy, and we didn't have any chairs in our apartment so she had to lie there all day long. I knew things were rough and I had integrity, I believed, and told her then, at that moment she said she'd like to kill me, “Everything will be okay. I will take care of you forever.” She broke down sobbing, and I hugged her and kissed her wet cheeks.

  My son, Charlie, was born on the day you were elected. I wanted to name him William Jefferson Clinton Rimberg. Thankfully, Mary said no.

  Mary divorced me later.

  I'm in Paris. I walked almost all day yesterday and saw plenty of students, which reminded me of you and integrity.

  Integrity is dangerous. Literally integrating mind, body, and spirit? What spirit? I think we made up spirit to hide from the fact of our animalness. Integrity feels good, because it limits uncertainty. It gives you easy answers. But integrity stems from popular values, not from the spirit (which is made up).

  Think of it.

  Values come from mass culture. What if you grew up watching gyrating women in music videos and you've learned to value sex? Wouldn't integrity demand you have a lot of sex? What if you were born into a value system that detests Jews? Wouldn't killing Jews be a fully integrated action? What if popularity is the most important thing in your society? Wouldn't an integrated person do whatever it takes to be popular? Integrity means what, President Clinton? That you act on your values? What if the only values out there are shit?

  I know this is a simplification, but it bothers me. I think most behavior is mob behavior, even when it doesn't look like it. I'm not a fan of mobs. I'm not a fan of this place. I'm not a fan of yours, although I used to be. I'm sorry.

  I guess this is another suicide letter.

  T. Rimberg

  Letter 35

  September 26, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Uncle Jim (or the Owner of Uncle Jim's Pizza), Madison, Wisconsin,

  Hello. I'm very tired. I slept under a bridge in Paris next to the Seine, just for a couple of hours, I'm sure. I'm not going to be alive much longer, but had to write this. This is my last apology.

  In October of 1992 I'd thought I'd found my calling. I went door to door for WISPIRG, the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group, raising money to save the wetlands. Although I'd struggled to raise a cent in Rush Limbaugh suburbs, where they called me a tree hugger and feminazi, I'd learned I could talk college students into giving up a portion of their beer money very easily. I set records for the organization in student neighborhoods, and I became terribly arrogant about my abilities.

  I believed that I knew what I believed in: saving the wetlands. And I thought, the ends justify the means. Saving the wetlands might mean I'd have to talk about music with punks or Vespas with Mods or football with jocks or counterpoint in Bach with geeky cello players or vandalism with vandals or my hatred of FIBs (fucking Illinois bastards) with rednecks from northern Wisconsin. I really loved talking rednecks into giving money for the environment. I could lie and say FIBs were destroying Wisconsin floodplains with their summer homes. I could also say that hunters helped the environment by facilitating the circle of life.

  As long as I raised money, I'd tell the students whatever they wanted to hear. The fact is, I didn't believe in saving the wetlands. I believed in being loved, being a superstar, winning. I believed in believing in something and making it happen. Integrity.

  One night I went to a house full of rednecks to ask them to donate money. I talked a lot about FIBs and hunting and snowmobiles with them. They loved me and said they'd put out the money, but only if I came back later to drink at their keg party.

  I was training another canvasser that night by the name of Hannah Garrity. She was from Chicago but didn't seem to mind me calling a FIB a FIB. She told me, after having two beers at the rednecks' apartment, that I reminded her of Bill Clinton, because I could talk to all kinds of people about what mattered to them. Three houses later, we took shots of vodka to get some Mod kids to contribute money. They gave us $35. Outside that house, I told Hannah Garrity about how I had integrity, and then I kissed her. Power is sexy and I was drunk. She didn't know my soon-to-be-wife Mary was back in my apartment wondering if her Braxton Hicks contractions were real contractions.

  By nine, at the end of the shift, Hannah and I were really drunk and we both thought it'd be fine to keep the money we'd raised in my bag overnight, and we walked toward the redneck kegger arm in arm.

  The party was filled with sweatshirted Wisconsin boys and girls. They stared at us when we walked in, but the guys we talked to before were happy to see us, especially one guy, a huge one, who loved to bow hunt. His name was Tim. He jumped off the couch when we came in and hugged us both, screaming, “You showed up . . . I love you fuckers,” and we became part of the crew. And the place wasn't filled with Republicans, like I figured it would be. A whole bunch of them said they were voting for Bill Clinton. “You damn right you are,” I told them, high-fiving each one. Then somebody put on AC/DC and we passed a one-hitter around and around and around, and when I got up to go to the bathroom, Hannah Garrity followed me.

  Inside the bathroom she said, “I want to bite your neck and your ears.”

  I smiled.

  And we took turns peeing in that bathroom, as if it were obvious we should do so. This ridiculous free peeing might have signaled to me that something wasn't working properly, and I should go home, should call it a night and go home to pregnant Mary, but it seemed right; it felt so good. I felt perfect, loved, integrated, and I stumbled against the hall walls walking back to the living room, ecstatic to be with people who adored me.

  Somebody called out for cash so they could go buy tequila.

  I pulled ten twenties out of my canvassing bag and handed it to the tequila buyer and said, “Get ten bottles.”

  The party whooped and clapped. I was a star. />
  Then a loud conversation started. FIBs again. People were pissed about FIBs. “They drive like idiots,” someone shouted. “My dad can't afford the taxes on our cabin because FIBs drive up the property values,” said another. “They're cutting down Wisconsin forests to build their stupid summer homes,” I shouted. “We're losing our goddamn songbird habitat.” And then everybody got so angry, especially after someone mentioned the Chicago Bears.

  And then I had an idea. It seemed important. Praxis. Do you know what Praxis is, Uncle Jim? Bill Clinton talked about it in an interview I read in 1992. It means putting knowledge and beliefs to work. Acting on your beliefs.

  “You know what?” I said. “I've been walking around in this neighborhood all day, and there are huge amounts of FIBs. Check out the license plates. We should get the fuck rid of those ugly-ass license plates. Show some respect . . .”

  Everyone shouted, “Goddamn right we should.” And the whole crew, girls and boys and Hannah Garrity, too—even though, as I mentioned, she was from Chicago—stumbled down the dark stairs of the apartment and spread out across downtown to get rid of license plates from the State of Illinois. Praxis. Beliefs into action.

  Me, Hannah, and Tim took off together. And the FIB plates were everywhere we looked. We ripped FIB plates off Toyotas and Pontiacs and Hondas and BMWs (which had honking alarms) and a Volkswagen Cabriolet, whose whole bumper came off when big Tim yanked on the plate, and we almost died laughing, falling over, high-fiving. And then Tim started hurling license plates, and they'd curl and they'd bend in the air beautifully, loop-to-looping, catching the light of the streetlights above, crashing against houses, causing people to shout out from their windows, “I'm calling the cops.” And I threw a plate that boomeranged around and almost hit Hannah in the face, except I knocked it out of the air in front of her. “I love you,” Hannah told me. “I love you, too,” I said back, and we stood there and kissed.