The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg Page 6

“If you don't know, he's not. Because you'd know. You'd sense it, man.”

  Didn't respond. Replaced the nozzle, picked up the scissors. Light from the window poured in. Mom complained about this morning light, standing at the counter, you and Charlie over early on a Saturday for sugar cereal Mary wouldn't allow. Most Minnesotans would kill for this exposure, Mom. Charlie crunching Frosted Flakes. Charlie's gone, too. You grabbed the front of Cranberry's sprayed-down head. “How short?”

  “Inch, maybe. No, half inch, then it'll blend with the sides better. I'm going to make it purple. I had a dream about purple hair.”

  “Fine,” you said, cutting, not good cutting, wincing at the cuts.

  “Purple is the color. Where's your dad live, if he's not dead?”Cranberry asked, eyes shut tight.

  “Somewhere. I got an inheritance from Europe.” Grabbed the next few inches above CB's forehead, intending to mow the mohawk front to back.

  “Inheritance? Then your dad's dead.”

  “No.”

  “What?” said Cranberry.

  “I don't think so.” You stopped cutting, thought.

  “Inheritance? You don't think?”

  “I don't think he's dead.” The check and the letters and the postdating of the letters. And those pictures in Antwerp. And how he took you that time to Packer training camp. “I don't think so. But maybe by Hanukkah. He might not be dead, but by . . .” You cut slow, shearing the mohawk. Big, slow chops.

  “I don't follow, man.” Cranberry shifted, making you notch to the scalp, to his skin, which scared you, a bolt of fear at seeing skin. You paused, then began cutting again.

  And while cutting you thought: Dad's the only one. No David, who will not talk. No Mary, who divorced you for good reason. No Chelsea, who could not take you anymore. No kids, who live shielded from you under Mary's wing. No Mom, who isn't even Mom anymore. No one but dead Dad, who you loved so much, is left. “Cranberry?” you said.

  “What?”

  “Something . . .”

  “What?”

  “Just a second, I'm thinking.”

  “Thinking about what? Hey, stop cutting my hair. You're not paying—ow!”

  “Do you have a passport?” you asked.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “Stop cutting!”

  Day Five:

  Transcript 2

  * * *

  As soon as the decision was made. I made the decision to go find Dad in Belgium and it was like opening the front door to a blizzard. These dreams. There was Chelsea with her black hair all night long in that apartment . . . It all came blowing in. Not Chelsea's hair . . . Julia, too. Julia Hilfgott and Chelsea and rolling tanks, panzers I guess, and marching soldiers and all this furniture all over, which the little dream girl would smash . . . and the girl would chase me, crying out . . . and crying children outside and burning furnaces and smokestacks, and I was making love, or touching Chelsea . . . and my dad standing at the window . . .

  Yes, I saw real objects. I saw real things in dreams. European furniture. Specific furniture. The little dream girl would sit in this chair in the corner eyeballing me . . . it was this chair made from a—a needlepoint. Like a medieval tapestry. Lady and the Unicorn . . .

  You know it? How would you know that chair?

  Oh, the tapestry. It's famous. Yes, that one.

  The Unicorn symbolizes Christ's love? Are you kidding me?

  The Lady is who?

  These were Jews. You think they had some kind of Virgin Mary chair? That's a little parochial of you. I mean . . .? Jews for Jesus in Europe in 1942?

  Wait . . . Wait . . . I think you're putting your own spin . . . Listen, Barry. Don't try to use me to prove a point. You can't make this point out of my story.

  Fine.

  The chair was real. I saw it later. In an Indian's house.

  Indian from India, yes. In Antwerp.

  We had to go to Europe.

  I just did know. We had to go to Europe.

  What am I doing here? I was half dead when we started talking, Barry, and now I'm afraid you're going to put me in some Jesus story. What am I doing here?

  Why should I trust you?

  Letter 18

  September 14, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Cranberry,

  I'm not going to call you Nick Kelly. You are a liar, but I will continue to hold up my end of the ruse. I will still call you Cranberry. But you should know: You've completely broken my trust.

  Don't lie anymore, or I will throw you in the ocean. When my father left, I felt lost and hopeless, too, but I did not turn into a big fat whining liar.

  I will throw you in the ocean, Cranberry. Do you understand me?

  T.

  Day Five:

  Transcript 3

  * * *

  Preparations for Europe were made difficult because of Cranberry.

  Of course I forgave him.

  I trust Cranberry now. Of course.

  I had no choice but to put my faith in the little jackass. There was no one else, Barry.

  He did come through for me. I got lucky.

  Not only did he lie, he acted like a brat. Before we left he refused to do anything. He wouldn't run errands. He wouldn't make phone calls. We had a contract. But he didn't want to go to Europe, didn't want to support me in my . . . situation, which was in breach of our contract. So finally I told him he could leave. But he didn't want to leave.

  Poor kid. He had a lot of . . .

  Nobody likes to get caught lying. He was afraid.

  What lies? “My mom is a crack addict! Crack whore!” He said stuff like that all the time, which was partly why I felt the need to protect him. “Poor vulnerable kid. So smart for having grown up in such dire straits.”

  It didn't make sense that his crack whore mother kicked him out and kept his CDs. Why would she care if he was looking after a . . . another drug addict? I didn't have the best handle on what was happening. He lied and I believed him.

  He claimed to have a passport, but would never get it, and the date of our departure was creeping up. It came down to this: I had to get his passport number to complete the purchase of the tickets. I'd already ordered them on the Internet, and I needed to plug his number into the computer.

  Right. Why would the poor kid of a crack whore have a passport? Liar.

  One afternoon I just lost my mind and screamed at him, and he cried and looked like he wanted to hit me, all red in the face with the new purple hair, and he dove into the couch and kicked the floor. A temper tantrum, like a whiny little . . . teenage cartoon character. So I told him I was going to take a drive in the car and he'd better get in with me, get in the car and direct me to his house or wherever he had his passport, or he'd better have cleared out of my place by the time I got back. He got in the car, sobbed the whole way, glared at me, but took me to his house in St. Paul.

  A huge house. Summit Avenue.

  I would love to know what percentage of the punk kids you see out on the street are actually wealthy. “I can go be as weird as I want to be because my mom won't let me starve if it really comes down to it.”

  No. His name is not Cranberry. His name is Nick Kelly.

  He came back to the car, still crying, passport in his hand. I asked to look at it, saw his head in the picture, pre-mohawk, pre-punk, a preppie-looking Cranberry. He tried to tell me that the picture wasn't him and it wasn't his passport, that this passport belonged to the brother of a girl he once “did it” with. God. I'd already purchased a ticket for somebody named Cranberry, who is obviously fictional, and it's a nontransferable ticket, so I have to pay for a new one for Nick Kelly, and . . . I wasn't nice. I called Cranberry names. And I regret that . . . Cranberry is a good kid. His parents divorced when he was little and . . . This trip was, you know, amazing . . . I mean . . . Cranberry just needed to be fearless.

  He wasn't fearless, but he faced his fear. He went.

  I have a great deal of faith in him now. Yes.

/>   Section ll

  Western Europe

  Journal Entry,

  September 15, 2004

  * * *

  You convinced yourself that love is gigantic, that love is everything, is to be pursued without regard for family or responsibility or anything, because it's so huge, so critical for humankind. Because, without it we are mere donkeys humping donkeys to produce another generation of jackasses. Love is huge, you decided. And it cannot be denied. Love is God. That's what you thought.

  God loves David more and David loves no one.

  And Chelsea. Shit. Love?

  What were you thinking?

  Day Six:

  Transcript 1

  * * *

  People are camping at the crash site? That's very odd.

  What do you think they'll see there?

  Lights. You mean, what, streetlights?

  They're pilgrims? Like buckle-hat Pilgrims? Are there Indians, too? Thankful feasts of turkey and squash?

  I'm kidding. I am . . .

  I am not laughing at them, Barry. No. Listen, I—I'm really not laughing. I have no grounds to . . . I just wonder if these people . . . if they were sitting here talking to me . . . would they think me capable of . . . I mean, I'm lucky in that I don't die very easily. But that's the only remarkable . . .

  They're there for God, not for me. That's why you're here, too. For God.

  Thanks. That's nice of you to say. I woke up worried you don't like me.

  Because I told you I don't trust you.

  How about let's get going? That would make me happy. Let's talk Europe.

  Yes. I had the dreams every night at that point. Always. Unrelenting war.

  During the days? I thought . . . well, I thought a lot about Dad . . . stuff we did when I was a kid. I also thought about the first time I went to Europe. Nineteen ninety. I was twenty-one.

  I wasn't there for very long. Ten days only. Ten days completely upset my sense of self. Molly was the closest thing I had to home, sort of . . . most stable thing when I was a teenager.

  I wrote her on the plane, yes.

  Letter 19

  September 16–17, 2004

  Molly (née Fitzpatrick)

  Presumably on Some Street

  Likely in Chicago, Illinois

  * * *

  Dear Molly Fitzpatrick,

  Where did you go? Why? Did you leave because you wanted something different than me in a larger sense, e.g., some young Irish guy, or did my actions that day prompt you to go? Good questions, don't you think? Perhaps I should have asked them fourteen years ago.

  Well, I wouldn't be writing you, Molly Fitzpatrick (or whatever your married name is if you're married), except there were some signs I couldn't ignore—must've been the god of numbers (picture Charlton Heston) at work. The plane I just took from Minneapolis to Detroit was Northwest flight 616. Now I'm flying from Detroit to Amsterdam via KLM flight 1904 (yes, I'm in flight right now). If you put the flight numbers together—6161904—you get an important date: June 16, 1904. That's the day on which James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses took place! I mean, remarkable, don't you think? How bizarre! And that date reminded me of you. I just had to write.

  Oh, you probably don't get it. You're probably thinking: “Why does that date have any significance? What does James Joyce have to do with me?” Maybe you find this a little spooky—getting a letter from a boyfriend with whom you broke up (broke up—hmm . . . nothing official, was there? how about “from whom you disappeared?”) fourteen years ago . . . am I right? Spooked?

  Well, Molly, I think you should think twice before crumpling up this letter and tossing it aside as detritus from your past or the product of an unkempt mind (though perhaps it is—to be completely honest with you, I've killed myself since writing it). For the two of us, there's great significance to the date June 16, 1904. If there had never been a Ulysses, we might be together now, in the perfect marriage, perhaps. You know I always liked you. Don't you ever wonder, “What if?”

  I'm sorry. I'm going to put words in your mouth.

  “What if I didn't disappear?” says Molly Fitzpatrick.

  It was June 15, 1990. We were between our sophomore and junior years of college. Really it's amazing we were still dating. What couple starts seeing one another during their junior year of high school, heads off to separate colleges in different states upon graduation, and keeps on trucking, keeps on keepin' on, keeps on being a couple? Sure, we had superb “see-you-after-not-seeing-you-for-three-months” sex. I mean the sex was short in duration (sorry), but it was fantastically energetic, right? And we were still dating.

  And I was so dedicated to you, Molly. I was a damn hind-wagging Irish setter (not that I'm Irish—that's your gig) following you around with sad eyes, sniffing after you. And you liked having me around, apparently, which was enough to make you everything to me, absolutely everything. You slept with me (“In the biblical sense!” cries Charlton Heston) but kept an emotional distance, and that combination, I think, caused me to ache knees, hips, and elbows for you. Sometimes you'd give me moments of yourself, and you would call me (or not) late at night, in my dorm room, me waiting for you to call because you never picked up when I called. Oh God! I ached for you, but of course I couldn't trust you. Why wouldn't you pick up when I called?

  That's right, Molly baby. I couldn't trust you; I couldn't believe you attended Notre Dame University without falling in love with some young Kennedy or having nasty one-night sex with some young O'Neil. I couldn't believe you wouldn't leave me. (You did leave me.) But you said on the phone when you did call: “I won't cheat. Stop it, T. I won't leave you.” Still, my suspicious heart suspected you. And there we were in Dublin on June 15, 1990, sitting in a pub, on the goddamned Irish vacation we'd talked about since high school, drinking fat Guinness beers like we said we would, and you were morose, distant, sighing. Man!

  “What's going on, Mol?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” you said. “Just tired from the flight.”

  “You don't seem happy,” I said. “Aren't you happy? We're finally here. You get to show me the whole Fitzpatrick gig.”

  “I'm just tired, T.”

  “I was on the same flight. I've had the same schedule. I slept less than you. You were distant before we left, too.”

  “Jesus Christ,” you hissed, attracting the attention of the old Irish men hunched over the dark-wood bar. “Can you leave me alone for one second? Have you ever heard of jet lag?”

  I lifted my Guinness and swallowed big, five times, emptying the contents of the pint. My eyes watered, my throat stung. I looked at you; your dark eyes, Molly, and I saw nothing, no indication of your inner state—no love, no betrayal either—just flat dark disc eyes. And I needed something, some indication. So I threw it out there: “You don't love me anymore, do you? You're seeing some goddamn rich Kennedy son-of-a-bitch—”

  “You're going to ruin this trip, too,” you spat. “You are so ridiculously paranoid. You need professional help.”

  What did you mean by “ruin this trip, too”? What other trip had I ruined, Molly? We never really went on trips before. This is of some importance. I'm trying to sort things out before I'm gone (too late).

  And we were yelling drunk, screaming drunk, making a big scene by the end of the night. Bar man said, “Get out of here,” as we shouted at each other (“You are such a prick/bitch!” etc.). We kept screaming at each other in the street, people in the street screaming at us to be quiet. We hissed at each other going up the stairs in the bed and breakfast, other guests poking their heads from behind heavy wooden doors (“Shhh . . .”). We spat at each other in the bedroom (which we'd booked as T. and Molly Rimberg, to avoid any Catholic discomfort, to seem married, which broke my heart). And you passed out while I shouted at you and I barely slept, drunken sobbing the entire night. You slept fine, which still makes me angry.

  Remembering that night, June 15, 1990, it seems impossible I liked you. There were good times, weren't th
ere? Why was the fact you were Irish so important to me?

  Holy shit, I'm uncomfortable on this airplane. Two Dutch guys are sitting in the seats next to me. They are so freaking tall, Molly, such Long Tall Dutchmen. In fact I'd say there are thirteen feet of Dutchman between me and the aisle. This complicates matters, matters being I have to take a whiz. What do you think? Is it wrong to pee into a cup on a plane next to two jolly giants? (They're laughing and laughing and laughing.)

  According to the television screen hanging from the ceiling above me (which shows a map of our progress), we are about to leave North America behind. I can't see Minnesota on the map anymore (nor Wisconsin, where we grew up). The Midwest has disappeared! Good. Some home. No home to me. The great North Atlantic, colored royal blue in this televised facsimile, lies ahead. I'll let you know when I can see Ireland. Hey hey! The dinner cart is coming!

  The smell of stale food is in the air. People are falling asleep. The movie Die Another Day plays on the screen in front of me, no map anymore. The Dutch guys are asleep. The son-of-a-bitch next to me has his feet draped across my lower legs. How can these Dutch stay sleeping through so many blinding movie explosions? I know how. The Dutch are comfortable on this plane taking them back to their families, comfortable on KLM, their airline, with their stewardesses, who are tall and beautiful and smile sweetly at the other Dutch people, and I suppose I will Die Another Day as will you, Molly, unless you're dead already. I don't know for certain you're alive. Here are the odds, though, if you're playing the odds . . . odds say I will die before you do.