The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg

by Geoff Herbach

  “What?”

  “She seemed upset and she left.”

  I ran to the room. Your bag, your clothes, your shoes, your brush, your everything was gone. I woke the proprietor, and she said you paid for the night then left. She said, “You should treat your wife better, Mr. Rimberg.”

  “Who?”

  “You should treat YOUR WIFE better.”

  Then I ripped through all of my clothes and notebooks and even through my bathroom goods hoping to find a phone number to call Boylen or a number for the Cullens with whom we were staying in that little town on the ocean the next night. I didn't have numbers. You carried it all, Molly. You'd done all the organizing. (They were all your people.) I couldn't even remember the name of the ocean-side town. I tried calling your parents, though they hated me. They weren't home. My head filled with so much pressure . . . so much, it almost exploded. And then I thought: this is right . . . go with it, T.

  And when I finally left the B&B, Julia Hilfgott was two blocks away, walking alone in the dark. I chased her, half sure things were falling in place.

  “I thought you had second thoughts,” she whispered when I caught her. Her eyes were red. She was shivering.

  “No. Just shoring things up . . .”

  And we walked on together, quiet. But the fucking Molly Fitzpatrick Irish termites . . . they were already eating me up.

  I won't tell you much about Antwerp except to say those termites: our history, Molly, our mysterious parting, my excessive guilt, my distrust of anything that came naturally to me, but mostly my pining over you—it all killed this thing with Julia Hilfgott. Listen, Molly, don't take this too lightly, I'm serious, I saw myself in her and never saw that in anyone again until I met a woman who reminded me of her so much, but was adult and in the present, and she left me because I was married to someone else, someone like you. And what if I'd stayed with you? Disaster. And what if I'd stayed with Julia Hilfgott, whom I followed to Antwerp where my father's family comes from, both our families, Julia Hilfgott's and mine? All I could do in Antwerp was cry about you, think about you, fall back into this life, my life now . . . and my life is not good, Molly.

  Julia Hilfgott didn't want me to leave Antwerp. I did leave (without saying goodbye).

  What if James Joyce went back to Ireland after two weeks of exodus? What if Moses got homesick for Pharaoh? I imagine they'd have strung themselves up, too, eventually (picture Charlton Heston dangling from a tree).

  And a year after I left Julia, me back in Madison, I met Mary Sheridan, who looks like you. A year later she was pregnant. (She's much nicer than you were, but still Irish and not like me.)Twelve years and three children later, she kicked me out of my house, which you would've done, too.

  And now I'm divorced, alone, which I deserve, and I'm traveling back to Antwerp where I'm hoping to find something of my dad who is either dead or not . . . Antwerp, where I went with Julia Hilfgott . . . maybe I'll find something to give to my children, something HE, oh my absent father, did not give to me. I've never had a clue about home, and I'm tired of doing nothing but hurting my children, hurting my wife, hurting all people, though I suppose I'm writing you, Molly Fitzpatrick, my first love, my Irish obsession, to hurt you—not because the flights made the James Joyce date, I made that up, too, I'm a terrible liar. No, I don't want to hurt you, don't let this letter hurt you, and now I'm landing, the plane low over thin-slit canals that reflect the growing sun, and the day after I mail this letter to you, I'll be dead (so much for not hurting my children—at least I won't be able to again).

  This is, after all, a suicide letter.

  Where did you go that night? I'll never know. I never tried to find out.

  I hope you are doing well, Molly, honest to God. I suppose you're a lawyer now. I really hope you're happy.

  And I did love you, too much, in an immature way. I was really young—It doesn't matter . . . I'm sorry.

  Here's Amsterdam. I'm going to smoke so much hash, Molly. Goodbye.

  T.

  Day Six:

  Transcript 2

  * * *

  Destiny or happenstance? I guess that's the question. There was so much intensity right then. Really, I had three paths. One) I stay dedicated to Molly Fitzpatrick and meet her back at the bed and breakfast. I'd probably be a househusband living in the northern suburbs of Chicago (and suicidal). Two) I leave with Julia Hilfgott and follow that path, in which case . . . who knows? I might have Jewish kids, know who I am, and live in New Jersey—who knows what me and Julia would've decided? Would I have found a home with Julia? Three) I opt out, which is what I did. Hid away. I took a disconnected route, went back to Madison, didn't call Molly ever again, never contacted Julia, and began a whole new life, apart from everything. Destiny or random bounce of the pinball?

  Of course you believe in destiny, Barry. God wouldn't fire us out into life and let us bounce around like pinballs. Clearly God wanted me to go back to Wisconsin to work in the deli at the student union.

  Yes, I met my ex-wife at the student union.

  It was intense, seeing Julia Hilfgott at that cemetery . . . I did see her explode in light. That was all true. I recognized her.

  I saw her light up in Antwerp again. Julia clearly is . . . something. I'd be lost without her.

  Right, Barry. God works in . . . God's big plan for me.

  What do you think God's plan is for all the moms and kids dying in Iraq? How about that school terror thing in Russia? All those school kids herded into a gym and murdered, Barry? What was that? Does God plan all that terrible crap?

  How is that disrespectful?

  Journal Entry,

  September 17, Schiphol, Amsterdam

  * * *

  Cranberry was angry we couldn't get seats together. But he came off the plane smiling, shaking his head. On his arm a young woman.

  This woman, this Dutch, took us from the gate to a little café/casino with a smoking section near the gate. Cranberry is on his third cigarette already. He is golden, so much color in his face, staring at this girl. She is lanky and Dutch and in a business suit, and she can't take her eyes off Cranberry. What is she seeing? Her name is Kaatje.

  Day Seven:

  Transcript 1

  * * *

  The diocese is paying? What if I'm ready to leave? Will the diocese let me leave?

  Thank God. Abducted by the Church. That would worry me. You guys have a jail?

  Go ahead. I'm feeling good this morning. That secretary of yours . . .

  Yeah, Faye! She brought me brownies and the original Herbie, the Love Bug. We watched it together.

  Faye thought it was weird, definitely.

  It was fun. I'm really feeling good this morning.

  No better time than the present, Father B.

  My first experience of Amsterdam was . . . I think it was colored by jet lag. I didn't sleep all night on the plane with those Dutch guys, and then I couldn't stay awake once we landed, especially after Cranberry went to meet with this girl, Kaatje. So I fell asleep hard but then heard music, Chopin, a nocturne—this is so vivid—someone playing a nocturne in the middle of the day, and I was in or out of sleep, and this nocturne turned into a dream, which was a quiet dream. I was in the apartment in the dream, nocturne floating overhead, and I'm moving from one piece of furniture to the next—really one piece of art to the next because the apartment is filled with modern art, the furniture is modern art, modern chandeliers hanging. Except there's that chair again, that Unicorn and the Lady chair . . . and the little girl isn't around, which feels lonely, because I expect her to be with me . . . and I'm looking at this chair, the Unicorn and Lady chair, and something moves . . . the woman moves, the stitched woman is moving . . . her head is swaying on her long neck and her eyes are black and deep and her black hair, dyed black like Chelsea's, slides out from under this . . . this headdress . . . and the music, Chopin . . . and while I'm staring at the tapestry woman moving, which—it is dawning on me—is absolutely terrif
ying, the earth begins to rumble . . . shaking . . . and the chandeliers are rattling and the plates in cupboards and the sculpture is all moving from this intensifying vibration . . . and I know that something terrible is coming. I scream.

  Chelsea. I think . . . Chelsea is the tapestry woman, Barry. She's stitched into a chair in my dreams and she's moving.

  I felt this terror when I was in Antwerp before. Molly was gone . . . like all of America gone . . . me haunted in Antwerp with Julia. A fundamental hauntedness . . . I'm really wound into something in Europe . . . wound into . . . I can't express it.

  I woke from that dream by screaming and pinching myself, and I jumped out of bed and ran down the steps to the lobby. Down there an African woman was playing the Chopin nocturne on a piano. I had to cover my mouth because this . . . I was so . . . really seriously terrified . . . and Cranberry had gone off someplace with an unknown Dutch girl and Chelsea was a moving tapestry and this long African woman was playing Chopin . . .

  It's like history isn't linear for me in Europe. I carry history . . . a somatic . . . cell level . . . connectedness. I mean you've read what I wrote about Antwerp, right?

  And I remember thinking . . . I wrote something about it in the journal. Does God not want me here? Because that dream was scarier than any . . . was more real and . . .

  Define God, Barry. Does he have a big Santa Claus beard? Paint a picture for me.

  I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

  You remind me of Chelsea . . . I mean . . . not exactly.

  You just talk like her.

  Journal Entry,

  September 17, 2004,

  After Dinner with Kaatje and Cranberry

  * * *

  They were so into each other, they forgot you were even there. You stayed quiet, just watched. Cranberry and Kaatje exchanging ions, wrapped in a field of gravity. And even though they've known each other a day, you know they belong to one another. And if they belong to one another, belong with each other, then there is something larger than two individual human animals, something that makes sense, creates connection and sense, that makes it necessary for two people to be with one another. Or you're crazy.

  What if you never took a wrong path because those paths led to Chelsea? What if the only wrong path you took was letting her leave and that's when God started hating you?

  Letter 20

  September 18, 2004

  * * *

  Dear Chelsea, my love,

  Is there a God? Something big outside our tiny lives, who drives us, individually, to make big choices for illogical reasons? If not, who is driving, Chels? Who is pumping the gas? My car is heading off a cliff. You should see my nightmares. (You're in them—you're made of thread on a chair or we're making love while hiding from soldiers.) Am I driving off a cliff, or am I being driven?

  I had to believe in God when I met you. If you believe in soul mates and the transcendental horseshit that comes with that notion, you have to believe in God, or something. You have to believe there's a master plan. You have to fall on your knees and say thanks. You have to spread the word. You have to be a televangelist to the best of your abilities. You have to say to the camera, to the interviewer, “Oh Christ, yes, Bob! Look at me. Look at her. We're living proof! God exists, Bob. Look at us!”

  First things first. If you're receiving this letter, the rumors are true. Believe the hype. I killed myself. (You are blameless . . . I love you.) And I wasn't going to write you, Chels. I promised myself I wouldn't, because I don't want to put any of this on you.

  My promises? They aren't worth much. I'm writing.

  I used to write you a lot. Lots of words. This is not that. I don't write e-mails anymore. I won't send you a postcard from Amsterdam (where I am now—sitting, on a very cold, gray day, in a stony square near some old palace, now art museum, dark clouds low over the buildings). I won't sit under fluorescent lights and write you a Post-it that says, “You know who loves you? You know. You know. You know,” and put it on your computer at work—neither of us works there anymore. I won't send you fake memos, asking you to lunch, to coffee, to bed. Those days are gone.

  Suicide letters. That's what I write. I'm writing hundreds, maybe thousands.

  But this one is different. This one isn't about blame, Chels, because it's to you, and you didn't kill me. This suicide letter is about God and love, and I love you forever. It does, however, contain the most important information a suicide letter can (otherwise it's not much of a suicide letter): I am going to kill myself. Goodbye.

  You're ambivalent. I know you wish you had faith, and you sort of envy and hate people of faith for their certainty and their idiocy. Maybe you don't want to talk about God these days like you did when we were together, God always on the tip of your tongue. I don't want to talk about God, either, never did, except I can't help it here at the end of my life. God is everywhere or nowhere. I am an atheist one moment and a pantheist the next. God God God. Today I think God exists.

  What's my proof? Cranberry. Cranberry is my administrative assistant and butler (yes, butler).

  Oh, Cranberry. He's lovely, had a powerful mohawk, now a short, purple coif. He is a poseur, a costume punk, the kind I could never be, though I wanted to have the guts, the panache (you have that). He stomped through the city in big boots and black pants, a scowl on his face, growling at people outside of sports bars, telling them to go back to the suburbs . . . He grew up rich (ha ha!) which, whether he admits it or not (and I am working on him to accept this fact), gives him freedom we of the middle class don't have. He is also tender and sensitive and a really beautiful poet. And Chelsea, he's in love, in beautiful, terrible love.

  Of course a love like that makes me think of you.

  On the plane over here, Cranberry and I sat separately. We booked our tickets late, and the flight was full. I spent the night next to two Dutch guys with long legs, crammed in the window seat, suffocating, unable to get up. I took this seat, because I thought it would be most comfortable, and I am the boss. Cranberry sat in the middle section of the DC-10. He sat in between two women, one tall but not so tall, the other a mother with a screaming baby on her lap, a newborn, a creature of God (a headache waiting to happen). But Cranberry had the best seat in the house, the best flight, even with the screaming and crying and burping provided by that poor, poor baby who couldn't possibly know how to deal with pressure changes and claustrophobia and bad food—which might also have been true of Cranberry, a poor baby at nineteen, innocent and unknowing, if something incredible hadn't happened to him.

  The tall girl on his right had been visibly moved for the half-hour prior to takeoff. And moments after takeoff, she turned to Cranberry, eyes opened wide and filled with tears, and she shook her head, silent, spooking Cranberry. Then she whispered to him in her funny Swedish Chef Dutch accent, “I dreamt of you last night.”The plane was still climbing hard and Cranberry was already having a mind-blowing life experience! (I'm a marvelous employer.)

  Apparently Cranberry is susceptible to spiritual connection, magical connection, magical realism, ghosts, etc. . . . perhaps God. (I am, too, sometimes.) Immediately, Cranberry fell in deep love with the tall girl. Who could blame him? (Not me. I dreamt of you for years before we met, and you know what happened when we did.)

  Could this girl, this long tall Dutch girl, be the special companion of Cranberry's soul? He thought a fat girl with multiple piercings who smelled like sausage was his soul mate before. But this feels different.

  Do you know why Van Gogh started painting? He failed miserably as a preacher. Not because he couldn't communicate, but because he was too good at communicating what he saw as God's truth. Yes, Van Gogh drove his Belgian congregation crazy. Be beautiful! he would shout. You are beautiful! Made in God's image! And they were, this congregation, rather than turned on to God, seriously discomforted. Be beauty! something deep in them would cringe. They wanted solace for their gray days, not ecstatic messages, which had nothing to do with t
heir shitty lives. They sat in the hard wood pews in black suits, hands hurting from long days of work, bleak light dim through colorless windows, stale air, gray faces, mouths downturned, elders growing in anger over this wacked-out Van Gogh, silently at first. The congregation eventually spoke. They said, “Van Gogh must go.” And he was devastated, hysterically so, but undaunted. There are many paths to God. Van Gogh decided to spread his message of joy and beauty through painting, through creating amazing things. God on earth.

  I was undaunted by the brutal realities of our relationship: my marriage, my kids, your evolving heart. You are beauty; you are God. I pursued you and continue to do so in many different ways.

  There are many paths to Chelsea?

  And of course, Van Gogh reminds me of me, except I have no talent and don't make anything. But when I see his swirling paintings, the fields of hay, the light, the texture, his bent bedroom, terrifying and beautiful, his swirling night sky, his vibrating self-portraits, I think of me. I, too, believed in beauty's power. I worked hard to demonstrate the vibrant, vibrating colors for you. So I didn't have a proper medium, didn't have the proper talent to make these perfect visions plain? I failed.

  But talent doesn't matter much in the end. Live by beauty, die by it. Van Gogh painted Starry Night, then shot himself in the chest and died. And what about me? I made love to you, then hung myself in some empty meat locker in Poland (why not Poland?). Van Gogh and I have much in common.