First off, I know that you are not George Curtis Flynn who was born in Davenport, Iowa, on May 30, 1978. While I cannot expect you to refrain from reading this highly personalized communication, it is my duty to inform you that you have already broken the law. You opened mail that was not addressed to you. That said, I will forgive you if you fulfill your moral obligation to submit this package to the nearest authorities, to be forwarded to George Flynn or his living relatives, a group of people that depending on the velocity of fortune’s breath might now be considered my own relatives.
Dear George,
I love you. This is the sum of what I have to say, a statement whose genuineness I am so certain of that everything that follows can be considered mere babble. I am only continuing to write because there is so much I wish I could say to you right now that I simply can’t. While I know you have an inkling about my feelings for you, and perhaps even feel the same way, it is my opinion that by saying these words right now, to your face, would only cause damage to the only person in the world whose love and high regard I could not bear to live without. I am talking about my sister Emily, obviously. It is possible that this letter will find the two of you married with children, in which case I will wish I’d never written it. Chances are by that time I’llhave adapted myself to the strict and affectless demeanor of the mature capitalist, which will entail hiding my feelings under multiple layers of professional and profit-driven sophistication. If this is the situation, then you will have no choice other than to assume the juvenile crush you all suspected me of has long passed, without a remaining speckle of the romantic silliness so common of teenaged sisters rivaling each other for attention. I assure you now that silliness has nothing to do with it. I love you. This is the only sure thing in my largely uncertain life that is currently posed with such questions of common adequacy as the capacity to walk under the power of my own muscles, or even more frighteningly, my future ability to see.
The idea for this time capsule comes at a particular moment of fear. I have an upcoming surgery scheduled for August 5, 1995, in Rochester, Minnesota, that will supposedly shorten my relapses and lengthen the periods between them. If I should die during this surgery, or somehow lose the ability to think clearly, I’lllikely never have the opportunity to say the words that I believe everyone should be given the chance to say, with the greatest amount of selfless indulgence and romantic sincerity, at least once.
I have one gift for you. No matter what happens, I will never attempt to publish the following comic series, the original first edition of which I’ve included in this time capsule, taking every preventative measure to ensure that it remains intact, and choosing this location so that my capsule will be found before the contents would unavoidably yield to dust. As you will see, “The Red Menace” details the life and adventures of a scrappy former wrestler turned lovable schizophrenic superhero. His existence results from a botched CIA experiment involving the implantation of the preserved left brain of J. Edgar Hoover, as well as mass injections of gorilla testosterone, in the hopes of creating a police servant with enough balls to single-handedly hog-tie every deadbeat, rapscallion, and otherwise weak link in the nation’s all-encompassing army of one. A kiss from me to you.
Love,
Katie [signed]
We can all correctly assume that my discovery of this letter was met with cathartic doses of tears and laughter. For a moment while hovering over my ditch in the woods I felt our baffling world had been whittled down to its most affirmative, life-giving functions. But despite Katie’s sparkling prose, handwritten on parchment as perfectly preserved as she’d intended, it turns out that the airtight, leak-proof package in which her letter was housed was buried too deeply to be recovered within the span of a workingman’s lunch hour. This required that I continue my dig the following day, when I found myself marching from one end of the forest to the other still smirking at every word of Katie’s ghostly confessional that lay buried in rich Iowegian earth near the base of a walnut tree at the end of a long steel wire that I was destined to stumble upon once and then never again.
Fifty-two
As I feel myself yielding to a habit of resurrecting every glossy-lipped memory that gives a man the false impression that the lips in question remain forever as willing and pliant, prompting him every few years to write courageous love letters that he will never mail, to addresses unknown, I will only say that this account has failed in its primary purpose: to once and for all rid the author of his pull toward a past that in a mere decade has rendered its real-life characters no more than ghosts, fictions of a mind that would rather believe what could have been than in what was. I leave the reader with a brief and ultimate exchange with Emily Schell. The location was the Iowa State Fairgrounds, the time the 155th anniversary, a mere matter of weeks after our crew had gathered at the mouth of the Grand Basin to witness the gentle unifying flow of red clay waters pouring in from the lagoons and streams that linked our new lake to the Des Moines River, knowing from there we’d tapped into the Mighty Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico and all the great oceans across the globe.
While Zach had joined our crew for another lake-digging assignment in a residential development out in Clive, Frank gave me two weeks off so I could volunteer at the fair and enjoy the crowd’s response to the fruit of our labors. By lottery during the first training day I scored one of the prized jobs at the highly popular state fair beer garden. As expected, a record-setting crowd turned up for the opening day, when it was hard to find a single man without a wife, girlfriend, or child stacked on his shoulders. With an up-close view of the whole scene I swore the heart of the American Midwest was pounding more crudely for those ten blazing days than ever before. Everyone raved that it was the best state fair in memory, with much improved fireworks and music performances, and even an impressive competitive pickle eater from Red Oak who stole the show by bringing a world record to Iowa. But the biggest news of the week related to the freshly established tradition of couples kissing the moment their paddleboats drifted beneath the footbridge over the Grand Basin. While there was little consensus over the exact brand of fortune this act was supposed to bring, soon there was a line a mile long to rent paddleboats, and more than enough TV crews and cheering crowds for the moment one of the mariachis, propped up on the footbridge railing in an attempt to romance the kissing couples beneath him, tumbled head over heels into the basin.
Serving Oktoberfest mugs in the beer garden was a high-profile position. I ran into all sorts of people I hadn’t seen in years, including Tommy Wick from the old neighborhood in Davenport, Coach Grady and his hermetic shifty-eyed wife who no one had ever seen before, and Jessie Walters, the girl wrestler from Winterset who was now engaged to her high school rival, Dave Friberg from Valley. I even ended up being approached by Floyd Truman, the big man from the funeral parlor who practically shook my hand off my wrist, introducing me to his date as his “old pal George” before bragging about his luck shooting thirty-seven ducks in a row.
On the final night of the fair, before Emily even crossed the threshold of the beer garden tent, I spotted her rambling along the midway arm in arm with Lauren and Ashley, attempting to drag them into a soothsayer’s booth called “Fiona’s Fortunes.” Her hair was still dyed jet-black, though it was nearly the same length and style as when I first met her in the hallway outside the St. Pius auditorium. As soon as they stepped into the tent, Ashley and Lauren whistled and shouted my name, beaming like the Fourth of July until Emily snagged the backs of their shirts, thus halting their forward progress. After a brief, secretive exchange, Ashley and Lauren planted themselves at a table facing the grandstand, freeing Emily to make her solemn honor-guard approach. On reaching the counter she draped herself over a prop wooden barrel of ale, then leaned on her elbows to survey the boisterous scene. I continued dunking mugs in the tub, pouring a few pitchers until she turned my way and sighed, gazing all around me like she was searching for something she might have left behind the bar
.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Just looking.”
“How about a beer?”
“I’ll be taking the night off, thank you. All right if I stand here a minute?”
“All right by me,” I said.
She tipped her invisible hat, apparently content to catch her breath, mostly fixing her people-watching gaze on a stage barker across the midway playing Guess Your Weight. In the chaos of pop music and drunken sing-alongs, we were almost anonymous enough to feel alone.
“You staying for the fireworks?” I asked.
“Of course. Any word on who’ll be playing the grandstand tonight?”
“That’s top secret.”
“Didn’t tell you, did they?”
“I can’t even tell you whether or not they told me. That’s the biggest secret in the state.”
Emily nodded, playing less than pleased with my snobbery. I had the feeling that unless I did something about it, our conversation would continue just as flirty and aloof as it started. (Perhaps that would’ve been for the best, though I still haven’t decided.) The song changed to an album of screaming country rock. I knew our time was almost up, that soon Emily would tell me what an expert I was at pouring beer, and maybe wink, then return to her table and that would be the end of it. When I felt certain she was ready to go, I spoke up and told her exactly what I was thinking. I told the truth, more for myself than anything.
“You know, when I think about Katie now, I don’t think about the girl with the crutches and the ponytail.”
Emily turned around, pushing a few empty glasses along the bar just as casually as if I’d asked how her semester had ended. “So what’s she like now?”
“She’s changed a lot since then. She’s more mature now and she’s not dead at all. She’s alive and I sort of feel about her the same that she felt about me. Like an immature crush, something that will probably never work out. I know that’s strange, but I hope you don’t take it the wrong way. It’s just that she’s become this beautiful and wise little girl and I can’t help trusting her with all my biggest decisions. I see her all the time, but it doesn’t make me feel sad. Seeing her doesn’t bother me at all.”
Ashley and the others started waving their glasses in the air, calling the both of us over to join them. Emily leaned on the bar, not seeing them, or anyone else. “You sound like a person in love. You sound like you’re in love with her.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I am. What’s not to love? She’s perfect. She always says exactly what I need to hear. And she doesn’t judge me, no matter what mistakes I make. She’s just there to tell me she believes in me and she wants to help out.”
Emily moved a few glasses around, almost like a dealer in Liar’s Dice. She got lost for a few seconds, trying to understand. “What does she do? Like, what is she doing when you see her?”
“Usually I find her standing in some hidden area of wherever I am, just looking at me and waiting for me to notice that she’s there. Once I was walking across the Hy-Vee parking lot when it was raining. I saw her standing under a black umbrella behind the place where they line up all the grocery carts. I was thinking about everything that happened with us, and how I don’t feel like going to college but I’ll probably have to. How I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. You know, worrying about everything at once. Katie skipped on over to me and put her arm around my shoulder and said, You can cry, George. Nobody’s watching. Let it all out.”
Emily looked away, pursing her lips until they lost their color, turning suddenly sad and silent. A waitress shouted an order and I poured a few more pitchers. The beer garden wasn’t the place for such a scene. I regretted making more of the conversation than necessary. I suddenly felt that I’d gone too far.
“You said she skipped over to you?” she asked.
“Yeah, she’s usually skipping, like she’s in remission and feeling strong. Like she might even be cured.”
Emily thought about it, squinting as she pondered the possibilities, like they were all there swimming in my eyes. “You know, the worst is when people ask me how many brothers or sisters I have. I never know what to say. It’s hard when you used to be someone’s older sister.”
She paused, waiting for a response. But I didn’t say anything. I had no idea how that must have felt. Emily pushed off the counter, taking another deep breath and smiling. “Good to see you, George. I think I’ll go sit down now.”
I gave her one last smile as she turned and walked away. While I thought I’d made progress in closing my heart to her, at that moment I knew I’d failed. I cursed the fact that there was never enough time, that I still loved her in a way that felt impossible to repeat. She was halfway across the tent when I caught up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. I couldn’t let her go without asking. When she turned around, her hair swung in front of her face and she tucked it behind her ear.
“If someone asked you who was your first love, would you tell them it was a redhead from Davenport?”
“No one’s ever asked me.”
“But if they did.”
“What do you think?” she said, taking a half step back. “What do you think I would say?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily’s gaze sharpened over the swarming crowd. A summer shiver briefly raised her. She replied in one blushing word, deep and stretched and falling.
“George.”
1 I haven’t seen any of these people in seven or eight years. I heard at one point that Tino was happily married to his second wife, despite splitting his paychecks with his crazed first wife who once set fire to his carport and the fire spread to the neighbor’s trees and living room. Hadley works at the Chicago Board of Trade, which I assume means he’s a trader, though I really don’t know. Ashley is an employment headhunter and cancer survivor, Lauren the owner of a less-than-solvent fitness club. We’ll get to Smitty later, but it should be known that I consider him a patriot in the best sense of this oft-misconstrued term.
2 Is this episode necessary to share? While sitting at my kitchen table next to a Beckett Sports Card Monthly that has informed me of the relative worthlessness of my vast baseball card collection, all my memories seem vital. But my sense memory tells me that this episode is important, and my sense memory is much clearer than my factual memory, which makes me think the rule of this narration should be to let the senses lead the way. But first one fact: the Schell house has been on the market for years now and finally sold last week for the asking price of $700,000. I have reason to believe Mr. and Mrs. Schell have left the state, and possibly the country, though this is purely an instinctual reaction, hardly based on anything.
3 My most convincing dream during this time involved a visit to a debutante ball at a stately mansion in the Deep South. Midway through the party Emily had dragged me into the butler’s quarters where we crawled inside a peculiar cupboard stacked with silverware the size of tractor attachments, and shiny porcelain plates like round skating rinks. After crawling inside a tank-sized teacup we sat facing each other, disrobing and throwing each article of clothing over the rim of the cup. Emily clamped her feet behind my back and we rocked back and forth, soon enough finding a common groove, just like when we’d kissed on the swing set before school. The teacup rattled and rocked along with us, banging against the plates as Emily shuddered and I came and we both burst out laughing, swearing, praising the gods of every religion we ever heard of. I woke the next morning with semen drying on my thighs and knotting my pubic hairs, feeling duped, cheated, etc. This dream still returns to me from time to time, with the same results, and I’m convinced it always will.
4 Recently Smitty figured out how to coordinate his bimonthly phone calls with my fifth-period lunch break. His last call came from a GI bar in downtown Seoul, which he claimed had an impressive library of classic vinyl, a decent porterhouse, and Korean bartenders who not only performed flame-juggling cocktail shows, but would write your name on a bottle of booze
and not pour it for anyone else. I advised him to go AWOL on the slow boat across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi to Davenport, where I’d pick him up and drive him home. But after I said this the phone went silent and all I could hear was Willie Nelson crooning on one of those vinyl albums he’d mentioned. “I’ve never even been tardy,” Smitty finally said. “And I’m never gonna be tardy, either.” I only tell you this to point out the irony in the fact that every once in a while I still consider visiting the recruiting station and signing up.
5 This past fall I was invited as a guest speaker for an extracurricular class called Modern Life-styles, which is basically a euphemism for Home Economics, despite its greater emphasis on personal well-being in an age of increased options and changing gender roles. I was asked to present the students with a portrait of singlehood. But in the middle of extolling the benefits of unhindered self-exploration—citing my own discoveries in Portuguese and slam poetry, as well as my extensive tours of India and Brazil—I ended up losing my train of thought and silently indulging the possibilities of a marriage to all three Schell women: the enormous bed we would share, waking to rest my head on the buoyant buttocks of one, laying a gentle palm over the sleepy nipples of another, and kissing the third on her warm pink cheek moments before she crawled from bed with the wispy hairs at the small of her neck silhouetted in the light of dawn.
Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter Page 31
