The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg

by Geoff Herbach

  I wish Die Another Day weren't on TV and I could keep track of our motion on the map. I really want to see Ireland on the horizon.

  Okay! On June 16, 1990, you—I'll call you Mrs. Rimberg, because that's who you were supposed to be in that B&B (God, Molly Rimberg doesn't ring like Molly Fitzpatrick does it? Never mind. I'll call you Molly Fitzpatrick)—woke before I did. From the bed I watched you take off your pajamas. I watched you go to shower. I watched you come out of the bathroom, a light green towel wrapped around your head, and I was dying to make love to you (it wouldn't have taken long), but was so hurt, you know? Throughout our drunkenness and baroque emotion the night before, I'd done serious accounting and knew with utter certainty that when I'd accused you of sleeping with someone else (“You are fucking around on me!”) or falling in love with someone else (“You can't live without an Irish husband, can you?!”), you'd done nothing but call me names (“Get off it, you psycho freak!”) and yell and scream. You did not deny my accusations. So what was I to think? Ow . . . I'm hurting now just remembering!

  You seemed disinclined to make love to me anyway, didn't want to like I did. (I would right now—I'm free to—my wife divorced me—too bad I'll be dead when you get this, huh?) But you weren't unpleasant, either, when you finally spoke.

  I pretended sleep in that big feather bed as you motored around, water and shampoo smells trailing you, putting on makeup, drying your hair, filling the air with sweet berry lotion. Morning sun flooded the room, making the white curtains burst white. And finally, you leaned over me, already dressed, I'd watched you dress, all that sweetness seeping into my nose and eyes, and whispered in my ear, “T. I'm going down for breakfast. We're meeting Tim Boylen at ten. You should think about moving . . . I'm sorry about last night . . . I'm—”

  “I'm not meeting fucking Tim Boylen!” I shouted, eyes no longer pretending sleep, eyes popping out of my skull, veins inflating in my forehead.

  “Fine,” you glared. “Do whatever you want.” You grabbed your day bag and walked out of the room, slamming the wooden door as best you could. And you were gone.

  I burst into tears before the door latched shut.

  Tim Boylen . . . Molly . . . Oh . . . I sobbed for ten minutes straight, tears rolling down my cheeks, soaking into the feather pillows and feather bed. (Makes me suspect the cleanliness of B&Bs—all those tears, all that moisture-receptive material—seems like a breeding ground for disease.) You knew Tim from Notre Dame, of course, a real black-blooded Irish boy, and holy shit was I shaken. I wrapped your light green towel around my head and breathed you.

  It took some time (snotty and tear-soaked), but eventually I couldn't stomach the passive stance I'd taken. I had to move: the pain and suffering and heartsickness and puppy love and adult hopes and all that sex I feared I'd never have again, it all swirled, a cyclone, lifting me from my wet, white feather cocoon, popping me into the air, wing-ed and beautiful—I would meet Tim Boylen with you! “I can make this right!” I peeled off the towel and hurtled out of bed in my boxer shorts and ran out of the room and down the hall and down the stairs and into the dining room, four tables of laughing tourists suddenly silent as a nearly naked T. flew into their midst.

  You weren't there.

  I begged the patrons' pardon, then ran to find the proprietor, and she told me you'd left without eating breakfast, but had left a note for me, presumably letting me know where you wanted to meet. She asked me to return to my room before reading the note. “You're . . .not quite dressed, are you?” she said, sweat beading on her brow.

  “No. Sorry.” I smiled, and I did smile sincerely. I felt great relief. Of course you wouldn't leave me behind without a plan to get me to you.

  I walked back to the room, smiling warmly at the horrified guests plastered against the walls as I passed them. “It's okay,” I told them. “She left me a note.” Only a Japanese gentleman in a straw hat and woolen blazer smiled back at me, seemed to nod his agreement to what I said.

  But he was wrong to agree, totally wrong, Molly, for here's what you wrote. Something like this:

  I think it would be best if we spent the day apart. You really need to calm down. You're making me miserable and I'm afraid you'll embarrass me in front of Tim Boylen. His father owns a newspaper, T. I could get an internship from him next summer. Having you around right now is too risky. I really don't have a thing for Tim Boylen, so don't think this is about me spending time with him alone; it isn't. I really do love you, T. Let's meet back here for drinks tonight and start our vacation over. Okay? I've dreamed for two years of being here with you. Let's get it right.—Love, M.

  What did you mean you didn't really have a thing for Tim Boylen? What were the implications there? Oh, I read between the lines, Molly. Did you sort of have a thing for him? Were there others you did, in fact, have a thing for? I sopped the feather bed with tears again for a while, then decided I would pursue my own bliss, my own destiny, perhaps my own Boylen-esque lover, and I jumped up, threw on my hippest, grungy, lowdown clothes (which you hated), and bolted from the room, my face still red from weeping.

  And here's where the date comes into play, Molly: The Japanese man in the hat and worn woolen blazer was waiting for me in the hall.

  “Stephen Dedalus, I presume,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  You know what? These Dutch stewardesses don't like me. They keep looking down their noses at me, smiling but not really. God they're beautiful. They're willow trees: tall, strong-trunked, arching arms set gentle against the artificial airplane breeze. No one could ever mistake me for Dutch. They are monumental. What a super-looking crew (a crew, much like the Rockettes, I could never join).

  There! The blondest stewardess! She distinctly looked down her nose at me as she passed the row! God, it's not hard to see why Calvinists did so well in Holland. These would-be bombshells are the physical embodiment of the Calvinist reformation: certain of their salvation, suspicious of others, and utterly prim. How did these people create Amsterdam with all the sex and drugs? I think I'm going to smoke hash when I get there, Molly. No sex, though. I want to be true to my wife, though she divorced me, and true to my girlfriend, though she left me.

  According to the TV screens, now back to mapping our progress, we're popping the cork on the upside-down bottle Greenland. And I can see it . . . Ireland on the horizon.

  June 16, 1904, was, in fact, James Joyce's last day in Dublin in real life. He, a young twenty-something, left for the Continent after that. Never lived in Dublin again. But he dwelled on it— not in a sentimental way. Ulysses is fiction but with a lot of fact in it. There's an older Jewish gentleman, Leopold Bloom (Jewish, sort of like me, right? I'm a semi-Semite), and he has a cheating wife, whom he loves entirely, Molly Bloom (Molly!), and then there's Stephen Dedalus (representative of Joyce himself), a young artsy-fart, dirty, unhappy, brilliant, hurtling without solution to the dissolution of his own parochial Irishness (as we hurtled to the end of Ireland as we knew it). Symbolically Dedalus and Bloom become one, or sort of, and, remember what the Japanese gentleman called me? Stephen Dedalus! Of course, I hadn't read the book.

  “Call me Bloom,” he went on to say. “Let's walk to the festivities together.”

  I had no clue what he was talking about but was in no position to disagree. I had nothing else to do! You'd left me stranded on the rocks.

  Picture this (you probably even saw this): As I walked with the Japanese gentleman, “Bloom” (though I had my doubts as to the veracity of that name—I've always had fine instincts regarding truth), as we approached the River Liffey, sun high, along a winding major thoroughfare devoid of cars, we met other people dressed like Mr. Bloom: bespectacled and wrapped in woolen blazers. More people gathered with us . . . and more. Soon we waded in a swooning mass of straw hats, blazers, and others not dressed up and also many wildly hip women, beautiful young women carrying backpacks and books. This was a stunning sea of humanity.

  My Mr. Bloom kept handing me a fla
sk of whiskey as we walked. He talked about where we were going (Bloomsday celebrations—James Joyce–themed parties) and what we were doing (drinking hearty), and I nodded and smiled and said very little, hoping to keep my cover as this Stephen Dedalus so I could continue to float among the glories.

  We came upon a tiny graveyard in the midst of Dublin. Buildings, three or four stories, old, gray, and also painted yellow and green and white, surrounded the dark green grass, the stone walls, the fallen headstones. The sun was high, abnormally warm for Dublin, apparently. My eyes ached from beer and light. At the gate a man stood in Charles Dickens–style undertaker's clothes. A coffin lay flat next to him. “What's up?” I asked My Mr. Bloom, feeling nervous, stomach washed in acid.

  “Our first stop today, young Stephen, is to drink to the dead.”

  “Oh . . . okay . . .” I nodded.

  And then from the undertaker reading from a big green book: “Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his wood box.” He pointed at the coffin (which, to be honest, was pretty small to be a real coffin—I didn't necessarily buy that there was a body in there, but, you know, I was hung over from Guinness, from fighting with you, from weeping sorrow all night while you slept and I had, by this point, consumed the equivalent of four or five shots of whiskey, so . . .). My head began to swim. I lost balance standing on the edge of that graveyard, sun bearing down, among laughing, half-drunk heads bobbing—the partying crowd.

  And I began to have a vision, a hallucination: I saw you, Molly Fitzpatrick, my beloved girlfriend, my favorite journalism undergraduate, boxed in the little coffin next to the nineteenth-century undertaker. My response to this vision was normal at first—a heavy weight sinking deep, drowning, faintness. Yes, picturing you dead: silent, lying inanimate in the dark box nailed shut, your white skin whiter amidst all that blackness, your black hair thin showing white scalp underneath, your cheeks sunken, caverns underneath your eyes—it did cause my cheeks to pull down and my chin to quiver and tears to grow in my eyes. But then something shocking, so amazing: a light, elation. Actual light born in my dark middle. And this light rose in my chest, freedom from you, from waiting for your phone calls, spending every last cent on bus trips to you, wishing my last name began with Mc or O (considering taking your name when we married), picturing you kissing a tall red-haired rich boy on a crisp South Bend football day—freedom from you, Molly, from fear. This light expanded in my lungs and straightened my posture and continued to rise through my bronchial passages into my throat and through my voice box where it caused me to cry out like a shaker, “Oh God.” And then light escaped, billowing, burping outward from between my lips, a bubble filled, it seemed, with ghost pictures of my real past that I do not know, and it floated ten feet above the crowd, Molly, not dangerous, a good light, riding heat inversions, rising from the woolly crowd, radiating the sun's heat back to it, until the light found a cooler place, perfect place, and became stationary, hovered. And there, as it hovered, it changed to crystal clear, the ghosts of my explicit past, colorful: a woman at an oval mirror combing thick brown-red hair, a man with a beard and a prayer shawl bending at the waist, and the bubble hovered and my eyes poured water from staring, from being astounded, Molly, from being overwhelmed. My Mr. Bloom asked, “Stephen . . . Stephen . . . Are you all right?” And I nodded because, Molly, these streams weren't sad streams riding down my face, this snot wasn't sad snot pouring from my nose. And then the light fell on a young woman underneath it, illuminating her utterly.

  The young woman wore a blue tank top and had wild, curly hair tied back, and she held open a copy of that Big Green Book, and she called out, scanning the crowd with her eyes as she spoke, in response to the undertaker's reading: “We come to bury Caesar . . . his ides of March or June. He doesn't know who is here or care . . .” and when she stopped, Molly . . . the crowd fell silent around her, and she glowed in my bubble light and her eyes bounced across the crowd until they locked on me, the maker of light, and she paused and she whispered, breathless, barely audible, but I could hear: “Oh, you,” and her eyes covered me, wrapped me up, and she stood there shaking her head slow, smiling, a Semitic smile, I knew it—ours was a preternatural recognition, Molly—I knew immediately this was something big, this Julia Hilfgott, whom I was about to meet.

  And holy shit, you knew me as a skeptic, filled with mistrust. But holy shit there she was, Molly, Julia Hilfgott, who may have destroyed us, a Jewish girl. I told My Mr. Bloom, “I'm going over there.”

  “Of course, Stephen. I'll see you tonight.”

  And the Irish Sea parted, and I walked across it, Molly, the path opened through the braying crowd until Julia and I were face to face.

  “Do you go to Brown, man?” she asked.

  “No, Wisconsin.”

  “This is so fucked up,” she said, sniffing, crinkling her nose, scrunching her dark brow. “I don't understand. I totally know you from someplace.”

  “I know,” I said. “Should we go get a drink or . . .”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes,” she said.

  And we walked away from the graveyard together, the crashing Irish Sea behind us swallowing the vision of you boxed in that coffin.

  Did we walk together to the Promised Land? We did if our eventual arrival in Antwerp, Belgium, “The Jerusalem of Europe,” counts for anything. But if by Promised Land you mean some sort of home—well, obviously not. I've never found home. But at least you were gone from my mind. (If only I could've kept you there.)

  That's some serious stuff. Don't you think?

  What were you doing with Tim Boylen all day?

  We're almost to Europe now. I just pulled open the window shade a slice. The sun is making the entire sky the color of fresh-squeezed orange juice. We're flying into dawn. And, according to the screen, we're just about to cross Ireland.

  In fact, there it is. And it really does look green. The sun is up enough. There is enough light and that country . . . your country, Molly—it is silent, unreal, beautiful.

  Flying east through the night makes morning happen so fast. Dark Ireland sliding away. I'll be in Amsterdam in an hour.

  You know, I had an amazing time that day. Unreal. There was a naturalness in my relationship to Julia Hilfgott that you and I never had. She and I were in sync. We sounded alike, although she grew up in a suburb of New York City. She'd just graduated from Brown, an English major like me. We had similar inflections, similar tastes in music and books (although at the time I'd never read Ulysses), a similar disregard for a neat appearance, similar senses of humor. And our bodies fit perfectly next to each other, after we'd had several drinks, lying in a park, spooning off our buzz. Did you see us lying together? Did you see us holding hands in the street? Did you know something was happening to me that day? Did you sense then that you and me inhabited new and different universes? Or did you know nothing at all and find yourself with Boylen and realize you belonged to him not me?

  We're on final approach. The long tall Dutchman and his long tall friend are stretching, speaking funny (in Dutch), smiling, so happy. I guess they have kind eyes. In this light they look kind. And they're going home. They're rested. I have no skin on my ankle from the Dutchman's shoe tread, which rubbed on me all night. I am trying to go home, too, you know? But in Antwerp I'll be as much a stranger as I am everywhere. I'm looking for my dad, but I doubt he's there. And, no, Antwerp isn't my home just like you're not, and my god, Molly Fitzpatrick, I haven't slept a bit.

  At eleven p.m. that June 16, the pub Julia and I were in closed. She said, “I'm taking a ferry to France in the morning. I have to catch the train to the ferry so early I didn't bother booking a room overnight. I don't want to be alone in the train station. Come with me.”

  “You want me to go to France?” I asked.

  Julia paused. “I'm not staying in France. I'm going to Belgium. I'm visiting my aunt and uncle in Antwerp.”

  “You're kidding. Antwerp is where my dad was born, where his family lived.”

  Ju
lia Hilfgott lit up, Molly. She lit up across her whole face, and I disappeared into her for a moment. I did. I knew for certain I belonged with her (for a moment). I knew positively I'd found my soul mate (for a moment). “You have got to come with me,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I told her. “I know.” And I did.

  But Molly, I didn't leave you, did I? I didn't have the chance. Julia and I walked to the B&B. In that potential giant's night, and though I remember these enormous stars, the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit, pregnant stars hovering in the black sky as we walked between street trees, I couldn't consider their metaphorical implications, their potential as guides to my correct life, to T. Rimberg's right life—you were on my mind. Our parting. The sad details of disunification played like video in my imagination: crying, last hugging, yelling, your terrible cold shoulders . . . How could I explain this to you, Molly? How could I tell you I was leaving? How could I leave Molly Fitzpatrick, whom I pursued so hard, whom I loved so hard, whom I called my soul mate for three years prior? This is the God's honest truth, Molly: as I walked with this Julia Hilfgott, I thought, “I can't. I can't. I can't do this to Molly. I can't hurt her. I can't leave her. I can't.”

  But the thoughts, they didn't matter. The thoughts were fruitless, weren't they?

  My Mr. Bloom, the Japanese fellow, sat with others in a room off the entrance of the B&B. One man played piano and the others sang Irish tunes. I'd left Julia with her backpack on the front step, thought I'd come back to her in ten minutes to tell her I was staying with you. But as soon as I entered, My Mr. Bloom stood and said, “Stephen—your girl . . . your wife is gone.”