The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg (8 page)

“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 flask 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.”

Julia 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.”

“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).